Keep Smiling

Still Kickin'

2012-02-14T13:14:00.000-06:00

Don't worry guys! The house didn't fall over, the tub didn't fall through the floor Money Pit style. We've just been extra busy putting all of the final touches on the bathroom. A lot of those final touches involve ordering things and sitting around anxiously awaiting their arrival. Some push button switchplates, handles for the faucet (yes, the sink does work, more on that later) and so on. In the mean time I thought I'd share the things we are working on. First up, as you may have noticed we don't have a vanity in this bathroom and our closet is now a shower so we needed a cabinet of some sort to put on the wall across from the sink, toilet and tub. I wanted something like this beautiful hunka cabinet from Project Nest. Glass doors, lots of storage. Bee-you-tee-full!

I craigslisted the crud out of it to no avail. And as much as I would love to drop a few hundred or even a cool thousand on something already ready already like this one from Restoration Hardware, I just couldn't do it. So one day, I spot this okay-ish cabinet at the DAV for $150.

Excuse the cell phone picture. Also excuse that dude that's all, "Hey, you can't take pictures in the DAV!" or something like that. Idk, he looks concerned. Anywho, it had the basic look. One problem:

It was a TV cabinet.

Whatever.

It was the shape I wanted, it had good bones and it seemed workable. So, we bought it and lugged it up the stairs (it was heav-to-the-eeeeeeee!) only to find that it was just a few inches too deep and with that huge trim up top it seemed a little severe. Conan got to work immediately, tearing off the trim on top and my handy-dandy dad ripped about 6 inches off the back and replaced it with beadboard. As for the glass doors I wanted, this past weekend we used the niftiest tool known to man, the SoniCrafter, to remove the middle portions

What we were left with, after a little sanding was this:

My dad also routered the back of the cabinet doors so we could slip in a piece of glass once they've been painted. I know it looks a little worse for the wear now but once we've added some new trim to the top, some shelves and paint it will be exactly what I wanted and at a price I feel good about. I can't wait until it's all done so I can show you guys the finished product.

In other news, we finished wiring the lighting fixtures that we took from the office and I just got over myself and went and got some fairly descent shades from Lowe's. They're simple, they work, so there. The lighting's bad in this picture but in reality, the light they give off is the perfect glow for taking a bath.

Speaking of bath. Who's that gremlin in ours?

It's Maggie! She's been jealous of all this bathtime attention Shorty's been gettin' so she decided to do a little improv photo shoot of her own. Look at that vogue. Dangerous!

Like I mentioned earlier, that weird sink we bought off Craigslist is actually hooked up and working! I'll post about it next along with a video of it in action since it's just too weird to explain.

Oh, and...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Shorty Takes a Bath

2012-02-02T18:43:00.003-06:00

Hey, I heard you guys were bored and maybe a little tired and maybe a little sad so I made you this:

I hope you like it.
I know Shorty did. Music: Anectdote by Ambulance LTDcovered by Alex Herron

In With the Old

2012-02-01T13:43:00.000-06:00

Took some pictures for something very special today. Eeeek! So excited! Can't wait to share!

In other news,

We now have a working

shower

tub

and toilet

The sink is a work in progress but hey, three out of four ain't bad. Ain't bad at all.

The toilet that was in the bathroom previously matched the sink that was in there and was just a little too...Grecian column inspired for our taste so we swapped it for the more simple, plain one downstairs. Also...

Shortly after our "Which lightbulb poll" was closed, I made the executive decision to "pull a Katherine" and change the light fixtures entirely. I know what you're thinking. "But you worked so hard to get those porcelain light fixtures in the first place! You are crazy!" But hear me out. They were a different color (almost gray) than the rest of the porcelain in the room and frankly, this room has enough gray in it already.

I said it.

So we looked and looked for something but they were all "too chrome" or "too modern" and then a couple of nights ago, we were sitting in the office and Conan noticed me staring at these sconces that had been in there since we moved in (and probably 90 years before that) and said, "You could always use those." I laughed at him and then the next day, what did I do? I took them down and put them in the bathroom. I love them. They're perfect. They make the whole room look better and they compliment the greenish color of the beadboard paint perfectly. Also, they were already in the house, so we didn't have to go out and buy anything. They need a little cleaning up (but not too much) and they need to actually be wired but then we're in business.

Now, what kind of shades....

: )

Art and Escutcheons

2012-01-30T11:36:00.002-06:00

A few things that happened around these parts since we last spoke:

In the search for a slide photo to blow up and put above the tub a la this, I found this one which I instantly fell in love with and had Conan print. It now sits on the mantle, which if you're keeping track is very far from the bathroom. Whatever. It's adorable.

We were also lucky enough to find some shower handles that ACTUALLY WORKED! I know I didn't detail this process on the blog but let's just say, thanks to some really knowledgeable young men at Hupp Hardware we found exactly what we needed and went from these:

To these:

The part we were having trouble with was the escutcheon. The vintage ones I picked up at Architectural Salvage for $5 each were too long and had no way to hold onto the wall. We replaced the original stems and still no luck. Finally, we went to Hupp Hardware and wouldn't you know, they had these perfect escutcheons for $7 each and they worked like a charm. The handles are from our basement shower so they came with the house.

Today we're going to attempt to finish hooking up the sink which should be interesting. Wish us luck!

All of the Lights

2012-01-24T17:18:00.002-06:00

So, as we work tirelessly to get our wierd sink to do what a sink is supposed to do I thought I would get a little reader input about something.

Remember our bathroom light sconces? The ones that are supposed to go on either side of our mirror?

If you haven't committed all of our blog posts to memory, here they are (and shame on you!):

Well, I have looked the whole interweb over and no where can I find any evidence that these are supposed to have some sort of glass shades (to cover the bulb). So it looks like the bulbs are going to be exposed. We started putting them up last night and I'd like to order the bulbs soon so we can start using those puppies! I have narrowed it down to two options but just can't decide.

Option 1: Rejuvenation

It's 25 watts which would be nice since there will be two and according to the website, it's as close as you can get to the bulbs that were meant for these fixtures. Huzzah! Historical accuracy!

Option 2: Schoolhouse Electric

It's also the equivalent of about 19-22 watts but it eats energy and at $19 each, it's not as cheap as old roundy up there. But on the plus side, LOOK AT IT!

So, we want to know what you guys think! Just click one of those buttons down there and we'll get to orderin'!

Soap Dish

2012-01-20T16:27:00.002-06:00

Well guys, since that last post, we have officially taken FOUR showers in TWO days and let me say, it was glorious! I mean, the way that water sounds bouncing off that tile, it's like a million little people clapping for me as I lather, rinse and don't repeat. It's magical. So magical that I thought I might try my luck at the tub. Unforunately, I don't have anywhere to sit my towel or my shampoo or most importantly, my soap. Conan and I looked at Bed Bath and Beyond and even in the Beyond they didn't have a soap dish like this one. So today I went down to Architectural Salvage and they had this little puppy.

He's a little worse for the wear (btw, why am I referring to it as a "him"?) but I think I'm going to avoid my usual urge to shine it up to look like new and just let it slide.

To the tub!

Let There Be Shower

2012-01-18T18:27:00.001-06:00

Man, oh man! First the tub gets installed (leak free, as of today) and now we have a working shower! That's right! Today, with my mom's help, I took the test pipe out and put the real shower head in.

FYI: It's Price Pfister, from Home Depot Online

Please excuse the "meh" pictures but Conan's still at work and let's just say, I'm no Conan when it comes to the snappy snap snaps.

Sorry.

I'm giddy at the possibility of taking a shower anywhere other than our basement!

Ugh! It's so handsome I can't stand it!

We're still working out the "antique handles and escutcheons are difficult to retrofit" issues so we're stuck with these bad boys for now

Here's a little excited/nervous video of us turning it on for the first time:

So excited!

I get to take a shower in a place that isn't here:

Uh-huh. That's right. We've been showering in a plastic pan meant to go under a washing machine for the better part of a year. It ain't pretty and I've avoided showing it until now because I'm so high on shower-having happiness that I don't care (and also, a dear reader named Jennifer wanted to see it). The realities of do-it-yourself.

But hey, it forces you to be pretty clever. Case in point: our dowel rod, telephone wire shower curtain up there. Word. Next up, the shower handles I suppose. Til' then, if you need me, I'll be in the shower singing Dancing Queen at the top of my lungs.

Little by Little

2012-01-17T17:08:00.000-06:00

Prepare yourselves folks, it's about to get real fancy (read: French) up in here.

"Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid"

Which translates into

"Little by little, the bird makes its nest"

That came up in an episode of House Hunters International we were watching a while back (which, if you have the chance, watch this episode) and I loved it so much I committed it to memory. I mean, what a nice thought, right? You don't have to run out and "buy the set" or decorate a whole room in one afternoon, just work at it, add things here and there and one day your house will be a home.

Well, little by little we're building the "whole bath" portion of our nest.

Yesterday we added two details that make a big difference.

First? We added a push button light switch we bought a while back from The Old Hardware Store in Halstead. The rest of house, with the exception of a couple of rooms had push button switches when we moved in. The bathroom did not so we figured, since we were tearing the whole thing apart, we might as well add them.

Flipper switch...

Push button!

I got the plate from Old Town Architectural Salvage and shined it up with some Brasso. Good as new!

And what would a switch be without...

a light!

That's right! This light is now that light up there and it's attached firmly to the ceiling of the bathroom. I love it.

Up next? I suppose it's time for us to put the shower together (if we have to) and start putting in other necessities like the toilet and the sink.

Move That Tub!

2012-01-16T11:23:00.000-06:00

On Saturday we reached a milestone in the odyssey that has been our bathroom remodel. We moved the clawfoot tub we bought back in March into the bathroom. It was a big day. A big, long, heavy day (brought to you by Ibuprofen and Mt. Dew which, when mixed, give you super human strength). Unsure of just how difficult it would be to move a cast iron tub up two flights of stairs, my parents asked a young man from their church to come and help us. He was looking for odd jobs to do to pay for a mission trip and bless his heart, this was probabl the oddest thing he could do. He was a trooper though, and really helpful. So, let me begin by showing you this super technical ~~doodle~~ diagram to explain the path the tub was to take to get from the laundry room to the bathroom.

And before you say anything, yes, I do realize that my true calling was art but the heart wants what the heart wants, folks. Moving on, I had a genius idea the night before to navigate the tub through our bedroom to avoid trying to round any corners in the hallway upstairs. Step one, we started in the laundry room by putting the tub on our furniture dolly:

Then we rolled it through the kitchen and into the living room

Here's Dave saying something to the effect of, "When it comes time to push that up those stairs, you're gonna have to put down the dang camera, Katherine." (to be read with a sort of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Kansas accent) From there, we shoved it up the first flight of stairs and onto the landing.

Everyone took a breather before the second flight.

Maggie...just...can't.

As my dad mentioned, I had to put down the dang camera and help move the tub. When we got to the top of the stairs, we all consulted my awesome diagram, put the tub back on the dolly and rolled it through our bedroom to the door directly facing the bathroom.

Then we took the bedroom door off of the hinges and put the feet on the tub.

We moved the tub into the bathroom and sat it down, only to find that it didn't sit level. We then moved it back into the bedroom (to avoid breaking any tiles), flipped it over and re-arranged the feet. We moved it back into the bathroom and lo and behold...it still didn't sit level. So, we made the first of about six trips to Ace Hardware to get some plastic furniture cups. We put one under one foot and that leveled it out nicely. Later, when the tub was ready to go into place with the plumbing, it would sit level on its own. Go figure.

Then, it was time to start installing the supply lines from Vintage Tub & Bath.

We had a little difficulty with the depth of the floor and the depth of the escutcheon for the drain but luckily, Ace Hardware had a flat escutcheon that worked like a charm.

We measured and cut the pipes to fit

Conan took a sheet of rubber material (also from Ace, natch) and cut it to fit behind the antique tub filler my mom and I picked up from Old Town Architectural Salvage for

FIFTEEEN DOLL HAIRS!

We installed it, turned the water on and guess what...

it leaked, of course.

Then, we tightened everything up and tried again with better results.

We still need a couple of washers here and there before it's official and I also need to clean the inside of the tub. But I mean, look at it!

I'm just in love. Shorty's in love, too. And as you can see, we painted the outside black. Olympic's Black Magic to be exact. Same color as the dining room doors. Hey, if it ain't broke.

I'll talk more about color choices when the bathroom is done and Conan takes some good pictures for me. Stay tuned!

The Tub Comes Upstairs

2012-01-14T16:24:00.001-06:00

Today was a pretty big day, dear readers.

We moved the clawfoot tub upstairs.

My mom got the first turn at sitting in it since she worked so hard to make this happen and also because she's the smallest, and therefore the least likely to cause it to go crashing through the floor and into the kitchen below. Thoughtful, right?

