Schmich Schack

Felted balls everywhere!

2010-12-14T01:16:00.001-05:00

Everywhere you look in our house these days, there are tiny colorful felt balls. On the sofa, on the floor, in the muffin tins, in the fridge. Happy little wool balls everywhere.

I bought some to make a garland, and perhaps talk myself into tackling this fabulous wreath this year.
I did make some pretty Christmas garlands for the mantels, but Adelaide fell in love with these delightful little buggers before I made the tree garland.

(See the melon-baller in her hand?)

She puts them in every container she can find, then switches to another container.

They go in a bowl with some blocks, then get sorted from the blocks.

She makes fuzzy ball soup, fuzzy ball pies, fuzzy ball drinks.

(Isn't that the happiest pie you've ever seen?)

(All the while muttering "dots, dots".)

I ordered more for a garland, so she can keep playing with these. They're so much fun, I don't mind having a whole bunch around.

My 2 cm felt balls came from this Etsy shop, since Ornamentea is sold out until, like, June. You can, of course, also make your own. I used embroidery floss and a sharp sturdy needle for stringing. A thimble or needle-nosed pliers could be helpful, too!

Art Caddy

2010-11-10T18:01:00.000-05:00

I have started buying art supplies lately, even though it's still a bit too soon. (Adelaide eats the tips off the Crayolas like they're breadsticks...). I am so excited for this part of childhood to start! So far we've got some crayon rocks and some pretty paper, but I gave an out-loud "AWW" when I came across this art caddy from the Playful Learning store. Holy moly! Isn't it awesome? And it comes pre-stocked with all that great stuff. What a great idea!

Playful learning has a bunch of other fun things in their shop, and the site itself is a treasure trove of fun ideas.

Living in a pyramid on top of a tower.

2010-11-08T07:53:00.000-05:00

Did you see this article about the family that lives in the pyramid on top of the Smith Tower in Seattle? It's amazing! What a fun place to grow up.

Priming the green room

2010-11-05T18:11:00.000-04:00

Lest you think I've gone completely Momblog on you, let me assure you that we are, indeed, still working on making the Schmich Schack ship shape.

For instance, we are finally tackling the other front bedroom, the ugly little sister to our redone guest room turned nursery. It was an "office" for a long time (before the rabbits took over completely) but we never really used it much because, well... I mean look at it:

To be fair, this is a photo snagged from the real estate website waayyy back before we were responsible for this madness. This is Previous Owner Madness right here. Though I sympathize with the realtor - it is really hard to get a good photo of this room!

As you can see, it's mostly the same as when we first moved it, just emptier and dustier.

I think it used to be a Thing to paint rooms dark colors like this, but this Spinach color has to go. It's sucking the life right out of this room.

By the way, eagle eyes will notice that this room, too, has swirly ceilings. They will be the death of me...

Those test paint splotches are funny. At our housewarming party (back in '07, lordy), my friend Paul made some smartass remark about how "people who have houses" and how testing paints like that is a sure way to jinx your progress and they'd probably be there for years to come. I told him to shut it at the time, but clearly there was some truth to it. Touche, friend.

So, here we go. This is one of those projects that is sure to take forever, since I'm mostly squeezing in painting time during Adelaide's weekend naps or when she's watching the Steelers with Ben. But so far I've got the dropcloth taped down, the trim on the windows is done, and one of the walls is primed. Not bad!

PS: Nicole has a great tutorial on painting if you're looking for tips and new tricks.

Baking with a tiny helper

2010-11-03T05:23:00.000-04:00

Making her first pot of tea, standing on a chair, and helping bake... so many firsts on one day!

This stage of toddlerhood between baby and tantrum-thrower (don't get me wrong, she knows how) is really wonderful - maybe my favorite so far. Adelaide just wants to learn and experience and get her fingers in everything. She doesn't want a baby spoon, she wants a real spoon. We try to accommodate her as often as we can, and in this case that meant accepting the giant flour and egg mess that was made while baking. It meant a few ice cubes in the teapot. It meant batter-caked hands...and cheeks...and dress...

But she's so happy when she's got a task, an important job to do. And I can relate to that. We can help make that happen, kiddo.

Indoctrination

2010-11-02T17:19:00.000-04:00

Are you kidding me? What kind of self-important tool buys these for their baby? What, were they all out of "eat local" shoes? Gah.

Trick or Treat

2010-11-01T05:48:00.010-04:00

Adelaide was a panda. A grumpy panda. Though I would most likely have been grumpy if someone smeared eyeliner all over my face, too. (She loved the fake fur, though!)

But then. Then we started visiting our neighbors.

And they started giving her things. Like candy bars. And cotton candy!

She didn't trust the cotton candy at first, but then... oh my. A torrid love affair ensued.

It was a nice Halloween, I think, grumpiness and all. But I'm even more excited about what's coming up.. Thanksgiving, Christmas... lots of cozy and sparkle.

Saturday "hikes"

2010-10-29T15:59:00.000-04:00

We've been heading out for "hikes" on Saturday mornings. Sure, with a little kiddo in tow, it's not really hiking hiking, but "hike" sounds cooler than "nature walk."

We live near Frick Park (the side with the playground), and Adelaide and I head there nearly every day that the weather is cooperative. This particular morning a few weeks back, some nice heavy fog was lifting. We took a a loop through the woods, spying chipmunks and dogs. Y'know: nature.

On another Saturday, we headed for Highland Park. It's too bad I don't have any photos of their Super Playground... You can see it here and here. It really lives up to its name!

We watched Adelaide run around in a field, and found a very pretty stone tunnel that, miraculously, did not smell like urine! (Hey man, we used to live in New York.)

This fall has been particularly spectacular - long and colorful and cozy. It's been great to get out in it while the weather is gorgeous!

Breakfast nook

2010-10-27T08:47:00.006-04:00

I've been organizing some files and found this photo. It's from Sunset magazine from... 2007, I think? It's still a great little corner, in kitchen full of simple colors and textures.

Tunes for Lucy

2010-10-25T20:05:00.000-04:00

Dear, dear friends of ours welcomed a new addition to their family of three this weekend. Her name is Lucy, and she's one lucky little lady.

In her honor, I thought I'd share a favorite little song mix for walking, rocking and being generally blown away by a brand new little person. An excerpt of this list was a standard part of Adelaide's bedtime routine for many months, and "that song by the huge Hawaiian guy" has gotten us through many cranky moments.

Enjoy, and welcome Lucy! We can't wait to meet you!

Chalk Table

2010-10-25T07:22:00.000-04:00

I've been scouring Craigslist lately for a simple little table and chairs set for Adelaide. Just a little spot where she can have a snack or scribble on something. While waiting for the stars to align, it couldn't hurt to shop around, right?
This chalk table from Giggle isn't really what I had in mind, but I do like the idea of a chalkboard table top! It wouldn't be hard to DIY with some sassy chalkboard paint from Hudson Paint.

PS: It is possible that Ikea will be the victor in this search. Cute simple and cheap!

Playdough!

2010-10-20T07:35:00.000-04:00

We made playdough! There are scads of recipes on the internet, but I used these instructions, found via a tip from Auntie Leila. I halved the recipe and still had plenty for a rainbow of seven generous-meatball-sized balls.

I think that I enjoyed making this even more than Adelaide liked poking it. Kneading the food coloring into the still-warm dough was especially fun. Adelaide didn't care much for the warm dough, but once it cooled, she had fun pinching and poking the doughballs and transferring them from one container to another.

I used too much oil and not enough cream of tartar when I made these, so they didn't last that long before they got kind of greasy and soggy. But I've heard that (if you follow the directions properly) these will last in the fridge for a long long time.

Farrow & Ball

2010-10-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

I was drooling over the Farrow & Ball website recently - they have a new book out and I've heard it's beautiful. Gah, such a lovely selection of colors. Is there another word for it? Lovely. I could paint my whole house in their greens and greys. It's no surprise, then, that their Colours page is also full of pretty photos of their paints in action. Here are some I liked:

(We are actually thinking of painting an indoor french door a similar Navy color - I think this has made up my mind.)

Jenny Odell print

2010-10-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Have you heard of Jen Bekman's 20x200 project? There are some brilliant things going on over there these days.

I just bought the current print by artist Jenny Odell, 195 Yachts, Cargo Ships, Tankers, Barges, Riverboats, Hospital Ships, Cruise Lines, Ferries, Military Ships, and Motorboats.

She collects, then arranges, images from Google Maps. She's got some other similarly great prints like:

Approximately 1,376 Silos, Water Towers, and other Cylindrical-Industrial Buildings

and

125 American Swimming Pools

The most recent email newsletter from 20x200 also mentioned that upcoming this year are prints by Lisa Congdon (one of my forever favorite artists), featuring some of her Collections as prints, and also David Byrne. And who doesn't love beautiful, brilliant David Byrne?

House Numbers

2010-10-13T09:30:00.001-04:00

We finally put numbers on our house! They're the mission numbers from Rejuvenation.

It wasn't so hard with a hammer drill, but we still snapped a few drillbits in the process.

Now we can order all the pizzas we want!

The single household telephone

2010-10-11T10:00:00.004-04:00

Way back before we became parents, Ben and I had a conversation about phone use in our future household. We were both remembering how when we were in middle school, when you called a friend on the phone, you often had to talk to their parents, or their siblings, or whomever it was that answered the house telephone. I remember being taught telephone manners around age 8 or so - how to answer politely, how to take a message, how to say, "I'm sorry she can't come to the phone right now" rather than "She's busy," how to ask to talk to the person you called, etc. It was a big deal to me, and made me feel very grown up.

Crosley Princess Phone, Vintage Tub

Not only were manners important, but having a single household telephone meant that our parents knew and regularly spoke to our friends, or at least the friends that were close enough to be calling. Ben and I realized that we feel the loss of the single household telephone even now. When Ben's family calls, they call him. When my family calls, they call me. It's surprisingly (sadly) rare that either of us talks to the other's immediate family on the phone.

And it only takes about 20 minutes in the presence of a text-happy teenager to start saying things like, "When WE have kids...blah blah blah." But seriously. What in the world are you texting to each other? Who are you talking to? Call me a control freak, but I kind of want to know who my kids are talking to. And also, put the dang phone down and go do the dishes. And tell your friends to get off my lawn. Hippies.

Turquoise push-button phone, Etsy

So, we decided, when we have kids, we'll have a cellphone-free home. Check your cellphone at the door, (perhaps in a nice little common area where the chargers are all lined up). Tell your friends that if you don't answer your cell phone, they can call the house phone. Simple as that.

rotary phone from Etsy

Ben mentioned the other day that, you know, if we wanted to, we could institute the common household telephone plan now. He also pointed out that hey! we don't even need to get a landline, we could just get a third cell phone. And he's right, technically that would satisfy our current situation, where it's just the two of us text-averse old farts using the phone. But it seems silly, doesn't it? To have this third cellphone that you use after certain hours when you're home? It seems unnecessarily uptight and fussy somehow. (yeah, I know, like the rest of this isn't...)

reconditioned 1940's Stromberg-Carlson 1222 Deskset telephone, Three Potato Four

I think that part of what is appealing about the common household telephone is that it's a throwback. I imagine it big and clunky, like old movies where the big sister has to sit in the hallway to talk her beau and the little brothers and sisters are all listening in by the stairs. It's stationary - that phone is for home, and it stays there (and doesn't get lost in couch cushions). And perhaps that's the heart of this idea: something to mark the difference between the outer world, where each of us is a single mobile individual, and the world of Home, where we exist all together, as a family. Plus if you're going to torture your kids by being a stodgy old curmudgeon, I say go big or go home. Maybe when they're 13 they can have a phone in their room for a little privacy.

