Basement Progress

Our basement project is coming along slowly but surely. Big strides were made this week with the addition of a reasonable amount of warmth (new floorboard heater!!) and shelving progress too...

Happy Fall

It's officially Fall... we've had our first fire of the year in our fireplace. Now we just need some marshmallows!

Family Room Improvements

We "finished" the fireplace surround almost a year ago, but I've been waiting to post pictures until it was truely 100% finished. All it really needs still are the handmade ceramic knobs on the cabinets, which are still being made. Actually, they were made once and determined to be too big, so Neil is redoing them once he gets his studio in order again. My main motivation for this project was to have a place to hide most of the little guy's toys. The cabinets on the right are all full of baskets of balls and trucks and books, etc. It works great, but somehow there's still overflow, so it's time to do the basement playroom shelves. We built-in a spot for our tiny old tv, which worked great until we joined the 21st century last week and bought a flat-screen. Now that's on the left hand wall and we're having to move everything around. I spent forever looking for a rug for this room and finally found one on overstock.com over the winter. Then last month the new crate and barrel catalog came out with this rug, which is perfect. Oh well! I'd still like to get a leather ottoman to replace the coffee table, and plan on making some new pillows for the couch when I finally get around to getting the sewing machine out.

A Very Special Painting

Our friend, Bob Stotts, painted this amazing portrait of the little guy for us this past Christmas. We finally got it framed and on the wall where we can appreciate it daily.

Backyard plantings

This has been a much better year for our plants than last summer. We lost many last summer, those that did come up didn't look good, and then we neglected them on top of that. So we were relieved when most of our plants came back this summer and our new ones are still alive and well. They haven't gotten as much care as I would like but they've been getting more than enough water with the lovely weather we've had and I've actually had a little time to get out and weed now and then. Even the dogs have been enjoying the new lush yard now that our tree is big enough to throw a little shade.

Lighting upgrade

It wouldn't be Father's Day without a trip to the Home Depot. I think we went to look for garage organizers and ended up leaving with new lights for the front of the house. The old ones were in really sorry shape and only 2 of 3 actually worked. So this is a major improvement.

Before

After (with the addition of our long-lost squirrel dinner bell)

Planting idea

I saw this plant pairing at the botanic gardens today and thought it would be nice along the side of our house where we have a line of hostas that seem to be lacking something.

Moo Moo

Neil's Grandma Idella made this adorable cow for the little guy. We think she should start her own line of stuffed toys. How fast can she crochet?

Privacy Screening

Sunday we decided spur-of-the-moment to run out and buy some bushes to give us some privacy from the neighbors. We started our quest about 3:30 pm driving from one nursery to another and finally ended up at Castle Gardens in their muddy back lot picking out these honeysuckle bushes. We got a great deal on very good sized bushes... we should have a great screen within a year. Neil had to use a pick-ax (good thing we all just happen to have one in our garage, right?) to get through the clay to get them in the ground. Even so, we had them in and watered by dinner-time and even took a break to walk to Divino's for gelato. Yum!

Beat this, Dyson!

Introducing the greatest vacuum ever..... "the Boss"! It's about 5,000 years old, passed down to Neil in college and still cleans better than any new vacuum we've tried. Those bagless ones are just plain stupid. The Boss has recently gone bionic with new belts and brushes and now there's not a dog hair in sight (at least for a few minutes til they lay on the rug again). It makes me love vacuuming!

Spring Plant Sale

Spring is officially here, now that the gallery's spring planter sale has happened. It was a great weekend, despite a rainy Saturday, with pots full of flowers everywhere. Our favorite plant expert, Judi, created amazing planters as we watched in awe. We even had some fun garden fountains this year. Always a good start to gardening season!

Dog War

The new neighbors have two dogs. Two dogs that like to bark. A lot. At everything, but especially at our dogs. We've tried many plans to get them to stop. Plan A: ignore and hope they settle in and shut up..... abandoned after week 2. Plan B: be nice, talk to them kindly and hope they shut up.... abandoned when I got growled at by the little one. Plan C: scold them (since their owners seem to be deaf) and hope they shut up.... still working on this one when my patience wears thin. I like to scold them under the guise of scolding my own dogs, but that often doesn't work because mine aren't the ones barking and they tend to get confused. I've now moved on to Plan D: outnumber and overwhelm them and hope that they shut up. I even brought in an extra dog so they'd be outnumbered 2:1. You can see from the photo how well this plan worked.... the barky dogs started their barking and my tough pack of killer mutts all ran for the back door to get away from them. Time for Plan E......

