Decking our halls!

We are transitioning into full Christmas mode around here. It's the first Christmas in our own house and you know we're doing it up big time. I've been decorating the shelves in the living room and the buffet in the dining room, and will post pictures of those soon.

In the meantime, we're the first house in the neighborhood to be all done up, Santa style...



1,800 lights!

We got a few of those industrial spools and ended up using about 450 feet of lights. That's a lot of Christmas cheer. :) (Oh, and please ignore that extra fence panel that hasn't found its way to the garage yet. We're lazy, but at least in the meantime the window would be safe from a zombie attack.)





Branden spent a long time measuring and meticulously planning how the lights would be strung. I think he might be fulfilling some kind of childhood dream to be the Clark Griswold of the neighborhood.

After looking at lots of tacky, busy wreaths, we opted for the simple and classic approach. Pine wreath with a big red bow. Nothing says Christmastime quite like that.



We're having so much decking the halls around here. We've agreed to restrain ourselves and not put up the tree until December 1st though, so we'll be busy trimming our tree on Wednesday for sure. Happy start of the holidays!!

What a weekend!

We got so much accomplished this weekend, it feels so good! Most importantly, my 5-month long quest for a buffet table for the dining room has FINALLY come to an end!!!

After searching endless antique stores, furniture stores, and consignment shops within a 1-2 hour drive from here, plus scouring Craigslist every day, I was ready to give up on ever finding the right piece (at the right price). Then today we took a last-ditch drive down to an antique store in Newburyport, and we found exactly what I had been looking for at an amazing price!



It's seriously exactly what I've been envisioning. And the woodwork is beautiful.



From researching the manufacturer's plaque inside one of the (dovetailed!) drawers it's from anywhere between 1917 and 1959. My guess is 1940s. (Those things on top won't be staying--I threw them on top quickly just to get an idea. I'm also thinking of hanging that mirror above it, but before I commit to mega-holes in the wall I'm going to keep it propped up for a day or two...)



The dining room is so much more pulled together. But most importantly we gained tons of storage space, which was the biggest reason I've been looking for a piece like this. With nowhere to store things, we would end up dumping stuff in the corner of the room. And it was driving me completely nuts. Like, borderline homicidal. So now I can breathe easier. :)

In other weekend work, I painted the beadboard and almost all of the trim in the bathroom. It took a few coats and was pretty time consuming, but it's almost finished now. So once that's done (I only have a couple of sections left around the door) I'll be able to post some complete before and after photos!

We also started tackling the next enormous project (did you really think we'd rest after the bathroom??) and are finishing part of the basement. It's a huge deal! We have no easy place to put a washer and dryer in the house, so after discussing many options, Branden came up with the idea of finishing off half of the basement to make into a laundry room. The floor is already underway!

This weekend I also picked up a new chair for the computer desk in the living room. Having the giant office chair on wheels had always driven me crazy. I've been searching everywhere for a parsons chair for here for a long time (almost as long as the buffet table, but not quite!), because I knew the smaller footprint would help this corner feel less bulky. They go for $80-$100 everywhere, which is just too much for me to justify paying for one faux-leather chair. So I was psyched when I found this guy for less than $40!



It takes up so much less space, is the perfect height, and it's nice and comfy too. Also, Branden is happy to see his favorite Picasso finally find a home. :)



In other news, I'm getting geared up for Thanksgiving, and I'm going to try my hand at piping icing for the first time. We'll see how that goes!

Also, these guys have been feasting early on my front porch pumpkins. Lucy hates them more than anything.

No escaping!

Branden and I finally got the gate to the backyard installed which means that it is finally entirely closed in and there is no escape!

This job was a big pain in the butt. More so than the rest of the fence. Granted, I didn't have to actually physically do anything when the rest was installed, so I'm really just saying it was a pain in the butt because I had to hold and lift heavy stuff this time. :)

Anyway, it really wasn't that hard of a job, I guess, it was just cold out and I'm really bad at holding heavy things. Seriously, I'm probably the worst mover ever. I hate carrying things. I would not have made a good Amazonian. Or donkey.



