Love & Reno[vation]

Photo Ops

2013-11-21T19:35:00.000-06:00

I know, this post has nothing to do with our house at all. But I thought some people might like it anyway.

In the midst of getting our house ready for a baby, we decided to take a quick afternoon for a maternity photo shoot. A friend who happens to play a photographer sometimes captured the shoot for us. And we're (well at least I'm) obsessed with the photos. Here's a few of my favorites:

A Peek[-A-Boo] Into The Nursery

2013-09-27T19:34:00.001-05:00

Since the end of construction, we've started on the project of decorating the nursery. It's still got a ways to go, but here's a quick preview of it.

We have all the major furniture pieces now: crib, dresser and rocker. The dresser still needs to be stained/painted as it's an unfinished hand-me-down (it was part of a bedroom set I had years back), but we haven't 100% figured out what we want to do with it yet. We also have a nice, soft high pile rug to anchor the room, a towel holder that we plan to use to hold baby blankets, some baskets for toys, a changing pad for atop the dresser, and some heavy curtains to block out any light. Since the picture was taken we also received the crib mattress, curtain rods, and a pouf ottoman for near the rocker.

We do have a few things left to be delivered. Our mobile is on its way from California as I type (well probably not since it's coming USPS and it's 9:00pm, so it's probably sitting in post office storage), and a few pillows and a changing pad cover should come early October. Then we get to sit back and arrange, rearrange, and figure out what we forgot. The goal is to have the nursery mostly complete by Halloween, and fully complete (minus any toys or clothes and such) for our baby shower.

Then this weekend, after a quick trip to Bloomington for a wedding, I'll be having a girls day with a couple friends to paint.

And yes, I've heard that some of the Jewish women that read this blog may be having a small heart attack right now over the idea of the nursery being set up, but I really like to have a say in things that affect me when I can and to have things like this done my way, so to relinquish control was just out of the question (call me a control freak, I don't mind). Also, I may be superstitious, but plenty of babies do just fine with having the nursery set up ahead of time, so I'm just going to go with that. :)

Of course I'll have updates as things come together more!

Three Rooms Become Two

2013-09-27T17:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry folks for the lack of a post recently (or basically forever). Life has gotten the best of us and unfortunately the blog suffered. I'll have two posts for you tonight to hopefully make up for the hiatus.

After 3 weeks of construction, the bedrooms were finally "done." I use the word done loosely because there was still an abundance of staining that needed to be tended to.

Here's a little photo timeline of the construction project.

Center window all closed up. Ready for the new wall.

Framing out the new closets (sorry it's a tad blurry...)

Closet framing on the other side of the window.

Doorway opened up, header in.

Shot of the closet framing and opened doorway with header.

So much wider area to walk from the front to the back of the room.

Framed in window bench (with storage!)

New wall separating the back room.

Drywall begins!

Dry wall on the new closets and window bench.

And a lid for the window bench!

No longer able to get between rooms without going into the hall.

Closet doors.

Closet doors hung. Window bench and baseboards stained.

Kevin took a couple weekends and stained all the baseboards and the window benches in the two rooms. He even did the trim and other staining projects throughout the rest of the house that we had been seriously slacking on getting to (most had only been there for two years...).

So now it's on to decorating!

A Not-So-Baby Sized Project

2013-07-07T20:02:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't posted any updates in a while. That's mostly because we haven't really done much around the house lately. But we do have a fun new project we're planning, a nursery!

We still have to tackle the big construction of the upstairs bedrooms, so that's our first step. Once the construction is done, we will have two larger bedrooms, instead of two small rooms and an awkward adjoining room. Each room will have proper lighting and closets too. Then we have the fun task of decorating. New light fixtures, paint, furniture, area rugs, curtains, etc etc.

We'll also be working a bit in the basement and setting up a guest room down there as well. Because, you know, a giant upstairs project wasn't enough to do at one time.

We don't have a whole lot to share about either project quite yet, as we don't even have a time frame of when we're going to start the construction yet. But we'll definitely keep everyone updated when we start. And one of these years we'll update on our exterior projects and how they're coming along too (hint: slowly thanks to mother nature).

A Weekend Outdoors

2013-05-20T20:10:00.001-05:00

To go with the theme from the last post, we wanted to give an update of the outdoor projects we've been tackling. We didn't get everything we wanted done, but this weekend we did a TON.

We'll start with the patio area. We rented a manual sod cutter which Kevin and my dad used to pull up the grass in the area we want the patio to go. We laid down some weed block to act as a tarp and mud barrier for now. We'll pull that back up when it comes time to actually build the patio. The ground still needs to be dug down deeper and leveled before any pavers can be laid. But hey at least its a start.

Sadie had a need to be in as many pictures as she could on Saturday

While they were at the fun, they pulled up the grass in the area of our vegetable garden too. Then Sunday, I got all the fruits and veggies planted. I still need some more mulch, though. We have tomatoes, green and orange peppers, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, blueberries, two types of lettuce, and chives.

I also got some flowers for pots and the front garden.

