We have FLOORS!

Guess what?  We have floors!  I'll post picts soon.  But not tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I'm heading to Camden Yards.  The Mayor is treating her Fellows to a night in her hospitality suite. So let's hope the O's wrap up this series with a win!

Painting is done

Chris doing a little bit of finish work.  



This weekend was a marathon of different sorts for us.  Our goal was to get all major painting that we needed to do done by the end of the weekend because our new floors were going in starting today.  It is a lot easier to paint when you don't have to tarp the floor or worry about drips.  In only 2 13-hour days we managed to paint our entire great room from ceiling to trim, our hall ceiling, hall trim, master bedroom ceiling, and master bedroom trim.  It was pretty intense.  

I definitely hit my breaking point on Sunday afternoon.  I'd been drinking entirely too much Coke, and when we started putting up the main wall color in the great room I decided that I had made an awful choice.  I berated myself for not choosing a light yellow.  The color we were putting up looked like chocolate milk.  Who knew there could be a bad beige?  This happened on the first coat when we were just cutting in . . . anyway my wise boyfriend encouraged me that 1) it's only paint and 2) if we don't like it we will change it LATER and 3) we'd already done an awful lot of work - we needed to see this through.  I have to say that in the end I was pretty pleased with our choice.  I just hope it looks ok with our cabinets (coming next week).

Caele and Jackson acted as moral support for much of the weekend.  Jackson has plenty of paint in his fur.  Turns out the wall color is very similar to his coat color, so he liked to play "Where's Jack-Jack?"

The last piece we had to do this weekend was to finish removing the linoleum adhesive from the old kitchen floor.  We had tried on Saturday night, but without much success.  In one of our 8 trips to the Ace this weekend I picked up more chemicals, and we were ready to go last night. We poured on the adhesive remover, and scraped with all of our might.  All told it took about two hours.  I am positive that the chemicals affected my brain.  We have decided that linoleum is evil, and that we will encourage others not to put it down.  It is only building bad-future- home-project karma because one day someone will have to scrape up the adhesive you put down . . . so think about that before you floor.

Painting and Stuff

Today was a long day.  I took picts, but left the camera at Charles St.  We logged 5 trips to our neighborhood hardware store in 24 hours.  Thank goodness the awesome folks at Ace Hardware Federal Hill on Charles Street allow dogs, and shower them with treats and pets while Mom and Dad agonize over which shade of beige to paint the family room.  Shout-out here - you should give these hardware gods your business.  We also logged countless trips to Sharp Street because when your two homes are four blocks apart, you tend not to plan very well.

So today we did lots of prep work for painting, primed where necessary, and painted the hall, bedroom, and living room ceilings.  We also painted a lot of trim.  Tomorrow we'll knock out a few doorways, and the huge job of our living room (really kitchen/living/office).  It will be another long day.  We also finally got around to removing the old linoleum adhesive tonite at around 9.  Turns out those fumes really can make you sick.  Anyway, we quit while we could still see straight - job to be continued tomorrow.

An upside to all of this hard work is getting to jam out to Johnny Cash and Cake all day and sing along TOGETHER.  We seldom get to spend so much time within earshot of each other, and it was really wonderful to listen to music we love, and shout our interpretations of songs back and forth.  Speaking of Cake - catch them as the Saturday night FREE artist at Artscape this year (weekend of July 17).  I heart Baltimore.

I'll try to post picts in the next few days.  I am not spellchecking this post.

Campy Jack, Happy Jack

Last weekend while Caele and I attended a Black Tie and Tails event (see FaceBook for picts) Jacks went on a bachelor party camping trip with his pops.  Despite being temporarily trapped under a tipped canoe, Jacks had a smashing time.  We think he really like camping.

Renovation continues, Fellowship, Statistics

Hi everyone!  As you might have guessed, the speed of change with the renovation has slowed a little.  Once the major demolition work is done, there is a lot of unglamorous stuff like electrical, wiring, etc.  The contractors have been working on those items over the last few days.  Today I discovered that they had rebuilt the ceiling where we removed the drop-down, and they are really moving along with getting us paint-ready.  With luck we will spend this weekend painting the main room.  

