the nursery novel: preface

i love 3 day weekends.  we usually end up getting so much done because we have more time to combine work with rest.  this is one such weekend.

last weekend began “let’s actually acknowledge we’re about to have a child and do something to prepare for it.” we sort of made a step in this direction back at the beginning of december when we decluttered the whole upstairs and cleared out lots of storage space in the future nursery (see pic below.) but now we mean business.

so far, we’ve tackled:

- breaking down our current guest bed frame and mattress and movin it on out (the little sis is thankfully babysitting it for a few years in their own guest room)

- dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and general clearing out of the cobwebs (and dustbunnies)

- taking down all artwork and spackling/sanding/painting the holes

- unpackaging the million 20 cloth diapers we purchased and storing them until it’s time to go on a laundry spree with all baby-related clothing items

- finally fixing that pesky 70-year old bedroom door that didn’t actually latch, but instead wedged itself up against the top of the doorframe (um, NOT conducive for a sleeping baby).  that got sanded within an inch of its life and repainted good as new

- and as of last night:  the introduction of a crib to the room! whoa.  talk about making it real.  the crib came in this week and was a most excellent gift from the tomko parentals.

so the room is more or less a blank slate for all the future baby-ness to come.

still to do:

lots. too much to mention.  but it’s all coming together and i’m hoping that if nothing else, baby wilsie will have a place to lay his or her head come april and maybe a onesie or two to drool all over.

reveal day: bonus project

it wasn’t really our plan to have multiple projects going on at one time, but hey, who am i to delay progress?

so let’s meet our bathroom.

this is the only full bath in the house.  and like most things in our house, it’s very small and cozy.  aside from the tub to the left of this picture, this is the whole room.  ross and i know we truly love each other because we’ve gotten ready for work here everyday for 3 years, squeeeezing in beside each other to bathe, groom, and primp for the day.

while there are many things to be discussed about our little loo, there’s one particular feature i’d like to focus on today:

yes, we have a ceiling fan in our bathroom.  as unattractive as it was, we didn’t switch it out because there wasn’t really any other venting source in the bathroom other than the window – and i really love hot showers (read:  the ceilings would start to drip with condensation.  not good.)  of course, neither is particularly appealing at 6am on a wintry january morning, so we did a little planning and a little shopping.

now there is no more unsightly ceiling fan, but instead something with a little class and a lot of old house character.

specifically, we made three significant changes.  four, if you count the new paint job.

we really love our new light.  we purchased it from here (on sale!), a site that offers reproduction vintage lighting, hardware, and accessories.

and ross scoped out this super quiet EnergyStar vent on sale on amazon.com

there are still a few items left to tackle a little later this summer, but we’re super happy for the little bit of progress being made in our only full bath.  and i don’t miss the dripping ceilings at all.

reveal day: part I

when ross and i first started house hunting, we didn’t have a super clear picture of what we wanted.  but once we had toured a few houses, two things started to rise to the top of my wish list:  I wanted an old house, and I wanted a fixer-upper.  ross, on the other hand, was quite certain he didn’t want a fixer-upper. “we don’t have any experience with house projects, what makes you think we can buy a house where everything needs work?”  i couldn’t really argue with that.  well, let’s be honest, i did try to argue with that, but it didn’t get me anywhere.

as it turned out, our home was a perfect compromise: old and creaky, but move-in ready.

and in the 3 years that we’ve lived here, we’ve added quite a few things to our home improvement resumes.  but this is one of our most fun to date. we were finally going to get our tiled kitchen countertops replaced and a new, easier access pantry installed.  after a lot of research and price quotes, ross and i decided on bamboo countertops from a local cabinet company in blacksburg.

our timeline was this:  pack up kitchen and demo countertops on saturday.  remove sink on sunday.  last measurements of the space by the installer on monday. tuesday through friday, installation and sealing the wood.

prep work was pretty simple in theory:  clear everything out of the cabinets and off the counter, and remove the countertops.  thankfully, the process was more time consuming than difficult.

in the meantime, our entire kitchen was moved into our dining room.  classy, right?

ross was excited because he got go to home depot and buy a few extra demo goodies.  then began the tedious process of chiseling up every tile…

removing every screw (and there were a million of them)…

and pulling up the plywood base

over and over and over.

this trashcan was overflowing by the end of the day

this is where we ended on saturday night.  we knew we’d be without a sink for a while so we wanted to wait as long as possible before disconnecting it.

on sunday afternoon (happy easter!) we scammed our friend todd into helping us put the finishing touches on the demo.  boys love demo.

remove the last million screws and lift

so just like that, the demo was done.  a very satisfying feeling that we did it by ourselves and with no major catastrophes.

of course, living without a sink or countertops is ghetto for 3 reasons:

1.  you have to use a makeshift “countertop” aka random piece of plywood as a stand in for dinner prep.  swanky.

