Tidbits about our new old house

I love our new old house. We have a large list of projects to get through but I'm kind of in love with that list. I am all about flipping the entire house into something new and making it ours. I'm obsessed with HGTV and events like Junk Jubilee and family trips to Home Depot.  Paint swatches are my jam and pinning on Saturday morning with a cup of coffee is my idea of a great time. I'm in. I'm all in.

You should know a few things about our new old house. Quirky things. Examples:

The previous owner was a horticulturist, something is always in bloom in our yard. It's kind of a jungle though.

The washing machine makes a train whistle noise twice during its run. I kid you not, it is exactly like a train whistle. We went for a family walk once and could hear it from half a block down.

The ceiling fans in this house operate under a non-standard number of blades design. Our bedroom fan has four, Dexter's has three and Evy's has two.

The window treatments throughout the house are a combination of lace curtains and vinyl roller shades...from 20 years ago.

The walls in Evy's room are covered in what one could only describe as ripped up papier-mached brown paper bags.

We have our work cut out for us but then there's the butler staircase, the finished attic, and the reading nook in Dexter's closet. Those are pretty good things. And then there's that lovely front porch with a swing. The porch that lends itself so well to morning coffee, afternoon snacks and blowing bubbles for this family. And that might be the best tidbit of all.

Boo, Mother Nature

Did anyone else spend the majority of last week feeling depressed and unmotivated? It rained and rained last week and now tomorrow they are calling for snow showers. Snow showers?! Yuck. My name is Lora and I have been stricken with seasonal affective disorder. It's not cute. This weather is maddening. Not even a cup of hot chocolate raised my spirits. That's saying something.

We got new windows installed and now I have to stare at grey skies. The new windows turned out nice, maybe I should just stare at them instead of through them.

I need a boost

Last year I cleaned out my closet and hauled a ton of stuff to Goodwill. Or at least what I thought was a ton of stuff. The majority of it was t-shirts. I methodically went through my collection and decided which ones I could part with and which ones I couldn't bear to think of in anyone else's closet except my own. I thought I did a good job. I thought that there wasn't very much there anyway since Suds did a pretty good job of whittling down my collection in the great t-shirt raid of 2007. I thought wrong. I still have stacks and stacks of t-shirts. T-shirts as far as the eye can see. A reasonable person would say, "You didn't get rid of enough, quit getting weepy over some old vacation/camp/internship/tumbling t-shirt and go through the pile again and toss some more out, Lora". That's a reasonable person. I say, let's get some under the bed storage so I don't have to say goodbye to any vacation/camp/internship/tumbling t-shirt and can start my life as a crazy hoarder lady.
Enter the bed lifts. Or should I say bed stilts. To give our bed a boost and make room for the under the bed storage tubs, Josh and I went to our local Bed Bath and Beyond and purchased bed lifts that according to the package are 7 inches tall. However, they definitely seem more like 7 feet. I need a small ladder to get into bed now.

This photo was suppose to illustrate the great distance between the floor and the bottom of the bed. Now that I'm looking at it though, it's just further affirmation that feet aren't pretty. Anyway, if my feet are dangling off the edge of the bed this much, imagine how tall the top of the mattress is. Yipes.

That's it?

We're in the middle of refinancing. Grown up stuff like this gives me a headache because it makes me feel like I might be an idiot. People need to be very patient with me when it comes to talking about interest rates, closing costs, PMI, etc. because for some reason, my little Lora brain has a terrible time grasping any of these concepts. So when our mortgage broker started plugging in facts and figures into his idea machine and came out with a few different scenarios, the only thing I could utter was, "House payment smaller, yes?" Okay, I was a bit more eloquent than that but you get the idea.

Pic from here

So we're in the middle of refinancing and the next step in the process was to have our house appraised. Josh and I went into a cleaning frenzy and spent the better part of last week painting the woodwork that experienced Suds' wrath, vacuuming, sweeping, dusting, mopping and wiping every nook and cranny in our house. Parts of our house that haven't been touched since we moved in three years ago got a good scrubbing.

I even thought maybe I should bake something because isn't that what you're supposed to do to make it smell more home-y and less Sudsy? We should take all the junk out of this room so they can see what purpose this room would serve instead of the purpose it currently serves, which is housing all the crap that we keep hauling around with us from college and our early 20s, right? Josh reminded me that we aren't trying to get the appraisal lady to buy our house and said that I've watched too much HGTV.

So appraisal day came and the lady visited with camera and notepad in hand and poked around for all of three minutes. That's it, three little, itty bitty minutes. Name things that should take three minutes or less and I promise a house appraisal doesn't end up on that list. I should have listened to my good friend Jennifer, she warned me that they walked in and walked out in no time flat. Oh, well getting all worked up like that was probably for the best since it gave us the kick in the pants that we needed to cross off some long overdue to-dos.

This is where I blog

This is where I used to blog (and surf the interwebs, and pay bills, and catch any missed Glee episodes)...



Pretty frightening, right?

And this is where I blog (and complete all the aforementioned tasks) now...




