Indoor outdoor living

I know I have said this before but of all the things I love about our house the Courtyard is the one that truly makes my heart pitter patter. I just love this space. I love the old wooden doors with the heavy hardware. I love the way the  house frames the courtyard making this enclosed private space. And I adore the old Japanese vine maples coming out over the house.

And now that we've been living in our house for almost a month I can truly say this is one of the spaces we use the most and enjoy the most. When we moved in it was a blank canvas and really it still is. We have some great long term plans for this space. We want to add some outdoor lighting. I think some vintage Japanese lanterns would be awesome! We want to add a lot of potted plants and some more ferns, maybe a rock garden in the large bed. Eventually we will need to either redo or change some of the concrete.. 

But for now we at least have some furniture, some plants and of course a ball for Margot to play with. I placed a few of my herbs out here along with some potted mums. We also removed the small wheel chair ramp that was leading to the front door and got a woven door mat. Underneath the ramp we found the biggest scariest spiders of my life! Arg, it was awful. 

The window above the steps is to the kitchen and doesn't have a screen and the front door next to the steps is a dutch door. When I'm cooking dinner I often send Chris and Margot out to the courtyard to play ball or sidewalk chalk and then I can chat with them through the window and door or Margot can stop to say hi. 

In addition to our courtyard we also have a lovely back porch off the main level of the house. The porch is great because it's covered which allows us to keep furniture out all year. I can also imagine some fall mornings before it gets too cold but once the rain starts where it would be lovely to sit out here with a blanket and steaming cup of tea to read on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The porch has an awesome view of the city, the river and Autzen Stadium. And since it's on the upper floor surrounded by big old trees it almost feels like a tree  house. Another great aspect of the porch is that the kitchen window opens out to it. It's an old window without screens. Sometimes when we have company I send everyone out to the porch after dinner then pass dessert out through the kitchen window. Totally charming! I love to open all the doors and windows between house and porch and then Margot and I wander back and forth picking up, watering plants and playing games.

Right now we have our red Adirondack chairs, some little kid chairs and a small table out here. I'd love a bigger table eventually so we could serve dinner outside and maybe some retro furniture. I also think hanging baskets and outdoor lights would be great. Regardless I know this space will be so wonderful when we host our annual Christmas cocktail party.

I'm not sure if it's the place, the age of the house or just the privacy of the neighborhood but I have never seen a house that feels as connected with its outdoor space. The house just seems to fit the environmental surroundings in a really unique way. 

I'm sure there will be a point when having bugs wander inside my house is no longer charming but right now I just love coming home and opening every single window and door without a screen. It truly feels like indoor outdoor living.

And we're off

As much as I'd love to spend the weekend demo-ing the ceiling tiles in our guest room, sanding baseboards and prepping the sun room for paint we are going to take a mini break from our various DIY projects for the annual Potter family beach trip.

Chris' awesome and wonderful parents rent a beach house each year on the Oregon coast and we so looking forward to one last get-a-way before fall is here.

So I'm off to pack up:

• a few growletts of Claim 52 beer
• lots of changes of clothes for our toddler soon to be covered in sand and water
• rain gear (it's still Oregon after all)
• a book..what a concept
• Grover, mickey mouse, Minnie mouse, Kitty, Pluto and the baby doll
• a real camera
• and one squirmy toddler who will hopefully settle down for along nap during our 2.5 hour car drive

But next week it's DEMO time!!!

Happy weekend

Asbestos? Negative

Yippee! I never thought I would be so excited about asbestos or the lack there of in this case. Now that we know our ceiling is asbestos free we can move onto operation ceiling demo.

The first step was to pull down the crown molding and window molding that was damaged in the leak. Then we set up a dehumidifier and fan. We will let everything dry out for a few days before we demo the rest.

And we will keep celebrating the fact that we don't have to pay for asbestos abatement.

Raining on my head part 2

In order to cohesively (or attempt to cohesively) cover the paint stripping process I sort of glossed over the plumbing issues so now I'm back with all the soggy details... literally.

