The Deck

alternate post titles:
How We Spent Our Anniversary
Carrie Finds Her Calling
Get The Gunk Gone
The Stupid Things Previous Homeowners Did
The Day My Blog Turned From Beads To Home Improvement Central




Thank you for the lovely "Happy Anniversary" messages yesterday. I know most couples enjoy a night on the town to celebrate their marriage. Dinner and dancing... greeting cards and flowers... maybe a something special and sparkling. Ron and I have been known to do such things on this annual occasion. But not this year. This is officially The Year Of The Exterior round these parts.

When I say that I was super excited when Ron said we should pressure wash the deck yesterday, I say it without a drop of sarcasm. We are project people and we love working on the house! (granted, we don't always agree how a job should be done, and we often fight like cats and dogs about it... but we love each other none the less... and this wasn't a brawling type of project) This year, we have a laundry list of projects for the house. When I think about it all, I start to get anxious and antsy. I want to get started... NOW!

Here is the list as it currently stands...

* Pressure wash (check) and seal the deck
* Replace metal front porch railings with pillars
* Scrap/repair/prime windows
* Rebuild the breezeway with new windows/doors/floors
* New roof for the shed and fresh coat of paint on it
* Paint/Side the house ( THE BIG ONE!)
* Possibly have the garage torn down and replaced with a 2-car garage (this one is a dreamer)

Why do we have such a long list of to-dos? The previous owners where nincompoops. This house has had 3-4 owners in the last 12 years. In 2000, the owner at the time had a ginormous 800sq ft addition put on the house that we estimate cost at the very least about $80,000. You would think, WOW! That's awesome!. But they completely neglected other, important, things that should have been taken care of first, or at the time. Like the breezeway that is crooked and has 50 year old privacy windows that the glass panes fall out of. Or the 70 year old one car garage that isn't much bigger than a shed. Or the rickety front porch railings. Or... or... or... I could go on and on.

But, I digress. Yesterday was about the deck.

Let me tell you, Carrie was in OCD hog-heaven as soon as she saw the first line of grim blasted off the floor boards of the deck. You see, when the deck was built in 2000, it was never sealed (plus they put the floor boards so close together the water pools, grrrr). And it sets under a mighty maple tree. It has built up 11 years of sludge and slime and gunk. It was getting down right slippery to walk on after the rain. Naturally, Carrie would get excited at the sight of beautifully bare wood boards brought back to life. Oh me, oh my... row after row... line after line... cleaned in a wonderfully meticulous way... the water blasted and busted away the gunk. *sigh* The things that make me giddy! Ron and I only bickered a little bit... over whose turn it was to blast a few boards.





All in all, we ended up washing for about four hours. Though, it took from about 9am to 8pm. Sprinkled among the spraying was Andrew' meeting (it went really well!), a trip to Lowes to fix the master bath plumbing problem, a trip to Home Depot (for sealer! where a 19year old literature major tried to tell me opaque means semi-transparent when he mixed the sealer wrong... yeah, I pulled out my smart phone and showed him the definition is "not transparent or translucent." grrrr.), a lacrosse game, lunch and dinner. That's how our DIY projects roll. I still have a bit more of the railing to blast this morning, then once the sun is on the deck, and the wood is dry, I'll be painting on the sealer. (And painting on a thick layer on sun screen on me too.)

So yes, with this many projects in the works, I give you fair warning. This may turn into a home improvement blog from time to time. I'll do my best to treat you with beady goodness interspersed. Are you with me?

Where We Spend Our Days

June 13th marked the two year anniversary of our closing on this old house of ours. Today I spent a solid 12 hours cleaning every square inch of it. Yeah, LOL, "Carrie" went on a spree and couldn't be stopped. She was a mad woman, just mad I tell you, mad. As I cleaned today, I thought it would be fun to do a home tour of humble dwelling. Hop over to my Flickr Gallery to see larger photos.

