Home Wasn't Built In A Day

Throwback Thursday: 3 Years Ago!

2015-10-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

It's time I get back to updating this blog. A lot has happened in the past few months. More on that in the next post. Right now I'm throwing it back to April of 2012! This is what we were workin' with when we walked through the open house.

Inspection day:

That security door is still on but I pained the door bright yellow a few months later!:

Today:

On the left we got rid of the old windows and centered a newer, bigger window to our room. To the right we demoed the front porch and laid a plain cement patio instead. It makes the front of the house look bigger and it's not an eye-sore - well not to me! We also got rid of the little window that was in the center of the house and switched around the front door. We bought a brand new door with a sidelight and got a new porch light. We have our house numbers up and now just need a mailbox to attach, a wireless doorbell and a cool doormat. Any suggestions? Budget friendly, please.

We painted the house grey and the chimney white. Picked a new fun color for the door. Construction is done but we still have SO MUCH TO GET DONE! Stay tuned for what's happened in the past couple of months!

Frames Part Deux

2015-06-13T16:47:00.001-07:00

Here we are over a week later and SO much has progressed.

Our back rooms addition has been fully framed.
We found out some news about our roof - more on that later.
We picked out our bathtubs and the shower fixtures - and they were delivered.
We were surprised when we showed up one day and half the front of our house was missing.
And in the same vein, our mailbox has a "cute" new location.
A slight change of plans.
The plumbing has commenced!
We think a cat has taken up residence under the house for now.
A couple of coke Slurpees and some Ho Hos...

BACK ROOM ADDITION!

Our foundation got the inspection sign off! So, they finished it, created the subfloor, added insulation (our children or house guests will be so toasty!), and framed the walls! Yesterday they framed the new roof, which is looking mighty fine from down on the ground.

Some progress photos:
Cement foundation

Subfloor, then with insulation

Subfloor complete

So, I actually was really confused about what was on top of the subfloor. Jordan wasn't around so I couldn't step down from the house easily with my sandals on and stuff. We learned the next day that they had framed the back wall and that's what was laying on top, waiting for the guys to put it upright. Here's a pic of the action:

Voila!

THE ROOF

We had planned to redo the roof shingles - you know, shuck the 17 layers that the previous owners shelacked on there and get it up to code, nice and fresh. Well, we found out that there was no plywood underneath all of those layers! We had original wood shingles baby. From the '40s, probably. So, for a few days (and still now) you can stand in our house and talk to God, Xenu, Zeus, Superman, Apollo, whoever you believe in, and hopefully not get shit on by a flock of birds. It's weird to walk up to your house and be able to see through to the backyard from the driveway and also through the ceiling to the clouds. Anyhow, we now have this lovely up to code (or it should be) radiant barrier plywood (I think) that is being laid down on top of the roof beams. Then on top of that they will install a "cool" roof. More on that when it happens.

Skylight, anyone?

LET THERE BE BATHTUB!

I mostly took this picture to show the plumbing - and it's the only one I took of one of the bathtubs.

WHERE'S THE FRONT OF OUR HOUSE?, THE GHETTO MAILBOX, AND THE SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS

Our old "master" bathroom was situation at the front of the house. It took up an odd rectangle in our living room. It just sucked all around. You can look back to a previous post to see how it looked all demolished. Technically, they only had to remove that tiny window and fill it in. We weren't sure how we were going to match the look from the exterior, since everything else had weird paneling but it was a non-issue at the moment. Well, Jordan was at the house and sent me a photo of them removing the window (pic below) and I was like, ha! great!, hooray. We took a break to buy our bathtubs and decided to come back to the house later on to check out the work. When we showed up the entire wall was gone! GONE. Bye, Felicia. We just sort of stared at it, then stared at each other, then walked through it, stared at it more. Took pictures of it. It was weird. Here is the result of that photoshoot:

We had a discussion with the contractor about this space, prior to them removing the whole freakin' wall, about the roof being lower here than it is over the other side. We said okay, just build a soffit, it's fine. But then, we saw the wall open and could see behind the yellow bookcase, we asked if they could just cut them out all the way to the chimney so that we could realize our dreams of a larger built-in down the line. The next day, our wish came true.

Side - you can see where we saw that these should be SO easy to remove:

Because the wall was removed, we also decided that we needed to remove that siding or paneling from the rest of the front of the house. There wasn't much. We figured we'd just have them do stucco, like the rest of the house. We found that the porch was built too high, which led to water pooling near the door, which led to rotting wood, which they removed. Everything is fine. Although, we may be demoing the porch now - at least the top and just laying down cement for now so that it's level and not too high for the house. And our steps are not to code and need to be fixed. So, here's where we are at:

GHETTO MAILBOX

When they removed that shitty facade, they had to relocate our mailbox. Lucky for us, the workers are some real Macguyvers...

PLUMBING, CATS, AND SLURPEES

This is really just some photos of the start of what the plumber has done. A photo of the cat that must be frightened out of her mind. And my ridiculous treat from last weekend.

Island kitchen sink

Gas line for the oven

Water line for the fridge

Washer/dryer

Bath/shower for kids/guest bath

Cat

Me being me

More to come! Plumbing and electrical carry on through the next week. We still need to pick out cabinets, vanities, and flooring. Jordan purchased windows earlier today - yay! Bye!

It's a Great Room

2015-06-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

How about a little progress update? Here's Jordan standing in what might be a broom closet.

Remember that big ass beam I mentioned in the first remodel post? Yeah, well that was in place today when I walked in to the house. HOLY. BALLS. It is a big. Ass. Beam.