I'll post more on Monday about plumbing it, cleaning it and the general shenanigan-ry that ensued when we tried moving it up the stairs. Until then, you can see what Maggie thinks of our new tub and also, a quick glimpse at the color by watching this video.

And don't forget to follow along on twitter for up-to-the-minute misadventures in home improvement.

Freitag To Do

2012-01-13T10:19:00.000-06:00

My how this week has flown. Seems like just yesterday I was putting off starting to paint the walls above the beadboard and now, look at us, it's Freitag and I'm sitting here blogging instead of putting a second coat on the walls above the beadboard. Well, you know what they say, time flies when you're avoiding things by dinking around on the interweb. But, I digress.

I'll make this quick, I swear. Just a few words on what we're up to and what's ahead.

We finished the floor tile in the bathroom. HAL-AY-LOU-YUH.

Seriously guys, I don't know if we could have done that for one more day. It started to seem like the world's fanciest prison cell after a while and it was playing some mean tricks on our morale but now that it's over, we can move on and hopefully move quickly through our to-do list. Which includes:

~~Put second coat of paint on upper half of walls and ceiling (today)~~

~~Go down to~~ Architectural Salvage ~~and try to find some shower handles (today)~~

~~Paint second coat on beadboard (today)~~

Put up shower head (Today!)

Put up overhead light (Today?)

~~Move tub upstairs (Tomorrow, hopefully)~~

~~Install tub supply lines (Tomorrow)~~

~~Sit in clawfoot tub and weep tears of joy (Tomorrow? Sunday?)~~

So that's a taste of what we've got coming for the weekend. I'll post more about some of those things individually as we get to them. But for now, I have to get up off my duff and go paint the upper half of the walls painted. Wish us luck!

We're On the Tweeter

2012-01-11T15:34:00.000-06:00

Hey guys! A few things are new and neat around these parts.

For one thing, we have a nice new "About Us" page right over there ==>

We also have a twitter now! Hooray, right?

Welcome to the 21st century, old house!

Please do us a solid and follow along! We'll be posting about the little things from day to day that go on around here and also, plenty of weiner dog pictures, rest assured.

@keepsmilingblog

P.S.

The tile is done.

Woot.

Shower Door

2012-01-03T23:11:00.000-06:00

Let me just begin by saying Happy New Year little blog and little blog readers! What a year it has been. We've certainly paid more attention to the blog this year and the comments and interest we've received are worth their weight in gold so we consider it a worthwhile investment. We also began a bathroom remodel that is coming up on its TENTH MONTH! But we are steadily making progress and now that the tile is down and the tub is painted (squeeeeeeel!!!) things seem to moving along a whole lot quicker. For instance, the only thing really left for the tub is the feet, which Conan primed yesterday

So pretty! So smooth! Also note the bathroom light fixture that I worked so tirelessly on...in that bucket...in the basement. Hey, Judgy McJudgerson when you work that hard on something you don't want it anywhere even remotely close to a cat that breaks sconces or a dog that just unleashes nothing but adorable destruction everywhere he goes. Seriously. So in the bucket it stays. For now.

So, you say, how 'bout that shower door you mentioned about two (very lengthy) paragraphs ago?

Maggie's just as surprised as you are that we FINALLY finished all of the shower tiling, grouting, sealing and general what not and got around to putting a door on that most beautiful of showers.

Just a couple dozen simple steps! I kid, I kid. My parents actually got it done in about no time flat and my dad assured me that it went off "without a hitch" unlike most of the other aspects of this remodel.

So, you read your instructions, you drills some holes

You hang it up, you smear on some clear silicone caulking

Screw on the shiny knob/handle...

(the easiest part and thus the part that I showed up just in time to do : )

And guess what?

You got yourself a door!

I know, I know it's just a big piece of clear glass but when you've been showering in what amounts to a washing machine drip pan with a glorified hose over it for TEN MONTHS (seriously, did I mention the TEN MONTHS part) even the littlest things feel big. And being able to say that the shower is thisclose

to being done is a real accomplishment.

I love it.

I love, love, love, love, love it!

Up next?

Hire a team of mules to pull that clawfoot tub up the stairs.

Kidding.

Tomorrow we finish grouting the floor and seal it then it's paint time for Katherine (ceiling and second coat for walls) and then it's time for the tub to come on up. Wish us luck!

Clawfoot Refinishing (Pt. 2 of 4?)

2011-12-30T11:17:00.000-06:00

I know I'm getting a little sure of myself putting part 2 of 4 up yonder in that title bar but listen you guys, I really think that this might be possible in less than 40 steps. Really. But, before I tell you guys the magnificent things I have done to that tub, I need to clarify something just in case anyone out there in the internet is searching "refinish clawfoot tub" and comes across this post or more importantly, the last post. I made an oopsie and said to use "Rustoleum High Performance Protective Enamel" between sanding(s) to get a smooth finish. DO NOT do that. My apologies but in the haze of wrapping and parties and family and ham (so much ham) I told everyone to put ENAMEL on instead of PRIMER. Okay, so here's what you want to use if, like us, your tub was already stripped of any paint and was just rusty rusty rusty.

Because, did we have rust?

This stuff is great and it's made specifically for what we needed it for. If you're stripping layers of paint off, then you might go a different route for primers but for us, this was perfect. As you can see, I got a quart of it and it looks to be plenty and I got it at our neighborhood ACE hardware.

Alright so now that that's out of the way, let's get to the good stuff.

When I last left you, we had gotten the tub inside and I had started sanding off the rust.

A little refresher.

We went:

Rusting hulk in the driveway.

Less rusty in the laundry room.

And after one coat of primer we went...

Don't worry, the primer is that rusty color already so this won't be what it looks like when it's finished. I am leaning toward a darker final coat though just because it would take a while to cover this up with white and also because we already have about a million different shades of white in that bathroom and I don't need one more. I'm thinking maybe a really dark gray or black with a slightly matte finish because as Conan so kindly pointed out, "Matte finishes hide blemishes" and even though it's pretty smooth, it still has some bumps here and there.

I really am so pleased with how it turned out. FYI for the lip, I used this nifty drill attachment called a flap wheel. It wasn't exactly perfect and this may not be its intended use but it worked pretty well and I intend to use it on the legs (clawfeet) as well.

Judge for yourself:

So there you have it. I think I'm going to do one more coat of the primer with a less "toothy" roller and then it's paint time, folks. That's right, four easy steps. Wish us luck!

Clawfoot Refinishing Pt. 1 (of 40 I'm sure)

2011-12-22T12:27:00.001-06:00

Who's got two thumbs and has been a bad, bad blogger lately?

This girl.

In my defense though, we've been working really hard on the bathroom but the stuff we've been doing (read: grouting, cleaning grout, etc.) just didn't warrant taking a bunch of pictures. Sorry but I like you guys too much to put you through that. I mean, you've seen one grout line, you've seen 'em all. Also, my Christmas to-do list rivals the Iliad or some other really, really long book I've never read.

Proof:

This was the dining room table today and it has been this way for an embarrassingly long amount of time.

Maggie doesn't mind, though. She says keep the boxes coming!

But seriously, I wanted to wait until I had some actual news to share and pictures to go along with it so, without further oblig. "cat in box" pics, I give you:

The completely, totally, 100% tiled and grouted shower!

It needs a little caulking and a little cleaning and then it will be ready for the door and fixtures!

We've also been working on grouting the floor of the bathroom a little bit at a time and as I cleverly cropped out of this picture, we've also been popping up tiles left and right that weren't completely stuck to the floor and having to go in and painstakingly scrape out the mortar that's still on the floor so they will sit level and then re-apply the individual tiles back to the floor. It's a mess but hey, better now than after everything's grouted, right? Right?

And now, for something completely different:

See that? That, my friends is a clawfoot tub, sans claws that has been sitting in our driveway since, let's see....March? It makes me laugh a little to think that we were so sure of ourselves, we ran out and bought the tub about 9 months before we actually needed it. Sigh...home improvement.

Yesterday, my mom rigged up a little dolly out of some 2 x 4s and four wheels so she and I could pick it up and sit it on there and hopefully roll it to the back porch steps where Conan would help us move it inside so I could start working on refinishing the outside.

It worked like a charm.

It also gave us some much needed encouragement about moving this thing up two flights of stairs to the bathroom which, let me assure you, we were not looking forward to AT ALL. But now, seeing how relatively easy it was with just my mom, myself and Conan, I think we will be able to do it when the time comes. So, here where all of these words are is where a picture of that mighty feat would be if I knew how to properly operate a camera. Instead, I have a bunch of pictures so washed out they look like they belong on some teenager's myspace page. Psh, whatever cameras! And that's right, I just referenced myspace. I'm bringin' it back y'all!

Anywho, we got it inside with some pushing, pulling and taking one (only one) door off of its hinges.

Welcome to the laundry room my little footed friend!

As you can see, it's pretty rusty on the outside but all in all, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well this thing stood up to at least 9 months outside (it was outside at the place we bought it for who knows how long).

In case you're wondering, and I'm sure you are, the numbers on the underside of the tub are for the date it was made (5/17/1935), the length of the tub (5 feet in our case) and that last one, that's anybody's guess. Seriously, if someone reading this knows, please feel free to share with the rest of the class.

So, I got my plastic put over the door to the kitchen, got some handy dandy face masks and my even handier dandier orbital sander attachment I got from ACE Hardware and got to work.

I got most of my info about how to re-finish the outside of a clawfoot tub from someone's flickr account strangely enough. Even stranger, for some reason that person has made those photos and that information private so I'm just sort of going on a wing and a prayer now. Basically, it went something like

1) Sand til' smooth-ish with orbital sander (look at me, using an attachment, breakin' all the rules!)

2) Paint on one coat of ~~Rust-Oleum High Performance Protective Enamel~~ (my bad) instead we used Rust Oleum Rusty Metal Primer

3) Repeat steps one and two until it's a smooth enough finish for your liking

4) Put final coat of whatever color you want on it

Yesterday, I began step 1. Here's how it looks now:

Maybe not a ton different but boy howdy, does it FEEL different. It's nice and smooth almost everywhere. I was even able to get that sanding attachment down into the lip a little bit so hopefully, aside from the feet, I won't have to do a whole lot of sanding by hand! Yay!

Next up, I finsih sanding and put my first coat of primer on. I can't wait to get a coat or two on there so I can see how smooth it's going to be. I had planned on painting it white but if I can't get it smooth enough, I'll probably go with a darker color that won't show the imperfections as well. Not sure, would a charcoal tub be too much black with the grout and the tile border? Thoughts? Suggestions?

Shower Grout

2011-12-09T13:02:00.000-06:00

Let me just begin this post by saying that our shower, while it is glorious indeed, is definitely too small for two people to comfortably sit down in. How do I know this, you may ask? Well, last night, my mom and I attempted to do just that while cleaning grout lines and let's just say, even with my Keebler elf of a mom, it wasn't pretty.

Back to the grouting. That's right! We started the process of grouting the shower last night. It went a little something like this:

Put grout on

Put down camera because grout is drying too quickly and begin cleaning it off. About three hours later...

Thanks to the magic of blogging, tile is grouted!

As you can see from this picture, we still haven't done the front sides and as you can't see from this picture, we also haven't done the inside sides. Man, that's a lot of sides. A clever and less tired person would make some kind of buffet/KFC joke about side dishes but...I just...can't.

It really looks sharp, though. More sharp than I expected. I kind of assumed that it wouldn't look much different than it already did with the spaces in between the tiles but boy does it ever!

Also, my mom came over, sat cross-legged (or "Kindergartner" style if you prefer) for about two hours and lo and behold, the lip of the shower is done!

Now, if you've ever read this blog before then you know that when I say "done" I of course mean, we still need to grout it and caulk it but whatevs. It's pretty much done.

And in even more exciting news, on Thursday I came home from volunteering at le zoo to find a package on the front steps!

Opened it up...

another package

Opened that up...

supply lines and drain for the tub!

Maggie was getting impatient waiting for me to empty the box out for her.

But check out this fancy thing-a-majig!

Shiny!

(Please disregard my "dishpan hands". Most of what I do at the zoo involves washing dishes and most of what I do at home involves not getting manicures so...)

As I type, we're waiting for the grout to set up so we can start applying it to the inside sides of the shower. Hopefully, that will be done by the end of day today. Stay tuned!

P.S. These are the supply lines we got

and

This is the drain

Bathroom Floor

2011-12-06T12:10:00.000-06:00

I interrupt your internet grazing to bring you this semi-important announcement:

Sort of.

We still need to grout (which won't take more than a day, I'm hoping) and you see those black tiles sitting in a sea of beautiful white? Those are tiles that popped out. Sooooo those and a few others have to be re-mortared and then it's grout city! After that, who knows! We need to put down base shoe, install the shower door and fixtures and like, a million other things but whatever! The floor is down!