Snowed In

I rolled over in bed about 3am and saw an odd amber glow. No, the house wasn't on fire... there was a total white out, that made the view nonexistant. When I finally came downstairs a couple hours later, we were officially snowed in with at least a foot of snow. School is canceled (for the first time in more than 2 years!), I can't even open the back door with the drifts, it is still snowing and is expected to keep snowing all weekend.

Keep warm. Stay safe. Have hot cocoa.

Dining Room Doll Up All Done

Well, almost done anyway.

Here it is, my new and improved dining room. I am smitten. I walk in there and I can't remember it ever being another way. I love the blue, which incidentally is NOT the color in my friend's bedroom. We got our aquas crossed. Her's is actually Aqua Bay, mine is Aqua Joy. Close enough. I think my color is a little brighter then her's, her's is a little richer.

I hung the prints frames for the prints next to the front door. There will be three prints from the same artist, Yellena on Etsy. I have adored her work for a while now and finally got myself a print. I loved it so much that I ordered two more. They should be here soon and I can fill in those blank frames. In case you are wondering, I purchase "Morning", "Season", and "Allusion". And if anyone ever wants to get me another one, hint hint wink wink, I am in love with "Spore" and "Amble".


There was much debate in the Bogert house over the height of the chair rail/plate rail. I knew from the beginning that I wanted it set high. Ron however, spoke to one of his buddies during a poker game who said it needed to be at 32inches. I am glad I won this one. I think a low rail would have made the room look squatty. The ceilings are low as it is and making the white area smaller would have made it feel even lower. Ron won out on a different area of debate, the fire place wall. I was thinking the rail should go all the way around the room, but that would have it behind out big mirror over the mantel. Ron said "Just paint that wall a solid color. It'll be stupid having the mirror hanging weird." LOL... only he thought I would paint it all white! HA, no way!! All aqua it is.

I hung my small collection of plates on the wall next to the mantel on the way into the kitchen. I plan to add to this meager grouping as I find special dishes at the estate sales I go to. I hope to fill the wall with them, like something I saw on Design Sponge a while back.


I think I am going to paint a special piece for that big blank area above the side board buffet. I can see a piece forming in my mind and I think it would be cool to have a LARGE piece of my own on display, no? For now though, Andrew's 2nd grade rendition of A Starry Night will do. It is one of my favorite kid art class projects I have ever had brought home to me.


When I set my camera on auto, it kept wanting to turn the flash on. I kept it off though so you could see what I mean about the lighting in this room. It was a overcast day yesterday afternoon and this is just how it was in there. It definitely feels warmer then when the walls where gray. *sigh* I love my new dining room.

SO, what's left? The curtain situation. If I am being totally honest, I don't like curtains. They just bug me for some reason. But, I think the room needs some. I am thinking something wispy and light, maybe in a yellowish off white. I don't know. We'll just have to sit and stew on that a little longer.

Dolling Up A Dull Dining Room

First of all, WOW!! You all really love my beads! I thank you so much for snatching them up. There are just a few sets left (5, I think, some of which are favorites of mine actually). I plan to package everything up today and send out a flurry of white boxes this afternoon. Which, in most cases, I expect will arrive on your doorsteps by Monday or Tuesday.

So what to do with my sudden, unexpected, earnings from this big de-stash? I am guessing y'all are thinking I will splurge on Christmas goodies, but nope. I have something else in mind. But first, to celebrate, I bought myself a tub of Ben & Jerry's Mint Cookie Chunk Peppermint Ice Cream and rented a movie *I* wanted to watch. (Yeah, Mom rarely gets to choose around here... if it isn't a highly rated kids flick or an action packed space odyssey, we don't see it, ha!) While watching my movie and spooning my ice cream, Ron found a box of cds we had been looking for ever since our move in the summer of '08. We sorted threw them all and after the movie sat up listening to some of our favorites on speakers that are apparently as old as I am and still worth a pretty penny, whatever. (LOL, my husband has a speaker fetish, ask anyone who knows him.) But I digress.

The whole situation gave me a seriously busy brain. I couldn't sleep. And why? because I was designing our dining room in my head until 1am. Yeah, I am weird like that.