The office is still far from complete. After all, thrifty desk and rug purchases from IKEA can only get you so far. If you didn't notice, we're still lacking seating, the walls are bare, and we could do with a better/prettier organizational system for our important documents, CDs and what have yous instead of the green Rubbermaid tub system that we currently employ. Here's what I have in mind for the future:

• Perhaps taking the living room loveseat and temporarily re-purposing it as office seating. The logic behind this is we're thinking of getting a recliner/glider/rocker type chair for the bambino and we don't have enough space for both a loveseat and chair in the living room. Yes, we could put the chair in the baby's room but it's my understanding that we may be sitting in this chair for long periods of time and I think Josh and I might prefer the company of Sportscenter or Detectives Stabler and Benson while we bond with baby in the wee hours of the night and I don't think putting a TV in the baby's room is an option.
  
• Framing and hanging some of my favorite concert pics on the wall

Apparently, pointing to the sky is a very popular pose at concerts.

• And copying Young House Love's desk organization style

Patio progress

We were hoping that the weather was going to cooperate last weekend so that we could share our new backyard/patio update with our friends. It didn't. So instead, people had to cram into our tiny dining nook and deal with the inadequate seating in our living room. Ah, well, them the breaks. Pics are below for your viewing enjoyment, use your imagination and pretend you had a chance to see it in person.

Before

After

After. Josh is still trying to get some grass growin' in that pesky spot to the right.

Productive!

The word of the weekend was "productive". We were on the move a lot and had equal amounts of work and play.

On Friday, Josh and I enjoyed breakfast at La Mie. We tested out their omelettes and the universe must have been out-of-whack that day because I decided to roll with the vegetarian omelette--asparagus, brie and creme fraiche. I don't know who I was trying to fool. My omelette was okay but I just couldn't handle the lack of meat. I definitely asked Josh to part with his ham, baby swiss and creme fraiche omelette and that made everything better. What can I say? I'm a carnivore through and through.

Saturday, we went to cheer Annie on for her first 5K. Suds about had a heart attack from the gunshot start. His back legs were shaking like a leaf and then some girl decided the race needed more cowbell so that was even more upsetting for him.



The majority of the weekend was focused on house stuff.Our house has been cursed with tiny closets so we did some reconnaissance on some organizational storage and are now toying with the idea of redecorating our bedroom. We also committed to the labor-intensive project of turning our dungeon of an office into a livable area.

Other things we did:

• Farmer's Market (Chorizo burrito from Sbrocco gets a thumbs up)
• CelebrASIAN (Lots of food but have to say that Josh's bulgogi trumps the festival's)
• Grilling out at Tom and Kelly's (their deck is such a good one!)
• Almost got swallowed alive by the ginormous-ness that is the new Homemakers while browsing for a new dresser
• Planted flowers (me), power washed the back patio and front porch (Josh); they are also getting a makeover

Holiday spirit

With Thanksgiving under our belt, we took the weekend to get geared up for the mother of all holidays--Christmas. We spent the weekend hanging up Christmas lights (no picture, they came unhooked from our roof! Shotty craftsmanship or operator error? You make the call), putting out decorations, wrapping presents, picking out a tree and decorating said tree.

Showing our pride

Showing our pride..however foolish it may be.

I can't believe these guys have survived the move from the DU house and Josh's apartments!

Three presents down, many more to go!

Lights out

Does anyone know what kind of light should go here? We've lived in our house for 2+ years and our kitchen light bit the dust about a month ago. At first, Josh couldn't figure out how to remove the globe but once he figured that out, a whole new challenge was presented with finding the mystery bulb that fits here.

Luckily, we haven't been left in the dark since the clever owner before us installed additional recessed lighting. However, I just can't break my habit of hitting the switch for our now defunct light and having nothing happen. Sheesh.

Foiled. You do not fit here, light from Home Depot.

Feeling Blue

We painted our bedroom this color blue when we first moved into our house a couple of years ago...

But now, we're having lukewarm feelings about it and are considering repainting it one of these blues instead...


I think I'm leaning towards the one in the middle on the top row. Josh is into the one on the left on the top row. Either way, looks like we're in for a darker room than we have now which could equal more hard-to-wake-up-feels-like-the-dead-of-night-not-8 a.m.-mornings, (not that I'm complaining!).

Look who's Back

He's just a little guy.

After our upstairs TV bit the dust, we hauled this little fella out of storage. He was the primary TV in my college apartment/dilapidated housing. You can almost feel the history seeping out of him. Oh, the things he's seen and heard, the stories he could tell.

Aaah! Attack of the giant Suds! Doesn't he look incredibly large compared to the TV?

One of these things is not like the Other

Being a homeowner is sweet and so is replacing rotting deck boards.


Here's the old board. I thought our little Sudsy was going to fall through it one of these days! The deck has been in disrepair for awhile but with a weekend of house to-dos looming ahead of us, Josh decided it was time to tackle this task.

Oooh, pretty!

Maybe I have a green thumb after all...*

These are flourishing in our backyard.

*Just don't ask me about the zinnias on our front steps.