Happy 2nd Anniversary for the Payson House

It is hard to believe it has been two years since we bought our house in Payson.  Looking back through our blog, it is even harder to believe all the work that has gone into the place.  We definitely could not have come this far without lots of help and greatly appreciate all the efforts of Craig and Bob.  While we were up at the place this weekend, I took some "after" photos to compare to the pictures we took during the pre-purchase inspection.  Here are a few of those comparisons:

New door/trim, window/trim, patio deck, skylight and no evap cooler on side

No lattice, new windows/trim, door/trim, and crawlspace covers

New window/trim, door/trim, outlet, light and no dog door

New door and moved the metal shed from the left part of the yard

Metal shed moved to make place for 10x14 workshop with attic

Ceiling leveled (new insulation and drywall), can lights,
window moved, plumbing moved, new flooring and sub-floor

New 4x8 pantry

Stub wall removed and new windows

Ceiling leveled, new windows, flooring, and sub-floor

New door, windows, can lights, ceiling fan and plumbing moved

Partial wall and vent removed to open the room up

New window, door, ceiling fan, entry light and carpet

New window, carpet, skylight and no more rock

New double door entry into den

Peeled off ducks, new toilet, shower rod/curtain and towel rack

New vanity, sink, faucets, mirror, medicine cabinet, lights and tile

This opening no longer exists, it is just an alcove in the room

Here is the alcove (future desk area) and wall where the door used to be

New opening for the den and new flooring

New window and flooring

New window, flooring and bed

New toilet and towel cabinet/rack

New vanity, sick, faucet, medicine cabinet, light and wood cabinet removed

New faucet hardware and shower rod/curtain

Window removed, some new siding and new trim

Some new siding, new trim, new light, door trim and screens

New screens, light and door trim

New outlets, new siding, screens and door trim (no Matt)

If you have not read the rest of our blog, it should also be said that all the electrical wiring, drywall and insulation was completely replaced (except for most of the ceiling).  All the internal doors, except one (it was reused), are new six-panel doors and a couple of those are solid.  Also, some of the items shown as new are not really new but are new to us.  They were either given to us, bought at a thrift store or at Restore.

This was the second of our new 3-day weekends based on my new work schedule.  After having company the last couple of times we were here, Laurie decided we would just take it easy and enjoy our place. So this was going to be a sit back and relax weekend, which most of it was but some work did get snuck in under the radar.

We spent some time in town Saturday morning at a couple of different stores after having a great breakfast at the 260 Cafe.  We checked out Sears, Restore, a jewelry store and a mattress store.  While at Restore, I remembered that we needed a door for the kitchen sink cabinet.  It looked like they had some that would work, but I did not have any dimensions to work with so I needed to return later.  Though it was not in our plans, we ended up buying a new bed at the mattress store and it was delivered that afternoon.  We will still need to buy a headboard for it since we did not like the prices at the mattress store and may return to Sears another time for one we saw there.  We returned home and moved the double bed from our room to the guest room just in time for the delivery team to show up and put together our new bed.  Laurie had originally wanted to buy a bed with built-in storage, but, since we found a cheaper headboard at Sears that she liked, we decided to lift the bed frame to allow for underbed storage so I picked up some bed risers at Walmart.

Our new QUEEEN size memory foam mattress set similar to a Tempurpedic - but cheaper

The double bed has been moved to the guest room, though we can use the inflatable mattress as a backup

Later I went back to Restore after measuring the cabinet door opening.  I initially found a door that matched the cabinet extremely well, but it was a little beat up.  After a little more searching on the shelves, I found another identical door that was in much better shape.  I also sorted through a box of door hardware for hinges and screws and bought a couple that I thought would work.  I could not believe how well the door matched the cabinet when I got home and, not only that, but the hinges I bought were almost identical to the ones on the existing door.  I mounted the new used door and then rotated the other door so it would open the way Laurie wanted.

The door on the right is the new used one from Restore - not a bad match

We finally made it to a new church on Sunday morning.  We attended the Expeditions Church from a recommendation by Kathy at the 260 Cafe.  It was smaller than the two other churches we tried last year and we really liked the message.  We may return to check it out again.

