And just like we did for her two previous birthdays, we marked the end of another 12 months by customizing the fabric backdrop for her photo project. You might remember that this tradition started on her first birthday, when we used my handwriting to create a pattern that we printed on fabric using Spoonflower (here’s how we did that).

Spoonflower came to the rescue again last year, but we took advantage of Clara’s artistic abilities and converted one of her scribbles into the fabric that time (here’s how we did that).

Last year’s fabric turned out a bit fainter than we would’ve preferred, so this year we knew we wanted to (a) involve Clara again and (b) make sure it came out bold and colorful. So we decided to just unleash Clara on the fabric itself…

Since it promised to be a messy project (if all went as hoped!) we headed to the new house where there were lots of big, not-too-precious spaces (like the deck) and taped down a drop cloth. Then we taped the cotton fabric down right in the middle of it.

For the paints we went with these little pots of Crayola Kids’ Paint (from Target) because it’s what Clara’s used to and it’s washable and non-toxic. We contemplated using some sort of fabric paint so her masterpiece could be preserved, but ultimately these kid-friendly paints were better suited to the free reign we were able to give our budding 3-year-old.

She chose pink first and basically just went to town pouring it right out of the bottle and smearing it with a foam brush.

Here’s a quick video of our painter in action.

She even added some hand prints and footprints. They’re our favorite.

It took about 30 minutes or so for her to fill the whole two yards of fabric with paint splotches. Right as we were wrapping up we got the idea to let her paint her shirt, right where we typically would photoshop the circle with her age on it. We figured why not give into the theme, right?

So with the paint still wet and Clara still a mess, we dragged the whole drop cloth over to the side of the house where we could tape it up to create a spot to shoot her photo.

Despite being dangerously close to losing all light (and losing the patience of a girl who was so far doing a very good job listening) we managed to snag this shot at the start of a jump. Jumping is kind of her default motion these days, so it was perfect. You can read how we add the number to her shirt in photoshop here.

We also caught a bunch of pretty hilarious outtakes, which you can browse over on Young House Life today. Sherry calls this her Stomp The Yard pose.

And with that folks, we’re calling it a wrap on her monthly pictures. I know it would be fun to keep them going, but we think she has started to outgrow enjoying them (read: it’s becoming more challenging to convince her it’ll be more exciting than doing whatever else she’s doing). So rather than force it, we’ll use this as a natural stopping point – although we’d still love to break out a new fabric for each birthday – and maybe even for her half birthday – depending how she feels.

The 25 pictures above are the ones that we took between age 1 and age 3, and the 52 weekly photos that we snapped during her first year are below. You can see all 77 of them at full size over here.

Oh and speaking of photo traditions – Clara’s also lucky enough to have spent all of her birthdays (including her actual birth date) with three of her grandparents. Our favorite thing about studying those photos is noticing than each adult re-wears the same shirt at least once.

Is anyone else out there making their own fabric? Wrapping up a photo project? Letting your kid loose with little pots of paint? Happy weekend everyone!

As for where to get it, first we looked on craigslist to see if anyone had a large quantity of something in the right tone/amount (no dice) and then we headed to Lumber Liquidators, since we’ve had luck with them when it came to buying hardwood floors for half of our first house back in 2007 and it’s also where we got the cork flooring for our kitchen in 2011. They always have a ton of selection, and tend to have lots in stock along with all of the underlayment & tools in one place, so they’re pretty much a one stop shop for us now that it’s our third time to the flooring rodeo.

Clara walked right in and made herself comfortable (the girl’s right at home on wood flooring, what can I say?) and we had a look around.

She also had some fun on the tiny set of display stairs. According to the guys who work there every kid who enters the store does that as some sort of unspoken toddler rite of passage.

We ended up grabbing six different samples to hold up against the stairs to see which one would be the best match (we tackled this “sampling phase” right before ripping out all of that nasty upstairs carpeting). Since the sun was setting, we waited until the next morning to take them to the new house so we could judge them in natural light.