In progress:

Today:

Welcome to our kitchen! At the top left will be our fridge and a pantry. And along the wall with the window we'll have the microwave built in (sort of) and the stove and a ton of cabinets. The window will be gone because behind that wall will be bedroom #3.

Here's a look at our hallway from before reno and the current status.

Current:

So, in the newer and more improved, longer hallway into our Master Bedroom, our closet (omg, hooray, we'll finally have some sort of closet!) will be situated when you walk in to the right. Down the line, when we regain our sanity and build up our bank accounts, we'll have someone come out and design the space for an awesome built-in closet. For the time being we'll just shove our old IKEA dressers and stuff in there and call it a day. Boom. Once you're in the room we'll have the door to enter our Master Bathroom! For now, you can sort of see the space through the new framing.

I also think the materials used to build this house in the 40s are so interesting. It just looks like old bandages to me. From the outside we used to be able to see this weird wire strapped around the whole house and the sludge that held everything together was poking out of the holes. That's all been removed from the parts that were demoed.

Let's go outside. I was wearing sandals today but there wasn't as much debris so I was able to walk through the new framing of our laundry room and bathroom #2 to get some pics. Before we get to the current status here's a few pics of the progress:

Current:

That's all for now. I feel like demo is pretty much done and now the exciting rebuilding starts! And that's when our $ goes byebye. Floors, cabinets, tile, fixtures, dishwasher, slurpee machine. You know, all the important stuff.

Stay tuned!

Frames

2015-05-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to our house to grab the mail. And peek inside our pile of sticks to see what was new. I figured more piles of rubble would be waiting for me to jump over. I was not disappointed! I was wearing a dress and sandals, so jumping wasn't really on my list of things to attempt but I snapped a few photos anyway.

Here is what's left of bathroom #1:

I noticed that this was probably the original front door of our house. At least at some point. What's funny is that we were considering moving our door to this spot last year while we were doing the initial planning but decided against it for miscellaneous reasons that I can't even remember at this point. Bummer! Anyway, you can see on the left that the yellow shelves pop out and the now empty bathroom space pushes back. Our plan is to eventually put a big built-in unit here that houses the TV, books, myriad other things. If anyone wants to build this for us in return for good company and a lot of Dominos pizza, you know how to get ahold of me.

Mmmm, attic insulation. Don't you just want to dive into that pile? Not! Because they removed parts of the ceiling, they pulled down the insulation and I can see the roof of my house from the inside! It's REALLY odd. We have such a cute, tiny house. Looks like it's got good bones. Especially for being 68 years old.

Here's the new framing! This frames out our new Master Bathroom. It also acts as the wall of our closet. Tough to see but you can tell what would is new and what is old. Hopefully. Can you?

And here is to the right of that bathroom! This will be the laundry room and then the 2nd bathroom. Aka for kids and guests. Sorry, guests!

Just for kicks, and bricks, here is a 3 day old photo of what they are doing outside. They have to dig the concrete up in order to create the foundation for the 2 bedrooms going back there. When I went by last night, the dumpster was filled to the top with chunks of backyard patio.

I couldn't get a better photo. See: dress and sandals. I've been ill enough times the past 5 and a half months. No need to add severed leg to the mix. Or tetanus. On a fun note, here is Jordo and me "watching" the demo last weekend.

Cool hair Hansel. Anyway... We're on a hunt to find our bathtub so they can frame that out next week! Stay tuned.

It’s Going Down For Real

2015-05-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Just like the subject line of this post, it’s going down. For real. I wanted to take a time lapse video of the demo of our house and have us do a crazy dance to “GDFR” by Flo Rida but now’s not the time to be messing around on a demo site. The song and the house demo aren’t really related except for that the house is coming down. For real. And that’s the song title. Moving on.

We started demo last Friday. They started by taking apart that heinous back of the house addition that was never permitted.
BEFORE:

AFTER:

It was really satisfying to see that piece of junk come down. The owners before us did some modifications on the house that must have been all unpermitted and all wacky. For this addition they laid tile straight onto concrete. It was basically a closed in patio. When the crew ripped it down there was mold and rotted wood. There were two sets of steps that led from the original house down into this addition. One was from the 3rd bedroom and one was from the 2nd bathroom. It was odd. Here’s a photo:

Look how janky these steps are in demo!

One set was wood, tiled over. The other set was brick, tiled over. I don't even want to know what lurks beneath our front porch, which will have to wait for a remodel round 2 when we build our savings back up!

Next, they started on the interior walls. They demoed the kitchen – removed the cabinets, the sink, the flooring. All gone! Before we purchased:

After we purchased:

Demo!:

They then removed the walls surrounding the kitchen and laundry nook and parts of the ceiling. There are a lot of rat nests up there. Luckily, it seems like the rats probably were long gone before we even bought the house 3 years ago.

We are taking down the wall that actually is supporting the house. We’re really interested in how they are going to do this. Here it is with just studs. The big ass beam they are using is laying down next to it, I think:

They removed the walls in bathroom #2. We now have a beautiful view if anyone wants a nature bath. They removed part of the wall that will start our new hallway from the kitchen to the bedrooms. The crew demoed the walls in current bedroom #2 and current bathroom #1. Sayonara. We noticed today that they also removed our floors. Well, the first layer of floors. When we moved in we put down laminate on top of the hard wood because it didn’t match everywhere and was too thin for us to sand down and stain. We put carpet in the bedrooms and removed the kitchen floor (see the before picture above) and put down simpler tile.

So that’s where we’re at as of tonight. It’s thrilling and terrifying to see your own house in ruins. We’re really excited for the rest of the demo to go smoothly (fingers crossed!) and for the re-building to get started. Stay tuned.

