#94: Simply When The Duplex Was Going So Well…

Simply when we thought the duplex renovation was at last rolling along smoothly, we found ourselves in the midst of an ordeal that required an emergency trip to Cape Charles, and another hot-seat meeting with the Historic Review Board. We are sharing all the details, along with an update on our month-long shopping ban (oh the temptations!). Plus we are talking about how to get large materials and furniture home when you do not own a giant car or truck. Because as much as we Hands-on, we do not in fact own the ideal DIYers vehicle. So this week we will tell you why, and share how we get around it. Plus, perhaps millennials are simply efficiently experts…?

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What is New

• That is a shot we took from the backyard of the duplex, looking at the weird chimney that twists and shifts as it passes through the second floor. This was after the contractor had took out the portion above the roof (where it twisted again). We have since brought in temporary framing around it to keep it steady during reconstruction.
• And here is a detail of it as it twists through the ceiling of the first floor. Crazy, right?!? Sherry thinks it looks like one of those bird nests made with mud.

• You can see in this before photo that it was not something that was visible from the street. It is in the quite back of the house and the low pitched roof blocked it from the sidewalk and the street, no matter where you stood out front. So the historic review board thankfully approved our removal of the unsteady portion above the roofline.

• We did not take any pictures of the actual meeting (these things feel so formal to us – so we were simply sweating the whole time) but I did snag this picture of the building it was held in. It is a especially charming old church simply a block away from our beach house, which now serves as the town’s Civic Center. Although holding the meeting in an old echoey church made the challenge to keep our four year old quiet for three hours seem even more daunting…

Updates

• If you missed the original discussion of the “shopping ban” it was first brought up in Episode #89 and we outlined our rules in Episode #93.
• You can also see the comments in this Instagram post and this Facebook post for an interesting discussion on some other ways that people implement their own shopping hiatuses.
• We have also blogged previously about the craft fair we mentioned, called the Richmond Craft Mafia’s Spring-Bada-Bing show (there is also a Handmade Holiday show in December).

Listener Question

• That shot above is that time we cut down some material in the Ikea parking lot so it would fit in the back of our Toyota Highlander. They were cover panels we needed for the sides of the beach house’s kitchen island, so I cut them roughly in half with my cordless jigsaw since the full 8 foot piece would not fit. I cut them more precisely when we got to the beach house, FYI – but this move got them into the car.
• As mentioned in the episode, I also used this trick 7 years ago when getting drywall home for our second house’s kitchen. And this time I had to fit it into a Nissan Altima!
• Here is a shot of our current car (a 2014 Toyota Highlander). We got it right before our son was born because we knew our Altima would be tight on trips with two car seats and a dog crate. I am no automotive photographer, but at least it had simply rained so the pollen got washed off for this shot!

• As we also mentioned in the episode, we do rent larger trucks occasionally as needed – like the low-cost hourly trucks for $19 at Home Depot and Lowe’s (below is when I used one to get materials for our irrigation project home) or even a UHaul, like I used to pick up the pink stove.

• We realized we also blogged about the subject of “Hauling Things With A Compact Car” way back in 2010 when we still owned our Nissan Maxima (pre-children). Sherry remembered this later because of the photo of her crammed in the backseat because of some bi-fold doors we were bringing home for a project. That glamorous journal life, tho.

We are Digging

• That is the photograph we were trying to describe from @kmsalvagedesign on Instagram. She sells prints of her work on her website, and I feel like they’d look strong alone or in a big gallery wall.
• Here is a recent time-lapse video she posted of creating one of her pieces. It is fascinating how meticulous she is!

• And these are the Aquabeads our kids have been using like crazy. Our son got the $15 Beginner’s Studio for his birthday and word from a family member is that our daughter now has the $25 Deluxe Studio coming her way for her birthday. It will be pleasant for them to have separate stations to work from (right now they have to take turns) and we might still snag the $20 refill pack at some point.

If you are looking for something we have dug in a past episode but do not remember which show notes to click into, here is a master list of everything we have been digging from all of our past episodes.

And lastly, a big thank you to Room & Board for sponsoring this episode. You can check out all of their furniture (including the bunk bed that inspired our own beach house bunks) at roomandboard.com/YHL. You can also sign up for their free catalog at the bottom of the page!

Thanks for listening, folks!

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