We decided to try stripping the carpet off of just the top stair so we could be sure the wood under there was still in good shape (if it was completely damaged we’d have to refinish them, which would mean that we could be less careful about picking a matching wood tone for the upstairs). Thankfully the floor under the runner was in great shape (after we pulled about a hundred staples out by hand) and we loved the medium brown tone (not too yellow, not too dark, not too light). Basically it’s the Goldilocks of hard wood.

For a bit more on why we love not-too-dark-not-too-light-not-too-yellow-not-too-red-toned oak, it’s probably 50% personal preference (some people love it redder or more golden) and 50% practical (if you go too dark with hardwoods we hear that every spec of dust and pet hair can be seen, and if you go too light we’ve heard that wear and tear is also easier to spot since it’s such a light surface). And since we had practically the same tone of oak hardwoods in our first house for years (and it worked well for us – we loved how it looked with our furniture, etc) that ended up swaying us.

Can you tell from this bad iPhone picture of all the samples (sorry!) which one works the best with the stairs?

Yup, it’s the bottom left guy. He was the only one in almost exactly the same color and with the same variety of grain (some dark grain and some light grain). It was also the same thickness (2 1/4″) as the hardwood downstairs. So although we loved some of the wider board options, it felt true to our house and nice and cohesive to go with the one that was the right color, had the right amount of wood grain, and was the same width as the rest of the wood flooring in the house.

It took everything in us not to keep going down each step with the crowbar and the pliers, stripping that stained old carpet as we went. But we knew we had a date with the carpeting upstairs (it’s more important to rip that out and lay the new hardwoods before we move than it is to get it off the stairs, which can be done at any time). In the bad news department, that top step took us about 20 minutes to wrestle free (which means we have about three hours worth of work in our future). But stair runner, you have been warned. We’ll be back.

So after judging those samples in the nice natural light of the morning, we returned to Lumber Liquidators a day after our first trip to officially put in our order. We were armed with the square footage for all of the areas we needed to do, so now that we had picked our Hardwood Bachelor (he accepted our rose and everything), it was pretty straightforward.

Here’s a close up of our winner winner chicken dinner. It’s called Lono Oak and it’s a solid wood floor (it’s not engineered, and it’s 3/4″ thick so it can be refinished many times) and it comes with a 25 year warranty. Most hardwood flooring is in the $4-7-ish range, but LL’s list price was $3.69 per square foot.

Here’s where I smiled sweetly and asked my favorite negotiating question, which is “what’s your best price?” Then you just stand there. Resist the urge to mumble “uh, not that I’m trying to be tough” or “I’m sorry, forget it” Just stand there in silence and wait to see what they say. If they can come down, they’ll tell you. And if they can’t they’ll say they can’t and you can smile and say “just had to ask.” John hates this step, so it’s always my job. And before I threw out my favorite line, I also mentioned how this was our third big order from them so we’re definitely loyal repeat customers.

Boom: 10% off our entire order for those two sentences. So that took the price per square foot down to $3.29 and also scored us 10% off other things we grabbed like a special type of underlayment to work with our subfloor (more on that when we get to the installation process). Speaking of installing it, we’re going to attempt to do it all ourselves, and we better get started soon if we hope to move in 2.5 weeks! Plus we want to paint all of the blue/mauve trim (and maybe even the doors?) while the carpet’s out but before the floor goes down. So… yeah. Tick tock, Petersiks.

Meanwhile Clara was busy spicing up their brochure displays…

We left feeling pretty excited about our big upstairs flooring overhaul. Especially since we asked how much it would cost to hire their guys to install all the flooring and they said it would be around four thousand bucks! So assuming we can do it (knock on hardwood) it’ll definitely add up to some serious money saved.

So our hardwoods are ordered and we have a whole mess of blue trim to paint. We’d like to buy a paint sprayer and try our hand at that, so we’ll keep you posted. Should be interesting…

• This “Splatter Stacks” print from Hoot Design Co. Because books make me happy.
• Shades of Light‘s dhurrie rugs, like this honeycomb guy that comes in five colors.
• Our pal Dusty’s DIY backsplash install as featured on The Tile Shop‘s homepage.
• This “Ava” bed frame from a Southwest inspired  Joss & Main sale.

