Blinded by the light---err uhhh freshly painted walls

This weekend the Man of the House had a strange urge to paint something. What did he choose you might ask? The walls of the basement staircase of course!

Did I mention we haven't painted a single room in our house yet? But the stairs...in the basement...NEEDED...paint! (I'm told.) Ok sure, I agree....but when the man of the house has an urge to do something...you encourage it!

I forgot to take some before pictures so these old pictures will just have to do! See the paneling? Well, there are two types of paneling in the staircase. Oh, and not everything was covered in paneling. Some parts were just old cracked plaster. Paint to the rescue!






We decided to buy Behr paint and primer in one, thanks to the suggestion of Dad B. Let's just say...it doesn't cover quite as well as they claim it does. That's life!

It isn't finished yet, but here's a little preview!
The color is Swiss Coffee. It isn't a pure white, but it's clean looking!



When he finds his motivation again...he'll be painting the actual stairs, and the "canned goods storage area!" That is if he can get me to stop using them 8 times a night doing laundry and other stuff! :P

Dresser {Updated}

With the threat of heavy flooding, which of course never happened, we decided we better get our "valuables" off the basement floor...just in case. Our valuables included two dressers, lots of kitchen stuff that stuff hasn't found a home, Blake's belongings, and most valuable of all...our new dishwasher, microwave, and stove.

Because that's the way we do things...we started moving everything around starting at 9:30pm one night last week. Typical. We decided to carry both dressers upstairs to a. get them off of the basement floor. and b. according to the man of the house to get the temperature acclimated to the balmy interior temperature of 62 degrees (that is what we refer to as turning up the heat around here) so that they can be painting (aka to the woman of the house (that would be me) to get them painted and in working order because he wanted it done already!

So...

We carried the dressers upstairs. Then we carried the old wood palate from the garage into the basement. Then (and this must have been quite humorous to watch!) we found a way to move the dishwasher and the stove (HEAVY stove) only the palate. Yes this was a fun evening...thanks for asking!

Moving on...

This past Saturday, while someone was sleeping (must be nice) I got to work on one of the dressers. I decided which dresser would work best in the guest room.

Here she is in all her old-school glory. Sorry but it's true.



Then, using what we had I got to work! I had 4 left over handles I used on Michael's dresser...so I figured might as well make use of them and I'd purchase more for the rest of the drawers later in the day. I removed all the hardware cleaned every nook and cranny. Thankfully the handles I planned to use matched up perfectly with the holes in the drawers. (I'd later find out that they only matched up on 3 of the drawers, not the top two. Sigh. More on this later!)

Gleefully I skipped the "filling the holes" process and moved straight ahead to the priming. Sadly I had to do 3 coats of primer AND 3 coats of paint. Guess that's what you get when you use what you have on hand. I began the project at 7:30am. And finished with all the painting on Saturday night at 9pm.

Here are a couple "in progress" shots:



On Sunday morning I got up bright and early and eagerly got Michael out of bed to help me move the dresser into the guest room. After the dresser was moved, I started to put the new hardware on the drawers. That's when it happened....3 drawers down, 2 to go. I kicked myself when I realized that I hadn't paid attention to the fact that the top two drawers apparently had slightly different hardware. Of course, anyone who knows me will know that I wasn't only upset about how I had made the mistake of not realizing this before painting, but that I was really even more upset by the fact that the new handles wouldn't be perfectly centered on the drawer! GASP!

Life goes on...I'm told. So, I brought back the wood filler, filled the holes, re-drilled new holes in their new (off center) location, sanded everything down, and applied two MORE coats of paint.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!


By 4pm on Sunday, all drawers were in place WITH new hardware.
Here she is!






Not too shabby! Now we have a little extra concealed storage AND room for guests to put their things. We still need nightstands, lamps, and something on the walls, but, one thing at a time. I'm also thinking of painting the room. I'm thinking gray, or maybe a slate blue. I don't want it to be too dark, but what would look nice with the orange and white bedding?Thoughts?

A Tale of a Trash Can

Once upon a time...

we purchased a trash can. It looked like this:


Every Sunday night the trash can gets moved out to the curb. On Monday morning it gets emptied and moved back to the garage. Not a very exciting life, but that's how it goes when you're a trash can.

One fateful Monday evening. I returned home from work to discover that our trash can was missing. It wasn't on the curb or by the garage. It had been stolen! gasp.