Yeah for spring!

Spring is finally here! Time for a little cleanup so we can start enjoying the flowers...

Wallpaper thoughts

I'm thinking about wallpapering the hall bath downstairs. It's kind of a crazy idea because I've always hated wallpaper, especially when it needs to be removed (as it seems like all the wallpaper I've come into contact with does). And I'm pretty sure that the process of putting it up will make me very frustrated and probably say some toddler-unfriendly words. But I've found some designs from Graham & Brown that I think would be cool. It's such a tiny space, it would be fun to do something a little wild in there. I sent away for a few samples and have the best contenders lined up on the wall. What do you think?


This one is the favorite so far. The brown goes well the the house's color scheme, and it has just a little shine to the gold flowers- they go more silver in the light. Might be fun...

Master Plans (aka the big list)

I have a big list in a drawer upstairs of all the house projects we need to/want to accomplish over the next few years. Now that I'm "high tech", I figured I'd put my list in blog form so others can check on my progress or lack-thereof on said list. My favorite way to make lists is to also add items that have been completed so I can cross them off and look like I'm really productive. But I don't know how to cross off typing so I'll skip that part of my fun for now.

Kitchen:
- crown molding on cabinets
- shelves above phone
- pantry shelves, new door and interior paint
- tile backsplash for oven
- extend cabinets with second-story
- window seat/bench for kitchen table

Family Room:
- pillows for couch
- new lamp (Neil's been working on one, or so he says...)
- knobs for the built-in cabinets (also in the works per Neil)

Living Room/Dining Room:
- shelving surrounding window in dining room and window seat
- shelves to separate rooms
- trim out ceiling in dining room
- molding in dining room
- new flooring

Entry:
- new closet door
- paint front door
- paint stair rail and new newel post

Half-Bath:
- strip wallpaper border
- paint or wallpaper (leaning towards wallpaper)
- paint vanity
- new counter and sink
- new faucet
- new mirror

Master Bath:
- blinds
- new tile and maybe new tile shower (only if we run out of other projects)

Basement:
- build shelving unit/cabinets
- frame chalkboard
- desk buit-in and shelves
- pillows
- heat!

We still plan to replace all the trim through the house and replace doors with white 6-panel ones instead of the flat wood veneer ones. It was fun going through the ol' list..... I actually got to cross some things off. Progress!

Bread's new home

This is my latest fun find while antiquing with my Mom last weekend. It's a tin breadbox, supposedly from the 1800's. It works great on the new counters and the bread seems quite happy with its new home. Thanks, Mom!

The counters are finished!!!

We've been dying to replace our ugly scratched-up formica counters since we moved in 3 years ago. Ideally, we had wanted to put in granite, but the budget didn't allow it. Plus, it seems silly to put nice granite counters on cheap cabinets and we were not about to shell out to replace all the cabinets. So in keeping with our general budget of cheaper than cheap, we found this butcher block counter at Ikea. We stained it dark to contrast with the floors and matched the stain on the oak backsplash. With new counters came a new sink and faucet too, as it was easier not to have to save the old as we pulled it out of the original counter. I love the new sink with its large drain board off to the side for drying dishes. It really comes in handy with wet things so we can protect the wood. The new faucet is turning out to be handier than I thought too. I originally was against the sprayer-in-faucet design, but was forced into it in order to get this sink (no room for an extra sprayer mount on the sink). But it turns out it's really easy to use, and maybe even an improvement from the old faucet.

Nursery-in-use

The nursery certainly has much more personality now that it is being lived in. The bookshelves are a favorite of the little guy's. He spends lots of time choosing books to bring to his chair for a reading and then stacks them on the ottoman (or floor) for future reference.


We found the artwork for the room long before there were any thoughts of a little one. We saw them at a gallery walk in Milwaukee's Third Ward a few years ago and had to have them. They are by Don Nedobeck and we love the colors and fun animal themes... a bird on a cat on a dog and a bird in rain boots... what could be better? And Jack likes to point out each animal and comment on the noises they might make. It's never-ending fun on the walls!

Setting up the nursery...

Our biggest project yet has been the addition of our son in 2006. Of course, that project meant we would be doing another house project as we worked on making his room ready. (We also finished off the upstairs painting in the guest room and hall bath while we were at it.) We decided to go with a happy yellow room and made two-tone stripes with painter's tape. Neil realized we could get a crisper line if we painted over the edge of the tape in the light color before we added the dark color on top. That way there was no bleeding though the tape and no squiggly lines.


