Another Two Bite The Dust

Well we are almost finished hanging the drywall on the exterior walls.  We did the two outside walls of the Master bedroom today.  It seems to get easier each time.  Must be learning from our past experience.  We had to cut 5 feet out of one wall for the french doors.  We were concerned about trying to get the top piece up over the doors so we ended up cutting the 12 foot length in half.  Working with a 6 foot section is so much easier – now we’re wishing we’d just ordered the 8 foot pieces of drywall.  Would have resulted in a lot more taping, but the hanging sure would have gone faster!  We are finding that there are some rather large gaps between the ceiling and wall drywall due to the uneven slope of the roof so my sister suggested we use crown molding to cover the seam.  We picked up a couple of pieces at Home Depot and tried them out and found one we like.  It is a curved “cove” molding and it is very subtle which we like because the house is not going to be fancy enough to support traditional crown molding.  Mike also cut the window opening in the family room so we could get more airflow in the house.  We didn’t have to use our heater or A/C this weekend, but we can tell the warm weather is coming soon.

The west wall of the master bedroom

The north master bedroom wall

We can see out the front again and all the windows got cleaned too

Because we didn’t have towel racks in the master bathroom, we’ve been hanging our bath towels on a hook over the door in our bedroom.  I found a wall cabinet, with towel bar, for $25 at Target and Mike put it together and mounted it.  Now we just have to find somewhere for Mike to hang his towel :).

A great place for MY towels

We did a lot of outside work this weekend.  We had hoped to go for a hike on Sunday, but the yard work took most of the day and exhausted us so we will hike another day.  We cut down/pulled up two dead trees (killing one old electric chainsaw in the process) and planted our living Christmas tree.  We also pulled a lot of weeds, trimmed the out of control hedge beast in our front yard and transplanted a “volunteer” side bush to a more suitable location.  Since the weather is getting warmer and we’re only coming up every few weeks, we made some repairs to the sprinkler system, ran a new line under the deck to the rose bush and installed timers on both the front and back spigots (our sprinklers are not automatic).  We also found some really cute solar post lights at Home Depot to add some ambiance to our driveway.  Finally, we added mulch to our front yard trees and rose bush.  Very colorful!

We gave the pine tree that was here time to recover, but alas it had to go

The beast hedge all trimmed proper

Our other pine tree that is still alive

This tree changed color in two weeks

Our living Christmas tree in the ground

Rose bush with mulch and new drip line (at wall)

Two station timer for our front water lines

Solar LED light mounted on our driveway posts

We’ve been having trouble with the tub in the master bath.  The tub/shower faucet did not have a stop point, so it took a little work to get it positioned to be off.  We could not find a replacement in the Payson area so Mike had to jury rig something together which has never quite worked.  This last week he decided he was going to go to every plumbing  store in the valley until he found the replacement stem and he did – at Central AZ Supply in Mesa.  He was able to replace the mechanism and the tub is now good as new.  He also fixed a tiny leak that had developed under the house in the winterizing drain he installed last year.

We made some improvements in the kitchen by bringing up some unused shelving.  It is amazing how nice it is to have our food supplies organized and accessible.  I told Mike I could be happy with this setup for a kitchen until we’re ready to retire, but then I made a comment about the sink being too small and now he doesn’t believe me.  While at Home Depot, Mike decided to get a new gas grill.  The one we have been using is a tabletop model and just wasn’t manly enough (I guess) so now we have one that he assures me will get used every weekend we are up there.  I just need to remember to pack the steaks.

More places to store our stuff and easier to access

Just a small grill, but bigger than the camping one we've been using

This was also our first weekend trip where we stayed Sunday night and came back to the valley early Monday morning.  We woke up at 5:30am and was able to leave the house by 6am (no need to winterize anymore).  The traffic was almost non-existent and Mike was still able to make it in to work around 8am.  We may start to do this more when the weekend traffic gets heavier this summer.

Stats:  2 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 3/21-4/3: $261
Remodeling expense to date: $26,435

Spring Is Starting to Spring

We arrived at our place Friday afternoon to a stunning display of purplish leaves on our tree out front.  We found quite a few trees starting to bring in new colors throughout the neighborhood and town.

