Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 27, 2011, 1:02 am
I had a little time over the weekend to start working on the shingles for the back wall. It’s the type of project that I visualize as being very quick and easy, but of course, it’s not. On every row I was reminded of every non-plumb surface on our house and had to deal with the almost-but-not-qu... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 19, 2011, 1:08 am
Although this weekend was a bit too rainy to get deep into the railing and post replacement, I did take time this afternoon to fabricate the new railings. The existing porch and step railings appear to have been homemade from 2x4s, so I ripped and sanded these to match. I also improved the design a ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 19, 2011, 12:53 am
I hadn’t yet managed to take my obligatory week “off” to work on the house, so I scheduled it for last week. On the Wednesday prior, I got a call from our mortgage broker saying that the underwriter at the bank was freaking out about our exposed plywood siding on the kitchen. They wouldn’t c... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 18, 2011, 1:44 am
When we moved into our house, the front railings looked this:
A little mildew, but not too bad...
After about one year, we found that they had rotted out. Like so many things done by our previous owner, I’m sure it was fixed up with a nice coat of paint just before we bought the house. For a lon... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Aug 29, 2011, 2:03 am
Sorry, I’m tired and that’s the best I could come up with! And technically, it was only one mommy.
This is a long overdue picture that shows all the plants that Stephanie got into the yard. It looks SO much better than before. Now that we have no more grass, all the sprinklers were disconnected... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jul 19, 2011, 2:25 am
I never get tired of fixing and replacing broken things. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
A few nights ago, I noticed a small puddle under the sink. A check with a flashlight revealed that the water was leaking out the exit hole for the power cord. Hmmm…not good! I went to Home Dep... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jul 13, 2011, 1:31 pm
6 1/2 years ago we demolished the chimney that used to run through our pantry closet. It was no longer being used, as we had switched to a high efficiency furnace and a tankless water heater, both of which vented out the side of the house. The bricks sat in a pile in the side yard for six months, un... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 26, 2011, 12:36 am
Here’s a composite view of the yard made from shots taken along the edge of the roof. It does a great job of showing the shape of the path. Some of the curves look sharper than they really are, which is just an artifact of the photo merge. We do want to slightly change the way the path interfaces ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 25, 2011, 12:10 am
Here’s what the yard looked like on Saturday, after the 4th day of work. While there are lots of punch list items yet to be completed, the overall look is infinitely better than what we had going on before the project. This will look really cool when we have some plants!
Ready for action Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 18, 2011, 12:34 am
Here’s where things stand after the third day of work. Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite enough concrete for the step, and they ran out while filling my form. So we grabbed some more, and I finished it up that night. Although it’s only one step, it provides a nice delineation between the area ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 14, 2011, 4:06 pm
Here is what the yard looked like after a day of digging and pulling weeds.
Getting dirty Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 14, 2011, 4:03 pm
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 d... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 14, 2011, 3:48 pm
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... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 4, 2011, 1:06 am
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 ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Mar 27, 2011, 2:55 am
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 ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jan 25, 2011, 12:03 am
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. Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Dec 27, 2010, 5:46 pm
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 ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Dec 17, 2010, 7:34 pm
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 ho... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Nov 3, 2010, 11:33 am
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… Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Nov 1, 2010, 2:00 pm
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... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Oct 16, 2010, 2:56 pm
Sifting through past entries, I noticed we’ve never posted photos of the upstairs/playroom bathroom.
Our girls love lavender!
Originally, I was reluctant to photograph the space until the bathroom door and trim were finished. Since we are unlikely to get around to finishing the door anytime soon... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Oct 7, 2010, 6:21 pm
A big difference!
Here is how our garage looks today. All the trim is up except the header boards, and one of our garage doors is in. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the garage door company fubar’d the hardware, though, which means we have to wait longer so they can get replace... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 30, 2010, 1:10 am
While the timing could have been better, our missing boards were sitting in front of the garage when I got home from work! It would have been a little sweeter if they had shown up before yesterday, when I re-fabbed all of them, but the good-at-heart person that mistakenly thought they were being g... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 29, 2010, 7:07 pm
Last Sunday, while trying to finish up the trim on the sides of the garage doors, we fell victim to an overeager freecycler. As anyone who lives on the eastside of Portland knows, it’s super easy to get rid of stuff you don’t want any longer. Piles of things, some useful and some not, are ro... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 22, 2010, 11:48 pm
Added to the playhouse this weekend:
one set of X railing
the back horizontal railing
the plywood back wall
We had intended since the beginning to make the back wall completely solid, but now that 1/2 of it is done, we are liking the more open air feeling and look. We’ll let it gel for awhile l... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Sep 22, 2010, 1:27 pm
We have been looking at our rotten garage doors since we bought the house in 2004. Rather than put any money or effort into their repair, we decided to hold off until the stars lined up for their replacement. We are going to get doors much more suitable to our house style (fake carriage house do... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jul 20, 2010, 1:17 am
We recently made the decision to try to focus a little more on the little things that have been neglected as we have long been distracted by things such as raising our upstairs ceiling, painting our house and building a playhouse. We’ve been living with a hunk of old kitchen molding serving as o... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jul 7, 2010, 2:45 am
Answer: speed it up to 120x speed. That means that every 2 minutes now takes only 1 second. I am trying hard to figure out a way to apply this same technique to my job as well.