Big Things On the Horizon

2015-04-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a long while since we've had an update but lots has happened! Over a year of marriage, 2 refinances (the 2nd has just been inked), and finally the renovation we've been dying to do since late 2012.

While we can't tackle everything on our wish list, this renovation will allow us to live more comfortably and allow us to expand our family at the same time! While we wait on the bids to come back from the contractors, I can tell you the plans:

We're knocking out each wall in the common area to create an open floor plan between the "living area" and the kitchen/dining area. Doing so removes the master bathroom, which really isn't that masterful to begin with. The master bath will be moving to bedroom #2, which is a small bedroom location right next to bedroom #1 (aka the Master bedroom). It will be a bathroom we can both stand in at the same time! Hooray! With a double vanity and a separate bath tub (that Jordan can fit in) and a shower (possibly a steam shower).

When you walk into our Master bedroom, the wall that houses the bathroom will be a closet. Yay! A real closet!

Next to the bathroom will be a laundry room and on the other side of that will be bathroom #2 for kids/guests. This takes to the end of our current house. Two bedrooms will be built side by side to fit on the back of the house. The internal hallway will dead-end at those rooms with a linen closet. Close by will also be a little coat closet.

Back to the common area and kitchen. We'll have an island that's around 7 feet long that will house our sink and dishwasher, among other things. The fridge will be on the left, next to a large pantry. Along the wall that is currently looking to our backyard but will become bedroom #3, we will have a built in shelf for a microwave and our stove. The rest is all cabinets and drawers. All the way on the right side of this area we'll have our table and french doors (probably) that walk out into our backyard.

That's the plan! We need all new electrical, a new roof, and a new HVAC. There are so many little details to remember. So many things we have to pick out!

Here's the current state of things:

Packin' it up!!!

STILL Half a Kitchen pt 1

2013-12-08T23:12:00.001-08:00

I'm here to report that we've done nothing to the kitchen since the last time I posted. We both had a crazy busy few months; lots of work projects and lots of --what's it called?-- a wedding. Now that things have quieted down a bit, we can focus on our house!

We're looking into a refinance and a possible renovation, details coming soon.

Here's what we've been up to:
1. Furniture for our closet
We found these weird crazy bugs, which we think are carpet beetles, in our carpeted areas. We may have freaked out a little. We washed almost half of the clothes we own, since our closet situation was looking like this:

We vacuumed like crazy, sprayed some bug spray, vacuumed again and started putting together new IKEA furniture. This happened the weekend or two before our wedding. Jordan spent a lot of hours putting together 3 dressers and 1 wardrobe. Behold!

Don't judge us. I've been sick for over a week and we're in the middle of doing laundry and cleaning. Piles of clothes everywhere! Everywhere but the carpet. Anyway, the metal shelf-racks we have in the closet now just hold our shoes. All of our clothes (when clean and folded) get put into the new furniture. NO MORE BUGS! We had an exterminator come out and spray inside the house and outside. Even though we were only at our house a short time while the man sprayed outside, and then waited in the driveway for him to finish inside, I still got a massive migraine from the chemicals. He told us to leave the house for at least 4 hours. That shit was WAY strong more than 5 hours later. Those bugs better be dead. A couple days later we found 2 little guys. Jordan captured them in a baggie and they are now hanging on the fridge, just waiting for the exterminator to come back so he can positively ID them. Sounds gross, right? Not so bad. they are smaller than rice grains. I've also named them Fuzzy and Fuzz-Face. We realized today that they finally died, we think.

2. We tied the knot! After 7 months of planning and craziness, we had a really great weekend with family and friends. Jordan was a trooper but I was a mess, including falling down the stairs at my parent's house and skinning my arm 3 weeks before the wedding. (3 days after the wedding I burned my other arm with a curling iron... and today I'm getting over a bad sinus infection -- again). Anyway, everything was beautiful and beyond the stress of the planning we ended up with moments like this:

What was also special about our wedding day was that the city finally stopped by to plant our tree! I may have mentioned it briefly in this post. We took a couple of pictures when he was all leafy and happy. Today he only has a small patch of leaves...

Hopefully, we can keep the tree alive to take a picture next to it again next year. Another wedding gift for our yard is the lovely bird house we received! We're hoping for some birdies to make their home soon!

3. New Faucet! After the hot water handle stopped budging in our "master" bathroom, Jordan installed a new faucet! It's so much better!!

We have some other things going on but that can wait for part 2!
Stay tuned.

Half a Kitchen

2013-09-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

This update is a little late. I was trying to wait until we had all of our cabinets painted and hung. Nope dot com.

We have 1 set of cabinet doors hung. Let me show some before photos.

Some cross-eyed painting action from me:

After!

Don't look at the mess!!

What we did was remove the cabinet doors and basically soak them in TSP. This whole kitchen was super gross. I don't know what those old ladies were cooking in here but EW man. Okay, cabinet doors off and cleaned. We gave them to my dad who cut out the middles at his factory. He gave them back to me and I painted them! Jordan then took them to a local glass store and had tempered glass custom cut just for these doors! He then used silicone to attached the glass to the doors and let them dry. They kind of sat around for a little while but recently he hung them up with the new hinges! And voila - amazing!

We haven't attached the knobs, or even put our dishes away. We kind of have a new set of dishes that we received for our wedding. Updated, prettier version of the above picture coming after next month! I've also been searching Craigslist high and low for a buffet/sideboard/cabinet thingy for super cheap that I can makeover and store a bunch of our stuff so that we don't have to keep it in the garage! Gross!! And by super cheap, I mean $50 or under. And shorter than 30 inches. I'll find my mini "china cabinet" someday!

