The Pony Wall: My Biggest DIY Attempt Yet!

When we first toured our house we both decided that this weird half wall (aka "pony wall") would have to go eventually. Our ground floor is pretty small, about 275 square feet, so the last thing we need is something taking up precious space and limiting our furniture arrangement options. 

Last weekend Leigh and I got to chatting about how we want our house to look in the long term and we started to get really excited about some big ideas: investing in furniture to last a lifetime, installing new kitchen cabinets, and similar big ticket items. One issue that kept coming up was how all of our plans revolved around getting rid of that ugly wall. That same weekend we replaced the lighting in our kitchen with new hardwired light fixtures. With this confidence boost I decided to use my ample time off to demolish the pony wall. How hard could it be?

The wall before: 

Not only was it awkward and ugly, but it blocked off our already small living space into two even smaller spaces and made it almost impossible to have a nice dining area.

The first day was pretty straight forward: I beat the crap out of the drywall with a hammer, a crow bar, and my boots. I tore off all the little pieces of drywall and removed any screws I could find and reach. 

Then I noticed this:

That's right folks, that is a freaking steel rod reinforcing this stupid, ugly pony wall. As you can see, it extends down into the floor through a hole. At this point I had no clue how far it went and where it ended. Most importantly, I had no idea how I'd remove it. I actually laid awake that night worrying if I could finish what I'd started.

The next morning I went into the crawl space to investigate and saw this:

steel rod coming through floor anchored by two 2x8 boards. 

I can only imagine this is to make the pony wall "earthquake proof."

At this point I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The good news was that all I had to do was unscrew the bolt and remove the anchor boards. Then the rod could be lifted up through the floor. The bad news was that I had to brace the boards with my neck and shoulder while unscrewing the bolt lest the boards fall on my hands/head. Guess what hurts like a SOB today? Yep, my neck and shoulder. I can't even turn my head fully to the right or left without tear jerking pain. Awesome.

That day a very kind former coworker lent me an electric hand saw and two sledge hammers. These items were life savers. I sawed big knotches into the sides of each vertical stud, then beat the crap out of them with the sledge until the broke free. I also detached the wall frame from the red wall and, very carefully, lifted the steel rod out through the floor. This was not easy. It was exhausting and at more than one point I wished I had another set of hands to help. But I just kept hitting the wall with the sledge and prying pieces loose with the crowbar until it looked like this:

No wall, just floor braces and a newly constructed outlet in the wall (fait par moi)

Then I did this little dance where I unscrewed any screws I could see, then hammered two crow bars between the floor braces at various points to pop the glue loose. Eventually each board came up to reveal bare plywood underneath....

Oh, shit. 

Yep, after all this work we have a bare strip of floor to deal with. So I pulled up a damaged piece and took it to Home Depot, where I learned that most laminate flooring has to be special ordered to Alaska and it takes 6-8 weeks. So I went to Lowes, thinking they might carry different colors or brands. There I learned that, not only do they not have the color I need in stock, but the laminate used in my 1981 house is no longer produced and newer laminates won't "lock in." Thus, the only way to make my house look non-trailer park is to get new flooring. Oh, and this laminate color is used on my stairs and a landing upstairs, plus two utility closets. This is already getting expensive....

So I did what I could by patching the damaged wall and spackling it. I even added a texture so the patch blends in with the wall around it. The next step is to prime the red wall white and take a chip of the white to Home Depot to get a matching white shade for the patched/primed parts.

The floor looks so lovely!

This is what our dining area looks like now. The idea is to invest in a nice dining set that is about 60"x36" and looks like it belongs in an adult's house and replace our bulky love seat with a comfy chair that takes up less space. 

 BUT, I did manage to tear down the wall and rewire the outlet AND our ground floor has a nice open concept feel. With new flooring the space will feel very nice and new. In the short term we will cover the bare patch with a rug....

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Holy crap, it has been raining a lot lately! We came home from Vegas to some rainy icky weather, then it was off and on for a few days. But the past week or so every day has been nonstop rain. I don't mean drizzles, though we get plenty of that, but actual stormy type rain. There's even emergency flooding in Seward, AK and standing water in the streets of Anchorage.

This crappy weather is hardly inspiring me to get out much, so I've barely spoken to anyone except for Leigh since my last week of work. Most days I complete one or two house projects, cook dinner, tidy up the kitchen, and stay in my sweatpants all day. For example, one day I refinished furniture for the baby's room and did some decorating. Today I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, walked the dog, went to the gym, and made homemade pita bread for the first time (it turned out AMAZING, by the way).

I've also gone to the gym pretty regularly too, sometimes just taking a class and sometimes jogging on the treadmill (by "jogging" I mean walking briskly with short running interludes). I should really be doing this every day, if for no other reasons than 1) I'm obviously really out of shape if I can't "jog" in the literal sense and 2) if I don't get out more I'm going to lose all my social skills, thus prolonging my unemployment.

Speaking of employment, I've applied for at least one job pretty much every day since my clerkship ended. Most of these are federal government jobs simply because there are more federal jobs than Alaska jobs. At any rate, I figure the more I put myself out there the more likely it is I'll get interviews and someone is bound to hire me eventually. On top of that, the irons I have in the fire from the past two years' of networking haven't completely cooled yet. Until then I'll believe it's possible I could be working within the next month or so. If none of those pan out it might be a bit longer. Not only does the latter thought bring up some financial anxiety, but I'm already worried about how long my sanity will hold out without regularly tackling difficult legal questions and generally being around other people.... 