And last but not least, Kevin and his dad did some work on the deck. They popped off the top rail and the spindles, then replaced the top rail. The spindles still need to be put back on and the stair rails finished, but it was a great day's progress. Also, another day I'll finish staining the rest of the deck and all the new pieces.

Hopefully some nights this week and this coming weekend we can finish some of these projects up. We still have to finish up the front landscaping and the rock garden too.

The Great Outdoors

2013-05-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

We wanted to give everyone a quick preview of some upcoming outdoor projects we have planned for the next month-ish.

We'll start with the parkway rock garden. Weather permitting, this weekend we plan to tackle creating a rock garden in the area between the street and sidewalk in front of our house. We decided a rock garden would be a good idea for the space to keep it low maintenance and also allow for a good place for people to get out of their cars and not kill any grass/plants by walking on them.

We also plan to create a vegetable garden in the backyard. There is an area on the side of the deck near our hoses and rain barrel (and a/c) that we feel would be perfect for our first vegetable garden. It should actually be a pretty decent size, so we're hoping to be able to plant enough to carry us through most of our summer fruits/veggies. Some quick measurements and calculations say we should be looking at just under 100 sqft of garden. For a city garden, we think thats pretty good.

Next weekend (again weather permitting-come on mother nature, work with us here...), we plan to makeover our deck a bit. The previous owners decided to not do the rail and spindles quite properly, not to mention the delightful squirrels have eaten the rail, so we're looking to fix it. Our lofty future goal would be to eventually redo the entire deck (redesign and rebuild) with composite materials, but for the time being this fix will do.

And our final plan is to build a patio. We bought new furniture and fire pit, and we're going to build a patio for it to all go on. It will be right at the bottom of the deck stairs under the big tree in our yard.

Hopefully things will go to plan (and mother nature will cooperate and let us get these projects done as scheduled). I'll try to keep everyone up to date on each project as we complete them!

Oh The Places We'll Go

2013-04-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

A new trend that we love is travel pinboards, essentially a corkboard map (whether just one country or the world). Then you put pins in all the places you visit.

We decided we loved the idea of documenting our travels together, but wanted to put our own little spin on things. Instead of buying a board or print, we decided to paint a map of the work onto the wall.

The project was tackled by myself and my mom (I tend to rely on her skills for any artsy projects, though she comes in handy for some construction type projects too). We started by projecting the image on the wall and tracing it with a pencil. Note: pencils work great because if/when you mess up, you can just erase and fix it.

Then we watered down a few different shades of wall paint to get a watercolor effect (three different greens so it tied in with the adjoining living room). Then we just went to town filling in all of the land area. I tackled the islands (there are a lot of islands on this planet, fyi) and my mom started with the larger landmasses.

After the mural was complete, I made little flag thumb tacks. I printed out small country flags from each of the place we had traveled to and mod podged them onto the heads of the thumb tacks. Here's what the markers for our most recent trip look like:

And as we continue to travel more in the future, we will be able to add more tacks to the map.

Honey Do List

2013-04-13T14:13:00.000-05:00

People keep asking me if the work is done/almost done in our house. I usually don't have much of a response other than laughter, since we manage to keep adding things to the list before we even get close to finishing it. So here's our list (as of now) of things we still want to do. Let's start from the bottom of the house and work our way up.

Basement:
-Paint. We bought a nice light tan color last year in hopes of painting the basement and lightening it up a bit (the dark green and orange make it a bit dark and creepy down there). We'll get to it eventually.

-Forth bedroom. With the replacement of windows, we now have egress access to a fourth bedroom in the basement (woo safety and legality). Once it warms up a bit, we're planning to spring clean the basement a lot and set that room up as a guest room and craft area (instead of just a giant catch-all).

-Water heater. Right now our water heater is old. Like survived Y2K old. We really would like to replace it with a tankless one to save on utilities and space in our basement, but it's not at the top of the priority list just yet.

-Fridge. We would love to get a second fridge/freezer for the basement for overflow (or when I bake a ton and need to store cupcakes somewhere). I've been keeping an eye on prices, but energy star is a big priority for us and right now the prices are just a bit out of reach.

-Finish the basement. We both think it would be great to finish the basement eventually. It's a HUGE project though, so who knows if/when it will ever happen. It would involve reworking the ducts, leveling the floor, electrical, framing, insulation, etc. etc. etc. One day it may happen, but definitely not in the foreseeable future.

First floor: The first floor is actually pretty put together. We spend most of our time here, making it a higher priority for us to get done.

Kitchen:
-Under cabinet towel holder. My mom made us these reusable "paper" towels a while back. They've been a great, green replacement to disposable paper towels. But right now the roll is just sitting on the counter. Since our counter space is limited, I'd love to get an under cabinet holder for them.

-Decor. I've started adding decor to the tops of the cabinets to bring in a bit of color to the kitchen. It's still a bit sparse, so we'll keep adding more as we find more things we like (and catch sales).

-Shelves. We put up pipe shelves, but they still need to be stained. I'm waiting on spring to really arrive in Chicago so I can open windows and not stink up the whole house with the stain, though.