That's the only update I have at the moment. It makes a huge difference AND Jordan installed new hinges so that when you shut the cabinet door it's slow and doesn't slam. I hate slamming. He knows me well. We should get married. Oh...

More updates soon!!

Summer's Finished - Our House is Not

2013-09-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Somehow September showed up and is almost halfway gone. I'm sorry, where did summer go? That went by too fast. Anyway, because it was 100+ degrees here most of the weekends during our summer, I didn't get much painting done. Last weekend I decided to get over it and paint.

Two more cabinets down, the rest of that orangey pile to go. And then Jordo has to hang them. And we have to put the pulls/knobs on them. More on that 5 years from now when we actually get to that!

I forgot to post pictures of our kitchen sink make-over. Jordan did some plumbing work while I was on a work trip in June. Now the water pressure is awesome AND we have a sprayer-thingy. Check out his handiwork!

It makes doing the dishes less crappy. So pretty and it was installed with love... ?

The rest of our house has a bunch of boxes/bags, wedding magazines and cards, and a pile of sweaters that I take off and put in the corner of the couch when I get home from work. I leave you with this last image of a table runner I got last month:

Bye.

Not Forgotten

2013-07-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

It's been months. I've been slacking. Between a full-time job, full-time planning for our upcoming marriage, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and 2 sinus infections, house updates don't fit in so well.

Since April we have cut down the tree in the front yard. It was full of termite damage. Check out this before photo and then check out the crazy termite tree being cut down!

Thank god we had it removed! So now there is a giant circle filled with some leftover wood shavings. Good news though - an awesome neighbor was able to get the DWP to plant free trees! Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks we'll be getting our very own Chinese Pistache! It won't go in the same spot as the tree from termite hell - and maybe this one will fare better! Pictures to come when it's planted!

I was reorganizing part of our kitchen this weekend and decided to spray paint some stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't take before photos. The box was a pale wood and the tray was white. So exciting .. .. ..

I really wanted to make one of those no-sew blinds I keep seeing plastered on all those DIY home blogs. Specifically, one like this! Well, seeing as though I don't have a lot of time these days and our kitchen was boiling by 4pm each day, Jordan and I made a trip to Ikea to check out a quick fix. We ended up with this shade.
Before & After!

I wasn't able to paint the trim before Jordan erected the blind. I'm also painfully aware of the cabinets with NO DOORS! I still have to finish painting them and Jordan has to hang them. Need. Time. My dad is helping us cut shelves for the other kitchen cabinet. It's halfway there. By the time we finish all this it will be time to actually renovate the stupid room. Argh!

Other things that have happened include us moving our big ass coffee table (on loan from the family storage bin) into our junk room and replacing it with Jordan's Bubbee's smaller coffee table. It fits right in! I think I'd like to refinish it - it's got some scratches and things from a lifetime of love. We also got bedside tables from Ikea. And lamps. Maybe I'll put some stuff on my table, make the bed, and take a photo for the next post! It makes the bedroom look more like a bedroom. We still haven't hung any photos or art yet. It's been almost a year. Holy cow.

What else, what else? We planted patio tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and bell pepper. In pots. In the back we moved a couple of trees around and are watching dwarf apples grow. They are awesome!

Other than some small rearranging we haven't been able to accomplish a whole lot right now. With time at a low and funds at a zero we're kind of on hold for bigger and better things. Hopefully, we can draw our wish for what we'd like our house to be in the future - we'll see if actually happens in the next couple of years!

'Til next time.

Just a Door Mat

2013-03-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

We finally got door mats. It's been about 10 months or so but we finally got them. Hooray for Target.

Front entry:

Back entry:

Does it look more welcoming? Welcome, but not too welcome. Like, hey welcome, but you have to have a key to get in? No? Anyway... I also picked up a soap dispenser. Exciting for me. Jordan thinks I'm crazy.

I also found a set of pillow cases, place mats, a basket to hold place mats and other junk, and a decorative pillow for our room. Too bad it's only the size of my face and we have a king-sized bed. It looks stupid so it will be returned.

It's like doll-sized. Why?!

I don't have much else to give an update on. We had our trees trimmed the other weekend and the guys did some rearranging of our apple tree, cherry tree, and a fig tree that we think a squirrel must have planted. We have a plan to get rid of most of the rose bushes in our backyard. Unfortunately (well fortunately for us, because yuck), the bushes are so old that when we take them out they cannot be replanted. There are a few that are newer that can be moved to a different location. They just are little too "old" for us. We want something fresh. In the meantime say hello to one of our elderly roses:

I have a plan to get started on priming our kitchen cabinet doors tomorrow. This has been a long drawn out project. It's going to make the kitchen look great!! Jordan promised to take me out for dessert. I'm out of here!

Reginald the Key-ng

2013-01-29T20:56:00.001-08:00

Well, hi. I suck at updating this. I'm going to blame it on my arms being sore from painting. We are halfway there with the kitchen cabinets! I'm the genius who was lazy and didn't paint the insides of the bottom cabinets but then decided to paint the insides of the top. It sucked.

On inspection day:

A few weeks ago:

Today:

Oh hey, girl!

I still have to clean, prime and paint the doors. Jordan will attach them. We have to pick out hardware. We want cup pulls for the drawers and we thought knobs for the doors, but now I'm leaning toward handles. You can see some of my ideas here: http://pinterest.com/ashleykaye/kitchen-inspiration/ We are also having a set of our doors cut so we can install glass. Fancy.

Behold, Reginald! Our key holder:

He's lonely. I think he wants a neighbor. Picture frame? Mirror? I don't know yet.

We are also in the market for a fire place screen since we are still housing the one that the previous owners left behind.