Despite my deficiencies, it came out well! We bought two latches (one for the top and one for the bottom) so we just need to screw those in and it will be completely Lucy-proof. :) From the front it just looks like a continuous length of fence (we're not putting a handle on the outside) so you can't see where the gate is.

Lucy has been running around like a crazy beast out back. She's so happy to have room to spread out.




Around the house I've been switching up some little bits of decor to make things feel a little more like Thanksgiving and to gear up for the real exciting time of year... Christmas! Yup, get ready.

I threw together this harvest-y centerpiece for the dining room table:



(Lucy must love it because she's pretty much melting over there in the background. This is why I call her The Puddle.) The woven disc I got at Target for around $1.50, and the candlesticks were from Goodwill for 50 cents each. The gourds I had gotten earlier for a buck or two I think. The whole thing was super cheap. And together it reminds me of a flattened cornucopia. In a good way.

I also switched up the telephone table to make it a little less Halloween-ish and more late-fall-early-winter-ish. (These are real words.)





I love this apothecary jar. I feel kind of like a scientist with my specimens, but I believe that whatever you put in a glass jar instantly becomes lovely. I just picked up a branch with some berries on it while on one of my walks with Lucy. Then I snipped some dying dried hydrangeas from one of our bushes in the front yard. I stuck some cinnamon sticks at the bottom, and voila! A beautiful little November time capsule.

Next to that I also filled a glass hurricane with some lovely glittery apples:



I've already started planning out my holiday decorations so it won't stay like this for long! Seriously, Branden developed his plans for the exterior lights weeks ago and is planning on purchasing multiple spools of lights to string the day after Thanksgiving. We're crazy over here, I know. But it's our first Christmas in a real home... you really can't blame us for wanting to get into the spirit early!

Slow... but steady, at least?

I know, I know, it's been almost two weeks since my last update. I've been a rotten blogger! I haven't updated because there's really hasn't been too much to report.

Since we finished all of the major renovation in the bathroom (walls, ceiling, tile, paint) we're down to just the annoying little details, which is why we haven't been quite as gung-ho to "git 'er done" as we were at the start. We're stuck with tedious jobs like putting up trim (Branden's the math whiz so that is allll on him, thank you), painting the endless little nooks in the beadboard, and painting all the trim throughout the room (and there's a lot of it).

That said, on to what we have done...

We installed a snazzy new light fixture:



It's chrome with white details. I just love the shape of it... the mount looks almost like a shower faucet!

I threw together some super cheap art (coast about $13 total, I think) for the walls:



This consisted of buy-one-get-one-free frames with mats, downloading free images from 19th century zoology books, and making prints at wal-mart for a few cents each. Yup, I said super cheap and I wasn't kidding.

We've got most of the trim up around the room, but you can see where we skipped over the particularly challenging cuts in the image above... don't judge. We'll get to it. But it makes our brains hurt.

So here's the room as it stands now.





I have a really hard time capturing this color, but it's a hint more blue and brighter than it looks here. I'm too lazy to correct these in Photoshop before I post them, so take my word for it. :)

We've got unfinished trim, beadboard to paint, and the shower tiles still need a good amount of grout scrubbed off of them:



Like I said, don't judge. We'll get there!

In the home stretch

Renovating a bathroom is messy.



Like, really messy.



It would've been awesome to have a second bathroom to use while we did this work, but alas. No such luck in our old house. (We have plans to add a half bath downstairs when we renovate the kitchen... next project!) Everything is cleaned up now and we're able to shower in our own house again...

The renovation has gone really well. We got all of the big stuff done--drywall, new ceiling, tile, paint--in our long four day weekend. We're working on buffing the tiles to remove the grout haze (from what we've read, it takes 1-2 weeks for it to come off completely) and still have to put up the ceiling trim and paint the bead board. We also got a lovely new light fixture that will be going up tomorrow.

Here's the bathroom after we primed the ceiling and that horrible yellow paint on the walls.