Next came molding about 3/4's the way up the walls and matching baseboards. The rest of the house currently has stained boring contractor molding, so we plan to update all of that eventually to wider white trim.


We went with blue above the molding and on the ceiling. It gives the room a good glow at night and brightens it a bit. We weren't originally planning on this color crib, but it turned out better than what we thought we wanted and is a good contrast to the light walls.


The corner of the room has a nice little nook where it sticks out over the stairwell. It was a perfect place to add custom shelves built by Neil and create a little reading corner. The changing table was originally mine as a baby. It was white with blue drawers and after 30 years it was a tiny bit beat up. So we added trim to the drawer fronts and base sides and painted to match the yellow of the room. It's nice to have a little history in the little one's room.


These pictures were all taken before the baby arrived, so the room seems a little bare. It certainly has much more personality now as it is very lived in..... toys and books everywhere and a little guy crawling all over everything. I'll add some current photos soon.

Second floor improvements

For some reason, I didn't take any before photos of the upstairs. There wasn't much to see. Same blue-gray walls and dirty white carpet, but upstairs instead of down. We have a vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom which helps make the small room feel a little bigger. Painting it this brown we used at the gallery too helped warm it up quite a bit. Neil surprised me with a newly painted room and bathroom while I was off skiing. That was a good trick. I should leave him to go skiing every couple months.


The bedroom still needs a lot of fine tuning. We've added storage where we could with antique dressers and a custom bookcase Neil built for our t.v. and some pottery. Space is an issue since we share the room with 2-3 dogs depending on when you catch us. I have lots of ideas, but keep this room low on my priority list since it's not seen by others. On the list are new bedding (maybe something like ones from here, here, or here) and curtains and building an upholstered bench for the end of the bed. I'm gathering ideas (and money) for the moment.


The master bathroom is teeny-tiny. I mean REALLY small. We don't even have room for a towel bar. On the up side, there's less to clean. We spent next to nothing in here and it looks better already. We painted the vanity black and Neil made some knobs for the doors. There was a wall sized mirror above the sink and toilet that just looked tacky, so we took it down and replaced it with this framed one and a small medicine cabinet from Target that we added our own knob to. I'd eventually like to replace the light fixture with something nicer (we found this one for around $30-40 and switched out the shades). And in my wild idea file I have plans to rip out the tub and build a full sized tile shower and then re-tile the floor in something not blue. We'll see if that ever happens.

Basement to-do list

Project Basement is officially underway. The walls have been painted.... "cookie crumb" by Glidden. The giant wall chalkboard is painted too and looks pretty cool. Now we just have 5 million more steps til completion.

1. build shelving unit for tv, toys, cd's, and games on far wall
   
2. build frame for chalkboard and ledge for chalk and eraser
   
3. art for walls
4. make pillows for floor and couch
   
5. new shades for windows
6. replace fluorescent lights with can lights
7. built-in shelves and desk for computer area
8. figure out a furniture lay-out that doesn't annoy me
9. fill with toys and let the little guy go crazy!

Next step is a trip to the lumber yard for a load of MDF. I'm still trying to sort through all of the junk down here and pare it down to only the most necessary crap. It's amazing how much mis-matched furniture we have down here. Hopefully someone else will want some of it, because it can't all continue to live here!

Our next project is underway....

Time to flash to the present for a while.... We've moved from the seemingly unending "pre-planning"stage (when we say "we really need to work on the basement", "the basement is next", "what will we do with the basement?" and stand around down there making said comments, then returning upstairs to forget about it) into the actual "beginning the project" stage. This is the stage when we actually start some aspect of the project. This in no way indicates that this project will be completed anytime in the next few years or has any connection to the actual completion of previous project(s). Just to give you an idea of how projects go around here, our last 2 projects are still technically in-progress. "Project fireplace surround" is 98% complete after 14 months (just needs knobs on the cabinet doors) and "project new countertops" is 80% complete (after only 1 short month!). So it seems like a good time to move on to something else rather than finish what we've started.


