Cheat Commandos, Rock Rock On!

Woohoo! We are done installing the tile! Well, we still have to finish the edges, but the tile itself is done, baby!

An elusive picture of me! I'm grouting like a grouting fiend. (Grouting is kinda fun, though not in the evil corner of doom!)


The final wipe-down

Wintry Day

I am sitting here sipping my coffee while it ices outside (snow/freezing rain mix - it's lovely). A nice few minutes of relaxation before beginning the day and our big tile grouting project.

Here is the promised photo of the new guest room curtains. We plan to replace the window shade soon, but haven't done so yet. We need another trip to IKEA!

Before:


After:


We also got our Christmas tree yesterday - lots of fun. We rarely get to go tree hunting in a foot of snow! Here's where the artsy side of me shines through:

We have been busy lately, I swear! Just haven't been posting our small steps.

I fixed a broken toilet (all by myself!) and installed some new flusher handles because the old ones were cruddy. No photos of that, I'm sure you're sad not to see our toilet. (Ok the secret is Matt forbid me to just take photos of toilet flusher handles. You'll just have to come to our house and see them in person).

Also - the pines on the south side of the house are down! The yard looks soooo much bigger and soooo much more light gets in now. Very exciting. Our illustrious friend the Tree Guy took care of that :-) Photos will follow when it's not dark out.

I also made some pretty curtains for the guest room. They are awesome, but there are a few finishing touches to do, so I'll wait to post pics until they're finished.

The big news is that today we actually put up our backsplash tile! We've still got to grout it, finish the edges with some molding, and clean up our mess, but it looks SO GOOD. I can't wait to get the cabinets sanded, painted, and new hardware-d.

Before:


After:

Birthday/Anniversary Weekend

We've had a bunch of fun this weekend, but we couldn't justify ignoring house projects completely (besides, they can be fun too). Yesterday we did take the day off from pretty much every conceivable obligation, and went to Logee's. We swore to ourselves only to get 1 plant, as space is limited in our one well-lit window. We came home with 4! Though 1 is for Matt's office, 1 is for the terrarium, and 1 is a shade plant that has a home in the office, so I guess we sorta stuck to our original plan. Careful to all visiting parents and pet owners - some of our new friends are toxic!


Colocasia illustris


The ferny plant is for the terrarium, the other for Matt's desk at work


Eucharis amazonica

We also worked on finishing up backerboard installation, here show with Matt's illustrious GFI outlet....



And I finished prying the paneling off near the sliders. We did this for two reasons - 1, the paneling was weirdly out of place post-slider installation (the picture rail didn't extend all the way to the doors) and 2 - we're going to use the paneling to make the back of the dishwasher enclosure match the adjacent cabinet backs. Here I am after vanquishing the paneling foe. The dining room already looks lighter, though now we have some interesting patch jobs to do.



And of course - GO SOX!!

Deck

Our sweet new deck table now has chairs! I meant to get them last weekend at Target, they were on sale for $27 each, but the Target I went to didn't have any left. On the way home from work yesterday we stopped at a different Target (where I had seen about 20 a few weeks ago), and they had FOUR left for $9.99! Such a great deal, we cleared 'em out. I'll check out a third store today to see if I can snatch up 2 more. Oh, and they're FSC Certified Eucalyptus wood, gooooo sustainability!

Weekend Madness

Well, this weekend we were super lucky to have 2 very hard-working helpers, Jeannie and Amber! They are so fun, and so helpful. We got a whole lot done, between shopping and sewing and installing backerboard and spray painting. And, since my camera is fixed, here are some pictures:

Here are the finished wall decals and the sweet IKEA lamp we got for the guest room.


This awesome $5 red chair was a great yard sale find this weekend. The woven seat was badly torn, so we made a chair pad for it with some fun fabric. It's found a home in the guest room.


Amber and I finished sewing the new sheer "custom" panels for the bow window (yay, we can see our plants!), while Matt & Jeannie installed backerboard in preparation for tiling.




And finally, Amber and I gave this great $10 table (another yard sale find) a fresh coat of spray paint to freshen it up. We'll use it for our deck table.

Backsplash Progress

Well, my camera is broken so I can't show you the sweet demolition that has been taking place today. We're more than halfway through gutting the backsplash walls - whee! Yeah, we bit the bullet and decided to do the job right. We're gutting the backsplash area to the studs, then installing backerboard, over which we'll put the tile. And, here's the tile we plan to get, our own custom blend, remarkably affordable from Modwalls:

Been a While

I've been a bit of a blog slacker lately. Lots to do, not much of it in the house. Well, that's not exactly true, but finishing up the unpacking and cleaning and such isn't very exciting visually :-)

We have gotten a few things done lately, however...

Matt & his dad started in on the dishwasher installation - still lots of work to do there, sadly.


Matt's mom and I painted the guest room, it's a little darker blue/green than what it looks like in the picture (we're eagerly awaiting our wall decals to finish the look!)


And, the surprise that Matt doesn't know about yet, I started demoing the icky brick backsplash today! We're going to replace it with glass tile. It's coming off pretty easily, I am super glad to say.

Productive Saturday

We had every intention of going to Home Depot, buying a dishwasher, and installing it today. However, we didn't realize, though maybe we should have, that we have to wait for them to deliver the dishwasher. Soooo, we just ordered a dishwasher today. We're pretty excited about it. We did a lot of research and chose the GE GLD5900N, in white. I'm sure you're thrilled to know. :-)

Since our Saturday was unexpectedly freed up, we took advantage of the beautiful weather and did our first yardwork in the new house! I cleared up the big sticks in the yard while Matt swept off the roof (yeah, I was NOT going up there).



