Here is what the yard looked like after a day of digging and pulling weeds.

Getting dirty

Because of the massive volume of dirt that needed to come out and the even larger amount of gravel to be carried up, we made the decision to hire out the “scaping” part of the project. We will be handling the plants and mulching, but there was no way we wanted to carry all the materials up and down from our elevated, difficult-to-access lot! Here are some pictures from the night before they started.

A few months back we asked my dad (a landscape architect) to help us out with a plan for our side yard. He put together the awesome plan below, which we are now attempting to construct.

We’ve made a few changes along the way as we started to lay things out, particularly regarding the steps. While we think the multiple step design looks amazing, but once we started envisioning the path, we realized that our yard’s slope really isn’t too steep. A simple, winding gravel path would do the job just fine. However, we did have a bit of a grade transition to deal with at the top (the area in front of the playhouse), so we modified the design to use a single, wide step at the top. Otherwise, we are following the spirit of the plan pretty closely.

The Plan

This is something I would never have realized without having a houseblog that allowed me to easily look back on my bold predictions, but I believe that I have just solved one of the great puzzles of remodeling. We all know when we think a particular project will be completed, but how can we predict when it will really be done?

Today I put the 2nd coat of stain on the door of our family room closet. That got me to thinking about how long it had been since I had started sanding the door. A quick search on our site revealed the answer…1 year, 11 months. Ironically, I titled that post ‘back in the saddle,’ which implied that we were back on the horse for a ride, not just a quick trot around the yard. Sadly, the door sanding post came a good six months after the room was allegedly nearly done. And not to mention that in the meantime some animal(s) had holed up under the tarp for enough time to do unspeakable things to that door.

So, to summarize, here’s the chain of events that have led to “finishing” our family room:

• Fall 2007: Chloe moves out of her room, freeing it up to be our TV room
• 7/2008: I will give us a pass here, since Ginger was born a year earlier, but we now finally start the project.
• 10/2008: We are nearly finished after only 9 weeks. We are on a ROLL here!
• 5/2009: That’s strange…where did the last 7 months go? Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because the door is being sanded, and we are going to be done soon.
• 5/2010: Now would be a good time to get the patio cleared off for the summer. Ooh, wait a minutes, what’s this crap under the tarp?! Damn it, this never would have happened if I had just finished sanding this door when I stopped a few weeks (a full year) ago!
• 4/2011: Last week I did actually finish sanding the door (as well as the upstairs bathroom door), and I stained it this weekend. Things are really moving now!
• The future: All that’s needed now is two coats of poly and some hinges. How long could that take? [I am documenting this now as a challenge to ourselves to actually see this thing through.]

So back to the question of when a given project will be completed. After analyzing many such improvements in our house, I have realized that all projects can be broken down into a simple equation…

Multiply these factors together:

• Cost of project (in US dollars)
• Number of children squared
• Disgust or annoyance with the project (measured in # of hours it takes to force yourself to start working on it on a Saturday morning)
• Number of other projects that are competing for your attention
• Number of times you think or say “wouldn’t be it be cool if…”

Divide by these factors:

• Bank account balance or equity line in US dollars
• Partner’s “encouragement” to finish (units are # of times subject comes up in a one month period)

The end result will be the number of months it will take to finish the project. The amazing thing I have discovered, though, is that no matter what project you plug into the equation, the end result is always virtually the same…somewhere between 3 and 4 years. This doesn’t apply to the entire house remodel, mind you, as that will never be done, but it is a good estimator of how long a single component of the remodel will take.

I hope that others will find this equation useful and stop themselves before they even start projects. Or better yet, before they purchase their home. If you stopped telling yourselves that this “little” project will only take a few weeks, you could save a lot of headaches and cash. Try this out before embarking on your next job and see if it still makes sense! And if anyone finds this to be useful or discovers missing factors, please let me know in the comments.

And since we are actually getting close to finishing this family room, let’s get back to the closet door. As with all our old fir doors, it looks fantastic with fresh stain, most importantly, there is no visible trace of it having been used as a toilet.

Inspiring

This kind of gets me motivated to start working on the rest of the upstairs doors. How long could that take?

