Tag: house

Happy houseiversary

I cannot believe I forgot our 11 year houseiversary the other day. Okay, okay, maybe I don’t have to mark every anniversary of every thing that’s ever happened. Yeah, I don’t have to. I just like to.

But wait…I’ve only posted once about a houseiversary, and that was ten years ago! So now I don’t feel quite so ridiculous for posting one today.

Old stairs
Living room, pre-kids.
Love these doors
The kitchen, back in the day.

In the past eleven years, we’ve been through a lot in this house. Engagement, Hurricane Katrina, marriage, and the arrival of three kids at once (as you can imagine, we bought this house on the assumption we’d have one or two kids, max.)

We’ve redone the kitchen, rebuilt the stairs, moved rooms around, built in triple bunk beds, painted the exterior, and added a wall, but I still want to repaint the living room and get new floors downstairs and fix the ones upstairs and redo the totally ’80s downstairs bathroom and finally change the lightbulb at the top of the stairwell that has been burned out for a decade.

One day.

Would I love to have a bigger house? One without so much wasted space? God, yes. The boys won’t fit in those beds forever, and I’d kill for, say, an actual laundry room and a back yard. But I also love the idea of the boys growing up in the same house forever. And I can still remember the knee-weakening feeling I got when we walked through the front door for the first time.

(Of course, the previous owner was an artist, and had one teenage kid. And was more on the minimalist side than we’ll ever be.)

A mini-makeover

The kitchen is done, and now our attention turns to the living room. It’s not terrible, I suppose. We got a new sofa from IKEA a few years ago, and as the boys have gotten older, their toys have gotten fewer, so it doesn’t look like Toy R Us vomited everywhere (just the LEGO factory.) But still, our “entertainment center” was a mess of wires and dust and functional but ugly furniture.

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Before: So. many. wires.
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After: Much better!

The unit is by Prepac and if you’ve put together IKEA furniture before, this will be no sweat.

I have more plans for this room, like re-painting and fixing the floors, but this is already so much better.

365 in 2014: 07/28/14

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I’m in the midst of some serious purging. The kitchen is done, and now I’m focused on the dining room/bike storage area. Chris is building us a huge storage bench and shelves, and we’re getting rid of furniture left and right. It feels goooood.

Details on our “new” kitchen

I thought I’d post some details about the kitchen, in case anyone was interested. I know I like reading posts like this, anyway.

Paint: Behr Premium Plus Ultra Super-Duper Fancy Nice Awesome (something like that) in Dolphin Fin

Granite: Cold Spring

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I love the metallic flakes. You know I like sparkly things.

Faucet: Glacier Bay Carmina Pull-Down faucet

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Tile: Daltile Rittenhouse Square Mosaic (white) and white penny tile mosaic bought from Floor & Decor (behind the sink only)

Grout & Caulk: Bright white non-sanded (hides my rookie tiling mistakes)

Stove: Samsung Electric Convection Oven (Black)

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Look at all THE BUTTONS!

If you have any other questions, just let me know. (And no, I am never tiling again.)

Our kitchen: before and after

Over the summer, we did a little refresh of the kitchen. Not a full gut job by any means, but a nice update.

It all started when my friend Mary Catherine got new granite countertops, and when I heard how reasonable they were, well, I wanted granite countertops. (When I came home and told George, he merely pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.)

Ten years ago when we bought our house, the kitchen was a sunny yellow. Sponge painted, if my memory is right. With royal blue trim. It was okay, but not my style. Especially the tiled pelican “artwork” behind the stove.

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Was not sad that we had to get rid of that fridge post-Katrina.

So before we moved in, we painted the kitchen, um, lime green. Okay, maybe not the wisest choice.

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There’s that damn pelican.

A couple of years later I was already sick to death of it, and went in the opposite direction. Dark brown. I actually loved it for a long time. The contrast against the while cabinets was nice. We also tiled over the stained white laminate with large beige ceramic tile. It was fine, but definitely an amateur job. Over the years, it cracked near the sink, and I hated that I couldn’t roll out dough on the countertop.

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Not terrible, I guess.

By this point, we’d already replaced all of the appliances with black ones, and I was itching to get rid of our range.  It was a slide-in one, which is expensive to replace, but the oven was small and off by at least 25 degrees, and it was just yuck. I knew that replacing the stove would have to wait until we got new countertops, which I always assumed was a pipe dream.

But it turns out it wasn’t! So this summer, we decided to change them out, paint the kitchen, get a new stove, and FINALLY GET RID OF THE PELICAN! (Confession: I made most of the decisions while George pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.) (Not really. He was very supportive.)

The kitchen should have been done weeks ago, but I started losing steam when we got to the backsplash tiling part of the renovation. I was all ready to grout, but then I went to Mexico, and then I had my triathlon, and finally I just bit the bullet and finished. Whew. Here’s the finished product. I’m so, so happy!

Ta-da!
Ta-da!
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The new stove (with a chicken nuggets button!) to replace the yucky old small one. And look! No more pelican!
Nothing on top of the cabinets. Clutter-free! (Well, mostly.)
Nothing on top of the cabinets. Clutter-free! (Well, mostly.)
New undermount sink and lovely new faucet. Heaven.
New undermount sink and lovely new faucet. Heaven.