-Pantry. Our pantry started out decently organized. But I made the mistake of not telling Kevin the organizational setup. And now it's just one giant mess. I'd also love to get reusable containers for things like snacks and cereal and drink mixes and the like.

Office:
-Jade plant holder/storage cabinet. The previous owners left a side table/cabinet behind. We've been using it in a corner of our office to hold our jade plant and have filled it with all sorts of crap. The plans are to paint it green to bring some color to the office and to organize the stuff inside a bit.

Bathroom/Laundry:
-Doors/trim. We started to stain the doors and trim but realized the color is a bit off. We'll need to sand down the doors and restain them, along with staining the door frame. We'd also like to stain the trim in the office and kitchen to match the rest of the house while we're at it.

Living Room:
-Bookshelves. The plan is to box up/move to the basement shelves all the books and movies that we rarely use, and use the shelves for more practical storage. I foresee a container store shopping spree in my future.

Entry/Stairs:
-Pictures. The ultimate goal is to fill the wall going up the stairs with pictures. This will probably be a long, ongoing project as we have more and more pictures we want to display.

-Race bibs. We hung a some beaded twisted cord at the top of the stairs to hang all of our race bibs on. Kind of like bunting. There is plenty of space still for us to add future race bibs to it.

Second floor: The majority of our upcoming projects will take place on the second floor. There's a lot we want to do up here.

Master bedroom:
-Mirror. I really want to get/make a nicer mirror for our room. Right now we have one of those cheap, over-the-door mirrors from my college dorm room. The plan is to either revamp it to make it look a bit more adult, or get a new mirror. I'd love to get one of those vintage free standing mirrors. We'll see.

Second Bath:
-Paint. We have yet to actually paint this bathroom. I'm thinking maybe painting it white and then doing a couple light, lime green chevrons around the room.

-Hooks/Storage. Right now there is no where to hang towels or store anything in this bathroom. Well other than a hand towel. This bathroom doesn't really get used much so it's not a big deal yet.

Bedrooms:
-Complete overhaul. This is on our list as the next BIG project. The plan is to remove a window and put up a wall in the back room, separating it into two defined rooms. Also, open up the doorways from the bedrooms into the back room space, which will make it feel more like one cohesive room each. Lastly, closets will be added (old house means no closets in the bedrooms) and some electrical work for lighting and outlets.

Outside: We did a good deal of curb appeal work last summer, but there is still plenty more to do.

-Parkway. I would love to create a low maintenance rock garden in the parkway in front of our house. With the new fence out front, it's difficult to mow/water, so low maintenance is key. Also people tend to walk on that area a lot when parking in front of the house, so the idea of a rock garden would allow us to have some plants but also a good area for people to walk and not kill the plants.

-Backyard. So much to do in the backyard. Clean and refinish the deck. Replace the handrails that have been eaten by squirrels (yes, the lovely squirrels in our neighborhood ate our deck rails). Finish the fire pit and surrounding seating area. And plant a few gardens, veggie and flower. Eventually we'll completely replace the deck and front porch. But for now we're just kind of putting makeup on things to hold us over until a full overhaul can be done.

-Siding. One of these years (in the foreseeable future) we will need to replace the siding on our house. Currently we have a layer of wood siding covered by a layer of asphalt siding. The asphalt is falling to pieces (literally), but we are afraid to pull it off the entire house in fear that the wood might be in even worse shape. We're thinking we'll end up with vinyl siding when we do replace it all. Cross your fingers that we can get another couple years on the current stuff so we can attempt to save up a bit (and pay off the windows first).

So now you can see, we still have quite the list of things we want to do. And even with this long list of stuff, I feel like I'm probably forgetting some things. And by some, I mean a lot.

Also, sorry for all the words. I'll try to make the next post more pictures.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

2013-04-01T17:36:00.000-05:00

This is a quick diversion from the typical house post, but I was too proud to not share. For Easter dinner this year I was asked to bring dessert (which is pretty typical for holiday meals, parties, random summer days by the pool, etc.). In the past I've made a lot of cupcakes, cookies, brownies, cheesecakes, pies, and more. This year I decided to make a shaped cake. A bunny butt.

The cake was two layer vanilla with raspberry filling, raspberry frosting, and shredded coconut. The carrots and foot pads were made from airheads and the dirt from chocolate cookies. It turned out quite well for the first time making it and everyone seemed to like it (either that or they're good actors).

Hope everyone had happy holiday, whether you celebrated or not.

The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling

2013-03-30T14:11:00.000-05:00

So far we've really liked most of what we've done to the house, but once in a while things just don't work. The kitchen shelves would be one of those things. We originally installed four shelves with brackets on an open wall in the kitchen, which provided more "counter"-like space.

Well, they seemed to look just fine. I was never a huge fan of the brackets, but figured we could change those out at a later date. But then the problems started. They were right in the walking path from the dining room to the pantry/back of the kitchen, so we were constantly scraping our arms on the corners. Without anything under the shelves and without big, chunky brackets, we were also hitting our heads when we would pick up Sadie's water and food bowls. The last straw was when I hit my head so hard it drew blood. Changing out the shelves had officially jumped to the top of our list.

