Making Room

Brain Food

2013-02-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

I took last week off (going from zero posts to two posts per week = a challenge) but I'm back! I had a great meeting with Leigh on Monday where we went over my proposal outline. She gave me the 'green light' to start writing and boosted my confidence that I have excellent mastery of the literature and that she thinks writing this time around will be a breeze! I left the meeting feeling great and motivated to keep moving forward.

Here's a picture of my lunch today...brain food! Alex has class tonight, so when I get home from clients I'm going to dive into writing until he gets home. Here we go!

We're hanging out in the basement!

2013-02-03T17:22:00.003-05:00

There is definitely still work to be done, but let's just take a look at these photos of progress!

shelves are back up in the laundry room!

Alex helped me move in the shelves last Monday and I worked all that night to fill them up with what we'd been storing in the old guest room. It feels so good to have the room back and functional!

the cabinet under the TV has been primed!

This cabinet used to be a baby blue color (you might still be able to see some of the blue through the primer) and it's really the last of the previous owners' paint choices that we have in the house--except the future nursery! We've been meaning to paint it since we moved it, but it always seemed low on the priority list. Now that the basement is really coming together and we have all the painting stuff out anyway, we figured we'd finally tackle the project. It'll need at least another coat of primer and then probably two coats of bright white paint but this is progress!

the plastic that was covering the bar is down and everything is clean of concrete dust!

This picture is amazing. Amazing, I tell you! This is the bar that Alex built right before we had the french drains installed (major timing fail, but it's what happened). So it's been covered up since practically Halloween and absolutely everything was covered in concrete dust. We wiped down the couch and chairs, the counters, the walls, and all the bottles. There were a few science experiments in the small refrigerator, but nothing too gross. You can also see in this picture the flooring that we started along the hallway and in the bar area; this is the flooring that will continue into the new guest room (you can see the the boxes are ready to go!). Last night we went out to dinner and when we came back, we just had to come back down and take a look at the progress. Alex put the ottoman and the chair on the floor and we sat on the couch, right there in the middle of the room, and just looked around. He made us a cocktail (or two...) and we told stories of all the work we'd done in the basement and the rest of the house. The pups even came down with us and curled up on the couch too. It was really, really nice to hang out in a part of the house that as basically been a construction zone for so long. I'm so grateful that he's so hardworking, motivated, and handy, and that he takes such pride in creating a home for us that is personal and safe (and dry!).

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everyone! We'll be hanging out in our basement by the bar, exactly where we should be :)

Moving right along

2013-01-31T19:44:00.001-05:00

I waited to post my dissertation update until today because I had my meeting with Leigh this afternoon. After our meeting last week, she had spent some time thinking about the variables I had presented and how they might become a research study. I really appreciated that her first priority was helping me discover a study that my future employer would value--since I don't want a career in academe, my dissertation needs to give me cache with agencies and departments that serve military families. I could tell she had really thought about things, and that made me feel valued.

After some back and forth together, this is what we've landed on:

How is the relationship between post-deployment stressors (including the problems at home during the previous deployment, the service member's adjustment to the return, and whether he returned from a combat zone or was wounded or is expecting redeployment) and spouse adjustment (including her depression, adjustment to the return, and marital satisfaction) influenced by resources and supports provided by the military (including counseling, support groups, and informational briefings)? Are certain resources more or less related to positive outcomes, accounting for the characteristics of the deployment? Does the time since the last deployment (0-6 months vs 7-12 months vs 13-18 months) matter?

So, this is a study of moderation and since I have several variables, there will be lots of potential interactions. First, I'll test the relationship between the predictor (post-deployment stressors) and the outcome (spouse adjustment) and I hypothesize that the more risks/worse off the post-deployment experience, the worse the spouse is going to be doing. Then, I'll test the relationship between the moderator (military-provided resources) and the outcome (spouse adjustment) and I hypothesize that the more military provided resources she accesses, the better off the spouse will be doing. Finally, I will test the interaction of the predictor and the moderator (post-deployment stressors x military-provided resources) on the outcome (spouse adjustment) and I predict that more resources will reduce the influence of post-deployment stressors on spouse adjustment. Of course, it all gets more complicated than that because I have more than one indicator for each concept (3 different measurements of post-deployment stressors, for example).

