Adventures in Domesticity

We're moving...

2006-12-29T19:56:00.000-05:00

...to http://ellenjane.typepad.com/adventures_in_domesticity.

Sorry for the unwieldy URL, and for the weird formatting here. Hopefully everything will be pretty enough at the new place to make you forget about the address as soon as you put it in your favorites and/or update your links.

Christmas with Craig and Ellen

2006-12-20T11:49:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like Christmas to make your house feel like a home. Especially if your house is small, so the Christmas tree seems to fill up all available space, winding around corners and surprising you in the shower.

I still love it, though, and wish I could show it off with better photography skills. Our tree is pre-lit with white lights, to which we add bubble lights and little red paper balls that make the white lights look red and warm. I've also been adding all the pictures that we receive in Christmas cards to the tree. I really like that, and will probably do it again. And to make it truly our tree, it's topped with a Minnesota Twins hat.

The house lit up at night. Note the appalling lack of snow. I wish we'd get just a little bit, so the boxwoods on the right didn't look so ghostly covered in their shrub protectors for winter.

A cautionary tale - beware the dangers of an unused room. It will be taken over by junk. The fact that it is junk of a holiday nature doesn't make it any better.

It's the baking that really ushers in the holiday season for me, though. It just doesn't feel like Christmas until I've slaved in front of the oven for a full weekend, stepping on Phoebe an average of 17 times per day. I don't know what this says about my character, other than the fact that I like cookies, and I like sharing them even more. Indeed, I have to share them, otherwise Craig would have to roll me into January.

Some of the fruits of my labor - gift baskets for co-workers.

So, Merry Christmas. Feel free come on over, have some cookies, and hang out with us. Help remind us that no matter how long our renovation list is, our home is still a home as long as it's cozy and welcoming and personal. Just don't expect Craig to share his prime spot on the couch.

The Basement Chronicles, Part the Second

2006-12-12T14:24:00.000-05:00

I feel like the first big step of the basement work is over with. With the help of Carl and Tenley's truck (thanks again, guys!) we picked the panels up from Menards on Friday night and installed them on Saturday. The installation went quite smoothly - it was just measuring, sawing, and fitting the panels together. Manual labor with very little high-level thought.

Craig lays down the first panel:

About a third of the way through. You can see what the bottom of the panels look like to Craig's right. We thought we'd have way too many, but ended up with only two panels left over. The panels have a tongue on two sides and a groove on the other two, so they could really only go in one direction, resulting in a lot of unusable trimmed pieces.

Ellen cleans up sawdust. The combination of the treated plywood and the vinyl on the bottom made for very slippery dust. Please note that I am leaning over, and do not always look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

All finished. I may just be imagining things, but it felt like having the panels on the floor took a bit of the chill off. Insulation will only improve matters.

In other news, Christmas season is crazy, work is a little slow, and I had my wallet stolen out of my office yesterday. Grrr.

In conclusion, here is a cute picture of Phoebe for no reason at all:

The Basement Chronicles, Part the First

2006-11-17T10:42:00.000-05:00

In the long break between posts, we've been busy planning, destroying, and measuring our basement.

A few "before" pictures:

The worst part is that it's not insulated at all. You nearly have to bundle up to take a load of laundry downstairs in January. A close runner up to the worst part is that, like everything that was in our house when we moved in, the entire basement was a pasty brown, this time accented by fake wood paneling.

In a year or so, we hope to have a cozy family room where we would actually like to spend some time. Our plans include a desk/computer station, table/eating area, fireplace, flat screen tv, and general space for a playroom.

So, with the help of Carl, Barb, and Dan, we ripped it all down:

It's amazing how fast it all came down. I am now willing to publicly declare my support for any political candidate willing to institute a steep tax on sales of all wood paneling - tearing out and disposing of one layer of wallboard would have been quite adequate.

After it was all cleaned up:

We cleaned up the walls and painted them over with waterproofing paint, just for good measure. All the walls are white now, which makes things look even cleaner. Next up: permits, DriCore panels for the floor, and deciding whether to use foam panel insulation or fiberglass batts. Ellen leans toward foam because of potential mold issues, while Craig doesn't want to think about it at all.

It hasn't taken us two months to do all of this. We've also had, you know, lives outside our house. Here are the highlights:
- Halloween fun with Phoebe, who was stylin' as spaghetti and meatballs.