2.  the huge gaping hole where your sink used to be now highlights the really bad water damage caused by a past pipe leak – can you see how the particle board actually wrinkled?  (don’t worry, we replaced it)

3.  when you only have a pedestal sink (or the bathtub) as dish washing choices, you opt for the dishwasher. and you just keep a bucket handy for when the water drains in between cycles.

next post:  the reveal!

before & after: finally, a completed project

I’m back!  At least I will be very soon.

Even though my life is going in 20 bajillion directions right now, I’ve missed blogging.  weird.

But I’ve got a great Welcome Back post, because Ross and I finally have a house project that’s been tackled and mastered and completed.  And we have pictures to prove it.

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so it’s been way too long since we’ve tackled a project around the house.  and what better way to dip our toes back into home improvement than with the absolute smallest room in our entire house.  our little half bath, while incredibly appreciated (most houses as old as ours would only have one bath total), is almost scary small.  not to be too graphic, but if you’re sittin down and doin your thing, your knees are apt to be brushing against the bathroom door.  fun, yes?

i was somehow incapable of taking a before of the bathroom before we started ripping stuff apart, so the following pictures are pre-makeover, but post-wallpaper ripoff.  be sure to note the tension rod curtains made of some random leftover material.  they’re classy.

here was our to-do list:

- repaint walls and trim

- retile old beat-up tile floor with a clean white hexagonal marble tile

but just in case you were missing out on the wallpaper experience, the two (yes, two) types on the bathroom walls were the same as the wallpaper in the medicine cabinet.

finally after a lot of planning, a lot of talk, but not much progress, we decided to jump in.  first on the list was to remove the toilet and the sink.

here’s ross removing the trim around the floor

oh yeah.  and here’s jim.  he was pretty much our lifesaver on this project.  mainly because he was the one with the know-how.  and that’s helpful.  because did i mention that we had never actually tiled a floor before?

here’s our beautiful tile.  we found this on amazon.com and got a really great deal.  marble is usually really expensive, but since this was on sale and our bathroom is only 14 square feet, it didn’t break the bank at all.

after giving the floor a good hard scrub, jim mixed up some thinset to adhere the tiles to the floor.

after a lot of research we decided not to rip up the existing tile, but to put the new tile right on top.  we pried up a few tiles in an inconspicuous spot and realized that the original tile was probably set into a bed of cement, which was common during the time our house was built.  so pulling the tile up could’ve turned this pretty simple job into a nasty mess.  tile on tile it was.

the thinset goes on with a trowel…

and then the tiles are laid down and pushed gently into place

because of the shape of the tiles, certain holes need to get filled in around the edges of the room and around the holes that got cut for the sink and toilet.

so after all the tile gets laid it has to set for at least 24 hours.  then it was grout time.  just spread the grout on top like mayo, brush of the excess, let it dry for about half an hour and then buff it off with a cloth.

i love what a wide angle lens does to my head

by the time we laid the tile, i had already repainted the bathroom, but the bright whiteness of the tile made the trim color look less white and more cream.  so i got the brightest white i could find and we repainted.  much better.

standing in the finished space – we did it!  now we just had to move everything back in.

and here she is…

and here it is a little later with some more “finishing touches”

and finally, say bye bye to the last of the wallpaper.  another project bites the dust.

another one bites the dust

So we’re finally ready to reveal the latest room makeover.  To refresh your memory, here’s what the room looked like when we first bought the house.  It’s considered the third bedroom even though its located on the first floor off of the living room and the kitchen (and with no full bath in sight), so we’ve adopted it as our study/office/library/catch all room.  And for about a year all it did was catch all of our junk, until we finally started tackling it around august of last year.

Here’s what the room looked like mid-demo:  the wallpaper got torn off, walls sanded, primed, and painted, and lots of things to be organized.

an old light fixture that just had to go.

and now for the after:  new slate blue walls, new library-esque light fixture, handmade shelves to hold our bulging collection of books, and just a general taming of the madness.

we also scored some new ladder bookshelves ($79 a piece from JCP as opposed to almost $300 a piece from pottery barn – score!) from my parents as a christmas gift, which don’t dominate the space like our old bulky cheap bookshelf from before.

so now we’re no longer scared to show this room off, because even though it has to take on a lot of different functions, it doesn’t have to be ugly doing it.

i keep my promises – eventually

with all this garden talk, i may as well follow through on my promise from ages ago to take a peek at some of the stuff we’re going to be attempting to grow growing next year.

so here’s an IOU that this. weekend.  it shall be done.

and what the heck, i’m also finally ready to show you the official before and afters in our study, previously known as the “room that shall not be named”