Spring 2012 Pictures

This weekend Thomas was able to borrow his work camera and took some pictures of the house. I enjoy looking back through pictures to see our progress, so here is the house in Spring 2012!

The front. There have been a lot of changes this year... New picket fence, gate, arbor, new door, lots of plants, a new oak tree... We hope the next couple years will bring a new paint job, at least one of the spruce trees cut down, more flower beds and much more.

I love this angle. Our new flag! Now we just need to find a matching Canadian flag to go on the other side. I love our rain chains and rain barrels... They are very therapeutic.

 Side of the house. The new tree is a Scarlet Oak... It will turn bright red in the fall and will get huge.

 The back of the house. Major changes to the back have been a new privacy fencee, lots of perennials, hot tub and rain barrels.

This is the side gate in the backyard. We have clematis climbing up the side of the gate. I love the beautiful flowers. 

Clematis!

Another angle of the back. We planted a new hydrangea this weekend and I love it... It's pink and I'm thinking we are going to have to get more.

We have orange trumpet vines and pink/yellow honesuckle climbing up the fence.

The living room. We will be getting the rest of our sectional this month and I hope to get a new rug soon after that... Plans for this room include finishing/staining the beams and woodwork, possibly doing something different on the ceiling (we are thinking tin ceiling?) and refinishing the floors.

Another angle into the parlor.

Dining room

Kitchen

Blue bedroom with furniture. We don't really use this room

My grandmother's roll top desk in the room.

Well, that's about all the pictures for now... I'm hoping we can finish some more woodwork this weekend, so I will post if that happens!

Pictures!

Well, I said I'd update with pictures... So here is a picture overload:

Knob and tube wiring

Bunglehouse blue up the stairwell... It looks less smurf blue in real life. I think it's going to look great with the trim painted a crisp white and with some solid carpet going up the stairs. 

New lighting. On the left is the porch light and the two on the right are the sconces we chose for the living room.

New porch light. Not my favorite out there, but it also was not $200, so it will do for now. 

The new sconces. They give off so much light... It is great. Our living room used to be a dark dungeon

I love it!

Light switch by the front door. The left- sconces, middle- lamp plugs and right is the porch light.

The state of the living room last night. We cleared it out so that our couches could be delivered.

Couver telling me he is over the cleaning and wants to play.

 Our new couches. We don't have all the pieces... It will eventually be one big sectional.

And that is it for now! I'm sure we will be back to work soon... I'm looking forward to more progress on the woodwork. 

Project Madness

We have been working almost every day after work and on the weekends for the past few weeks. Here is what we have done so far:

-Painted the living room and dining room a color called Hubbard Squash by Sherwin Williams
-Painted the parlor a color called Library Pewter
-Started painting the hallway and upstairs Bunglehouse Blue
-Worked on sanding and staining the woodwork (this is a p.i.t.a)
-Finished electrical on the main floor which includes
       -Installing two mission style light sconces to brighten up the living room
       - Installing a dimmer switch for the sconces 
       - Updating wiring from knob and tube
       -Installing a new light on the porch (to replace the gold boob light we had)
       -Installing a switch for the porch light that you can input your location in so it turns the light on/off when it  needs to be (this will be amazing for when we are on a trip... so people won't be able to tell we are gone!)
       -Updating the plugs so we now have a switch to turn on the lamps and to dim them

We ordered a couple of leather couches a few months ago (they are basically a sectional without the corner piece) and they are finally scheduled to arrive today! We are both very excited to have a place to sit and stretch out because we sold our old sectional over two months ago. We spent all evening yesterday tidying where they will be sitting, so I think we will be taking a couple days off to enjoy ourselves, but I'm sure we will get back to sanding/staining before the end of the week. I cannot wait to be finished with all of the woodwork so we can stop living in dust... lol. 

I will update with pictures sometime this week!

Project Updates

I haven't posted a lot in the past couple months... But we have been very busy working on all sorts of projects. I think we have house a.d.d... But we really have accomplished a lot.

Here are some more recent projects:

Because we were broken into over Christmas break, we installed two more security cameras and a couple of signs stating that we have cameras. While the signs are not beautiful, I hope they will deter future break-ins. We also have signs in the yard that advertise that we have a security system, so hopefully this makes our house seem less appealing.

We also purchased a locking mailbox because our mail was tampered with around the same time that we were broken into. The mailbox has been great because I don't have to worry about the dogs being out front when the mailman comes. It is also nice for when we are gone on short trips... We don't have to worry about having someone come over to bring our mail in.