P.S. I also got a bathroom cabinet at the DAV that needs some work so, expect to hear about that soon. I can't take any pictures of it right now because it's wedged into the hallway outside the bathroom pretty tightly. : |

Thing weighs a. ton.

Kitchen Lights

2011-11-30T10:41:00.000-06:00

Thought I'd share one more important thing that happened in the kitchen the other day.

No, I did not make the perfect grilled cheese, that still eludes me.

I did however, make my husband do this

That's right! I made him get up on the counter with a drill and test his core strength!

Just kidding. I actually asked him to install these little puck lights underneath the cabinets.

As part of my "Bring the eye downward" initiative I bought a pack of 5 puck lights at Lowe's for $35 and in about an hour and a half we had light!

I don't really have a before picture because...well actually, I did have a before picture but it just looked like a messy kitchen in the daytime so I said, "These people have an imagination, let 'em use it!"

I looooooove them. I know it's something silly and little that most kitchens probably already have but it makes ours look a little nicer, just like the de-cluttered cabinets and any improvement, no matter how small is appreciated. We also have these lights in our living room on those massive shelves. They don't require any wiring, you just need to plug them in to each other and an outlet. As seen here:

I would highly recommend them if you have a cabinet that's near an outlet or some shelves with an outlet or some cabinets with an outlet or whatever...near an outlet.

Up next? My mom is coming over today and she and I are going to lay down the very last of the bathroom floor tile. Ohhhhh! Pics to come hopefully!

De-cluttering the Kitchen and Other Stuffs

2011-11-29T12:28:00.000-06:00

Well, the turkey's been carved and most of its leftovers have been eaten. It was a great Thanksgiving around these parts. Conan's family and my family all came to our house and we sat around eating too much, talking too much and when it was all over, cleaning too much. I kid. I cleaned just enough to get by. So, the decorations are up now and here's a couple pics of them in all their bustin'-the-meter glory. What can I say, lights make me happy and I am lucky enough to have a husband who supports that.

We got both of the trees up and decorated. That white one back there is my pride and joy.

This year, we decided to decorate the shelves in all of their shelf-y glory. The garland was a black Friday sale that I stumbled across at Michael's. $1.99 for 9 feet. Top that.

I got some new bows for the stairs this year since apparently tying real bows with silk ribbon is like the hardest thing that you can ever attempt. Ever. $2 each at Big Lots.

And here is my lovely, sparkly, slightly pink dining room tree. Bee-you-tea-full!

Okay so, once the stuffing subsided I was firmly situated in a holiday funk. Here we've got all of these friends dropping by from out of town and family coming by and my kitchen, the place where everyone inevitably ends up standing around, looks...shall we say...not so Martha.

Due to our bathroom remodel, the kitchen ceiling is just chillin' lookin' like this:

So yeah, I needed to do something to, as Conan put it, "Draw the eye downward."

So yesterday morning I decided to do something little, with a big impact. De-cluttering.

Bear in mind, these are the cabinets the house came with and we are nowhere near doing a full-blown kitchen remodel but there are some things that anyone can do to make things look good no matter what you're workin' with. So, here's what the cabinets looked like before:

Yeah. Basically the hottest of all messes. Three years of just kind of "putting stuff on the shelf" had not served me well. Lots of odds and ends glasses and mis-matchy stuff we didn't even use made everything look worse. So I simply removed everything and then began sorting.

- Things we use everday

- Things we use once a week

- Things we haven't used in a while (read: they had a nice coat of dust)

The dusty stuff went in a box bound for DAV land and the rest was then sorted into

- White dishes

- Other color dishes

The other color dishes went to the Island of Misfit Dishes (under the counter) and the white ones stayed topside. Then I just put things back using the quadrants my cabinets were already divided into. (Note, for a more organized look, keep things front and center, not in between the cabinet dividers)

Here's what I was left with:

With the exception of the cup hooks ($2 for three at Ace Hardware) and the new set of unbreakable tumblers on the right ($2.50 each at Wal-Mart) this was all stuff that I already had. Hanging the cups saved a lot of space as well as getting rid of a lot of the coffee cups we don't use. I mean, my husband is the only one who drinks coffee and he uses one cup per day. There was no reason to have all of those cups. That's what de-cluttering is all about folks. Be realistic. Now I realize that some people have just that...more people. And with more people in your house come more dishes but if you have once nice cabinet or curio, you can use some of these same ideas with it. Okay, so I mentioned earlier that I went to the DAV with all of those dusty dishes, right? Well guess what I got

That's right, another beat up Lane "Acclaim" table.

It's from the same line as our coffee table that I refinished a while back

But as you can see, the new table is much glossier since I didn't use a polyurethane finish on the coffee table, just good ol' Howard Feed N' Wax. Which, I think this picture was taken before I did. Dang. Oh well. Anywho, it has a couple of problems

But all in all, for $13.47 I'm pretty excited to have a nother place to set magazines and such. Now I just need to decide if it's worth refinishing or not. Thoughts?

Floor Tile Progress

2011-11-22T12:08:00.000-06:00

What. A. Weekend!

Sorry for the tardiness of this post but my, oh my have things been busy around here! Remember how I mentioned that my dad was taking three days off last week to come up, help us finish the shower and then do the floor tiles? Well, change of plans. It took the entirety of those three days to finish the shower alone so the floor tile wasn't started until this weekend. On Saturday, the bathroom got all cleaned out. No more accent stuff in the corner. See ya' later tile saw. Well, the tile saw actually just got moved to the sunroom but whatevs. So, the entire bathroom was clean and then the work began...

Step 1: Butterin' yer joints!

Using this tape that looks like sheetrock tape but totally isn't and some mud, my dad went over all of the hardie backer joints on the floor so the tile would have a nice, even place to lay.

Step 2:

We let that dry for almost an hour and then came the task of making the room square.

See, we have an almost square room with the exception of the little place where the wall goes back into the shower so, armed with a measuring tape, a chalk box and some hairspray, we set out to turn the room into a nice, easy to tile square. If you remember from the shower, you're going to divide your room into quadrants and tile them one at a time with the help of a ledger strip.

Remember how I said we had some hairspray? Well, neat factoid: if you want your chalk lines to stay put while you walk around all over them, just give 'em a little hairspray. We used Mega Hold : )

Step 3: Lay out your tile

This step, I didn't get too many great pictures of because I had to put my camera downa and help. You might have noticed in previous pictures that we're doing a black tile border around the room. Well, what we had to do because we couldn't just get sheets of black hex tiles was buy a few boxes of white with black in them and then go back and pop out the black ones one by one. Then, you lay them on your white tiles and when everything looks right, you, your husband, your mom and your dad all sit on the floor at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night and pluck them out and plunk in the black ones. Fascinating stuff, huh? Those white ones you plucked out will go back in the spots where the black ones were missing from the first sheets. Any questions? No? Good.

Step 4: Stickin' the tile to the floor (finally)

I mentioned earlier that the floor is divided into four sections. Working from the middle out and using your ledger strips as a guide you can start putting your tile down once you've got your mortar on the floor. So, this is as far as it got. I love it and I can't stop going in and imagining what the whole floor will look like! Unfortunately, it may be a while until things get rolling on it again since we're hosting Hanksgiving at our house this year and I should really be cleaning/decorating/taking stock of what dishes I have and what ones I will need to borrow from mom. I'll leave you with this pretty picture of the tile border in all of its sharp, high contrast glory.

And this picture of the tree we put in our dining room last night.

One tree decorated, one to go! Wish us luck!

Happy holidays home improvers!

The Neverending (shower) Story

2011-11-17T15:02:00.001-06:00

Well guess what I'm blogging about today, folks?

That's right.

The shower.

Don't get me wrong, taking a shower inside that porcelain paradise is going to be...paradise but honestly after my parents working on it for three straight days I'm kind of tired of the shower.

But, in the spirit of blogging allow me to share with you the shower progress.

So, here's what it looked like before:

Then, I got a little prematurely excited and blogged about the "after" you see here:

Then, over the course of the last three days we've gotten to here:

As you can see, we tiled all the way down the floor and got rid of our handy-dandy ledger strips.

But we still have to do the lip and the outside edge.

Which, will just have to wait until we've got the floor in the bathroom done seeing as how the cove tile will sit on top of it.

So, our next projects will be something like, finishing up the lip tiles, grouting, caulking and maybe...just maybe installing the shower door and fixtures. Haven't quite decided if it's more important to have a working shower and no bathroom or just grin and bear it for a while longer until we have finished the whole room.

Decisions, decisions.

During the first few days of this week, I managed to do a couple of things that didn't involve showers or tiles. They were

Installing a coat rack!

It's from Tar-jay. It cost me $19.99. It holds coats and I love it. What more do you want from me?

(Somewhere out there is a SATC fan that will get that and laugh and laugh and laugh. You're welcome)

I also painted an old cork board white and hung it up above the little table where Maggie eats in our kitchen. This wall has been a big, white, empty space for far too long and our fridge has been a cluttered, messy mess for far too long so I said, "To heck with this!" and put this bad boy up. I love it as well.

I mean, who wouldn't enjoy looking at pictures of that stud in the middle all day? I mean, really?

It's also a nice thing to see as you're coming down the second staircase.

Home of the cute little cameras that somehow multiply when I'm not looking.

You on the right, I've got my eye on you.

So there it is. Shower, tiles, coats, pictures, mating cameras.

Next up? Finishing the tile, grouting and caulking it and maybe a little shower door installation action if you're lucky : )

Stay tuned!

See the Light

2011-11-15T11:33:00.002-06:00

You guys, the "light" puns are just neverending around here.

I'm a little sad that this project is all but finished because frankly, I enjoy a good, bad pun.

Okay so, yesterday was just a flurry of activity around Casa de Fugit. As I mentioned last week, my dad took off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to come up here with my mom and try to finish the tile in the bathroom. Tall order. Well, they were here til' 8 last night and as we type I can hear drills upstairs. Yesterday, my project (aside from just staying out of the way) was to refinish the light fixture for the bathroom and guess what?

I did!

First I put some zip strip on the fixture and after it became apparent that the paint was going nowhere I used a very fine sandpaper to smooth it out so that there at least wouldn't be any bumps under the new paint.

I used the same spray paint I used on the living room light fixtures.

Rust-Oleum Metallic Finish in Oil Rubbed Bronze.

I think it's just going to look great with the black tiles on the floor.

Can't wait to put it up!

Another little project?

My mom helped me hang this German perpetual calendar that my mother-in-law got at a garage sale many moons ago. Cute, huh?

Today?

We attempt to finish tiling the outside edges of the shower and I have a dentist appointment. I guess you didn't need to know that last part but I'll take pity however I can get it. Stay tuned for pics of the all but grouted shower (hopefully)!

Is This Real Life?

2011-11-12T19:28:00.000-06:00

Here are some wild and crazy pics from our Saturday night in the bathroom.

First up,

the smallest member of our party and thereby the one elected to fold herself up and do the bottom tiles in the shower, ladies and gentlemen...my mom!

The ever growing pile of stuff in the corner. Let's call it accent stuff. Let's just say it gives the room that certain something.

And lastly,

Maggie T. Cat who doesn't ever, under any circumstances want this project to end for that would mean...dare I say it? The end of the boxes!

If you hadn't guessed from the first picture, the three shower walls have been tiled top to bottom. Up next? My dad takes three days off this week and hopefully the result is the entire bathroom floor being done as well as the outside edge of the shower tile. Wish us luck and stay tuned!

Let There Be (Bathroom) Light

2011-11-10T15:44:00.000-06:00

Well, we've passed another milestone in the great bathroom remodel, folks.

We have light.

Well, we have a light fixture to be more precise.

I had pretty much decided that for the overhead fixture I wanted something simple and unfussy like this schoolhouse light from...wait for it...Schoolhouse Electric.

But, at a cool 145 bones just for the fixture (not including the shade for another $70) that was pretty much out of the question. So last Friday my mom and I stopped by our old friends at Architectural Salvage expecting a bust but much to my pleasant surprise I found this fantastic light that met all of my high standards at a very low price.

$52.13

Sold.

Thanks for holding it up so nicely mom!

As you can see it needs a little help from my new favorite pastime - chemical stripping.

But just give me a couple of days and it'll be as good as new!

It just needs a little TLC.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some, you guessed it, chemical stripper on the door upstairs that needs to be taken off NOW! Up next? Work begins tomorrow (fingers crossed) on our clawfoot tub! Stay tuned!