We decided we wanted to pull a bit of the industrial design from our pipe pot rack into the shelves. And we wanted to make sure there was also some structure at the front of the shelves to make sure we don't walk into them/hit our heads anymore. Thus blossomed the idea for pipe shelves. They were constructed from the same electrical conduit that our pipe rack was. Using a 1inch drill bit, holes were drilled in the corners so they could slide onto the pipes. And finally, the entire structure was attached to the wall.

The entire project cost under $300 and was put together in a day. Though, I do still need to stain the wood shelves. But that's a project for another day when it's warm enough to open windows.

Office Space

2013-03-18T18:50:00.000-05:00

So there was a slightly awkward addition at the back of our house. It left an extra room on both the first and second floors. We have yet to tackle the second floor addition area, but on the first floor we opened up the wall and extended the kitchen into half of this addition. But that still left half of the addition room empty. It was a bit of an odd space. Originally we thought about turning it into a den/sitting area, but realized that would probably never get used. We're not the formal living room type. So instead we turned it into a home office.

The office made the most sense for our lifestyle. We'd never use a space with just a couch or a chair. But the office allows for us to have a space to work from home or for Kevin to work for his consulting job. It also allows a place for us to put Kevin's extra large monitor that would otherwise sit in the box in the basement. It also allows us a place to hook up a computer and pay bills or the like, if we'd rather at a desk than sitting on the couch with our laptops (still has yet to happen, but maybe one day).

We used a desk we had in our last apartment. I've talked about painting it black to match other furniture (it's currently a black-brown color), but just haven't gotten around to it yet. We set up our display bookshelf on it's side in front of the desk for all of our tchotchkes. It also made the area seem a bit more finished rather than looking at the front of a desk (it's not a fancy, ornate desk). Then finally I painted and glazed some old glass jars and put some flowers in them to give a sense of privacy at the desk, and divide the rooms a bit since it is open to the kitchen eating area.

Take a look at our *mostly* done office!

Down Under, Part 3

2013-03-04T17:23:00.000-06:00

Last stop on our trip was none other than Sydney, Australia.

The day we arrived, we decided to walk around the city a bit. We walked down towards Circular Quay and ultimately ended up walking around the botanic gardens. From the gardens, there were some great views of both the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

Our first full day in Sydney, we traveled out to Olympic Park for the Color Run. For those of you that haven't heard of the Color Run, it's a 5k fun run where you get color thrown at you throughout the race. By the end of the race, you end up rainbow coated from head to toe. We spent a little time post race to walk around Olympic Park to get a better view of everything (you can only see so much while running).

Day two's big highlight was the Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb. A 3 1/2 hour journey, about 440 feet above sea level, about 66 feet of ladders, and 1439 stairs. It was a combination of slightly terrifying and absolutely amazing. If you ever have the chance to get to Sydney, I highly recommend it.

The following day we left Sydney and spent the day in Hunter Valley, one of Australia's oldest wine producing areas. Here we went to two different wineries for tastings--Lindman's and McGuigan's, as well as a the Bluetongue Brewery Cafe.

We spent a day out at Bondi Beach and the east coast of Sydney as well. We walked along the beach and coastal trail. There wasn't really much of a plan for the day, so we just walked down the coast until we got hungry. After grabbing lunch on the waterfront, we sat at Bronte Beach for a while. The plan was to enjoy the sun, possibly walk further south down the coast, and ultimately walk back up to Bondi to catch the bus back to our hotel. Unfortunately, mother nature was not on our side. Around 4pm it started to mist. And looking out over the ocean, you could see the storm rolling in. So we hightailed it back up to Bondi and caught the bus a bit earlier than planned. It was still a great day at the beach though.

Our last full day in Sydney was Valentine's Day. We spent the day walking the city and taking things in one last time. From the BridgeClimb, we had tickets to get into one of the bridge pylons. You're able to climb to the top of the pylon for a great view of the city. And for this one you can actually bring your own camera up. We also walked around Darling Harbour and had drinks and dinner on the waterfront. We then walked down to the Sydney Opera House to see La Boheme. It was definitely an experience of a lifetime to get to see an opera at the Sydney Opera House. One last walk along the water and seeing the Harbour Bridge and Opera House at night finished our night.

The next morning we packed up, had a nice, leisurely breakfast, and headed off to the airport for our nice long flights home. We did get a break from airports in Los Angeles when we left LAX and went to In-N-Out.

And at 9pm we arrived back in freezing Chicago, just in time to catch the end of the Blackhawks game (which they won!)

Down Under, Part 2

2013-02-25T11:53:00.000-06:00

Second stop on our trip was tropical Cairns, Australia.

We spent two days out on the water, snorkeling and diving the Great Barrier Reef. It was everything you see in pictures and movies, and even more. The colors were absolutely amazing. We saw tons of different fish, varieties of corals, reef sharks, turtles, and more. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. And something that cannot be accurately described by words.

The third of three days we had in Cairns was spent in the Australian rain forest and at the small village of Kuranda. We took the skyrail up over the tops of the trees to Kuranda. It made two stops along the way, which allowed us to walk through some areas of the rainforest.

