Trash Can Be Pretty, I Promise

September 2010
 

Oregon is big on composting, it's even bigger on recycling.  Now that we had our own place these things were suddenly a part of our world.  There was no trash room anymore, instead we now had to go outside to dump it, and remember to drag it to the curb every week.  Welcome to the world of home ownership.  My google searches have recently changed from 'new restaurants' and 'beer fests' to finding a good composter. hrmph.  If there was one thing I knew, it was that we were not the type of people to turn our compost every week.  I mean honestly, I can barely remember to shower every day... keeping a composter turning schedule was not going to happen. After much research, I stepped up and bought an Aerobin 3000 and for that fancy of a name you would hope it would make dinner too.  

Unfortunately, the Aerobin did not make dinner... however, it was big and green and required placement on a hardsurface.  In order for us to start greening our lives we need to set up an area for it.  We decided the muddy weedy area next to the driveway would be a good fit.  We went to Lowes and bought 12 stone pavers and constructed our composter. 

Then it happened, what we would soon learn is the way every project begins... the project tripled.  The composter looked so pretty on it's pavers. I was smitten, but then you looked left there was our sad trashcan and recycle bins sitting there in the weedy abyss.  So, another trip to Lowes followed and we got 120 more pavers, three bags of gravel and spent one long hot Sunday bringing 'a trash center' into our lives.   

This was our first exterior project on the house.  It seemed a little silly to spend that much time and money on a trash area when there was so much other work that needed to be done.  Yet, every Wednesday when we smoothly roll the trash over the pavers instead of dragging it out of the mud I am glad we did it. O and for those who want a review of the Aerobin... it is amazing! We never turn it, we put about 3-4 gallons of food compost in it a week and it hasn't been close to full.  It rarely smells and looks a lot more attractive then most of the ones I have seen around town.  So trash can be pretty, although I hope that this blog does not involve many more entries about it.

Electrical: Important! But Unsexy

August 2010

 

During our home inspection it was brought to our attention we had a 1960's pushmatic electrical panel. They were called pushmatics because instead of switches for your circuits they were actual buttons you pushed to turn the circuit on or off.  These were not recommended since they tended to leed to electrical fires.  Wonderful... cough. After talking with some electricians at work, we found out it wasn't 'horrible' but when they got a surge of power they tended to not trip... making them: a fire hazard.  On top of this, after living in the house for almost three months we had started amassing a large list of electrical needs and figured it was worth it to bite the bullet. Also, for those who don't know, my Grandfather owned his own electrical business and I am sure somewhere in Virginia he had started developing a twitch, sensing my electrical deficiencies.

 

 

Josh called in an electrician he worked with and we went through the list: 

1. Replace panel

2. Add circuit for our new (still in box) dishwasher

3. Install exterior outlet on front porch(yay christmas lights)

4. Change electrical outlets on exterior to GFCI

5. Repair taped together electrical line to cabinet light

6. Install fancy new light in kitchen

7. Add another outlet to back bedroom

8. Correct anything that looked very scary

 

Randy came out and spent the whole day bringing our house up to some level of code.  He also fixed our doorbell for free, bonus.  It was our biggest expense to date on the house and we slept a lot better. 

Since electrical is necessary, but unfortunately not so sexy.  I bought the aforementioned fancy kitchen light and a new globe for the kitchen cabinet light. Apparently, fire safe still isn't quite enough for me.  But, when you find a light in the character of your house that happens to be the same lime green of your kitchen, it is meant to be (this was my line to Josh).

Let there be light! and no fires.

Dining Room Bliss and Other Rambles

July 2010

I abruptly left the last blog post about the dining room because I felt it was getting long and probably not overly interesting.  Also, I wanted to convey the length of time it takes us to finish these projects.  It feels a bit criminal to sum up 2-3 weeks of work in one blog entry... although I am sure to blog world it makes it look like Josh and I are rock stars. 

 

Since I broke this blog up into two I can also talk a little about our trim/ceiling color.  As many of you may know from this blog, life, or any other interaction with me I do not like white.  Apparently, this is one of the reasons I can never be a true architect.  I feel quite simply, white is for pussies... wow I said it, gulp.  I love color, I think in colors, I want to express my moods in colors.  To the white lovers, I apologize, I try not to make it personal- I just feel deeply about this and wish I could go into every white house/apartment and paint it when their on vacation (so far this has not happened, so friends and family you are safe).   I realize that artwork and furniture can 'pop' against a white wall but so to can a sky blue vase on a chocolate brown wall.  Okay wow, that was a huge aside. I didn't know you could ramble in writing but proof is here.