Shiny & New

2011-11-09T14:17:00.000-06:00

So, as part of my ongoing "Bathroom Door Saga" I needed to polish up the fixtures that we had taken off (keyhole, door knob holder thingys). Simple enough, right? Conan took them off of the door and I sat down with my Brasso and got to work. A few seconds in and it was obvious that at some point, someone had spray painted them gold and then years of grime had covered that too. They also had some paint on them that I just couldn't scrape off by hand so into the stripper they went. I soaked them for about ten minutes in a little metal container of stripper and then proceeded to use every sort of "tool" I could to get them cleaned up. Rags, toothpicks, cotton swabs, whatever. After I had gotten all of the stripper off with some mineral spirits I got back to work with the Brasso and here are the results:

Not too shabby for about an hour worth of work.

And if there's anyone out there that is scratching their head thinking, "What is Brasso?" This is it.

My secret weapon. I used this stuff on brass push button switchplates and they look like new. Worth every penny.

Now, back to stripping that door.

And also, hooray! We got a light fixture for the bathroom ceiling! I'll put that up here as soon as I get the chance. And guess what it needs? Some stripping. I'm a glutton for punishment, huh?

Just Wondering

2011-11-08T11:35:00.000-06:00

I just posted this question over on my other blog but since it's going in the house I thought I would post here too. Here's the deal. We need a coat rack yesterday. Every year around this time I start looking for one and always come up empty handed. I want something that goes on the wall because it's going to be in a pretty narrow space but I don't want anything too "look at me" or "shabby chic". I'm really into those old accordian style racks lately and I just wondered if anyone reading might have an opinion. I sure would appreciate it!

A couple of examples of what I'm talking about

top & bottom

Door Progress Pt. 2

2011-11-08T11:07:00.001-06:00

So some of you may remember about a million years ago when I started stripping the bathroom door. Well, guess what? I'm done-ish.

Shower Wall Tile

2011-11-07T11:42:00.000-06:00

Phew! What a weekend you guys! We started tiling the bathroom shower walls which will eventually be the subject of this post but I also made some real progress on the bathroom door! Yippee!

Oh, and also, um...we had an EARTHQUAKE! Can you believe it? Well, if you're reading this from California or some other place where earthquakes are NBD then yes, you probably can. But if you know anything about Kansas, you know that it goes like this:

Tornadoes: YES Earthquakes: NEVER.

Needless to say, we were a little bit shaken up (pun totally intended) but the tiling continued on Sunday. Here's how it all went down!

Last week Conan and I went to Lowe's and bought 80 square feet of subway tile at 28 cents each it came out to a cool $200 without the cove tile we'll be returning...

So, about that "returning cove tile" thing.

Yeah, the shower floor was a little not-so-straight here and there so putting nice little base tiles was out of the question and as my dad put it,

"We are going to have to get a little creative."

So, we put a piece of wood about a foot off of the floor, you could also use a level if you want but it's going to get messy so...

You use that as a guide and once you've mixed up your wall tile mortar and put it on the wall you can start laying your tile from the center, out. You can kind of see in these pictures that we sectioned the wall like we did with the floor. You can't just throw mortar up there willy-nilly because it will dry so you have to do a little at a time.

Once you've got that first row figured out it's just up and up and up! Cutting tiles when you get to the ends of each row, "buttering" them with a little bit of mortar, squishing them into place and applying the spacers.

Lots and lots of spacers.

It helps to have an assembly line. It also helps to have someone take the pictures of said line. That's where I come in : )

Look at my little worker bees, buzzing about!

You want someone brave to cut the tiles, someone fast to butter them and someone with an eye for detail (and not claustrophobic) putting them up and measuring the ones to be cut!

So as of last night, this was the progress that my mom, dad and Conan had made.

It's uhhhhhh-may-zing!

A little before and after to give you an idea of how far we've come!

And my own personal feelings about this gorgeous shower that's taking shape:

Next up? That door I told you about needs another coat of stain and it should be about ready to share and we finish tiling the third wall and the outside edges of the shower wall!

Grrrrout

2011-11-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

I promised grout and I have delivered!

On Tuesday my mom and I went to pick out the grout. I knew we were going to go with a dark grout but I was torn between a very dark brown and a light black. I had already been to Lowe's and their selection of unsanded grout colors was less than extensive so we went to The Home Depot and though they had the Charcoal Gray I wanted they didn't have the caulking to match. Bummer.

So we went back to the specialty tile store (I say store but it's more like a warehouse in the middle of nowhere) where we got the Quick Pitch and natch, they had every color under the sun along with the matching grout. I picked charcoal and we drove back to our house fully intending to put the grout off til' Saturday.

My mom took one look at the tiny shower floor and said, "We can do this tonight." I looked at her with one of those "Can we...really?" looks and she said, "Let's do this. You want to do this?" I said okay and just as quickly we were changing into work clothes and getting started. Here's how it went down:

I know I already addressed this step and it seems kind of obvious but I thought I would show you our grout box in all of its milk carton-y glory. Cute, huh?

Next thing you want to do is pour a little of your grout and a little water into a bucket and start mixing until it has the consistency of cake batter. You'll have to add a little, mix a little, add a little, mix a little...you get the idea. When that has set up for 15 minutes you can apply it with your handy dandy grout float. We got ours at Ace Hardware for $5.

Holding your float at a 45 degree angle, you drop a dollop of grout mixture on the tile then smooth it back and forth, making sure you come at each section from different directions. Get that grout good and in there. It's going to look pretty messy, especially if you use a dark grout but don't fret, it all comes out in the wash, so to speak!

After that has set for about a half an hour you go back with a sponge (that is just barely, barely damp) and wipe up the excess. This will take a while but be patient and before you know it...

It'll be time to grab an old t-shirt or soft rag and buff the remaining grout off of the tiles. I waited about three or four hours before I did this final step.

The result was beautiful and I couldn't be happier with it. And after seeing the way the light from the window comes in the shower in the morning I cannot wait to take a nice morning rinse in there!

Next up? We tile the shower wall this weekend so we're going to get our subway tile tonight. Wish us luck!

Bathroom Paint

2011-11-01T10:12:00.000-05:00

Some of you may remember that one time when we were all totally certain we were going to subway tile the bathroom walls. Well kids, things happen. Money happens, time happens, getting sick and tired of showering in the basement happens. You get the idea. Long story short, we went with beadboard. But don't get the wrong idea. This was not in any way a let down or a concession. This was actually something that was both practical and turns out, exactly what we wanted.

See, a few weeks ago I spotted this picture of this wall and I was like, "THAT...is my bathroom."

I realize that you can only see a tiny sliver of the beadboard down there but sometimes that's all ya' need.

So then I had a color idea and a decorating idea (salon style hanging) and I knew at once that making the decision to go with cost effective beadboard was the right one. It would give the room a different texture against all of the smooth, shiny porcelain and it would add color to the room as well. So, speaking of color. As of now, we have one coat on the beadboard and we went with....

Valspar Montpelier Madison White!

from their very cool partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Now, in person it's a little more of a putty color if that makes any sense. It almost has a tinge of green to it which is just going to siiiiiing against that black and white tile. The top of the wall is still just primed with Kilz but we are going to paint it a white that has just the tiniest warmness to it. It's going to look great, I swear. Now, speaking of that singing tile, I'm off to buy grout. Tobacco brown or charcoal? Hmmmm....

It Has Begun

2011-10-31T10:49:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the dramatic title you guys but after eight months (of weekends) of showering in a spider-y basement I think this moment of our bathroom remodel deserves a little drama.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have started....TILING THE SHOWER!

Just the floor but hey, it's a start.

So, here's how it all went down on Saturday.

In the two weeks prior, my dad had constructed the shower pan using something called a Quick Pitch and it had been given ample time to sit and get nice and hard for the tiling to come.

So on Saturday, we started laying out the tile in the shower thinking that since it was such a small room it should just be all white tile instead of the two parallel lines pattern that are going to be in the rest of the bathroom (see the inspiration here). After a few "That doesn't look right"s we decided to try running the pattern from the bathroom into the shower.

A few minutes into that and it was obvious that trying to run the pattern from the bathroom into the shower along the same line wasn't going to work. It made it too close to the wall outside the shower and it just looked no bueno. Maggie's passive stare tells me everything I need to know. Try again.

Okay. So. I went and printed my inspiration picture out (I know, I know should've done that first) and we tried just putting down the pattern in the bathroom without trying to continue it into the shower.

And....success!

Then there was just the matter of oh yeah, tiling the shower which we had to figure out. We tried little black daisies, random black tiles here and there and nothing seemed to work. Finally, we landed on just making a pattern like the bathroom has inside the shower like it was it's own little room. Perfect.

The next step after we decided on how the tiles were going to be put down was popping out the white ones in the shower and replacing them with black. Then we took the whole thing out very carefully and rearranged it outside the shower. We also cut out the tiles where the drain was. Don't worry, we're not that dumb : )

Then we chalked the shower into four equal sections, mixed up the goo that goes under the tiles and...

Buttered the floor. One delicious section at a time. Then the tiles were carefully placed beginning at the drain and working out to the sides in each section.

My wonderful parents ran the tile saw until it was dark outside while Conan and I went on a Boba Tea run. About two or three dozen tiny little sawed in half tiles here and there later and...

Wouldya' look at that!? We have what appears to be almost a shower! I keep sneaking into the bathroom to peek at it and make sure this is really happening. Sounds crazy, but like I said earlier, showering in a basement for 8 months will make you a little cray-cray.

Next up, we grout. And also, I swear that the bathroom door is ALMOST done. A progress report on that coming soon as well as a decent picture of the paint color in the bathroom whenever Conan has time to show me how to take a good picture of it. For serious though, this bathroom has the best/worst light for taking pictures ever.

Morning

2011-10-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

If you've inspected any of our photos closely or you just have a pair of eyes you might have noticed that we don't have any curtains. Well, I take that back, we have one verrrrrrry sheer pair in the guest room but they filter about as much light as a piece of clear glass so...

Someday I plan to put shades up but I honestly have just never seen a pair of curtains that I really liked. Ever. So, for now at least, it's no curtains or shades on the windows. And aside from constantly being badgered about not having any privacy, it's working out pretty well. Just don't walk around downstairs in the nood (misspelled on purpose for comic relief) and don't have a giant flatscreen TV in your living room : ) I kid, I kid. But serioulsy, to our critics I say come over at about a quarter to 9 in the morning and feast your eyes on all of the beautiful light cutting through the house. It really is our best feature.

The guest bedroom gets the best morning light. Our two guests have raved about this room. For real.

The light in the landing is pretty terrific too. As is that picture (I swear it's straight in person) that I got Conan for his birthday from here.

First Place

2011-10-21T15:42:00.001-05:00

Let me just begin this by saying that Conan is the greatest husband in the world.

Okay.

So.

The other day was not a great day. I got some bad news and I was feeling pretty down. I had called Conan on the phone on my way home to tell him and when I got there he said he had gotten me something and motioned to the coffee table.

On the coffee table was a book that I didn't recognize.

I picked it up and tried to act really happy about my new book on Ansco Color Film. : /

He told me to open it and when I did, to my surprise was this:

A first place ribbon for some sort of puppy competition held in, get this, 1949!

I ran right out and bought a frame at the DAV for $1.50 and stained the heck out of it. This afternoon, Conan helped me put it in a frame and there you have it!

The very first thing in my collection for my "salon style" hanging in the new bathroom. Squeeeeel!

Turns out, Conan found the book in the back of the store where he works in a pile of stuff and decided to take it home because as he put it (with some fancy pants photo language) it's "the most useless information ever put into book form." or something like that. He opened and lo and behold, my puppy ribbon was inside and he knew right away I would love it. What can I say? He just gets me.

Okay.

Enough puppy talk.

I have a door to finish stripping (just a tiny bit more to go and then some pictures and staining!).

Cheeseburgers in Paradise or How We Found the Bathroom Mirror

2011-10-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

Soooooo after the incredibly dissapointing trip to Architectural Salvage last week resulted in zilch bathroom mirrors I made plans to drive out to Marion, Kansas (about an hour away from Wichita) to visit our old friends from Bearly Makin' It Antiques.

In March we were searching for a clawfood tub on the cheap and Conan's friend Kyle's mom Julie referred us to her husband George who gave us the number of Marion who, with his partner Dennis runs Bearly Makin' It Antiques. Whew! That was a lot of names! But this is what it takes to get exactly what you want without paying through the nose, folks.

So, we ventured to Marion in March and happened upon the most magical place in all of the world. No, not the antique store that they have downtown (which, btw is very impressive) but the "Old Alfalfa Mill" and "The Barn at the Farm" which are outside of town a bit and open by appointment! Needless to say, among the rows of clawfoot tubs, we found the crown jewel of our bathroom and headed back home tub, quite literally, in tow.

So, back to the mirror sitch.

I was looking for a wood framed mirror with rounded edges kind of like this one from Door Sixteen:

And I was coming up perpetually empty-handed.

