Whimsy Girl: My life, loves, and passions

Let’s hope the groundhog is right.

admin — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:10:53 +0000

Not only have we been hard hit by the ice storm (not as bad as some places thankfully), and luckily we did not lose our power last week (once again we are thankful!). We have had some pipes bust and a motor in our furnace go out.

I will be back to posting again after this weekend. I have some posts lined up with some projects we’ve tackled since we took care of those issues for this week, and a huge event at the end of the summer that we’re going to need to coordinate all of our renovations around.

Rental unit, huh?

admin — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 03:38:12 +0000

So we kind of came out of left field with the rental unit plan in this post. However, if you think about it, it’s just wasted income, and if you ever watch Income Properties then you’d understand what I mean. Did we purchase another property? No, we didn’t. We decided to forgo the Man Cave. Steve and I realized that we just had very little time and money to convert it into the space we’d want to for that purpose, and then once we did, we wouldn’t have much time to use it for those reasons. Instead, we could spend a short amount of time and money to convert it into a rental unit, and then it would continue to work for us so that we could to the projects in the house that we want to do. The unit has a lot of the fixtures that we’d already need (plumbing, toilet, etc). Even still, there’s still a lot that we’d need to do.

While we’re working on the rental unit, most of our finances will be funneled into that project, so we’ll be doing very little to the actual house. The idea is that we’ll spend a chunk of money renovating the space now, spend a year (at most two) recuperating those costs, and then the rental unit would be a revenue generating space that will be helping us with projects here.

I’ll share the nitty-gritty here, because that’s what I enjoy reading the most on the DIY blogs that I read (like YoungHouseLove.com, etc.). I’m a budget and planning person, so I like to read how people budgeted and planned for their projects.

First floor: clear vision

admin — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:13:10 +0000

Now that we’ve made some of those crucial decisions, I’m seeing a lot of the rooms more clearly than I did before, and that is very exciting for me. Since I know certain things will come to pass, I can image these rooms and come up with crazy ideas (some good and some out there) for each of these rooms. The plan above is more or less the layout after we’d be finished. Some things are not quite as clear as others. One such thing is the flow of the master bedroom, bathroom, and closet. That sort of “long hallway” in the master bedroom will be the closet, but I haven’t decided whether to put up a door or just hang a curtain or what yet. More decisions will need to be made on that department.

Steve and I are both looking forward to having an organized utility room, because right now it’s always a disaster. We have on occasion been known to wash clothes that were already washed because one of us was in a hurry and just put clothes from the dryer in a basket (ahem, I would never do that). So we definitely need some sort of system in there.

While the kitchen will remain the same for a while, there are plans we’d like to do with it, so with those in mind, we will proceed with the current projects. To tide us over, we’re going to paint the cabinets and the walls while we do the other repairs.

We were given some great advice when we purchased the house. Live in the house for a year before making any major changes. You’ll see the house in every season, every holiday, and see how it fits your family through all of those changes. Then make the changes as you see fit rather than rushing in to make cosmetic changes that you think will be what you want, and I think that is so true. There are things I thought would annoy me, and there are things I thought I’d love. I was wrong on both counts, and because we waited a year we were able to see those things.

P.S. The colors correspond to the paint color choices we are contemplating. 1, 3, & 4 have been painted and are staying those colors, but the rest and negotiable. I think I like all of them as is except for #8. I think the plum again is too much. Maybe blue? What do you think?

Decisions

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:34:32 +0000

We’ve been busy around here making lot’s of decisions. I hope that sounds important. As far as the house goes, we haven’t gotten nearly as much accomplished as I’d have liked, but we had to slow down as some point and that point is now. We are at a recovering point, and truthfully we have been making a lot of decisions. For one, the main floor rooms are completely dependent on one another. We don’t want to do any huge repairs on one room without understanding how that will affect or flow into another room, so we finalized most of those plans. The main things we have decided is to put in one and a half baths which will increase the value of the home, and make our guests happier when we have people over. We had an unfortunate circumstance where our bathroom was occupied and no one was able to use it at our last shindig. The full bathroom will go upstairs, and the half bath will be on the main floor. This will also allow us to convert our current bathroom (which is ugly -sorry bathroom) into a master bathroom suite, but I can’t get too far ahead. We still need to decide and finalize what we’re doing in the long run for the kitchen, utility room, and sun room. Then we’ll be able to move full steam ahead and put plans in to motion and stages, because we have another HUGE project that has to be accomplished prior to us even starting these projects. What’s that you’re wondering?