So yeah, trim, I didn't want white trim in the house. Trying to pick out non-white white is kinda similar to a slow death by fire.  So I was lucky that we were using an 'attractive' cream white at our buildings.  It seems crazy to use a color that is used in health care clinics... how is that not cold?? But it is the perfect shade because it doesn't seem to fight any colors and doesn't change much with the lighting.  So, I had Josh buy a huge 5 gallon bucket for the trim and another for the ceilings.  We applied our Bone White and let me tell you, it was a leap of faith, against the stark white of the primer it kinda looked the color of flesh, urgh.  And Josh was looking at me in that... 'we just spent $200 bucks on the ugliest thing ever look.'  However, as soon as the white was banished with color it looked AMAZING.  It was antique without looking dirty, cream without looking pastel, and it looked fabulous with our oil rub bronze hardware, yay!

After we finished with the trim we pulled up the paper on the floors, cleaned the room and rolled out my favorite rug I got in Morocco, which fit perfectly!  Josh's boss was amazing and gave us an 80 year old Oak dining table and chairs that had been in his basement for years.  It is adorable and totally something I might have bought at an antique store if we had to go.  We slowly unpacked the room and ate our first dinner at a table in our own dining room.  Bliss.

 

 

Also can we all love this Gus photobomb?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adults Have Dining Rooms... Now I Do!

July 2010

 

It was now July and we had moved into the dining room.  I want to start by saying this is my favorite room in the whole house. It was probably one of the reasons I agreed to buy the Castle.  The room is almost a square, which is my favorite shape for a room.  There are two large windows on the East and a set of small English Cottage style casement windows (you know the ones you see on Masterpiece where the farmers wife puts her head out the window and calls everyone in for supper, those kind).  The room has an original built-in and a small arch over the windows.  This is probably too much information, but I am an architect and I get excited about these things. 

 

I wanted to make the dining room feel intimate and cozy, the kind of place you can sit with friends after dinner for a long time.  We decided to go with a warm dark chocolate color in the space.  This ended up being harder then we thought.  Did we want a blue brown, a red brown, or a purple brown... ummm kinda just wanted dark chocolate.  In the end, we chose Benjamin Moore Barista and I am very happy about it.  This room had a lot of damage to the trim work and we ended up tenting the doorways off and sanding for many many days.  This was also the point in the project where we stopped hand sanding and bought an orbital sander... why we did not do this earlier? I can't really tell you, but it makes life o so much easier.

 

After a week of sanding we got about priming everything in the room and applied the Barista, it went on like fudge.  It was so delicious looking I felt tempted to eat it several times when it dripped on my fingers. Over share, maybe? This is a much smaller room than the living room and only required two coats, phew. We removed the tenting and got to work painting out the trim each night. I was really excited to see this room happen because we have never had a dining room and it felt very grown-up to have one.  Also, its right off the family room and I have to look at it every day.

Living Rooms Are For Living

June 2010

 

At this point, we are about two weeks into our house owning adventure.  Josh came home every night and dutifully worked on the living room.  I helped taping, caulking, and scrapping paint off the windows.  Finally, late on a Saturday night we realized... we might be done?? 

 

We pulled up the paper on the floor and looked at our new walls, new floors and new paint and there was a wonderful moment of exhaustion fueled satisfaction.  However, it was also 11:00pm and there was no way I was moving furniture.  I cleaned the floors and woodwork and then went to bed.  If I wasn't so dang tired I would have thought about this all night... The best part of moving and projects is unpacking your stuff and making the room yours!

 

The next morning we went into our 'hoarders room', or as Aunt Cindy termed our 'room of requirement' and unearthed our two area rugs, coffee table, side table, chair, blankets, tv stands, hall table, lamps and pretty much proved that the back bedroom was Narnia because there was no way this all was in there.  As each item went in... it fit!  Yay, no new furniture! And I got to unpack about 16 boxes of movies and cds.  Hello, living!

So, It's Like Camping...

June 2010

Upon moving, we still had a ton of work that needed to be accomplished.  For the first two weeks we entered a time period I like to term 'house camping.' Half the rooms were not even started, others were halfway, some were future projects.  We asked the movers to pile everything in three spaces, the back bedroom, the basement, and the office so we could work away in the other spaces.