We also need to lay something over the brick hearth. YUCK! I want some sort of stone or tile? Something easy. Suggestions, anyone?

Remember the list I made in this post? Here's an update:
Our list of things to get done:

~~Paint inside of front door~~
Frost the front door windows
~~Unpack boxes~~
~~Decorate/fill shelf next to fire place, bookcases~~
~~Hide cables from TV above fire place~~
~~Replace light bulbs over dining table (how they are already burnt out from July, I will never know)~~
Hang art
Paint kitchen cabinets
Paint laundry room cabinets
Install cabinet hardware
Find a new fire place screen and other tools
Find couch/chairs that fit our living room space
Create custom closet
Paint bathroom cabinets
Install new hardware in bathrooms
Our back room - it's a list in itself

That's all I got.

Update Coming!

2013-01-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

I swear that we've been working our butts off to get more stuff done in our house. I don't have all of the photos that I'd like to share and chat about yet. Once I do there will be posts aplenty!

We had a house warming party in the middle of December aka crazy holiday month! We are still trying to find places for all of our things, new additions (from Hanukkah Harry & Santa) as well as where to put our furniture. Both with newish jobs, we are both working hard and are back to getting projects done on the weekend.

The things that I want to share with you are:

Reginald our octopus key holder
Our completed front door/windows
The completed bookcases
Our kitchen cabinets
Jordan replacing drywall, with a face mask a la "Breaking Bad"
Our lemon tree that pretended it was a lime tree for the summer

In the meantime, I've updated our House page! More to come.

The "How's the House Coming Along" Progress Post

2012-12-02T23:03:00.001-08:00

I've been lazy. I haven't kept up with this blog because we have projects that are half completed. Yes, the door is still only painted from the outside. We still have the old-lady lace hung up next to it. Our desk has been camping in our living room for a few weeks. The kitchen cabinets are half done. The list goes on...

I left off last time with our front door. I was actually going to do that this weekend but it's been raining for a week straight. Probably not a good time to take the door off or even have it propped open for painting. Here's a reminder:

I also tried to time-warp our linen closet. This is what it looks like inside:

I love a lot of things about the 90s but this shelf liner needs to go. Anyway, I purchased some clear adhesive liner, measured and cut it to fit. I peeled back the bottom liner and it lifted off the paint. I decided I would get back to it later when we take care of more important things. If anyone would like to take a trip back in time, I'm sure I can say that I have a Linen Closet Time Machine.

The next thing we took care of was moving our dresser (one of my grandparent's pieces from the 60s or 70s that they kept in their old Palm Springs home) out of our "closet" and back into our room. We propped it up, primed it, and painted it light grey. Jordan then painted a design on it - I'll show you later.

Now, instead of a hulking, dark and giant lug, the dresser sort of melts into the wall. A picture of that will have to wait...

Remember our crazy bookcases that used be decked out with mirrors until we bought the house and then after work, one day, I came in here and smashed them all with a hammer? Oh good, me too. That side of the room is no longer ghetto. Here's some before and after shots:

Clearly, we still need to put things ON the shelves but at least the hard part is done. Jordan sawed the boards, glued on the fabric, and placed them inside the bookcases. He did a great job!

On to the kitchen! I was able to paint our bottom cabinets. That may sounds awesome but it was only 5. I still have to paint the top - ugh. We went with a charcoal color on the bottom and are probably going with a white-cream color up top. I also had hardware delivered but it turned out NOT looking like it did online. So, project is only a quarter done.

One side - BEFORE looking into the kitchen:

Other side - AFTER looking out from kitchen:

Our list of things to get done:

Paint inside of front door
Frost the front door windows
Unpack boxes
Decorate/fill shelf next to fire place, bookcases
Hide cables from TV above fire place
Replace light bulbs over dining table (how they are already burnt out from July, I will never know)
Hang art
Paint kitchen cabinets
Paint laundry room cabinets
Install cabinet hardware
Find a new fire place screen and other tools
Find couch/chairs that fit our living room space
Create custom closet
Paint bathroom cabinets
Install new hardware in bathrooms
Our back room - it's a list in itself

Here's a photo from work a couple of days ago. The clouds were creeping down the mountains during our "storm."

Happy December!!

No Stairway! Denied!

2012-10-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure why my post title is what it is but I feel a little bit stuck. We have too many projects going on at once. Or at least, that's what my head thinks. I have to touch up the paint in the bathroom but what I really want to be doing is painting the rest of the front door. But to do that I need to get rid of the ugly curtain rods and putty the holes and finish priming and tape rosin paper to the windows so people can't see in and the list of dumb things goes on.

So, this is what I've been staring at for over a week. I had figured that while the door was off the hinges and being painted yellow, I should at least prime the inside of the frame. And then I decided to just go ahead and prime some other places. And while we can tell it will really make the room much cleaner and brighter, it's big ole hot mess right now.

I don't have too much else to update you with. I touched up some ugly spots in our kitchen. It looks much better to me but since no one has really spent much time in our house, besides us, it won't make a difference to anyone else.

We also made a functional decorative purchase. He has a name: Reginald. We're not sure where to put Reg yet but as an octopus he will be holding our keys sometime in the near future. Picture to come.

Hmmm... Oh! I also spray painted our house numbers dark blue. That took all of 5 minutes. But that's all I have to share!

Does anyone know where they have great deals on front door handle sets and door knobs? All of ours are kind of grimy. Ewww.

A Sunny Door & A Shiny Top

2012-10-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

I've been working hard over the last week or two on a couple of projects. 1. Our kitchen pass-through counter top. 2. The outside of our front door.