Thankfully when our next door neighbors moved, they had stashed their trash cans at our house. So...after a moment of mourning we began to use one of their trash cans. Several weeks later when they came to pick them up, they left us the one we had been using. Thanks Neighbors! (So nice!)

Our "new to us" trash can was even better than our first. It was much bigger with a more secure lid. It looked like this:



It was settling nicely into its new role when on another fateful Monday evening I came home to discover that it too was missing. Stolen again! tear.

We're asked around and no one has seen it. We thought about posting fliers around town, but I think we'll just go to the depot this weekend and buy ourselves another.

Thanks a lot you thieves!

Damn Ice Dam!

Ever Heard of an Ice Dam?
If not...here's a little tutorial for you:
First, a picture:


In case you want to read a bit about it:
http://www.doityourself.com/stry/icedamremoval

One night last week I was trying to fall asleep and I kept hearing this annoying dripping noise. I figured it was probably one of the icicles on the house melting and dripping onto the driveway. It was making me a bit crazy so I got out of bed to investigate. Unfortunately what I discovered was that water was dripping inside the window. The temporary overnight solution was to use towels to catch the dripping water. The next morning we discovered that every upstairs window had filled with water and was not frozen underneath...but still dripping on top. Here's what we found!






Well....Michael took to the window with some tools and removed all of this:


Unfortunately it left us with something that looks more like this:








We now know why everything had been freshly painted! If only the issue involved the insides of the windows! Unfortunately it doesn't end there! This isn't a great picture...but you can see all the stains on the ceiling in the guest room. This was the first time we noticed the leak. It's gotten worse since I took this picture, but you get the idea. All the woodwork around the windows has separated and cracked. It's a bit of a mess. I'm going to choose to look at it with this perspective...now we're forced to do what we said we were going to do...PAINT! :) Michael wants to smack me every time I say this, but hey it's my choice to view it that way! Can you hear him snickering. I can!




Looks a little crummy now...


And just for fun...a little peak out the back bedroom windows:

More Snow.

Here are some updated pictures of what the house looks like now.

Weekly forecasts have all been the same. Snow headed our way. It seems like a new Wednesday tradition to get a big snowstorm.

This week we're switching things up! Snow on Tuesday and Thursday but NOT on Wednesday!
:)

You can barely see the house over all that snow.


The driveway and road look like this all the time now!


Here are a couple shots of the man of the house in action. This is a new morning and evening ritual...get the roof rake and try to clear off some snow and ice. Breaking off the icicles is becoming increasingly more important due to all the troubles we've been having house wise. More on that later this week...





I think I'm in denial that the snow goes all the way up to the first floor windows. I thought we lived in Massachusetts not Alaska!

p.s. All you people in Chicago who are reading this. We don't feel bad for you. Your (one and only) blizzard this year has nothing on our daily foot of snow. :P

Mid-Century Modern Love

I have a secret love for all things mid-century modern. Ok fine, it's not that much of a secret. Did you know that about me? Michael does. He thinks it's weird. He thinks I'm weird. Oh well.

But then again, if home furnishing were left up to him, we'd be sitting on milk crates and sleeping on an aerobed with mis-matched sheets and 12 blankets, but no comforter. FACT.

One day a few weeks ago there was a "Deal of the Day" sale on Rue La La. Or was it HauteLook, or perhaps it was Ideeli, or maybe it was One Kings Lane. Regardless, the sale was on one of my all time favorite mid-century modern pieces, the Eames Rocking Chair. Ok perhaps it's not a REAL one, but it's gosh darn close enough!

Because I constantly seek approval (FACT-hahaha), I took a picture of the image on my computer screen and texted it to Michael. Even though he thought I was nuts, he said go ahead and buy it crazy girl. So I did!

Here's what it looks like in the living room. It may not live there forever, but for the time being I'm enjoying the new look.







What do you think?

p.s. I spy the BEAUTIFUL birthday flowers sent to me by my awesome sister! They smell great! and look awesome too!

Winter Wonderland

These pictures were taken about a week and a half ago. Since then, we got another 14" of snow. Plus an additional 2 last night.
In case you were wondering what we've been dealing with. Here are some pictures.




Yup, I'd say there's a lot of snow here!

Here is the view from across the street. You can't even see the porch!


I'll be adding some updated pictures of the house soon. But this should tide you over until then.

p.s. Michael is thrilled that we've gotten so much snow...but only for one reason. He hated the bushes in front of the porch. Well, lucky him...because with the weight of all that snow I'm sure those bushes are about done for.