- Ellen moved offices and officially began working for all 4 of the College of Education units on the St. Paul campus, rather than just Family Social Science. This has led to a lot more work, as well as a laptop, so we're running about even.
- Traveled to Phoenix for a weekend to celebrate Ellen's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. My newest cousin, Audrey, was also baptised that weekend. See the Flickr photoset at http://www.flickr.com/photos/craigandellen/sets/72157594368471993/ if you're interested.
- Started moving photos from Photobucket to Flickr. I like the option of having tags and sets, as well as the cool little photostream thingy that I'll eventually get on the blog. Forgive me if the photos look a little wonky for a while. I'm working on it. As I once said in a job interview, my html skills run about at the level of making things bold, so I'll get there slowly but surely.
- Watched the Hawkeye football team's spectacular collapse into mediocracy.
- Had a number of personal freak-outs about how EVERYONE IS PREGNANT.
- Wondered why I'm not a better blogger - I'm a writer by training and inclination, and I think I'm pretty smart and articulate. But then I refer back to Articles 1 & 2: Full Time Job and Home Improvement. So I'll just have to be happy with checking in on the odd slow day at work.

Angie's List is checking in....

2006-09-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

We haven't been doing anything photogenic to the house lately. The last of the brown on the outside of the house is officially gone, though. Between bouts of swearing, dripping enamel paint all over everything, and surprise rainstorms, Ellen managed to paint the awning on the side door to match the house. We also painted the garage door and touched up the rest of the garage. Our house is now yellow, green, and white. Yay!

This summer, we had a local nursery with a landscaping division draw up a landscaping plan for our yard. It's great to have someone else do the designing and thinking for me. It has, however, had a domino effect. All of a sudden, we're gathering bids for patios, sodding, grading, privacy fences, and gutter repair. Angie's List e-mails me almost daily to "check up," wondering how I'm coming with all the contractors I've been researching.

Tentatively, we think we'll have the back yard regraded and sodded next year (they'll also install the beds for our planned plantings) and add a privacy fence. Our problem gutter should get fixed this fall. The grading and gutter repair will hopefully eliminate the trickles of water we get in the basement from time to time. With our plans for finishing off the basement, this would be a Very Good Thing.

So here's a bit of what we've been doing besides making expensive and grandiose plans for the house.

Vegetables! Between my little garden and our community agriculture box, we've been overrun with tomatoes. The last few Friday evenings have found me in the kitchen, glass of wine in hand, making large quantities of fresh heirloom tomato sauce.

Humiliating the dog! Every year, a group of Twin Cities Westie owners has an entry in the James J. Hill Days Parade in Wayzata. The dogs all dress alike, and walk the parade route. This year, the Westies wore tartan sashes and Glengarry hats. Phoebe shook her hat off after about 90 seconds, but she looked cute anyway. The Westies even made the evening news. You can see a clip in the upper right hand corner of this page: http://wcco.com/pets. The Westies are the middle choice under the video "screen."

Phoebe was a model in a fashion show after the parade. The show was sponsored by the very fancy Lulu & Luigi pet store. Her cute little fur-trimmed tartan jacket cost $90. Yikes.

A summer lull

2006-07-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

So. We haven't been doing much with the house lately. We painted the garage ourselves over the 4th of July weekend, and are ready for a rest. We haven't even done touch-ups yet. The garage doors are both still brown, and clash with the fresh coat of paint. We're not quite to the point of caring yet. Maybe in another weekend or two. Right now, we're soaking up the AC.

I have also found that I lose at vegetable gardening. I think I killed my zucchini. Yes, the garden veggie that produces by the power of thought alone. Mine are on life support.

Now, I'd never grown much of anything before, so I didn't know that zucchini plants grow giant leaves that take over everything. I don't have a lot of space in my square foot garden, so when the zucchini leaves attacked, I put a tomato cage over the plant, and the leaves have more or less grown upward. I've been getting lots of leaves and flowers, but no fruit.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided that this must be because the raspberries were flopping over the zucchini and shading it too much. So I took a bungee cord and strapped the raspberries back against the fence, opening up the space around the garden. "Great!" I thought. "I'll just take the cage out, and the plant can flop all it wants!"

I was very pleased with myself. Then I pulled on the cage, and (duh) the entire plant came with it. I panicked a bit, stuck the whole cage back in the ground, mounded dirt over the poor exposed roots, and gave it plenty of water and Miracle-Gro. If the plants live, I might try pollinating the flowers myself. If not, I'm sure someone will provide me with zucchini this summer.

At least I'll have some basil and knowledge for next year out of the garden. The way things are looking now, that may be it.

Aside from killing vegetables, our weekends have been pretty busy. We went to the Schwarzkopf family reunion in Breda, Iowa toward the beginning of the month. The next weekend was the Minnesota Scottish Fair - nothing like haggis in 100 degree temps, aye? We also went to the Jensens' cabin near Hayward, WI, for a weekend. And look, there we are, feeding blueberries to fish! Thanks to Doug & Kathy Freeman for the pictures.

