From House to Home

It's 3 days and counting until moving day. The house is not nearly liveable. We are not nearly packed. But, Friday will be our first night in our new home.
We decided to buy a new toy with our tax refund and got a 40" LCD HDTV. It's our first brand new TV ever. And we are in heaven! Of course we had to buy a new dvd/vcr combo to go with it. We felt so dirty spending that much money. But it does look beautiful in our new living room!
The bathtub is finally plumbed, waiting for tile to go up before we can install a shower head and spout. Meaning, we still can't use it. Even though we'll be living there in 3 days.

The floors look amazing and my husband says the living room looks like a room in a magazine. What a nice hubby. We found these great cheap tables on sale at Target for $26 for the set of 3!!!! We also found these new rugs at a crazy crap mart up the street for $40 each!



I've been having fun starting to hang art, finding the perfect place for every decoration, and repainting sad old furniture.

I found this french memo board at Ross for like $7.00!!!

This old movie board was at the Hollywood Video store where I worked when I first moved to Portland. The manager gave it to me when it was taken down. I've kept it all these years. I think it looks great in my kitchen with all the antique bronze and dark cabinets.

My daughter's door.

I wanted my daughter's bedroom to have raspberry accents. So I decided to paint this old yellow bookshelf I'd found at a garage sale years ago to match her new color scheme. Her bed is cherry, and we had refinished my dad's old toy box in a cherry finish to match. This is what it currently looks like. I had to rip the back out because it was so bowed from age. The new back has a nice matching raspberry paint and will be ready to install tomorrow.

I also had purchased these wall shelves at the antique mall a while back. There were two, but one was precariously perched, and an unknowing brother in law broke the other one. So I decided to use the raspberry paint to make it cute for baby Nemi's room.

I also purchased this other one, and I think it looks great in the entry way. I'm thinking of putting some hooks on it to hang keys from.

If you look back in the posts you'll see these end tables as I found them on the side of the road. Now just look at them! I'm so excited with how they turned out!

I found these finials at The Home Depot for $12 a set. I had been having difficulty finding large enough curtain rods that didn't make my wallet cringe. So when I saw these I grabbed them. After a few coats of white paint on some dowels and brackets, they look great! And were super cheap.

And, I think we've finally agreed on an exterior color!!!! We think it's gorgeous. Can't wait to see what my parents say!

And lastly... a project that has been sorely neglected. My daughter's rocking horse got some love tonight. I had a lot of fun starting it out. I'm thinking of padding and upholstering the seat in some raspberry. Then making a tail out of the same raspberry ribbon I used for her shades and also getting some brown and green to mix in to match the other colors. I can't decide what color to paint this pony's eyes!

The floors are stained.

Mr. Brick Ranch here. I took another load of boxes over to the house today, and took some photos of the floor. Some of them are through the windows and are not that great quality wise, but I couldn't walk on the floors. They also look a little different because of the natural vs lamp lighting. The guy who has been doing the floors is from Siberia and he is a master of his craft. They look Fan-Freakin-Tastic! He sanded, puttied, sanded again, replaced an entire section of scratched boards in the office, 2 coats of stain, and 2 coats of sealer... all by himself. In 3 days!
Here is a photo of our entry way.

Entering the living room from the kitchen.

This is the living room looking through the giant window.

And finally our bedroom through one of the windows. I love the blue up against that dark wood.

My wife absolutely loves how the grain of the wood has risen to the surface and can't wait to get some thick white toe board in place. Tomorrow he'll be buffing and putting on the last coat of lacquer. The end result will be a satin finish. We're extremely excited to see the final product.

Behind Again

It's been another long week and I am again somewhat behind on my blog posting. So without further ado, the last week at Our Brick Ranch.

We decided that we couldn't possibly live without a phone line and cable jack in the office, so Dad got to work on making it happen. He is very dashing with his power tools wouldn't you say?


He ran the new wires through the crawlspace and is drilling a hole through the floor in the wall to run them up. He also installed an outlet in the closet in there so I can build a built in sewing area that I can just shut up with all of my craft supplies behind shuttered doors! Clean and baby proof!


Dan rebuilt the wall the shower head will mount to. The way it was before there was only one beam offset and the old tub handle was towards the right instead of centered. We decided that was silly and just put up another support and made it look symmetrical.

Dan also tar papered the floor and put some metal flashing up for extra water protection. He also reran the drain and the tub is actually in position but I didn't get any photos. He's also installed some of the durock cement board in the tub surround to get ready for tiling.

My Dad apparently got tired of the TP resting on the window ledge and did this. I think he's a mad genius.

It was a gorgeous day on Saturday and I worked my hands to the bone clearing a huge garbage heap/brush pile out of that back corner of the yard. I also clipped out a small tree between the fences and a bunch of blackberry brambles.

I also transplanted some plants from our old yard, including this lovely fern and a ton of red canna lilies.

It was all worth it because when I pulled back all of the dead stuff I found a bunch of these. Such lovely bulbs all popping through. Some definitely are daffodils, other's look as if they may be Hyacinths, but I'm not quite sure. I can't wait to see all of them pop up!

I love these trees so very much, despite the mess they make. Do you see that tiny lower branch? Dan is going to cut it off. Then you see that nice sturdy one above it? It will soon be holding a beautiful new swing.