So yesterday, after making an appointment, we drove out to beautiful Marion, Kansas.

Pretty, huh?

We headed to the Barn at the Farm and started to rummage.

It's a rummager's dream. We were truly two cheeseburgers in paradise as I told my mom.

Tucked under my mom's arm is what we thought was coming home with us. Not exactly right but pretty close. Then, as we were headed out the door, something told me to look in this corner. I was staring aimlessly at some shelves when my mom said, "Here's your mirror." very matter of factly. I turned around and she was holding a frame (no mirror inside) that was exactly. perfect. Can you believe it? Search over!

(this is a prime example of my not great picture taking abilities. crooked, too dark, etc.)

Now all I have to do is shine this puppy up and put a mirror in there and we'll be cookin'!

I am so unbelievably happy! So happy in fact, that on the way home, I agreed to let my mom stop on the side of the road and steal some rocks. Because...well, you'd have to know my mom to understand this kind of adorably wierd behavior but whatever.

All in all, a great day.

Can't wait to show you pictures once I get the mirror all finished!

Now to go finish stripping what paint is left off of the bathroom door and finding a frame for something very special that Conan got me to hang in the bathroom : D

To Do

2011-10-17T10:50:00.004-05:00

Ed. note: I don't know if anyone comes back and reads this to do list execept me but for my own wierd peace of mind, I'm coming back to cross some things off. Go team doin' stuff!

I worked all weekend and although Conan is pretty productive by himself and got pretty much evertyhing crossed off his to-do list I still have a lot left on mine. My mom is coming up today and hopefully together, we can knock some stuff off but I'm pretty sure a large portion of this time is just going to be spent staring at Shorty, our wiener dog in his new halloween costume. He's a bee : )

Our fence in the summer in all of its ivy covered glory.

To Do This Week (?):

~~Scrape and paint back porch windows~~ (so we can jerry rig some storm windows on them)

~~Jerry rig some storm windows to put on the back porch windows~~

~~Caulk seams in bathroom walls~~

Put second coat of paint on bathroom walls (beadboard)

Get paint for upper 1/3 of bathroom wall

Paint upper 1/3 of bathroom wall

Wire in our new push button switches for bathroom

~~Finish stripping bathroom door~~

~~Sand/Stain bathroom door~~

~~Put in shower membrane~~

~~Try to find mirror at~~ ~~Bearly Makin' It~~ (this place will get a post of its own. We got the clawfoot tub here, too)

As you can see, there are a lot more To Dos than To Dones so I better go get started.

Bust

2011-10-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

Don't worry. Contrary to the title of this post, the cat didn't manage to bust/break anything. This was a bust of the "waste of time" variety. As I mentioned yesterday, I was going to go to an antique store called Old Town Architectural Salvage here in Wichita and try to find a mirror like the one I mentioned (beveled edges, wood frame, perfect, etc.). Well...let's just say I came home empty handed.

Well, not totally empty handed.

I got these pictures.

As you can see, this place literally has everything except for what I was looking for. Such a bummer since I was certain that they would have at least a frame that I could plunk a mirror into. Oh well. I got to wander around and have two guys try to get to me to buy stuff I didn't want. Which would have been really annoying if it weren't kind of endearing. The search continues.

Bathroom Inspiration

2011-10-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

Before we started our bathroom remodel I had such grand ideas about everything. I mean, a marble countertop? Moving the sink to the opposite side of the room along with all of its plumbing? Who did I think I was kidding? Well, 9 months into this thing (that's 9 months of working on the weekends FYI) and needless to say, a few things have changed and with those practical decisions, came new inspiration. So, as I prepare to put the second coat of REAL PAINT! on the walls, I thought I would share some of the photos I've collected along the way that inspired me and the way the bathroom will eventually (soon) look.

Clockwise from top left:

Hugo Guinness Prints in Vintage Frames from John Derian Co. NYC

There are a lot of things from this picture that I won't come close to re-creating but that doesn't mean I don't stare at it like, once or twice a day. That rug! And as God is my witness, I have no idea where it came from. It's like the good taste fairies dropped it on my desktop one day.

When we began this adventure I really thought white grout would look good. Pause for laughter. This picture changed my mind.

The one elusive thing I have yet to find for the bathroom is a mirror like the one in this picture. I'm going to go to a great antique store tomorrow and look. Fingers crossed!

Done Priming & Door Progress

2011-10-12T12:22:00.001-05:00

That's right! The title doesn't lie. As of about 15 minutes ago, I am officially done priming the bathroom. And in about an hour I'll be well on my way to painting it. Well, the beadboard anyway.

What color? Well, you'll just have to wait and see!

FYI: Those "eyes" are where the hot and cold knobs will be for the sink

(if you didn't already know, we bought a sink with no faucet holes in it)

and also FYI: Naked Berry Veggie is the most delicious of the Naked beverages. That is all.

And an update on the stripping of the bathroom door.

As of today it looks like this:

It's not the most beautiful door but once I'm done with it, it will be. Swear.

Paint Colors

2011-10-11T10:30:00.001-05:00

A commenter with similar uh... "colorful house issues" as us asked about what colors we used and how we decided on them so I thought I would go room by room (and hallway) to talk about where I get inspiration and how I turn it into a color palette.

First up: Living Room

When Conan and I first started dating I was introduced to his massive Natty G collection and it was such a large part of who he was so we agreed that they should be a big part of the living room. The shelves were designed specifically with them in mind. I kept the wall color very muted because of all of the colorful books but very warm so that it looks cozy by lamp light. I wanted this room to feel like the inside of a little boy's cigar box. Full of treasures and pretty pictures. Basically, I think this is a good rule of thumb for anyone when painting or decorating. Choose something meaningful and go from there. The warm wall color picks up the yellow in the National Geographics and little touches of yellow here and there.

Wall Color: Olympic "Crumb Cookie"

The Dining Room

When I found that picture down there I loved how the black looked against the gray so gray it was (I knew already I was painting those doors black). Against the white trim the walls look even more gray. I wanted the colors of this room to be rich but understated and let the accessories like the shiny brass switchplate and the crystal doorknob shine. Another good rule of thumb when choosing paint: If there's something in the room that you are drawn to, highlight it - even if that means painting it black. Also, consider everything in the room-the radiator, the switchplates-as part of the color palette.

Wall Color: Olympic "Ash Mist"

Door Color: Olympic "Black Magic"

Upstairs Hall

This one's pretty straightforward and again, like the dining room, when you put this paint next to white trim it really changes the color. It's almost a minty green and against the dark wood doors in the hall it reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream!

Wall Color: Valspar "Luna"

Guest Room

The only thing I knew for certain about this room is that I wanted a black iron bed in it. The color palette was secondary. After what seemed like a million trips to the DAV I finally got ahold of one (without rails) for a cool $20. I found another one like a week later (dang it all) with rails and bought it for $10. And thus, my crazy, cat-lady-like hoarding of iron beds began. In my mind this bed was always covered in quilts and I used those two pictures up there to guide me. Luckily, my mother in law made a lot of quilts so we have a nice sized stack in the closet of this room, just waiting for chilly guests : )

Wall Color: Dutch Boy Berry Float

Stripping the Door

2011-10-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

Okay, so.

One of the great things about having a house blog is that it motivates you actually do stuff to your house!

Novel idea, right?

Well, today's "Thing I must get done but really don't want to do" is stripping the bathroom door. I'm hoping that putting these photos up will encourage (ahem...force) me to get this project completed.

So, based on my previous wood stripping experience, I would say there are about four layers of paint on this door, including one final, sticky latex layer that you could pretty much just pull off with your hands if you could ever get ahold of a good, loose piece. Which believe me, we had tried.

As you can see, I've already stripped a small portion and after seeing the wood underneath, I think we're good to go. FYI the other side of the door is a beautiful, dark finish like all of the other doors upstairs. You can see one behind Conan on our fancy new banner up there!

So here's a rundown of the products I'll be using in a well ventilated space I don't mind getting dirty. aka our drafty attic : )

1) Mineral Spirits - this is for cleaning off the excess stripper

2) Paint Stripper - for stripping off the paint

3) A not too nice brush - we got this one at ACE for about a dollar, it has natural fiber bristles

4) Gloves - this is important! Get serious gloves because if there's one thing that sucks, it's burning yourself with chemical stripper. Trust me.

5) A rag - for wiping off your scraper from time to time and for applying mineral spirits

6) A metal container - for your stripper. It must be a metal container. Again, trust me.

7) A scraper - I use this plastic one because it works and there's not much danger of me digging into the wood like there would be with a metal one.

So, there you have it.

My today, to-do.

Wish me luck and check back to see if I actually stay motivated/don't pass out from the fumes. I kid.

Before & After: Office

2011-10-10T11:07:00.000-05:00

Admittedly Conan and I watch a lot of home improvement shows. We like to laugh when Monica Pederson takes someone down a few pegs on Bang For Your Buck and we LOVE to exchange lots of knowing glances and "Mmmmm....they are gonna' regret that later"s over My First Place. Seriously, it's like looking through a window into the past; like watching ourselves two years ago when we were embarking on the same insane adventure.

Which brings me to my point. On My First Place, the initial walk throughs of these nearly perfect homes (with heat and everything!) usually involve a lot of "Oh, I don't like that paint color." to which we both throw our heads back and laugh because no one, and I mean no one, could have been more shocked at the color of the rooms in their home than we were. Case in point, the office.

There was a time in our lives when we actually thought Kilz was going to personally call us and ask us to endorse their product. We used that much of it.

We knew when we moved in we needed some place to put Conan's computer (which currently resides downstairs because we don't have any AC and in the summer, this room is like an oven). We designed and built these shelves and the desk along with nifty sliding compartments for a printer/scanner. They really are super handy and when the weather permits, we'll move the computer back up here because it's a shame to waste this space. I got the (incredibly heavy) Brown-Morse office chair at the DAV for a whopping $3.50 and all of those fabulous old bookends, we got from a church that was going out of business (Do churches do that? Well, they were.)

Up next:

Speaking of paint, we got the bathroom paint (eek!)

and

Stripping an old door to it's original woody glory

Stay tuned!

Before & After: Upstairs Hall Corner

2011-10-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

We really haven't potsed much about upstairs but that's all about to change. It's kind of a mess up there what with the bathroom being torn up but that will be done soon (eek!) and we'll have pictures galore!

For now, here is a little before and after of the end of the hall near the front of the house. From left it goes Master Bedroom, Home Office, Guest Bedroom (which you can read about here).

As you can see from the "before" it was a pretty colorful house. A little too colorful for us so we painted the master bedroom before we even moved anything in!

The office shelves were next and finally I got around to painting the guest room.

The guest room window is one of the few in the house we have actually re-corded and re-glazed.

It works like a dream and I'll post about that arduous process as soon as I can!

Also on the agenda:

a post about the office shelving

and for all you wood lovers out there, I'm stripping one of the hall doors that was painted white!

Stay tuned!

*The poster above our bed can be purchased at our Etsy shop*

Stare/Stairs

2011-10-07T07:33:00.000-05:00

A little pretty for your Friday.

I just love looking at these lazy, hazy pictures of our second stairwell.

My mom and I actually completed this project some time ago but it's never been posted here before so...

Yup, that's wallpaper on them there stairs!

I had seen something similar to this done on lots of DIY blogs so I set out to do it our way.

The cheap way.

We scoured the wallpaper books at Lowe's until I found something similar to this but at a price point we could afford. A cool $25 later and we were hanging with this pre-pasted, pretty paper!

The lamp at the top of the stairs I found at the DAV for $10 and painted it red with some spray paint.

All in all, not bad for under forty bucks!

In The Black

2011-10-06T14:39:00.000-05:00

I think these french doors leading to the dining room were one of the first and only things that I was certain what I wanted to do with. In the month leading up to our house actually being ours we spent countless hours pouring over blogs and scouring the internet. Conan found Door Sixteen and we were both like, "Oh girl, this is it." Well, maybe I was a little more "Oh girl." than he was but whatever.

I saw her pocket doors painted black and I knew right then what had to be done.

By the way, Anna is the patron saint of painting what you want without fear.

I don't regret it for a second and yes, I was kind of timid at first but they look uh-may-zing. Especially with the light, light gray we painted the dining room.

Tools of the trade:

A little about the process:

When you're going to paint something such a dark color like black, you need to use a tintable primer. We went to Lowe's and got a quart of Valspar Interior Latex Enamel Undercoater and had them tint it a dark gray color so it would cover the wood and be easily covered by the black paint. Next, after you've taped over all of your hinges and knobs, get to priming.

Two coats did the trick and we still, to this day have almost all of that primer sitting in the basement!

We used Olympic Premium Exterior Latex Semi-Gloss in Black Magic. I know it seems like all blacks are black but you actually want one that isn't pure black. This one is almost a little gray, a little "turned down" if that makes sense. Two coats of that and you're done! Sit back and enjoy your handywork!

That Darn Cat

2011-10-06T07:36:00.000-05:00

So, some of you may remember that one time when I bought those escutcheons for the shower and then promptly broke one of them clean in half pushing on it like a big oaf (50 year old porcelain is fragile, who knew?). I learned a valuable lesson that day. Or so I thought.

Fast forward a few weeks and we manage to find a porcelain sconce that I like that we think might, just might, match one I saw at The Old Hardware Store on a previous trip. So we drive 45 minutes both ways to get this other one and hooray, happy day, it matches.

The next part goes something like this:

We buy it, take the two matching sconces home, sit them on the counter, go outside with the dog, hear loud crash, come inside and...

Yeah.

That happened.

So we were back on the hunt for two matching sconces. Which, apparently is like searching for the Holy Grail btw because everywhere we looked there would only be one, not a pair.

Well, that one at the bottom of the post I mentioned previously?

I managed to find one on Etsy that I thought might match. We ordered it, drove back to Halstead, got the other one and held our breath. When our shipment arrived we put them side by side and...

Voila!

In case you're wondering, aside from when this photo was taken, they are kept in a very secure location. So secure, I'm not even going to mention just in case Maggie T. Cat likes to surf the 'net.

Can't be too careful, you know?

Luckily, we have a spare chain and all of the parts we need from that first disaster to make these match up very nicely.

We meant to do that

; )

Before & After: Dining Room & Mantel

2011-10-05T15:04:00.003-05:00

Okay, just a quickie and then I promise I'm going to show you before and afters of the french doors. Promise.

Just as soon as I go upstairs and start/finish priming the bathroom walls. So...maybe never. I kid, I kid.

The first shot is one that Conan took before we had done really anything.

Note the awesome light fixture in the dining room and the sconces above the fireplace. Class all the way. The after is a pretty dramatic change. We painted everything (including the stencil on the fireplace *shocking*) and we added crown molding and a new light fixture in the dining room.

We also added that wiener dog you see coming from the doorway.
He was pricey, but in the end I think he really makes the room.
Feel free to clicky-click on these to see the somewhat larger version!

These below are of the dining room. Again, just a better view of that light fixture that we replaced with one from CB2. Also, the paint isn't a green tint, it's actually pretty gray and eventually we'll get a more accurate representation of its awesome-ness up here. The table was from a yard sale I believe and the chairs were a Craigslist score.

More to come!

Before & After: Living Room Lights

2011-10-04T17:58:00.000-05:00

I promised before and afters and I am delivering!

Next up, a small one that made a big difference.

The living room light fixtures were original to the house and as such, even though they're not my personal taste I thought they deserved to hang out (pun intended) and enjoy the party.

Still, they were broken in a lot of places and in need of re-wiring so they had to come down.

Here's what followed:

Step 1: Look at your lights everyday and say things like, "Dang it, I've gotta' take those down and clean them." Wait about a year before proceeding to

Step 2: Take them down and give 'em a good cleaning and then decide, because it's your house and you're a grown woman, that you are going to paint them a nice, antique black with flecks of copper.

Step 3: Rip old stereo wires out (yes, these were wired with stereo wiring like you get at Radio Shack) and leave them with your mom for the weekend to re-wire, cover sockets with tape and paint.

Step 4: Hang back up, stand back to admire, realize they're crooked, re-hang, admire.

Before & After: Living Room Shelves

2011-10-04T17:14:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a while but in my defense, not having a working bathroom at your disposal really takes its toll on you. REALLY. So, to get back in the swing of things I thought I would go through and find some before and afters for you guys, starting with the living room built in shelves. Enjoy!

I wish the actual process of building the shelves had been as simple as three easy steps but it wasn't. Here's just a sneak peek at the deets:

Stay tuned for more before and afters!

Including, how that light fixture got painted and how the doors went from brown to black!

One Man's Trash

2011-05-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

You know how the saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Well, when you live in a house that is nearly 100 years old that is literally the case. As mentioned previously, we are in the middle of the world's longest bathroom remodel (I kid, I kid) which if you've ever had the pleasure of enduring you know that around month three your patience is wearing pretty thin and the novelty of plaster and lathing has completely worn off. You just want the thing done. Well, yesterday we were given a little glimpse into the past life of our house that made all of this worth it. Conan was just passing through the bathroom, checking on the progress of the shower when something caught his eye sitting beneath the staircase to the attic (which, is now exposed because the bathroom wall is gone). He went to pick it up and lo and behold it was a little bottle of "Colgate's Brillantene"! He later told me that he thought about just showing me the bottle, having a laugh and then giving up but thankfully, something told him to grab a piece of the aforementioned lath and poke around under the stairs. And what followed was this:

A treausre trove of trash. Apparently, what we thought was a laundry shoot in the hallway was actually where they threw their trash. Makeup containers, gum wrappers, dry cleaning tickets, mentholatum lids, whatever, if they were done using it, it went in the wall. My favorites are of course the makeup containers, especially the Oriental Cream (which is recommended to be put on with a velvet sponge - ooh la la!) but the best part is definitely the can of tobacco. A worker found one of these once before while installing our heating ducts but this one is far better, and here's why: on the top of the can is a date March, 1919. If you've ever lived in an old house and been unable to positively identify when the house was actually built it is like stumbling on the Holy Grail. Something that helps to date your house! Well, needless to say I will definitely be displaying these treasures somewhere special. Probably our new, shiny, glorious bathroom when it is finished. I highly recommend looking at the larger size of that picture up there and reading the fine print on the bottles, it's a blast from the past.

Escutchion Excursion

2011-05-01T13:15:00.000-05:00

You learn a lot of things when you’re remodeling your bathroom. Like how long you can go without taking a shower and no one in the free world has ever seen nor heard of a sink without holes in it. But for me the most fun little tidbit of knowledge I have garnered has been about Escutcheon. According to Wikipedia, an Escutcheon is a shield, something that goes around a keyhole or in medicine the distribution of ahem...hair. But for the purpose of our discussion (which is exactly how you pronounce escussion minus the “d”) we are going to talk about the bathroom variety, found behind the knobs of your sink or in this case, shower.

So, last week I went on an Escutchion excursion. And wouldn’t you know, I found two beautiful knobs with matching Escutchions at a place in Wichita called Old Town Architectural Salvage.

That thing on the right is the Escutchion of which we speak.

So I’m driving home with them and I decide to stop off and show them to the hubs at work. As he inspects the merchandise, I start dinking with one of them and lo and behold, it breaks right down the middle.

Fantastic.

Add that to the list of things I’ve learned: don’t put unnecessary pressure on 90ish year old porcelain. Okay, so now I have to find a matching Escutchion to replace that one with or I have to find a pair that will work with our knobs. So yesterday, my dear old mom and I head out to Halstead, Kansas to the fascinating, fantastic Old Hardware Store.

This place. Let me tell you. It’s amazing.

Drawers full of treasures stretching up to the ceiling. Nearly identical to how it appeared when it opened in 1879!

Which, would in itself be a feat but the fact that they actually are an operating, useful hardware store just blows my little mind. So, after we are greeted warmly and ushered to the back of the back of the shop, our hostess eyes a seemingly endless wall of drawers and Bam! Pulls out one with at least a dozen Escutchions. We search through them, find two that work and trade the one I hadn’t broken for store credit (if you were wondering why I only have the broken one in my picture).

(New Escutchions, Yay!)

Now, of course you know that you can’t drive 30 minutes to this treasure trove of old timey goodness and leave with just two little chunks of porcelain! So, I bought this stuff too.

A porcelain glazed switch plate cover and a brand spankin’ new push button switch.

So there you have it, bathroom remodeling, while tedious, dirty and sometimes very, very trying can also be a cool learning experience.

Next up, finding a matching pair of these:

Wish us luck! I have a feeling we'll need it.

Bathroom Sink

2011-04-11T15:26:00.001-05:00

First, I want you to look at this picture:

Nice, right? That was my inspiration for the entire bathroom remodel. And I loved it. I was completely content to copy it down to the last detail. I even blogged about it over here.

Then, as with most remodels everything changed.

Recreating this picture was going to require us to move the sink plumbing from one wall to the opposite wall and if you know anything about plumbing (and I don't) you know that would be no simple task. In addition, I had been googling 1920's era bathrooms and in none of them was there a wall of custom cabinets or a marble countertop (which, by the way, would cost a small fortune to acquire) as in the above picture. The ones that I favored had a pedestal sink something like these:

With a very large, functional top. After all, if I was going to forego those beautiful cabinets I was going to have to have somewhere to sit my makeup and our toothbrushes...

or, in this person's case, my tiny little vase of flowers.

Now, I realize that we are not in the business of restoring this home to it's original glory (see the previous post about busting the old tile out with a sledgehammer rather than trying to keep it), but I still could not bring myself to deviate from the design that was originally suited for this bathroom. And so, I set out to find a sink. There were a couple of models at The Home Depot that would have sufficed but they were missing that certain something that only comes with age. The next option was Craigslist and after searching our area and a couple of towns south of us (Oklahoma City, Tulsa) I was feeling like it wasn't going to happen. That was until I searched the Kansas City area. Out of a list of about 12 or so "antique pedestal sinks" I clicked on one near the bottom and found a description and a few pictures that piqued my interest. I forced my mom and Conan to stop whatever they were doing and come look. Had we found our sink? They were just as intrigued as I was. After all, this sink had...wait for it...no holes for a faucet or fixtures! That's right. No holes. Just one beautiful, little porcelain pull knob for the stopper. After a week of asking everyone who would listen whether or not we should drive three hours to buy a sink, I decided on Saturday night that it was just too neat to pass up. So, on Sunday we made the drive up, met a wonderful couple with just as much of a passion for interesting, old houses as we have and picked up our sink.

Maggie inspected it and found it up to her high, high sink standards. Seriously though, that giant lip around the edge, aside from being practical from a makeup standpoint is also perfect for a cat to sit on and play with the water coming out of the tap.

Now comes the task of finding a wall mount fixture that comes out from the wall far enough/looks appropriate with the rest of the bathroom. I've searched and searched for anything about bathroom sinks from this era that would have had wall mount faucets and have come up empty. I even sent a desperate email to "Ask This Old House" but I haven't heard anything yet and probably never will. Regardless, so far I've come up with this:

This bad boy from Copper Sinks Online might be the best looking but at $380 it's a little too rich for my blood. Luckily, I think I found the same faucet on Plumber Surplus for a little less if this is the one we go with. The only problem I have with it is that it's very, very chrome. That's not a bad thing but I would prefer that the handles were porcelain. So, I'm thinking about replacing them with something like these from Period Bath:

Well, that's all for now folks. More pictures to come when there are pictures worth posting. I'm off to scrape the old glazing off the bathroom window, which is another post for another time. Until then...

Guest Room

2011-03-29T19:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, let me begin by saying that I'm not a bad wife. I'm a good wife. I keep the clothes folded, I keep the yogurt in the fridge. But maybe, just maybe I'm a bad blogger. Maybe? Now, I have my own blog and that keeps me moderately busy and I also buy the aforementioned yogurt which, when you consider the speed with which Conan eats it, is a full-time job in and of itself. Just kidding. He eats yogurt at a regular pace. But, I do realize that I haven't been a very good blogger here, on this blog. But that's all about to change starting......now.

I give you, the ugly, cluttered, where clothes that don't fit go to die, guest bedroom BEFORE:

Now, I know that all of that good wife talk up there isn't really evidenced in this picture but please bear in mind that we had just moved in and were still in that "Oh crap! Throw stuff everywhere because we are too busy planning a wedding in our backyard!" phase of homeownership. Yeah, you know the one.

So, that was how it looked completely untouched. The floors were nice, there was a radiator that didn't work and for some reason, painter's tape on both of the windows.

So, the first step, obviously was to clean this mess up. And so, with much complaining and many breaks, I did. A couple of trips to the DAV later and it was all spiffy.

So, I then took to the arduous task of scraping the tape off of the windows and moving that big ol' chest of drawers and matching nightstand to the sunroom.

Oh, my beautiful radiator. You might recall having read about my mom and I lugging those things out of the house. It was a chore but in the long run, especially in a room this size, it pays to have every inch you can get.

We also had these lovely sconces which were first on my list of things to dispose of.

My parents made quick work of that and my mom then used one of the holes from the sconces to create an outlet down near the baseboard. The ONLY outlet in this entire room. I know, right? So after some intense paint scraping and one window repair job...

I was ready to paint. I chose a really, really, really (think virtually nonexistent) shade of pink and semi-gloss ultra white for the trim. After some intense DAV'ing I found this gem of a rust covered bed for $10!

As I mentioned before, it was rust covered. So badly, that some places the rust had eaten all the way through the metal. No worries though! A little WD40, a couple of rags you're never going to use again and some really fine grit sand paper did the trick. I chose a satin black spray paint for the finish and voila:

We've since bought a blanket to go over the bed but you get the idea. And those sheets? $4 at the Assistance League. Nice. Not bad if I do say so myself. Now, back to the bathroom. Wish us luck!

What absolutely pains me...

2011-03-29T13:04:00.001-05:00

Seriously, what really bothers me is that this house probably had almost the exact bathroom that we're installing before some contractor-type person decided to "update" everything.

This tile was underneath the crappy vinyl black and white junk:

Why would you cover that up even with the hole in the floor?! It makes me sad that we tore it out, and I keep thinking, "If only we would have done x, y, z we could have left it where it was." Ah, but oh well, we're going to be putting in a black and white hex tile floor like this:

And I apologize to whomever it was I stole this picture from, but it looks great! I just hope my novice tiling skills are up to the challenge.

You might also note in the first picture that there's a stain on the floor that certainly looks like it came from a skirted tub like this:

The old pipes were even still in the wall positioned where they would have been for this tub.

68 Inch Sunrise Specialty Piedmont Skirted Tub No Faucet Drillings from Vintage Tub & Bath.

But instead of paying $4000 for a contemporary replacement, we payed $100 for a 1930s clawfooted tub that needs a little reconditioning, and hauled it with the help of Katherine's mother an hour back to Wichita:

And yes, we have all four feet.

Demolition

2011-03-27T17:13:00.000-05:00

So we're putting in a new bathroom. A trepidatious statement if ever there was one. The past week has resulted in a complete gutting of the old bathroom and minor prep work for the new one, and I have the pictures to prove it.

From this:

To here, in one week.

More to come.

So, I'm sort of a dummy.

2011-02-06T16:27:00.000-06:00

Yes yes yes, it's been forever since I made a post, and I suppose that's largely because I feel so stupid for hiring Alpine Restorations to work on my roof, but it's time I explained what happened. Let me first say that I'm sort of the trusting type, and I'll give about anyone at least one chance to do the right thing. Sometimes that rears back and bites me on the butt, and unfortunately, when it comes to extremely costly home improvement type things it's best not to take chances.

So Chad Weprin (and yes, I'm naming names in case there are other people attempting to look up these guys) came up to my house one weekend afternoon while we were working outdoors on our house and said, hey we're going through the area and looking for anyone that hasn't yet had hail damage repaired from the last storm. He said he'd work with our insurance company on the claim and do the job at whatever price they came up with, and should the claim be denied there was no charge to us. Well great I thought, but honestly I didn't really think the insurance company would approve it because we hadn't lived here very long, and the roof was pretty beat up when we moved in. But if they did approve it, hey that'd be great also; we get a new roof and there's standards that these guys have to adhere to and there's inspectors that have to check stuff out and everything, right?

So anyway, Chad's a nice guy and whatever, and he turns me over to Jarrod Dehn, the company manager or something, and he's a nice guy also. They figure it will take two or three days and they decide when they're going to start, and then some guys from Heavy Duty Home Improvement show up. Okay, who are these guys? I call Jarrod, because Chad's basically out of the picture at this point. Oh yeah, he says, those are our guys, and I'm thinking, I thought Chad said you had all your own workers, but whatever, so they sub-contracted this out; it happens. But they say, well there's more layers of shingles on your house than we thought, so we've got to take some pictures and send them to your insurance company to approve the extra demolition and then we'll start.

A week goes by and finally they show up, and most of the guys there either clearly do not speak English or clearly want me to think that they don't. Whatever, my father's been a sheet metal worker for 30 years, I know how it goes. They start tearing the roof apart and throwing it all over the place. Now I knew it was going to be messy, and I knew there was a lot of demolition that was going to need to be done, but they left a heap to the side of the house that went over our fence and spilled all over our neighbor's driveway. Fortunately our neighbor is pretty laid back, so when Katherine saw her pulling up she went over and explained it and helped pick everything up. Regardless, this is something that shouldn't happen, so a call was made to Rick Unruh, owner of Heavy Duty Home Improvement, because neither Jarrod nor Chad could be reached on the line, and he was told that this was unacceptable.

After that they were at least somewhat more respectful of our neighbor's property. However, this job, which everyone, Jarrod, Rick and the foreman in broken English assured me wouldn't take more than a few days, drug on until the end of the week. Normally, I wouldn't have minded so much--like I said I knew it was going to be a big job--but Katherine and I were headed to Colorado again for our first anniversary, and there was no way we were going to have these jokers crawling all over our house with no one here to keep an eye on things. So I tried to get a hold of Jarrod, but his cell phone wouldn't pick up, and all I got was an error code when I called him. A quick Google search revealed that this was the code you get when someone's pre-paid phone is out of minutes. Ah ha, I said, so this was why I'd never met this guy, he got Chad to bring him a phone with a local area code, so that he could pretend to be a local contractor. It's not that I mind being lied to, I sort of expected that, but it's that they seemingly thought I was stupid...although, obviously I was for hiring these guys.

So we called Rick again, and told him that we were going to have them stop work until after we got back. He wasn't super happy about it, and I surprisingly got a phone call from Jarrod in very short order trying to assure me that they could work while we were gone. No dice, buddy, you should have stayed in better contact, and I'd already had to postpone my trip a few days because of this. He said he apologized for being out of touch, but he was on some "R&R" and didn't realize his phone wasn't working...sure.

We went on our trip, which was fun, but the whole time I had this cloud hovering over my head, because I really wasn't looking forward to all of this when I got back. And I have to say that these jerks made my first anniversary less enjoyable than it should have been, for which I have apologized endlessly to Katherine, and she really took it all in stride, and for that I'm very grateful of her.

We got back, and they started work again. A week and a half later they finished their "two or three day job." But there were two problems. They busted the vent for the new furnace in the attic, and judging from their first attempt to fix it, they had no idea what they were doing. And amazingly, our gutters had disappeared. So a call was made to Jarrod, again. I said that we had a brand new furnace, and that I wasn't confident in their ability to fix the vent in a way that would protect my family, and I was going to have Hannah Heating and Air come back out and fix it, and they were going to deduct the cost from what we owed them. He tried to convince me otherwise, but I said no. As to the gutters, he said that Rick said I told them to get rid of them, to which I said, "No, I did not." And Jarrod, of course, was surprised by this as he couldn't believe that Rick would tell him one thing and I would say another...sure. So he checked around and called back, and said okay okay, we're sending some guys out to put new gutters on your house and take care of it, to which I said, no, we're going to get some bids and you're going to pick one and pay for it too. He started to argue, and I said, look, I've got to get back to work and you can talk it over with my wife (she's not as nice--or rather, gullible--as I am). So Katherine gave him an ear full, and a week later he agreed to one of the bids.

In the end, we wound up with a new roof; although, one that I question some of the craftsmanship of, but one that so far has shown no signs of leakage, and new professionally installed gutters which Alpine paid for. And most importantly, the insurance company paid for it, minus our deductible or course. For the final payment, Chad Weprin showed up one more time, and he says, "Boy the roof looks great." I looked at him like he was stupid, because the front of the house looked the worst (I should have taken a picture of it, we've since fixed their sloppy work, but it was almost laughable how slap-dash it looked). He apologized for the mistakes, but then he had the nerve to ask for a favorable recommendation. I really didn't know what to say...what a turd.

Anyway, moral of the story. Never hire solicitors to work on your house, hire a local company that you know something about and trust. Ask if you can contact some home-owners in the area that have had them work on their houses. And never be afraid to stand up to anyone working on your house; it's your property and your money after all.

Be careful who you hire...

2010-09-02T09:50:00.000-05:00

So we got a new roof put on the house recently and it was about as unpleasant of an experience as you can have. I'll have more to say about it once all the payments and everything has been worked out, but I thought I'd share a few photos of what it looks like when you tear five layers of roof off of a 90+ year old house.

So yeah, I learned a few lessons from this whole ordeal...and boy do I regret a couple of things.

Too much heat!

2010-08-04T07:33:00.000-05:00

Ugh, it was 108 degrees yesterday, and I could barely sleep all night long it was so hot inside even with the A/C on. I've got the upstairs windows open right now to let in the last of the evening "chill" before the mercury starts heading northward again. I'm starting to really rethink this whole no central A/C thing, but it's likely to be $4000 to get it installed, and the electric bill...don't want to even think about it. Maybe we could also install solar panels on the roof to run it in the summer...

I can't wait for winter.

Sunday to do list.

2010-08-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

I work six days a week so my Sundays usually become rather packed with housework and other activities, and I thought I'd maybe just jot down a list of ten of the things that I hope to get to today. In no particular order:

I) Yardwork
   A) Mow
   B) Edge
   C) Water
   D) Trim trees?
II) Finish stripping coffee table
   A) Take photos
   B) Decide on a finish type
III) Clean floors
   A) Need to buy more cleaner
   B) Need to really figure out the correct finish and...wax? accordingly
IV) Figure out why the brake lights and turn signals don't work on the MGB
   A) Clean up garage again
   B) Maybe just sit in car and make vroom vroom noises
   1) Tell Katherine that I think I've figured it out
   2) Spend time looking through parts catalogs
V) Finish editing through our vacation photos so I can make a post about it
VI) Reorganize the books so our built-ins look full
   A) Take photos
   B) Make long awaited blog post
VII) Fix Katherine's clock
   A) Her anniversary gift
   B) Not a euphemism for domestic violence
VIII) Fix Katherine's bike baskets
   A) Go on bike ride
   B) Maybe picnic
IX) Paint porch furniture black
   A) Buy more spray paint
   B) A lot more
X) Waste time on the internet while I finish my morning coffee
   A) Three or four cups
   B) In-progress

So there you have it. I'd guess that I probably won't get anywhere near close to finishing all of these things, but it's good to know what lays ahead of you. And I'll get to it all...eventually.

Radiator Removal

2010-07-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

I apologize for being such a slacker and never updating our blog, but home improvement always seems to take more time away from your other activities than it should.

Anyway, I thought I'd just post a few photos of the long radiator that Katherine and her mom removed one day while I was at work. Turns out they're fairly simple to dismantle and cart away.

Here's the tools required for the job next to the offending radiator:

The first step is to remove the tie rods (my term) that hold the whole thing together. You should be able to unscrew them with a good socket wrench, but it's more manly to use a sawzall.

Then you just use your pry bar and your hammer and your muscles to work each section apart until you can carry them away.

There's a lot of debris that'll probably fall out of your old radiator so you might want to put something down beforehand to catch it. You also obviously want to have drained the water out of your system before breaking the radiator apart (my father and I had already cut out all the old water pipes in the basement and removed the boiler so everything was pretty dry, but there's always the possibility that some water could be left in the bottom of the radiator).

And that's basically it. You'll probably need to do some wall and floor repair, and if you've still got pipes running up through the floor boards you'll need to remove those as well (a good monkey wrench or sawzall will take care of that though). And then haul everything to the recycling center and cash in some of that old scrap iron.

Piece of cake...I guess. Again, it was all done by the time I got home from work.

Furniture

2010-05-28T11:21:00.000-05:00

An oft read blogger dropped a more-or-less rhetorical question at the end of one of her posts a few months ago, and it's stuck with me for a number of reasons. She wrote, "What do those of you who live in places without IKEA do when you need something beautiful and cheap and you don’t want to thrift for it? I have no idea."

And I know she meant it light-heartedly, but it feels like she's saying that those of us that live in the poor impoverished areas of our country that don't have local IKEAs are at a disadvantage. And while I'm sure it's very difficult to find nice modern furniture at thrift stores in, of all places, New York City, it is near impossible in most parts of middle-America and of course requires a bit of a shift in one's sense of style.

Anyway, I know a lot of people are out looking for mid-century furniture and unfortunately, in this neck of the woods, when you do it's outrageously expensive for even beat up examples. I swear, if you want to start a gold mine of a business, open a Danish Modern store in Wichita, Kansas and just ship in stuff from elsewhere in the country--you'd clean up.

So what do we do for furniture that has that sort of style that we're looking for? Our answer: mid-twentieth century office furniture. Office furniture? You bet. Designed for function, built for mass production (often by war-time aircraft parts suppliers), and created with a little of that post-war optimism that seems so hard to fathom these days. Want an example?

A Browne-Morse office chair. Weighs a ton, needs to still be shined up a bit, but a beautiful and comfortable chair that rolls like a dream. $3.50 at the DAV. Evidently Browne-Morse makes things like laboratory tables these days, but these chairs were fairly common at one time.

Or how about this wonderful old chair, I don't remember exactly but let's say $5-ish. You see these all the time on TV in shows that take place in the '50s and '60s, and I've even seen them more recently in shows like Law and Order, SVU--not that I ever watch that of course.

Or this, although, I'm not positive the age or whether I'd really call it office furniture, seems more like school-house furniture. Still though, about $7 at the DAV, and it's in really great shape.

Katherine is the best thrifter I know, and to her goes the credit for these great finds.

Random Photos

2010-05-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

I was looking through my house folder on my desktop and realized how much stuff I had meant to post about and how much stuff I just never got around to putting up, so I thought I'd do a real quick catch-up.

I work a lot on the weekends usually, so sometimes I'll make it home from work to find that Katherine and her parents have started on new projects. This is a shelf that Katherine asked her dad to put in over the servants' staircase, and I think it's pretty nice.

And properly staged with cameras, bowl of fruit, and issues of Dwell:

If I remember right, this was also during the time that they were working on removing the ugly plastic sconces from our guestroom. Thank God for handy in-laws, because working on this old of wiring gives me the willies.

We also hung a couple of new lights, the first one in the dinning room came from CB2 and was only about $40. And the second one went up in the laundry room and was a DAV score. It's amazing how difficult it is to find a good light at a reasonable price.

And speaking of the laundry room, this was the wallpaper that was left behind the paneling that we had to remove to put in the hookups for the washer and dryer.

Here's our neat, Donnie Darko-esque bottle opener:

And this is the office lamp that Katherine found at the DAV and spray-painted red to use on our staircase landing.

Anyway, those are just a few of the projects that has taken up our time the last year or so. I was so consumed getting the central heating taken care of that really Katherine and her parents are mostly responsible for the visible work that's actually gotten done on the house in that time, and for that I thank them greatly.

And I'll have a big reveal fairly soon on something we've been working on for the last four months.

Yard 'n stuff.

2010-04-15T10:17:00.000-05:00

Well the grass came back quite nicely after the winter, and I have to say I think we have the best looking grass on the block. I still have to mow it down real real short and overseed, but I'm always so afraid it's just going to drop dead if I do that. I'm also going to try some flea and tick killer this year, because Schnitzel was just covered in them last summer--I think it was all the watering. Anyway:

The house still needs to be painted of course, and I'd like to put in a privacy fence next to my neighbor's house to complete it all the way around the yard, and I need some sort of gate across the driveway, but I can't quite figure out how I want to do it. Suggestions?

Oh, and I can't remember if I've ever posted a picture of the garage doors since Katherine's parents put them up, so:

I swept out the garage before it became a spider trap again this year, and now my birthday present is parked inside:

A 1967 MGB. Pretty sweet, huh? I can't thank my dear sweet wife enough for allowing me to get it; I've always wanted one, but figured I'd have to wait until my mid-life crisis to get it. I first had to figure out why it wouldn't start (improper choke), and now I have to figure out why the break lights and turn signals don't work, but I drove it around the block yesterday anyway, and it drives great.

So yeah, things are well.

New Lighting

2010-03-24T10:14:00.002-05:00

So Katherine took a cue from Door Sixteen and had me order the same bulbs that Anna used for the wall sconces in their new apartment (here's the link). Katherine wanted something very simple that would be in keeping with our very clean, very white bedroom, and she decided that those bulbs in ceramic fixtures would be perfect. So while I was at work one Saturday, she and her mother replaced the hole in our ceiling with a ceramic base that Katherine found at the DAV for $1 and put the bulb in. Pretty quick and easy, I suppose--I don't really know, it was done when I got home.

A keen eyed observer might notice that the room is a little messy in this photo and might also notice the black spot on the bed, which is:

A wiener dog mistakenly thinking that he's people!

Goodbye rusting hulk.

2010-02-24T09:50:00.000-06:00

During the installation of the cold-air returns on the first floor we had to remove one of our old broken radiators:

Schnitzel did a lot of the work himself; he's so helpful around the house.

This of course left us with a wall untouched for many years:

It was part old purple paint, part old decaying wallpaper, and part cracking plaster wall. So with a little spackle, a lot of sanding, and a little painting, we came to this result:

Neat, right? Now, I don't really know what to do about the holes in the floor where the pipes led down to the basement, or the marks left by the feet of the radiator, or the stained wood next to the wall, but if anyone has an idea, I'm open to suggestions.

Wow first offer!

2010-02-17T15:06:00.001-06:00

Yeah, we got our first offer to buy our house today via a single-spaced typed letter in our mailbox, and we're not even done working on it yet! Oh well, they offered up to $100,000 or a trade for their smaller house. Sounds like quite a deal to me, too bad we're not looking to move.

And in other news, Katherine's started a new career as a highway bandit.

Heat, no seriously!

2010-02-10T11:12:00.000-06:00

So anyway, long story short(ish) because I'm sort of tired of writing about it...we have heat. Although, we didn't get it finished until Feb. 2nd, after the coldest winter in 20 years. We ran four electric space heaters almost continuously, which ran our electric bill up over $400, and only kept us maybe 15 degrees warmer than outside temperatures. Didn't freeze any pipes, amazingly enough, but it wasn't very comfortable.

We have two separate central heating systems, one for the downstairs and one for the upstairs--a necessity in an existing house like this. The basement unit is a 93% efficiency unit and vents through PVC out the side of the house...which makes it a little odd seeing water vapor billowing up outside the dining room windows. The upstairs unit is an 80% efficiency unit, because I was told that they don't really recommend higher efficiency for attics due to the condensation that they create.

I can whole heartedly recommend Hanna to anyone in the Wichita, KS area (ask for Danny). They were the lowest priced bid that we received and the most professional acting company that we called. They completed the downstairs--including the installation of duct-work and setting the unit--in one week and then finished the upstairs the next week. The work is top notch and the units run efficiently and quietly. They also did a commendable job at keeping the duct-work up and out of the way in the basement and against the walls in the attic to preserve as much floor space as possible. And when the city inspector came to OK it, he couldn't say enough good things about the quality of the work.

So anyway, because I feel like I don't post enough pictures, this is what it looks like:

I think these are the first photos that I've posted that really show the basement. This is only half of it, but there's not really much duct-work to show on the other side.

This unit resides in the unfinished back attic room that is directly over the sun room/sleeping porch.

And this shows the crazy looking flex-duct returns that have some extra kinks in them to cut down noise.

And there's the attic duct-work.

So anyway, all in all, not the best experience of my life, but I'm very pleased with the results. If anyone's contemplating a similar project, let me break the costs down a little for you. We spent about $1400 on electrical improvements: new breaker box, upgraded service to the house, wiring for the upstairs unit, and so on. The actual installation of the duct-work and units cost $9500, but keep in mind that we still aren't set up for central air-conditioning, and that would probably run another $3000 or so according to one estimate we received. Now the city did come through with $5000 to offset the installation cost because we qualified for some low-income assistance, but in order to get that money we also had to pay another contractor about $1200 to seal up any cracks in the basement floor and walls since our house sits over a contaminated water plume.

So $12,100 minus $5,000 equals $7,100, minus what we negotiated the purchase price of the house down to, and we didn't really come out too bad. But as someone who actually isn't independently wealthy, it's painful writing checks with so many zeros.

Heat almost!

2010-02-04T22:53:00.000-06:00

We applied for an emergency grant for home improvement through the Neighborhood Improvement Services (NIS) branch of the South Central Kansas Economic Development District (SCKEDD). Now, you'd think "emergency" would mean rush or hurry or we need this right away no delay, but the thing you have to remember, is that emergency action when dealing with government agencies means four to six weeks. This would have been no big deal had I been able to start this process in August like I intended. But as with anything home improvement related, you should triple the amount of time you think it will take.

First of all, simply finding out who I needed to contact to apply and get the paperwork filled out took about three or four weeks. It took a solid week to reach anyone in person in Topeka that could tell me what to do; although, evidently what I needed to do was actually to not talk to them but to instead talk to someone else. Once I found out who this other person that I needed to talk to was, it took another week to get them on the phone, and another week thereafter for him to come out and look at the house and inspect it. So three weeks gone by and I'd just finally gotten the paperwork I needed to fill out which then took almost another week to submit.

Doesn't this sound like fun, everybody?

Neat old photo.

2010-01-16T15:17:00.004-06:00

I just wanted to post this photo of our house this winter. When Katherine and I got married we loaded up a bunch of old box cameras with film and set them out on the tables instead of wasting money buying those wedding edition disposable cameras. There was one camera that still had a few shots left on it, and I finally finished it off and took it to the lab last week, and here's one of the photos from it. Pretty neat, huh?

I actually still need to scan all the rest of the film, but it's a bit time consuming as you can imagine.

Heat? What heat?

2010-01-15T11:44:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I've mentioned a few times that we don't have any heat in the house, which has been somewhat problematic considering that this has been the coldest winter in 20 years, but hey, as everyone points out to us, we're young and in love. Anyway, we bought the house knowing that there was a problem with the old radiant heating system. Originally we bid the asking price (which was quite low) with the requirement that the heating be fixed. The bank said no, so I dropped $4500 off of our bid to cover repairs, the bank counter-offered and we accepted. That was in March of 2009.

Between March and August of 2009, we painted and planted and sodded and got married. Heart.

So in August of 2009 we began the process of fixing the heat. The first company that looked at it figured that most of the radiators needed to be replaced at, he guessed, a cost of $350 to $500 per unit with an additional $150 or so for new valves. He said the boiler looked pretty good, but that it needed $1500 or so in upgrades to bring it up to code; however, it was only about a 30-40% efficiency unit and new 90% efficiency units ran around $10,000 to install.

Anyway, it turns out that replacement radiators are no longer common around Kansas, and new convectors aren't cheap either, so the total cost was simply too high to work with the old radiant heating system, and we knew it was time to consider central heat and air. Thus it was bidding time, and what a time it was.

The next company that we called upon was recommended by one of the bankers that helped us get the loan. And while I'm sure being called "brother" by someone you've only met for five minutes is quaint and folksy to some people, to me it seemed like an almost aggressive ploy by this guy to make me feel like he was on my side. Here's the thing though, when you tell me that you're going to replace all my windows, spray insulation in my walls, and install the best heating and air units on the market, all for the low low cost of $25,000-35,000, and then suggest that I get a home equity loan for a house that I've lived in for all of four months, I have to assume that you think I'm stupid. Anyway, he spent about 15 minutes at my house, didn't take any measurements, didn't even look around, called me "brother" about seven or eight times, and told me that he could double the value of the house. To which I said, "not unless you're making the duct-work out of gold, brother."

The next couple of companies were much better, thankfully. One of the guys that came out was about retirement age, but he used to play football way back when, and still looked like he'd could take me down if we were to face off. Real nice guy though. The other company was one of those small town companies that you sort of wonder about when you first call them, but they were actually very good and very professional, and gave us our second lowest bid. But the final company to come out was the best and cheapest, and they're actually here working as I type this.

Now you'll note, that I'm typing this in the middle of January 2010 and not the middle of August 2009. There's two reasons for that. One, it's been too cold in the computer room to do much blogging, and two, we decided to get some government assistance for this project. More on that later.

Honeymoon!

2009-12-26T21:32:00.001-06:00

Sorry for all the delay. As you can imagine, December is a busy time for me to be working on a blog, especially when we still haven't any heat in the house, and the computer is in one room that stays particularly cold. Anyway, I'm trying to get through all the catching up, so Katherine can start posting about the things that she finds interesting that are happening today.

For our honeymoon we went to Colorado and spent a couple of days around Fort Collins and then drove up through Denver to Estes Park and stayed at the Stanley for a night and then hiked around Rocky Mountain National Park for a few days. It was an amazing trip, and there's not a time that I think about it that I don't want to immediately go back. So much fun, and so beautiful.

Anyway, pictures:

Our Wedding!

2009-12-14T11:08:00.003-06:00

Well it's been some time since my last post, and I appologize. It's terribly cold in the house right now from lack of heat--long story, I'll catch you up soon.

Anyway, after laying the sod, and watering and watering and watering, we were ready for the wedding on July 18th, 2009. Ours was a very DIY wedding in the best sense of the phrase, and I know that of course it was mine, but it really was the best wedding I've ever been to, and it came off beautifully. Katherine should really be the one to post about it, because she was without a doubt the driving force behind it, and its sucess is really a credit to her creativity and her willpower.

But to prepare for the wedding meant a lot of hard work on the part of ourselves and our parents, siblings and friends. In addition to finding a Justice of the Peace, renting chairs and finding tables, we had to make many things from scratch such as: invitations, programs, flags, centerpieces and labels of all sorts. We had to clean the house, hang lights, buy food, make the music playlist, and so on and so on. It really came down to the wire, and we were up until about 2AM the night before, and it's still hard for me to believe that it all worked out perfectly.

Anyway, I'll post some photos to give you an idea of what it was like, and I hope that Katherine will come back and talk about some of the details.

So there you have it. Pretty amazing, right?

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