House. Painted.

2006-06-21T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well, the painters have gone, there's a hole in our savings account, and the various shades of brown on the house are just a memory. The new colors are Sherwin Williams "Jersey Cream" for the body and "Rosemary" for the trim. Here's the progress:

Day 1:

Day 2 - Scraped, spot primed, and test patched:

Day 3 - One coat of the body color is up:

Day 4 - There's another coat up, although it's hard to see:

Day 5 - Some of the trim is done now:

Day 6 - Mostly done, except for a few touch-ups:

The finished product - we have pretty new house numbers, although I do think Craig put them a little too far to the left. (We'll see how long it takes him to notice this comment.) We also have a new copper mailbox that matches the numbers, which will be installed a bit later:

Closeup of the trim color:

All in all, we're happy with the outcome, and happy with our decision to have someone else do most of the work. It was nice to have it go on while we were at work. So why am I so tired?

If the siding's done, this must be June

2006-06-14T10:08:00.000-04:00

Sorry for being a Very Bad Girl about updating. The College of Human Ecology is closing on June 30, and all the work issues that have been percolating for the last year are coming to a head now. There are lots of rumors, negotiations, and stressful situations right now, and all I really want to do is go on vacation and drink margaritas. Hopefully things will improve in the next few months.

Anyway, all the work stress is one of the reasons we elected to have the house painted professionally in the first place, and I'm happy to report that they are there RIGHT NOW. This is very exciting. The house was all scraped and patched with primer last night, and it looked like they were starting on the first coat of paint this morning. We're taking pictures every day, and I'll post them when the job is done, so the Great De-Browning can be seen in its full majesty.

Anyway, here's a little photo tour of what we've been doing in the past few weeks. I want to take a moment to thank Craig's dad for all the help he's given us. An engineer's brain is an invaluable resource.

On Memorial Day weekend, Dan and Craig finished up the railing on the front step. It looks great, and is sturdy enough to support a klutz like me. It's now spray-painted a textured brown color - guess I'll have to get a picture of that, too.

Craig installed our new garbage disposal. Compared to the old one, which was installed in January 1979, it is an amazing piece of machinery. The first time I flipped the switch, I was afraid I might get sucked in.

The next weekend, Craig and Dan installed our fiber cement siding on the peak of the garage. We still have some trim to add on the edges, and it needs to be painted, but it's looking pretty good.

The backerboard was very helpful - it warns that it will smolder or burn if ignited. Come to think of it, I probably will smolder or burn if I'm ignited, too.

And in the meantime, things are growing. I'm beginning to worry that our front planter may actually be too shady for impatiens. I did not know such a thing was possible. This picture is a couple of weeks old, and the plants are nice and leafy now, but not blooming much. Time shall tell.

A crappy attempt at designing my own planters. Apparently there's a reason they sell those pre-made. I do like the tuberous begonias, though.

The vegetables seem to be growing well. Craig wishes I would just leave the tomatoes the hell alone, though. I think I may have pruned the growing end off of one of my Cherokee Purple plants, thinking it was a sucker. What can I say, I'm a novice. I hope it can recover somehow.

Stay tuned for painting pictures!

Destruction makes me happy.

2006-05-15T11:38:00.000-04:00

If it would ever stop raining, we might be able to make some real progress. As it is, we've been working in fits and starts to get ready for the painters, who are coming in mid-June. So we've been told, at least.

Last weekend, we ripped down the aluminum awning over the front door. This was extremely satisfying, and the sight of our shiny new reciprocating saw drew in several male neighbors from across the street.

Despite the fugliness of the awning, somebody rifled through the stuff in our carport and took it by Monday morning. The least they could have done would have been to take the vinyl siding too.

I believe I've mentioned before that between the two of us, Craig and I have four college degrees. None of them are in anything remotely engineering-related. We are much better at destruction than construction. We'd planned to rip down the awning and put up our new special-ordered railing on Saturday. We managed to get a quarter of the railing up. Perhaps next weekend we'll deal with the fact that we're mounting the railing to a concrete step that just isn't level. Perhaps.

It looks really nice, though!

That same Sunday, we attacked the ugly brown vinyl siding someone had put up on the peak of the house and painted brown. We'd been planning to take it down and replace it with something like this, but we found a Great Gift from the House Gods under the vinyl - the original wood siding, painted the same color as the vinyl. Mystifying.

It doesn't look the greatest at the moment, but with some scraping, sanding, and painting, it should clean up just fine. We later found that the James Hardie shingle siding we wanted costs $450 for a 4'x8' panel, so we're in love with this wood right now.