• Kendra Scott‘s statement necklaces, like this Valora piece in matte green.
• Entryway monogram vinyl decals from WallQuotes. This one’s for Burger.
• This office-ready paper clip inspired key hook rail from Liberty Hardware.
• Jewelry for every occasion from Lisa Leonard, like this true friend necklace.

• Custom growth charts from Urban Tickle. I, of course, like the one with the bikes.
• Fish Window Cleaning services (clean windows = more spring sunshine).
• The feline reference on the Naked Binders website that literally made me LOL.
• Royal Design Studio‘s new Bonnie Christine stencils, like this herringbone one.

• Speaking of herringbone – Cozamia‘s Wild Herringbone print rocks our socks.
• This cool vintage postcard from Ruby Lane, featuring flowers framing the US Capitol.
• Freshline Illustration‘s cheeky nursery print that can be customized too.
• These stellar house notecards from 1 Canoe 2. I kinda wanna live in them.

• Smock Paper‘s earth friendly printing methods that produce pretty cards like this one.
• Keeping up with the charm-tastic inspiration on the Heart & Stone Jewelry blog.
• The crisp line drawings available at A Vintage Poster, like this brass trumpet.
• Mirror Mate‘s Pinterest page, especially the board of blogger bathroom makeovers.

• Audrey + Gem‘s colorful watercolor animals for nurseries (including a Clara worm!)
• Food & leftover minimizing meal planning for two from Couple Supper.
• This summer ready woven bag from Red Barn Mercantile. Bring on the beach…
• And a hint for Monday’s Giveaway, which will be $500 strong!

Here are the details on those DISCOUNTS:

• Shades of Light: 10% off with the code YHL0811
• WallQuotes.com: 15% off with the code YHL15
• The Tile Shop: 10% off when you use the code YHL10
• One Canoe Two: 10% off with code YHL10
• Heart & Stone Jewelry: 10% off with the code YHL10
• Royal Design Studio: 10% off stencils with code YHL10
• Freshline Illustration: 25% off with code YHL25
• Urban Tickle: 10% off with code YHOUSE10
• Audrey + Gem: 10% off with code YHL10
• Hoot Design Co: 10% off with code YHL

* None of the products or services shown above were provided to us for review or for free (check out our no-swag policy here).

The funny thing is that when we shared a video tour of the new house, some people said “wow, the new house seems so much bigger!” and some other people said “wow, your new house seems so much smaller!” so that was interesting to us. I think it’s hard to judge room size without furniture, so since the new house is empty – and covered in blue trim and wallpaper – it might be throwing people off. In reality the new house and the current house are almost exactly the same square footage (there’s literally only a 20 square foot difference). The new house just looks a lot bigger from the outside since there’s a visible second story instead of a hidden 1000 square foot addition off the back of the house that you can’t see from the street.

As for a few first thoughts about what we’d like to do to alter the actual footprint…

• we’d love to convert the big triple window in the eat-in part of the kitchen into a big french door that leads out onto the deck

• there are a bunch of doors closing everything off on the first floor (they block the flow between the dining room and kitchen, the kitchen and foyer, etc) so we’ll be taking those down to open things up

• the wall between the living room and the kitchen will come down, but we’d love some built in bookcases on each side with a large centered opening (sort of like the built-ins in our current dining room but perhaps with glass doors and lighting)

• we’re planning to fully renovate the chopped up bathroom and sink nook in our master so they’re all one space with a nice big double sink and a soaker tub

• someday we’d love to fully finish the unfinished storage space at the end of the hallway (right now it’s just a raw space full of exposed beams and ducts, but maybe down the line we can floor it and drywall it to create a movie room/bunk room for Clara, potential Bean #2, and their friends when they’re older) Update: due to lots of questions, I wanted to clarify the stairs you see in the unfinished storage space – those lead to the attic, but the area labeled as “unfinished storage” is on the same floor as the bedrooms (no walking up or down to get to it).

This video tour of the new house will probably make more sense out of those bullets, and of course we have a bunch of other stuff banging around in our heads (we change our minds every minute) so we’ll be back with a big ol’ List O’ Planz for all the items on the agenda. Get ready guys, we might break 3,000 words with that baby. Oh wait, we forgot measurements! Here’s an extremely approximated rundown for ya (tape measure + three year old = immediate mayhem).

