My Life is Now Complete!

Aaand we're back after nearly 18 months of no posts and no updates. Believe it or not, our home is STILL a work in progress, but after the major project we just finished, our home is just that. much. more. awesome.

Let's take a trip back in time, shall we?

Before we moved into the house, the front room looked like this.

Ceiling to floor wood paneling, ewww.

It had some real potential though, and by that I mean it had a working fireplace and was therefore worth saving. After a few hours with a sledge hammer, a lot of wires, a dozen electrical outlets, drywall and spackle, we had a workable room.

We put a coat of primer on the walls and ceiling, moved Dan's desk and file cabinets into the room, and basically left it alone for the past 4 years or so. DVD cases moved in, a bookshelf ended up in there, but we had a vision for a better future. 

A real library.

In February, we put in motion a plan that took us nearly an entire summer to conclude. We drew up designs for what we wanted the room to look like and hired a master craftsman to build us our dream room. We bought a ridiculous number of oak boards from a local lumber mill, and I spent most of the spring and early summer staining and polyurethaning. 

We went from blank walls ... 

... and empty corners...

 To this.

Corner shelving between the windows for DVD's, 

CD's, and Daniel's toys.

L-shaped window seats that function as storage

compartments for Daniel's camera equipment. 

Antique brass hinges that match the rest of the 

hardware in the house.

Eventually, there will be cushions on these, and I

will have myself a cozy reading nook!

Shelving with recessed lighting over Daniel's 

desk for display.

A gorgeous mantle built right over top of the other. 

Funny story, we couldn't actually remove the other

without damaging the fireplace, so our carpenter did 

an awesome cover-up job with the new wood.

And a little something for me. Something to make my fellow bibliophile's hearts beat a little faster.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves. 

Solid oak with fancy support pieces.

I am so in love!

It's not every day that a girl gets to design her own library and have it become a reality. I cannot think of a better gift for my 30th birthday than to have a real library in my home. 

Someone find me a rolling ladder, please :)

What Did You Do On Your House This Winter?

I've had at least a dozen people ask me that question. And until the end of February, my answer would have been, "Absolutely nothing." Instead of being productive, I read far too many books, sewed two quilts and played more video games than I care to admit (Ok, so it was two, and I beat them beginning to end. My husband is so proud of me!). About the end of the dreadfully frozen month of February, I finally got my butt in gear.

~~~

We desperately needed a toybox for Logan, especially after Christmas! I wanted an old wooden box to fit with our rustic barnwood/ old crate furniture pieces around the house. Dave, of course, knew just the box for us. Sadly, it was covered with old wallpaper, so I had some work to do.

Tools: Plastic scraper, hot water, vinegar, rags

Time: About two days of Logan naps (4-5 solid hours)

How To: Mix 1:1 ratio vinegar to hot water. Apply mix to wallpaper with rag. Wait 5 minutes.

               Scrape off wallpaper. Repeat if necessary.

Some spots were a bit trickier than others, but it was

a pretty simple process. Oh, what's that under all 

that wallpaper? *Gasp*

I LOVE this box. It fits perfectly with

our house and my personality :) 

And Logan loves playing in the box 

with his toys. 

~~~

I've also done some scraping/sanding of an old window I found in our barn. I'm planning on turning it into a photo frame for some of Daniel's best photographs. 

Doesn't look like much.

First I had to remove all of the old putty from the windowpanes without cracking the old glass. Once I did that, I was able to remove the glaziers points from behind the glass and take out the panes. Then came the sanding. And sanding. And more sanding.

Here is what I have now. I'm planning on following a This Old House tutorial on how to replace pane glass windows, so the next time I post I'll be able to show you just how I did it. I haven't decided if I should paint the frame, poly it, or just leave it. If I poly it, it may look like all the barnwood in my house, and y'all know how much I love barnwood!

~~~

Daniel and Dave did a bit of work around our library fireplace, covering up some of the gaps and seams. 

Before.

After. Hurray for crown moulding, corner trim 

and the obligatory deer antlers :)

~~~

We bought Dave a scroll saw for Christmas, mostly because he wanted to redo the gingerbread pieces that had been on the house when he originally bought it. The old gingerbread was falling to pieces, rotted through. Sadly, no restorative efforts made there, but we did make carbon copies of the old pieces. 

Starting with these. As you can probably tell, these

are not even close to being the same shape, so I took

up my dremmel sander and got to work. 

After many hours of sanding, smoothing and doing my darndest to make each piece congruent with itself, I had more than a dozen of these little pieces ready to be made into decorative pieces.