Phoebe says: Just Say No! to cheap and ugly vinyl siding.

After Sunday's work:

Mother's Day weekend was cold, rainy, and generally nasty. Ellen spent Saturday shopping for plants at the Friends School Plant Sale and Linder's. On Sunday, it was nice for just long enough for us to build a little frame for vegetables. Craig got to use the reciprocating saw again!

I know I'm not supposed to plant the seedlings I bought this weekend for a week or two yet, but I'm itching to do it. With my gardening skills, though, those little tomatoes need every advantage they can get, so I'll hold off as long as I can. I also bought over 200 white impatien plants - even I can't screw that up too badly.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

2006-05-03T10:27:00.000-04:00

We've been in a home-improvement limbo the past month or so - it's been too wet or too dry to do yard work, our materials weren't delivered in time to take advantage of the good weather, or we've been doing things that photograph pretty poorly. No one really wants to see pictures of me scrubbing the kitchen floor. There have been a few things going on, though. Here's a rundown.

First and foremost, we've been enjoying the fact that everything outside is finally greening up. I'm happy to announce that all of the bulbs we planted last fall are present and accounted for.

We dug up the bare patches in our yard, worked in some compost, and planted grass seed. It's starting to come up, but time will tell how it's going to last.

Craig put up our new light fixture for over the kitchen sink. We bought it from Lightworks Lighting in Minneapolis, who I'd heartily recommend to anyone with an older house style. We were able to pick out our finish, our shade, and customize the fixture with a pull cord switch. Prices were very reasonable, and not needing to pay shipping costs was a bonus. I don't have a good picture of what was there before, but you can get a bit of an estimation here.

The time of the Great Debrowning is getting closer (painters are scheduled for mid-June), and we've decided on "Jersey Cream" for the body color - it's the creamy-yellowy color on the right here. We plan to do white and dark sage green trim, but I need to go visit with the design consultant at Sherwin Williams before making a final decision.

I dug up the weeds and overgrown raspberry bushes in this little plot by our carport. This is the only consistently sunny spot on our property, so I'm hoping to have a little vegetable garden here. After the steady rains we got all weekend, this spot is covered in weeds again, so it needs some attention.

The weekend of April 22, we drove to Lyons, Nebraska to help Craig's grandparents move out of their house and into a retirement apartment in Omaha. Phoebe was a good helper.

One of life's mysteries

2006-04-05T09:38:00.000-04:00

Or, why a $300 video iPod seems like a perfectly acceptable purchase, if a bit of a splurge, but $25 for an actual armband or lanyard holder is too much to justify.

Because this works just fine for listening to audiobooks while painting, right?

That is, until I spill oil-based primer all over it.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled cooking.

2006-04-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

That's right, we're done with the cabinet painting, and everything has returned to the place it should be. Well, almost everything. Two jars of chicken boullion mysteriously disappeared in the shift between the dining room and the kitchen. (We also bit the bullet and bought a new digital camera.) It's nice to be able to use the kitchen to actually make food, rather than just the place we put the takeout on plates.

Our kitchen is now covered in a fresh new coat of Navajo White. It's amazing how much cleaner the whole place feels. Here's a before shot, for comparison.

And after...

We have a new pendant schoolhouse-type light fixture coming to put over the sink. The one that's there now has a cool '50's feel, but is also covered in 50 years of paint smudges. If I can clean it up nicely, I may put it on eBay.

We painted over the cabinet door in blackboard paint, which has worked out nicely. (I need to remember to buy yeast.)

Sometime, hopefully this summer, we plan to get a new countertop and backsplash, and add some undercabinet lighting. (We'd planned on doing all this during March as well, but a few looks at the checkbook killed that plan.) This will help break up the expanse of white and add a little more interest.

For the time being, we're turning our attention to the outdoors. We have house painters scheduled to come in June, and need to make some exterior improvements before then. Stay tuned - Craig now owns a reciprocating saw....

Tragic.

2006-03-10T14:49:00.000-05:00

We appear to have lost our digital camera. Sigh. We remember taking pictures at Adam and Glennae's wedding, but nothing after that.

There's nothing like losing something semi-valuable to make you feel like a little kid again. I feel like hanging my head and rubbing my shoes in the dirt, while some Authority Figure (who is a combination of my dad, my Grandpa Schwarzkopf, and my eigth-grade history teacher) tells me that people who lose things like this don't deserve to have them in the first place.

But these things happen. But this time, they're happening in mid-project, so we can't offer any "during" pictures of the cabinets. I'll have to be descriptive in the meantime.