• Foyer: 9.5 x 8′
• Office: 16 x 13′
• Dining Room: 13.5 x 13′
• Kitchen: 21 x 11′
• Hall Bath: 4.5 x 5′
• Living Room: 20 x 13.5′
• Sunroom: 18 x 12′
• Master Bedroom: 13.5 x 19′
• Master Bath + Sink Nook (since we hope to combine ‘em down the line): 8.5 x 7′
• Possible Future Nursery: 11.5 x 13.5′
• Clara’s Room: 13.5 x 12.5′
• Hall Bath: 8.5 x 7′
• Guest Room: 13.5 x 11′
• Laundry Nook: 3 x 7′
• Unfinished Storage (with exposed beams, ducts, etc): 17 x 19.5′

Ever made a floor plan? Ever been so excited to have stairs? Tell $herdog all about it.

When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas.

Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were working with. Sadly, there was no hardwood to be found under there, and we were greeted with subfloor. But we’re so glad we made that discovery before buying (we definitely factored that expense into our decision). And after we got over the sadness of not having old hardwoods under there to revive, we got excited about picking out new flooring.

We considered a whole range of things for a while (hardwoods, new wall to wall carpeting, bamboo, tile) and after a lot of thought ended right back at oak hardwoods, since it’s what we had in our first house as well as our current one (even in the bedrooms). We like that we can always toss down an area rug to cozy things up (and since those can change over time it feels a little more flexible than committing to a certain type/color of wall to wall carpet for a decade or two). Plus with a kid and a dog we have just found wood flooring to be easy to keep clean/wipe down/etc.

We also already have oak flooring on the stairs that lead to the second level as well as in the future office, dining room, and living room – so we thought finding some in the same finish and grain would be a nice seamless this-has-always-been-here choice. But before we could bring in some delicious new hardwoods to install ourselves (at least that’s the plan!) we were faced with stripping away all of the aforementioned nasty carpeting in all four bedrooms up there and the hallway… which turned out to be quite the job. Here’s how we got ‘er done.

First we used a mini crowbar to pry back the corner…

With some gentle force it popped right up and we could start to pull it out from that corner.

It definitely wasn’t delicate pulling, more like forceful yanking, but with John working on one corner and me in another we were able to free up enough of it to start rolling it towards the other side of the room (we paused to take this photo, but picture me standing next to John rolling along with him). It’s definitely one of those four-hands-are-better-than-two tasks if possible.

Oh and wear gloves! And long sleeves if you’re smart. We wised up after our forearms got raw from carrying rolls of carpeting down to the garage, where we’re storing it all until we can figure out what to do with it (it’s too gross to donate, so we might need to rent a Bagster or something to get rid of it). Update: thanks for all the info on recycling carpets, cutting them down for curbside pickup, and all the other cheaper/greener alternatives than just trashing them. You guys are geniuses!

Room by room we repeated that process (and down the hallway as well). Pry up the corner, yank yank yank, roll roll roll, and drag that baby down to the garage. In some areas there was so much carpeting that we cut it in half with a box cutter before carrying it down to lighten our load. Then we were left with this lovely blue carpet padding underneath. Which was stapled and nailed down in about a thousand places per room (sadly that’s not an exaggeration).

Just like the carpeting, it could be yanked up, but it left a ton of little staples and nails and tack strips all around the room once it was stripped from the space.

These are tack strips. They run around the perimeter of a room and are thin little shim-like pieces of wood with nails poking up through them (they grab the carpet pad and carpet to hold it in place).

Sometimes you can shove a crowbar under them (this takes borderline brute strength, so your palm is red even with gloves on afterwards) and pop them up all as one piece. The hard thing is that if they’re old and brittle (check) sometimes they splinter as they go, which means instead of slamming a prybar against them to try to get each 2′ long strip up in about 30 seconds, if it splinters a ton it can take five minutes to dig out all of the nails and splintered wood that break apart but are still stuck in the floor. You can see me gracefully (and breathlessly) doing this in the video we made for you about five photos down.

I worked on all of the tack strips in the master bedroom while John did the hallway and the nursery and then I tackled the guest room while John worked on Clara’s room. It probably took us about an hour and a half to get that part done, so one person trying to do that all by themselves might be in it for 3+ hours (probably with some blisters even with gloves on).