But I am JAZZED! It was a great meeting and I'm ready to really get to work. My tasks for this weekend are to come up with an outline of my proposal, with all my section headings and subsection headings. This outline will be indicative of the story that I'm going tell, how I'm going to link the concepts so that readers conclude that the only logical way to investigate the gaps in current knowledge are through my study! I also have to determine the theory that helps me explain why I think military-provided resources will influence the relationship between post-deployment stressors and spouses' adjustment. I'm going to give what I write this weekend to Leigh on Monday and the ball is back in her court!

Thanks ROW80 for the kick-in-the-pants to get going on this project. Writing this post and actually typing out those questions and the interactions...they really are priming me for a full, productive day of work tomorrow! I'm thrilled to be part of this supportive community :)

Progress in the Laundry Room!

2013-01-28T09:34:00.001-05:00

We've made some good progress in the basement this week/weekend--the new guest room floor has been sealed, leveled with leveling cement, and one coat of trim paint on the baseboards. Now we're just waiting for the new concrete to fully set before the engineered hardwood goes down (hopefully next weekend's project) and we picked out a really cool tile option for the backdoor landing that I can't wait to share with you. Plus, the old carpet was pulled up on the stairs, all the tacks removed, and the baseboards along the stairway painted twice. I actually walked down the inside stairs this morning, instead of our outside stairs like we've been doing since November. Amazing! And as for the laundry room...look!

view from the hallway (the openings on the left go into the utility closet)

view from the middle of the room (the hallway door is to the left of the washer)

It may not look like much, but this room has come a long way. All the exterior walls were demoed, then cleaned, then insulated, then new drywall, then all the drywall work on the seams and corners, then all the exposed rafters/duct work/wiring in the ceiling were cleaned and vacuumed, then two coats of primer, then 2 coats of paint...and now, just this weekend, Alex has stained the floor with two coats of concrete paint. We love how the rich chocolate brown color ties in the butcher block counter and the wood cabinets above the laundry area. And then this time we also decided to seal the floor with a high gloss concrete sealer (you can see the nice sheen in the first picture). This protective coating (2 coats of it!) will keep the floor from getting banged up over time. We need it to dry for the rest of the day (I shouldn't have walked on it to take these pictures) and then tonight while Alex is in class I'm going to move the shelves back in and fill them up with all the things we've been storing in our upstairs spare room (and the future dining room-- you can't imagine how excited I am to get working on that space!). I'll definitely take lots of in-progress pictures tonight of the laundry room and maybe even post again!

Things are really, really coming together!

We're a GO!

2013-01-24T19:35:00.001-05:00

My meeting with Leigh on Wednesday was a great success---we're a go!! Here's what I'd come up with the week before:

The 2010 MFLP data is worth using for four reasons:

it's from 2010 (whereas most recently published studies on military couples are analyzing data from 2003-2006 and deployments are different now than even 5 years ago),
it's a large sample of spouses (unless the study is of medical record data, where the Ns are in the hundreds of thousands, sample sizes are generally between 100 and 1,000),
its questions cover a broad spectrum of issues that face military families and this breadth will address a gap in the literature that while we are gaining understanding about specific associations, we still know very little about the "big picture" of risk and resilience in the face of multiple deployments,
and most importantly, I HAVE THE DATA!

Leigh loved it :) I had typed and then cut into movable pieces my different "clusters" of variables, like demographic information, current reunification experiences, military life characteristics, coping and resources...and we moved them around on her desk as we talked about how they might be combined into an analysis model. It was a quick meeting, only about 30 minutes, but I walked into it and out of it feeling confident and knowledgeable and on the right track. It was SO great to have those feelings confirmed and to know that we're moving forward on the project with the data that I already have.

Our next meeting will be late next week after she's had some more time to process my new direction. In the meantime, I'm going to comb back through my literature and reorganize it into the new conceptual variable "clusters" so that when the time comes for writing (soon! soon!), I'll be ready.

So. When people ask me now what I'm writing my dissertation on, I have an answer. I'm going to be analyzing data from female spouses of active duty service members who have recently returned home from a deployment to investigate their levels of risk for negative outcomes (like depression and low marital satisfaction) and to identify what military and social resources (like counseling and family coping style) contribute to their resilience.

