New House Blog: Episode XII - From Top To Bottom

Hello again, all you friends and family who are following our house-preparation progress and wishing us only the best.  This is Episode XII - From Top To Bottom, and as usual the title kind of gives the general idea of what we will be talking about.  And it's turning out to be a very top-to-bottom job to make this house ready for us to move into, but we went into this knowing full well we would have our work cut out for us.  There have been some surprises, of course, but overall we're enjoying the journey and learning a lot of new things.  Occasionally, well-meaning family and friends have given us a bit of grief about all of the work needed to own a house, in general, and all of the work we're having to do to this house, specifically (these are in-person people, not people who have posted responses to our blog (we like your blog responses - keep them coming)).  Please help us to stay excited about our new house adventure by being encouraging and by not making discouraging remarks, even in jest.  Thank you all for your support.  Moving on...

We want to say thank you to Becky's awesome sister, Amy, for helping us with the house this weekend.  She was mainly focused on a project that we are keeping under wraps for the time being.  Here's a hint, however: Amy knows the name of the color of paint that was previewed in this Episode. :)

The Chimney

In keeping with the title of this Episode we are starting at the top of the house, which is where the top of the chimney lives.  Because of some concerns about the fireplace and chimney, we called Royal Chimney Service to come out and clean and inspect our chimney.  We chose them because of their excellent reviews on yelp.com.  The chimney technician showed up on time and he got right to work cleaning and inspecting our fireplace and chimney.  His findings differed a bit from the house inspector's findings, and we decided to go along with the chimney guy's findings since that's what he does for a living, and that's what his company does for its business.  To sum it up, our fireplace and chimney are in good shape despite their age.  He recommended, and we agreed, that the top cap of the chimney should be replaced as it was letting in water.  He also patched up some gaps in the fireplace, cleaned the flue, and made sure our damper is working properly.  Royal Chimney Service provided excellent service for us, and if we were yelp users we would give them a glowing review.  

The old, form-over-function chimney cap

Apparently this was the style of the day in our neighborhood.

The remains of the old cap

The new, functional cap

Floors

Next on our journey downward is the floor.  Yes, there's a lot of stuff between the top of the chimney and the floor, but we're not talking about all of that stuff today.  And we're not talking about all of the floors.  Today we're talking about the linoleum floors of the house.  These include the bathrooms, the kitchen, the laundry room, and the entry areas.  The linoleum that came with the house was old, ugly, self-adhesive linoleum squares.  We had no love for these old squares, and we were concerned that there might be damage to the kitchen floor, due to some suspected dishwasher flooding in the past.  We believe the flooding was caused by the lousy dishwasher installation: the installers did not knock out the dishwasher knock-out tab when they connected it to the food waste disposal, and this caused flooding.  We don't know how often it flooded, so we thought it prudent to have the floor properly inspected.  On the recommendation of Bish's parents we called Abbey Carpet and Flooring, and they were most helpful.  We dealt with Pete, and his help and support is very much appreciated.  In order to conduct a proper floor inspection the old linoleum had to be torn up, so it seemed like the ideal time to put in some new linoleum of our choosing.  We chose two patterns from Abbey's fine selection - one pattern for the kitchen and the other for all of the other linoleum areas.  Also replaced at this time were two toilets: since the flooring guys had to remove them to work on the bathroom floors it seemed like the ideal time.  We were going to replace at least one of them, anyway, due to cracking, but since two of them qualified for Santa Clara County's new-toilet rebate program we were decided to buy two.  They are white, 1.0 gallon per flush, pressure-assisted toilets, and the flooring guys installed them for us (for a small fee, of course).  On to the pictures.

The kitchen with linoleum and underlayment removed

The entry way

The upstairs bathroom

New underlayment in the kitchen

The upstairs bathroom

The new kitchen floor

One of the new ultra-low-flow toilets

The entry way

Meet And Greet

Once again we have some new team members to introduce.  Give a warm welcome to Buck, Dusty, and Flop.  As you can see from the picture, all three have been put to good use already, and we expect great things from them in the future.

Top to bottom, left to right - Buck, Flop, and Dusty

Bonus Picture

We're going to wrap things up with a bonus picture.  The debris is the remains of what used to be closet doors in the master bedroom suite.  The darker looking thing is what used to be an awful window shade in the master bedroom suite.  Rather than trudge all that stuff down the stairs we (I, Bish) thought it would be better to defenestrate (Becky's word) it all off of our balcony.  What good is a balcony if you can't defenestrate stuff off of it once in a while?

Who's going to clean up that mess?

Stay safe, and have a wonderful

   bIsh