Once the tack strips were all up we were faced with the harder part…

… these guys.

They were everywhere and the prybar was of no help since it couldn’t really get under them. At first the only way we could get them up was by hand with a needle nosed pliers. One by one. But after John did Clara’s closet that way and it took over an hour (for one closet!!!) we decided we needed to find an alternative. Thankfully a little googling turned up the idea of a nice heavy duty long-handled floor scraper (we got ours for $25 at Lowe’s) and that was a lot faster! It still took some serious strength, and we both had sore backs, but we were able to get all of the staples up in all four bedrooms and the hallway in about two hours (at the by-hand-with-a-pliers-rate we thought it might take us about two days). Warning: if you have hardwoods, you might not want to use a scraper since it could ding them up, but it’s great for subflooring.

The next day we returned to clean up, using a broom to make piles followed by the shop-vac to suck up all the staples and nails.

You can see in this video how each step of the process went (it shows how to get up those tack strips and staples a little better than still photos can):

Now we have smooth, bare subfloors that are ready for hardwood.

We never thought we’d be so glad to see pure unadulterated pressed wood in our lives!

And now our garage looks like this:

That, my friends, is what progress looks like. Turns out progress looks a lot like stinky rolled up carpeting.

But oh happy day, we’re moving in the right direction!

Any other carpet stripping going on? Are the staples your arch nemeses? Those little buggers were infuriating until we discovered The Amazing Wonder-Scraper! Seriously, my “what superhero power would you have?” answer would now be to have a paint roller on one arm and a floor scraper on another. Never know when you’ll need one…

This week’s randomly selected winner is… Sheilagh (who’s talents lie in “all aspects of art and being crafty!”). Congrats!

One of the most exciting parts of doing a project is getting to share the sweat-inducing results when it’s done. And that’s the idea behind HouseTalent, a free site where you can easily upload before pics, progress shots, and after photos of the DIYs that are going on in your digs. The friendly interface makes browsing other peoples’ accomplishments just as easy as uploading your own inspiration – from small furniture builds to major room overhauls. And to help you get some of your projects ready to share, HouseTalent is giving away a $250 gift card to World Market this week. Speaking of the world, this giveaway is available internationally – so if World Market doesn’t ship to you, you can select a local alternative for your gift card.

• PRIZE: $250 gift card to World Market courtesy of HouseTalent (or an equivalent store if the winner is international)
• TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M TALENTED” and tell us…
• BONUS QUESTION: … what’s your special talent? Do you sing or play a musical instrument? Do you have a photographic memory that wows all of your friends? Or can you wiggle your ears?
• NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
• PRIZE SHIPS: This giveaway ships anywhere in the world!
• GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, May 15th or at 10,000 entries (whichever comes first)
• USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winners will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday for the announcement of our winners. Good luck…
• ***COMMENT ISSUES? If you’re trying to enter but keep getting a “duplicate comment” warning, click here to see how to solve it!

Note: We aren’t paid or perked for hosting these giveaways, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQ page for more info. Pics courtesy of HouseTalent.

(I’ll pause while Sherry flails around since that sentence is a trigger).

And now that we’re through the inspection & the appraisal (and the closing date is officially on the calendar), we’re finally at the point that we feel safe enough to shout it to the interwebs (we waited until this point to share the “we sold our house” news last time too). Of course nothing’s guaranteed until we’re all signing on the dotted line in early June, but so far, so good…

First, some background: Sherry was set on selling our house FSBO (For Sale By Owner) again. She argued that we stood to save nearly ten grand – or even more – by not owing a Realtor the 6% commission. Even if we sold to a buyer with an agent (like we did last time) we’d only be out 3% instead of 6%… so the numbers were pretty compelling. But I still wasn’t so sure. I remembered the stress that we felt last time and was also curious to experience selling with an agent. We came to a compromise. We decided we’d try straight up FSBO for a week. If that didn’t work, we’d list it on MLS for a few hundred bucks ourselves (which is what got us a buyer last time) and if there still weren’t offers a few weeks later, we’d think about engaging a Realtor.