Wall phone 302 by Crosley, Vintage Tub

We haven't actually instituted the single household telephone system yet. But we're seriously thinking about it. And that has only a little bit to do with my recent desire to buy a funky old telephone. I think any of these beauties would fit the bill...

PS: This is the exact phone that I had in my room in high school. I spent many hours being fabulous on that phone. It was my grandmother's.

Bookcases

2010-10-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

We need a new bookcase. I like these.

Ikea Hemnes

PB Bedford

PB Benchwright Tower

LLBean Painted bookshelf

LLBean Tall Painted bookshelf

...Or if money were no object:

Anthropologie Bewick Cupboard
Those glass doors slide... So pretty.

Simple.

2010-10-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

"happiness seems so very simple. and yet, simple seems so very different than easy."

--- from Public::Bookstore

Shifting

2010-10-04T18:00:00.001-04:00

So it turns out that the only thing harder than completing house projects while caring for a baby is blogging about whatever project you might have finished...

That's if (and it's a big one) you actually finished something.

Even when they're industrious little imps who help with the weeding.

This space has been sadly neglected for quite some time - it's been about a year since I posted anything house-related. (Coincidentally the same age that Adelaide turned a few weeks ago!) It's been difficult enough to find time to work on the house, let alone document the projects. And that's a shame. If this blog served any purpose in our little life, it was nice to have evidence that we are, in fact, making progress. And progress is good! It's fabulous! It's just...hard.

But please don't think that I'm complaining. Oh. No, no, no.

Because if having Adelaide in our lives has taught us anything, it's that flexibility is also quite fabulous. And doing things together is much better than splitting ranks, even if it means adjusting your timeline or methods, or wearing a baby on your back.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I think I'd like to reclaim this little space, even if I don't strictly post about home renovations. I'd like to have a place to tell a few of our stories and stash what's going on with us these days, even if it doesn't (always) involve powertools. With Adelaide, life is messier and projects get done more slowly. But I guess that's just part of the story, for now.

Greetings from the trenches!

2010-01-10T13:57:00.003-05:00

Hello!

Yes, we're still here.

Yes, I had a baby!

And boy is she a beaut !!!

This is Adelaide, and she's one of the finest little humans I've ever had the honor to know. She was born on August 21st. She's funny and feisty and very ready for rollerskating and bicycle races, even though she's only four months old.

As promised, our little world has been turned upside down in (mostly) the most wonderful of ways and as a result, there simply hasn't been much house progress to blog about and certainly no time to even tell that there's nothing going on.

So, hello to those few faithful of you still reading! I have a smattering of things to tell you about and some advice to ask, too. So, Happy 2010 to us all - I really think it's going to be one to remember!

Baby Schmich's Room

2009-08-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

Today is officially our due date, so I thought I'd share some photos of the baby's room. It was the guest room that we so lovingly finished in November.

Now all we need is a little kiddo. C'mon, kiddo!

The rug is from Pottery Barn, the Together print from petit collage, the tree over the mantel was painted by my sister, the quilt on the rocking chair was made by a dear friend, and the one on the bed by my great-grandmother. All the furniture is either Ikea or craigslist.

Laundry Room

2009-08-16T09:44:00.007-04:00

I suppose part of living in an old house is having a dank basement. Ours certainly is. It doesn't help that it's leaky and the walls need to be patched and painted and it constantly fills up with junk no matter how many dumpsters we fill up. We could have spent the whole summer just fixing up the basement.

Our basement is also where the "laundry room" is, which, up until recently was a scuzzy lineoleum-covered platform with an ancient, rusty, scuzzy washer and dryer on top. Usually our clothes came out moderately more clean than when they went in - enough that we were able to put off a new W&D for about 2 years - but it was seriously NOT a pleasant place to wash your skivvies.

So with a sweet little Schmichbaby on the way and the prospect of washing all those tiny, cute, sweet little onesies, not to mention cloth diapers, "Buy new Washer and Dryer" quickly made its way to the short list of things to get done this summer, pre-baby.

And let me tell you, I was secretly pretty happy to be able to pull the Pregnant Card and not have to work on this, because it was a DISGUSTING project.

Here's the platform after the old W&D were moved off. They're hanging out stage left:

Mold, filth, and scuzz. Awesome.

Ben started ripping things apart:

He was so into it, he even ripped out this stupid under-stair closet that had been bugging him (the beige bit, etc):

Post- ripping:

Then he swept and swept and shopvacc'ed and swept. And filled 8 garbage bags with DIRT.
But the results were worth it:

We imagined that we'd have to replace the platform to keep the floor level for the lovely new W&D, but it turned out the concrete floor wasn't so bad, and uh... we were running out of time.

Ben moved the new W&D into place, hooked up the gas to the dryer, and even routed the washer drain into a major drain pipe without incident. The nasty old shop light was replaced with some brighter spotlights. We even put a rug down and bought a new laundry basket AND switched to baby-friendly laundry soap and dryer balls.

The results? I think you'll agree they're pretty great.

It's awesome. It is so awesome. This update has already completely changed our lives for the better. The new washer and dryer (Samsung HE - blue! we got the blue ones!) are incredible and beep and ding and have settings especially for towels and actually clean our clothes. (We've washed almost everything in the house - the rabbits are watching their backs). And going down to do laundry isn't nearly as unpleasant. It's bright and, though still a bit dank of course, at least cleaner and much much much more pleasant.

Oh yeah, and helping along this Before-and-After masterpiece is the fact that we got a new camera! We've been cursing our old crappy point-and-shoot for years, and finally did some research and got a wonderful new one, a Canon Powershot SD1200. It's. Glorious.

One man's Before is another's After

2009-08-13T13:30:00.003-04:00

Oh my. The "Before" bathroom photo in this Design*Sponge post looks an awful lot like our "Afters."

Isn't that funny? I mean, I do prefer our Afters to the ones in that post - a modern bathroom is just not in the style of our house. Plus the cuckoo clock is a touch silly, don't you think? I mean, really.

Bathroom makeover

2009-08-09T11:11:00.006-04:00

Sigh. Isn't it pretty? I am completely in love with our new bathroom. This room has always been full of fun old house potential, but so mucked up and full of gross that things were pretty discouraging for a while (Before photos). Look:

The elements are there, but the room was always way too dark, especially with the (#$%@ swirly!!) ceiling painted the same color as the textured walls. With the dampness and dust, crud would settle in the ridges in the wall texture, too, which was supergross.

So when I came home from a business trip and Ben had skim-coated and primed the walls as a surprise? OH MAN. Best ever. Even just having them an unfinished white for a few weeks was like heaven. But then he went and finished up the job right before we had some family visit last month, and the results are fantastic.

The walls got a double skim-coat and are painted Bamboo Mat, from Martha Stewart's Valspar line (lesson learned). The trim and newly-smooth ceiling are our favorite Chef White, also Valspar. We moved the green cabinet out, which freed up a lot of space, and Ben got rid of the weird medicine cabinet that was lurking behind the door. We replaced it with this nice one from Lowe's.

He also took out the small, shabby mirror that was hanging over the sink and, for now, we've just hung a plain ol' one that we found at Construction Junction. Someday we'll have a custom one made for the space, but for now it's just really nice to be able to see yourself.

You know what else helps with being able to see yourself? The lovely overhead light that replaced the utterly useless and painfully hideous Satan's Tungsten Butthole that hung there previously.

Before:

After:

There are still some details we'd like to work on someday, but for now it's so so SO great to have such a bright, clean space.

Monday, 11:30pm

2009-07-14T16:12:00.002-04:00

The bathroom is almost done, and it looks so so so so good.

The Studio

2009-06-01T09:47:00.000-04:00

Posting about the "final" guest room made me realize that I never posted the After shots of the second-to-the-last guest room we fixed up. Known previously as "The Checkered Room" or "The Room Full of Junk" or "The Room With The Giant Scorpion on The Wall," we now tenderly refer to it as "The Studio."

Here's a pretty gnarly Before:

With an appropriately charming After:

Pretty freakin' cute, huh? The quilt-top on the bed was made by my great-grandmother. You should see the insanely tiny, perfect little Swiss-old-lady stitches.

Originally we were going to put a little bed in the nook right by the window, but it was November and the cheap windows are kind of drafty. Instead we're thinking a comfy reading chair and a small bookshelf.

The floors are still covered in stick-on black and white tiles, but we're not quite ready to tackle taking them off and dealing with what's lying underneath. Hopefully the floors are as cool as in the other third-floor room, but you never know.

And this is our makeshift door until we figure out who the lucky winner is that gets to fit, strip, and refinish one of the doors that's gathering mold in the basement. It's just a canvas drop cloth that has cute ribbon tied through its grommets and around a spring-loaded curtain rod. It does the trick.

Guests in the Attic

2009-05-28T08:42:00.005-04:00

I have been thinking of Aqua lately because of my recent last-minute makeover of our last guest room. Before my sister and a friend stayed with us to attend a wedding a few weeks ago, I got it into my head that I'd paint our third and last guest room, the cute one on the third floor in the front of the house that has a charming view of our garden. It was already a sweet little room. Great light, awesome vaulted ceilings, very cozy:

But kind of...granny. I'm not sure you can quite appreciate from this photo that the walls were sponge painted in two shades of pink, ("Mama, mah colohs are Blush and Bashful"). That gave it a kind of creepy flesh-like color.

I figured that I could bang this room out over the course of a few weeknight evenings, and hey - we even had an extra gallon of the reject color from another guest room. I slapped some up on the wall to see if it would work (you can see a few test strips in the photo above). It didn't. So we dumped our bag of paint chips out onto the floor and picked one that looked sort of pale greenish-blue. Carolina Aqua something.

It was also not quite right. Here's half the damn room painted in it, since I was just so determined to get this room done. But it's a little anemic, no? We, apparently, are completely unskilled when it comes to picking room colors. So we went back to that old maven of good taste and style: Martha Stewart. Her paint line at Lowes has not disappointed us yet. And we also stopped mucking around with wimpy pastels and pulled a real Crayola out of the box.

As Jason would say, BAM!

It's called Tulip Leaf and we like it a lot. The trim is Valspar's Chef White. We got rid of the granny rug, too, and for now the floor is just bare. This is great because these floors are so cool and old and attic-y anyway.

It's interesting to look at the progression of colors for this project: Blush&Bashful, Blah, Meh, and BAM!

And so many lessons learned!: We do not like pastels. Lowe's "Historic" line is totally unreliable (and questionably historic). We are strangely attracted to aqua. And Martha Stewart wins again.

Aqua

2009-05-04T08:51:00.004-04:00

I lost track of where these came from, but it's a good bet that they're pulled from Desire to Inspire.

Colors

2009-04-06T21:10:00.004-04:00

Spring keeps trying to break through, despite the unacceptably gross weather. I've not quite got my blogging mojo back, so in the meantime, check out THIS post full of pretty pictures from Design*Sponge. I really like the fresh color combinations and light in all of them.

Starting Seeds, 2009

2009-03-30T14:46:00.004-04:00

Last year's from-scratch seed starting venture was relatively successful and a lot of fun, so this year we decided to get a little more official. I had in mind a setup something like this one, but still done cheaply. What we came up with is this:

The shelf is a simple wooden one from Ikea, that we figure we'll put to good use in the basement or workshop once it's outlived its time here in the Scullery. We couldn't find plug-in fluorescent shop lights that would fit these shelves (30"), so we settled on some of those cheap metal task lamps attached to clamps. We'll also use these for lots of other projects. We took the clamps off and they're hanging from little teacup hooks. To adjust the height of the lamps, I attached a rubber band. High tech stuff here.

