Posts from April 2012
small cool 2012
Happy Friday friends! Just a quick note to say that chezerbey is now officially a contestant in Apartment Therapy’s Small Cool 2012 contest!
I know, I know…it seems like The Homies just ended (another gigantic thank you for all of your support by the way!), but now things get serious. Why? Because the grand prize for this contest is $5,000!
There are 4 main size categories (ours is in “small” – 800-1000 SF) and after voting ends on April 30th each category winner goes on to compete for the grand prize.
Just think what we could do to our small (and cool) space with 5k! Plants for the yard, furniture for the nursery…Kyle might even get crazy and put another window in the loft (and you know you want to see that). So head over to Apartment Therapy pronto and make us your favorite. (Bonus: some new photos are part of our submittal and we even snuck Bailey in!) You have to sign in (or create an account first), but it’s the same thing you saw with The Homies, so no sweat.
In all seriousness, we’ve worked hard over the last 5+ years to make the most of out of a small footprint. Part of our decision to buy a little home was financially driven, but a bigger part has been to experiment with small-space living, a concept that we both believe strongly in. In other words, we believe that your home doesn’t have to be big, just well-designed.
Thanks in advance and have a great weekend!
oklahoma + laundry
Last Thursday I hopped on a plane and headed to Oklahoma for a long weekend. What started out as a sister’s weekend (we have a yearly tradition that dates back to camping in the backyard as little kids) turned into a family reunion of sorts when we decided to meet up in northeast Oklahoma instead of one of our respective cities. My parents live in the same small town that I grew up in and two of my three brothers live a couple of hours away so they drove over for the weekend. I even squeezed in a visit with Kyle’s mom and my sister-in-law (who is due with their first baby in early July!) when they drove up from Tulsa for an estrogen-laden brunch on Saturday.
Even though I love Seattle, sometimes it is hard being 2,000 miles away (an absence of direct flights makes it even harder).
The weather was pleasant (warmer than 55 degrees!) and we even got a real rain storm on Saturday morning! Above is the view from my dad and stepmom’s back porch (thanks to my sister for the awesome photo)…
…and this is the view from my mom and stepdad’s back deck. Same town.
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting my new niece, Holly. She and zerbebe will only be about 5 months apart and I love the idea of them spending long weeks in the summer together (y’know…when the grandparents host “camp cousin”).
She’s the cutest, right? And she makes the whole baby thing look deceptively easy…sleeping 8-12 hours at night, every night. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
While I was enjoying a slower pace of life and temporarily forgetting about my massive to-do list, Kyle was knee-deep in a surprise weekend project:
New washer and dryer! Kyle’s plan was to surprise me with a new laundry set-up when I got home, but the weekend got gobbled up with plumbing diagrams and trips to Home Depot instead. So when he called me on Sunday night he let me in on his plans. Normally, I would have been peeved that he had made a major appliance decision without me, but his intentions were so sweet that I didn’t mind (and we had more or less narrowed down our choices anyway).
We ended up getting the larger capacity Whilrpool Duets from our go-to local appliance store Albert Lee. Using a trade discount, we saved about $600 on the pair and still have at least one utility rebate to apply for, plus the sale of our old machines. [FYI – we’ve worked with Tylar Strong at the Southcenter Location for a few years now and as a new father himself, he assured us that he hasn’t had any problems with washing cloth diapers in the Duet.]
But before the washer and dryer were delivered, Kyle’s first project was to remove the awkward column in the middle of the space. (You can see it in one of the photos from last week’s post.) To compensate for the column, Kyle first bolted a steel channel to one side of the existing beam. (We’d been throwing around this idea for a few months and had our friend and structural engineer Julie do a quick calc for size and bolt spacing.) Once in place, the column could be safely removed.
At each end, the wood/steel beam combo bears on 2x studs.
In the photo below, you can see the opposite face with exposed bolts, spaced evenly across the span at about 20″ on center. Kyle did all of this by himself, he amazes me.
Bye bye column. The next step will be to jack hammer out this funky concrete curb. Removing the column and curb will free up this side of the basement and give us more flexibility in our laundry room layout (which has been modified, yet again).
Kyle also picked up this 3′-0″x8′-0″ birch solid-core door. Although he’s been using it as a temporary work surface, it will soon become a countertop over the washer/dryer and utility sink.
So even though he didn’t get as far as he wanted to, the good news is that all the details have been worked out and the supplies purchased. It’s officially go time! We’ll be back next week to talk more about drain lines, furring walls and if all goes well, just how many jeans we can wash in a single load.
spring cleaning
Maybe it’s early nesting, the change of seasons or Kyle’s recent trip to the allergy doctor, but we spent all of last weekend purging, organizing and cleaning our little house. (We also took lots of new photos, so look out for that in the coming weeks!)
One of the items on the to-do list was to have our ducts professionally cleaned. The ductwork was installed with the rest of our heating system 3 1/2 years ago, but between remodel projects and a large shedding dog, it was due for some attention. Clean ducts not only extend the life of your furnace, but they also help keep contaminants out of the forced air system (a major plus for people with allergies). The whole process took a couple of hours and scared the bejesus out of Felix (we actually thought he ran away at one point but he finally came out of hiding later that day).
The truck basically acts as a giant vacuum, with a large hose that ran down the side yard, through the basement door and connected to where the return air ties into the furnace.
Now that we’re breathing easier, let’s move on to the next basement topic – laundry. With a baby on the way and Kyle’s newly discovered allergy to dust mites, we’ve also been considering upgrading our washer and dryer. Our current mismatched set came with our home and appear to be from the late ’90s. As you can see, they are one of the few remaining relics from the last 5+ years of remodeling.
Although I doubt they’re that efficient when it comes to water usage, we haven’t been able to rationalize replacing them because they still work. The downside of course is that they’re small (compared to front-loaders) and with a center spindle (agitator?) you can’t wash large items like comforters and pillows (which gets back to the allergy issue).
So ok, let’s get some new ones! But of course we just can’t swap them out for something new. No, no…that would be too easy. You see, whoever installed the original units seems to have taken the most amount of shortcuts possible when it comes to plumbing and electrical. So we’ll need to run new plumbing and wiring and since we eventually plan to finish out this half of the basement, we might as well build out the furring wall while we’re at it (which would be an extension of the media/electrical panel you see above).
Sigh…nothing is easy in remodeling, is it? Damn you old house!
But back to appliances. It seems like the hands-down favorite is the Whirlpool Duet. What do you guys think? Any particular models that you love? Also, any tips for scoring amazing deals? Let’s hear it.
Finally, on a somewhat related basement note I thought it would be fun to do a side-by-side comparison of “mission control” and how it’s evolved over the years.
On the left, you have the 2006 version which consisted of a few fuse boxes and some questionable electrical decisions (we actually had to have the electrical service that comes into the house upgraded before we could move in. I don’t think our little house had seen a computer before). Fast forward to 2012 and we’ve got ourselves a pimped out wall o’ power. It’s pretty, right? Our architect-electrician does good work.