Alex and I are off to a concert this weekend (Tegan and Sara!! check out their new album here it's amazing!) then Sunday I have a full day of clients. Work on the basement is moving along too, the concrete laundry room floor has been painted and the baseboards in the new guest room have a coat of trim paint. Things are definitely looking up :)

On being effective

2013-01-20T13:30:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I helped Alex in the basement (as I've said, we call this 'avoidance behavior' in my family). He's about to start classes again for the spring semester, so this was the "last" full weekend of basement work before homework starts. My job was to chisel up all the old flooring and glue in what will become the guestroom in our basement. Here's what I looked like before I started:

Clean and ready to go!

I used an air hammer, which is basically a chisel bit attached to an air compressor. I was on my knees, leaning over the floor and using both hands to push and scrape and guide the chisel as it jack-hammered under the tiles and glue. Today I'm sore in muscles I didn't even know I had, but at the end of the day yesterday, I looked at that pile and felt so good! I started in the morning in one place, and I finished in the evening in another place. That pile of old tile and glue was real proof that I worked hard and accomplished my goal. So often working on my dissertation feels the opposite- I work and work and think and write and at the end of the day I don't have much to "look at". But yesterday, I was effective! I produced a real result through my own sweat and determination. I didn't stop when I was tired, I didn't complain. I just kept chiseling.

My pile of tile, glue, and effectiveness

I'm going to print this picture of me, tired but proud, with my pile of tile and glue and effectiveness. I'm going to tape it to the wall behind my computer at work as a reminder that I can do anything I put my mind to. That I am hardworking. That I am determined to reach my goals.

No progress, feeling stuck

2013-01-16T11:51:00.001-05:00

Since my last check-in, I haven't made any dissertation progress. Another week slips by and nothing to show for it. I didn't even spend time thinking about my question, or my model...nothing.

I'm feeling pretty stuck at the moment. I know I need to dig in and get going on this (I want to graduate! I want to graduate!) but every time the thought enters my head to sit down and work, I come up with something better to do (like work in the basement, which as you could tell from my last post isn't nothing!).

I have a meeting next week on Wednesday with Leigh when I need to present to her my revised question using the 2010 data and my revised analysis model. So I'd better get going! Looking at my calendar, I have time tomorrow, Saturday during the day, and Monday during the day. Hopefully by my check-in next week, I'll have much more to show for myself.

(Tell you all what, though, having to check-in today and tell the world that I haven't made any progress is motivating me to get my act together! This week may have gone by without my working, but now by checking-in about that lack of progress I'm held accountable. Slowly, slowly I'll change my habits!)

French Drains (better late than never)

2013-01-14T09:29:00.003-05:00

Posting a check-in on Sunday is going to be difficult. I work as a couple and family therapist in private practice, and I work most of the day on Sundays seeing clients. Yesterday, before I left for the office, I helped Alex paint in the basement and right when I got home from the office, we left for dinner at my parents' house. No excuses, but I'm realizing that I'll need to work on the Sunday post ahead of time so that I can just upload it.

I'll be better this week. And since I mentioned the basement a few sentences ago, I'll leave everyone with some teaser photographs about where we've been since November of last year with the "basement project"...

Water damage! Seeping under the floors and through the walls for YEARS. Most of the studs in the exterior basement walls were rotted out and the old insulation was full of mold.

So...french drains were installed. And when I say installed, I mean a two foot trench was jack-hammered and scooped out all the way around the basement. Then the pipe and rock were laid, and new concrete was poured. This is the view from the corner of the TV room.

Another view of the trench at the bottom of the stairs.

We should have installed the french drains before Alex laid new flooring and built a bar in part of the basement, but installing them late was better than never. And we've come a LONG way since these photos were taken. I promise this next week I'll do a better job of 1) posting something cohesive and 2) posting it on time!

A timely check-in

2013-01-09T16:56:00.001-05:00

It's timely that I'm supposed to post my first dissertation check-in today, because just this afternoon I received an email update from my data contact at the Pentagon. But before I feel like I can explain what the message said, I think I should walk through the story of how I got to this point. So here's my dissertation story, from where it started through where it is now.