It's not totally ideal - the coverage is not as consistent as I'd like, so I have to kind of shift the flats around (oh! another upgrade - plastic flats and peat pots!) to get things to grow straight, but it's a huge improvement from my single ghetto lightbulb from last year.

And here's a sampling of the stuff we planted:
Peppers: jalepeno, anaheim, banana, jingle bells, poblano
Tomatoes: san marzano, sungold, yellow pear, jaune flammee, black cherry
Basils: lime, purple ruffles, lettuce-leaf, cinnamon
Flowers: cape daisy, african daisy, sweet pea, california poppy, peony poppy
Etc: cucumber, watermelon, tomatillo

They're labeled with little Post-It tags:

Hey Stranger!

2009-03-08T12:38:00.001-04:00

Today is a lovely, sunny, warm day in Pittsburgh, and I am sitting in our kitchen-den, sipping an espresso and eating some greek-style green beans.

Well, lah-dee-dah, you are saying to yourself. Three months with no posts and you finally show up to tell us about your lunch?! Shenanigans!

Shenanigans, indeed! But I'll take that finger-pointing and turn it squarely on the completely freaking brutal winter we had this year. The Schmich Schack was on hibernation lock-down, and almost literally, there was nothing to blog about. Unless you would like our opinions on Season 8 of American Idol, or how to stay fashionable while wearing nine layers of clothing, or a daily post that goes something like: "It is -10 degrees outside. That is an absence of degrees. That is none more degrees."

Well, okay, so that is not entirely true. We've done tons of planning these past few months - we are on the brink of many exciting projects. We even rearranged our bedroom.

And there is one ongoing construction project that we're pretty proud of:

Yes, indeed, that is a tiny little Schmichperson. He or she (we don't know which yet) will arrive sometime in mid- to late-August. And we're pretty freaking excited about it.

Of course, having a tiny, delicate little bean of a human being inside of you will make you reconsider projects involving fumes, particulates, or aliphatic hydrocarbons. Unfortunately for the Schack, most of our outstanding indoor projects involve those very things: painting, skim-coating, improving some of the wood trim, etc., and these will have to wait until we can open the windows up wide and let in some fresh air.

But like I said, there are some exciting plans underway. I'll get back on the blogging horse and let you in on the details soon!

A study in contrasts

2008-12-16T14:28:00.003-05:00

Remember that completely gorgeous kitchen I showed you yesterday? Well, apparently our kitchen got jealous of all the attention and compliments being lavished on the Bungalowcious kitchen, and in a desperate and rather unattractive bid for attention, the sink threw its p-trap on the floor in a huff, refusing to deal with our dirty dishes until we stopped taking it for granted and said something nice about it.

So. Hi there, Scullery. You uh... Hmm.. Your walls are so neutral! No? Your exposed outlets are so rustic and manly! Huh. I can barely see the earwax-colored mastic oozing out of the cracks between your cheap tiles in this photo! Still no good? Well, despite all of the abuse you've received, you're still pretty functional. There. I'm done. Time to pick up a new p trap.

Beautiful Kitchen at Bungalowcious

2008-12-15T11:13:00.003-05:00

Drool....Go check out the descriptions and the awesome Before-and-Afters at the blog, Bungalowcious, and the Flicker set here.

Holidays: It's on.

2008-12-15T06:31:00.000-05:00

The Schmichmas '08 season officially began this weekend, when we bought our tree. The hippie tree farmer that sold it to us told us that it's a hybrid between a fraser fir and a balsam. It's soft and smells lovely, so that must be a good thing. We started decorating Saturday night with cocoa while It's A Wonderful Life was on and finished Sunday morning over coffee and Meet the Press. (You know I'd never watched It's A Wonderful Life from start to finish? It's a really good movie! duh, right?)

We are attempting to make as many of our Christmas gifts as we can this year, and after I finish one last $#%* presentation for school/work, I am ready for some full-blown Holiday Cheer (tm). With marshmallows.

Snow Day

2008-12-12T16:23:00.001-05:00

Well, good morning!

I was planning to work from home today anyway, but a sticky coating of snow just makes the whole experience even better.

Coffee, couch, winter wonderland... pretty sweet.

I was typing on the couch ...under a down blanket ...with the fireplace going... and Jackpot joined me for an apple.

Mind you, as cute as our rabbits are, they do not like to be cuddled. Heead scratches, sure, but lap bunnies they are not. Except when you want to share your apple.

So I typically exploit Jackpot's apple-love and momentarily pretend like he's in my lap because he likes me. Today I even filmed him. Sick, right?

By the way, that's Ellen on in the background (Dude, Ellen is awesome!). I love working from home.

So what happens when I take the apple away? Well, the love ends pretty quickly.

Still love ya, JP.

Have a good weekend! I hope it's full of fluffy, cozy things like snowdrifts, down blankets, and small furry critters that are only in it for the treats.

Guest Room Hijinks - Part DONE!!

2008-12-09T16:02:00.001-05:00

Click here for Before shots, and to see Part I and Part II ...

Well, it's done.
Even though we are rocking almost 100% Ikea in this room, it's pretty cozy, if I do say so myself.
(the quilt was a wedding gift. everything else has a funny swedish name....)

In the end, we didn't like the Lichen color we had chosen and made a spontaneous close-your-eyes-and-point kind of choice for this color.

It's bolder than usual for us (these photos make it look a bit tamer than in person), but we're in love with it. This room feels at once energizing and relaxing, which is pretty ideal for a guest room, right?

We decided not to paint the mantel, since we'd like to strip it someday. I think it blends in alright for now. And I love what the punchy blue does for the fireplace insert.

Do you know what the best part is? We can leave the door to this room open now! It's no longer full of dust and plastic, and it's even bunny-proofed.

Thank you to those of you who were pestering us to finally get this project done.
Thank you Lowe's for being open until 10pm.
And thank you to our incredible families who traveled far to stay with us.

I hope it was cozy!

Painting the guest room

2008-12-06T14:19:00.001-05:00

Painting the guest room, originally uploaded by Rita Ballou.

Here's me painting the guest room, probably around 1am the week before Thanksgiving. We are really excited about how it turned out, and our guests concurred!

It's snowing and cold, and non-house work is taking time away from house stuff, including blogging. Back next week with more details on the After photos of the guest rooms!

A Coupla Turkeys

2008-12-01T10:26:00.004-05:00

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope that yours was as full of fun and family as ours was!

(PS: We finished guest room updates just in time to actually house guests! Photos will be posted soon!)

SquirrelWatch '08

2008-11-20T08:17:00.003-05:00

via Berkley Illustration

We got one.

Actually, we think we got two.

We checked the traps this morning, peering hopefully out of the 3rd floor window. We weren't sure -- after all, the Critter Control dude said it would take one week, probably two -- but then the trap closer to the window starting bopping around like crazy, and the plastic on the second trap is chewed in spots.

While we were both standing there, cheering our good luck, a third squirrel showed up, chattering like crazy, and stared straight at us. He approached the cages, then turned, and I swear to god, he looked right at us, advanced just enough to make an aggressive statement, and made a little fist. He shook his tiny squirrel fist at us. Then he ran off, presumably to gather his minions and stage a takeover. He was back seconds later, alone, and approached the cages again. Now I was starting to feel bad - he was clearly distressed at the plight of his trapped comrades! It was cold and snowing this morning, and oh! those poor little critters! we're breaking up their family! this is heartwrenching! he's so upset! he's... stealing the bait peanut. From his "fellow" squirrel. Who is trapped in a cage. Man, what a jerk.

So we don't feel so bad anymore. Squirrels are not nice. And Nature's a bitch. And we're bigger and it's our house.

Guest Room Hijinks - Part II

2008-11-19T13:34:00.001-05:00

For previous entries on this room, check out the Before photos, and Phase I.

We're chin-deep in incredibly last-minute guest room makeovers (guests arrive in four days (shit! guests arrive in four days!)). Which means that finally, finally, we are squaring off against the stupid guest room with the swirly ceilings. I started priming and skim-coating in September of 2007, and sanded the first coat in October. Then it sat dormant for a long time - until spring maybe, when I half-heartedly started a second skim coat. I hate this project, I really do. but not nearly as much as I hate shiny swirly ceilings.

Man, I just don't get it.

So Ben and I both laid into the ceiling, using the same crappy leftover joint compound that I started with, watering it down and making the most of it. Our arms got tired, the joint compound took a long time to get all the lumps out, it was late... not a fun time. But we persevered and eventually the ceiling was covered.

Then it came time for sanding. Sanding f@#*ing blows. I tried a pole sander and it just made me flail and curse. I settled for blindly running the hand sander over an area and then touching up with 120 sandpaper by hand. My goggles fogged up and even with my mask I was hacking like a lung patient. So I'd take them off and get dust in my eyes and down my throat and that sucked, too. Sanding f@#*ing blows.

And here's what the room looked like:
What a mess.

And here's what I looked like. Dazed, bloodshot, and pretty much pissed off at the entire world. What a mess.

But it was done. Finally done. Last night we vacuumed and cleaned and cleaned and vacuumed, swapped the plastic sheeting on the floor, and got ready for painting. I put one coat of primer up on the ceiling and collapsed.

But hey - check out this cool room that's hiding underneath all the dust and cursing. I forgot how pretty the floors are, how awesome the hearth is, and what an overall pleasant space this room is. Tonight we're starting to paint the walls (Behr Pale Lichen, we think), then it's just:

paint the trim
reattach outlet boxes, shades and hardware
clean it (gahh, dust)
furnish it (Hello, Ikea!)

A visit from Critter Control

2008-11-19T10:23:00.003-05:00

So, it turns out that ignoring a squirrel problem does not make it go away. Go figure.

Sure, we knew there were squirrels. We knew where they were getting in and approximately where they were hanging out. But it wasn't until last week, when they started regularly waking us up by loudly chewing on our home that we finally took some action. (We are lazy, lazy, people.)

If I had known how great Critter Control was going to be, I would have called months ago. This morning a very nice guy showed up and he and his partner inspected our whole exterior, made a list of not only where the squirrels were getting in, but also other potential problem areas, gave us quotes for fixing the structural issues, and set traps. All in 40 minutes.

Here, squirrel squirrel!

They'll come back every day to check traps until they catch the buggers. Then they stuff the holes with newspaper. If the newspaper is disturbed the next day, more traps. If not, they'll fix the holes (if we want) and guarantee them for a year. They told me it can take one to two weeks to fix a Squirrel Problem, so our Thanksgiving guests will probably still have a squirrel alarm clock while they're here, but at least it's a start.

2008-11-07T11:44:00.003-05:00

Another incredible 1920s kitchen from Shorpy. I really love how simple and basic it is. And I'd kill for the cabinets. Click for an enormous version that is chock-full of details (the canisters on the counter! the sofa in the other room! the scrub brush! all awesome.)

Moodboards

2008-10-30T09:44:00.003-04:00

The genius folks at This Young House have created a Flickr set of the custom moodboards that they make for their clients. Their ideas are great, and they really focus on affordable pieces. If you've never seen their blog, it is certainly worth reading.