Now for the timeline details:

Friday, April 26: The Realtor who helped us buy our new house (Anne) checks in to see if our current house is on the market yet (she knew we were hoping to sell it sometime this spring). Turns out she has some buyers looking for a ranch and she thinks ours would be perfect. We tell her that we’ll be sharing the news/putting it on the market in four days. She says she’ll call us back if they want to see it then. This is a reenactment. And it makes Sherry cry laugh. 

Saturday & Sunday, April 27 & 28: We spend the weekend furiously getting last minute projects done, on the off chance that we get any quick interest (we’ll write up a whole post about what we did to “stage” our house for a showing soon).

Now here’s where the days become a bit more action-packed…

Monday, April 29

• 2 pm: Anne the Realtor calls. Her buyers are very excited about seeing our house. She wants to bring them by the next day at 2pm. Yikes!
• 2:30 pm: Come down from the high of our first scheduled showing to realize we haven’t made a flyer or decided on a sale price. Uhh…. better get on that.
• 3 pm: Begin frantically cleaning the house. Since when did Clara have so many toys? And where would we be without storage ottomans?

• 9:30 pm: After some scrambling and looking at comparable homes for sale, we pick a list price and throw together a flyer.
• 12:30 am: Computer freezes while attempting to print flyer. File is lost. Too tired to recreate.

Tuesday, April 30

• 7 am: Up early-ish to recreate flyer and proofread our post with the new house news.
• 9 am: Flyer is printed. House still doesn’t look clean enough. More cleaning commences.
• 10 am: Post is up and comments are rolling in faster than we can keep up with them, but the caulk around the tub is too grimy. Where’s the caulk gun?
• 1:30 pm: House is looking presentable, but we’re a sweaty mess. Good thing Anne the Realtor will be doing the showing.

• 1:45 pm: Anne arrives early (as planned) for us to show her some of the improvements since she last visited.
• 1:55 pm: Buyers are early (not as planned) so we high-tail it out of there so they can look around without us hovering.
• 2 pm: Since we have Burger with us as well as Clara, we kill time at a nearby dog-friendly walking mall. We have some fun browsing places like Banana Republic (where Clara and Burger try out the three way mirror) and Build-A-Bear (without actually building a bear, which is a parental coup if we’ve ever had one).

• 3 pm: It’s a full hour later – and Clara’s naptime – but we haven’t received a call from Anne that we’re clear to come home. We try giving her a ring but our call goes to voicemail.
• 3:15 pm: Clara’s late for her nap and she’s getting tired of being at the mall. We assume Anne forgot to call us and drive home.
• 3:30 pm: We turn onto our street to see Anne and the buyers just getting into their cars. Wow. An hour and a half at a first showing seems pretty good. Maybe they liked it!
• 3:31 pm: Anne calls to say they really liked it and they were going to sleep on it, crunch some numbers, and get back to us.
• 4 pm: We’re excited and relieved, but have tons of comments to catch up on. Plus, we’ve had a few other house-interest emails from locals. We’re a pretty even mix of grateful, tired, and nervous.
• 8pm: We’ve sent out a few other flyers via email and have scheduled another showing for 11am the next morning. How did this house get so messy already? Oh yeah, our three year old…
• Midnight: House is reasonably clean again. We crash for the day.

Wednesday, May 1

• 5 am: Sherry can’t sleep thinking about all of the new house projects and potential buyer excitement. She begins drafting a Q&A post for you guys.
• 5:30am: I get up to go to the gym before the girls wake up. Clearly I missed Sherry rolling out of bed already.
• 7:30am: I’m back. Clara’s up. Time to get her fed and ready to go on an adventure with Grammy.
• 10am: Post is up. Clara’s with Grammy. Counters need wiping down post-breakfast. House is ready for its second showing.
• 11am: Potential buyers show up with their agent. Sherry, Burger, and I go for a walk (pretend this is a picture of Sherry, me, and Burger instead of a shot with Clara and no Sherry).