This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, ever since seeing some of the first sped-up recaps on home-i... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jun 19, 2010, 10:14 pm
With many DIY projects, I know just enough to have an unjustified confidence and not enough to know that I’m screwing something up. I had started installing the playhouse shingles based on my own recollections of how much exposure each shingle was supposed to get. You have to keep in mind ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jun 19, 2010, 6:02 pm
Q: what’s better than spending fathers day weekend working on a playhouse
A: nothing!
Birds' eye view Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Jun 14, 2010, 11:07 am
So here’s what was accomplished the last couple of weekends. As always, it’s piecemeal…a few hours here, a couple there. One of the design changes we’ve made since the “final” Sketchup design is to extend the front rafters out beyond the roof line. Also, we ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 30, 2010, 6:56 pm
Or maybe it was a raccoon, an opossum and a rat. And it wasn’t in a pub but actually a blue tarp that had been protecting (I use the term loosely) our large stack of stripped down doors until we had time to refinish them.
While doing the annual spring cleaning of our patio, I lifted up said... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 23, 2010, 5:58 pm
I once again was able to press last year’s scaffolding platforms into service. By resting them on the 2 Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 19, 2010, 12:43 am
Today was fairly productive, considering that multiple lumber yard visits were made in the morning. The overall shape of the playhouse is now apparent, as all the beams are in place. I tacked on an old piece of decking in lieu of a rafter, so that we could see the roof line. It is quite exciti... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 16, 2010, 1:50 pm
We went through another round of revisions on the playhouse design recently. What you can’t see in the rendering are the cedar shingles that we’re going to use for the roof.
The ever-changing design
We decided to make it less modern than our original design. Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 16, 2010, 12:11 pm
Technically, this should be called part 29, because it feels like we’ve been here before
Yesterday was our annual we’d-better-get-out-and-cut-down-the-3-foot-tall-weeds-before-they-swallow-children-or-pets event. As anyone who lives in the Pacific NW knows, springtime makes everythi... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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May 16, 2010, 12:04 pm
I finally remembered to pick up some concrete, so that I could pour the final footing, in the front right corner of the playhouse. This hardly warrants its own post, but I just wanted to show that there is actually some progress!
Should stay put! Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 18, 2010, 4:28 pm
Me – “Ginger, how do you like your playhouse?”
Ginger – “That’s not a playhouse, it’s just a bunch of wood!”
Technically, she’s correct, but we were hoping to see a little more enthusiasm(!) along the way. On the other hand, Chloe is already ... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 18, 2010, 11:15 am
Now this is more like it! It took 6 hours of planing, sawing and screwing yesterday, but we now have something that kids (and adults) can use. I am trying my best to convince the girls that imaginary walls are just as good or better than the real thing, but they’re not buying it!
We are r... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 12, 2010, 10:19 am
A few hours here and there led to some decent progress this weekend. First, I trenched a path for the drain pipe that would later be buried under the playhouse. This is actually a long overdue project, as our patio roof drains a ton of water, which would tend to want to flow right around the pat... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 8, 2010, 10:35 pm
Another baby step, but that’s more than I usually accomplish on a weeknight. Last night Chloe was all pumped about “working on the playhouse,” so I agreed to head outside with her and Ginger. I managed to add in the final piece of the perimeter structure…the 4 Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Apr 4, 2010, 12:27 pm
Last night I had a little time and was able to set the 4th post. Chloe helped me get everything lined up by holding the tape measure and the square. We got the diagonal measurements within 1/4″, so I’m quite happy about that. Later today I’ll dump some concrete around the pie... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Mar 30, 2010, 3:27 pm
A little. Most exciting is that our neighbors (thanks, Brooks & Marcia!) did give us all their old cedar, so we’ve got a huge stash of 10′ pieces. While some are in really bad shape, most are salvageable. I have a little electric hand planer, and you can see how great the cedar loo... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Mar 26, 2010, 2:14 pm
Yesterday I dug holes and placed the pier block footings. I think I got them all placed well, but I always find this kind of work challenging. Not only is there no existing point-of- reference, but it’s on ground that slopes in two dimensions. I will add concrete around the pier blocks o... Comment - Like
Stephanie B. posted an article on
Bungalow Insanity
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Mar 26, 2010, 12:35 pm
We’ve been promising to build the kids a playhouse for a couple of years now, so we decided that we’d better get to it before they are old enough to move out of the house! We have been working on the design for awhile now, and we think that we’re going for a modern look (horizont... Comment - Like
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