My Ph.D. program is in Family Science, which you can think about as the psychology of families. Our department is housed within a school of public health, which means the coursework and the research is community-focused and has a real sense of contributing to the greater good of our communities in the service of family health and well-being. It's a great program, with great faculty and great opportunities. The program is set up with the first two years as coursework (for me this was fall 2010 through spring 2012). Then, after all course requirements are met, you are eligible to sit for the Qualifying Exam, which is a two week period of intense thinking and writing on three prompts. At the end of the writing period, you have to sit in front of a committee of three faculty (you're not told who they'll be ahead of time) and defend your answers. For me, this happened in the late spring/early summer of 2012. Once you pass (which I did! what an amazing feeling that was), you advance to Candidacy. This designation means you can begin to work on your dissertation.

Being the high-achieving student that I am, I started working on my dissertation even before I passed Quals. I'd started to think about what I wanted to research when I entered the program and the answer was obvious to me: military couples. I also had thought about what I wanted this dissertation to do for me-- did I want it to get me an academic position or did I want it to get me a degree? This answer was also obvious: I wanted to write a great paper, to produce good and meaningful research, but I did not want it to lead me to an academic job. I wanted it to lead me to graduation. Knowing this meant that I'd be doing a secondary data analysis. In other words, that I'd be using data that someone else already collected so that I didn't have to collect it myself. Through a few coursework papers, I'd identified a data set at the Pentagon that met all the requirements: it was large (over 100,000 participants), it was designed to examine the health and well-being of military spouses and their marriages (perfect match for my interests), and it had more than one year of data (which means I could look at how the spouses' health changes over time as they experience deployments). I identified my dissertation chair from within our faculty, Leigh (she was also my thesis chair during my master's degree and we work great together), and she was on board with the idea of a research project that used the Pentagon's longitudinal data on the spouses and their military husbands. The plan was to write my project proposal over the summer and fall of 2012, defend the proposal in the late fall/early winter of 2012, and then graduate by May of 2013.

Everything was going smoothly until it wasn't. The first hitch was that I was denied access to the data on the military husbands. Because they're active duty military and I am not a government employee, I didn't meet the clearance qualifications to get access to the data as soon as I'd need it. The second hitch was that I didn't get the first year of data on just the spouses (the data from the 2010 survey) until early December. When you're using secondary data, it's really essential to have the data in front of you, to know how each question was asked on the survey and then to know how those answers were coded in the data set. Having this information ensures that your research questions and literature reviews are relevant and appropriate to the study you'll actually carry out. I tried to get started on the literature review through out the fall, and actually wrote almost 80 pages of it, but in the end when I sifted through the data in December, I knew I'd have to end up rewriting or restructuring most of it. And even though I'd received the 2010 data, I still didn't have the 2011 data (the next survey year and what would make the project longitudinal). The third hitch just came this afternoon, when I checked my email and found out that I wouldn't be receiving any of the 2011 data after all. Due to a confidentiality audit and data cleaning procedures, the 2011 data wouldn't be ready for release until almost the end of 2013. Since I'm not planning to be in school that long, I won't be waiting for it.

So, that's where my story ends for today. Even though this news is disappointing, it means I can get on with things now. Knowing is better than not knowing! I know I can still write a great paper and produce good research. I'm ready to just be done with school, to graduate this year and do a great job, and then get on with my life. As soon as Leigh gets back from her break, we'll dive in again to tweak my question and analysis plan to adjust for the single year of data and I'll keep moving forward. She'll be back in the office early next week, so hopefully we'll get a chance to meet before my next check-in.

So that's where my story ends for today. Whew! If you're still reading, thanks a million :)

A Round of Words

2013-01-02T10:50:00.002-05:00

(I'm just going to move past the fact that it's been a year and a half since we last used this blog...as we say in my family, "we're looking over it." It's a new year, okay?)

Last night while looking for 'how to sear bay scallops' I came across a recipe on a blog called Pots and Plots. I liked the recipe so clicked around the site a bit and found out the blogger is also a novelist. So I jumped over to her author page and found another link to ROW80, or A Round of Words in 80 Days.

And it was like lightning. I want to revive Making Room and I want to motivate myself to dig in to dissertation writing...could ROW80 marry my two goals?

"ROW80 is the challenge that champions the marriage of writing and real life." (from here)

Perfect!! The first Round of 2013 begins on January 7 and goes through March 28, that's 80 days and about 12 weeks. My goal can my anything that I want, as long as it is measurable and that once I've settled on my goals, I write them up on my blog and link it to the ROW80 Blog. There are check-ins twice a week on Wednesday and Sundays, where I write up a post of my progress and link it back to ROW80. And since my italicized thought above doesn't actually contain goals (as I found out here), I've revised them below:

I am going to post once a week about house projects, house decorating, or something else home and family related. By the end of the first Round, I will have written 12 of these posts. These posts will occur on Sundays, as my Sunday ROW80 check-in.
I am going to post once a week about dissertation progress, what I've accomplished that week, or something else dissertation related. By the end of the first Round, I will have written 12 of these posts. These posts will occur on Wednesdays, as my Wednesday ROW80 check-in.