• 11:30am: Get a call from someone that we sent a flyer to last night while we’re out on our walk. They want to come see the house that afternoon. Woo hoo!
• Noon: Second showing is done. Agent says they liked it a lot, and have to talk to their lender with some questions. I let the agent know there’s another interested buyer but that no offers have come in yet.
• 2:30pm: Clara is back from Grammy’s and the third potential buyers show up. They don’t have an agent, so I show them around the house while the girls go walking with Burger. Sherry’s getting lots of exercise today!

• 3pm: Third showing is done. They seem to like it, but don’t appear as interested as the other two families.
• 3:30pm: Anne the Realtor calls. She’s sending us an offer from the first couple who walked through our house yesterday. It’s strong, but $5k below our asking price. “Thanks so much! We’ll get back to you soon!” is our response (while we sweat profusely).
• 4pm: We think things through and discuss everything a few dozen times. I call the buyer’s agent from the morning showing just to let him know that we have an offer on the table. He asks me to hold tight, they’ll have one for us within a few hours. Whaaa?!!!
• 7pm: Second offer comes in. It’s not as strong as the first. Bummer, but at least it helps make the decision clear. We call Anne back, tell her we have another offer, and ask if we can meet in the middle on the price ($3k above their offer, which is just $2k below our asking price).
• 7:15pm: Anne calls to say that the buyers have agreed to the new price and she’ll be bringing over papers for us to sign in an hour!
• 8:30pm: We sign about twenty papers with our minds spinning. Our house is officially under contract! And it’s less than 36 hours after our first showing. In our heads we’re doing a celebratory Elaine-from-Seinfeld dance, but in reality we’re too tired to move.

Now we just have a bunch of little things to check off of our list (a few inspection items, ordering a final termite inspection, and of course packing things up and getting moved into the new house). Should be a busy month!

I can’t tell you how grateful and relieved we are at how quickly and smoothly this second FSBO process has been so far (just like last time we’ll pay 3% to the buyer’s agent, but we saved nearly 10K by marketing the house ourselves and acting as our own seller’s agent). We hear the market is really coming back and it’s a great time to sell, so for anyone wondering, many other homes in our area seem to be getting contracts within a week or even a few days of listing them assuming they’re priced right and show nicely. So hopefully that’s good news for everyone!

We assumed we might end up selling our house to a reader who came to us through the blog, but hilariously enough, just like when we sold our first house, our buyer isn’t a blog reader and didn’t find out about our house because of our site at all. It was just coincidence (serendipity?) that we kept our Realtor in the loop and she happened to have a buyer looking for an updated one-level ranch like ours. So it might also be nice to hear that you definitely don’t need a blog to sell your house, although I’m sure the updates that we did certainly helped us sell it.

So far this experience feels like a stark contrast to our first time selling a home back in 2010. That took us 14 showings over more than 3 weeks, and a variety of promotional attempts (craigslist, forsalebyowner.com, MLS, a sign out front, etc). It was stressful, but even then we were grateful that it didn’t drag on for months. So we certainly are counting our lucky stars for the speed at which things happened with this house! As of right now we’re planning to move to our new house in around three weeks. Holy cow, we better start packing!

Happy Friday y’all! We have some interesting house guests today (we’ll instagram/Facebook a sneak peek as soon as we get the ok) so we thought we’d have some Friday fun over here. We used to make at least one mood board each week and we’d get your thoughts every Friday with Burning Questions (little home-related “would you rather…” polls) but somehow over the years our smorgasbord approach narrowed and before we knew it things were feeling pretty our-house focused. Which is why one of our blogiversary goals was to get back to the variety that we used to have so much fun with (goal #2) and to include “more of you” (goal #4). So we thought this feature would be a fun way to highlight some cool mood-board-worthy stuff while getting your take.

So here’s the big question: if someone slapped $460 into your hand, would you go for this big statement making armchair or this collection of lower priced items and accessories?

The splurge source: This armchair.

The spread sources: This bedding, this pineapple vase, this candle, this mirror, this bath mat, this accent chair, these hanging glass terrariums, and these artichoke printed napkins.

I can totally see arguments for each side, so I can’t wait to see which way you guys go! And feel free to elaborate in the comments.

Remember back when we debated painting the siding on the front porch way back here in fall 2011? Hence the creepy Halloween wreath on the door.