Beautiful bloom on our tree in the front yard

We brought with us a new counter-top convection oven to give ourselves more cooking options than the microwave and a bullet-like mixer.  Both were quite a deal at Kohls.  We spent the late afternoon rearranging the kitchen and getting the house out of its winterized condition.  Since the days are getting longer, we had time to take a neighborhood walk while there was still light.

Our kitchen keeps growing with more stuff

Will soon need more counter space

We are determined to hang drywall on the exterior walls of at least one room every weekend we come up.  This weekend we did the guest (Matt's) bedroom.  Mike spent some time in the morning removing the rest of the paneling in the small hallway so we could pass the long sheets of drywall through the wall studs in the den.  He also removed other pieces of paneling that remained around the doors in the hall and bedroom.  Since we have been using the guest bedroom to store all our tools, Mike had to clear them all out to give us room to work.  He then spent some extra time removing dried spray foam insulation from around the windows.

Removing paneling around door

Multi-tool has been a great asset

Opening through den to guest room

While Mike was working, I wanted to visit the local paint store to look at a product I had seen there last year that might work for a remodel we are planning for our pool deck in the valley.  I also stopped at the grocery store and snuck into a thrift shop (unbeknownst to Mike) while I was out.

When I got home, we started the drywalling.  This was our first attempt to hang drywall without Matt.  We were concerned about moving the sheets, but did not really have many issues.  It was fun taking the sheets through the wall as I could walk right through carrying the sheet (my diet is actually paying off), but Mike had to set it down and walk around.  He could fit through the stud openings, but not with the drywall.  We didn't plan well for the first sheet we moved and ended up taking it in backwards.  Since the sheets are the full length of the room, we could not turn it around and had to bring it all the way back out and do it again.  More thought went into the other three sheets, but we still got it wrong on the third sheet.  It only took about five hours, but we did complete the two exterior walls in that room.

A picture to prove I am working

Done for the day and my thrift store coveralls

We had a leisurely morning on Sunday and then started some yardwork.  Mike continued his spraying of all the weeds and I watered bushes/trees and pulled up an awful looking vine that had fallen off one of our brick walls.  Before going home, we went on a 2 hour hike just west of our house.  There is a north part of the trail and a south part, but the two do not yet meet.  We wanted to see if we could find a connection to get from one to the other and we did (mostly due to someone thoughtfully placing yellow ribbons on trees) - down the side of a hill, through brush and some cactus and we were on the south trail at last.  This took us back to some town roads which looped back up to our place.  We think we hiked about 6 miles, though next time we will remember our camera and GPS.

It is possible that the temperatures will still get to freezing at night before we make it back, so we winterized the place again (hopefully the last time for awhile) and took off for home.

Stats:  0 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips (Wow that's a first!!)
Remodeling expense 3/7-3/20: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $26,174

We Are Back

We originally decided not to start work again on the Payson house until the beginning of April, but we needed to spend a weekend at the house to test a recent upgrade to the heating system while it was still cold.  During our stay at the end of 2010, the company we bought the system from installed a new part to help the unit convert from heat pump to heat strip at a certain temperature.  After they did the install, it did not seem to be working properly that same night, but due to the holidays and extreme weather issues the company could not work on it before we left.  I went up for a day in February to meet the service guy and get the unit configured properly and this weekend was a test, while overnight temperatures were still low, to see if the unit worked as it should.  Although the temperatures were not as extreme as they were at the end of December, we were toasty in the house and the unit was not blowing cool air.

While we were at the house this weekend we decided to do a little work and, if the weather continues to be as nice as it was, we will start coming up every other weekend to continue our improvements.  This weekend we did some demolition to remove the drywall and paneling in the short hallway by the bedrooms.  Our original plan was to leave this drywall up, but we found that in order to get the new drywall sheets back to the guest bedroom, we would have to either go through the window or go through the den wall as the 12 foot sheets will not fit around the hall corner.  After lifting some of these heavy sheets, we decided that taking down the hallway drywall was the easier way to go.  As an added benefit, now all the walls (with the exception of the bathrooms) will all have new drywall and all the old paneling will be gone.