Status Updates:

Kitchen:  At this point I had finished painting the upper cabinet and installed cork liners. I had also finished up all the painting on the walls and trim.  The new fridge was in, yay!  We were half way unpacked.  In a moment of pure frustation, I pulled the backsplash off.  By backsplash, I mean faux sandstone exterior metal paneling.  It was special, and I was happier with the particle board backing (Josh was undecided).  I was still scrapping and priming away on the lower cabinets and drawers every night after work.  I went to Restoration Hardware and got some new kitchen hardware that was traditional in the bin pull fashion and modern in it's clean lines.  I think it was a good compromise between our two styles.  Camping rating 2 out of 5

Family Room:
 

When we moved in the the only thing we had completed in the family room was the putting two coats of paint on the ceiling.  We tried roughly 6-7 different paint swatches on the wall trying to get the right gray/green.  We first tried the colors from our old apartment, which we loved, however, these just did not work in our room.  This was a learning experience, what looks amazing, rich, antique, and warm in your west facing 100 year old apartment, does not necessary give the same feeling in your smaller, east facing, 80 year old house.  All the colors appeared dull, washed out, and sad.  We started going more and more green, until suddenly we found ourselves with Dark Celery.  This was a mix between army green and fern gully.  Dare I end that statement with 'in a good way?'  After much debate Josh started painting and we soon realized our small family room was quite large and required a lot of cutting in.  There are three doors, 5 windows and one large fireplace.  So we painted, every night, every weekend, 4 coats in all.  All the while, the only thing in the family room was one couch (covered in a sheet) and our tv, on the ground.  Camping 4 out of 5

Back Bedroom:
 

In the meantime, 90% of our belongings were in the back bedroom.  We called this the 'hoarders' room.  There were boxes of dishes, bags of food, books, lamps, boxes of kitchen utensils, rugs, side tables, and pillows.  Everyday we had to go into the room for something, it involved stepping precariously through a warren of objects and junk to dig in a box.  The best part is that once you had used the item you had to bring it back to the hoarder room because there was no place for it.  We bought a house to have more room and now we were back to living in about 500 sqft, which consisted of a small bathroom, half a kitchen, and a bedroom... lovely. Camping 5 out of 5

So it gets better right?

Sometimes We Buy Shiny Things

June 2010

After three long weeks of house prep we were getting ready to move in.  We had help from friends and help from outsiders, but in the end, sometimes you have to shell out the big bucks.  Everytime Josh and I have moved, which is about 13 times in 12 years collectively, we have always done it ourselves with a friend or two to help.  This time, I made the big leap and called a moving company to see the damage.  We had already moved all of our boxes, clothes and loose items over.  We just needed the man power to move couches, dressers, beds, and various other 'very heavy items.'  The guys showed up and moved everything out of our apartment in 45 minutes... no joke.  They then moved everything into our new house in 1.5 hours.  Josh and I were in shock.  This is amazing, this would have taken us all day, we would have sweated, cursed, gotten in about 15 small fights and damaged half our belongings.  Instead we found ourselves at 1:00pm standing in an empty apartment.  Wow, worth EVERY penny.

 

We realized pretty quickly (ie. the first load) that the washing machine at our house was shot, we also left the refrigerator out on the porch for two weeks.  When we opened it we were pretty sure a crime scene had taken place.  This called for one thing: an appliance buying binge.  Luckily, we were looking to buy appliances in the sexiest time of the year for that sort of thing... Memorial Day weekend. 

We went to Lowes at 8:00pm on a Saturday night and set about buying.  All appliances were 10% off, not good enough you say... well all Samsungs were 20% off on top of that... still not impressed?  O yeah and free warranties, free delivery, and free take away.  Well Mr Lowes salesman you are about to sell shiny objects to us today!  That night we bought a new shiny stainless steel freezer bottom fridge! Yay! A new dishwasher, even though there was no existing dishwasher (this is America gosh darn it)... we were gonna make it work!  And a VERY fancy steam washer and dryer set.  It was crazy and exciting and overwhelming.  Luckily, we have amazing parentals and they had agreed to make these 'home buying' contributions.  This was HUGE in our books!

On Sunday at 7:00am they delivered the first big purchases of our adult lives (minus the house of course).  We were very excited!

 

Please note that a dishwasher can also make an amazing paint table for 2 months.