Something old, new, borrowed and blue

2008-10-27T10:09:00.001-04:00

We finally got rid of the old disgusting behemoth fridge that was taking up too much space in the scullery. Please say hello to the Kenmore Elite 22.6 cubic feet side by side counterdepth refrigerator with PureSource Water Filtration in stainless steel:

Sigh. We're in love. We bought this while Sears was having a sale a few weeks back, and purposefully set the delivery date for this weekend so we'd have enough time to finish off some work in the Kitchen-Den, but also a hard deadline for completing the work.

Here's the Kitchen back in July '07:

Our old Chambers stove (sold to a nice couple from upstate NY!) was still around, as was the wall oven (still sitting in our living room!) and the dirty old wood floors (redone!) and in this photo you can see the offending fridge, too.

Our plan has always been to move the fridge out the Den to free up the scullery space for more countertop. Plus with the fridge out of the way, the view into the scullery would open up, making the two spaces feel more cohesive.

Ben disassembled the built-in in that housed the wall oven a while back, and a few larger holes were left over. Now that we'd finally ordered the fridge, it was time to patch, prime and paint.
Patched:
Priming:

Painting (Behr Liberty):

And the big reveal:
Quite nice. And we were right about how it opens up both spaces. So much better.

On the downside, this particular model was damaged when it was delivered. Sears was incredible cool, though, and let us use this one until a replacement gets delivered next week.

They also took away our old one. This guy:
Oh my god, I still hate it so much.

You are disgusting, fridge.

Look at all the space that's freed up! The room feels huge now. Still gross, but huge.
(Before Thanksgiving, we might slap a coat of primer on it.)

This was one of those projects that was totally rejuvenating, not just to the space, but to us, too. We spend a LOT of time in this room, and it finally is starting to feel the way we want it to. Plus we're excited to finish some more cosmetic projects.

(The new space in action: Sunday morning omelets!)

Two* Internet-y Things

2008-10-21T17:00:00.004-04:00

(1) I was super pleased to run across the website of Jane Cumberbatch, a stylist and interior designer with awesome natural simple taste. It's a fabulous site all around, but since we've been sort of room-color-obsessed lately, I especially liked her Colour link. Really great.

(2) Speaking of color inspiration, I started using Domino's My Deco File feature to keep all of my grabbed and stolen "inspiration" photos in one place. I still think that Domino is outrageously overrated, but this is a handy tool. (though, photo is via Domino, actually...well, via Frolic)

*(3) Bonus! Houseblogs is back!

The Checkered Room

2008-10-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

Oh, the Checkered Room. A pit of 90s nostalgia. Oy.

While I show you these photos, I need to show off how much work I did in cleaning it out. Here's the Checkered Room Before:

I guess you can't really see much since all our shit's in the way. In the Great Purge of '08, I sorted through all that junk and gave away most of it. Then I crammed what was left into the closet.

Not bad, huh? It's cool, though because Jackpot helped out. Here he is pushing his old cage over to the corner: That'll do, J.P. That'll do.

Anyway, you get the idea: white walls, black splatters, black and turquoise trim, checkered floors... oh, and this:

Ahem.

Like I said, this was a teenaged daughter's room, and apparently when she and her friends were done spattering, they painted their zodiac signs on this wall. THAT is a huge scorpion.

So now that it's clutter-free, I'm going to work on turning this:

Into something approximating this:

(photo via Small Space Style)

Dude, I know. It's like a teen makeover movie right outta the same decade. If only it were as easy as taking off her glasses and putting her in a low-cut prom dress.

But you can see it, right? That little alcove by the window is screaming for a "reading chair," and I've already been scouring Craigslist for an old iron twin bed. And if the floors under those cheapo tiles are trashed, I think this would be the perfect room to try a painted floor in.

But first, we're gonna need a LOT of primer...

The Third Floor

2008-10-15T14:06:00.001-04:00

We are hosting our first Thanksgiving at the Schack this year, with 4 members of the Oregon crew and 2 from the Eastern PA/NYC camp. We're really excited to have everyone in one spot for the holidays (the Schack was made for holidays!), but uh... well, we're going to have to find places to put all these people!

In addition to finishing the 2nd floor guest room, we're also going to be focusing on the two very fun, cozy bedrooms on the third floor where the daughters of the previous owners lived while they were teenagers.

The first room faces the front yard and is painted a soft pink, sponged over with a soft yellow. That sounds nasty, but it's kind of sweet. The ceiling is all slope-y and low, and the light in there is just amazing. I really like spending time in that room, and while we're still working on the 2nd floor guest room (dude, seriously... not even funny how long I'm dragging that one out..), it has become our default guest room. It's nice and private, if a bit sparse.

With a fresh coat of paint and a few pieces of furniture, this room will be pretty easy to whip into shape. Right, Lion-o?

But then there's The Checkered Room. Ohhhh.... The Checkered Room... well, let's just say it deserves its own post.

...to be continued...

The Great Purge of '08

2008-10-13T15:02:00.000-04:00

No pun intended.

Here's all the stuff we donated to Construction Junction yesterday:

Well, okay, not quite. Two of the toilets didn't have tank lids, so they won't take those, and we're going to try to sell the cast iron pedestal sinks before we probably donate them anyway.

We also gave them this metal stool:
And this fancy mirror:

(The doors are for sale.)

On top of this, 15 garbage bags of clothes, two boxes of junk, and an ancient carcinogenic microwave were donated to the Vietnam Veterans and we threw away 4 giant black bags full of junk. And it feels SO GOOD.

There's still too much crap in this house, even after this purge and the dumpstersfull of stuff we tossed over the summer, but we're getting there. I think we're nearing the point where we start organizing the stuff that's left over, which will be great.

Jackson the Rooster and other chickens

2008-08-28T13:05:00.002-04:00

Jackson is a rooster chick that my mom is raising. He is a gorgeous barred frizzle bantam cochin (say it five times fast!) and I'm totally in love with him. When I got to visit my parents and their chickens (and dogs and cat!) this summer, Jackson and I bonded and I took this very dignified portrait of him sitting in the dutch door of the chicken house. (What, don't all chicken coops have dutch doors?) If Jackson were not a rooster and therefore prone to crowing he would probably have "accidentally" "followed us home" from my parents' house.

In fact, I would LOVE to follow in my mom's footsteps and keep a few urban chickens in our backyard. Putting yard logistics aside, Pittsburgh city law says you're allowed 5 pets total, so we could get up to 3 and still call them "pets" (a professor in my department did this, much to the chagrin of his uppity neighbors). I think one of our neighbors could be plied with free eggs, but the other might be more difficult to convince... But check out some of my mom's other chickens; aren't they gorgeous?

UPDATE: Are we trendy or what?

The Workshop.

2008-08-27T10:22:00.001-04:00

It has been a long time since I've shown updated photos of the workshop.

Our kitchen-den is part of an addition that the previous owners put on the house many years ago. The workshop is the room underneath the kitchen that is attached to the basement and opens up onto the stone patio.

A big aim of ours for this summer is (yikes: was?) to finish off the workshop: install a french door, finish the windows and exterior and insulate the crap out of it. Because as you might have deduced, with the workshop wide open to the elements and it's position directly underneath the Den/Kitchen, and there not being a speck of insulation to speak of... well, we had a pretty chilly winter.

Now, the addition isn't totally without a heat source. The previous owner rigged up a radiant heat system to heat the floor.
See that red tube? It's connected to a water heater on the other side of the stone (formerly exterior) wall and snakes its way around the ceiling, ie, the Kitchen/Den floor. Its power source is a bare wire shoved into an extension cord and half-secured with duct tape. So we don't use it.

The rest of our plan is to properly insulate the walls, then cover them with beadboard and paint; something rustic, simple, clean. We are also lusting after a tin ceiling, which I think would be just great in this garden-adjacent room. So far the cheapest option for that-- cheaper than Craigslist or ebay, even -- has been this site, but even then materials and shipping for a ~10x18 ft room are around $500. Someday, maybe.
For now, the workshop is essentially a glorified potting and storage shed. Here you can see a bunch of orphaned doors and trim, our kickass lawnmower, garden supplies, and seat cushions. See those two glass doors to the left? The POs intended to install those as doors to the patio. We would use them, but they're pretty ugly and we're not sure our skill level is up to hanging our own doors (we'll probably go with a pre-hung set).

It's already starting to feel like Fall here (noooo!) so we're hoping to get this done soon. Otherwise I'll have to buy a sheep and take up knitting.

New rug!

2008-08-26T18:15:00.003-04:00

I completely forgot to brag about our new rug! This was one of our wedding anniversary gifts to each other back in June (our red patio umbrella was the other one!). It's the Brice rug from Pottery Barn, which we'd been eyeing for some time. It just happened to be on sale at the store when we were buying the umbrella and !woot! we bought one.

The Den is damn cozy now, and the colors are a nice complement to the various schemes going on in this room. (PS: The table that I dragged upstairs in an ill-advised attempt to refinish it would replace this one, its twin.)

Also, much better than before. This photo is about one year ago:

Want

2008-08-25T10:30:00.002-04:00

Small space style is another design blog that I really like. Today they feature some lovely lovely kitchen photos. Check them out here!

Project Update: TV table

2008-08-20T09:14:00.005-04:00

Way back, we bought a cute table from L.L. Bean's Cottage Collection. They didn't have the green one in stock then (and told us it would never be back in stock...hrmph) , so we bought the sand color and decided to paint it ourselves. (Whoa - it looks like L.L. doesn't carry this anymore? They must have updated it to this version. Also cute!)

After sitting in the box for months and then being half-painted for months, I finally finished it!So, I did a pretty sloppy job of painting this. I didn't prime or sand, just slapped 2 or 3 coats of a semi-gloss latex paint on there. I was going to put a coat of urethane on it, but then didn't. Despite that, I actually think it turned out pretty well. It's down in the front room, dutifully holding up our TV.

I got all revved up about finishing a project and immediately, stupidly, grabbed the table the TV had been sitting on...

...and started sanding it, with the goal of restaining it a darker color.

Too bad I forgot how messy, noisy, and slow sanding is. Blech. I guess the guest room retains its title of The Room of Unfinished Projects.

Say hello...

2008-08-19T12:08:00.004-04:00

...to the newest member of Team Schack:

She's fer haulin'.
And we like her a lot.

The Short List and some eye candy

2008-08-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

Yes, yes, I know that this Schackblog hasn't had much original content lately. Fingers crossed for any of the following this weekend:

clean out the workshop
mow the lawn
turn over parts of the new yard
plant some perennials
work on the guest room
deal with the abundance of vegetables in the fridge

In the meantime, pretty things from Desire to Inspire. Thanks for the pretty, ladies.

Love the beadboard - I should make some more cushions for our porch.

I LOVE the colorful dishes seen through the frosted glass.

Man, good stuff all around. DtI does a lot of modernish things that I tend to not like, but once in a while they post something that's just perfect. And then I steal it and post it on this blog. :)

All of the above from Stacey Brandford.

We love maps.

2008-08-13T08:31:00.000-04:00

from Benchmark Maps

So classy.

Our front room is going to feature maps of some of the places we love (Oregon state map, Glacier National Park, etc.). These maps from Benchmark might be a new addition.

1920's Kitchen

2008-08-12T17:44:00.004-04:00

Dang. Simpler times, eh? Not a granite countertop in sight.
(or Paperstone for that matter....)
Though I know for a fact that that sink splashes water.

The image is from Shorpy, a great source of old photos.

Comfortable

2008-08-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you, but somewhere between the heat and humidity and the Schack being just on the precipice of comfortable... it is getting harder to stay motivated and finish up our projects.

Sure, there are ceilings to skim coat, workshops to insulate, gardens to weed, and yards to till and plant. But there are also margaritas to drink, and porch swings to read books on, and birds to watch, and bunnies to pet. It's tough keeping a balance between being productive and enjoying the results of your productivity.

