Happy 4th Anniversary in Payson

On 7/22 we will have owned our Payson house for four years.  We both thought we would be much further along with its renovation, but we have come a long way and had many reasons for the delays in the last year and a half.  We have been very happy with the house, the location, the neighbors and being in Payson just feels like home.  Cannot wait to be up there full time.

Laurie started her week at the house with a visit from the Tub Guy.  She had talked to him quite awhile ago (probably over two years) and had him do a quote to refinish the guest tub - it was in sad shape.  He had recommended that we take care of the tub enclosure first before he did the tub.  So now, many months down the road, we have finally redone the enclosure and are ready for the tub.  We had hoped it would be completed before our guests came for the 4th of July, but he had a full schedule and couldn't fit us in.  It took two days for him to complete the work and the tub looks amazing! It was much cheaper, and less hassle, to have the tub fixed this way rather than to have tried pulling it out and replacing it when our walls were out.  A very good choice.

It's a shiny new tub - no nicks, dents, scratches or discolorations. Thanks Tub Guy!

Laurie found some shower curtains at Goodwill to use for the den closet that have the right colors to match our walls.  They are a little short, and the rod we have needs to be painted a better color, but the curtains look very good in the room.

Colorful curtains for a colorful wall

Since we installed Matt's router over the 4th of July, Laurie has had a few connection issues.  Plus, we knew that the router had a bad connector for the main ethernet port and the power connection easily comes loose, but the router was still working well in Mike's opinion.  While Laurie was on a thrift store run one day, she just happened upon a Netgear router for $5 that currently sells for $80 on Amazon.  She decided to buy it with the thought that, if we ended up not needing it, she could resell it.  Mike prefers Netgear routers over the brand Matt gave us and so he installed it at the house.  Now we do not have to worry about connection or power issues.  Thanks anyway Matt.

This $5 router can be bought brand new for $80 on Amazon - great find Laurie!

Laurie wanted more cabinet space in the kitchen, as well as a cabinet that could be closed off.  Having all the dishes in the open on the white shelf unit did not appeal to her, plus we found the dust accumulation on the dishes was a big pain.  So we found a bigger cabinet at Big Lots in the Valley during the weekend of their 20% off sale.  Laurie brought it up in the truck and we unloaded it and put it together when Mike came up on the weekend.  We had to rearrange some things in the kitchen to make it work, but it looks very nice and holds much more than the old shelf unit.  We hope to find a couple of more shelves to add to it.  In addition, Laurie had bought a rack that is used for holding aluminum foil/saran wrap rolls and Mike installed it on the side of the microwave cart.  A very efficient use of space.

Mike was amazed at the improvements that have been made to these put-it-together yourself kits

Had to relocate the microwave cart to make room for the cabinet's height

Still could use one or two more shelves, but there is free room as it is

Rack installed on the hidden side of the microwave cart

The kitchen changes allowed Laurie to move the white shelf unit to the den for books and games.  She also spent a lot of time putting the den back into office mode after having been used for guest sleeping quarters.  She exchanged the rolling plastic cart used for her nightstand with the one used for storage in the den to give her more room for clothes. Mike has found that Laurie loves to research deals online, shop at thrift stores and rearrange everything.  He is always having to look for items because, where they were last week, is not where they are today.

White kitchen cabinet moved to the den

Laurie took over the wider cart from the den. . .

. . . and gave the den her nightstand

Awhile ago, Laurie had bought some other hooks and racks to use in the house.  Two of them are supposed to be attached to doors and Mike decided he did not want to put holes in the doors for hooks.  He knew we had some 3M tape hooks in the Valley and would check before buying more.  But two hooks she bought are for her towels in the master bathroom and would go into the wall.  She picked a spot and Mike put them up.  He had trouble at first as it seemed the hooks had been around awhile (a swapmeet purchase) and the wall mollies included in the packages started to completely fall apart.  Luckily it came with a different set which worked much better.

New hooks for Laurie's towels

As we were sitting one evening, Mike noticed the room was a little darker and found one of the ceiling fan bulbs was out.  This was a special type of bulb and we did not have spares.  We found some fluorescent bulbs at Walmart the next day that we thought would work and they did.  We bought the day light bulbs instead of the soft white and the room is much brighter now.  We also cleaned out the dead bugs from the celing fan and the entry lights.  They sure do accumulate in those glass domes.