The whole weekend was filled with rain in the afternoons or evening, but the big storm came Sunday night.  About 4 or 5pm the dark clouds started rolling in and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees. Until almost 9pm we had heavy rains with lots of thunder and lightning.  One strike was so close it rattled the house and there was almost no time between the strike and the following thunder. We had forgotten to bring Zena's pills, so we spent quite a bit of the evening trying to keep her calm even after Laurie gave her some Benadryl.  The power flickered in the house once after the storms started and then an hour or two into it, we lost power altogether.  When the storms calmed around 9pm, I ran into town to get some dinner due to our power being out (I was able to see that the town area was still lit).  After finishing dinner and getting ready for bed and making sure everything was unplugged or shut off to avoid a power surge, the power came back on.  Now I had to reset all the clocks.

I had brought my golf clubs up with me to spend some time on the driving range, but the storm on Sunday thwarted my plans that afternoon so I was going to try again Monday morning.  When I woke up, I found that the outlet in the kitchen for my coffee pot was not working, though it was fine the night before when the power came back on.  So I had to fix that and I also decided that, since the ground was soft from all the rain, I would install the solar lights in the front yard that we have had for over a year.  So much for golfing this weekend.  The lights installed easily and lucky for us the power problem seemed to be a failed GFI outlet.  A new one from Home Depot resolved the issue.  Since I was working in the yard putting in the lights, I also got some weed killer (lots of ground stuff from all the recent rains) and some ant killer (had a big mound in the back yard).  It was quite muggy working outside, but the temperatures were not too bad.

It is hard to see all of them, but there are six lights around the grassy (weedy) half circle

Laurie had to do work all morning (even with her reduced hours she still works on Mondays) and when I was done with my work, we broke for lunch and then packed up the car to head on home.

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 2 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 7/17/12-7/30/12: $1,087
Remodeling expense to date: $44,882

Babysitting in Payson

When we first bought the Payson house, I discussed with my manager the possibility of modifying my work schedule to a commonly accepted eight nines program.  The way it works is, in a ten-day work period, I would work one 8-hour day, eight 9-hour days and have one day off.  One of my MR KLUD friends is on this work schedule and my company does offer this as an option, but my boss was not very keen on the idea.  I let the subject drop and did not bring it up again, especially once Laurie started working full time, but when she recently went to a 30 hours work week, I brought it up again.  It took quite awhile to get my manager to agree to a test period, but he finally did and this will be my first use of the new schedule.  I originally wanted Fridays off like my friend has, but another guy at work has Fridays off for a different reason through the end of the year, so I told my boss I would take Mondays off.

This weekend we did not plan any real work as we had scheduled to have our niece, her husband and their 3-month old baby girl stay with us for the full weekend (including the Monday).  Our niece had worked as an interior designer for awhile, so we offered them a weekend get away in return for pointers on paint colors and how to set up the great room.

The first night we got there we went for a walk through the neighborhood and our neighbors across the street were celebrating a friend's birthday and asked us to join.  When we got back from the walk, the girls went inside with the baby and my nephew and I went over to visit.  I have met this neighbor before, but never spent much time with them and this time I met his wife and daughter (we had met his son another time).  We got some low-down on the neighborhood and some info on the previous owners of our house and got a beer to boot.  While we were there, the wife starting screaming about a spider and we found a tarantula type spider near the door.  Her husband and a friend took the spider down the road to let it go.  She said she hates these spiders and they get them quite often.  In the two years we have had our house, we have seen many spiders but never one like this one.  I am hoping we won't as I know Laurie would have the same reaction.

While we were at the neighbors, Laurie and her niece had worked on the color scheme and had it just about completed by the time we got back.  Here are the colors that they eventually agreed upon (I just nodded my head in approval):

The main wall color (same through out the house)  is on the left and
the contrast color for the great room and kitchen is on the right.

Same main wall color on left and contrast color for the den

Same main wall color on left and contrast color for the bedrooms

Color for the bathrooms and laundry room

The rest of the weekend we had a great time taking them to some of the places we liked and we wanted to take in the Saturday night concert, but it got rained out.  We were even brave enough to let them go out for dinner and a movie while we baby-sat their little one.  She is quite the little cutie and we had a fun time watching her.

I did end up doing a couple of small projects at the house during some down time.  I got a couple of new temporary shades for the windows since some that we had put up a long time ago kept coming unstuck.  I got lucky with this as Home Depot had discontinued carrying the 48" wide shade, but someone must have returned some as there were two available and I got them both.  I also got some new pads for the dining chairs.  I had put some adhesive felts pads on the feet of the chairs when we put down the vinyl floor, but they too were starting to come unstuck. This time I bought some felt pads that replaced the nailed-in plastic chair feet.

Our nephew had to work Monday afternoon, so they took off around noon while we finished packing things up at the house and left a few hours later.  Now that we have a color scheme, we will have our work cut out for us to do all the painting of the walls.