Once we got to Kuranda, we got to see all sorts of Australian wildlife, from butterflies to kangaroos and wallabies to dingos and koalas and crocodiles and a cassowary. We even got to pet the kangaroos and wallabies, as well as hold a koala!

We then took the train back down to Cairns, with a quick photo op at Barron Gorge along the way.

Last stop on the trip: Sydney!

Down Under, Part 1

2013-02-20T09:23:00.000-06:00

First, I'd like to thank everyone to voted for our picture on Facebook from the last post. We ended up in 2nd place, which won us $250!

It's been a while since my last post. This time I actually have a reason other than just being a slacker. We were on vacation! We spend 2 1/2 weeks traveling to New Zealand and Australia. Over the next few posts, I'll give you all a brief overview of our trip! Then back to the house stuff.

We started our trip in New Zealand on the north island. We visited Rotorua to see all the geothermal activity. It's similar to Yellowstone in the states. We also went to the Polynesian Spa and had mud wraps. Definitely a great treat after two days of flying/traveling.

Then we drove up to Auckland. We stayed at a friend of my mom's place (Thanks again Rhonda for the hospitality and showing us around!) Here's an early, foggy morning view from her house. Stunning, right?

Our first day in the Auckland area, we took the ferry out to Tiritiri Matangi Island. It's a wildlife sanctuary island, that is even home to endangered Takahe. We hiked the island from about 10am to 4pm.

We then took the ferry back to Gulf Harbour. That evening we did some more light hiking around Shakespear Park. We saw the sunken ship at Okoromai Bay, a parent and baby endangered Dotterel, and of course token New Zealand sheep.

In our last day in New Zealand, we went to the Auckland museum. We started with the volcano exhibit, which has a neat simulator of a volcanic eruption near Auckland. We also spent a good amount of time in the Maori exhibit and seeing the Maori cultural show.

After the museum, we split with our wonderful tour guides and hosts. We went to the sky tower, while they spent a bit more time at the museum (It was a bit of an overcast day. Not the best day for the sky tower, but the only day we had). Luckily the cloud cover and fog had receded a bit allowing us to see from the top.

We were supposed to have a sunset kayak tour to Rangitoto that evening. But, unfortunately, it had to be cancelled due to weather. The winds (and waves) were just too high for it to be safe to kayak. As sad as we were about the cancellation, safety is always top priority. Better not to have done the tour than to spend the rest of our trip in the Auckland hospital.

There is plenty more to do on the north island, and we didn't even make it to the south island, but we feel pretty satisfied with what we got done in our time in New Zealand.

Next up: Cairns, Australia.

We Need You!

2013-01-23T13:35:00.000-06:00

Cue picture of Uncle Sam.

I've posted a couple times about the new fencing we installed around our house. Well the company that makes the fencing is holding a Facebook photo contest, and we're a finalist!. What we need from everyone is to CLICK THIS LINK and like the picture of our fencing.

Winning this contest will help us continue our home improvements, so please tell all of your friends as well! The more likes we can get, the more likely we are to win!

THANKS EVERYONE!

Our contest entry! Like it on Facebook by using the link above!

Gobble Gobble

2012-11-23T13:07:00.002-06:00

After just over a year in our first house, we decided to host our first Thanksgiving dinner. I always help my mom cook for holidays, so I wasn't super unfamiliar with cooking a big holiday dinner.

We had homemade green bean casserole, six cheese mashed potatoes, honey and bourbon glazed apples and sweet potatoes, cranberries, stuffing, challah rolls, and of course turkey and gravy. For dessert were mini pumpkin pies and mini apple pie cheesecakes.

That hardest part of the entire day, was trying to get everything cooked and done (and hot) at the same time. I actually had a surprising amount of down time that I was not too fond of having. It's hard to sit around when you know there is so much left to do.

But everything seemed to come together. And everyone said the food was delicious (who knows if they were really telling the truth...).

Our first turkey!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now it's time to put up all the Christmas and Hanukah decorations. The bitter cold and flurries definitely make it feel a bit more like the holiday season.

Favorite Things: Clean Freak Edition

2012-11-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

Yes. I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a clean freak. So in today's post I'm going to share a few of my favorite things.

First is our scooba. I've named ours Henry (I figure if it's going to clean my house, it should at least have a name). Now you're all going "what in the world is a scooba?" Well it's from iRobot, the makers of the roomba. Only unlike the roomba which is a vacuum, the scooba is essentially a robot mop. It is meant for hard surfaces, like our wood floors. You fill it up with a bit of floor cleaner (specific to your type of floor) and water, press a button, and off it goes. We have the 230 model, but there is a new 390 model that also vacuums small particles while mopping (so you don't even have to sweep before!) Best part, it makes a pretty amusing dog toy while it cleans your floors.