We had picked a color and everything (Flagstone by Martha Stewart – the one on the right in the photo above) but before we got around to doing it, the temperatures dropped too much to paint. Then the test swatches – which lived on our porch for several months (sorry neighbors) got painted over when it was time to shoot book photos out there. The project literally became out of sight, and out of mind.

Then we redid the columns. And when we did a few of you guys were all “wait, weren’t you going to paint the siding out there? what happened?” and we were all “oops, yeah, that never happened.” And then we added the pergola and a few window boxes and our paint-that-siding hankering returned. Initially we worried that painting just the porch siding would be weird without doing all the other siding on the side/back, but after rethinking it we decided it would be fine since the cream color of the other siding is still in the porch trim, so it all ties in.

So although you could literally describe us as being on the fence about this project since 2011, in the end we just didn’t want to leave without going for it. Especially because we thought the trim, columns, and that happy yellow door would pop a lot more from the street. And let’s face it, we’re going to be doing a lot of drive bys just to wave at her once she’s not ours anymore. #totallynormal

So out came the paintbrush and roller. We had already bought the paint way back when we settled on the color in 2011 (Flagstone by Martha Stewart) so we didn’t need to spend any more loot to make this happen. Update: this is hardboard siding, which is like a wood composite material, so this method might not work on aluminum or vinyl siding.

And believe it or not, we whipped out the entire job (two coats!) during a Clara nap on the same day that we hung the window boxes (we were like little front yard tornadoes running around).

And since the color ties in so well with the mortar in the brick (it’s nearly the same color up close) it’s a nice seamless addition. It helps the door and the trim and the columns feel a bit less flat from the curb, yet it doesn’t make the other cream siding stand out like a sore thumb since that relates to the rest of the trim.

The biggest difference that we notice in person is that the house feels less choppy since that big cream rectangle was a lot more broken up looking than the not-as-light new color. See how the before picture below looks like a house made of a brick box next to a white box next to another brick box and the after picture looks a lot more like one facade instead of three blocks sitting next to each other?

Best of all the yellow door is one heckova happy guy now that he’s next to a slightly deeper tone than that former sea of cream.

Almost makes us forget that the house looked like this during our first walk through back in 2010…

Anyone else painting siding? How did you tackle it? We just used a small foam roller and a brush (John used the roller to get along each length of siding and I used the brush to get into the groves and cut in around the edges). We were both shocked how quickly we got those two coats knocked out.

Hi Sherry and John, We recently finished renovating our kitchen. The challenge was creating a kosher kitchen (two sinks and separate spaces for meat and dairy) while keeping it looking clean and uncluttered and keeping the cost down. The original kitchen was beige-on-beige laminate with very little counter space.

The only thing that wasn’t torn out was the window above the sink! The wall between the dining room and kitchen was removed, the dinette area was deleted, and that’s where the breakfast bar now sits. The large picture window was made shorter to accommodate the long counter with a second sink.

This kitchen is all about contrasts… white upper cabinets and dark gray bottom cabinets, a rough reclaimed wood dining table and shimmery capiz lighting fixture, sleek white counter tops and a dark limestone tile backsplash.

The cabinets are shaker style Diamond cabinets from Lowe’s (I’m thrilled with the quality). The brass pulls are Martha Stewart for Home Depot and the counters are quartz. Light fixtures over the breakfast bar and sink are from Schoolhouse Electric. The natural light that pours into the kitchen most of the day is awesome although I still need window treatments–I’m thinking of roman shades.

The new pantry sits where the original refrigerator used to be.

There are also two “sides” flanking the stove–one for meat the other side for dairy.

Here’s one of my favorite things–I found the idea on Pinterest.

It was totally worth the months of plaster dust and living with no sink or stove for a while.  Our new kitchen is not only beautiful but a pleasure to cook in and I feel blessed to be able to work in it everyday. Thank you, Rita

No, thank YOU Rita! Because in addition to that awesome cabinet color combo, you have actually made me – a dude who likes power washing – appreciate gold hardware. And Sherry’s pretty much in love with everything, but the gold fixture over the sink (speaking of which, you can read all of the full sources on her blog) did her in. Thanks again for sharing your kitchen! What do you guys think? Got a favorite part? Who’s digging the secret TV?