I have been disappointed with our dining room since the day I painted it last year. I wanted a rich gray color (if gray can be rich) and instead I got something that looks a little on the lavender side. The room is on the east side of the house, so it gets good light when the sun comes up but by about 10am it is very dim and dreary in there. I have been stewing on the idea that I want to add a darker richer color, but still keep the room bright. Hmmmm... think on it... enter the idea of a chair rail. My plan is to paint the upper 1/3rd of the room a color called "Aqua Joy" from Valspar (which my friend used in her bedroom) and the lower 2/3rd antique white.

I am hosting book club on the 17th so there is no time like the present to doll up another room in the house before having party guests right? I plan on painting next week, picking out some pretty prints for the walls, and changing out the ugly seat cushions on the chairs. Oh, and maybe I'll make some quick curtains. Before all that happens though, you need a "before" tour.

Check out my dining room... today, and as it was on Thanksgiving.


The details: The table and buffet are an antique set that Ron found on Craigslist. Both are solid oak (his favorite kind of wood furniture). We don't intend to keep the chairs, but rather swap them out as time goes on with unique ones we find at sales. We want a whole set of unmatched chairs.


The mantel will get changed up a bit. The trays and plates will be hung on the wall, and the artwork too. I am a little worried that my glass pieces will get lost against the new color, but we will see.


The empty frames are getting moved and prints will hang there. The china cabinet is antique "Empire Style". One I found at another estate sale. I love it. It will stay where it is. And I am making a very conscious effort not to over stuff it. I want to be able to see what is it in.

Now to get the paint and new roller heads and moulding while I am out today mailing off your packages. :)

Home Improvement Junkies

I swear that, if I ever give up jewelry making, I am going to become a handygirl. Goodness I love home improvement projects!! I could watch This Old House on PBS for hours on end and never get board. I am completely in tv-love with Norm, Rich, and Tom, seriously.

So you guessed it... we installed new hardwood floors in our big living room this weekend (and I finished knitting a pair of legwarmers for my sister that I started last Christmas, but whatever). In case you haven't noticed, we are "project people". We always have something we are working on to make our home more homie to us. There was the big kitchen remodel last year, the gardens this spring, the bathroom gutting this summer, and now the living room floors. And those are just the house projects, we have side projects too, ex: the medicine cabinet stripping project I am working on.


Doing something special to the floors in this room has been on our list since we first walked through the house in March of 2008. For those of you who have house hunted, you'll know what I mean. It is the "we could" list. You walk through a house for the first time and say "we could do this..." or "we could do that...". I didn't really think this was one that we would actually follow through on, but I am so glad we did.

Here is how the project went down... Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were "prep days". Ron came home early from work on Monday and we busted out the tile near the back door and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I pulled out the carpet and padding and the rest of the tile.





On Thursday evening, we set out some tar paper and started with the hard part... getting the pieces just right to go around the back door. My hubby is might handy with a saw... watch out!




Friday was the big day. Ron took off work and we tried to get the floor layed before the kids got home from school. I think this was a stroke of genius on my part. Why try to lay floor on the weekend while the kids are home and in our hair? Oh, and more about the flooring itself. It is a 3/4in pre-finished solid oak hardwood from Lowes. We bought 20 boxes of the flooring and ended up using about 18 1/2 of those. The room is 25ft x 17ft and we accounted for about 10% waste. It worked.

Here was how the day went...









We had to do a lot of furniture moving. We keep pushing stuff out of the way until we couldn't push it any further and then moved it to the finished side of the room. We were exhausted by 5pm on Friday and only about 75% done. So, we threw the kids in the car, went and got a cheesburger, refreshed our energy, and worked a little longer. We went to bed with the room about 80% done. And ended up having to pay to keep the stapler we rented for an extra day.

Saturday morning I woke up with a head cold. Which, considering the sickness that ran threw this house a few weeks ago, I figured was coming. At least it didn't hit me on Friday! We worked on the floor lazily through out the day on Saturday and was bale to finish it up by lunch time. Then came the fun part, trying to arrange furniture. I am still not happy with the layout yet, so I don't have any really good shots of the room, but once the baseboards are back up, I will be sure to share something.