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 7/6/12-7/16/12: $385
Remodeling expense to date: $43,795

Flooring Completed For The 2nd Annual 4th of July Peep Shoot

This was our first extended time of being at the Payson home since Christmas, though that week it was only myself as Laurie had to work. We have tried to schedule the rest of our vacations this year to coincide with holidays to take advantage of the extra day off.  So we came up for this 4th of July holiday week to complete our flooring installation and to have our MR KLUD friends up for a 2nd annual Payson 4th of July celebration and peep shoot.

Our first task was to install the last piece of vinyl flooring in the master bedroom.  After removing all the furniture, I used the nail gun to lay a new set of ring-shanked nails as we did in the other rooms.  We then realized that we would need to chip away some of the bathroom tile because it came too far into the bedroom (was visible with the door closed).  We will have this tile replaced in the future to match the hall bath and laundry room, but we need to leave enough vinyl in the doorway for the tile guy to know where to stop.  I thought chipping away the tile in the hall bath was tough, but this was even worse and I am hoping the whole floor will not be like these few inches.  Once the room was clean after all the work mentioned, we were able to lay the flooring.  As we spread out the piece for this room, we found that Lowe's had not done as good of a job cutting this piece as they had the others.  This piece was cut at an angle and we had to rotate it to allow enough overlap to go out the bedroom door, but it did not leave enough to go through the bathroom.  Due to the size of the room, we already needed to splice a piece for the closet (something we did not have to do in the other bedrooms) and now we would need to splice a small piece at the bathroom door.  Apart from this issue, the flooring went down easily and the cutting process was very quick after learning on the other three rooms.  The time consuming part was splicing pieces for the closet and bathroom.  We did not spend a lot of time trying to match the pattern in the closet since it will be hidden by the closet door, but after an initial attempt in the bathroom opening, we had to find a better matching piece as it did not look right.  The documentation for the flooring recommends overlapping the two pieces of vinyl to be spliced and making one cut.  This worked very well as long as it was one continuous cut.  One time I stopped and switched directions and that did not work very well where the two cuts met.  Once the ends matched, we laid the special vinyl tape on the floor and secured the seam.

The tile came up easy, but the hardiboard was another story

Even with the multi-tool scraper, it was tough

Chipping it away little by little

Enough ground cleared to lay the vinyl

Trimming around the door

The final piece of vinyl completed

Color changes based on the light angle - this looks lighter

The small matching patch to the bathroom entrance

The last task we had to do to prepare for the carpet install was to trim the vinyl in all the door openings.  In each of the rooms where we laid the vinyl, we left a little extra protruding past the doorway.  We decided to trim back to the center of the door jam and then let the carpet guys tell us know if we needed to trim more.  Laurie took care of the trimming task and found a straight edge she could use to make the proper cut.  Now we were ready for the carpet.

Laurie trimmed the vinyl on the doorways of the master bedroom. . . 

. . .the guest bedroom. . .

. . .and the den

Saturday night we went with some friends to the Payson Summer concert series held in Green Valley park.  It is a program that has a different band each Saturday night throughout June and July.  This particular night the performers were Junction 87, which is three guys who play country music. We knew they were good as we heard them in a local restaurant a few months back. Apparently they are a local favorite and the park was packed. After the concert, we played some pool with our friends at their house and then made plans to hike the Tonto Natural Bridge the next morning.  We have never been there and it was beautiful.  We hiked down under the bridge and then hiked along the stream to the other end of the park.  After the hike we had lunch in Pine at the Randall House, another place we have never been, which had been recommended by some people who used to work there.  Lunch was very good, but our favorite is still the Early Bird Cafe.  After lunch we walked through the Pine 4th of July Craft Fair which was held this weekend.  What a great couple of days with friends and seeing new things.

Laurie, Denise, and Bob on the walkway to the Tonto Natural Bridge

Us in the opening under the bridge

Denise and Bob in the same opening

I had a couple of small projects to do to get the house ready for our 4th of July company.  A few weeks back when we were getting the hall bath set up, we could not find a towel bar that Laurie liked to go over the toilet, but we were able to find one online.  We brought it up this weekend and installed it.  We also needed a new shower curtain and rod.  These items we picked up in the valley at Bed, Bath and Beyond.  We bought a curved rod similar to the master bath, but with only a single rod instead of double.  I had some concerns about the installation because of the tile around the tub, knowing that if we did not drill into the tile (which I did not even want to attempt), the rod may be too high for the curtain length.  At the store we happened to find a pressure fitted curved rod and was able to install this (no drilling required) right on top of the tile and have it whatever height we wanted.