It’s not perfect (don’t look too closely at the backsplash, okay?) but being in the kitchen and cooking is so much more pleasant now. Particularly chicken nuggets.

Things ‘n’ stuff

It’s been a while since I’ve written a real blog post with more than like fifteen words and a picture, and I’m feeling kind of neglectful of my poor blog. Ironic, considering my job!

The boys went to the beach with my mom and Larry while I was in Mexico. And by all accounts, they had an amazing time. I got pictures and videos from my mom throughout the week, which was nice. Kind of cool to think they really weren’t that far away, as the crow flies.

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Some pictures that may or may not have made me tear up throughout the week…

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My hearts.
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There was a room with bunk beds, but I guess they liked sharing a bed better. *sniff*

 

But the best part about their trip was the email my mom sent me when it was over. Every time I read it, I teared up.

One of the most touching times we had was walking down the beach with them at night and them finding sand castles that others had built and just being awed. Last night they saw a tiny crab on the beach and played with the crab for several minutes.

Miles woke me up in the middle of the night one night to tell me we forget to have dessert. The next night they had enough brownies and oreos to make up the missing dessert.

Kristina’s coming in a couple of weeks and we’re taking them back to Orange Beach for a few days, so now I’m extra excited about it. But they’ll probably be dismayed to learn that I won’t be stuffing them with brownies and Oreos there. That’s a grandmother’s job!

In other news, my friends Heather and Maggie and I are doing our triathlon in a week! I had a week off of swimming (I’m guessing being lulled by the waves at the beach or floating in the pool with a glass of wine doesn’t count) so I’m trying to get back to where I was before my trip (i.e., not flailing across the pool for the entire 200 yards.) I think I’ll be okay, even if it means doing a length or two of breaststroke while I catch my breath. I also need to not forget about the twelve mile bike ride and two mile run after that swim. I know I can do those on their own, but after the swim? And then the bike ride? Hmm. We’ll see!

We just got new gutters this week. They are pretty. This has definitely been the summer of Home Improvement, what with the kitchen, the gutters, and the bench that’s being built in the dining room. Good stuff!

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We also had a super fun awesome playdate the other day with one of Miles’s kindergarten classmates. Miles got to play with his friend alone for a few hours while I ran some errands with the other two, and then we all hung out together and went and had dinner. It was so nice! And the boys were really into impressing Rajan’s mom, because they ate strawberries, seaweed (!), rose petals (!!), and some other new things. I said I was going to be dropping the boys off at her house for food training.

One of the errands I had to run that day was to drop off the heart monitor I’d worn for the previous 24 hours. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my heart (I had it looked over plenty before my surgery last year) but I do get palpitations sometimes, and better safe than sorry, right?

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Painting is done! (well, almost)

The painters came on Saturday and were like rockstars. The house is done! Almost. Maybe. There are a couple of spots that I wish they’d painted the trim color, and I only noticed on Sunday. I knew something was bothering me about the front, and that’s what it was. Too much gray. Need some trim color to break it up. But still…it looks amazing. What a transformation!

I could watch that over and over and over again.

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So much better!

More painting progress, for real this time!

Okay, I know yesterday’s pictures weren’t exactly dramatic, but wait’ll you see the ones I took last night!

I took them at twilight so you could see better.

Day 3

Day 3

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That’s paint! On the left side of the house! And on the porch, but you can’t really see it.

Now I need opinions. I’m going to buy some new numbers (right now they’re on top of the garage doors under the porch, so barely visible) but I’m not sure where best to put them. What do you think? They’ll probably look like this:

New house numbers

Tomorrow, I’ll have some really great pictures to post. Here’s a teaser:
Day 4

And don’t be too sad, but it looks like this series isn’t going to be as long as I’d hoped. The painters said they’re going to finish tomorrow! Saturday! That’s five days after starting!

Painting: Day 2

Because, why not?, I’m going to post pictures every day of the painting progress. I apologize in advance – these are not terribly exciting, but today they’re actually going to be painting! When I went outside this morning, I saw these:

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That’s two giant buckets of Elephant Skin by Behr. Worst paint name ever, btw. Yet kind of perfect.

End of day 2

End of day 2

End of day 2

Slight progress!

Progress!

We’ve been in our house for nine years and the day I’ve dreamed of for so long is finally here…we’re painting the outside of it! It’s in terrible shape, but it’s such a huge expense that we’ve been putting it off, but finally, we’re having it done! So exciting!

Here’s a before picture I took on Tuesday. One would like to think I mean some Tuesday in late December because, yes, those are Christmas lights hanging from the porch. We are so classy. (Oh man, I could have kept my mouth shut. Just realized the tree is blocking the porch in this photo.)

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Yesterday the power-washing and sanding started. Eeep!

Day 1

Here is George pointing to the garage doors and saying we should paint them like the TARDIS doors. What you can’t hear is me saying, “no, dear.” I’m such a meanie.
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Can you believe that tree out front was the size of a pencil when I planted it in 2005? Crazy. And maybe could use a little trimming. Hmm.

Anyhoo, the house is going to be a dark gray, the trim will be a creamy white, and the front door will be red.