Now onto Sunday, I hope you aren't too bored yet. I told you I love this stuff... feel free to click onto a different blog if you are starting to dooze off. Sunday, sunday, sunday... we went to Lowes. We needed to figure out what to do about the two stairs coming into the room from the hallway and the kitchen. They didn't have what we needed so we had to get creative with moulding. And that is what we will be working on later today (Monday). What we did finish up was covering up some badly damaged flooring in the old side of the house. Back when we did the bathroom, I went all psycho and ripped out carpeting in the hallway. Only to discover a place where we think there used to be a doorway and a "repair" job done with spackle. Not good. Rather than making the effort to get all that out, we decided to cover it up, and it looks fantastic now.






Okay... a side project update. I think I mentioned that we were doing something with out woodburning stove. Didn't I? Our old stove was very very pretty, but not big enough for the house. Our home is about 2400sq ft and the stove was only rated to heat about 1200sq ft. We found a new-to-us replacement stove on Craigs List that is much larger and is rated to heat closer to 2000sq ft. It is still a Vermont Castings stove, like the old one, and it is enameled, like the old one... and it has really cool dragons. We love it. The old hearth was n.a.s.t.y. It was about 8in off the ground and had 1/4in tile glued to it. Anytime you dropped a log, by accident, the tile broke into a million pieces. So after our first winter, there were at least a dozen tiles missing. We pulled that all out when we replaced the stove and dropped the hearth down to floor level. We bought some beautiful pieces of blue field stone that is 2inches thick and so much more durible. We. LOVE. It.








Okay, so the nitty gritty... the cost. Total for the flooring, the staple rental, the moulding... everything... we paid about $1500. Not too bad if you ask us, considering that is about how much we would have had to pay for carpet (if not more) and that only lasts a few years, this should last about 100 years.

Now I get to go thrifting for cool area rugs and won't have to move furniture again to put the Christmas tree up in a few weeks, HA! What fun!! Now, I need to go finish freshing up the paint on those baseboards so they can be put back on this afternoon, and we need to install those stair treads.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the project! LOTS more detailed photos with more descriptions on FLICKR!!

Oh Boy!

Wait till you see what we've been doing...

Tweaked

Things didn't go according to plan yesterday, but they did work out in the end. Check out Jacob's new old bed. Nothing fancy, just a simple wood headboard and some plain bedding. I picked him up a down comforter for chilly winter nights and no, I didn't iron the bed skirt. I.hate.ironing. Would you believe, his room is always that clean? All I did was sweep and set the bed up. He is like me in more ways than we can count. For his birthday, I plan to get some reproduction vintage football prints for the walls. I can already envision them hanging on the wall over his bed.

Oh, and his neck... thanks for all the well wishes. He is doing much better, but still isn't 100%. I took him for a massage yesterday afternoon, and the massage therapist could feel swelling in two areas still. So he isn't going to football practice tonight, but hopefully he will be back on Saturday.

Now me, on the other hand, totally tweaked my back last night. Ron and I were laying in bed watching an episode of Hell'S Kitchen on my laptop on Hulu. When it was over, I closed my laptop and twisted to set the computer on the floor. Well, I twisted the wrong way and wrenched my back. I was in pain all night, and got very little sleep. I am hoping my Mom can bring her heat pad over later this morning and I can get enough relief to take a breath without being sore. Ugh. I am sure it will be better in a day or two. But I think I need to take this as a sign that I need to slow down and take it easy.

Here is to a day of knitting on the couch with a heat pad and coffee.

Operation A.E.I.O.U ~ Complete

Okay, so we weren't able to finish it in 4 days like my impatient inner child wanted. But I say getting it done in 9 day ain't too shabby. The bathroom is DONE!! No more icky ucky yucky oder... no more gross grout... no more ugly cabinet... just crisp clean sparkling white porcelain goodness.