We added the 2x4s to the top of the arbor out front. Now all the arbor needs is a fresh coat of paint. We caulked all the screw holes, so it needs new paint pretty bad to cover the off-white caulk.

We also decided to finish the small projects left on the fence. We finished up the arbor on the side gate. It took no time at all, but it really makes the gate look finished. 

While we were doing this, I noticed something I hadn't seen before. The previous owner's children (who visited and got to see the house) had mentioned that they had written their names in the concrete. 

It's hard to see, but it says:

Hill 

Sandy 

Mary 

Am I the only weirdo that finds things like this cool? 

We ordered wood blinds from blinds.com and received them a few weeks ago. Here is Couver modeling the new blinds. 

These were our windows before... The window treatments we had were left by the previous owner and were absolutely disgusting.

We love that we can open the blinds and get light without the entire neighborhood seeing in the windows. 

 We planted a lot of bulbs last fall and have been enjoying watching them bloom. We are definitely loving the yard. We have hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and a ton of shade plants planted.

We also decided we wanted flower beds along the walkway up to the house, so Thomas killed the grass along there and he rototilled it today. We planted blueberries and strawberries and are going to use it as a garden and flower bed.

In the backyard, we decided we wanted to have 4x4s line the garden beds. We stained them to match the fence, and will most likely be adding another layer of 4x4s to make them raised. I don't have any finished pictures of this, but right now there are 2 4x4s lining the beds. Here is a during shot.

I gave up on my parasol plants that were left outside too long this winter, and decided to plant some pretty annuals in the pots to keep on the porch. These make me happy. 

Before: parasol plant that was trying to come back... I just didn't have the patience. 

 After: pretty, colorful annuals.

We finally decided to go for it and get back to work on the woodwork. There is a sale going on at Sherwin Williams, so we decided it was time to get some paint. We got Hubbard Squash for downstairs and Bunglehouse Blue for up the stairs and hallway upstairs. 

The living room is an absolute mess right now, but we are getting a lot done. 

We stained the first bit of woodwork today, and it was shocking. The stain we chose is so dark... But it is perfect. It matches the pictures from the 1930's almost perfectly. It is going to be a huge project, but will be exciting... 

The front door trim. This is newer wood... Not original to the house. It is a lot lighter than the rest of the wood we have and had far fewer coats of paint on it. It will be interesting to see how it stains differently than the rest of the woodwork. 

After the stain. It's so dark... But I love it. I'm very happy with the paint color we chose... It makes the trim really pop.

Well, I think that's about it for now. We plan on really focusing on the woodwork... But we will see what happens. We often get bored of a project and take breaks. I really hope we can stick it out on the woodwork because I want to finish the floors this year, and we don't want to do them until we finish painting and staining.

Goals

I haven't posted recently, but we have been working around the house quite a bit. Now that the weather has changed, we have been outside a lot. We have been planting and gardening quite a bit and even worked some more on the arbor. We finished the top to the gate in the backyard and handy husband made caps for the tops of the 2x6s on the drive through gate. I will have to post pictures soon, but I wanted to write down a list of goals for the next couple months.

-Stain 2x4s and use them to edge the garden beds in the back yard
-Put up the caps on the 2x6s
-Stay on top of weeds in the yard
-Sand the trim upstairs so we can paint it crisp white
-Paint the wall that leads up the stairs and through the hall upstairs
-Buy a used crock pot to strip some more hardware (I recently stripped a bunch using a pan on the stove, but have heard a crock pot works wonders and don't want to destroy mine)
-Start thinking about finishing the beams and woodwork in the living/dining room area
-Stain more wine barrels and connect them to our existing rain barrel system so that we can catch more water to use in the garden

I will post some pictures this weekend. Everything is looking like Spring around here and I'm loving it.

Finished Arbor and Gate

This weekend we actually were able to follow through on our goal. We 'finished' the arbor and gate and could not be happier. We added the house numbers to the arbor tonight, and will be eventually adding matching house numbers to the house once the trim is back on the front door. I want to center the house numbers above the front door.


Thomas leveling the posts

Building the gates

The view from the outside looking in

And finally, a picture of the front door (it matches the back door)

As for the arbor, we plan on adding some 2x4s at the top to make it more 'Craftsman'. For now, it is finished and we are very happy to have a complete fence and gate in the front. Our next goal is to work on the mailbox and get it set up. It will be next to the arbor, and will allow the mailman to drop mail off without coming up our porch.