Thankfully we purchased a home warranty with our house which in a mere three weeks we have used twice and has paid for itself 3 times over. Since we knew the warranty would cover the plumbing we had to work with them to get a plumber scheduled which ended up being highly frustrating. But in the end worth it because it meant our $700 dollar plumbing bill was really only a $60 dollar service call fee. A very good thing since we found out our warranty does not cover our ceiling damage.

Right away the plumber informed me our ceiling was toast. The ceiling in our whole downstairs is this ceiling tile which we assume is original to the house. Most of our plumbing appears to be behind it since our exterior walls, and some of our interior walls, are concrete block. To identify the leak he had to pull out several tiles to see what was going on.

Right away it was clear that there was some serious water damage behind them. They came out in crumbled pieces and were a soggy mess. 

With a clear shot of the pipes above it didn't take long for our plumber to figure out our problem. Three connections in the galvanized steel pipes coming to/from the kitchen had leaks where copper had been connected to the galvanized steel. We bought this house knowing it had galvanized steel and we actually did a lot of research on galvanized steel plumbing. They tend to have a 50-60 year life span but can last well over 100 years particularly if the system is 100% galvanized with no copper connections. The biggest place problems tend to occur is where copper and galvanized steel have been connected. Something about the metals touch and increasing corrosion. We knew going in replacing plumbing would be in our future but we'd hoped it would all hold steady for 10 years until we could do a major renovation and just redo all the plumbing, flooring and ceilings at once. Meh, onto plan b, which will be to replace sections of piping as we need to/ have the opportunity to. 

Our plumber ended up replacing this whole section of pipe with a new 25 year warranty pex piping which is apparently the latest and greatest thing in the world of plumbing. Who knew? I learn something new everyday I own this house.

Once piping was in place and water was on we were left with a big whole in our ceiling, a pile of old soggy tile and some decisions to make.

1. How do we fix our ceiling? They don't make this tile anymore so patching the whole just isn't an option

2. If we have to redo the whole ceiling do we just go ahead and redo all the plumbing in this room now?

3. How do we demo this thing? Is it asbestos? how do we find out?

Our first step is to figure out what we are dealing with regarding the ceiling and any possible asbestos. We are having a contractor come out who has experience and can tell us what we are dealing with. If it's not asbestos we will grab some dust masks and crow bars and demo it ourselves. If it is...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

Until then I'm not allowed in this room because you can't be too careful when you may have asbestos on your hands especially when you are married to a loving and over protective plaintiffs attorney.:)

nap time, scary chemicals and rain on my head

This project, ergo, this post was supposed to go a certain way. First there was going to be documentation, second I was going to have a nifty photo showing all of the needed materials, then there was going to be a before shot, a during shot with bubbled up paint and an after shot showing wood. A brief clean up description and done. Successful project and successful blog documentation of how I stripped the paint off baseboards in the guest bedroom. 

Yeah...that's so not what happened. But before I get to all the things that went wrong lets chat about this room. Arguably this is the worst room in our house right now. The downstairs had carpet which we pulled leaving a raw concrete floor, the paint down here is in horrible shape with lots of oil residue and streaks. There was a lot of plaster repair done leaving white splotches everywhere and all of the windows would have a lovely view if it wasn't for the fetching chain link fence surrounding them right now. But this room I have big plans for. It's going to be the guest room and I can see all of it's future loveliness in my head. And with our first overnight guest scheduled to arrive in two weeks I wanted to get cracking on this space. 

Before we set up a guest bed in here I'd like to re-paint the walls, re-caulk the window frame, add curtains, change the light fixture, clean and polish the concrete (eventually we'll add flooring down here but until then polishing the concrete is a short term cheap solution) and add a nice rug. But as I got looking at this room I realized that the walnut baseboards in this room had been painted over.

This is what they look like every where else. 