We have dealt with this mostly by extending our timeline and lowering our expectations. Sure, it will be lovely when the walls are smooth and we can relax in the pergola in the backyard, but what we really need to do is finish the workshop so that we don't suffer another freezing cold winter with a wide-open basement (stupid, stupid!).

On a more positive note, before we left for Weddingpalooza, we did fill another entire 10-yard dumpster with the leftover crap that the previous owners left behind. Now that felt good.

Here's to a relaxing AND productive weekend!!

Photo is by Martyn Thompson, via Desire to Inspire.

Paint, Color, and Indecision

2008-08-07T08:30:00.000-04:00

We traveled a lot in July, to attend two of the loveliest weddings I've ever seen and also a shower for one of the brides. Between the traveling itself (one wedding in CA, one in PA) and the increased workload to make up for days missed, not much has been going on, Schack-side.

This past weekend we cleaned up the neglected yard, grilled a lot, and worked in the garden.
We've also started to obsess over paint colors again. My Sister The Parson's Graduate gave us a few tips and a bunch of color chips a few weekends ago, but we're still sort of floundering overall. We just can't decide what colors to put where, and it's hard for us to not paint everything some shade of green.

Here are a bunch of photos I found on the CottageLiving.com Design Assistant that I liked. But there's still so much green!

Squirrel Nest?!?

2008-07-17T12:15:00.002-04:00

Me to Ben in an email this morning: I am 90% sure that there is a squirrel nest under the eaves outside of our bedroom window. I heard a bunch of commotion, went up to the third floor to see what was up, and saw three - three - squirrels go under the eaves through a space in the gutter. Right where we saw that other one a few weeks back. Then I heard them fighting (or whatever) in the space under that part of the roof.

Ben's reply: Oy.

You said it, Schmich.

How do I get rid of squirrels? Fox pee? Exterminator? Napalm?

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-04T10:00:00.002-04:00

Margaritas, Schmich style:

for each drink, use - 1 1/2 jiggers of tequila, 1 of Cointreau, 1 of fresh lime juice, 1 of lime syrup. Shake over ice with just a teeny bit of powdered sugar and serve with more fresh lime squeezed in the glass; salted rim optional.

And try not to gulp. They're mighty tasty, but slightly deadly.

Starting Plants from Seed

2008-07-03T11:34:00.000-04:00

This was the first year that I tried my hand at starting plants from seed. I am horrible at keeping indoor plants alive, but I was buoyed by the support of my mom, a true green thumb, and a friend at work with an extensive and obsessive seed collection. What the heck, I figured, seeds and dirt are cheap, and it was February and planting seeds felt like such a hopeful act in the middle of the awful late-winter cold.

I bought a few packets of seeds and was given some more by my seed-obsessed pal. I tried to focus on flowers, herbs, and a few varieties of small tomato , rather than lots of vegetables, knowing that we won't have space for a proper veg garden until next year.

I bought a few packets of seeds and was given some more by my seed-obsessed pal. I tried to focus on flowers, herbs, and a few varieties of small tomato , rather than lots of vegetables, knowing that we won't have space for a proper veg garden until next year.

For containers, I decided to really push the "cheap hobby" aspect and use only recycled materials. I folded little newspaper cups. I used old tupperware. I filled up old muffin tins and take out containers. I cut the tops off of some small juice bottles. It was really fun and I was pretty proud of the results.

In went the seeds, and the containers took up residence in the still-under-construction guest room (I know!) on a desk with a wimpy light bulb. I was freaked out about not having proper lighting at first and intended to get a decent fluorescent grow light, but then things got busy, I was feeling cheap, and I never did. Next year, I think a better set up would really help.

The containers all sat on this table for a few months, growing bit by bit. A lot of things didn't make it. Actually, most things didn't make it... But even with my less-than-ideal setup, I managed to transplant a bunch of the tomatoes, nasturium, poppies, and all of the basil. The thyme, rosemary, lobelia, lavender, and portulaca all died at various stages - which I am blaming on their supposed general difficulty to grow and also my sub-par growing conditions. So there.

I bought seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds, Baker Creek, and the very addictive ValueSeeds.com, who offer flat rate shipping, and rotate their stock regularly. So you never know what's available AND it'll be cheap, which feeds right into things I easily get obsessed with.

The Yard, part 3

2008-06-27T11:48:00.003-04:00

When he started:

Now:
We filled up the entire dumpster with weeds and yard debris. That's 10 cubic yards, or 10 washing machines full. We're going to need to get another dumpster for clearing out the basement!

Now we can see our neighbors! Hello, neighbors!
That's the woman that runs the small nursery on the other side of the alley. She's been very enthusiastic about our yard-clearing efforts; friendly and encouraging. And now we feel like we can patronize her very cool establishment without the shame of a hellacious yard.

We still need to get rid of that enormous dead tree trunk and the pile of stuff next to it, but otherwise, everything is fabulously clear and ready for the next step.

Wow, we have a yard!

2008-06-18T10:38:00.008-04:00

I forgot to mention that Ben and I took off from work this week to work on House Projects. So far, we've mostly been filling our shiny red dumpster with yard debris. Ben continued on his weed clearing vision quest and I chipped in, moving the heavy, gross, slowly decomposing pile of stuff he'd already cleared.

Even with breaks for a haircut, lunch, a quick trip to work for me (sadly grad school is not a real job...), and a visit to Lowes, here's what the backyard looked like by the time we were done yesterday. It's huge. We can't believe how big and steep it is. All those weeds really hid its sexy curves.

So who has a favorite landscaping book to recommend? We've got more yard than we know what to do with. We've just about memorized this one, Hillside Landscaping by Hazel White, but I'd really like one that's more about the types and names of plants that would be good for a certain spot. This one gets full sun, is steep, and we'd like the plants to be as low-maintenance and drought-resistant as possible. Any thoughts?

Something else arrives...

2008-06-17T20:05:00.001-04:00

Our dear friends Bob and Sara had a baby boy today. Joseph was born at home in Chicago, healthy and gorgeous. Congratulations, guys - we're so incredibly happy for you!

The Dumpster Arrives!

2008-06-16T12:07:00.003-04:00

15 days, 4 tons. Time to fill it up!!!

Salvaged Cabinets

2008-06-06T11:26:00.003-04:00

Last Saturday, we took a little roadtrip to Cleveland, OH, to visit a man named John who re-claims cabinets, countertops, and old hardware from old schools and offices, and who specializes in laboratory salvage. We met him at his warehouse was huge and awesome and full of gorgeous old oak cabinets that he's been collecting and reselling semi-professionally for 12 years.

Ben showed him the sketches of our layout ideas for the kitchen and scullery, and he showed us the various sizes and drawer permutations that might work.

We are so excited. The cabinets are in awesome shape overall, and he's selling them for an absolute song. So for less than an Ikea kitchen, we're going to get pre-assembled, vintage, solid wood cabinets that are from a lab. Awesome!

I asked John if his whole house was full of old lab cabinets and without hesitation he said, oh yeah, absolutely. This picture is from his kitchen. Gorgeous!

Here's a link to his website, which is also where all of the photos in this post came from.

The Best Organic Herbicide

2008-06-03T11:02:00.000-04:00

Apparently the best organic herbicide you can get is good old fashioned Schmich Sweat (tm). You want a quick, effective way to kill weeds? His name is Ben.

Over the past two weekends, Ben has annihilated the weedy, gross, Vietnam-like area of our backyard. It was a jungle of despair, believe me. These suckers were at least 4.5 feet high:

(The tiny person in the background of the photo above is a customer of the small business that is located behind our house and that sells Pennsylvania native plants. Like, how embarassing.)

After the first day, Ben had threshed, raked, mowed and hoed the mess down to this:

Then by the end of the second day, he made it all the way down to the retaining wall at the top of the gravel parking pad. That dark splotch is where the compost pile used to be.

He was really kicking ass by Day 3 and the remaining weeds were shakin' in their boots. Did you notice that the giant rocks are now at the bottom of the hill? It was quite an adventure getting them down there. Birthing noises and grunting and whatnot. A lever-fulcrum system may or may not have been employed.

Here's Ben with his hoe over in the sunken-railroad-tie-retaining-wall area. Yep.

You know, from certain angles, it almost looks like a normal, albeit barren, yard!
This is our very sexy retaining wall, with an even sexier decoration: an old diet Pepsi bottle on a giant piece of rusty rebar. You like it? Yeah, we didn't even have to pay extra for it.

We're on our way to civilization, folks, one weedy patch at a time. Ben's got another 10x30 feet to go or so, but he's really into it, and is eager to get it done. He also keeps checking the yard in the morning to make sure the weeds haven't grown back overnight.

That would be really scary.

Wall Oven for Sale!! Come 'n' Get It!!

2008-05-16T11:57:00.005-04:00

I'm so desperate. This is the last time I'm going to post an ad for this wall oven on Craigslist, and then I'm calling Construction Junction to donate it. Anyone out there in Houseblogs-land need a gas wall oven? I'm telling you, it really does bake well.

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/hsh/682059864.html

Ikea Rules

2008-05-12T18:08:00.000-04:00

We were visiting friends in Chicago this weekend and among the many fantastic conversations about life, home-ownership, family, kids, jobs, and dishwasher maintenance, at some point we commiserated about the desire to buy nice furniture from the likes of Pottery Barn, but running back to Ikea with open arms after being thoroughly depressed by PB prices.

So thank goodness Ikea introduces new things from time to time and that not all of them are weird plastic modern pieces. I've been kind of enchanted by their new Hemnes stuff lately that has a cool cottage-y vibe to it. Observe:

Hemnes bedside table, $100. Straight outta Maine Cottage, isn't it?

Hemnes linen cabinet, $300.

Hemnes bedside table, $50. Way better than $200.

The painted furniture thing is tricky, though. I like all three of these, but you can't really put them in the same room, you know? Likewise, I wouldn't have an all-yellow or all-red bedroom ensemble. All the same, they sure are charming, especially if you live in a house like the Schack with funky-fresh cottage action.

The New Kid

2008-05-09T10:11:00.000-04:00

Did I happen to mention that we bought an old card catalog? It was via Craigslist (oh, how I love you) and it was $100. It's from Chatam College's library where the woman I bought it from used to work. She told me that she saved it from getting moved from the junk room to the dumpster. It's pretty much my favorite thing in the whole house right now.

The drawer labels still have typewriter-typed or handwritten categories on them in classic librarian handwriting (click the photo to make it huge - you can see it better). The wood is divine. The legs have little copper taps on them.

And the middle section has pull-out shelves for you to set the drawers on while you look up books for your report on the Civil War.
It's crazy to me that my kids will never use a card catalog. In fact, by the time we have kids and they're old enough to be doing library research, it'll probably be optional to even go to a library. It'll all be internet-based or downloadable to the microchips in our arms or something wacko like that. See? This is why we're moving to an island in the country and taking all of our old books with us.

Organic Herbicide Recommendation? - UPDATED

2008-05-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

Can anyone recommend a really effective organic herbicide? I want to annihilate a whole hillside of weeds and vines, but I'd rather not use Weed-B-Gon or other nasty, expensive chemicals.

I've heard of corn gluten and various dilutions and mixes of vinegar.

Does anyone have experience with either of these? I'm leaning toward the vinegar because of cost and application (I can spray it on existing leaves). But that's only because Ben won't let me slash and burn with a blowtorch. Party pooper.

