We're Back!

It's time to revive the blog. It has been over a year. We haven't totally abandoned working on the house, but we also haven't had much time to blog about our improvements. The biggest improvement since we moved in last August is this little stinker:

JWB, August 2011

He keeps us pretty busy.

About a month ago we started a major renovation and we have a contractor working for us, so things are actually going to get done! Right now they are doing all the exterior work before the weather gets cold. Lots of wood and stucco repairs, which involved some scary looking scaffolding but was otherwise not very interesting. The big excitement is paint. The house is orange! (Keep in mind the work is still in progress.)

As you can see, we're missing some windows. They are off at the shop being cleaned, stripped, repaired, refurbished and generally loved. They will return to us soon, stay tuned for another post.

Big Girl Room

Our biggest project so far has been improving one of the bedrooms on the 2nd floor. And of course its for babygirl. So I mentioned beadboard in the last post. First I'll start with before photos:

So after we pulled up the carpet the room wasn't too bad. But the old plaster walls are so dingy and uneven and like I said before, I had my heart set on beadboard. So my Dad and hubby got to work, cutting and gluing/nailing the sheets to the walls. The walls were so uneven we used a tub of liquid nails per sheet! Nothing was even or level so it required a lot of attention to detail. After a couple re-dos, the boys did a fantastic job.













After Dad headed back to VA, Hubby was left with painting. Like everything else we've done so far, it took 5x longer and 3x as much paint as we thought. Here he is in progress:















As you can see, I picked a light bright blue above the beadboard and a soft green for the ceiling. We still want to add crown molding to really finish it off, but after all the other trim work, this should be a piece of cake. And here is the semi-finished product:

Thanks to our model Reggie. Obviously I still need curtains, a rug, accessories and artwork. Grammy is working on a custom bedskirt to match the bedding. But the heavy duty work is done! I'll post finished pics when we get it pulled together.

Whoa Double Rainbow!

So it's been a few weeks since we've posted. I hope we haven't disappointed the nine people who actually read this thing, but home improvement for some reason has lost a little of its mojo. Call it the "sophomore slump", or when a rookie "hits the wall", whatever it is we've hit it. We still love the house, but the excitement of "hell yeah, we own a house!" has turned into "oh shit, we own a house!"

Wife has some posts she's working on and they'll be up soon, but the highlight for me since the toilet installation was absolutely the electrical work we had done. We hired this great guy named Harry Anderson, who played in a friend of a colleague's band, to fix all the fire hazards identified from the housing inspector and to boost our service to 200 amps from the 60 amps we had. Don't ask me what any of that means. The best part of Harry's work was his installation of two strategic outlets in our living room. First he put an outlet behind the TV, so now Babygirl can't yank the extension cord running across the room out of the wall right as Clinton Kelly is about to tell whether to match your socks to your shoes or pants! Better still, he installed another outlet so I could hook up my stereo.

Babygirl was at daycare that day, so I spent the afternoon wiring my speakers and connecting all my components. I finished hooking in up and threw on some Neil Young and it was just me and the dogs, in my new house. I don't know what it was, the plaster walls, the hardwood floors, or the sleep deprivation, but my stereo sounded incredible. I was having a Double Rainbow moment. After a few songs, the wife and Babygirl arrived and for the first time I really felt the joy of owning a home, the American Dream: thirty years of mortgage payments, leaky toilets, endless hours of yard work, but fuck it I could play my stereo as loud as I wanted and it sounded beautiful and my wife is beautiful and my beautiful daughter was dancing with me in our new house.

Double Rainbow, all the way!

Status Update

Hello Dear readers! It has been awhile and I've really started slacking on the posts. But only because things have been busy around here... We've done a lot of small projects and they are not super exciting but here is a quick rundown:

1. We bought a new stove. I forgot to snap a picture when it was brand new and since I'm not known to be a clean cook, it could use a good scrub down. For now I'll post a sample online photo instead. We actually bought this not too long after move in, so its sort of old news now, but since its one of the best things about our kitchen I want to give it proper credit. We are planning to put in a new dishwasher and then after that just live with the old kitchen (imagine bad linoleum, oak cabinets, and blue laminate counters) until we get to do a full renovation of the space. The kitchen is pretty large and with great new appliances it functions well so we can live with it for now. We also have to give a shout out to Grammy for the new fridge. She volunteered to help clean at move in and promptly offered to replace the fridge as our housewarming gift. The previous one was that bad!

