Community Forklift

So a week ago, on my day off, I had Community Forklift come by.  This nonprofit group is doing a great job salvaging and reselling house parts–and I’m glad to support them.  William and his helper parked a big truck in the alley and went to work.  Together, we loaded two very heavy radiators (probably worth $250 at retail), five doors, extra sheets of plywood and sheetrock, misc. electrical parts, the little corner sink that we pulled from the bathroom 3 years ago, many feet of extra trim, and so on.  It felt so good to be finally rid of my junk knowing that it would become someone else’s treasure–and not go to the landfill.

Red Bud

Red Bud:  almost sounds like that the famous line in Orson Welles’s movie, Citizen Kane (Rose Bud).

The red bud is quite possible the world’s most beautiful tree and goes perfectly with the azalea, the world’s most beautiful shrub.  National Geographic, take note!

Today, I bought and planted a red bud ($39.95 from Home Depot; with up to $50 credit from Casey Trees–thus, free tree!).  And in the beautiful, warm, sunny fall DC weather, I worked on the rock retaining walls and set four fence posts.  My friend Mike taught me to add water to make the digging easier (I needed all the help I could get; this dirt was like concrete).

The main reason for my focus on the backyard is that we were recently assigned a landscape architect under the District’s RiverSmart Homes program.  We’ll receive up to $1200 in free landscaping–mainly native plants with names like Calamagrostis and Rhus aromatica.

Doug the carpenter spent the last working on some of his other customers’ houses.  He came back last week and worked on the porch railing and installing our new stained glass window in the kitchen transom (which is way cool!).

Photos soon!

Ribbons and medallions

We are at the final finish stages for a number of projects.  That means we’re buying stuff like ceiling medallions and appliques (or onlays) for the custom radiator cover (in our case, we’ll use ribbons to match the ones that are on the fireplace mantel).

Misc. thought:  How do you know contractors have been working at your house?  The toilet seat is up.

New stained glass window for the kitchen

Check it out:  http://architectural-emporium.com/index.php?page=product&id=1909&catalogid=1&subcatalogid=1&p=2&orderby=3&view=1&mode=browse&search

Many updates

Yikes–sorry it’s been so long since my last post!

Lots of progress to report:

1.  Emily chose a paint color for the master bedroom.  After looking at many browns, she chose a light color.

You’ll notice the brown wood trim.  We think it is original; some previous owner had stripped it and numbered the back of each piece.  We reused the trim and planned to restain it, but now we decided to paint over it–which meant filling 100 years’ worth of nail holes. 

Since we’re going to cover up history anyway, I think next time I would’ve just trashed the trim and bought new stuff.

2.  Doug Crouch, our carpenter, built a custom-radiator cover/book shelf/sitting area (complete with two hidden compartments for my valuables or xmas presents):

He also built a matching one for the small radiator:

3.  Our dual sinks are in, finally.  The manufacturer sent two “identical” sinks, but one was clearly smaller than the other and didn’t fit in the hole (cut using a manufacturer-supplied template) quite right.  The local distributor, to its credit, went to great lengths to try to remedy the situation.  Here is what the sinks look like:

Kitchen backsplash detail

As you can see from the photo, the intricate design is brought about by carefully notching all four corners of a square tile–just enough space for a small square tile to fit.  Yours truly spent several hours hunched over–and sprayed by–my wet saw.  The trick to uniformity is to treat the problem like Henry Ford would:  mass production.  First I made all the left cuts; then switched my jig and made all the right-hand cuts.  It’s frustrating, of course, when the tile breaks along a fault line on your very last cut.

New tile!

It’s amazing how a little tile, skillfully applied, can totally change a room.  Check out our new backsplash and master bathroom.

Columbia Heights Heritage Trail

Just a few houses from ours is a placard marking the Columbia Heights Heritage Trail, one of a dozen self-guided trails throughout the District.  Turns out Girard Street was the home of the black intelligentsia. 

And the fine print:

Can’t help but wonder who famous lived in our house?

Backyard is Taking Shape

Thanks to hard work by Doug the carpenter and Patrick the mason, our backyard is taking shape:

All we need now is a fence, loose-laid field stone retaining wall, brick pavers in a herringbone style, some more railing, a handrail, and some guests sipping wine on the patio.  One bottleneck is the extra dirt–I’m too cheap to pay someone $70 to haul away a pickup load, so I put six 5-gal. buckets of dirt and rock in my car and take it to the local tranfer station along with our other construction trash.    I probably have another six loads, at least.   Even though we’ve got a garden in place (and have already harvested delicious lettuce, thank you very much), we’ re hoping much of the permanent landscaping will be paid for by a District program called RiverSmart Homes–we pay $100 to have a landscape architect and crew design, buy, and plant up to $1200 worth of “Bay friendly” vegetation (mainly native).

Time for New Clothes

So far in four years of renovation I’ve gone through two pairs of jeans, 3 pairs of shorts, 5 t-shirts, 1 pair of running shoes, 4 pairs of gloves, one car, and about a pint of blood.  I won’t show you the blood, but here is my latest victim: