Friday, January 29, 2010

I am very proud to announce that where once Dan's head was sticking through the roof... there is a new vent! Go Dan!


Here you can see 3 in a row, I think you can definitely tell the placement was perfect, they obviously just neglected to install it and just left us with a hole.


In other news, Dad moved the wires over the tub so we can get started on sheet rock.


He has done the same over the sink area, and hopefully today will be running the new lights.


I'm sorry this is a short post, but I have a sick kid, and my husband is at the house working on his own.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

If it can It will....

Today started out beautiful and almost warm. I decided I must get some yard work done. Then it started raining on me. But we'll start at the beginning and take this post one step at a time.
The ceiling in the kitchen is dry and needs a patch or two but for the most part is ready to paint!

As promised, we have a sub floor where the tub will be installed! Unfortunately...That slit at the right is where the drain was. My hubby touched it and it... uh... fell off? Seriously. It fell off. Sooo more work.

Here's a view of the wall that he's put new supporting 2x4's in because of slight dry rot on the base board.
And the ceiling over the tub where there used to be a giant soffit box that hung down. Hopefully we'll have a ceiling soon!

This is the other side of the bathroom where a soffit box used to hang over the cabinet's and mirror. A little rewiring and we'll have a beautiful new wall. Today Dan spent the entire day bagging up the insulation that was in this area.

Our lovely new shop vac was an amazing help. You are worth your weight in gold little shop vac.

I bought some samples of exterior paint and pretty much ended up hating all of them. Just for the record, that orange was brown on the swatch... I swear to God. Eww!

Alrighty, now on to the yard work. We have this very narrow area between us and the park. We will be installing a privacy fence here and these poor Rhododendron's will have no light.
So I had the amazing idea to relocate them here. Against the back fence that has no privacy and hopefully let them grow into some kind of a hedge. My husband looked at me like I was insane and told me to just buy hedges. I told him if he could magically find the money for hedges he was welcome to.... he started digging.
We have one Rhody dug up... the smallest one. I also got some great work done on the front herb garden. There was one lonely purple sage bush against the front courtyard and one lonely lavender bush all the way up by the street! So I transplanted the lavender next to the sage so they could be buddies. Which led to me ripping up all of the old weed cloth along the driveway and digging a whole new garden in the front lawn... I am coated in mud and in glorious gardening heaven.
Until......
Hey Honey? Look up!!!!
WTF!!!!!!

WHY IS MY HUSBANDS HEAD STICKING THROUGH THE ROOF!!!!!!!!
Well, apparently the roofers decided a giant hole could just be hidden by one little shingle and we wouldn't find out??? But then, the shingle just fell off. Dan went into the attic for something and thought.. uh.. why do I see blue sky? I think there is supposed to be a third vent there. Well, there will be now because there is no other way to fix the hole. It of course started raining. So there is my poor hubby in the rain, in the dark, on top of the house, trying to patch a 20" hole so it won't rain in the attic!!! I must have jinxed myself after the plumbing, the drainage, the roof, all of the electrical, most of the walls and ceiling got replaced. I said... hey! Nothing else can go wrong right? We've replaced everything right? I've cursed us.
Oh! I didn't mention the funnest part of the day though. Forgive me .. do.
While I was digging in the mud in my painted jeans and way too tight Voltron tee, a beautiful little girl walked up and said is that your dog in the backyard? I said yes! She said, oh, she is sooo cute! I said thank you. She then told me her name was Dominique and she loved this house. OMG this girl was adorable probably about 10 years old, shoulder length kinky Afro hair and bright 80's style neon earrings. Like a black version of Hannah Montanah LOL She told me the house had been vacant for around 2 years and her and her girlfriends had been using it as a fort! I know it sounds bad, but it made me feel so nice knowing the break ins were just little girls! She said they loved the house so much and had been trying to clean it up and make it pretty but then were caught by the realtor and told they couldn't go inside anymore. But that they continued until they realized our stuff was there. I told her I appreciated that they stopped going in and that we would be living there soon. She told me she wanted to help us make the house pretty. I told her in the spring when it was warmer she could come over and help us with the gardens :) She seemed extremely pleased.

Monday, January 25, 2010

And then there was floor!

I haven't seen it, I have no photographic evidence. But my husband insists that the bathroom now has a floor! Which is honestly wonderful. I imagine it looks much like before, just without the giant gaping hole looking into the crawl space. Unfortunately he said while he was down there he found a rather large puddle of acrid smelling urine......... ..... ..... I'm not catching whatever critter is down there. Dadddy!!!!!!!

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Ceiling Texture

Alright. Sometimes you just have to bite your cheek and say, I'm an amateur. We did a pretty bad job on the ceiling, so we decided to texturize. With advice from Dan's dad, he finished the job beautifully! There are only 2 spots we need to go back and thicken a little when it's dry. I am sooo much happier with it! I can't wait to finally get this kitchen painted!


While he did that, I did this. It's a wall decal my sweet friend Carrie sent us! I have been staring at the tube waiting and wondering where to put it. I absolutely adore where I placed it, right next to my new curtains and the fireplace. And yes.. I know I put the last word too close to the others, but it was kind of a one shot thing, and now it's stuck that way :) I don't think it's too terrible though! I promise I taped them up and respaced them several times and even used a level before I stuck them... sigh.


Earlier in the day my parents took me shopping for more bits and pieces for the house. Including, new knobs for the closets.


And the most dramatic change... before...

After!!! Okay so it's not the same door, but you can see the old knob and the new knob :)

I also had purchased these finials earlier in the month because they were on sale, and because I could not find long enough curtain rods I liked in white. So I decided to buy some dowels and make my own. Today I bought these bracket's to hold the dowels and spray painted them white.


When we had the forced air installed, unfortunately the back built on laundry room/bath was not connected to the main ceiling, and we were unable to duct that one tiny bathroom. It did have a working wall heater like this from the 70's... but it pooped out on us this week. I told mommy the toilet seat was toooooo cold for my bum, and we bought a new heater today.

And lastly, but the biggest purchase of the day. I'm sorry Dad, but the shop vac we were borrowing from you just wasn't cutting it anymore. The filter kept falling off inside and more dust was escaping than it was sucking up. I mean come on, I remember that shop vac when I was a kid. LOL
So here's our brand new one! Bigger too!
The baby started coughing pretty badly tonight, so I will be staying home with her tomorrow. Dan will be going to the house on his own, and hopefully starting to fix the dry rot in the bathroom floor and possibly touch up the ceiling texture. I'll post if anything amazing happens, but more than likely you'll have to wait until Monday for the next post!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Today was a fun project day. We started off with a free coffee coupon, so I tried something new. It was the grossest coffee ever. So we got donut holes at Krispee Kreme to make up for it. After a quick trip to The Home Depot, Dan prepped a patch job in the kitchen while I spent some time sanding these old end tables and patching a few places. They are now ready to paint white! I also painted this shelf resting on top of them. It goes in my closet :)


I was sanding outside on top of this old table. I realized I'd been meaning to refinish this orange table for years and never done it. So after I was done blowing dust clouds from the end tables I decided why not tackle the table? Later I primed the top because I had a full roller I was going to wash anyway. It looks ridiculous at the moment, but hopefully every time I walk by it I'll do something more to it.


When my daughter decided to finally take a nap we headed outside. On the left there you can see behind the shed. Dan pulled two trees out and moved the wood pile that had been leaning up against the back. Unfortunately the wood had been there for a very long time and was rotting the side of the shed slightly. But it's an easy fix. He did however make some pretty awful noises when he came upon a giant centipede about 3 inches long and fat and red. As I am typing this he comments... "and me without my Atari joystick!" Yes my hubby is a giant geek. He then killed a giant spider. My hero :) I spent a little bit of time painting the new trim around the windows and the sliding glass door. It then started to sprinkle, so we packed it up and moved inside.


Where I finished painting the closets! I really should have taken a before photo of this one. If you'll believe it, it used to be electric lavender on top with a forest green stripe going across the center where the rod was, and the bottom was a dingy off white. It now sparkles. I can't wait to start installing some trim! We need to refinish the floors first.


This is the master closet and it was bright orange. Even the ceiling and front of the closet was orange. Honestly? Why did the ceiling of the closet need to be orange? I guess I'll never know. Somebody thought it was beautiful though.

It's been a rough week. Between sickness and laziness we really don't feel like we've accomplished much. But Dan did finish mudding the ceiling, and we realized we need to texturize it to cover up the problems. Dan's dad agreed to come help us.


I put a coat of primer on the closet doors of the office. It's making a huge difference already! Although halfway through I swore I would use the paint gun for the other two closet doors.. what a pain!


Then we realized that we were slowing down because we couldn't find anything and the garage had no more space to store anything. So we rearranged and now everything is in order according to when we'll need it and we have a ton of space!


Dan also took some time to help me with a little project I'd been working on. A coatrack made from twigs I cut from our trees out back! I had him cut the back off of a small log to have a flat surface. I then pre-drilled my holes in the log, and in the backs of the little branches, and also used a sinker to make sure the heads of the screws were sunk so the back would sit flush against the wall. Dan helped me screw them in because I was having troubles holding the drill and branches.
Voila!!! A coat rack! How crafty are we?

Monday, January 18, 2010

Daddy's Little Girl

I am somewhat of a neat freak. That is why I am dedicating the first portion of my blog post today to my Dad. My dad and I go together like peas and a pod. I like everything tidy and neat. He likes everything organized and labeled.


Every time I enter my kitchen or the family room and look at the light switches it makes me smile. His neat little handwriting on neat little tags on all of the light switches and breakers.


Maybe you can't appreciate it, but I do. You know what else I appreciate? The fact that he's there, every morning, on all of his days off. Rewiring my entire house, free of charge. What kind of a dad is he? The best. Thanks Dad.
When we arrived this morning I was so eager to see how the new shades and curtains looked I immediately hung up my daughters. They work almost as well as what was in my head! And I love them. They were super easy to make also. The only drawback is that when they are cinched up the lower corners slightly hang inwards and do leave a slight gap that you can see on the right hand side of the large window. All in all I'm happy though, and can't wait to find a neat little birdcage to spray paint the same colors as the ribbon's and turn into a lamp to hang in that corner! I'm also toying with the idea of painting or constructing from vintage wallpaper a tree up that corner. I can't wait to get the white trim around those windows!
I then hung the curtains I made for the living room. I am so in love with these. This isn't the greatest photo but if you go back a few posts you'll see me standing with the bolt of fabric.
I then proceeded to install these blinds by myself. Note: If anybody ever... EVER hears me say I'm going to install blinds again... please slap me. This was an extremely frustrating job for me. I suck with a drill, it was super heavy and my arms hurt and there are scratches all over the new paint on the sills from me dropping screws. At one point I dropped one of the brackets and lost it for about an hour while I searched. Then I finally got the brackets all up and went to hang the shades on them and broke one of the chintzy plastic brackets!!! After much screaming and swearing my hubby finally came in and rubbed my back while I fumed... good hubby. Then he helped me put them up. There's still a broken bracket, as they come with 50 extra screws but no extra brackets. But they are hung, and I'm happy. Except now I can see that the floor trim really needs to be painted white! And the outlet's aren't changed out yet. But it's getting there! Imagine my white IKEA Malm bed frame and dressers against that bright blue!!!

The last thing we did before we left the house was install these beautiful new lights in the family room! I have the same domes for the living room, but a fancier center one that's more like a pendant on a chain.

I realized today that the ceiling in the family room is much taller and I may end up having to swap the center ones because we'll probably bonk our heads on it if it's in the living room. We'll see what it looks like, it's still on back order!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Ceilings and more ceilings.

It seems we've been working on ceilings a lot this week. I hate ceilings. I especially abhor painting ceilings. The good news is all of the big ceilings are now painted.

Dan taped and mudded the kitchen ceiling. Then I primed the ceiling, then he primed the ceiling. Then we bought more primer, and I primed the ceiling again, then he primed the ceiling again. And we finally came to the conclusion that we probably will need to texturize because there are all kinds of imperfections showing through the coats of paint... It's a learning process.


Then Geri and I painted the family room ceiling! Which looks sooo much better. Remember what it looked like before?



Then when we painted the walls?


Here's how it looks now. We are still working at filling in those lines on the top so we can put a chair rail up and fake that the bottom is wainscoting. I can't wait to hang the new lighting! We can finally do that tomorrow when the paint is dry!!!!!


Dan also finished mudding in the new entry way to the family room.



He also tore into those cracks that were above the slider. Turns out some weirdo had put nails every 1/4" all the way up the seam between the two pieces of sheet rock instead of on either side. Thus, the tape popped up and made a crack through all of the putty and paint. Dan is working on remedying the situation.


Lastly, Geri and I figured out how to hang blinds!!! We only did one because it was the only window sill that was painted. I did finish painting the trim in my bedroom so we can hang the blinds tomorrow.

Tonight I am working on my daughter's window treatments. As most mom's know, blinds can be dangerous for little ones, posing the risk of strangulation in the cords and all kinds of hazards. So what I'm doing is a sort of roman shade. I have tension rods and a bunch of white duck cloth. I am making them exactly the width of the window like shades, then sewing tubes down either side and inserting bright fuchsia ribbon so that I can sinch the bottoms of the corners up and tie in big bows creating a swag effect. I believe the large window will also need one in the center. At least that's how it works in my head. I'll let you know how it turns out!