On Home Improvement

So if you've even remotely been following me you know that we moved to Colorado and bought a house.  It has been eight weeks of work so far, but we are settled in pretty good and can actually find most everything that we brought with us.

This is the first house that we've owned in about 9 years.  We moved from Vegas to Minnesota by way of Philly 9 years ago, and sold our house in Vegas oh about 12 hours before the market tanked. We were a bit gun shy about the market and also about whether we'd actually stay in MN (oops) so we rented.  So we've been away from the Home Improvement game for a bit.

This weekend while I was painting, I took some time to reflect on the last 8 weeks of home ownership and thought that I'd pass on my musings to amuse and educate.

On  Getting Started

When a house "just needs paint and carpet", it needs a lot of work.

Think about it for a minute.  Odds are very good that at least 90% of the walls in your house are painted and 100% of the floor is covered by something.  If you need to paint and replace the carpet, you will be working on the entire house.  It's not as invasive as say gutting a bathroom, but don't discount the amount of work you have in front of you.

You'll have lots of questions for the former homeowner

"Why did you take an old metal shelf, cut it in half, and mount it upside down at eye level in the garage?"

Follow up question: "Why did you take one of the metal shelves (presumably from the other half) and screw it into the top shelf of the closet in the upstairs bedroom?"

"What was that railroad tie doing running down the center of the patio anyway?"

"Why'd you think installing OSB instead of wonderboard under the tile downstairs was a good idea?"

Follow up questions:  "Why did you use what appear to be thousands of finishing nails to affix said OSB to the subfloor?  Did you get a new nailgun and decide to play Rambo?"

Your carefully organized garage will be destroyed

This

Quickly becomes this.  It's best to just accept it.

On Flooring

Think carefully before buying real wood flooring that comes in random lengths.  

You need to understand that installing wood flooring consists of  numerous pullups, pushups, and burpies.  Now, there are a couple of my friends that would probably actually enjoy that kind of workout.  They're lanky and thin and eat Paleo and do Power Core workouts for fun.  I secretly hate them a little bit.  Installing random length real wood flooring is NOT for them!

A couple of my other friends and I fall into a different category.  A little heavier, a little rounder, never met a carbohydrate that we didn't like, will probably join a gym "next week".   If this sounds more like you, you MUST install random length real wood flooring.

Here's why.  Once your significant other realizes that real wood flooring is actually wood, with different grains, patterns, knots, cut marks, etc.  and realizes that each random piece is also sized differently,  your floor becomes an object of precision.  Each plank must be carefully selected for quality, size, color, and pattern.  How well does it relate to the pieces around it?  Is it perfect?  How do my seams line up?

This leads to every box of flooring being opened and each piece being categorized by size, quality, and location

All of this adds up to a 5 minute minimum break between the installation of each row as the next row is selected, laid out, replaced, laid out again, considered, and finally approved.  Now that I think about it, its basically interval training.  Five minutes of intense exercise, five minutes of breathing heavy and drinking beer.  So, if you like interval training and/or drinking beer, totally install real wood random length flooring.

Right about here, you're thinking that this isn't so bad

Right about here, you're wondering if you will ever be able to lift your arms again

When tiling, it is important to use cement on each and every tile.

Cement is critical to ensure that your flooring is solid and stable.  One tile, right in the middle of the floor, couldn't be forgotten, right?  I mean, that had to be intentional, right?  Right?  I searched underneath it for a secret safe, but nope.

Clearly the former owners didn't adhere to using cement.  Adhere.  Get it?

When the floor in your house is like a half pipe in certain sections, you'll want to fix it

When the decision is made to fix it, you will quickly succumb to analysis paralysis and sit and stare at said floor for over a week before doing something about it.  There are so many options.  Floor leveler, wonderboard, new subfloors, shingles (yeah, you heard me).  Which one to choose?

When you finally do something about it, you'll do it wrong.  Like twice.

Round one of leveling

These are the planks that I laid down in the dining room then ripped back up because it still wasn't level.  Note the awesome PostIt numbering system

Round Two of Leveling

Success

If one of the bathrooms has carpet in it, this is your first priority.  

I don't care if there's a hole in an exterior wall, get that carpet out of that bathroom first!  Seriously, who the hell does this in the first place?

I mean, ew, right?

Even if it takes awhile, the results are worth it

Travertine makes a big difference

On Painting

If you look at the room you are about to paint

and figure a gallon of paint oughta cover it, buy 2 gallons.  If you think you need 2, buy 3, and so on. Trust me.

Paint before you replace your floors.  

This seems like a no brainer, but when you see the glossy white paint slowly spreading across your subfloor you'll thank me.

Paint one wall orange.  Just because you can.

On Tools

Power tools 

are a great way to endear yourselves to your new neighbors.

Resist the urge to scream 

when your wife says offhandedly, "maybe we should have bought (insert the name of the tool that you've been looking at through the entirety of the project, just went on sale, and were talked out of buying the day before here)".

When you walk up to the cashier at Home Depot

and say, "Hello.  No, this will not be going on my Home Depot card.  Yes I am aware that I can save $50 today by applying for one, thank you" before they even open their mouth, you have a problem.

When you are walking out of the house to drop off your dry cleaning 

and you can hear the sound of the tile saw still running in the garage, resist the urge to look around to see if there is anyone else within earshot.  Similarly, when you are rocking out to 80's Rock on Pandora and happily peeling that blue painters tape off of the aforementioned orange wall and hear the saw running in the garage, resist the urge to feel emasculated.  Remember that you a) hate tiling b) aren't very good at tiling c) don't have the patience to tile and d) have a wife that likes it, is good at it, and arguably takes way too long making sure that everything is perfect.  You're still a man.