Our kitchen is currently in chaos, with all the contents of the cabinets emptied, and only the really essential things, like coffee and wine glasses, on the countertops. I've primed the interior of the cabinets, so it's kind of splotchy and white. The frames are still pine-colored, with wood epoxy patching all the holes. Craig manfully ripped down the scrolled piece of wood over the sink, exposing a very 1950's light fixture that's seen better days.

We ended up working with oil-based paint, on the advice of a very helpful gentleman from Abbott Paint & Carpet in St. Paul. (A paint store that knows their stuff is a great resource - they also helped me with the front door project.) Apparently latex paint will always be a little tacky where surfaces touch, but oil-based paint will not, and will hold up a bit better. I'm sure we'll appreciate this when our house doesn't stink like oil primer.

We've also ordered oil-rubbed bronze hardware from a pair of eBay vendors. We ended up getting all of the necessary hardware for about $130. We were excited to receive the box of hinges last night, but then discovered that we ordered the standard hinge, when what we needed was the lipped hinge. Oops.

Well, the wrong hinges are winging their way back to Tennessee to be exchanged, and we're planning on sanding the frames, priming them, and painting those and the cabinet interiors this weekend. Hopefully we will have plates in our cabinets again early next week.

Onward, Kitchen Soldiers

2006-02-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

Well, we've decided on painting the cabinets. The prep will likely be as time-intensive as it would be with staining, but I'm much more confident in my ability to produce a nice-looking finish with paint.

After a little bit of thought, we're also planning on replacing the countertop, putting up a subway tile backsplash, and adding undercabinet lighting while we've got everything dismantled.

A couple of photos for inspiration. The first is from a UK kitchen designer, and the second was posted on the GardenWeb Home Decorating forum.

About the kitchen cupboards...

2006-02-20T18:03:00.000-05:00

We've finally gotten around to doing something about our kitchen cabinets. They're flush panel pine, and I imagine that they're the ones that came with the house in 1952. After fifty years, they're not in the greatest of shape.

The finish has become quite brassy over the yellow pine, but I suppose it could be worse - they could be knotty pine.

We'd like to remove this piece, but need to figure out how to do it without damaging the existing cabinets too much.

I once saw an episode of "Designed to Sell" in which the illustrious Lisa LaPorta used Howard Restor-A-Finish to refresh some kitchen cabinets. Since Craig and I harbor a soft spot for HGTV's Design Bulldog, we decided to give it a try.

Before:

After: A TSP scrubbing and the Restor-A-Finish definitely cleaned up the finish, but didn't go far enough. The most amazing thing is the feel of the wood after using the Restor-A-Finish - it's silky smooth. Fear not, though, fans of LaPorta. The Restor-A-Finish will be put to good use on our doors and woodwork. But not until summer when we can open the windows - that's some stinky stuff.

We're left with two options to make the cabinets look nice. New hardware is a given. I waffle on this every day. In an effort to get it out on virtual paper, here are the options.

Strip, Sand, Stain, & Polyurethane
Pros
1. Craig likes the look of wood.
2. A medium tone would look nice with the beige appliances.
3. I can practice my staining skills with my mom, who has graciously agreed to come up for a weekend in March and help with the project.
Cons
1. This is a lot of work.
2. In light of #1, these are not particularly nice cabinets. If we had the cash, we'd happily rip them out and start anew.
3. I don't really like pine - the yellow tones look brassy to me, even when they haven't seen fifty years of use.
4. There's a veneer, and I'm a little scared of having the veneer buckle while stripping.

Paint
Pros
1. The workload is considerably less than with stripping, sanding, and refinishing.
2. Painting would allow us to sand down the cupboards, fill old nail holes with spackle or skim coat, and have a nice, clean result. Because of this, could use cabinet knobs without having a noticable hole from the existing hardware.
Cons
1. Craig likes the look of wood better.
2. I might have trouble finding a paint color that would match the appliances.
3. We'd need to touch up more often than with a wood finish.

Have I mentioned that I'm an obsessive planner? And self-doubter? Yes? Carry on, then.

Crap. It's February already.

2006-02-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I am officially an adult. I asked for doormats and lighting fixtures for Christmas, and was very excited to receive them. And then work got busy during January, so I was way too tired to think about anything other than USDA grant regulations and whether or not Scrubs was going to be on that night. I think the combination of being excited over doormats and caring about indirect cost rates has sounded the death knell to any claim I had at being a fun-loving twentysomething.

Anyway, by popular demand (read: Diana's demand), here's what we've been doing:

First off, we again demonstrated our ability to follow directions and use hand tools by fixing the leaky kitchen faucet, which had been dripping steadily through December. (I almost cried when I opened the water bill, and discovered that it would not force us to go into debt, as I'd feared.)