Changing light bulbs and fixing how the glass dome attaches

During our 4th of July get-together, we wanted to make some home made ice cream.  We bought the ingredients, but just never found time to do it.  Mike took some time to make the mixture (it is a cooked milk recipe), but then remembered we had never bought ice for the maker (another reason we did not do it before).  So we put the mixture in the fridge overnight and got ice the next day.  After about 45 minutes in the maker, the ice cream was mostly done and we placed it into some plastic tubs for the freezer.  Later that night we tried some and it was very good.

Home-made chocolate-chip ice cream and it was gooood!

Late one night we heard some groaning from our pipes and there was no water running.  We have a known issue with our pipes that, when water is running, they groan a bit.  We are not sure if we want to fix the groan because twice it has shown us that we had a leak somewhere.  It is still necessary to find the leak, but at least we know there is one and can fix it once found.  Without the groan, we would have never known (poet and do not know it) and would have ended up with a lot of damage to our walls and flooring.  So in the dark we were running throughout the house looking in cabinets and then running outside to listen for running water and found nothing.  However, as Mike ran out the master bedroom french doors to the patio and then turned to come back in, at the entrance was a large tarantula.  Mike had seen one at a neighbors house a couple of years ago and they said they get them all the time, but this was our first.  In fact, one of our new neighbors across the street had just told Laurie that week about finding them in her yard/house.  Mike was too concerned at the time about the water issue and killed the tarantula instead of keeping it.  He regretted that later on.  He hopes to find another one, but Laurie does not.

The tarantula Mike crushed from the night before, almost looks alive

Mike has an electric toothbrush and an electric waterpik in the master bathroom.  They both stand so tall on the counter that they must be moved to open the cabinet over the sink.  Laurie found that she could adjust the cabinet shelves to make room for the units inside, but the power cords would keep the door from closing.  Mike was able to drill a hole in the side of the cabinet to run the cords through and allow the door to close.  Less clutter on our small counter now, which pleases Laurie.

New cut-out for cables

On the last day of our weekend, we took the quads out for a run since we had not been on them in many weeks.  We took them out to the trails behind our neighborhood because Mike wanted to scout out where the shooting area was.  We have heard shots from that area and had seen a big pit one time on a hike.  When we got to the open pit place, there were some boys shooting arrows and we saw many targets and shell casings all around, so that must be the place.  Mike hopes that he can go there some time to shoot his guns instead of going to the range at the southern edge of town.  When we took the quads out of the shed, Mike noticed some bolts in the enclosure were missing nuts.  When we got back, he found some of the nuts on the ground and some of the other bolt/nut combos were loose.  He went through the whole enclosure and tightened all the connections before closing it up.

Securing all the nuts/bolts in the quad shed (the green thing is a bungy cord)

To avoid a lot of dead grass like we had last year from all the rains, Mike sprayed weed/grass killer over the whole back yard and in the ditch in the front.  It took quite awhile with a 2 gallon sprayer, but he got it mostly covered and should be able to see where he missed next time we come up.

Spraying the weeds and the whole yard to prevent new growth

While Mike was working in the yard, Laurie started working on a project to put a fabric seat on an old director chair frame. She got the base at - you guessed it - a thrift store and thought it would work well as a luggage rack in the spare room for guests to use.  Then she thought it could also be used as a stool/chair if we used fabric for a seat instead of straps (like a luggage rack has).  So she found some fabric and Mike found a dowel he had at the Valley house that fit the slots in the chair.  Before the day ended, she had measured and pinned the fabric; hopefully the chair will be finished before we have guests again.

Laurie's new luggage rack/stool project

That is where our weekend ended and, though we had planned to take it a little slower after the fast pace we had been on before the holiday, we still got some stuff accomplished.

Stats: 1 Home Depot trip; 2 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 7/06/14-7/21/14: $436
Remodeling expense to date: $41,796

Another Full Week and More Improvements Made

Laurie stayed in Payson house after Mike left on Monday per our new schedule.  This gave her a few more days to get some painting done before we would both be up at the house for the week of the 4th of July. Mike took his vacations this year around holidays to minimize the number of vacation days he uses.  Since we have been having our annual 4th of July get-together up at Payson, it was a perfect time to take off and get the house ready for guests.

Laurie spent her days completing the base color painting of the main room and then did the two green accent walls, one in the den and one in the main room.  The accent colors in all the rooms really look great and add so much to the color of the house interior.  She returned to the Valley near the end of the week and both of us came back up on Saturday for our 2nd extended stay.  We had quite a list of items we wanted to accomplish before our guests started arriving Thursday.