My next new favorite cleaning thing is our washer/dryer. We have an all in one washer and dryer. Meaning you toss in the load of laundry, set the wash, set the dry, and let it go. I'm the type of person that puts a load of laundry into the wash and then start doing other things, and completely forget to move it to the dryer. An all in one machine is by far the best laundry invention for someone like myself. Not to mention it is amazing for those who work all day. The LG machine we have allows for you to set a delay and also has a cool down cycle after drying. When I worked full time, this was a life saver. It allowed me to throw in a load before going to work (or even the night before) and set it to go on about 2 in the afternoon. It would then wash and dry the load and be ready for folding when I walked in the door. And even if traffic was bad, the 4 hour cool down cycle kept the clothes from wrinkling. It even sings to you when it's done.

Now if you're not looking to spend a lot of money, here are some of my quick clean freak loves.

I keep one of those Oxo squirt dish cleaners with a mixture of dish soap (like Dawn or Palmolive or whatever you like) and vinegar in my shower at all time. Before getting out of the shower, I real quick wipe the shower with the cleaner. It adds maybe 30 seconds to each shower, but it eliminates having to scrub the shower clean each week (or month or year, depending on your cleaning habits). And it actually keeps my shower looking cleaner than it ever did with weekly scrubbings. I keep a container of premixed dish soap and vinegar in my linen closet upstairs, and refill the cleaner once a week when I clean the rest of the bathroom.

Dryer sheets. I use these to dust everything. They leave a small film on surfaces which helps to prevent the dust from sticking (at least from what I've noticed). Meaning less dusting, which I'm sure everyone would like (really, who likes to dust?) It's the best for electronics that are basically magnets for dust. You can even rub dyer sheets on baseboards to help prevent dust build up on those. And if you own the wonderful washer dryer combo I talked about before, you might be like me and have an abundance of dryer sheets since they were bought at Sam's club that you'll never use again (no need for dryer sheets with that machine). Best part, no sprays or anything needed. And you get that great fresh laundry smell around your entire place!

And of course, what clean freak post would be complete without a cleaning wish list.

I'm slightly obsessed with finding the perfect vacuum for my house. I have a big upright vacuum. It works well. But it's a huge hassle to carry it up and down the stairs every week (or to get my husband to do). I also bought myself a stick vacuum (basically a dust buster attached to a stick so you can stand while using it). Which is fine for the hardwood floors, but doesn't work well for the rugs. But I think I found my perfect match. It is a handheld vacuum, but has the suction of an upright along with a spinning brush. It combines the best of both of my current vacuums. Light enough to go up and down stairs easily, but powerful enough to get those rugs clean. I know "they" always say you're not supposed to give women vacuums as gifts, but I would be pretty excited to get this one.

Interested in any of my clean freak items? Just click the pictures! The pictures will link you to where to buy them!

A Bit Of Privacy

2012-10-24T08:17:00.000-05:00

I wrote earlier about installing our front fence and that we had one for the back sitting in the garage waiting to be installed. Well, it's finally done!

Like the front fence, we used a WamBam product. Only this time we went with a 6ft, semi-privacy, white vinyl fence. We decided to go this route to give us a bit of privacy in our back yard, to block the view to our yard from the street and near by condo building a bit more. But we didn't want to completely close off the yard, which is why we decided on semi-privacy rather than a solid fence. The panels have small gaps between each slat, allowing light (and wind) through, but are still small enough to give the sense of enclosure and privacy.

Once again it took a full day and six people to get the fence installed. Our handy, dandy contractors found a drill bit that would allow us to drill into the soil (and through all of the crazy roots in the yard) which made installation a whole lot simpler.

The fence was installed pretty much the same way as the front fence. Anchors into the ground, post covers, and panels. Once the anchors were in, the installation was pretty simple. And I'd assume that installing the anchors might be easier if the soil was a little less disagreeable than ours is. Hence the use of a 3ft drill bit.

Somehow, the addition of a privacy fence actually makes our yard feel bigger (at least to us). And it checks another box off the backyard to do list. But with it being fall, and winter approaching (hopefully not too quickly), the rest of the projects will probably have to wait until spring.

The Wall

2012-10-09T07:59:00.000-05:00

Since living in our apartment, I have had numerous comments about "the wall". Well everyone is in luck! We're decided to do something similar in our bedroom in the new house and I'm going to dedicate this post to showing everyone how it was done!

Reminder, the wall in our apartment:

Yes I did paint around bookshelves, hence the giant white space

Start by painting the walls the color you want the lines between the blocks to be. In the case of our apartment we wanted white so we skipped this step. In our bedroom we went with a tealish-blue color (it's almost Tiffany blue for the ladies to get a better idea since pictures and computer screens sometimes distort colors).

Next is to tape off the pattern. This is where you let your creativity shine (or where you call in your artsy mother to help because being an engineer you don't do random super well). Start putting tape up in squares and rectangles of all different sizes. We tried to avoid having a line that connected more than three boxes. This helped to keep the look less predictable. For the apartment I started by taping horizontal and vertical lines using a lot of measuring and a hand level (to make kind of a plaid) and then removed and added tape to make it random. In our bedroom I invested in a laser level that showed both vertical and horizontal level and skipped the plaid step. The entire bedroom took far less time to do than the single wall in our apartment, so I would highly advise the laser level.