After some online research and a visit to the paint store I decided to strip the paint off the baseboards and refinish them before we painted the walls or polished the concrete.

So Sunday as soon as Margot was down for her nap I headed down stairs to tackle baseboards. The first thing I did was open every single door and window as wide as I could. Then I got all my supplies together. This is where I was going to have the great photo of all the supplies needed to strip paint off baseboards except I forgot the scrapers and the cleaning solution. So imagine this photo with a Spackle knife, a plastic scraper and some TSP cleaning solution along with what you see here, the chemical stripping agent, a small bucket to pour stripper into in order to brush it on, a cheap varnish paint brush, painters tape, protective eye wear, protective gloves and a course rag. The orange bucket has the cleaning solution.

Once all of my supplies where assembled I taped off the wall along the baseboards. The paint store guys recommended this to minimize the amount of stripper on the actual wall. 

Once the baseboards were taped off I got all of my protective gear. I tend to be a little flippant regarding my attire and protective wear during projects. Can't tell you how many articles of regular clothing I have ruined with paint or bleach over the years. However, chemical stripping agents are no joke. I even wore real shoes and socks in lieu of my standard flip flops. I also wore long pants, safety glove, glasses and a scarf to keep my hair out of my eyes. Don't I look fetching! This was especially nice when one of our new neighbors came over mid project to introduce  herself.

But enough about my clothes. Back to the stripper. Once properly geared up I painted the stripper on the baseboards in one direction in a nice thick coat. Then I waited 15 minutes. This was the part where bubbles were supposed to happen. You are supposed to apply the chemical, wait, the paint bubbles up and then you scrape. No bubbles. I waited another 5 minutes and this was all I got. So I applied a second coat as directed on the can. No difference. 

 I decided to just scrape some and see what happened.

 Paint came off! But...it left more paint. I could sort of see the wood but it was underneath a stubborn, albeit thin coat of green. I kept scraping and same result. I re-read package instructions, consulted Google and determined that I was either going to have to strip in layers or sand off the remaining paint so I resumed scraping. I used two scrapers, a regular Spackle knife for the flat base of the board and a softer plastic scraper for the groves and along the top since it's really easy to gouge the wood with a Spackle knife.

I was about halfway through the room when it started softly raining on my head and ear. At first I couldn't figure out where the water was coming from. I thought maybe the open window but then I remembered it was 80 degrees and sunny out. But then I noticed a small trickle coming from the crown molding in the room. And this is the point my project really went down hill. It was of course Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend so even though I wasted no time calling our home warranty company I didn't get very far. At that moment our friends Jeannine and Mercy came over with wine. Being my DIY mentors they know way more than me about all of this and were pretty sure the leak was coming from the intake/outtake lines from the kitchen. The kitchen is the room directly above. They explained how to turn off our water at the meter and then we all drank wine. I needed a break from paint scraping anyway. And no water meant no ability to clean up. After our wine break we figured we'd better go find our water meter. Once our water was off we loaded up Margot and walked to our neighborhood brew pub for some dinner. We thought we'd just finish scraping the paint once Margot went to sleep. Funny thing about chemical strippers is they don't work once they've dried so no paint was coming up and we still had no water to wash off all those gross scary chemicals.

The next morning we finally got the warranty company on the phone, got a plumber in and figured out what was going on. More on that tomorrow. I re-applied the paint stripper on the remaining paint, finished scraping, swept up all the paint and wiped down the baseboards and floor with the TSP cleaning agent. 

It really needs to be cleaned a second time with the TSP and a stiff brush but it was about at this point when the plumber informed he had to tear into out tile ceiling which we are concerned could have asbestos and my husband kicked me out of the now closed up room until our contractor can come take a look. So once again we have an example of how a room is going from better to worse on it's way to much much better.

As for our overnight guest, I fear she may be sleeping on a very nice air mattress in the library.