It actually is more of a present for ourselves, but shhh….don’t tell the house. It turns 100 this year, and it’s a little sensitive about the whole thing. Sure, everyone says that the 100′s are the new 80′s, but it’s still feeling a bit old.

We bid on an artistic rendering of a home at Ginger’s preschool auction fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always thought that these were cool, but it’s not something that we ever got around to doing (how can we spend money on a picture of our house when the actual thing still wants to suck every cent it can out of our bank account?). Well the auction gave us a great excuse to have it done, and we’re pretty excited to have the sketch. The artist, Ken, did a great job, and he was really pleasant to work with. We wanted to give him a mention on our site in case anyone is interested in having something like this done for their own home. As you can see, he does nice work.

Sketch by Ken Quinlan-Pierce

What a sad little outlet…

I know! I’ll put a bird on it!

it's so pretty!

Spruce it up! Make it pretty! This is Portland, after all.

Someone out there has a really good memory and sharp eyes!  A friend of a friend, who knows about our site only through our friend’s blog, spotted this post on Craigslist Philly:

The evidence

She recognized the photo on the left as being from our site and sent the Craigslist post to our mutual friend.  While we have had other cases of our content being “borrowed” without permission, this one crossed a line.

Not only is someone misrepresenting our room as being an example of where someone might be employed in another state,  given some of the stories out there of criminals luring victims in with craigslist, this immediately raised a red flag with me.  What legitimate reason would you have for posting a fake picture of your house?  I flagged it, emailed craigslist and sent an email to the poster.   If it’s still up, you can see the craigslist post here.

Our original picture can be seen here.  The irony is that that’s not even a real picture of our room.  The rug was photoshopped in by Stephanie and was never even purchased.

Big holes in the roof happened.  No, not those kind…the good ones.  After weathering multiple seasons with a leaky patio roof, we finally bit the bullet and had it replaced.   Additional benefits of having it done included making it strong enough to walk on for cleaning and having those big holes (aka skylights) added.  While the huge cover has been great to have in the rainy season (although the leaks kind of defeated the point), it’s massive footprint (22×28′) created a LOT of shade.  And while the structure of the roof was really well done, the sheeting, chintzy, poorly-supported aluminum panels, meant that it was incredibly difficult to walk on top of the roof.  We now have a solid 3/4″ surface that will make it really easy to sweep off once or twice a year.  Or every four years, whichever the case may be.

I had intended to purchase a couple of moderately sized skylights, say 2′x4′, but the roofer we used had a much better suggestion.  He came up with the idea of framing out 4×12′ boxes, which then could be covered with a single sheet of polycarbonate.  By running the panels under the eaves and all the way back to the house, no flashing would be necessary at the top, and by extension, no leaks should ever develop.  Another perk of doing it this way was that for the same $$ as what we would have paid for 16 square feet of skylights, we ended up with at least 80 square feet!  The patio is now WAY brighter, and we are also getting much more light into our kitchen and family room.  A win-win.

Pile of old aluminum panels

Since the roofers left things half-done during the rainiest day on record, I had to create an aqueduct to channel all the runoff

LIGHT!

View from above

This is what it looked like a few years ago, when I had to cut the hole for the upstairs drywall. The roof would then spend the next 3 years being covered with a (barely effective) blue tarp.

They came back out yesterday to swap out the mis-drilled panels and to install the other door, as well as our hardware. Not only do they look so much better, they actually work. No more fighting with doors that won’t open or close! Now we just need paint and the rest of the trim…

A small (but very satisying) project completed this weekend was finishing up the conversion of the obsolete back steps to a hall closet.  Previously, everything had just been piled up on the steps, making it difficult to find anything.   About a year ago, I wired the closet for power and CAT5, as well as installed our router and VOIP unit.  As with all projects that reduce clutter, there is a real sense of calm that comes out of seeing things neatly organized on shelves.

And no post is complete without the amusing or painful “oops” backstory.  In this case, when I bought the plywood for the shelves (back in 2008!), I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Only after making my first cut did I notice that the grain looked unusually interesting…and suprisinging oak-like.  A quick check of the label verified that someone had slid a sheet of two-sided oak plywood into the stack of what I had meant to buy.  After I got the nerve to pull out the receipt, I learned that I had spent $60 on a single sheet!  And now we have the best-looking toilet paper shelves around…

Neat and tidy...for now!