Adventures in Remuddling

Assignment: make a complete list of home repairs.

No, this is not the complete list.  There’s another section for the building, common areas as well as landscaping.  I would venture to say that an old house’s repairs/renovations list grows faster than, say, the list of an apartment or condo.

One of the first things the Cure recommended was to to vacuum and mop the floors. By vacuuming, the author says, we can tell which parts of the room have bad “flow”. We should be able to easily vacuum around furniture and objects.

This is where I have to confess, we are not very good housekeepers. Gillingham-Ryan that believes that healthy homes are ones which are cleaned and de-cluttered regularly. Dust aggravates allergies, and “its accumulated contributes to stagnation in your own life.” On a gut level, I have to agree with him. Clutter and dirt/grime are symptoms of house “disease”. It’s just that both activities are neither fun nor glamourous for me.

Continue reading “Week One - Deep Cleaning and Flow” »

Tig has been diligently trying to grow basil and cilantro seedlings.

Neither of us has grown anything from seed since we were children.  So this is an adventure for us.  Each day brings a new surprise.  The basil seeds are so small!  Cilantro takes twice as long to germinate as basil, who knew?  We feel like kids again, watching seedlings grow.

Tig built a compost bin a couple weeks ago. Now we can save our veggie and fruit scraps; even the coffee grounds go into our labeled containers. Our weekly garbage volume is definitely decreasing now.

A few weeks ago Serena gathered up all the toxic chemicals and cleaners she could find so we could get rid of them and replace them with more natural products. The previous owners lived in the house for 43 years. And so you can imagine, they accumulated lots of chemical cleaners, paints, acids, gases, and who knows what else. And they kindly left them for us.

A few months ago while rummaging through the basement, I found a large compressed gas cylinder. It’s the same cylinder in some home inspection pictures of the basement (you can see it propping open the door).

Continue reading “Bye-bye Hazardous Waste” »

Where have I gone? I’m going to my day job to pay for all the renovations!

Kidding aside, we haven’t been posting as much as we used to (especially me). Tig has been very strict about only posting house-related topics, he doesn’t like “blog creep”. Blog creep is like style creep in a fund manager, or mission creep in a foundation. It’s when a blog starts out about one topic, but then evolves into other topics and general on-line journaling. Not that there’s anything wrong with it; he just wants to keep things focused.

Continue reading “Where have I gone?” »

It’s easy for us as home renovators to collect stuff: scraps of wood, bits and pieces of metal parts, salvaged trim, doors, knobs and pulls, light fixtures, and stuff left over from the previous owners. Each of us needs to balance the practicality of collecting useful things with cluttering up our home. While we manage to get our living and dining room under control after doing the Apartment Therapy Cure, I didn’t have time to be smug because shortly thereafter, I discovered we had been sweeping our crap into the guest bedroom, basement, and attic. There, the stuff gleefully multiplied behind our backs.

Peter Walsh a professional organizer on the TLC show “Clean Sweep”, has written a book It’s All to Much to help people battle their own clutter demons.

Continue reading “All Too Much Book Review” »

You’re renovating an old house with your spouse or significant other, you fabulous do-it-yourselfers! You’ve missed a few deadlines, and actual costs are exceeding your budget, which you’ve already stretched to the breaking point. You and your significant other devote all your spare time on the house, talking about it, working on it with each other. It’s late, and you’ve put together and taken apart the pedestal sink three times, and your love-of-your-life is not listening to you. You have power tools and very sharp implements at your disposal…Sound familiar? Anyone who’s undergone a major renovation with their loved ones understands the stresses involved and how it can strain your relationship. And if you’re one of those couples who chirp: “We never fought. With each passing day of home renovations, we’re more passionately in love…” Please keep your comments to yourself. We don’t want to hear about it.

We definitely have our moments, like the time I found myself arguing about why we need a dumpster while demolishing two bathrooms, or the time Tig changed his mind about the front bedroom when I originally wanted it to be the study. The biggest differences usually are related to our work-styles. I’m a spreadsheet gal; if I had project management software, I’d probably use it for our home renovations, complete with Gant charts. Tig likes to make cryptic notes on little sheets of paper, especially since he broke his phone which also served as his digital organizer.

Despite our differences, we’ve managed to make a go of fixing our home, and would like to share a few strategies here. We don’t have it figured out, and it goes without saying that each house and person is so unique that what works for us may not work for you. So humor us as we pontificate on love, remuddling, and the meaning of life:

Continue reading “Love Among the Ruins - Part One” »

A long overdue two-part article on love, remuddling, and the meaning of life:

Take your estimate of how long it will take to do a renovation, and triple it. That way, you’re not blaming each other when you’re three months behind and under stress. We were naive enough to believe that we could get two bathrooms and a kitchen done in a month, an idea so absurd that we laugh ourselves silly thinking about it today. I know better now. When my very optimistic husband says that the driveway will be done in 2 weeks, I nod in agreement and mentally double or triple it. The truth is, there is always a setback or a delay, even when we think we got it all figured out. For example, the living room. We’ve painted many rooms and thought we were seasoned pros. But the renovations gods saw our budding smugness and smited us with a knee injury, which set us back a few days.

Continue reading “Love Among the Ruins - Part Two” »

As a child, I have fond memories of my parents taking detours on the way home just so we can see the holiday light displays on peoples’ lawn.

A fellow resident in our town has garnered local fame (or infamy) for his holiday light display. This year, his display consists of approximately 500,000 lights, a 650-lb 23-ft diameter crown, multitudes of inflatable characters (santa, snowmen, penguins, a Tigger, etc), and a whopping electric bill (upwards of $3,000/month).

Whether you like it or not, it’s definitely a remuddling feat for the record books. According to a local newspaper article describing the work on the “crowning achievement”:

Continue reading “Holiday Remuddling” »