We ran into a minor problem when it came time to put color on the walls. We bought our paint in a semi-gloss finish, and oh man, it looked horrendous. It was way too shiny and the brush strokes were super visible.



See how terrible? Yikes a bikes.

Side note, though, see that lovely smooth ceiling up there? Branden did a great job putting it up. It's so much nicer than the gross panels that were up there before.

So, another trip to Home Depot and we got the same color in an eggshell finish. By the way, yes, the cashiers do know us and ask how our projects are coming along... it's sad.



Sooo much better!

Once the trim is up and painted I'll do a full reveal of the before and after. Until then, I'll leave you with another shower tile preview, all grouted!

Bathroom renovation update!

Here we are at the start of day three of our four-day bathroom renovation. We've gotten a ton accomplished in the last two days! I'm confident that we'll be able to get all of the major stuff finished before Tuesday.

First thing we did was drop the ceiling. Then we started pulling down the tiles in the shower.



All was going well until we discovered this:



Black mold, awesome! This is the spot where the tiles had started falling off previously, so I wasn't surprised to see that we had some moisture there.

So we changed plans a bit and pulled down the drywall around the entire shower. We figured we might as well take it down to the studs and replace everything--even the spots that aren't currently damaged--to be sure that it doesn't happen again.





After bleaching the crap out of everything we put up a vapor barrier across the ceiling and down the walls. This helps prevent further moisture.



Then Branden and our bff Josh hung the drywall (the purple board underneath in the picture... didn't have time to take a pic of just this step, sorry!) on the ceiling and walls, taping and mudding along the seams. This particular drywall is mold and mildew resistant, so ideal for bathrooms.


After that we put up a cement backerboard, which is used to prevent mildew and also to help tiles adhere.


Last but not least, we put up the tiles!

Neither of us had ever tiled before, but it was really simple. It took a couple of minutes to figure out exactly how much thinset to use on the wall, but once we got that down, we were able to zip right through.

So the entire shower is finished now and that's where we're at! All that's left now is to do another coat of mud on the ceiling, grout the tile, put up trim, and paint!

I hope to have the full reveal in just a couple of days! Until then, here's a sneak peek of the shower tile:

It's bathroom demolition time!!

As I speak type Branden is in our bathroom ripping down the ceiling. See, late last night he decided that since we both have the next four days off, this would be a good time to renovate the bathroom. The bathroom has been on my list of dream projects for a while, so naturally I thought this was a fantastic idea. That settled it, and off to Home Depot we went.

Our upstairs bathroom (the only one in the house) is a major eyesore, and we haven't touched it since we bought the house in June because we knew it needed a total overhaul. And, frankly, we had bigger fish to fry.

Here's the unsightly mess that we've been living with for the last 4 1/2 months:



Nasty. I know.

The walls are painted a bright as the center of the sun yellow, and it's some kind of super stretchy latex paint. You can actually just pull it off with your fingers and it feels like a balloon. I've never seen anything like it. (Our kitchen features the same lovely paint job, btw.) We started pulling it off in some places, and you can see that equally lovely mauve paint underneath. Barf.

On top of the beauuutiful paint job, the beadboard was never completely primed or painted. You can see where the previous owners stopped priming to the right of the toilet. Awesome.

So, here is the renovation agenda for the next four days.

First, rip down the ceiling panels.



These panels were originally throughout the entire house, and we already got rid of them everywhere except the kitchen and bathroom, since we knew we'd be doing bigger renovations in those rooms. We'll be replacing the ceiling with mold and mildew resistant sheet rock.

We'll also demo the equally barf-inducing robin's egg blue tile in the shower.



See how the tiles have already started falling off? Hopefully the demolition is a breeze. We already picked up some beautiful glass mosiac tile for the shower. We plan on bringing the tile all the way up to the ceiling for a more polished look. Neither of us have tiled before, so this will be a new adventure!

After the tiles are up (successfully, I hope!), we'll strip the latex paint off these walls and repaint.




So what do you think? Can we get this done in four days?? We'll find out!