This week has been exciting on a few other fronts as well.  Monday was the first day of my summer Fellowship.  We had lunch with Mayor Dixon, and then started work at our sites.  I am working at Baltimore City Recreation and Parks (BCRP) to help them develop an information infrastructure for their participants, as well as to better track their sponsors and partners. Each Wednesday the Fellows get together downtown for lunch and to hear speakers.  Today we heard from two of the three Deputy Mayors.  Next week we will hear from the Baltimore City Superintendent of Schools.  

Last night was the first night of my statistics class.  As many of you know, I'm a little stat-phobic, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a refresher course this summer in preparation for my Biostatistics class next fall.  I'm taking the class at Baltimore City Community College - they have a location downtown, and it only takes me about 15 minutes to walk there.  I'll have class Tuesday and Thursday nights from now until early August.

That's all there is to report from Baltimore!

Renovations Day Two

Boxes of flooring.  Heavier than they look.

We have been letting the doggies hang out in the bedroom while we work.  It seems like Jacks enjoys the drywall dust more than Caele.

We didn't think today would be too hard.  After all, yesterday all of the carpet came up.  It seemed like our part was mostly done.  Not so.  For starters, we remembered at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon that we needed to move our flooring from the 405 condo to the 602 condo. How could we forget about this stuff?  We had relocated our kitchen table to the middle of the living room and kitchen chairs were stacked in the guest room because all of this stuff was piled at the top of our landing, making our house feel like a storage space, but with more pet hair. 

But I digress when I eat apples . . .  unfortunately the parking lot at 405 is being repaved which means that street parking is at a premium - we were afraid to move our cars for fear of not being able to park again.  So this morning the first order of business was to move the flooring over to 602.  This turned out to be a very sweaty and arduous task.  I will not need to lift weights this week.  Here's what we moved:

19 boxes of hardwood flooring at approx. 75 lb. each = 1,425 lb.

10 buckets floor application "goop" at 70 lb. each = 700 lb.

stray shoe mouldings, bridges, etc. = 30 lb.

Total lbs. moved = 2,155

Now keep in mind that we currently live on the third floor, so we had to schlep all of this stuff down to street level and into the XTerra, then drive 4 blocks to 602, where we then had to schlep it up to the second floor.   As a result, we are very tired.  I wish that our day could have ended there.   Next on the agenda were some renegotiations on the electrical work to be done. We are much happier now.  

When we left the condo we decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream - conveniently located on the way to our cabinet and countertop guy.  With ice cream in our bellies, we narrowed down our countertop selections.  We should have prices in a few days, which will determine our final decision.  We really liked cambria (quartz) a lot better than granite, and our second runner-up is a material called Staron.  Stay tuned.

From cabinets we headed to Lowe's.  On our list was 2 ceiling fans (master bedroom and living room), lighting for under the cabinets, lighting for over the kitchen island, and some other stuff that I realized I forgot on the way home.  Guess I'll pick those things up later.

Tomorrow there won't be much action at 602 - the next step is the electrical work.  We did decide to delay floor installation until the 15th which will give plenty of time to do the electrical and put up the new sheet rock, as well as hopefully paint the kitchen/living room/office.  We looked at colors last night, and are thinking of a warm beige, cream trim, and some red to accent in the kitchen area.

And by the way, today the contractors removed the dropped ceiling from the former dining room/soon-to-be office area.  I took picts but accidentally erased them, so I'll have to get some more the next time I'm there.  We also learned that one of our contractors is quite musical, and used to play in a band.  He opened up for Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.  Chris is thinking of getting together with him to form a Merle Haggard/Waylon Jennings cover band.

This post is a little rambling.  I'm sweaty, dirty, and tired.  But this is fun, and my boyfriend is a manly-man so all is well.

Renovations Begin!

CDW tearing out the carpet.
Kitchen before.
Above - Condo before (with renters furniture).

Hi everyone!  I have been unforgivably neglectful of the blog.  I'm hoping to turn over a new leaf at least for the summer, and especially since we have so many exciting things going on!  This morning we started the renovations on our condo on Charles Street - we only have until June 30 to get everything done, and get moved in!  

Before lunch today we tore up the carpet in both bedrooms, and the hallway.  I say we, but CDW did most of the really hard work.  I'm primarily on clean-up crew.  Our contractors have also gotten a lot done already - they've removed all of our kitchen cabinets and sink.  We are told that after lunch they will be taking out the kitchen wall.  This afternoon we'll finish taking out the carpet, and haul our flooring materials from the Sharp Street condo to Charles.  We have to open the boxes so that the materials have the week to acclimate.  More to come . . .