Our kitchen pass-through window actually started off being framed by dark shutters. After a few weeks of staring at them once we got the keys, we took those suckers off.

Getting rid of those shutters makes the space look cleaner and more modern. It also makes the room look bigger. What was grossing me out was the poo-brown paint or stain that they previous owners used on the counter top. Over the last few months we thought about what to do about it. Do we paint it a dark charcoal color? Do we paint it white? I then decided that I wanted to strip it down and then paint a pattern over it so that you could see the wood grain next to the painted pattern. Then I decided to strip it, sand it, and stain it.

Before:

Hey guys, don't forget to wear protective gloves and eye-wear!!
I'm putting on the gunk that lifts old paint or stain. It definitely burned the inside of my nose - it's pretty toxic smelling.

Nudey shot:

After I put the stain on I slapped on some poly and called it a night. With only a few hours of absorption it looks a little red:

And here she is all normal brown and rustic-y looking! (The lighting wasn't too great when I took the photo. Trust me - it's loads better!

The next steps will be to paint the trim around the "window" a clean white and to slap a pattern on the counter top. We have one in mind and will most definitely post about it when it's complete - whenever that is!

Project # 2! I've been anxiously waiting for the day when I could paint our front door yellow. I'm sure some of you have heard me mindlessly blabbering on about it a few times before. My strong partner in crime, Jordan, unhinged the door for me and laid it out in our back room on some cinder blocks. There, I spent the whole day priming and painting. No joke, we put the door back on last after 10pm. I don't think it was fully dry. I definitely have a few touch ups to do.

For some reason I can't find a before photo that doesn't have our security door open. But I do have some shots of the poo-brown color the door was. I think the previous owners liked poo-brown a lot.

Primed:

Painted!!:

Oh yes, and decorated for Halloween. I got the idea from this blog right here: Hi Sugarplum! I thought they looked cute and simple and headed over to Michael's to grab some felt.

I'm hoping to tackle the inside of our front door soon. At that point we can remove the ugly doily that plagues the windows next to the front door. I won't even burn your eyes until I can do a proper before and after!

I just finished off my box of Raisinets, which means it's time to sign off. More soon!

Thanks for reading,
Ashley

Help Me Wednesday: Built Ins

2012-10-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

I think about this blog all the time. I feel kind of bad that I don't have too much to write about right now. Even though I have the time to do more, WE haven't had much time to organize ourselves together and decide what to tackle next.

Remember the yellow built ins that I painted? I painted the actual shelves and our mantle white. Within a few days I had also painted the other set of built ins completely white. Our problem is deciding on what to do with the wall portion of these built ins.

That is where the title of this post comes in. HELP ME! Does anyone have any ideas? We thought about getting some foam board and attaching fabric to it. I can't paint it because there used to be mirrors glued to the wood. The glue is the black lines you see all over. It's not flat and would look pretty gross through the paint.

Thank you!

Mellow Yellow

2012-09-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

Actually, the yellow is not so mellow. It's really bright. I think it shocked my dad when he came over a couple of days ago. When you walk in our front door (ha, which will soon be the SAME BRIGHT YELLOW!) you are greeted in the corner of your left eye by a peek of our built-in bookshelf!

Don't mind the mess. We (by we, I mean Jordan) are still trying to mount the TV and have items scattered ALL over the place.

Here are some before/progress/after shots:

The fireplace bookcase the day of our inspection. Wow!

Here is what it looks like at this very moment:

I also made sure to repaint the actual shelves there and our mantle WHITE! They were kind of nasty and yellowed. They look so good that I can't wait to throw some white paint on the old doors, frames, and trim! Remember this? That WAS the shelves...

One thing I was really excited about was getting rid of our toilet paper stand. I found a TP holder that holds onto the bowl. Voila! I also installed new toilet seats but didn't get around to photos of those. I think maybe the only difference it has made is for my peace of mind.

Some action shots?

And a glamour shot of Harry Potter the dog:

Since I have lots of time off right now I'm hoping to get more and more things done. I just need to have a game plan. Ugh...

'Til next time!

Sneak Peek: Dining Room + Porch

2012-09-10T22:52:00.001-07:00

While trying to figure out how to begin this post Jordan said this: "Jordy painted the walls. While I took a nap. And we didn't finish the rest of the room because there's too much crap over there."

So, anyway, yes, Jordan painted the majority of our living/dining room. It's looking pretty awesome. Once that is done we can get started on painting the trim while and it's going to look so crisp, I can't wait! Here's a little sneak at the color:

There is a set of built in shelves to the right of the fireplace that we are going to probably paint a yellow-ish color, keeping the shelves white. It should look pretty neat next to the grey color of the walls. And then eventually the front door will be yellow. Even if it's 10 years from now. YELLOW!

We've also updated our porch. We can now enjoy our street by sitting outside on our new Adirondack chairs! I've been scouring Craigslist for over a month and finally found a pretty good deal. Now, we just have to decide if we want to paint them, stain them, leave them as is, etc. Although, we should probably seal them, right? Anybody know?

I hope to be back soon with a more complete living/dining room update. Due to some RLS (real life shit), I now have more free time during the day. I'll see what I can tackle by myself... and then whine to Jordan, later on, about how much my back hurts. Ha! Goodnight!

P.S. Have you seen how awesome my plant was doing until we were gone one long weekend? Anyway, keep up with my plant saga here: Grow.

Porch Beginnings

2012-08-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm sweating. I drove home from work and couldn't believe that it was 101 degrees out. Well, yes I can. This is the valley.