The new treatment for the mirror is my favorite new touch in the bathroom. I found the frame for $3 at an estate sale. It was way too big, but Ron was able to cut it down and it fills the space perfectly. And I love it with the light from Lowes too that rang up $3.53. LOL... new mirror and light for less then $7... not bad.



While we are talking prices, before we started the remodel, I read somewhere that the average bathroom remodel costs between $10,000-$15,000!! Granted, those people are probably putting in Italian marble shower surrounds, but seriously. $15K for a bathroom? Not us!! We ended up spending around $650.





There are few more finishing touches. I need to hang a reclaimed window frame on the wall and touch up some paint on the moulding. I plan to hunt down a lace edged bed sheet at an estate sale and use it as a shower curtain (until then, the circles remain). And we gotta caulk the tub too. But isn't it pretty?

Debriefing

Ya know how on TV shows that are all about well coordinated attack plans after the operation is complete the characters have to go and be "debriefed"? Well, that is what I am doing now. I am debriefing you on the details from Operation AEIOU.

I literally woke up Thursday morning, rolled over in bed, saw the rain, and said to Ron "we should remodel the bathroom this weekend". We have been talking about it for weeks now, we weren't sure if we would remodel the bathroom first, paint the exterior of the house, or put hardwood floors in the living room. As the weather has slowly gotten warmer, and more humid... that bathroom has started to smell nastier and nastier. That is nasss teeee... emphasis on the nas and the tee. Just gross. All the bleach in the world can't keep that room in line. It was time to gut it.





We were able to get all the demolition done on Thursday. The cabinet and sink came out first, then the tiles, then the toilet. When everything was out and vacuumed we assessed the situation. There was a two foot ring of rot around the toilet and that had to go. We removed the first layer... found more rot... removed the next layer... found more rot... we had to strip the floor down to the rafters. And yes, we had to hold our breaths the entire time.



After the floor was repaired, we gave up for the day. I would have been happy to keep working, but that is just because I am really a very impatient three year old trapped in an adult body. Ron went golfing, and I worked on replacing the light fixture on Friday. Cool thing about the fixture, when we were at Lowes picking out all our stuff, we picked this light that was on clearance. Regular price was $68, marked down to $53. We get to the register and it rings up $3.53. YEAH!! Three bucks for my new light!! Makes me love it even more.



Saturday, by far, was the more difficult day. Ron and I have personalities that really don't mesh on projects. We both have ideas on how things should be done and we don't give an inch. We bicker and fight until someone says "I quit, do it yourself". So, even though it was a holiday, we busted our butts, screamed and yelled a lot, then both gave up for the day and went to a party instead. The problem was the plumbing. Nothing is standard anything in this house. Pipes that should be 1/2'' are 3/8''... knobs that should turn the water off, don't turn it off all the way. It really is a nightmare. And I have tons of photos from that part of the process but they disappeared from the camera!! I think it is the kids fault. They were playing Wii and needed batteries, they took the rechargeables out of my camera, and that lost the photos. I think.

Sunday, I was a sore lady. Did a little too much celebrating at the party the night before. Yeah... let's just say you shouldn't have wine and then let people talk you into having mixed drinks. (Ron was the DD.) Oh and you should probably eat at the party while you are drinking, so all that alcohol don't go straight to your head. Needless to say, Sunday was slow. But we got tons done!! The new bead board wainscoting is up, we came up with a special treatment for the mirror (we just couldn't figure out how to get it down with out shattering it), and the tiles are layed.



We even took a break and went cherry picking on Sunday afternoon. There is still more to do... finish the tiling. You can see, I am few tiles short in the corner there. I need to paint the walls, and another coat on the wainscot. And then we can replace the fixtures. I am in love with the pedestal sink we bought and I can't wait to put it in!! The toilet is a Cadet 3 Spacesaver... cool huh? More then you ever needed to know. And then, I have an idea for a new shower curtain too, though the kids really like this one, so we'll see.



This is going to be a crazy week ahead!! More about that tomorrow...