The main room painted along with its green accent wall

The accent wall in the den painted during Laurie's time on her own

Our new blinds from Home Depot were delivered right before Laurie left for the Valley.  The nice thing about these last two blinds, besides being cheaper online, is they were exactly the right length for the windows.  The store only sells blinds with a 64" length, but all our windows are 48" or less.  So all the other blinds we installed required us to remove many of the slats to make them 48".  However, you can buy the 48" blinds online and these fit perfectly.  No modifications were required.  We now have blinds througout the house.

Front window blind, which Laurie appreciated since she did not have a covering for a few nights

Last blind to be put up in the main room and house

Laurie continued her painting work in the master bedroom.  All that was left to paint was the master bedroom (including the closet) and the pantry.  Laurie started on the closet so that Mike could put up the new sliding mirror doors that we like so well in the guest bedroom.  In addition, we had decided to add a 3rd shelf to our closet and Mike got all the wood and hardware needed for this job.  While Laurie painted, Mike cut all the wood so she could paint them before Mike did the installation. We also found some leftover wood pieces that Mike cut to use as tops on the plastic drawer carts we are using for nightstands.  Mike already had a makeshift wood top, but Laurie did not and we also needed one for the spare room.  All of this would be painted in the base wall color, which we had to get more of at the store.  Laurie was not able to finish the painting of the master bedroom as she started having pains in her arm and did not want it to be irritated during our guests' visit.  So we still have the bedroom and pantry to paint at a later date.

Laurie's new nightstand top

Mike's original nightstand top now painted

Once the wood and closet walls were dry, Mike installed the extra shelf in the closet.  He attached it to the wall just like the other two shelves.  As with other items we found during the house remodel, he noticed that none of the supports holding up the other shelves were going into wall studs, but he used the studs for the shelf he put up.  Luckily we do not put a lot of heavy stuff on these shelves.  Once the shelf was done, Mike put up the closet doors from yet another run to our favorite Home Depot store (actually our only Home Depot store in Payson).  The install went as well as the guest room, but he found our closet opening is not as plumb as the guest bedroom.  It made us wish we had reworked the closet openings during the remodel.

The new third shelf went between the other two

The new mirror doors - all that is left is to paint the base color

As with the security doors we had been storing for quite awhile, we had also purchased a set of bi-fold doors to use for the laundry room closet.  This would be the week those doors would get installed.  Mike found the installation to be much more involved than the sliding doors.  It required quite a bit of work making sure the doors were level and to be sure they met in the middle.  But he persevered and they look really good.  We did have to buy some new door knobs as the ones provided did not seem very sturdy.  We originally were going to put another set of bi-fold doors on the closet opening in the den, but tried using the doors for the laundry room in the opening and found it was not plumb and not the right dimensions to accommodate doors this size.  A major oversight in our remodel job.  We cannot install sliding doors (the original doors) since Laurie wants to use the closet space for a sewing nook and will need more access than the sliding doors would provide.  So we decided we will just hang curtains to close off the closet.

Bi-fold doors from a purchase many, many months ago and new knobs

Since Laurie is spending more time up north, we finally decided it was time to have a normal Internet connection instead of using wireless broadband services.  Laurie had a visit one day from a SuddenLink rep and made an appointment.  Since Matt had Suddenlink installed while he and Danielle lived there, and had given us their modem to use, the installer only needed to verify there was a good signal in the house and we were set to go.  We do not have a router to use for now (Matt is going to give us an old one he had), but Mike had some network cables in his work bag and we used those to hook up our laptops.  It was much better and faster than using the wireless broadband and we do not have to worry about data limits.  Later in the week when Matt got to the house, Mike was able to quickly set up the router Matt brought so people could use the wireless connection.

Mike installed the security door for the front door, keeping in mind some of the lessons learned from the back door install.  At first the install did not go well using the same clamps he used in the back, but Mike got some longer clamps from his workshop and attached them to a higher point and then the install went better.  He did a better job at centering the door and used some old lip balm as a lubricant for the screws.  Also, he had picked up the special drill tool for the one-way screws, which made the job much easier.  Not only is it nice to have these doors out of our workshop space, it is even better to have the extra air flow through the house.

The security door looks more centered than the back

We had been waiting for our neighbor to make a decision whether he wanted our old metal shed.  Mike spoke to him over the weekend and found the neighbor had decided on a site-built shed, so we were now free to tear down the old shed.  Once it started to get cooler one evening, Mike began the process of taking it down.  The shed came down easily and split into many sheet metal pieces.  Before it got dark, he was able to get all the metal taken apart and stacked in the yard.  The next morning, before it got too hot, he dismantled the wooden floor and its base. We stashed some of the bigger wood pieces behind our shed with our other old wood and the rest of the shed fit nicely in our dumpster.  That saved us a trip to the dump.