Aside from not feeling too great and having to cancel dinner with a friend, I also am so exhausted. I put my car in park, gather the mail while peeking around to the side of my house to check if our hornets/wasps have come back to haunt the person that killed their friends and destroyed their houses. That would be my dad, my last Saturday's hero. Nope, no wasp-like creatures were flying around! I did see something moving on the ground. I walked up closer and it was a tiny lizard! But not like the other lizards I'm used to seeing here. So, instead of going inside, putting on comfy clothes and landing on my bed, I hurry Jordan off the phone, grab my camera and run outside to try and snap a few photos. I wish I could give you all a size reference but since I hate being too close to creepy crawlies I'll just inform you that this little guy was about the size of my ring finger, which is small. It's color was really interesting. He was a nude color with accents of random hues. Didn't come out in the pictures too well.

I left the little guy alone when he jumped (um, that's why I don't like creepy crawlies, sometimes they can jump!) into the dry soil pit in front of my porch. If he stays, I hope he doesn't turn into a ginormous lizard like that weirdo in the latest Spiderman. That'd be bad news. If you look closely, you can see it looks like the tip of his tail is missing. Just pointing that out...

About a week and a half ago I brought out an old table of mine to put on the porch. The tiles used to have images of cats. I used to be obsessed with cats, so my parents bought me a cat table. Weird. We bought regular white tiles and replaced the cats. Perfect for putting potted plants on! Here is my attempt at making our porch look welcoming for now.

The succulent pot was given to us as a house-warming gift. We actually received a second one that can be hung. He's hanging out in the backyard for now. The 2 little green pots are from a recent baby shower that I went to. I think they painted the pots green and put a plastic bag of soil inside along with a packet of seeds for various flowers. I took home two (another girl gave me hers) and planted them! I've been watering them every night and a few days ago Jordan asked, "Did you know you have some sprouts out here?" It was exciting. I fail at so many things... yet I had succeeded at growing a plant! Well, almost. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, inside... I decided I couldn't stand the paint splatter that I caused when I painted our master bathroom. Thank god for Rich at Sherwin Williams. He threw in a free razor blade when I bought some more paint & supplies. This is the lamest before and after but I am proudish.

Tada!

Oh, and can we discuss how I sprayed mildew cleaner on my sink and the glass shelf and before I could wipe it off, noticed that my new blue paint had turned neon?!

Oh well. It's time for bed for me. Stay tuned for more porch and bathroom updates. Things I want to do include:

Paint front door yellow.
Get two chairs for front porch.
Plant some prettiness in front of the front porch.
Hang mirror in bathroom.
Paint bathroom cabinet.

*No lizards were harmed in the posting of this blog.

What's Cookin' in the Kitchen?

2012-08-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

With every free weekend that we now have you can find us working on our house. While Jordan was sanding one of our doors, I was playing in the kitchen. I took a roll of contact paper that I ordered over a year ago from Amazon (Metal FX Stainless Steel Contact Paper, 18" x 6'), and tried to make the kitchen a little bit more modern looking. I can't say I'm amazed with what I did but it works for now. We have a hand-me down basic white fridge that I wanted to give it a line of steel to match our stove and our microwave, which are both black and steel.

And after:

The backsplash tiles also needed a little modernization. This really was just my way of covering up the picture tiles... It's not that pretty now but at least those tiles are covered! I measured (poorly) and stuck the contact paper on.

And after.

We are going to see if we like this and figure out if we should add more steel tile squares, in a pattern. That might look cool! On another note, we finally got to washing our pots and pans yesterday. That means we were able to cook! Jordan cooked us an awesome meal tonight: artichoke, butternut squash raviolis, and a salad that I saw online and mentioned to him. It has avocado, corn, peas, and bell pepper. It was delicious!

Last week, I mentioned the electrician coming to install some of our light fixtures. Stupid me forgot to take before pictures. But here are some afters! I took 2 photos so you could see the brightness and then the actual fixture. We bought 2 of the round fixture for the kitchen and then realized how giant it was and decided to put the 2nd fixture in our closet, not photographed since it is still a mess!

And of course, an update on our bedroom lighting. We picked out the Cooper Lighting 310SN 6'' Recessed Fixture Trim and installed them into the ceiling. The white ceiling and blue walls definitely are interesting with the metal and black light trim. We really have a lot of light in here.

Tomorrow we may have doors for our bathroom and bedroom! We are having a handyman shave our doors so that they can actually open and close. He is also going to shave the front and back doors and install the thresholds for us. If we had the tools to cut the doors, we would do it ourselves. That's what Jordan was trying to do earlier by sanding the edge down. The sander just wasn't powerful enough. Luckily, it seems that the bedroom and bathroom doors only need a good wipedown. The frames, however, need caulking AND white paint. As do the rest of ALL of the doors in our house. And soon, SOON!, our front door will be yellow. No more poop brown. NO MORE!

Today, I also attempted to make our front porch not look so desolate. I put out a table, placed a potted succulent plant on it that was a house warming gift, and then I planted 2 tiny pots with flower seeds. Picture to come. Maybe I can document the flowers if they actually grow. The last time I tried to grow something was probably a 1989 chia pet. And those things are impossible to mess up.

That's all I have tonight. We're on a roll though, so stay tuned for more progress! There is a yellow front door, a closet barn door, and shatter-proofing/privacy-filming windows on the horizon. Ultra-fun stuff, I know... Good night!

My Current Viewpoint

2012-08-14T23:14:00.001-07:00

Please gather 'round while I sit on the soft-carpeted floor of my bedroom and type this post. I'm sad to say that this post is a little bit of a filler while we try and balance exhausting 9-6 day jobs and life in general with getting things done in our house little by little.

Well, here I am (don't you judge the bags under my eyes!), sitting with my back against our bed, on the floor. That's because my laptop is currently plugged in here, under the temporary TV stand.