2. Pruning. The previous owner let the natural elements take over the lot so we did some tree trimming, removed some tree stumps (left by previous owner) and cut back all the brush from around the front and sides of the house. We haven't done any landscaping (yet) but just reclaiming the yard helped a lot. In the process we discovered that our yard has been home to a large colony of snakes, we've found five so far... I'm freaking but I did my research and found out they are harmless. I still don't want them around but I'm hoping now that we've bulldozed their habitat down to the ground they will move on. (PS the "we" referenced above = husband)

3. My Dad came out and spent two weeks helping get things in order. So much was accomplished, I can't even begin to thank him. I couldn't take time off work so the boys were on their own to manage the house, keep the baby and get stuff done. I can't believe they survived. First, we started by painting the nursery. Babygirl was previously set up in the front room until this could happen. The goal was to have the nursery painted and get her moved in before my Dad arrived but it didn't quite happen. Apparently plaster walls suck up paint so a tiny room required two coats of primer plus two coats (of white!) paint and numerous return trips to the paint store to purchase additional quantities. So Pap showed up and helped to knock out the paint project, move in the furniture and hang the curtains. I still want to do a few things to spruce up the space for the new baby so I'll save pics for a future blog...

The next project to tackle was the front bedroom which will be the "big girl room". I had my heart set on beadboard and even though it was costly, a pain in butt to install and no one could quite see the point, everyone humored me. I guess that is the beauty of being pregnant during home renovations. The job is finally done and every agrees it turned out great. I'll give it proper credit in its own post... up next.

Bat Attack! Reprise

Since my wife likes to use the first person plural in place of the third person singular, I would like to expound in first person singular how I exhibited some total "MAN" last night.

After putting on my work pants and sleeveless shirt, I performed perhaps the second manliest task involving a toilet that a true man can attempt. I installed a toilet! I dropped that bad boy down on a brand new wax ring and reconnected the water. Before I could test it out with the most manliest of tasks, I went downstairs to put the tools in the basement.

At the foot of the stairs I caught a black blur out of the corner of my left eye which I dismissed as a hallucination from the increased testosterone levels in my blood. However, when I came up out of the basement and saw the intruder flying around in my living room there was no dismissing the situation. BAT ATTACK!!!!

I calmly put down my PBR and called to the wife upstairs that we have a bat in the house and she locked the dogs in the bedroom. My bulldog is rabid enough already. I reached for my shotgun and then reconsidered. A broom would suffice. It was me against the bat.

I'm an animal lover, but I couldn't let Edward Cullen reach the second floor where my beautiful baby was sleeping. I also had to resign myself to possibly shattering a lamp or knocking over the TV because this blood sucker must die!

Edward flew at my head a few times, but I'd only had one PBR and was still nimble as a cat. I missed on my first two swings, the count was 0-2. Unfortunately for Edward, he left his 0-2 pitch hanging in my wheel house (high and outside) and I nailed him. He slid under my speaker and tried to hide. Here is where we can now switch to the nosotros form, Ashley grabbed a blanket and we pulled Edward out from under the speaker with the broom and smothered him. After that it was just a matter of getting the blanket outside and Edward fluttered a bit on the ground and then flew off to find Bella or a crowd of shirtless 16 year old boys.

I basked in my manliness. I had just performed two of the most intensely masculine duties a husband can do. The only things more impressive is if I had rebuilt an engine and then defended my home from a horde of Russians or a crystal-meth tweaker.

Creatures of the night, think twice before you invade my house after I'm high off of successful plumbing.

Bat Attack!

We were feeling pretty great after installing our toilet tonight, until we came downstairs to find a massive bat swooping around our house as if he owned the joint. My bloodthirsty husband sprang into action to protect our family and home and nearly destroyed the creature with a combination of a broom and blanket. I sat on the steps and mostly laughed my ass off. Why didn't I think to grab the video camera so all six of our followers could enjoy the chaos? Just take my word for it, it was a good time.

We have no clue how it came in. The electricians were here all day (more on that in another post) and had the basement door open most of the time. Maybe he was hanging out down there and just waiting to come up at night and suck our blood? Creepy.

Tiling project is finally complete!

Well the last post was very rosy and full of confidence. We spent another long and discouraging weekend working on the tile... things went a bit downhill after the first weekend and initial installation. I say initial installation because as we started to prep the tile for grout, we realized

that some of the tiles were popping up. No big deal, we went out to get some tile adhesive, pried those suckers up and lathered them with adhesive before placing them right

back where they belonged. The problem was, as we started checking, more and more tiles were popping up. And before we knew it we had ripped up at least 1/3 of the floor. And so the second installation began.

So most of the weekend felt like three steps forward and two steps back. Finally on Monday we were ready to grout. Grouting was surprisingly simple. I stayed away because we mixed it with a chemical component that the tile guy recommended for extra strong grout. So grouting was a super simple part of the project for me. The big guy did a great job and we decided to be extra cautious and let it sit again for 24 hours before sealing it last night.

And finally, finally the toilet went back in tonight. No more trips downstairs in the middle of the night. That is a BIG big deal for someone like me with a 6 month pregnant bladder.

Next up is to finish our custom vanity. We started sealing it with polyurethane this weekend while we were waiting for the grout to dry. I guess that is the royal "we" because again, I stayed away to protect BB2 from the fumes.

Plumbers crack! (almost)

I'm thinking about paint colors and shopping for a new shower curtain... I've looked at my usual go to home decorating websites and am not having much luck, if anyone has seen good options let me know!