All set and ready to go on our porches

once the weather warms up! I'll be sure

to post a picture of what these look like

on the house. 

~~~

Speaking of porches... our new contractor, Fred, replaced all of our blocky, unpainted porch posts with these beauties.

They need a good coat of paint, but again,

we need to wait for some warm, dry

weather to make that happen.

I can't wait to get the gingerbread up, and everything painted! We are planning on painting our porches the proper color of grey (not the odd bluish shade they are now), the posts and gingerbread white, as well as painting the garage. Lots of spring/summer plans around our house!

~~~

Carrying on with the painting theme, we FINALLY agreed on colors for our bedroom. It has taken us five months to accomplish that much. Five. Months. It only took Mary Ann and I two days to paint, but five months for Dan and I to decide on a paint. It'll be a miracle if we ever finish this house.

Thanks to a Facebook query and a number of suggestions, we decided to paint the walls a very light brown and paint a green accent wall behind our bed.

The colors work great together, but now that I'm looking

at a picture, I realize how much we need an accent rug,

and maybe some matching nightstands. And things on

the walls. Someone help! I can't decorate. 

We just yesterday decided on a color for the window and door trim as well as the baseboard. White. Seriously? But it had to be the correct shade of white, otherwise the walls would look like they blended into the trim. And honestly, why are there so many shades of white? The walls are painted, and the trim is being worked on now. I'll post a picture once everything is up.

~~~

I also managed to paint our spare room this winter. Dan gave me permission to paint it whatever color I wanted, so the next day I went to Lowes and bought purple. No surprise to anyone who knows me. Mary Ann and I painted it just a few weeks ago so as to be ready when my parents came to stay with us. While they were visiting, Dad took it upon himself to put up the baseboard in the room. Now our spare room is almost complete! 

Dave is working on putting up the window trim as I speak. Once that is up, it's touch up paint and putty, window blinds and curtains to make this room look amazing!

We also have plans to do a bit of trim around the fireplace, same as we did downstairs. The fireplace itself needs a bit of work: re-bricked on the inside, new tile outside, and a pipe down the chimney to make it usable. All in good time. That might just wait until next winter when we look for indoor projects to work on.

~~~

As we head toward spring, I'm looking forward to doing much more outside. My early garden plants have been planted, I have lots of landscaping to do, as well as a lot of outdoor painting. Looking forward to getting out of the house and into the sunshine!

In Lieu of a Christmas Letter, I Bring You a Post!

Many of you might not know how renovations really happen. You start out with a "to do" list, get some contractor quotes, settle on someone to do the job(s) and then they tell you when they are available to work.

Normally. 

In theory.

But really, not ever.

My Christmas present from Dave last year was the promise of a sidewalk and a blacktopped driveway. I was pretty thrilled, because here is what our walkway looked like.

And our driveway was concrete patches with some gravel, but mostly weeds. Not terribly appealing.

When spring rolled around, we started asking around about getting the sidewalk poured. We got some extraordinary quotes (thousands of dollars, really?), had a few promising leads, and then life happened.

First we had to landscape.

Then we had to get drainage dug out back. 

Then I was gardening and freezing veggies. 

Then contractor machinery broke. 

Contractors backed out.

Ugh.

6 months later all of the major projects that needed done are finally being finished, all in the same week.

Sidewalk was poured. 

Framing

Watching the cement harden....

Driveway was paved. 

Logan loved watching the skid steer at work!

The finished driveway.

Dave and his new contractor completed barn renovations and fenced in the back pasture for the new tenants.

Our new "neigh"bors! Actually, there are four of

them, but they are typically only out two at a time.

I LOVE living next to these guys!

I suppose the moral of the story is that if it's gonna happen, it's all gonna happen at once. At the end of the season. Right before the holidays. At least it is done, and we have a sidewalk that can be shoveled, and a driveway to be proud of. And I enjoy looking out my kitchen window to see horses frolicking in the back yard :)

A few other projects of note...

My living room shelves are complete!

I had the boards sanded and poly'ed this summer, but it took a while to make it from the garage to the living room walls.

Good old barn wood. If you look at the top piece, 

you can see little white dots on the wood. Those are

air bubbles; the wood was so dry that once poly went 

on it, the board sucked it up and pushed the air out.

I literally had to put six coats of poly on these before 

the smooth surface was created.

Dan stuck the shelves flush in the corners of the 

living room so that we have room next to them to

display his photos.

And Dan finally got to put his surround sound speakers

up where he wanted them!

I think sometime I'll write a post on a dozen ways to use barn wood in your home. So many ideas! I really like the rustic charm these add to my house.

I finally finished up our master bathroom! I taped the room up, picked a color for the wainscotting and trim, and went to work during Logan's napping hours. I was so pleased with how the colors turned out, and I rejoiced.

And then I pulled off the painters tape.

I was left with this.

I would like to tell you just what went through my 

mind, but I'm not proud of those words...

It was everywhere. I cried.