UPDATE:
Here are the additional suggestions from the comments so far:

Kill it with giant piece of old carpet (psychedelic orange shag optional)
Kill it with some plastic sheeting
Pour vinegar on the roots
Get a goat.
Solarizing
Nature's Avenger organic herbicide

What else you got??

Gardening fantasies

2008-05-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

This link from this blog led me to this website, which is chock-full of helpful advice and gorgeous pictures of gardens.

Speaking of that original link, isn't this just the perfect little potting shed? We're thinking of using some similar elements when we finish up the workshop. Whitewashed beadboard, maybe a tin ceiling, lots of shelves with helpful pots and crates. I wish I could snap my fingers and make it so.

Our own garden is not so picture-perfect these days. How is it possible that it's only the first week in May and we're already behind in keeping up with the overgrowth?

Order = Luxury

2008-04-30T20:52:00.003-04:00

Kind of funny how this single picture of a laundry room manages to capture exactly what I'd like our house to be like some day: clean, bright, organized but not rigid, kind of old-fashioned and simple, but with a touch of luxury.

Damn you, Pottery Barn.

Inspiration*

2008-04-29T15:09:00.000-04:00

Thinking about:
summer mornings
bright, warm tones
panes of glass
texture, layers, layered textures
crispy white sheets
stripes, apparently

Lucyina Moodie
(via Desire to Inpire)

Alise O'Brien
(via Desire to Inspire)

*During the long, dreary, unproductive winter, I found myself gravitating toward "design" blogs... I thought I'd share some stuff I've saved.

Hibernation is Over

2008-04-28T13:15:00.000-04:00

It's finally warm and sunny, the semester is almost done, and I can feel our momentum building. Ben was out and about this weekend, mowing the lawn, changing a flat tire, sweeping the porch. I dabbled when I could (still a week to go for me) with cleaning the porch swing, weeding the flower beds, baking cookies, etc. We are, as always, alternately inspired and daunted, but I have a good feeling about the coming months.

I'm ready for:
* bright colors
* smooth surfaces
* fresh coats of paint
* Barbecues
* beers on the porch swing
* flowers, flowers, flowers

Northern Flicker

2008-04-13T14:27:00.004-04:00

Today we saw a Northern Flicker in the backyard and I have not been so excited about wildlife since the time I was nearly viciously attacked by a kitchen mouse. We identified it by using this neat tool called WhatBird.
We're both really excited about the return of the backyard birds. It was so much fun to watch them squabble and claim territory last year. If the Flicker stays, having a new player will be interesting.

Hilarious

2008-04-11T14:08:00.002-04:00

The house won because some homes are just not ready for a DIY fix. Some homes are grumpy old dowagers and they want you to quit putting popcorn on the ceiling and they don't want you putting up plastic crap-ass tile. They want you to go to work, make your money, come home one day and say, "See this fist full of money? Fine, you stupid motherfucker, you can have it all."

From this entry from Decorno.

Happy First Day of Spring!

2008-03-20T14:49:00.000-04:00

Guest Room Hijinks - Part 1

2008-03-07T13:12:00.001-05:00

Thank you all for being so patient. Well. Some more than others. Without further ado, here is the first installment of What I've Been Doing to the Guest Room Except Not Recently Because Life is Busy.

The Schack is chock-full of things that make me roll my eyes, sigh deeply, shake my head, or pound my fists, but there is one element that absolutely makes my blood pressure skyrocket just thinking about it.

The swirly god damn ceilings.

Lord help me, they make me want to harm small animals. I'm really not exaggerating - I have real, true, honest to goodness physiological reactions if I look at them for too long. Now, I understand that these were rather popular at some godforsaken time, and that some soulless heathens still think they're kinda kicky. I am not one of these people.

Take this picture:

This is a photo of the guest room part-way through this project. (Here are some Before shots.) And do I look at this project and admire the fine woodwork or the neato original lighting fixture? Do I see the excitement of home renovation in progress? Do I feel shame that when I started this project there were still leaves on the trees? NO! I feel none of these things because I am too focused on my deep breathing exercises, attempting to bring my heartbeat back to normal human range because of the god damn swirly ceilings.

Look at them. Like Van Gogh on crack.
A neverending swirling vortex of neck pain and grief.

Ever so long ago, I got started righting this tremendous wrong. (Before I took a four month hiatus...) I read a ton about all kinds of ways to remedy horribly textured walls. Some said to wet the walls and scrape (yuck). Some people recommended ripping them out and replacing them, either with drywall or new plaster ($$$$). The solution that made sense to us was skim-coating with a plaster mix of some kind to smooth out the texture.

Here's how I got started.

First I painted the whole room bright white with a double-coat of primer. This one seemed to do just fine:

Then I set about patching funks in the walls and skim-coating the (shudder) swirls. I tried knocking down some of the more ferocious swirls with a hand sander, but it was messy and didn't work so great, so I stopped. I read a bunch of online tutorials like this one, and another one that I can't find anymore (it was a blog with an orange background, written by a guy maybe in Texas, who was skimming a wall that separated his living room from the kitchen/dining room - if it's you, say hi!) and decided to use simple, ready-mixed joint compound to skim the walls. We picked this particular bucket because a guy at Lowes with white splotchy pants said it was good.

I remember the day that I started so clearly... it was a warm, sunny September day. I gathered my supplies, cleared out the room, and taped a giant plastic drop cloth down over the floor.

Then I opened the joint compound bucket.

oooooooooh........... It smelled like Playdoh and looked so smooth I had to stick my hand in it.

Then I got artistic. It was like a bucket of cake frosting.

But I kept myself from eating it.

Then it was time to get serious. I dug in with the 10" trowel

And scooped some goop into my trough (that's what it's called, right?)

Then I got started. I quickly switched to the 8" trowel, as the 10" one felt a little unwieldy. I covered about a 3x3 foot square before I had to move the ladder, scooping some goop, scraping off the excess on the sides of the trough, and spreading a thin layer on the ceiling. For the first coat, I mostly focused on filling in the space between the ridges and making the whole thing as flat as I could. I'll use subsequent coats to smooth it out and further cover the ridges. Here's the work in progress. You can see where I started (far left) and how that part is more dry than the middle. I think you can even already tell the difference here, between the superswirl fantasma on the right and the sane progress of order on the left. Ah.

...To Be Continued!...

Don't know much about history...

2008-02-25T14:35:00.000-05:00

We are both total Old Map Nuts and have been curious about the history of our house and neighborhood since we moved in, but I'd always assumed that finding any cool information would take multiple trips to a big dusty old library archive. That sounds kinda fun, actually, but it's not at the top of our list, you know? So when I was procrastinating at work and discovered that the University of Pittsburgh's library has all of the building permits for 1895 - 1917, (the Schack was built in 1910), I gasped out loud. (As a coincidence, it also turns out that the Archives are right around the corner from our old apartment - who knew!) A few breathless clicks later I found out that Pitt also has a TON of great online databases of historic images, maps, documents, etc. A seriously impressive collection. Some of my favorites so far are the Pittsburgh Print Collection, the Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection, and Historic Pittsburgh, where I managed to find some maps of our street from 1904, 1923, and 1939. The one up top is from 1904, which was 104 years ago, before our house was even built. SO COOL.

Storybook

2008-02-06T15:04:00.000-05:00

Hey, Ben, Let's live in a storybook cottage someday.

I'll stay home and bake gingerbread cookies for the dwarves and when you come home at night you can climb up my hair. It'll be super.

(Photos of Comstock cottages in Carmel, CA from cottageliving.com)

Holidays

2007-12-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

I hope that everyone had a restful and wonderful Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Solstice) full of friends and family and presents and good food. We've been in Oregon this week visiting Ben's family, drinking our weight in chai and admiring the many different types of moss on the trees.

Posts to come, including that pesky one about the damn guest room. It's being split into portions for your post-resolution consumption. Promise. No for real this time. No really. Shut up, I'm serious.

A Promise

2007-11-27T15:07:00.000-05:00

Back in September, I started doing fabulous things to the Guest Room on the 2nd floor. Then Life got in the way and that project was quickly abandoned. Right now I'm actually in a bit of a quiet lull (well, everything's relative; what I really mean is that my working hours are back to being 8am-6pm instead of 6am-3am) and have been a bit antsy around the house. I'm hesitant to jump into a project only to have to abandon it at half-ass again, but I feel like I'm wasting precious free time just fussing around the house. So here's what I'm going to do.

I am going to finish the Guest Room by this weekend (Sunday, 12/2 - Hey! Amy's Birthday!). Even if I don't finish it by Sunday, I will post the big fat expose I have been planning about what I've been doing to the Guest Room. And oof, you don't even know how badly I don't want to post a half-expose. It makes my mildly-OCD forehead twitch.

Here's a preview/hint of what I've started but not finished:

The Wants.

2007-11-21T13:35:00.000-05:00

I've got a bad case of the Wants. Between the onset of Christmas Shopping and a fierce dose of cold-weather nesting, I've got a Gimme-Gimme list a half mile long. I think this is even further impacted by our not being able to work on the house lately. Buying just feels like instant progress, you know? So gratifying when you don't have time to address the big projects.

And check out how nest-y my list is, too. It's borderline frivolous for someone who should be way more worried about dealing with the giant door-less gaping hole in their basement than what kinds of pictures to hang in the not-yet-completed (crap!) guest room. (Horse, then cart! Horse, then cart!!)

Some day, we're going to get a red slipcover for the loveseat in the Den from Bemz.While we're at it --and already paying a buttload for shipping from Sweden -- we're going to get new covers for our two little armchairs in Moss and Gold. Which are not as assy looking in person, I promise.

They'll go in the Front Room, which, with all the maps and dark trim and strong colors, is turning out to be quite the Dignified Man Room (I don't know what's up with all my Capitalization... I'm just going with it). I'm cool with that. It suits the room quite nicely. We can kick back in our smoking jackets with a cigar and talk about the stock market or something.

I have been looking for pillows for that red couch for a while now and haven't been able to find anything good. I'm thinking something light blue-ish because I love the combination of cherry red and sky blue. But everything is so MUCH these days - busy fabrics, beads, silk, pricey; ugh, so not us. I actually really like these from the Purl Bee Blog.

Which has led me to buy this book with the foolish notion that I will finally learn to sew. I mean, I didn't do so bad with the porch pillows, right? And it's just a pillow. Too bad finding the right fabric is way harder than I thought... Maybe I'll do patchwork pillows like this one from Lisa Congdon. God, that is so outside my realm of expertise, it's embarrassing to even suggest it.

Pottery Barn's line of red furniture makes us both positively drool, and every time I see it, I think, NO! I'm not paying that much for a simple table! I'll find one on Craigslist and paint it! And then off to CL I go to hunt for something even marginally as cool as the PB furniture. It's a vicious and largely unproductive cycle.

I've also been scouring The List of Craig for other stuff. My major search is for

(1) a dresser for the guest room:

I like these in particular because they have mirrors. I think that's a key thing to have in the guest room of a house with one bathroom, don't you? That way Aunt Gertie isn't making Uncle Clem pee in the sink while she ties up the bathroom putting on makeup and resetting her curlers. I hate it when that happens.

(2) paintable furniture for the porch:

Actually, I'm in talks with the owner of that green chair. Dear god, what is it about those chairs? I go all jiggly-legged over them. And if it's really as nice as it looks in the photo, I wouldn't paint that. We like green.

And what's up with me and Etsy lately? I'm hooked. I want to put these in the Office/Bunny Room when we're done with it. These are all from badbird's shop.