Finishing the last of the metal removal

Old ugly shed gone

When we first got the house, the small wood shed in the back yard had a door on it that was falling apart.  It was an interior door and nature had taken its toll.  We were not sure what the future of the shed would be, so instead of spending money to replace the door, we reused an interior door we had removed from inside the house.  This was ok for a temporary fix, but again the elements did their work and our replacement door was falling apart.  We have decided to refurbish the shed and found that Home Depot sold a six-panel (like our inside doors) exterior door slab the right width of the shed opening.  Mike was able to cut all the right notches in the door for the hinges and then the proper latch and lock holes in the door frame and installed the door.  We had already had a deadbolt and doorknob set that was keyed to the new shed, so now we only have one set of shed keys.  The door looks much better so the next task will be replacing the siding.

New door and old door

There were a couple of small jobs we performed during the week.  One was to install a door viewer in the front door so we could see people at the door instead of looking through the window.  Another was to install door stops on all the interior doors to replace all the wood blocks we were using.  We mostly used the 45 degree hinge bolt stops as those are less noticeable, but we did use one wall stop plate where that particular stop would not work.  We also covered the raw wood on one of the kitchen cabinets with some contact paper to make it look better.  Then we spent a little time going through some old pictures of our guests to find ones we could print and place in frames for the rooms they would be using.  We found some fun pictures of our friends when we were in California a few years ago and a cute one of Matt/Danielle from last year's 4th of July party.  We had them printed at Walmart and placed in frames Laurie had on hand.

Peep hole in door not to be confused with peep shoot

Hinge door stop we used on most of the doors

This is the door stop used for the front door painted to match the wall

Contact paper over the old bare pressboard side

Picture and frame for one of our guests

Another painted nightstand top and picture for our friends

The last big task for Laurie this week was cleaning the carpet.  She really wanted to do this on her own and so we rented a Rug Doctor unit from Walmart and moved all the furniture out of the big room.  She started with the area rug to get the hang of it and then moved on to the hallway, working up to the big room.  She thought the smaller unit would be easier to use, but found that changing the water so frequently became a time consumer.  It took many hours, but she got the task done and we returned the unit on time.  We never really wanted to put in carpet, but it was the only cost effective option for a house that would not be temperature regulated.  After cleaning the carpet and filling the tub with all that was pulled up in the machine, we cannot wait to get up here full time and replace the carpet with something easier to clean.

Laurie working the Rug Doctor - she also cleaned the sofa with it

A clean hallway carpet

The main room after a thorough cleaning

What the Rug Doctor picked up on a carpet just one year old

Mike spent one of the last days working in the front yard.  It had not been mowed in quite awhile and the big bush needed a trim.  It took awhile to cut the bush because it attracts a lot of bees and wasps.  He tried to work around them, but finally had to break out some wasp spray we had so he could finish the job. The mowing was easy to do, but he decided to remove all of the weed growth that had come up in the ditch next to the street.  He has worked on it before, but was never able to get it completely cleared out.  This time he got it all.

Thursday was spent relaxing and doing odds and ends getting ready for our guests.  One set of friends arrived mid-afternoon, followed by Matt/Danielle just after dinner.  Our other friends came up on Friday the 4th around lunch time.  We had a great time being with everyone and having our annual peep shoot off our back patio.  The guys won the competition again this year.  We BBQd a pork loin and had some other wonderful dishes prepared by our guests and then went off to see fireworks under the threat of rain.  The Town of Payson said they would shoot them off no matter what the weather brought, but after waiting over a half hour for the show to start and getting pelted by the rain, we finally went back to the house.  About an hour after the show was supposed to start, we finally heard fireworks going off in the distance.

Peeps all lined up ready to be shot

The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast prepared by one of our guests and then they went further up north for a hike they planned and the rest of us went into Pine for their 4th of July craft fair.  We did not stay too long as our friends were returning to the Valley that afternoon and Mike was going with them as he was flying out early Sunday morning on another work trip to Hawaii.  Matt/Danielle and one set of friends stayed until Sunday and then Laurie was all by herself until she returned to the Valley on her normal schedule later in the week.

It was a busy week of activities, but the house looks much better and it was great to share it with friends and family.

Stats: 4 Home Depot trips; 4 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 6/24/14-7/05/14: $339
Remodeling expense to date: $41,360