We were not able to take down all the paneling as Mike had taken our new Craftsman multi-tool down to the valley and did not think about bringing it back.  It is the best tool to use to cut the paneling in the corners as the recriprocating saw is too unwieldy to use on this.  We will bring the tool back on our next trip to finish the job.

The drywall will go through the wall on the left into the door on the right.

We made a trip to Home Depot for some weed killer (they are already growing) and other miscellaneous items.  We spent some time there pricing out lumber and parts we will need to build a Murphy bed.  We bought a hardware kit from Rockler Woodworking when they had a recent sale.  We are interested in putting one in the guest bedrooms in each of our houses, but to buy one at a furniture store would cost over $2500.  The kit, on sale, was about $270 and comes with a plan and parts list to build the bed cabinet.  The lumber and parts priced out around $370.  All we need after that is a queen mattress and we should have a Murphy bed for under $1000.  We will need to wait until after we get our Jeep back to pick up the lumber and will add the materials to our next Home Depot bid, which hopefully will save us even more.

We spent Sunday relaxing in the morning and then I watered all the plants while Mike sprayed the weeds.  Since the temperatures are still getting under freezing at night, we re-winterized the place before we left in the afternoon.

Stats:  1 Home Depot trip; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 1/4-3/6: $347
Remodeling expense to date: $26,174

A Drywalling We Will Go

We finally made it to Payson on Sunday, December 26.  Our plans were to be up there on Christmas Eve, but Mike had been down with a cold for almost a week and still was not feeling 100%.  By Sunday he was feeling better and we needed to be up at the house by Monday to take our drywall delivery.

We got a call fairly early on Monday that our drywall was on its way.  The Home Depot delivery truck dumped 60 sheets of 1/2 inch drywall in our front yard, but for some reason did not have the sheets we needed for the kitchen ceiling.  I called Home Depot and discovered that the 8 pieces of 5/8" drywall had been incorrectly tagged as a customer pickup so the delivery guy had to go pick it up and bring it back.  We then spent the next couple of hours carrying the very heavy 12' sheets into the house.  Just recovering from a cold, this took a lot out of Mike and we did not accomplish any more work that day.

Lots of drywall to get into the house

With Matt home from college, we wanted to take advantage of his help and get as much drywall up as possible.  Using the drywall lift lent to us by my dad, we decided to tackle the kitchen ceiling first. This was our first time doing drywall and tackling a ceiling with cutouts (9 can lights and a ceiling fan box) presented a good challenge.  Our friends Doug and Ursi had given us a tip (which Mike had also seen on the internet) on covering the outlets and cutouts with lipstick and then pressing the drywall against the wall to mark where the cuts should be made.  Sounded like a good idea and looked good on YouTube, but the lipstick did not always make a full mark, plus it was really hard to get off.  However, we did get enough to get a good idea of where the cut should be made and did not have to do many re-cuts.  Mike used his Dremel tool that has a special drywall cutting blade and Matt stood by with the shop vac to keep from spreading too much dust as Mike cut.  The cutting went much better than the marking and the lift really helped us to support the drywall while measuring and cutting, then to hold the drywall in place while securing it.  Mike had decided long ago to use regular cordless drills with a special adjustable dimple bit (much cheaper than a special drywall driver).  With a few tests on some scrap pieces, we were able to get them adjusted properly and they worked very well.  Mike and Matt were a little nervous about going too deep, so a few screws had to be finished by hand, but once they got into a rhythm, most of the screws did not need adjusting.  We were able to finish all but two small sections of the ceiling before calling it quits for the day.  Mike and I woke up the next morning and, while Matt was sleeping in (surprise, surprise), finished the last couple of small pieces.

