the one where they built a wall...

As expected, the past month has been pretty hectic and we haven't got much done around the house.  We're getting closer to finalizing plans for the kitchen so now it's just a matter of saving a few extra bucks and scheduling each step of the remodeling process so that we are without a functioning kitchen for as little time as possible.  I'm already dreading the stress and patient discussions (a.k.a. arguments) in our near future.

In the meantime, I decided to close off one of the doors that is in James' bedroom.  The previous owners of our house used this room as a den/office space but, now that we've switched it into a bedroom, the extra wall space means more to us than an extra door.  Besides, I prefer James not have such easy access to the front door - if he's going to sneak out to meet friends at night, we aren't going to make it that easy for him.

Oh, and we still haven't gotten around to putting doors on James' closet.  We're planning on building a large barn door-type door on a track that will slide to the left when open - another reason I wanted to close off this doorway.

The other side of this door leads right to our front door and living room.  We've never used this door since moving in so I don't foresee us missing it.

We took the door off it's hinges and removed all of the trim and frame from the doorway - taking all of 5 minutes and a crowbar.

Next, we built a frame to fit the new hole with another stud centered in the middle for support.  This was then nailed into place.

We cut two pieces of drywall to fit either side of the doorway, taped, and mudded the seams. Voila...

We still have a little sanding to do and then will paint both sides - and hopefully there will be no indication that there was ever a door here!

In other news, I also bought two new rugs.  While I love the black and white rug that I originally bought for the living room, the high traffic caused it to shed more than we'd like - so we'll move this to one of the upstairs bedrooms.  I also wanted to get coordinating rugs for the living and dining rooms to tie everything together since it's basically one big room.  Warming things up would help too.  I found two rugs on overstock that I had to have.  I bought an 8x10 for the living room and a 5x8 to go under the dining table.  They arrived in less than a week and I love them!  I almost wish I bought another one for our bedroom but I'll rethink that once we're ready to fix up that room.

Now I want to make some new throw pillows and new curtains to go with the new look of the room...

This winter has been strangely mild so we've been trying to get out of the house as much as possible.  In between all of the running around the past couple weeks required, we managed to fit in a quick trip to the beach where James loved throwing rocks into the water and watching the surfers... 

We were also able to get away for a weekend and head up to New Hampshire for some R&R - well, as much R&R as one can get with a 14 month old running around.

We hope everyone had a great holiday season and will have an even better 2012!

mantle makeover.

Ever since we painted the walls and trim in the main living area, the mantle has stuck out like a sore thumb - at least it did to me.  The orangey wood tone bugged me way more than it should have...

We stopped by the hardware store and grabbed two pieces of wood to spruce up the mantle and here's how it looks now...

Minor improvement.  Major relief.

We bought one piece of 1x8x8 and one piece of 1x6x8 (I think...this was 3 whole days ago and my memory is totally useless since becoming a Mum.)  The mantle is only about 6 1/2 feet long so Joe cut those two boards to the correct length.  (The *ahem* not-so-perfectly-square trimmed pieces would later be used as the end caps.)

We used liquid nails along with our trim nailer to secure the two long boards - basically forming an L shape.  I didn't take a picture but here's a ridiculously awesome drawing of this step:

Next, we attached the two end pieces using the same method.  I know, it's like rocket science...

After we confirmed our box fit snugly over the mantle and the liquid nails had time to dry, I gave the piece a quick sanding and then stained with what was leftover from the TV stand project.

Two pieces of wood:  about $20
Stain (we already had some):  free
Total cost of new mantle:  about $20

Feel free to break out your calculators and check my math.

Aside from more yard clean up, our next project(s) will be to fix up the mudroom and laundry room - both are slated to be done on the cheap as well.  Stay tuned.

Oh...and if anyone has any large, granite stones/blocks they want to get rid of, let us know!

month one.

We've only been in the house for a month and it already feels like so much has changed since the day that we moved in. 

Here are a few interior changes:

Living Room:

The walls were painted, we hung curtains, stained the tv stand, got a new sectional, got a new rug, and finally got around to framing and hanging a few pictures...

Dining Room:

The walls were painted, we replaced the light fixture, brought in our furniture and hung a few pictures...

James' Room:

The walls were painted, his furniture was moved in, we bought a new rug, and I replaced the old lace curtains with navy blue roman shades.  Now we just have to hang his frames on the walls and get some closet doors!

Most of our sweat has been poured into the outside of the house.  I should point out that my Mum has put just as much - if not more - time as us into the yard.  We've spent hours removing the pool and chopping down unwanted vines, briars, and branches but she has volunteered several of her afternoons to haul away much of our "debris".  We pay her by letting her watch James 3 days a week.

First, our pool was removed...