Final step is to paint! Just like stripes, don't use too much paint on your brush and start with the brush on the tape and pull onto the wall rather than the opposite way. This will help prevent bleeding under the tape. If you are going with more than one color, I suggest opening all the colors and use your finger dipped in the paint to mark which block will be which color before painting the entire wall. This will help avoid the inevitable multiple blocks of the same color next to each other.

Then just pull the tape off the wall and touch up any bleeding there may be!

A Little Curb Appeal

2012-09-17T18:35:00.001-05:00

I know, I know. I clearly am not so good with this posting on a regular basis thing. Life has, well, gotten the best of us lately. There has been so much to do with the weather being nice, the blog took a bit of a backseat. But here I am again.

Anyway, with the string of nice (but a tad hot) weather, we decided to work a bit on the outside of the house. Seems silly to be doing indoor projects when it's nice and warm out when those can be saved for the cold winter months. We started with the front of the house. It's a bit smaller of an area to work with than the back and also gives that first impression to the house when people walk up.

First up was installing a fence. Since we live just down the block from a school, there are a good number of kids that walk by our house to school every day (well when school is in session). It's pretty common on our block to have a fence in the front of your house. Not because there have been any problems with damage, but just to keep the teenagers off the lawn if they're is a big group walking by. Actually, we had more of an issue with people walking dogs than the kids. But nonetheless, we installed a fence. It also helped with uniformity of the block since we were one of the only houses without one.

We decided to go with a product called WamBam Fencing. It goes in by pounding an anchor rod into the ground and then securing the post and panels on top. No need to dig post holes or pour concrete. Which would allow us to install it by ourselves. Sounds great. Sometimes things are just too good to be true though. While there were no problems with the product, it was our yard that was the problem. About 6 inches into the pounding we hit all sorts of fun stuff: roots, concrete, stone, etc. Basically all sorts of things we couldn't just pound our way through. So much for installing the fence ourselves.

So we brought in our handy dandy contractor. He and his trusty sidekick drilled through the concrete and whatever else so we could slip in the anchors and then build the fence. It took about six hours and six people, but the fence finally went up. Now to just get the backyard fence done...

But that's a story for another day. The following weekend we decided the yard was looking a bit drab. So a plan was hatched on how to give it a bit of a facelift. And off to Home Depot we went. We came home with about 1200lbs of retaining wall block and 900lbs of dirt. And that was just day one. Day two involved another approximately 600lbs of dirt and lots of flowers. Two days worth of work resulted in a new raised garden bed!

Combine that with a new porch platform step, some fresh stain, and a new mailbox, and we think the house now makes a great first impression.

Since the picture above, the new grass has started to come in, the flowers have filled in, we stained the planter box white and planted some rose bushes in it. I would insert a picture, except apparently I never took one and it is currently raining (I really don't like being out in the rain and I don't think my camera or phone would either). Maybe I can remember to take one eventually...

A True Wash Room

2012-05-28T17:27:00.001-05:00

During the major house renovations, we redid the upstairs bathroom and added a second. But we neglected the downstairs bath. Until now.

The previous house owners were elderly and had troubles making it up stairs. So they were using an addition off the back of the house as a bedroom and created a handicap bathroom. The bathroom included a huge toilet (I'm pretty sure this thing could have competed in cavernous-ness with the grand canyon), a really old vanity, an equally old medicine cabinet, and a handicap shower.

Seeing as we have 2 full baths on the 2nd floor and no bedrooms on the first, we had no need for a shower on the first floor. I've also been complaining about having to take clothes from the 2nd floor down to the basement to do laundry (I got spoiled with having laundry in my apartments). Thus the idea was born to turn the handicap bathroom into a half bath/laundry room.

We decided to leave the layout pretty much the same as it was and just exchange the shower for a washer/dryer to save money (less pipes to move). The old giant toilet and vanity made it awfully tight, so we opted for a smaller toilet (standard size) and a narrower vanity. We went with a 'euro vanity' which allowed for a full depth sink, but a narrower cabinet. This made the room appear bigger without making the vanity/sink seem undersized. To keep the house cohesive, we used the same tile as both upstairs bathrooms for the floor (plus we just love the tile).

While opening up the walls for a bit of plumbing and to change out the door (we were going to use an old door in the basement to replace the plain front door to match the rest of the house), we ran into a bit of a snafu. The load bearing wall lacked a proper header. Since everything had to get ripped out to fix, we decided to increase the opening a bit more and install double doors for better access to both sides of the room.

My favorite part of the room: the washer/dryer. We got an all in one machine. This allows us to put in a load, set the wash cycle, set the dry cycle, and forget about it for a while. It also has a delay start feature of up to 19 hours and a cool down cycle of up to 4 hours after finishing drying. I've actually put in a load of laundry at night, set the wash to start in the afternoon of the next day, and come home to washed and dried clothes. And it even sings to you when it's done.

With a towel hook, toilet paper holder, and some shelves for laundry detergent and storage, the washroom was done. It looks so much better than before (at least in our opinions). And it's great to not have to go down to the basement for laundry anymore. Take a look!