The faucet is now working well, with only one problem - we apparently put the facuet cartridge in backwards, so hot and cold are reversed. But that's a pretty fast learning curve.

We also painted the kitchen. I've decided I like painting - it's relatively cheap, can be done in a day or so, and produces immediate results. The color is "Raspberry Truffle" from Benjamin Moore.

A couple of before pictures:

That's a dropcloth, not my decor scheme.

The rather disturbing layer of dark gray primer we used:

And after:

I was amazed that it only took two coats of primer and two coats of red to get a good result. All the horror stories I've heard from friends who wanted a Trading Spaces-style red dining room are apparently just a good argument for buying good quality paint.

Finally, we replaced our 1970's Pizza Hut hallway light with this number from Rejuvenation (Merry Christmas!).

File under "Things that cost more to ship than you can sell them for on eBay."

Craig discovers that the previous owners/builders thought it would be a good idea to wire other rooms through the hallway light.

The finished product. But now it makes everything in our little hallway look cheap. And such is the curse of home improvement, sayeth Craig and Ellen.

Deck the Halls (and paint the walls)

2005-12-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

My apologies for the terrible rhyme. It was the only witty thing I could come up with this morning, which should tell you something about my present state of mind.

This year marked the first Thanksgiving since Craig and I started college in 1997 that we haven't traveled. We (well, I) therefore decided it was a good idea to pack it as full of work as possible.

We had a nice Thanksgiving with Dan and Barb in Woodbury. Barb made the turkey and some sides, and I contributed potatoes, rolls, green beans, and apple pie. Our car smelled very good as we drove across town.

Phoebe enjoyed her Thanksgiving dinner of a spiral shaped dried beef tendon.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we eschewed early morning shopping for painting our bedroom. Good thing, too, since we had a nice wet snow that day. Very picturesque, but I prefer not to drive in it on a day when people are already willing to maim each other for cheap digital cameras.

The new color is Benjamin Moore "Saybrook Sage," a grey-green-blue shade that is remarkably close to Martha Stewart Everyday's "Quaking Aspen." (I drove to a K-Mart in a seriously not nice part of St. Paul just to get the MS paint chip, then got home to discover that it was essentially the same thing as the BM color I had already decided upon. At least I know I like it. Twice.)

The ceiling wasn't very well done, so we re-painted that. We (okay, me, again) wanted to try the cool ceiling paints featured in Menards commercials that go on pink or purple but dry white, eliminating the need to guess where you've already painted. We tried it, but I don't think we'll be using it again. The purple tint, which was profound in the can, stayed on the ceiling for about 10 seconds, and the paint didn't cover well at all. We might have gotten better results by systematically licking the ceiling.

Can you say "gimmick?" I knew you could!

Dan and Barb proved that they will paint for pizza, which we really appreciate.

Goodbye, foul olive green!

Goodbye, foul yellow that previous owners were too lazy to cover up in the closet!

The end results are still green, but a nice, quiet, restful green.

We finally hung a few pictures on our bedroom walls, including this nice antique oak-framed mirror from Bob and Mikki in Jefferson.

On Saturday, we put up the Christmas tree and drove all around town for various errands and decorating supplies.

The tree looked like one of the slimmer models in the display at Michael's, but it's apparently been sitting in the basement gorging itself on candy canes, because it fills up a whole lot of our living room. We don't mind, though. (Note the lovely tree skirt made by Ellen's mom.)

We haven't figured out if there's actually a power supply on the exterior of our house, so our decorating is limited to candles in the windows. But that's all right, it looks nice and homey that way.

Now, on to the baking!

Inspiration / Rumination / Procrastination

2005-10-25T20:46:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I updated. In early September, we went to Paris and Switzerland for a couple of weeks, and our house progress ground to a screeching halt. (See A Life More Ordinary if you're interested in pictures and commentary.) Our Saturdays have been taken up with Hawkeye football, but a long list of painting jobs and other home improvement tasks are piling up for the moment when we find some ~~inspiration~~ motivation.

Inspiration, we have in spades. We visited a couple of homes in our neighborhood that were part of the Twin Cities Parade of Homes
Remodeler's Showcase. One featured a kitchen/sitting room expansion, and the other re-did a kitchen and added a master suite. Both were lovely examples of hardwood/stainless/granite perfection, and both carried price tags in the high $100,000 range. You could buy a bigger, nicer house for that in much of the country.

I don't know how I'd feel about having one of those expansions done in our little house. Everything was beautiful, but just didn't seem to jive with the feel of the neighborhood or the rest of the houses, which were WW2 era models like ours. I'd love more space, but I don't know how well I could stomach a contractor's pricetag in order to have a little slice of trendy new construction attached to my cute little house. Of course, all these noble ideas might evaporate into a turnkey Summit Avenue mansion were I suddenly to come into money...