Now, I realize that participating in ROW80 means I already have to check-in (and since these are my goals, it could seem like a wishy-washy goal), but it's actually perfect for me. Posting about the house on this blog has been something I've wanted to get back to for a while so using the check-ins will keep me accountable. And all the other work that goes in to a house post, like picking the project to feature, taking and organizing photos, and writing it up, will all happen throughout the preceding week. In terms of dissertation progress, right now some of my most important work is just thinking and organizing my literature and tweaking my research design--goals about actually writing would be doing myself a disservice. Those are for Round 2! So right now, just needing to write a post about what I accomplished that week, will keep me accountable and moving forward.

So here I go. My first dissertation post will be Wednesday January 9th, one week from today. Then my first house post will be Sunday January 13th. And since posts are more interesting with photos, here's an in-progress picture of our new desk in our newly painted office! More details to come on Sunday :)

Thank you Google gods for leading me to ROW80 :)

Don't Look Up!

2011-03-18T17:22:00.002-04:00

Up next in the living room was prepping of the ceiling. I really, really dreaded working on the ceiling. I put it off for days and spent inordinate amount of time googling how to do it. Why worry about the ceiling? Why not just prime and paint?

Living Room Before: this is the paint and the Prior's furniture. bleh

Well, like a lot of our house projects, we mostly are fixing the awful DIY attempts by the previous owners (We'll call them "the Priors"). The living room ceiling was one of the worst offenders in the house. The Priors had globbed on the dark puke mint paint and must have done it in the dark late at night. There were whole sections of ceiling missing paint, showing the white primer through the puke. Most of the surface was bumpy, with runny paint stalactites. Other sections were veined with plaster cracks, some feebly ‘fixed’ with smooth spackle juxtaposed with the geologic paint features.

In short, the ceiling needed work. We were planning to paint it a light, off-white color which would inevitably highlight the flaws (actually, it’s the same color we used in the kitchen). My parents had recently skip-trowel plastered their kitchen walls and ceiling, achieving a beautiful, textured, old-world style stucco look. My dad tinted the plaster mix with paint colorant and the project took him weeks to finish. Literally, weeks…

I liked the look and knew it would hide the ceiling flaws, but I only had two days to do the project. Then I came across a slightly different method on the DIY Diva Blog that used a thin coat of pre-mixed joint compound, spread and “skip-troweled” with a 10 or 12 inch mud knife. I convinced my beautiful wife that this would be a great solution to fixing our ceiling. She agreed. However, I doubted my skills and was anxious that I would screw up the ceiling even worse.

Up next, I’ll show you what happened...

Don’t Dodge the Draft, Plug it! Or, a tutorial on how we fixed the gap

2011-03-17T16:29:00.007-04:00

Before we painted the living room, including the trim, we knew that we wanted to do something about the drafty baseboards. We decided not the paint the wood floor-matching quarter-round and figured that this would be the perfect time to fix the drafts.

We really minded the gap

Our house is a typical brick and plaster, 1940s cape-cod. While it was built very solid and with enormous character, the builders didn’t seem to care much about insulation and air sealing. In my masterpiece Paint drawing below, I show side and top views of the exterior walls. The anatomy of these exterior walls consists of brick (red), concrete blocks (gray), 1 inch deep furring strips, half inch of old style gypsum board (we’ll post on this later!), and a quarter inch of plaster (yellow). As far as insulation goes, there really isn’t any. Air comes in through the attic down between the plaster board and the concrete block (between yellow and gray), in between the furring strips and right under the base boards into the room.

Wall diagram of 1940's brick cape cod

We had serious cold drafts in the living room and everywhere else on the main floor. It blew so strongly at times that the curtains would flutter. So, I decided to fix it. I googled and googled and found lots of info on how to seal under the baseboards. I decided to go with Great Stuff Foam, specifically the window and door version that stays flexible after drying. While it's messy, it applies easily, is dry in an hour, and has really done a great job at sealing our house from drafts. In short, I have a dozen cans of Great Stuff on hand in my basement tool stockpile because I love to plug stuff up that much. Really this post might as well just be an unpaid, unsolicited promotion of the foam.