Dremel cuts clean holes

Matt helps to keep the dust to a minimum

Drywall lift made a big difference

Matt's impression of a lift

Next we decided to do the exterior walls, starting with the ones in the kitchen.  We found that marking the outlets while hanging the drywall on the walls was much more difficult than doing the ceiling.  We found it easier to measure, re-measure (very important step), mark, re-check marks (second most important step) and then cut the outlet holes.  As with the ceiling, we had to do very few modifications using this process.  In the whole drywall process, we found that our three most important tools were a drywall cutter that cuts both sides of the drywall at the same time, the Dremel for cutting holes and a newly purchased Craftsman multi-tool for trimming.  These tools surely made our life a lot easier.  We were able to complete the three exterior walls of the kitchen/dining room in two days of work.  We took one more day to do the front wall of the great room and the den.  We did not have too much trouble with weird angles and cuts in the kitchen, but had to make some very interesting cuts in the great room/den walls because, as expected, the walls are not square.  We decided not to come back to the house until the weather gets warmer, so we did not cut out the window openings so that people can't look in and see how empty the house is.

Great drywall cutting tool from Amazon

The lift did wonders on the walls too

Trimming some uneven boards

Front wall done, but window covered

The big news of the week was the large amount of snow Payson and the surrounding areas got starting on Wednesday.  It was a lot more than we had after Thanksgiving and we knew it would not be gone later that day.  It snowed most of Wednesday and part of Thursday.  Before the snow accumulated too much on Wednesday, Mike and I drove into town to buy some chains and an ice scraper for the car at WalMart.  We were not sure if we would need the chains, but did not want to be without them in case the weather continued to get worse.  We did not attempt to go on the roads again until Friday and by then we were barricaded in our driveway by the snow plow castoffs.  Mike had to use a regular shovel to dig a path out.  The roads were snow packed, but easy to drive on.  We picked up a few things in town and then decided to play hooky from house work and go to a movie and dinner.  The three of us saw Tron Legacy at the local cinema and enjoyed it, even though it was not in 3D.  We were going to take Matt to the airport diner for their regular Friday fish fry, but had noticed that El Rancho, the Mexican food restaurant we like so well, also offered an all you can eat fish fry and we decided to try it.  I did not think a fish fry at a Mexican place would be good, but both Mike and Matt really liked it.  In fact, Mike liked it better than the airport diner.

Zena covered in snow

Just the beginning, it got worse

We went back to the house and found things to occupy our time until midnight arrived.  Some of our friends are staying on the East Coast for a year and they decided to spend New Years at Times Square, so we texted them to see how it was going.  We have no TV service in Payson, so we could not watch the ball drop as our friends did in New York, but we celebrated just the same when midnight came.  Since Matt turned 9, we have not exchanged Christmas gifts in our family as we wanted Christmas to be centered on Christ's birth so we now exchange New Year's gifts (this actually works out really well for after Christmas sales).  Once midnight struck, we opened our gifts then went to bed.

Zena's New Year's snuggly

Matt made us a plaque for the house

That night did not just bring us a new year, it also brought us extreme temperatures.  In the morning we found that the overnight low was -0.8.  Our friends in New York had been wearing sweatshirts to the Times Square events and here in Payson it was below zero!  I decided to make the guys a nice New Year's Day breakfast and found that there was no water coming out of the hot side of the kitchen faucet. Mike discovered that the hot water line for the kitchen sink ran closer to the opening to the crawlspace than the cold line and, apparently, the water inside it had frozen overnight.  He spent time after breakfast wrapping insulation around both of the exposed lines running under the kitchen and enclosing those areas with insulation.  The water finally started running by the time he was done.  We do have plans to completely insulate the crawlspace, but there was not enough time before winter kicked in.  Another item to add to the summer projects.

Some other miscellaneous items we got accomplished this week included putting up the ceiling fan in the kitchen after the drywall was up, cleaning out the gutters in the front that were blocked with ice due to drain blockage and putting down some de-ice on the patios.  We also bought a wicker table on clearance and a cute little living Christmas tree that we decorated.  Our plan is to buy a new pine tree every year and then plant it so we have a memento of every year we've been in the house.

Our temporary kitchen table from Home Depot

Our living Christmas Tree to be planted in the Spring

Stats:  3 Home Depot trips; 4 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 12/6-1/3: $1544
Remodeling expense to date: $25,827