A friend of mine walked into this back yard for the first time a few weeks ago and saw my trees and exclaimed, "You have to get a hammock!" That's exactly what I'm putting on my birthday list this year. Can't you see me chilling in my hanging hammock, Nemi on the swing beside me? Oh, also imagine the privacy fence that's going up between those 4x4's in the background. It will be my little piece of heaven.

Today the floor guy came. And I snuck in afterwards in socked feet to see what he'd done. He's completely sanded all of the floors, and they look amazing!

He also puttied in all of the age cracks.

And he completely replaced a whole section in the office where there were some very damaged boards the previous owners had gouged!

It really looks incredible. I can't wait to see what it looks like after the stain is finished!!!!!

He said he'll start staining on Wednesday and we shouldn't walk on it until Monday. So we are stuck finishing the kitchen and family room for the next week. I also can't have baby B over at the house because of all of the fumes. This gives me ample time to pack up all of our belongings. Because we are moving in by the 20th! I can't wait to call this house home.

A Hard Days Work

I worked a hard 8 hours today on the house. Ever muscle in my body aches. I have this advice for any of you out there looking for a great workout. Buy a crappy old house, tear down all of the walls and start from scratch. I've lost 20 pounds in 3 months. Just from remodeling.
Sooo without further ado. Guess what I finally committed on? A kitchen color!!!!! Sooo, I decided I'd just try the tiny wall the slider was on and just live with it for a couple of months. Yah, so, any of you out there who know me. You know that when I start something, I don't stop until it's sparkly and finished. That's right. I loved the paint so much I just kept going onto the next wall. I forced myself to pause until my husband came home to see it. He walked in with a giant armload from The Home Depot, and he squealed like a little school girl. Eeeee, I am a plaster GOD.
I said??? Hey buddy, it's my paint that made your plaster look so damn fine. He told me why did you stop? I love the color! So on I went.

I painted and painted.

And then I pulled out the new fridge and painted behind it. I heard my husband chuckle in the background, My wife the linebacker. Hahaha, I guess when I get started I do turn into some kind of She-Hulk.

And yes, I do know there will be cabinet's and tile covering every last bit of paint in this photo. But not for a few weeks. And until then I can marvel at my painting prowess.

Guess what I did then... Did anybody yell scrape nasty funky linoleum? Well, you were right. I decided that old linoleum had better hit the highway. I started out scraping and shoving and screaming, until I was red in the face and dripping sweat. My husband told me I was CRAZY. Certifiable. Out of my Damn mind. Then I realized that when I used a lower angle and pushed with my feet the scraper slid right under and ripped the linoleum up faster. I then got a better idea. Sit on my butt and push with both feet back and forth. Viola! The linoleum started coming up in patches!

At this point, my husband is sitting on a bucket laughing at me crawling on the floor covered in drywall dust, my pants sliding down because I didn't wear a belt.

But it worked. And that linoleum is almost toast.

During my 8 hour hardcore workout. My hubby played with the bathtub. We ended up having to buy some weird custom overflow that I've never seen before! See it? It's a weird rectangle. And then a matching drain because the overflow only came in stainless. And we have all matching antique bronze fixtures already purchased. Ah well, at least the drain will match the overflow. The rest will be in bronze.

Dad ran a new cable line into the office, finished changing out several light switches and outlets, and installed some new face plates.

I also patched up some holes around one of the old thermostat boxes so we can cap it off in case the next owners want to do something with them.

I do believe we are kicking bootay. I had so much fun today. I came straight home and soaked in a scalding bath. Every muscle in my body is screaming. And I'm in heaven.

Where's Waldo?

This is what my table looks like. It's become almost second nature to me to always be reading home manuals. My dad brought these over to help with the bathroom. The one on the top right is straight out of the 80's. The bathrooms are hideous. But it makes me happy.

We had an incredibly prosperous week. We finally got our family room blinds and installed them.
Tadah! I know, beautiful taped up fireplace! haha! Hey we're getting there. I believe this room will be a huge project for many years to come. Right now it's our staging area, our lunch buffet, and storage.

We put new numbers on the house. The old 2 was broken in half.

We also picked a stain for the floors. The one on the left.

Dan installed many doorknobs. I tried the first one on my own and decided to let a man do it.

This is my area. I eat sleep and breathe paint at the moment. I kept the old dining room chandelier because it was so handy as a brush drying rack. All of those paint cans have already been used in the house. They are all different colors! I have 4 more gallons of ceiling white. The yellow and black item is our paint gun. And the bin is full of miscellaneous rollers, tape, stir sticks, brushes etc.

We moved our first load of belongings into the new house.

Set up a little feeding station.

Installed a bathtub... okay, so it's just sitting there looking pretty. But hey, we will install it soon!

Primed all of the kitchen walls and half of the ceiling. We are ready to hang uppers! And we put our new fridge in place. It took some measuring and walking around half of the house to the only door it would fit through.

What an incredible sight! Sigh... my first new refrigerator. Brings a tear to me eye.

I wish everybody could see the whole picture. I walked in today after finishing the paint in the kitchen, and could completely visualize myself cooking in this kitchen. For the first time I could imagine my daughter running around our new home. Playing in her bedroom, running down the hallway. It's finally starting to feel like home. I know I still have no stove or shower. But in a few weeks I'll be living here, and I can't wait to see what new things are ahead of us.

There is officially a ceiling in the tub area now! It still needs some love, but it's definitely progress.


There is also progress over the vanity area.


Thanks once again Dad!


For these pretty new outlets and phone jacks.

And this one too!