Somehow, weekly trips to Home Depot and Abbott's Paint are less painful than contemplating an all-at-once renovation, so that's what we'll keep on doing. This seems to be the week of toilets at our house. Our super-duper low flow upstairs model started running this week, and we ended up replacing all of its guts. It works better than before - truly an accomplishment for two humanities majors.

Broken, rusted out toilet innards.

This morning, I took Phoebe out while Craig was in the shower. I needed to use the bathroom, so I went downstairs. I opened the toilet lid, and saw something in the bowl. Without my glasses, it looked like a leaf, and I bent down to investigate further. Once my head was a foot over the rim, I realized it wasn't a leaf at all, it was a MOUSE. Floating in the toilet bowl. After I got done screaming, I ruminated on how I mortgaged my life away so I could deal with drowned mice at 6:15 in the morning. Being a homeowner is so rewarding. (Not for the faint of heart.) I have no idea how the little guy got in there, but hope that his untimely end is warning enough for his little mouse buddies.

Outside, it's become fall. Fall is beautiful.

But you never realize how many trees you have on your property until fall comes around. And how leaf-covered your yard looks after the neighbor painstakingly removes every shred of leaf from his lawn.

The leaves do, however, cover up things that you had no idea were sitting on your lawn...

Thank goodness for rakes. My desire to get this random suppository box out of our yard was almost as strong as my desire to Not. Touch. It. Some things are better to just not think about. Mice included.

We ripped up the sickly, pale hostas in our front planter and planted daffodils and tulips for next spring. Once the bulbs are done blooming, we'll put some impatiens in.

Craig is apparently too much man for the pitchfork. Well, that lasted a summer. We'll have to invest in a tougher model than the Home Depot standard next spring.

We also set up our birdfeeders for fall and winter. Watching the birds got us through several Phoebe-less winters in Iowa City, and we hope to get a lot of feathered visitors again.

So far, we've had very little but squirrels, who shimmy up the stakes and hang upside down on the feeders. They're entertaining, but some squirrel baffles will be necessary if we don't want Phoebe to explode from pent-up squirrel hunting urges.

Here's our resident albino squirrel - named Morrie II in memory of Morrie the albino squirrel at our last apartment.

As we tuck in for winter and think about painting and working on making our basement a useful space, I'll be turning around yard ideas in my head and calling my mother to get her Master Gardener advice. Some of the problems we hope to address next spring and summer:

Creeping Charlie. Eeek.

The end of the gutter on this side of the house doesn't drain properly, and dumps water over the edge, washing out a corner of the yard and draining dirt down the sidewalk to the carport:

All in all, the yard slopes to the carport. We hope to figure out some way to minimize this - probably with some planting beds built up around the sidewalk.

Before all that, stay tuned for Painting! and Demo! and Snow! But hopefully no more mice.

Basket O' Tools and Junk

2005-08-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

Since the entryway project ended up taking about a week and a half, a lot of tools and other random items had to be in easy reach. When the mess got to the point that I was dreaming about finding sandpaper under my pillow, I implemented The Basket O'Tools and Junk. Everything that wasn't in active use got dumped in, and now that the project's done, it can be taken downstairs in one fell swoop.

Kind of like 30 Minute Meals' Rachael Ray's garbage bowl, but I hope Rachael Ray isn't fishing anything back out to use later.

Entryway (Version 1.5)

2005-08-24T20:46:00.000-04:00

The original title of this post was going to be "Touch My Door and I'll Cut You," but I'm feeling a bit more charitable than that this evening. You are invited to stroke it and ooh and ahh respectfully.

When the house came to us, the front entryway left something to be desired. I can only imagine that the storm door is original to the house, and the actual door was painted in the same pale baby poop brown as the rest of the house.

Our first step in making things a bit more inviting was to replace the storm door with a full view model. Several lessons learned from this process:

No matter how good the directions appear, it's best to read through them and figure out how the pieces work together before you make cuts and drill holes. That way, you don't begin to attach the "Z-bar" upside down. (Yeah, we'll let you know when we actually apply this lesson in a future project. Don't hold your breath.)
Our drill sucks. The $30 Black and Decker cordless model is great for apartment dwellers, but we need a bit more power. In order to get the closing mechanism attached, Craig had to sit and wait for the drill to charge enough to complete each individual pilot hole.
The friendly biker guy down the street is willing to lend a hand if we really get in over our heads. Good to know...