These baseboards definitely needed painting!

I started by using a pry bar to carefully pop off the quarter round without breaking it. By the way, I've got two prybars/demolition bars/man tools in my arsenal, one for delicate projects - Stanley 12-inch Wonder Pry Bar and a big boy for ripping shit up (like walls, projects at impasses, and general destruction), Stanley FatMax Xtreme Utility FuBar. Seriously, it's officially called a Fubar (F*$% stuff up-Bar), but I call it the MAN TOOL and it's for serious business.

Anyway, on to the baseboards... Don't use the man tool here, unless you plan on replacing, well, the baseboards, walls and floor. I used the regular prybar for this job and occasionally a razor to cut sloppy paint. As I planned on reusing the quarter round to save dough, I needed to figure out a way to keep track of where each piece went. So, on painter’s tape, I made numbered labels and labeled each section of quarter round with a number, going all the way around the room.

Quarter round pieces removed and labeled

Painter's tape to protect the floor. Look at those minty walls, yuck!

To keep from messing up the hardwoods, I ran 2 inch wide painters tape on the floor about half inch from the baseboard. We vacuumed the gap and proceeded to foam fill the gap on all the external walls. Around the air return ducts we filled the gaps outside the duct.

Push the straw in deep in the wall, spray working the straw out until the foam appears

The return duct had a huge gap around it allowing air to blow through the wall. Could have just left a window open year round for the same effect.

Tips for using spray foam insulation/sealant (from trial and error):

1. Wear disposable gloves when foaming! The foam gunk won’t come off your skin for two weeks. Don’t use water to clean it, that makes it dry even faster. And of course don’t eat it. I'm an idiot for not wearing gloves in the pics above.

2. Put the foam can in a plastic grocery bag, poke a hole in the bag and stick the can straw through the hole. When you get near the end of the can, the nozzle tends to ooze and it will be all over your hands without the bag. Paper towel works too, but shreds of it often super glue to your skin.

3. Be ready to use the entire can and don’t stop till its empty. If you set the can down for 10 mins to go grab a beer or do whatever, the can will stop up and be unusable. At $5 a pop, I'm too cheap to let any foam go to waste!

4. When the foam is set and its dry (give it overnight), use an old serrated bread knife to cut the excess. A razor/utility knife is useless. I ran the bread knife blade parallel to the baseboard cutting of the excess.

5. Needless to say, if you have carpet, you should either pull the carpet up to do this projects or do not attempt at all. I found that the dried foam globs come off the wood floor easily. Don't be tempted to wipe it up while its gooey.

Anyone else with an old house ever had to do this?

Color, Color on the Wall, Which Paint Shade, Sheen, and Brand is the Fairest one of Them All

2011-03-10T17:46:00.005-05:00

First up on the list of to-do’s in the living room was to pick out the new paint color. How hard could it be to find a warm/not-minty/not-pukey/luxurious-yet-comfortable/sagey-gray paint color? Almost impossible!

First, we had a sample color matched to what we thought was a lovely, soft sage color from Alex’s uncle’s house. The sample turned out to be the pukiest green ever! When our friend Allison saw the sample square on the wall, the first thing she said was “You’re not going to paint the room that color, are you? It looks like barf!” And then our neighbor came over and asked “So you’re replacing minty with vomit?” No, we were definitely not going to paint the walls that color.

The next round of samples weren’t right either. We picked three dark greens, “Painted Turtle” (Behr), “Egyptian Nile” (Behr) and “Fossil Stone" (SW), and three light greens, “Svelte Sage”, “Ancient Marble” and “Liveable Green” from Sherwin Williams. But they were either too dark or too light. Duh.

By the way, color samples on the wall do not look like the paint chip which do not look like the color on your computer screen. Plus, testing new paint colors on top of minty/puke green background didn’t help. So we got smart and primed an entire wall to have a clean, primer white surface for contrast.

Feeling a bit discouraged, we turned to magazines for inspiration and found an article about a living room makeover. It looked like the perfect paint color—and it listed the color name and brand!