So here is a tip for anyone that DOESN'T want to have this happen; use oil based primer on bathroom walls. It helps prevent your paint from peeling due to high moisture content. I put the tape on and didn't remove it for nearly a month (because let's face it, getting any project done with a one year old takes more time than necessary). Big mistake! Between the tape, a steamy bathroom with taped walls and a lack of proper primer, I have a mess on my hands. 

What to do? I need to scrape off all the loose paint, sand down the peeled spots, re-primer, re-sand, and repaint. Ugh. This is going to take a month of Logan's naps to accomplish. 

If you're painting your bathroom, please learn from my mistake. Only YOU can prevent a peely bathroom!

Merry Christmas to everyone! This might be the only proper Christmas letter that anyone gets. Between post-partum depression, a needy growing child and a house that still needs finishing, it has been an interesting and challenging year. I think I'm on the upswing of things, though prayers for us and our sanity are always appreciated. We love you all, and hope you have a merry Christmas, in whatever state or country you may find yourself.

Mommy's Christmas helper :)

Aaaand We're Back!

Well so what if it has been eight months since my last post? It's not like we've been busy or anything...

Logan Paul was born on November 22, 2013. 8 lbs, 3 oz, 19 inches long. He is now 7 months old, and growing like a weed! He is our little goat, eating anything and everything that can fit in his mouth. He has just cut his first tooth too! Dan and I are very proud parents :)

The house work went on hiatus for a few months due to Logan's arrival and a very VERY cold winter. There wasn't much anyone wanted to do, though a major, ongoing project was started sometime in January.

Door, window and floor trim, huzzah!

What an adventure here! Because we took all of the original plaster out of the house and replaced it with drywall, we had some major gaps along the edges of the rooms, where the floorboards and walls were supposed to meet. Not centimeter gaps. Inches. Holes everywhere. When I swept the floor, I used to just sweep the dirt to the edge and dump it into the gap (no judging of my housekeeping skills, please and thankyouverymuch). Your typical piece of baseboard from Lowes would only cover a fraction of the gap, so we had to get creative.

What we did was commission and Amish woodworker to make two separate pieces of baseboard.

One to cover the rather large gaps.

The other goes flush with the wall on top of the other piece.

Dan and Dave have had quite a time trying to get all of the baseboard on downstairs. Because a lot of the floors are warped, and the corners aren't all 90 degree angles, they've had to do some creative finangling to get it on. You really can't tell unless you know where to look. Overall, I am really pleased with how it came out! Most of the door frames and baseboard are complete downstairs. What an improvement! It really gives the house a completed look.

More trim in the dining room.

My mom-in-law took it upon herself to paint a number of rooms in our house over the winter months. After looking at the paint chips we had up on the kitchen and bathroom walls since last October (!), we finally chose colors, and Mom got to painting. 

Our kitchen is a lovely shade of green. It isn't

the color I originally wanted, but the Easter-y

green has grown on me.

Our master bathroom also received a few coats of paint

in a lovely shade of blueish green. We decided to put

wainscoting on the bottom half of the walls because the blue

was a bit overwhelming on the whole wall. The wainscoting 

isn't finished just yet; it needs the trim put on to give it a 

finished look, but that is next weekend's project!

Daniel installed the door trim around both bathroom doors. 

Eventually it will be painted to match the wainscoting.

Other miscellaneous items of note: 

Our bedroom closet finally has a door!

Again, a master job of cut and paste by my

dad-in-law and husband. I am so happy to finally

have the gaping hole on my side of the bed

covered up!

Shelf in our living room. I include this because it is one

of a kind. I discovered it was cheaper to upcycle an old

piece of barn wood than it was to buy a shelf of the dimensions

we wanted. I sanded off the grey paint, used a fine sandpaper

to smooth it out, and finished it off with two coats of polyurethane.

And yes, that is a stuffed Yoda and a LOTR Lego 

set on display #geeklife

Seriously though, how cool is this wood? Old nail holes, 

cracks, knots and wood grain take this from a simple shelf 

to a unique living room piece. I love it! I have plans to 

do the same thing on the opposite living room wall, only

two smaller shelves instead of a large one.

With the advent of warmer weather came the desire to

get some outside work done. My brother Mark, Dan and I

dug up the grass, planted and mulched around the sides of

the house facing the road. We've got boxwood, hydrangea,

holly, mini lilacs and something else I can't remember. It 

definitely improves curb appeal!

This was an interesting project. Before doing any planting, 

Dan and Mark had to dig down two feet around the entire

porch and place wire in the ground to discourage the resident

groundhogs from coming back. Fifteen of them were also 

discouraged by the business end of a gun.

A huge thank you to Mark for doing so much work around

our house this summer. Dan and I wouldn't have much done if 

it had been left to just the two of us!