We’re going to have a rental unit. Yeah, pictures and plans to come because text is boring.

New curtains in the kitchen

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:08:13 +0000

These are the new curtains I put together for the kitchen. I love the white, but it’s a temporary fix until I find the perfect fabric. For next time though, I need to measure my folds better. You can see the variations in the thickness at the top because the white fabric is so thin. Oh well, for now I try to ignore that it’s not even.

Frustrating but rewarding

admin — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:07:29 +0000

When we moved here, I had wanted to put the bookcases in the living room, and to line the walls with bookcases. We had hand-me-down bookcases to hold the books we had, and let me tell you, there was no room to LIVE in the living room (you can see those photos here). So we moved them upstairs into what would become the office, and you can see them here.

I loved the bookcases that are in Nicole Balch’s library on Making it Lovely, and I loved the way it greeted you as you came up the stairs. I realized that the corner we’d placed our bookcases in could become a corner bookcase system, so we started to save for it. We recently purchased them to get out of town during a huge festival that happens every year, and this past weekend I was finally able to start putting the bookcases together.

While I was building I had to make a huge decision, because we are planning on painting the walls in the room they’d be going. I needed to decided whether I would purchase the paint and paint the corner wall where the bookcases were supposed to go before installing them, wait and purchase the paint later..take all the books out..then paint, or install the bookcases and paint around them when I purchased the paint. I did a combination of one and three. I painted the trim, but I think I’ll paint around the bookcases when we purchase the wall paint.

The reason I chose to wait on the wall paint was because we haven’t agreed on a final color, and the longer the study remains in chaos the harder it is for me to work. So I went ahead and installed them, but installation wasn’t without some issues. For now, I’ll leave you with a photo of the final product.

Preparing for fall

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 02:47:22 +0000

We can seat more than one

admin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:42:54 +0000

We’ve been so busy that I completely forgot to post photos of the new sofa we purchased. It was a long overdue purchase, and I feel if you’re going to splurge on something you should spend money on your mattress and your sofa. We got a good deal on this sofa, and we’re very happy with it. We’ve had it for almost two months now, and it’s been wonderful to have enough room for BOTH of us to be able to lay down and watch a movie together.

The next few posts will just be some photos of the projects or purchases we’ve made and maybe a short blurb if that. I feel that the pictures are way more exciting to look at when I look at blogs when it comes to decor and DIY and house projects. So let me know what you think.

Plugging away

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:34:00 +0000

We’ve been very busy working on projects around the house before the cold weather hits. We also recently made our first huge meat purchase and went in on 1/4 of a cow from northern Ohio, so we’re very excited to have meat so that we’re stocked up for the winter. While we can’t own animals to farm on the lot that we currently own, we are going to grow more vegetables next year and purchase the greenhouse that we had wanted. We finally got to go and see the materials used in it last week, but we’re going to make the purchase in the spring.

We also made another huge decision that I’m going to reveal here in a few days.

White picket fence

admin — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:07:44 +0000

So a while ago we put up a fence to keep the dog in, and granted it’s purpose was just that, to keep the dog in the yard. It wasn’t pretty. Believe me, it was ugly. We replaced it the front portion once, and it was done incorrectly. We were told how to do it instead of looking it up and verifying the information, and so we found out that it was done wrong. We learning our lesson, and we purchased all new materials to do it again. Steve and a few buddies finished the project a few months ago, but I finally got around to painting the fence a few weeks ago. I really probably will only get to the front part, because the cold has already hit. It looks great, and I can’t wait for us to be able to do the rest of the fence. Sadly, it will have to wait until next year though. Here is how it looks right now, and I’ll post my ideas for landscaping next spring (which is why we moved it back).

Oh, you may also be wondering why we have a huge pillar in our fence. This is something Steve, and I went back and forth on. I think Steve will end up winning on this one. I wanted him to cut it, so that it would be even with the taller fence to the right. Then I would put a nail in the front, and we could hang a sign from it or put a bird house on top. As this has not happened yet. It’s slowly turning into one of those, “April, can I please just cut it down?” things. So we will see. I’m still brain storming. What are your thoughts? Is it tacky? I know it’s tacky with NOTHING on it, but what about the IDEA? Is that stupid, too? Hmm…..