That's what we're starting with. Yikes, I know. It's amazing how much crap can fit into a basement. We need to transform this trainwreck into a cool playroom for the little guy before his toys overtake the entire house. Unfortunately, we have lots of problems to solve in order to use this room. First off, it's freezing cold down there all winter and we don't want to turn the little one into a kidsicle. Apparently, when they finished the basement, they didn't insulate at all or hook up the cold air return properly (or at all...they just cut a hole in the wall that goes nowhere). Neil rigged up a cold air return vent last week and now I can feel my hands. At least I can't see my breath down here. The second problem is the lovely shade of sanitarium gray on the walls. That's easy enough to fix. I think we'll go neutral so we can do some fun art on the walls. And the third issue, as you can see from all the lovely junk in the photo, is we need STORAGE!!
The plan is to build some type of shelving for toys, books, games, and the tv at the end of the room. I've been having trouble visualizing just what I want. It has to be something easy to build (i.e. fast, and therefore, likely unpainted), cheap (read= MDF), and really functional. And I still want it to look nice somehow. We've had some luck staining MDF and having it look ok, so we'll likely try that. Painting MDF shelves takes forever and I would like this room usable before the boy goes to college. I finally came up with this general idea for the shelving unit, with cabinets on each end for big awkward toys and a spot for cubbies with baskets where the boy can reach them.


I had a 3 hour long wild plan to build this crazy "house" shelving unit, but I'm over it now for many reasons. Maybe one day we'll go crazy like this...


As you can see, I had some coloring assistance from my 16 month old design associate. He was NOT into sharing his crayons and spent most of his time pushing me away from the paper and yelling "NO! NO!" at me. Good ole toddlers!

Kitchen presto-chango

The kitchen was our home's most glaring example of "contractor-grade" tract home blah. It came complete with original lighting, appliances, scratched-up counters, ugly cheap faucet, and those horribly bland cabinets. It needed lots of help and we were on our usual budget of no dollars and 00 cents. So we saved and planned for a while and got a cheap, but much nicer, faucet and bargain light fixtures. Our big splurge was a new gas range and dishwasher. It was nice to feel a little more up-to-date and not have rust on our dishes after we'd washed them. Ideally, we would have loved to rip out all the cabinets and redesign the kitchen with all new cabinets and counters.... there's a million new cabinet designs out there that would look great in here. But, as I mentioned, we are working on a budget- a VERY tight budget ($0.00) - so we had to be creative.


We decided to paint all the cabinets white with a contrasting color on the doors. Strangely, I got the idea from the kitchen on "Two and 1/2 Men". We had the typical plain cabinet doors with a narrow trim around the edge that just seemed very boring. So Neil added a small half-round about an inch inside the original trim to give the appearance of a wider trim.


We spent forever priming and painting and then added a light burnt umber glaze to give the cabinets a more worn look and a little dimension. We then added a clear varnish to help protect it from the elements.


We added nickel knobs and drawer pulls, as our cabinets originally had none and we didn't think that functioned well.


Overall, the kitchen turned out quite well and really has a big impact for very little cost (just lots of labor). We enjoy cooking and eating much more now that we are no longer nauseated by the look of our cabinets.


Of course, there's still the ugly worn counter-tops, but that's going to take a little more than our current budget allows, so we'll have to wait.

Light fixture update

As you can see from some of the early photos, the house came with lovely contractor-grade light fixtures throughout. Most were brass colored (not my favorite), gaudy, and just plain ugly. My favorite was the florescent box in the kitchen. Ick. So right away we found some new kitchen fixtures for a low low price of $45 bucks for the pair (awesome clearance sale at Target!). They are the same style as the "optic pendant light" at Restoration Hardware, but in our price-range.


We splurged a little on our entryway light because we wanted something unique and loved this one from Schoolhouse Electric. We went cheap with the hallway fixtures and used some stock lights from Home Depot in a similar style. New lights sure make a huge difference in the feel of a place. Well worth the effort!

Chickens on a settee

My parents found this cool settee at an antique store in Spirit Lake, Iowa. All our favorite pieces came from Iowa! It was in rough shape when they bought it so they tore it completely apart and rebuilt it- restained the wood and rebuilt the cushions. My dad even hand-tied the springs himself. After all that work, they realized it didn't fit where they had planned on using it, so it came to live with us (lucky us!). It still needed fabric, so my mom and I spent a weekend recovering it. I think we spent 2 or 3 hours at Loomcraft fabric trying to decide which to choose. After that long wandering through bolts of fabric, we were a little delirious and decided why not cover the settee in chickens? The color was good, and hey- who doesn't like chickens? So here it is.....


It sits in the front window and is a favorite spot for the dogs to sit when we're not home. (We like to pretend that the dogs know that they are not allowed on the furniture) So, it's a bit worn now and is usually covered in a blanket to protect it from all the dog hair. I recently bought some black and white fabric to make a slip-cover, so hopefully the blanket can retire.