Making A Comeback!

2012-04-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

Yup, I'm still here. Life has been a little hectic lately and unfortunately the blog got a bit neglected. Ok a lot neglected since its been almost 3 months since the last post. But I'm back and have a lot to tell you all about. Here's a quick preview of some of the things we've been working on lately.

A finished bathroom/laundry room!

Our own personal workout area!

Living room "finishing" touches!

Bedroom painting!

Our home office!

Curb appeal and a porch facelift!

And a backyard set for summer!

A Practical Picturesque Pipe Pot Rack

2012-01-29T10:33:00.000-06:00

Some of you may have noticed our pot rack in pictures from previous posts. So here is our post telling you all about it!

Being an older home, there is a large window in the middle of the kitchen. Meaning there is not a whole lot of cabinet space (luckily there is a decently big pantry for food storage). And pots just seem to take up so much room in cabinets. If we had put them in the few cabinets we have, there would be no room for much else. In an old apartment we had a pot rack (just one of those small oval ones) and loved the way displaying our pots looked. Especially now that we have more appealing stainless steel pots. So thus the idea of a pot rack was born.

Traditionally people put pot racks over islands. Well we don't have an island in our kitchen so that idea was out. There are also wall mounted ones, except we don't have any open walls in our kitchen to hang one. Scratch that idea too. I've also seen over the stove. Well we have our microwave there. That idea wont work. In our apartment we had it hanging over the bar area. Well we just knocked out that wall to open up the room and hanging something would close it off again and cut up the kitchen. Nope not a good idea. Then came the idea of hanging a rack from the ceiling in front of the window. The window is essentially wasted space in a kitchen where storage space is in high demand.

So now the trick was trying to find/figure out a pot rack that would work in front of the window. Most of the commercially made ones were too small and/or too wide. Since the window is so large (about 5 feet wide) a small pot rack would just look off in front of it. Not to mention it wouldn't be able to hold all of our pots and pans. We also didn't want a oval/rectangular one since it would stick out from the cabinets and just look awkward in our opinions. So I came up with this idea of hanging a curtain rod from the ceiling. It would be able to be hung out from the window so any swinging pots wouldn't break the glass, be able to extend then entire width of the window, and not stick out from the front edge of the cabinets.

This post is starting to get a little wordy, so I'll cut to the chase. Hanging a curtain rod from the ceiling is a lot harder than one would think. So to Home Depot we went to figure out a plan B (or C or D... not sure where we were at this point). We ended up in the section with all the conduit. And came up with the idea of half inch conduit (seemed to be large enough to hold the weight spanning 5 feet but not too large to look bulky). A couple of elbows and floor flanges would attach all the pipes together into a U and to the ceiling.

We bought some large S-hooks for the pots to hang from. This ended up being a bit more work than expected since the opening was too small to get the hooks onto the pipe. After a bit of prying, we got them all open enough and onto the pipe.

Last step was hanging the pots.

We think it looks great in the room. Give some purpose to the space of the window and a bit of sculptural art. It also adds a bit of industrial to the kitchen/house.

A New Look For The New Year

2012-01-09T21:30:00.000-06:00

I apologize to everyone who has been waiting ever so patiently (and those of you that haven't been so patient by yelling at me for a new post) that I haven't posted in a while. The holidays, a few parties, and just trying to get the house put together took a bit of a toll on us. And unfortunately the blog posting didn't happen. But since we've gotten a lot done around the house, this post is going to be a "where is it now" post. A tour of the house so far. And some of the things you see that I haven't specifically posted about I will try to write a post about at a later date.

(Note: please forgive any dust in the pictures. There was drywall work going on and that dust just gets everywhere)

Kitchen

Eating area in the kitchen

Under construction: Downstairs half bath/laundry room

Entry way

Living room

Dining room (thanks for all the housewarming wine!)

Upstairs second bathroom

Back room upstairs (it's amazing what a bit of orange glow and a putty knife can do to fix a floor)

Master bedroom

Master bathroom

Our brand new garage roof and fascia (thanks to everyone who contributed to it!)

Now You See [Through] It, Now You Don't

2011-12-20T21:48:00.001-06:00

Our front door has a large window in it (it takes up about half of the door). It is great for letting in light to the entry, but not the best for privacy. From the front porch you could see all the way through the hall and kitchen to the back of the house. So to solve the privacy problem, I frosted the window.

But just solid frosting is boring. So I wanted to bring a little clear glass into the design. We decided to go with an outline to sort of mimic the stain glass window next to the door. We also thought it would be nice to incorporate something such as "welcome" or the house number. Well, since the house number is on the front of the house twice already (under the stain glass window above the mailbox and also on the porch light), we went with "Welcome".

The process started by taping out the design we wanted to stay clear. I used blue painters tape for the outline and contact paper for the welcome part. Once the writing was on level, I had the tedious task of cutting out each letter.

After plastic-ing around the door, I used a spray paint froster (Krylon Frosted Glass Finish). It went on a little spotty after the first coat. But after a second and real light third it evened out.

And the finished product:

Edit: By request, here is the door from the outside!