I don't even care if these send me hurtling into Crazed Rabbit Owner territory, I can't resist.

So how great is it going to be when we can freely feather without the guilt of unfinished projects and unpadded bank accounts? How awesome will it be to see a room completely finished and photo-spread worthy? And exactly how long is this going to take?

Paperstone Countertops

2007-11-12T09:26:00.000-05:00

While Ben's dad, Joe, was visiting a few weekends ago, we visited an environmental building supplier in Lawrenceville called Artemis. We were just sort of generally curious about the place, and we all love a good clever innovation and/or the chance to make fun of hippies (Ben and Joe are from Eugene, OR which gives them license).

It turns out, we might have found a pretty kickin' idea for our countertops!

Paperstone is this crazy material made from layers and layers and layers of recycled paper held together by resin that gives it a stone-like feel. It has the look and practicality of honed granite or even soapstone, but is (1) way cheaper (2) way easier to work with and (3) a sustainable, renewable, small-company-manufactured, environmentally-sound, high-fiber, smugly morally superior, boast-inducing product. And who doesn't love that?

But it's so pretty!

2007-10-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

A whole bunch has happened since I took an unexpected blogging hiatus.

Ben applied urethane to the floor in the Den, fixing some mottled staining and making us both feel like home-renovation champions. That floor is so beautiful, it brings a tear to my eye!

Ben ripped out the utterly useless yet incredibly heavy cabinets above the sink in the scullery.

Ben re-plumbed the hot-cold water supply to the bathroom, thus ending the reign of the Hot-Flushing Toilet.

Ben re-re-plumbed the hot-cold water supply 3 or 4 times after each of us discovered a waterfall in the basement. He has promised to document the changes he made.

I cleaned up the front yard, raked leaves, razed the dead stuff, and ripped out about 3 square acres of lamb's ear from the front yard. I also planted cute daisies, mums, and some other green stuff.

Most of this was in preparation for Ben's mom, Tina, and her partner, Lori, to come visit, which was just wonderful and lots of fun. I've got some neat-o photos from our trip to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Phipps Conservatory which was just awesome. There was a lot of driving around in the air-conditioned car since the weather was so uncooperatively warm and some really wonderful meals and conversations and just general hanging around. Really great stuff. T.Lo, we miss you guys already!

We picked a stove! And, not surprisingly, it's way way WAY more expensive than our initial estimates. It's got 5 burners with one of those griddle inserts in the middle, a convection oven, a second tiny oven where the broiler drawer is, it's all stainless, AND it has this neat meat probe inside where you can set the oven to cook it to a set internal temperature. How awesome is that? So no wonder it's $1800. Ouch. Is that ridiculous? That's ridiculous right? I dunno.

Part of our thinking is that we're saving a ton of money by going with an Ikea kitchen that we'll install ourselves. The flip side is that since we're DIY'ing so much, we don't want the overall look to be cheap. Plus we do cook a lot. So we'll actually use and appreciate the extra bells and whistles. But still, $1800 is so much money. SO MUCH. So what do you guys think? Should we go for it?

Lessons We Learned This Weekend.

2007-09-24T14:04:00.000-04:00

1. Plumbing sucks.
2. A Sawzall can totally cut through copper pipe.
3. Sanding a skim-coated ceiling sucks.
4. A coat of urethane evens out a blotchy staining job.

5. Raw pork can liquefy when left to its own devices.

Life feels really blurry and messy lately and I hope it knocks it off so things can be fun again. We're looking forward to putting the Living-Kitchen back together, buying a new stove, and baking a pie and maybe some mac 'n' cheese. Until then, woosh, it's blurry.

Ben patches hardwood floors

2007-09-18T13:36:00.001-04:00

Let me start by saying that Ben did all of this work - I had no part other than that of the Documenteur (is that a word? It should be.) So hopefully if I describe things incorrectly, he will let me know.

Okay, so before we could refinish the floor in the Living-Kitchen/Den, we had to patch up a few holes. The POs had sawn two holes in the floor, one where they imagined an island sink would go and another where they imagined a sink would go after they gave up on the island sink. There was also a funny little square missing - not sure what for.

Here is the end result of Ben's patch of the first hole. Using some scrap wood that had somewhat-matching grain, he roughly cut it down to size using a probably-dangerous combination of our circular saw and the Sawzall. I wasn't around to witness the madness. Once he saw-whittled it down to something approximating the hole, he sanded the edges to make them round and to get the fit juuuust right. In the foreground is the little square patch. Much easier than the big round one.

For the second large patch, he had to first remove the half-assed plumbing that was there. Sawzall, baby. (He tried to include me at this point, but holding a reciprocating saw 8 inches from my face just made me worry for my modeling career, y'know? In general Ben has done the heavy lifting with the power tools because I wig out thinking about all the ways I could accidentally clutzily maim myself.)

Here's the hole that needs to be patched. Or as they say in Pittsburgh "needs patched."

Ben decides to cut it into a square to make it easier on him and the sander. He measures to make sure he'll cut evenly, then uses the Sawzall to make the hole.

He removes any leftover pieces of floor:
And sands the edges smooth.

He cuts a new piece of wood, sands its edges, and plunks it into place. Some wood glue and a rubber mallet make sure it's all the way in and secure.

There was also some making-a-brace-from-underneath action, but I missed out on that because (I believe) I was taking a nap. Which is a shame because I totally missed some sweet nail-gunnin'. Maybe someday Ben will fill us in on what he was doing.
(Hint hint! Hey Ben! Blog!)

Anyway. It's SUPER impressive how well these blend in to the refinished floors. Especially with the stain on it, you can barely notice the patches unless you're looking for them. Ben rules.

Surprise! We refinished our floor!

2007-09-17T10:28:00.000-04:00

We have been plotting this attack on the floor in the Living-Kitchen/Den for a little while now. We did the backwards-planning of, well, we need to have a stove when Ben's mom visits. And if we want a stove we need to take out that corner unit where the wall oven is. Then we need to re-do the floors.

So we got a quote for refinishing, staining, and polyurethaneing the floor in this room, which is ~15ft by ~18ft, or 270 square feet. At $7 a square foot, we were looking at a starting bill of very close to $2000 just for one room. [Correction: The quote was $3/sq.ft, not $7. That's still a total of $800!] I don't need to tell you just how far and for how long $2K [$800] would last us. We're cheap people. Cheap and resourceful! So we decided to throw caution to the wind and do the floor ourselves.

It was a good room to start in - the PO salvaged the floors from a building on the Southside - a factory or a warehouse or something - so they're not fancy or original or almost 100 years old like the rest of the floors in the house. It's the biggest room in the house, too, so it would also give us the most satisfying bang for our buck.

Here are the floors when we started.

Here's a close-up so you can see what kind of shape they're in. That bald spot is a patch Ben made a weekend or two ago that I haven't had a chance to blog about yet.

This section is where the corner unit with the oven was (the demolition of which I haven't blogged about yet...). The floors were never refinished in this patch. That's okay - that's were the fridge will go.

And here's a relatively nice spot over by the bookcase. It's still pretty shabby.

Underneath the china hutch:

So we got up nice and early, made a big pot of coffee and emptied out the room. All was going well until we go to this behemoth. All the dishes came out and we manged to wedge the thing onto the handtruck. It wasn't a pretty sight, lots of grunting and shrieking and "OH HOLY #$%@*" but we finally managed to dump it in the dining room. Ben's going to turn it into TWO pieces before we move it back in.

Then we covered everything with plastic. The bookcases and fireplace, all the lighting fixtures, the fan motor, the outlets.

And you know that Safety is Number One at the Schmich Schack.

Actually we really only used the earmuffs. We should have used the respirators, too, but they do make it hard to breathe, don't they?

We bought a new ShopVac for this adventure, too ($99). There's not a way for me to adequately express how much dust this thing sucked up. POUNDS of dust. Truly stunning.

And now, please meet the beast:

The drum sander cost $42 to rent from Home Depot for 24 hours. Each sleeve of sand paper for the drum cost $7 and we used 4. Total = $70.

So we got started. It took a little while for us (well, Ben) to get the hang of running the drum sander. "You gotta keep that thing moving" was what everyone and their mother told us while we were renting it. Once Ben perfected his technique, it was smooth sailing.

The key was to start it off moving, but really slowly. Then ease the drum down. Walk slowly behind the sander. Then he does a snappy quick-pickup at the end, all while it's still moving.

Also, you need to restrain the thing. We didn't realize this until after we did our first pass and things looked...funny.

After the first pass with 80 grit:

This was when we realized that Ben shouldn't be scooting after the thing while it pulled him across the room leaving funny marks behind. He needed to OWN it. Dominate it. Cesar Milan style. After that, things went even better.

Here's Ben doing the second pass with 80 grit:

After the 2nd pass with 80:

After 1st pass with 100 grit:

2nd pass with 100:

After detail hand-sanding and edging with 80 grit, then doing a once-over with 120 grit.
At this point, the floors were so soft and butter-smooth and CLEAN, we could barely contain ourselves. We'd done it! And without any huge divots or dings or dents!

We tested two stain colors we'd picked out and decided on Olympic's Oil-Based stain in Red Mahogany. It blends really nicely with the shade of the original floors in the dining room.

Staining was a little trickier than I thought it would be. We spread it on, then wiped off the excess with an old tshirt 5-10 minutes later. We hit a rough spot later on when Ben's can of stain suddenly got really dark and sticky. It was a surprisingly sudden change - we don't really know what happened. But it all blended together in the end to give us this lovely result:
Isn't it great?! Can you hear the angels singing?
Can you hear us laughing with glee?
We ran out of time to put the polyurethane down just yet, but we're still ridiculously impressed with the results. It was time-consuming, dirty work and my knees are killing me, but WOW, how incredibly satisfying.

Also, let's do the math:
Drum Sander rental: $70
Shop Vac: $100
Second hand-sander: $50
Ear protection: $20
2 qts of stain: $12
gallon of urethane: $28
Various brushes/applicators: $20

TOTAL: $300.

Four New Bathroom Updates

2007-09-14T14:36:00.000-04:00

I was going to show some of the During shots of work going on in the guest room, but instead I'm going to string you along a little bit longer. I have this image of being able to post the whole process start-to-finish and it's just too tantalizing to let go of - I might actually finish it this weekend!

Instead, here are some of the other updates we've made to the Bathroom. Just a few little touches that actually do make a world of difference. (Here are some Before pictures for reference.)

1) New light fixtures! These are probably the nicest thing we've added to the house so far. They're Mercer sconces from Pottery Barn. We we lucky enough to have some gift cards, so all we had to pay was shipping ($20)! Installing them was a snap; easier with two people though - I held the flashlight while Ben put Wire A into Coupler B.

Here they are on either side of the mirror. I like the shadows they make.

2) A glass shelf over the terlet. It doesn't hold much, pretty much just our toothbrushes, but it looks so nice. Ben hung it level, but you can tell that it's out of line with the crooked wall tiles. Hehe.
3) A Toilet Paper Holder!! Every time I use the toilet paper now, I feel like a queen! No more windowsill storage for us!

4) Speaking of clearing the windowsill - here's our shower caddy. It needed special attaching mechanisms because we've got one of those big sunflower showerheads and it wouldn't sit like it should.

So it's attached in two places with a bracket and these layered stainless washers:
And at the top with this bracket-screw-nut thingamajiggy. The caddy rotates a little left to right, but otherwise it's solid. And so much better than keeping your body wash on the windowsill.