From this angle I have a lovely view of our bathroom, that still doesn't have a door, let alone a finished (by finished, I mean caulked and painted) door frame. Oh yeah, we also don't have a mirror in there yet. Oh yeah, and we (or maybe just me) are still trying to figure out a decent storage solution in here. More on that in another post.

To the left of that angle is our bedroom door... well it will be our bedroom door when we caulk and paint that door frame. Both doors also have to be painted.

To my right is our little Sony TV. This is going to be the TV we end up mounting on the wall in our bedroom. It's just sitting on the floor now, collecting dust until we figure where in the house to mount the bigger TV. We have an interesting living room space that is having us scratch our heads a little bit.

I guess the point of this post was to try to be current but to also try to light a fire under my ass to make a list. A real list.. on paper.. or um, on blog. Go room by room. Then start crossing them off as we go! I was thinking of making it another page, like the ones at the top of the blog, under the header. I think I'll title it "The List." Creative, I know.

Next time I update, I hope that my list will have been started. Lucky for us, the electrician should be coming by tomorrow evening to put up our remaining light fixtures and plugs, gfcis and what nots. If our house didn't have wiring from the 40s then perhaps we would attempt this ourselves. This time we'll leave it to the pros. I would love to show before and after photos of this but they will still be "in progress" since we're not done painting yet. I'm a little bummed. We bought a cool enough pendant light for our service porch, not realizing that the back door opens right into that space. So we are having to use the previous owners old nasty globe light for now. One thing at a time...

I will try doing an update on our fixtures tomorrow! Goodnight.

Sneak Peek: Master Bath

2012-08-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

Our shower curtains have arrived! I ordered this curtain and another from the store the other week, and I have been patiently waiting for them to get here. The one pictured is the Raindrops curtain and the guest bathroom will have the H20 curtain. Here is a sneak peek of our master shower. This room is still in progress but we are getting closer to being a little more settled.

Sneak Peek: Master Bedroom In Progress

2012-08-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd start a "sneak peek" series. Since we are slowly putting things away (okay, we haven't actually put ANYTHING away) the rooms are starting to come together. Starting with our bedroom, we have our bed all set up complete with TV and TV stand. A few things:

1. We have no door on our bedroom or the master bathroom yet. So that's interesting.
2. We have bald light bulbs just hangin' out. We took off the fixtures when we were painting and are thinking we want to get fresher looking new guys. We haven't yet looked up the prices to see what the cost will be.
3. The table that we used to eat on in our apartment is now the temporary TV stand in our room. The TV that used to be in our living room is now living in our bedroom hooked up to our DVD player.
4. Did I mention that we are trying to the whole we are not paying for television right now? We'll just watch shows on DVD and the internet. So far, not so bad. It's only been 3 days though. I honestly think we might be too busy to even care.
5. The old bedside tables (thank you, Ikea) haven't been put back together, yet.
6. A giant spider tried to eat my face off yesterday morning. While waking up, I opened my eyes and noticed a big black dot walking across the wall above our bed. I screamed. Jordan went and got a little box, captured the spider and put it outside. EW! It was bigger than a quarter! Now when I am in bed I curl up about a foot away from the wall and wake up every few hours to make sure there isn't a spider on me.

So, here is our progress:

*Sorry for the poor photo quality and weird filters. I was trying out the camera+ app and the HDR filter went a little crazy and made everything weird and green. Our bedroom is blue. Also, I am pretty sure I sized this right in Photoshop. Not sure why technology hates me today.

We are actually missing 3 doors. Our bedroom door, the bathroom door, and the closet door, which will actually be a sliding barn door when we get around to it! The windows have temporary vinyl blinds on them that we found at Target for $4.99 and $5.99. You peel off the backing and actually just stick it on the top of the window frame. For now it definitely serves our purpose for privacy while we decide on what to do with our windows. The only bummer is that until figure it out I can't paint the window trim... unless I buy new temp blinds. Seems like a waste of $$$.

Tonight we also bought a microwave. Target's selection wasn't big. And all we need it to do is heat up our food quickly. And we have gift cards there. So... now we have a microwave. It's cute and it kind of matches our stove. More on that in another post. Our bedroom is really all I have to show right now. The rest of the house is still crammed with unpacked boxes, big Hefty trash bags, and no true plan yet.

And because we are living off of DVDs right now, I'd say it's time for some Breaking Bad.

Goodnight!

We're Home

2012-07-30T22:07:00.001-07:00

After a long week of priming, painting, getting flooring, and moving all of our stuff, last night was the first night Jordan and I slept in our house. It was surreal. It was amazing. It was peaceful. But maybe that's because I was so exhausted! Jordan and my brother did all of the heavy lifting. I packed a lot of the smaller things and brought them to the cars and truck. I'm not sure how both of them lifted all that stuff out of our apartment and then, again, into our house. I'm amazed. Jordan also took apart and put back together 2 ikea beds. I accidentally dropped a piece on my foot. Jordan got a few cuts and bruises I am sure.

We still need to paint our dining room/ living room, hallway, and guest bathroom. Other than that we are waiting for our bathrooms and kitchen to be cleaned before putting anything away! Oh yeah, and putting up curtain rods and shower curtains. We definitely still have a lot to do so stick around to see how it goes!

Jordan just reminded me to tell the blog people how great of a job he is doing. He is doing an amazing job. He lifted most of the stuff in here. Out the furniture together. Sealed the kitchen tile grout. Made our washer/dryer connectors look pretty. I think there is lots more that I am forgetting.

Goodnight! (Can you tell I wrote this later at night using my phone?)