The Bread Line

Last Tuesday was my last working day. That's almost 2 full weeks of unemployment so far. I am really bad at being unemployed.

The first day was busy: a midwife's appointment and a job interview took up most of my day. The next several days, including the weekend, were also busy with a long "To Do" list around the house. I was exhausted at the end of each day and pleased to see so many little projects coming together at home.

Then yesterday I started to wind down. I woke up, saw that I didn't have as much to do and thus less motivation to do anything at all. I watched DVDs, cleaned a little bit, hung some pictures on the walls, and then met my friend for yoga in the evening. Today was about the same, but I also made some calls about jobs I interviewed for a few weeks ago. I'm still in the running, still theoretically employable and might find myself working in the near future. Maybe.

I've also started feeling really terrified today. Sure, I still have a half dozen things to get done around the house (install new light fixtures, reorganize the pantry, finish preping the baby's room, etc), but soon enough I will finish those tasks and be left only with daily cooking and cleaning, plus any personal hobbies I find to keep myself busy. For a lot of people this sounds great, and it might have sounded like a nice break to me too a few months ago. But the reality is that now I can see a few weeks into the future and then an abyss of aimless days.

Leigh says I should keep looking for work, but really try to enjoy this time off. I am trying and I am enjoying focusing on projects I didn't have time for before. But seriously, I'm tired of hanging around my house alone all day with nobody to talk to and no real challenges to overcome. Those things build my confidence and sharpen my professional skills. I am afraid of dulling those skills and thereby losing my confidence, which will only make it harder for me to sell myself to a potential employer. 

So it's already time to start Round 2. It's not enough to just fill my days, I have to have a plan, even if things don't work out according to plan. First order of business is to finish up some lengthy applications I had put off while wrapping up my clerkship. Then I need to find things to do outside the house, so I will look for volunteer opportunities or maybe try to sit on a planning board or something. Also, I really, really need to always be reading something. I used to read constantly, then I started clerking and was reading all day long so that the last thing I wanted to do at home was pick up a serious book. Well, that is no longer a problem. 

This was certainly not how I anticipated things working out for me post-clerking, but I am still confident that I will find something. Now I have to exercise what patience I have (not much) and focus the energy I would normally use on work onto other aspects of my life. At the end of the day this might turn out to be a great life lesson for me about patience, perseverance, and priorities. Let's hope my heart is open enough for me to hear those lessons and my mind is open enough to understand them.

Las Vegas & Environs

Leigh and I went to Las Vegas the last week of August. This was Leigh's first vacation since Christmas and my first vacation since April (I know, I know...). Needless to say, Leigh really needed this time off. We chose Las Vegas because it has hot weather, cheap lodging, and lots of stuff to do. Plus we got to take a day trip to Utah, which was cool. We chose to go the week before my job ended because it was literally the only week we could both get away from our jobs and other plans here in Anchorage before Leigh became too pregnant to fly.

We stayed at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino for a whopping $40/night. The room was pretty nice: clean, comfy, air conditioned, etc. Our only complaints were the our neighbors seemed to think it was OK to smoke in the hall and they were pretty loud too. Oh well.

Vegas itself was pretty cool. We enjoyed exploring the casinos, window shopping, and basking in the desert heat. I especially enjoyed the Paris Las Vegas. It was so cheesy-faux-French. I thought I'd hate it for the same reason, but something about the way the designers took the most typical French/Parisian themes and added an American spin was kind of like being my head when I first arrived in France filled with anticipation, jet lag, and confusion.

Of course we spent an evening downtown on Freemont Street. Somehow it managed to escape me that Freemont Street used to be Vegas in all its glory. When we saw this cowboy guy I flashed back to being 5 years old and watching Honey I Shrunk the Kids and it all started to make sense. Freemont was pretty fun with music, lights, and drunk people falling down. 

A couple days into our trip we rented a car to drive to Zion National Park in Utah. What I did not realize before arriving was how very "Mormon" Zion National Park is. Every sight had a name out of the Book of Mormon and throughout the park are old Mormon settlements. 

 But seriously, don't feed the "wildlife." After 2 years in Alaska I think an animal needs to be large and potentially very dangerous to be "wildlife." At the very least it should be wild, and not prance up to you and politely ask for food, which the Zion squirrels did regularly. I politely denied them each time, mostly because they were incredibly fat.

 I had wanted to visit Zion for over a year when I first read about The Narrows hiking trail. It's one of those bucket list hikes that you just MUST do sometime. Obviously we couldn't do a 13 mile trail in wilderness while incubating a baby.

Leigh at 24 weeks pregnant.

 Instead we did a day hike from the end of the trail a few miles in. This hike is cool because you literally hike in the Virgin River, which winds between steep rock walls through the canyon. Very cool. The water regulates your body temperature in the heat and you can even wade or swim up to your knees or chest at time. It was beautiful and a lot of fun. Zion was about 3 hours from Vegas, so it was a long day but totally worth it. It was great to get out of the city too.

In all, we had a great time. We ate, we shopped, we went to the pool, saw a Cirque du Soleil Show (I HIGHLY recommend it!), and we ate A LOT. We are not Vegas people by any means, but it was a nice getaway. There was so much do to every day that we were actually exhausted at the end of the week and happy to go home to a 3-day weekend so we could sleep off our vacation.