Off to the local Benjamin Moore store we went. We confidently went to the paint chip wall, and grabbed the card for "Polar Sky". However, the magazine had listed the paint color with the wrong name! What the magazine said “Polar Sky” looked like (creamy sage) was not what the paint chip looked like (frosty blue). Luckily, a very helpful sales lady came over to help. I explained the rather long list of requirements for the color (not minty or pukey, gray undertones rather than yellow, not a beige) and she suggested two perfect colors - Moon Shadow (1516 Ben Moore) and Grant Beige (HC-83 Ben Moore).

We painted the samples on the the freshly primed wall next to a sample of our kitchen color (Tea Light SW). And, though these two samples both looked the same to Alex (he's color blind!), we finally had a winner!

Moon Shadow by BM was exactly what we’d been searching for. It looked great with the ceiling color we’d already decided to continue from the kitchen, “Alabaster” in Harmony (Low VOC) by Sherwin Williams and for flow, looked good next to the Tea Light from the Kitchen. Since the rooms are right next to each other, we thought it would be good to have the colors coordinate from one room to the next.

If you've had a rough time picking out paint colors or just want to comment on our unfortunately long color picking process, let us know in the comments below!

Updating the Living Room: In the Begining

2011-03-10T17:19:00.005-05:00

When we moved in, the living room was not high on the priority list of things to change. The master bedroom and bath topped the list followed by the kitchen. We put off fixing up the living for almost a year. We decided that we needed to “live” in it for a while before we could figure out how we wanted to update it. It didn’t take long, though, for the list of projects started adding up…

The walls were a really, really minty green color and the ceiling had splotchy tinted primer that didn’t cover the cracks in the plaster. Because the ceiling had been patched by previous owners, there were places where it was smooth dispersed among places where it was textured.

And the “tinted” primer was too dark so it made the ceiling feel low and cramped.

And while our furniture fit nicely, the tone of the walls and ceiling wasn’t warm or inviting—the feelings we wanted to associate with a room we spend so much time in. Plus, 1940s houses didn’t have overhead lighting so we were dependent on floor and table lamps to dimly light the cave.

As the focal point of the room, the fireplace was really the first project in the room we knew had to be updated. The hearth was tiled with the original 1940s 6x6 brick tiles, the surround was sooty brick, and the “white” mantel wasn’t white anymore.

Let’s be serious, the room wasn’t that bad. The original hardwood floor was still gorgeous (although it needed a good buffing). And, after several iterations of furniture arrangements, we found one that really worked. So, with a (long) list of to-do’s and a plan for the room, we got started!

Where have we been?

2011-02-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

Where have we been? We start a blog, then disappear for a week...

We've been working on the living room! Cutting 6 holes in the ceiling for recessed lights. Pulling out old insulation. Achieving amazing feats of engineering to run wires to the recessed lights and connect them to the existing switches. Applying drywall mud to texture the ceiling. Patching. Priming. Painting.

We promise more details (and pictures!) to come. But oh thank heavens the minty green is gone!

Stay tuned...

Making Room

2011-01-28T10:07:00.001-05:00

Here we go!

We're officially off on our blogging adventure. We hope this blog is an honest reflection of our happy life together--reflections of our home and all the projects we undertake to make it our own, of our pups and all the happiness and energy they bring to our family, and of our selves and all the joys and challenges of marrying your best friend.

Since we moved in almost a year ago, we find that we're constantly making room in our home. We bought a 1,200 square foot Cape Cod that was built in 1947. The smaller rooms and classic floor plan don't always mesh with our furniture or design dreams, but we're having so much fun making it all work for us (eventually!). From finding storage solutions (like keeping our bigger appliances in a hall closet) to building pieces that perfectly fit our space (like our plans to build a farmhouse kitchen table and bench in the tiny eat-in kitchen), we're open to anything that helps us use our space more efficiently and more elegantly.

Philosophically speaking (I think it's safe to predict that mine will be the more philosophical posts and Alex's will be the more practical- we'll see...) I like to think about us making room in our home for much more than just furniture. We're trying to get rid of negativity and meanness and discouragement and we're making room for joy and gratitude and fun. As my Mamma always says, we're trying to be mindful of the needs of others and love each other every day. I think it's worthwhile to make room in our lives for graciousness, for peace.

So, we're looking forward to sharing all of that with you. We hope you join us for the journey ahead!

Warmly,

Emily