Guest Room - before

2007-09-12T13:44:00.000-04:00

Life Outside the House has been a pain in the butt distraction lately. Buckets of joint compound don't grow on trees though, so I can't complain too much. To motivate me to get back to blogging, here are some Before photos from the guest room, one of the projects we're working on right now. JUST WAIT until you see the Afters. Your mind, it will be blown.

This is, overall, probably one of the less offensive rooms. Tasteful color combinations, good light, pretty view. I don't have a photo of it all decked out for guests - this is about halfway through a project I was working on - the dusty floor should be a hint. Please notice the swirly ceiling and say a prayer for me.

This is probably my favorite fireplace in the house. It's the only one with an original insert and I like the mini subway tile. This room also boasts two closets!

The hearth does need a little work, though. A little scrubbin' and a little patchin' is in order.

The PO's were all psyched about finding these original wall markings under old wall paper. They had frames hanging around these two white squares.
This says "White ... Mahog Doors"

And this is..... yeah, I dunno. Graffiti?

So that's pretty cool. Wait till you see what we've been doing to it though! Ooooh! you will swoon!

Not to mention what's been going on downstairs in the Kitchen-Den area... Teaser!

The kitchen is greener on the other side of the blog...

2007-09-05T13:52:00.000-04:00

More green kitchen lovin' from this site of all places. I was googling "Cottage Kitchen."

I do love the look of the dark dark countertops, even if they are trendy. They remind me of the old slate benchtops in the lab where I work. (Actually, I tried to yoink some because they are renovating our building and I thought they might just get tossed, a travesty!, but they absolutely reuse them - building engineers aren't that stupid.)

This pastel look is really not our style at all, but I still think it's adorable.

Not to mention what a sucker I am for anything fenestrated. Cubby holes, paned glass, etc.

And beadboard. Man alive, I luzz me some beadboard.

Installation of our new bathroom sink

2007-09-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

The long weekend was good to us, I think. We each had minor breakdowns to the tune of "why did we do this, the house will never get done oh god we're brooooooke...." and bounced back with full and even productive recoveries. There is a growing backlog of projects that I need to document, blog-style, but now that we're both back in class (which, I would argue, contributed to the breakdowns... things get so nuts During The Semester), I'm going to have to pace myself. Blah - having a career is so overrated.

Enough preface? I agree. Let's get down to brass (actually we prefer chrome...) tacks!

Two weeks ago we picked up our bargain ebay cast iron bathroom sink in NJ. Here it is after a good scrubbing, air-drying on our porch:

One week later, we hauled it upstairs and started messing with it. Ben was the primary messer and successfully attached the new faucet handles.

{Ben, messing:}
He ran into a bit of trouble with the faucet head itself, though. The center hole on our sink is apparently larger than modernly-manufactured sinks, so the base of the [modern] faucet had barely any surface to rest on, and was tipping all over like a drunk sailor. We didn't have any plumbers putty and silicone wasn't enough. So Ben rigged up a little brace for the underside that looks like this:
So that's a flexible but stiff rubber "washer" with a metal "bracket" held together by the metal washer that came with the faucet kit. Without the rubber "washer" the metal washer has nothing to brace itself against. (Ben has promised he'll write up a more detailed description of what's going on here. Someday.)

Here's another shot.
It's not perfect, and we have since bought (but not applied) some plumbers putty. But low and behold! It works!
Crap, I must have deleted the shot with water. Anyway, take my word for it, the shiny new faucet works, without spray from the opposite handle hitting the wall, or your eye, or your freshly laundered shirt (yeah right, like we have those anymore), or whatever.

And doesn't it look great!? Compare it to the Before shots.
And After:
Heaven!

Ben's still working on the drain and trap assembly. Like I said, he's the primary messer on this project, so once he's got that all sorted out, I'll report what he did. Another problem is that the cold water pressure is still low. We're still trying to figure that one out.

More bathroom updates to come! More chrome! More pretty! More better!

Stairs

2007-08-31T10:56:00.000-04:00

A little while back (err, a month or more ago...), Andrea from Litter Box House asked me about (1) my stairs and (2) how/what/why we were seeding between our flagstone paths and patio. Since I'm feeling guilty for not posting in a week, I thought I'd indulge her stair obsession. So here's a short photo tour of stairs and grass.

So here's the grass in the patio before Ben whacked it last weekend. In the far corner we are attempting to grow some Irish Moss. When it's not eleventy billion degrees outside, it looks like its doing quite well, but it's a little stressed out lately (aren't we all...). We would have done it all in moss, but that would have cost a lot of money. A lot. So instead the rest is done in regular old grass. It's filling in nicely for the most part, and is fun to walk on. I have been thinking lately that creeping thyme would have been a cool thing to plant here, too.

We thought we'd be able to just mow it, but it turns out the mowing deck is a little high for that, even at its lowest setting. The weedwacker isn't bad, but it can be uneven. I had fun trimming it with hedge shears the other night while we were grilling. Didn't take too long.

On to the stairs...

Here is the main stairwell. (All of these pictures turned out funky because our digicam can't handle its own flash. When you come in the front door, the stairs are to your right. In this picture you can spot the following:

pretty wooden stairs (I'll give credit where it's due)

-hideous cottage cheese stucco gross shiny walls (it's a pet peeve)

beige.

damage to the bottom stair

but a pretty newel post!

Let's look a the pretty newel post some more:

....nice.

And here is the side of the stairway (do the panels on the side of the stairs have a special name?). This is quite pretty too, except for the parts where you can peer through the floor into the basement...
oof, we need to refinish the floors.

I did not include the picture from the top of the stairs looking down because there are three suspicious dust-mote-spots in it and I don't need a whole bunch of comments telling me that they're ghost orbs. Lord knows I'm neurotic enough about spooky things and don't need to get all freaky-deak about dust spots. They're just dust spots. Dust spots.

Ahem. So here we are at the top of the stairs, winding the bend to the second floor. I should dust.

And if I turn around, here are the Cosby stairs that go down to the kitchen. And more ugly walls! Going down these stairs feels like walking through stucco catacombs. I try to focus on how pretty the wood on these stairs is. It's different from the main stairs, not as fancy, but I like it. You can kind of see the difference between the landing and that first step. I'm not crazy about that shade of blue. It's a little too country crafts or something. I don't think I want to strip this wood, but I'm not sure what color to repaint either. We are not good at choosing colors.

So these are the best of the bunch of photos I have. Does that satisfy you, Andrea? Do you even remember asking these questions?

Our new sink!

2007-08-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we drove out to Easton, PA to visit my parents, and while we were out in that neck of the woods, we picked up a lovely cast iron bathroom sink that we bought on ebay.

Isn't it great?! It was $25. Can you believe that? We've been looking at a porcelain reproduction that's $400. It has some minor rust and some stains in the basin, but I think those will come out with a little BKF and TLC, and otherwise it's in great shape. This weekend we're going to attempt to install it, as well as this new faucet (Fairfax by Kohler).

Ogden Nash had an old house

2007-08-20T09:59:00.000-04:00

Lines to a World-Famous Poet Who Failed To Complete a World-Famous Poem; or, Come Clean, Mr. Guest! by Ogden Nash

Oft when I'm sitting without anything to read waiting for a train in a depot,
I torment myself with the poet's dictum that to make a house a home,
livin' is what it takes a heap o'.
Now, I myself should very much enjoy makin' my house a home, but
my brain keeps on a-goin' clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click,
If Peter Piper picked a peck o' heap o' livin', what kind of a peck o' heap
o' livin' would Peter Piper pick?
Certainly a person doesn't need the brains of a Lincoln
To know that there are many kinds o' livin', just as there many kinds o'
dancin' or huntin' or fishin' or eatin' or drinkin'.
A philosophical poet should be specific
As well as prolific,
And I trust I am not being offensive
If I suggest that he should also be comprehensive.
You may if you like verify my next statement by sending a stamped, self-
addressed envelope to either Dean Inge or Dean Gauss,
But meanwhile I ask you to believe that it takes a heap of other things
besides a heap o' livin' to make a home out of a house.
To begin with, it takes a heap o' payin',
And you don't pay just the oncet, but agayin and agayin and agayin.
Buyin' a stock is called speculatin' and buyin' a house is called investin',
But the value of the stock or of the house fluctuates up and down,
generally down, just as an irresponsible Destiny may destine.
Something else that your house takes a heap o', whether the builder came
from Sicily or Erin,
Is repairin',
In addition to which, gentle reader, I am sorry to say you are little more
than an imbecile or a cretin
If you think it doesn't take a heap o' heatin',
And unless you're spiritually allied to the little Dutch boy who went
around inspectin' dikes lookin' for leaks to put his thumb in,
It takes a heap o' plumbin',
And if it's a house that you're hopin' to spend not just today but
tomorrow in,
It takes a heap o' borrowin'
In a word, Macushla,
There's a scad o' things that to make a house a home it takes not only a
heap, or a peck, but at least a bushela.

from today's Writer's Almanac

Green Kitchen?

2007-08-15T16:12:00.001-04:00

Has Ben talked me into painted cabinets? Maybe. I'm not saying.

PS: These are all from this article at BH&G.

ISO Transom

2007-08-13T17:34:00.001-04:00

I would faint from happiness if we could find a stained glass like this for the transom that goes from the Kitchen-Den into the Scullery. Especially if it weren't $600. (It's got all three colors we're working with: light blue, green, and cherry red!)

Bathroom - Before.

2007-08-09T10:58:00.001-04:00

Here are some Before photos of our bathroom. We did some work on it this weekend, so Afters are soon-to-come!

It's a great little bathroom, we just want to freshen it up a bit. The layout will mostly stay the same.

This was built by the previous owners. It won't be here permanently, but for now it's a nice storage space. Eventually we will put in a medicine cabinet on the wall above where this is now, and this unit will move to the Bathroom-To-Be.
A closeup of the tile - it's so pretty! It needs to be cleaned and re-grouted in spots, but we're not touching it otherwise.
The bullnose tile goes all the way around the mirror. We'd like to have the mirror taken out and re-silvered, but I have no idea how to get it out of there without messing up the tile.
I hate the lighting fixtures. You can't see the icky floral motifs on the glass lampshades. You can see me in my weekend finery.
This is a scary medicine cabinet that's behind the door. Nope, there's no door on it. And nope, nothing fits in it. And yup, that central crack goes right into the wall. And yup, we're getting rid of it.

Here's the sink. I have read that this style is rather rare with its curves and its width, etc. We will either have it refinished for the Bathroom-To-Be or get rid of it. Not sure yet.
The Whiny Faucet. It leaks, it sprays, you can't use the cold water, the handles leak. It's a sad, sad faucet. You can also see our hideous patch job of the pitted area around the drain. Rust is peeking through.

If you turn on the cold water, it's almost impossible to turn it off again. Even when you use the other handle, this one shoots a tiny stream of water onto the wall. The tub hardware. It's a little rusty, but showers are nice. We're working on a shower caddy thingie so we don't have to use the windowsill for shampoo storage.

No overflow drain. And why are all the faucet handles crooked? (Answer? Everything is crooked in this house - the handles were obviously made to match.)
Isn't the toilet cute? Unfortunately the base is cracked and it wobbles like a drunk sailor, so we'll have to replace it.

*Added: Oh yeah! And it flushes hot water!!
Oh yeah, this thing. It's a ventilation fan.
(Also please check out the swirly ceilings. And the throbbing vein in my forehead...)
It heats up when you turn it on. See? Old-school tungsten coils.
In an already-stuffy bathroom, it's a nice touch to be ventilated by Satan's Tungsten Butthole.

Yuck... show me the pretty tile again!
Ahh...