Happy Belated One Year Anniversary!

Laurie is staying in Payson again this next week and so thought it might be easier if I write the blog for this weekend.  Actually, though the blog was Laurie's original idea based on a friend's suggestion, we have been writing the blog together.  Over the last year, the major writing of the blog has flip-flopped between the two of us, though we have written the blog from her point of view.

It has almost been a month since we have been back at the house in Payson.  Since our last posting, I went on a business trip to San Jose, we took a week vacation in Sedona and spent a weekend traveling to Flagstaff and across Route 66 to Kingman for a diner trip with our MR KLUD friends that we found in a recent Phoenix Magazine.  It was a lot of good food and a great time with our friends, plus we got to see parts of AZ we have never been to before.  Matt stayed at the house in Payson as he is still working at his summer job and we left our dog, Zena, with him during our travels.

The one year anniversary of the purchase of our Payson house has come and gone and we were not even there to celebrate.  We closed on July 22, 2010 and we started de-construction on July 25.  We have done a lot of work over the past year and have learned a lot.  We have made more trips to Home Depot and Wal-Mart than we have possibly made in our lifetime prior to this past year.  It has been a year of frustrations, surprises, joy and excitement in seeing our house become what we had envisioned when we bought it.  I can honestly say from my point of view that there have been a few times when I thought we bit off more than we could chew and wished for it to go away, but overall it has been worth all the work and trouble (though I will still be happy to have it done).

After all our trips, Laurie was able to catch a ride with her dad to get to the Payson house on Wednesday night to relieve our son from our crazy dog.  There were quite a few storms in Payson during our absence and she does not handle them well.  She has adopted a new behavior of climbing into the bathtub to hide from the storms.  I left work early on Friday in hopes of getting a jumpstart on the last few pieces of drywall.  However, when I arrived Laurie was not feeling well, so we just spent a relaxing afternoon at the house.

After Laurie made us all pancakes on Saturday (this has become somewhat of a new Payson house tradition), we started on the drywall in the den.  We actually got a later start than planned as the electric skillet started to smoke really badly and filled the house and my lungs.  I was coughing for quite awhile and even had to go outside to breath.  Matt also had some problems with the smoke, but it did not affect Laurie.  After doing a thorough cleaning on it, we tried it again and it immediately started smoking.  Looks like maybe the non-stick surface is going bad as the smoke has a chemical smell to it.  Apparently a new skillet is in order.

Since the den has been our main storage room for many of our future project purchases, we had to do some moving of boxes and doors before we started the drywalling.  We were able to do the wall with the double doors and started the north wall which backs up to the laundry room when I realized I had to do something with the dryer vent in this wall.  The current vent is one of those accordion tubes shoved through a hole in the floor.  Once the drywall is up on this wall it will be very difficult to put in a new vent.  So off to Home Depot we went to find a solution for a new vent.  I did not have many options as it has to make an immediate 90 degree turn from the drywall opening through the floor within a 3 1/2 inch wallspace.  I found a vent tube used for connecting the dryer to the wall vent in a tight space and then connected a extender tube to it through the floor.  I also bought a special connector that is used to connect the dryer vent to the wall opening.  Though it was still a tight fit through the floor, this solution seems to work well.  I will still need to extend the vent under the house to an outside vent, but that will be a later project since it will be awhile until we will need a dryer in the house.  We were now able to install the bottom piece of drywall on that wall.  We also thought now would be a good time to cut out the window in this room - the last window in the house that was still covered with drywall.  That definitely provided a lot more light in the room.

East wall of the den completed

The north den wall

Dryer vent opening in laundry room

Last window to be uncovered

Our plan was to drywall the wall with the closet door next, but we realized we had to do some work on the closet door opening.  We want to install bi-fold doors on this closet instead of standard sliding closet doors to have more access to the space (Laurie hopes to turn the area into a sewing center).  The bi-fold doors require a somewhat precise opening size and we had to measure to see if we needed to make any modifications as we did with the laundry room opening.  We found that all we had to do was remove the drywall and paneling on the opening studs.  We decided to wait on putting the drywall up, but I was able to remove the existing drywall pieces from the opening while Laurie started prepping drywall for the laundry room wall.

Den closet after drywall/paneling removed

Due to the resizing of the laundry room opening a few weeks ago to accommodate bi-fold doors, we had to remove the drywall from the interior side of the wall.  We installed the new drywall on both the wall and studs for the opening, then reinstalled the electrical box and light that was on this wall. While Laurie and I worked on this, Matt took on the task of straightening one of the new studs on a wall in the den.  It had warped outward and would have caused a problem when the drywall was installed.  He was able to put some shims in the opening to straighten the stud.  Not the best solution, but due to the electrical wires in the wall, we could not put this stud in the proper way and it is needed as an endpoint for securing the drywall.

Light and drywall in laundry room

Laundry room opening completed

Light colored stud in corner with added supports

Sunday was a laid-back day, though we did install the new screen doors for our master bedroom french doors that we picked up while at Home Depot on Saturday.  This was a special order due to the size of the french doors.  The screens installed easily and now we can leave these doors open to provide more air flow in the room without all the bugs.

Screens to enjoy the cool breezes without bugs

Stats: 1 Home Depot trip; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 7/11-8/7: -$2
Remodeling expense to date: $30,694