New glass shelf and towel bar from Amazon.com

New pressure fitted curved shower rod with curtain

The next item for the hall bathroom was to finish the small linen closet that is behind the door.  The walls inside the closet had been completed, but I needed to cut the shelves and install the brackets to hold them.  I did not want to install complicated, expensive brackets in this small closet, so I decided to use the small L-shaped clips that have a pin that fits in a hole in the wall like what are used in kitchen cabinets.  I cut four shelves out of melamine we bought awhile back for this purpose and then measured and drilled four holes per shelf.  The holes in the drywall side of the closet were not as tight as I would have liked, but the tightness of the shelf helps keep the clips in place.  I may eventually need to come up with a different solution, but it is working now.  I put the original door back on the closet since the stain on the wood is pretty close to the color of the bathroom vanity and plus it is hidden by the bathroom door.  This is another item that may get replaced later as it is a little skewed making the top of the door come out of the opening a bit.

Shelves in linen closet

Original door back in place

The den double doors needed to have their knobs installed so we did not have to pull the bottom of the doors to open them.  We used dummy knobs which are called "dummy" because there is no mechanism to them.  We used these types of knobs because they look like the other door knobs we installed for the bedrooms and bathrooms. No holes were required for installation, just screws to secure the knobs.  Since I was putting one knob on each side of the door, I had to offset the screw holes so the knobs lined up correctly but the screws did not run into each other.

New knobs on the double doors - the ones on the other side look the same

On Monday the carpet installers from Home Depot showed up to lay our new carpet.  There were two guys who came all the way from the valley just to do this one job.  The main installer said the job would not even cover the gas for the round trip.  We let them take over the main area of the house while we isolated ourselves (and the dog) in the master bedroom and kitchen.  They installed tack strips around the walls and where the carpet would meet the ceramic tile, but where the carpet met the vinyl they installed z-bar strips.  This type of tack strip holds the carpet like a normal tack strip but then allows them to bend the carpet over the edge, which is a metal strip, and then pound the metal down to the floor to hold the carpet in place.  This is better than using a separate transition strip.  The installer had to make a quick run to Home Depot as they did not bring enough z-bar to complete the job. The whole install only took about four hours and the carpet looks really good.  It definitely makes a difference in the look of the house.  One downside of having carpet is it caused two doors that swing into the room (the pantry and hall closet) to drag on the carpet.  I had to take both doors out and trim about a 1/4" from each.  After that they worked fine.

Long hallway before carpet. . .

. . .and after

Short hallway before carpet. . .

. . .and after

Great room before carpet. . .

. . .and after with Zena and Laurie testing it out

Another view of the great room before carpet. . .

. . .and after, but Zena was done with her test

Our new floor and expensive furniture ready for 4th of July guests

We did not do any more work the rest of our holiday week.  We had our MR KLUD friends come up to help celebrate the 4th of July as we did the year before.  Each couple spent one night with us and we were able to spend time together as a group and then some time with each couple.  We took a walk around Green Valley lake with one couple and saw all the bats come out at dusk.  As a group we visited the Tonto Natural Bridge and took a different trail than the last time we went.  We also saw some Javelina in the park and picked some wild blackberries.  The guys then spent some time getting all our pellet rifles sighted in so we could do some peep shooting.  Peeps are the marshmallow chicks they sell at Easter and this year each couple had their own rifle instead of sharing one amongst seven people (Matt was with us last year).  We also had different colored peeps this year and came up with a scoring system based on those colors.  The teams were guys against gals and unfortunately the gals won.  One couple stayed until Thursday and after inspecting a couple thrift stores in town, we both left Payson for the valley.  Laurie and I could not stay any longer as we had a flight to North Carolina Friday morning for a friend's 30-year retirement party from the Navy.  It was a great week with the flooring getting completed and being able to share our place with our friends.

Javelina at the Tonto Natural Bridge Park

We saw four javelinas in the park

Mike in the middle of blackberry plants picking berries for the group

There were rows of plants and plenty of berries to pick which made Mike happy

Partially shot up peeps table

Richard and Doug setting up a new peep display

The canopy was added due to rain and then added shade

Friends, pictures, beer, guns and peeps - great day!

Kristen getting a good bead on a peep

Laurie showing her shooting finesse

Stats: 1 Home Depot trips; 3 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 6/11/12-7/5/12: $7
Remodeling expense to date: $43,410