Next, we ripped out half of the vines/briars/brush that was growing uncontrollably in the back left corner of our yard.  It was crawling it's way up the surrounding trees and strangling them to near death.  For now, we have a 25ft. sandbox in our backyard.  We plan on putting a small stone patio down and then laying grass to cover the remaining portion of the yard.  That big tree in the middle of the picture below is what is rotted and needs to be removed - eventually.  We still have a lot of brush to get rid of on this side of the yard, obviously.  We're holding off on ripping the other briar patch out because there is an egg filled bird's nest inside.   Oh, and the drum barrel...we use that to cook...marshmallows?  No, town fire department, we wouldn't dare burn anything outside of the designated burn season!

We also started to rip out some more briars/vines from the back right corner of the yard.  The vines that are wrapping around these trees are even larger and stronger than the ones on the other side of the yard...

The next project I want to tackle is our bedroom.  Or maybe the main bathroom.  Or maybe the kitchen.  Arrgh.  The bedroom will probably be the least expensive of those options so I should probably focus my energy there.  (Although its getting more and more difficult to ignore the kitchen wallpaper and cabinets and bathroom sponge paint everyday.)  While we're saving up for bedroom furniture, we should be able to spruce up our room with a coat of paint, some new curtains, and a treatment on the back wall to mask the small, off-centered window.  For now, I guess I should just work on trying to figure out which piles of my laundry are clean and which are dirty.

And just because he cracks me up...

pull up a seat

We finally have a place to sit!  We don’t have any time to sit but that’s another story.  Our sectional arrived this week and it looks even better than I had anticipated.  I had been eyeing grey sectionals for the past several months and finally settled on this sucker.  It’s sturdy, masculine, comfy, and awesome – all of the qualities I look for in a…sofa?  I have been obsessed with gray for a while now.   (…which is no reflection of my mood – bright yellow would be a more appropriate representation.)  We also got a large, dark brown, leather ottoman in lieu of a coffee table - its firm enough to use as a table but also cushy enough to rest our feet or use as additional seating.

The new sectional definitely brings a different look to the entire living area.  We still need a large rug for this room but, as mentioned in an earlier post, rugs cost mucho dinero.  I’ve been looking for a black and white striped rug to add some interest and pop.  I wouldn’t think a black and white striped rug would be hard to find but everything I have some across is zebra-ish and/or costs at least 400 smackers.  No thanks and no thanks.  A rug isn’t on our “gotta-have-now” list so I’ll just keep my eyes peeled and our living room rug will eventually come along.

I also had a chance to stain the TV stand this week.  I started off slowly and precisely applying the stain but after 10 seconds I said, “eh, screw this”, and just started slapping the stuff on there.  Getting in all of the nooks and crannys was a pain in the heiny but it only took about 2 hours of my precious time over the course of the week to complete.  Two coats of stain – 3 coats on the more-visible parts of the piece.  The polyurethane that I originally bought spilled in the back of the Jeep on the way home from the store so James and I made a Lowes run and grabbed a spray-can version instead.  It probably didn’t give the same amount of coverage/protection that the paint-on-kind would have but that’s aiiight – it still holds our TV.

Other happenings this week:

• We finished taking down the deck that was surrounding the pool.  The wood/metal/crap that made up the deck is in piles in our back yard waiting to be hauled away.  Hopefully we can get a few bucks for the scrap – we think it’s mostly aluminum.

• We started cleaning up some of the brush in the back yard but there has been about 12 minutes of sunshine in the past week so we didn’t make too much progress.  We were able to tear down all of the vines that were strangling a small tree but that probably only accounts for about 1% of the work that needs to be done.  It’s a start.

• The fireplace was cleaned and inspected.  We’re in the clear to start our wood-burning-insert hunt.  We hope to have one installed by the end of the summer so we can be ready to burn once the temps start to drop.  We don’t want to solely rely on oil to heat our house and the math tells us that we’d recover the costs of a new insert within a year or two.

• We are also planning on replacing the heating system – new oil tank, new furnace, new electric water heater.  The existing equipment is original to the house (50+ years old) so obviously isn’t very efficient.  A fella came and checked it out this week so we are just waiting to hear back to see how much time and money that overhaul will entail.

• We unpacked more boxes and started getting some pictures up on our bare walls.  I'm planning on blowing up some of our own pics and hanging them in the living room - and once we finalize the furniture placement of James' bedroom, we'll go ahead and hang all of the frames from his old bedroom, too.

• James discovered that he loves Cheerios.  He’s getting pretty good at picking them up with his pudgy little fingers – and has already figured out that it’s much easier to slobber all over his hands so that the Cheerios just stick to his them.

We have a lot going on over the next few weekends so we probably won't get much stuff done around the house.  I'd like to say that it will be a nice break but doing dirty work around the house isn't nearly as stressful as spending the weekends rushing from place to place - but at least we can come home after a long, busy day and plop down on our big couch for about 3 minutes before we decide to go to bed instead.


...aaaaand a few random shots from this weekend...