When I regain access into our guest room I'll re-clean the area with TSP and a very course brush, remove all the tape and start sanding down the rest of the paint and original varnish. Once the wood is bare I'll have to clean it very well with a deglosser before staining it back to it's lovely walnut finish. And the next time I decide to strip paint I'll so be trying the heat method instead of the scary chemicals.

The end...for now.

what we're eating

The last few months in our old house I made monthly menus instead of my usual weekly menu. Then the moving chaos hit and three months later I'm just returning to my kitchen routines. So last night I decided to make a September menu. And it was so fun! Aren't early fall menu's the best? All the summer produce is lingering but the season is starting to change and so all sorts of foods that were off the table all summer suddenly sound wonderful. I love making a menu for the whole month because I really have an excuse to spend a lot of time pouring over my cookbooks and thinking through recipes.

I also think it's fun to try and balance our meals over a whole month between different types of foods, flavors, meat/fish and lots of good meatless dinners as well. I also find it's easier each week to get organized around groceries and prep because the menu is already made.

coconut shrimp soup (Everyday food, Great Food Fast)

Indian red bean curry with brown rice (smitten kitchen blog, recipe here)

Brazilian black beans

Lentil soup, buttered radishes and bread (everyday food, great food fast)

steak, pars-lied potatoes and green veg

black eyed peas, brown rice and green veg

spaghetti and salad

red bean soup (from Tom Fitzmorris New Orleans Food) 

Chicken baked in rice and green veg (from The New southern basics) 

Chicken corn chowder (gourmet magazine cutout from long ago)

Date Night

Pinto beans with bacon, rice and collard greens

Pot Roast (from The new southern basics)

pot roast hash and eggs

stewed eggplant with brown rice (The New southern basics)

Pioneer woman beef with peppers

Basque potato and green bean soup with garlic chips and bread (Farmhouse cookbook)

steak, roasted veg, and green

hoisen Salmon steaks, rice and Chinese broccoli (everyday food, great food fast)

roast chicken with ginger and potatoes, salad (Farmhouse cookbook)

beef stew

paneed pork chops with fennel creole sauce (Tom Fitzmorris new Orleans Food)

squash and chickpea stew (smitten Kitchen)

black bean and chorizo soup (bon appetite magazine cut out)

chili and corn bread

chicken alfredo rice casserole (better homes and garden magazine cutout)

There it is, a glimpse into what we eat...at least this month. Not that you care but I, being the food dork I am, LOVE to see what people are eating. It's like I think they have discovered some brilliant recipe/food/food blog or cookbook and I just have to know about it.

 Another sign that fall is approaching,

Rain boots!!!

Go out one door...

and come in another. Or so you could, because there is not one, or two but 4 doors onto our back deck. Add this to two front doors, three lower level doors to the outdoor patio and three doors in/out of the garage. The result is a whole lot of doors with a whole lot of locks.

The harrowing total is 12 doors and 17 different locks. Harrowing because one of the renovations we did before moving in was to have each lock re-keyed, several repaired and a few replaced. And 17 locks adds up. In fact the total cost to get all of these locks working and re-keyed was $330. We were prepared for several unexpected expenses like this to crop up and had a contingency set aside so it wasn't a big deal and it was very worth it to have securely locking doors with fresh keys. Plus it was kind of fun to walk through each door with the locksmith and learn a little bit about the different locks, door knobs and keys we had. And fun fact: we ended this project with three different keys into our house! So imagine Chris and I at any given time or place outside our house trying to figure out which key goes to what door. 

Almost all of the locks and door knobs were original and over half were broken. The locksmith was able to rescue 8 original knobs and locks but we had to replace the remaining 4. Luckily, the 6 really cool vintage ones, the two front door knobs and these four on the back porch,

he was able to take apart fix and reassemble.One lock even had a broken off rusty key inside! 

I file this post under "crazy things you don't even think of when you buy and old house". Because while a lot of things were going through my mind when we made our offer, old tile, mildew stains, roof leak and rose carpet, rusted out broken keys inside of non-functioning locks was not one of them. And I definitely hadn't counted how many doors there were!