Then Matt mowed the lawn while I swept the patio and deck and trimmed the hedges. At this point I should have finally taken photos of the outside of the house with no snow, but yeah, I didn't think of that. However, picking up all those sticks gave me one thought - "kindling". So, after checking with the fire department to make sure they are allowed, we headed to Target and picked up a patio fire "bowl"! It will most definitely be christened tomorrow when we have some guests over. We also got a hammock for the deck - woohoo! I can't wait to sit and read in it, occasionally looking up through the branches of our backyard trees. Or making goofy faces.





And finally, we put the painted paneling on the back of our IKEA bookshelf! I heart our office colors. *sigh* Grey walls, blue ceiling, and green accent.

Blue Bathroom and Sweet Shelves

Working on the house and taking care of photo jobs has been delaying my updates, but here are some things we've gotten done lately!

The blue bathroom is as done as it's gonna get anytime soon, all straightened up, with the shower curtain in place. We still plan to frame the mirror with molding and maybe a shelf, and to replace the light fixture above the mirror.


Here's a close-up of the IKEA lamps we bought recently - they currently live in the blue bathroom but will eventually find a home in the guest bedroom. (there are 2 of them - you can see the reflection in the photo)


No shelves (except for a scary soap dish) in the shower stall, so I installed this tension rod shelving unit. I had to custom cut it to size because of the low tile ceiling - good thing the seller left us some cool tools in the basement!


Our favorite recent project was definitely getting these sweet, sweet IKEA shelves put together. It was pretty tough towards the end, with all those boards wanting to go in their own directions. We lassoed it into shape though. Next step will be to prime and paint the backing board, then tack it on! Then our office color scheme will be complete!


We also got some Roman blinds at IKEA and put them up in the office windows. A vast improvement over the old standard shades, we think.

Doorknobs

Today was a knob day. After cleaning out our old apartment and officially leaving the keys, we stopped at Home Depot and picked up new doorknobs/locks for the side door and the basement door. Now, instead of stupid sticky locks, we have shiny brushed aluminum super-functional awesome locks!

You can tell how much I loooooved the old, barely functional, and ugly doorknobs.


Here, we're realizing we have to chisel a little more out of the previous doorknob's hole so the new one will fit!


In another feat of chiseling, Matt makes the perfect spot for the strike plate to rest. Who knew owning a home would require so much chiseling!!?? No fingers were lost, thank goodness. (Matt was very careful, much to my relief)


Our reward? A good-looking, fully functional door knob!



Doorknobs and locks were not the only knobs of the day, however. I decided the old, tired-looking knobs on the bathroom shutters needed updating. You see, the shutters had grown on me (I hated them at first), but they looked outdated and I decided they just needed some sprucing up. Matt decided I was crazy. :-)


The new knobs make them look much fresher (and were fun to install), though now I'm realizing that changing out the rest of the old hardware wouldn't hurt. Or maybe just taking it off and polishing it - it's kinda cruddy looking. That project will be for another day!

An Update

Well the biggest house news is that we finally have internet and our computers set up, so I'm able to post a new progress "report". Things are getting a little more miscellaneous - so I don't have any dramatic before and afters, but here are some things we've done in the past few days:

The living room, with new curtains and all the furniture set up. It's a big room, this photo shows about half of it. The room is split up along the diagonal with the seating area near the window and the media area (i.e. TV and bookshelves) along the back wall. This preserves the flow from the front door into the dining room, and helps us keep a cozy feeling in the big room. I did just buy some felt pads so we can get rid of the bulky carpet squares currently protecting the floors.


Matt painting the office walls. The walls are grey and the ceiling is sky blue (oh how I love the sky blue ceiling). We're going to get a big white shelving unit and paint the backs of the shelves a bright yellowish green as an accent color.


One of my favorite things Matt's accomplished so far - getting some coffee roasted! Now I can enjoy amazing coffee at home while typing this blog entry.


Yesterday the shower doors came down and this shower curtain went up! The icky door frame is solidly attached to the tub, but we'll put another curtain in front of the tub to hide it! We have a curtain we like already, but I saw this PHOTO shower curtain at Target and I must find where I can get my own made. It's too awesome. I do so love the tiled shower ceiling, but I think eventually we may need to do some updating in here. Anyone know how to get badly grouted ancient soap dishes off tile??


And finally, here's the office with our desks! We still have to get to Ikea for the shelving unit, but it's getting there. Sadly, the room is too shadowed in this shot for you to see the awesome blue ceiling very well. This shot also showcases my delicious coffee and greek yogurt (with honey and blueberries) breakfast - mmm.

Tackling the Floors

Today my parents and my younger sister came to help us out with the house. We were really glad they did, as we had floors to refinish in four rooms! We'd already pulled the carpet (and associated nails and staples) up in the master bedroom, so one team got started sanding that room down while the rest of us went from room to room ripping up carpets and padding and nails and staples. It was tiring work, but many hands did make it much lighter! We were pleasantly surprised that we got all of the floors sanded down and still had half an hour to spare before the sander had to be back to the hardware store. We even had time to apply the first coat of water-based floor finish (not polyurethane, can't remember the exact name, something about acrylic). Here are some pics, though sadly no shots of the girls working hard on the carpet removal, I guess we were pretty busy and the camera wasn't on-hand. I'm rapidly finding that, while I do have energy to post, I don't have much energy to touch up the photos. So, I hope you don't mind the wierd flash shadows and off-kilter lighting too much!

Since the room featured in the pics is the living room, here are some befores:





And, the afters:

My dad doing the rough sanding in the living room.


Matt taking a turn with a finer grit.


The living room floor after the first coat of finish! There are some really neat color variations in the wood, the photo doesn't do them justice.