A Bloy and his Blog

I got home after the first day of kitchen demolition to find this.

read the rest of: Naked kitchen

Tomorrow the contractors will start demolition on my kitchen. I thought I should post some “before” pictures to document the transition.

read the rest of: Kitchen remodel: before

Yet another surprise perennial at the house I bought a few months ago.

read the rest of: Peonies as metaphor

I could smell the old, stale, cigarette smoke when I first walked in. I was getting my first look at the house I decided to purchase. The yellowed curtain rods told me that smokers lived there for a long time. It turned out that the fifty-year-old home was owned by only one family, and from what my neighbors tell me, they were heavy smokers. But the price was right, and I figured I’d be able to deal with the stale smell and make it livable again.

Thankfully, all of the walls and ceilings were painted before the house went on the market. After I moved in, I got to work on cleaning the woodwork. I started with the hardwood floors. Once over with Murphy’s Oil Soap, then rinse. I could not believe that it took five, sometimes six rinses until the water would not be brown when I dumped it out.

read the rest of: Years and years of tobacco smoke residue

I’ve been living in my new home for five days now. There is a lot of work to be done, but I’m slowly getting settled in.

In the past four days I’ve made seven trips to a home improvement / hardware store, with still more things on my shopping list to pick up. I’m expecting the clerks to start greeting me by name soon. I already have people working on my kitchen remodel, which is something I want to get done fairly soon. The house is definitely a fixer-upper, but it’s going to be real nice once the fixing up is done.

Probably the most frustrating part of this move is the fact that I still don’t have internet access at the house yet. Since the phone company is having some problems (and I’ll be getting DSL through the the phone line), I’ve been suffering from serious internet withdrawal. Hopefully I’ll be plugged back into the matrix soon.

Today was the inspection for the house I’ve agreed to buy. I thought it would be a good idea to shoot some pics while I was there with the inspector.

read the rest of: New house tour

I’m not a big fan of clothes shopping. If I need a new shirt, my ideal shopping experience would be as follows: A few feet into the entrance of the store is a rack of shirts. This rack would have the exact size and style I need. It would be unnecessary to try one on. A few feet from this rack of ideal shirts would be the cashier. There would be no one in line, and I would be done shopping after a minute or two. Alas, the clothes shopping experience is usually quite different.

Now that I’ve got a good offer on my condo, I’ve been shopping for a house. I’ve come to realize that shopping for a house is a lot like shopping for clothes. First you browse the listings, then find houses to look at. Once you visit a potential house, you spend some time walking around and checking its comfort, not unlike a new pair of shoes. Like clothes, you wonder how long aspects of the house will last before they might need some mending. Will those sleeve buttons fall off soon? Will I need to replace those windows? If the house doesn’t “fit right” you move on to another house. Or you might think the fit is okay, but wonder if there is a better fitting house out there. You try the next house. You might also hear of a new sale (house or shirt), and try that one on for size. Does it fit?

Right now I’m just looking for a good fit.