Next was stripping and refinishing the front door. We really liked the door itself, just not the flat icky paint on it. It's a nice solid door, and looks like it goes with the house (unlike a Suburban Special from Menards would). The handle is really cool, and there's a sticker on the side telling us where to go in case of nuclear attack - one of the few "pieces of history" we're likely to find here. Too bad we can't read it, and some child years ago decided to scribble in his own "No Nukes" protest.

The stripping itself was a learning experience. After browsing through a few library books, I picked up a gallon of "Power Stripper" and was on my way. Most of the paint came off in two coats, but I did spend a fair amount of time scrubbing with steel wool and "Fromby's Paint and Poly Remover Wash," as well as scraping in the corners with my handy dandy teardrop-shaped moulding scraper. The previous owners had apparently stripped the door down before they primed and painted in brown, but I found some bits of Pepto Bismol / My Little Pony pink in some of the corners. Scary. A few flecks of paint and other imperfections remained, but I was satisfied.

The finish on the interior side of the door came off quite easily.

We then rehung the door, since the basement wasn't a very good place to keep it while we were away at work. That's when the trouble began. The bare wood was lighter than we wanted it, so I decided to rub some stain in before the final finish.

This was a Very. Bad. Idea.

The weathered wood on the exterior side of the door sucked up that stain like a sponge. I hadn't applied any sort of sealer, and consequently I was left with a dark, muddy mess.

After some tears and gnashing of teeth, I got out our little handheld power sander, and got off the muddy top layer of stained wood. What was beneath was pretty good. I had to sand the crevices and paneling by hand the next night.

As a side note, it's best not to use your working kitchen as an area to sand down wood, no matter how much hassle it would be to move the door to the basement or garage. Even if you vaccuum as well as possible, you really do get a fine layer of wood dust over everything, the dog tracks it into the rest of the house, and you have wood dust all over your black pants when you try to make coffee the next morning. Anyway.

We then re-re-hung the door for its three coats of satin spar varnish. I applied a sealer coat first (just in case - I think I'm sold on sealer for everything now), then put on a coat of varnish per day. The exterior side of the door looks like what it is - a fifty year old door that's seen some use, and the interior looks pretty dang good.

At some point - hopefully this fall, we plan to take down the awning in front and replace the existing railing. We'll also change out the light fixture, select a new mailbox, and get new house numbers. For now, though, the door changes bring us to Entryway Version 1.5.

And Phoebe likes it.

Gratuitous Phoebe cuteness

2005-08-15T16:30:00.000-04:00

I just had to share this shot of Phoebe, which Sarah Hansegard took at the Westie picnic on the Fourth of July.

The Great De-Browning, Stage 1

2005-08-09T15:12:00.000-04:00

By all accounts, the previous owner of our house seems to be a nice enough guy. But he seems to have cared for the color brown just a bit more than we do. In this case, "just a bit" is a nice term that means "a whole hell of a lot." We already painted over the living room, and we've embarked on a plan to paint the exterior and get rid of the two shades of brown there.

Over the course of three weekends, we completed the first stage - painting the screen frames, storm windows, and window sashes white. They were a flat dark brown. Luckily, we were able to take all the screens and storm windows down to the basement and paint in a nice cool environment, with baseball and HGTV on in the background.

It turned our basement into a war zone, but that's okay.

So, all of the window frames are painted now. You can see an old picture for comparison here.

Our overall plan calls for three stages:

Window frames, etc. painted white. - Done!
Rest of the trim painted blue. - Hopefully to be completed the rest of this summer and fall, getting rid of all of the dark brown by winter.
Paint the body of the house light yellow. - Next summer, before we start having 97 degree days again...

Here is a (decidedly not an) artist's rendering of what we're going for. That brown blob in the middle is a beautifully refinished and stained front door. It's cleverly disguised, I know.

We're working with California Paints, which received top marks from Consumer Reports. So far, we're very happy with the quality and the way the window frames look. For the rest of the trim, we plan to use Beethoven Blue. The body of the house will be something similar to Fresh Lemon.

After a while, you run out of excuses.

2005-08-09T14:39:00.000-04:00

Sometime around the middle of July, we ran out of excuses for not starting on the yard projects we'd been planning. After one massive trip to Home Depot (the Internet is not big enough for a tally of everything we bought), we were ready to finish off the backyard fence and build a tree ring planter around the red maple in the front yard.

After we decided to actually do these projects and had a ton of landscape stone in the carport, we were resolute. Unfortunately, the next weekend to come up was 97 degrees and insanely humid. And it was the release date for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. But we're tough, right?

Now, the instructions for building a tree ring planter are very simple. You just need a level base that allows the bottom ring of landscaping stones to be buried about halfway. In real life, though, trees have roots, and roots are not level.

An impromptu call to Matt, Ellen's brother and forestry major, confirmed that sawing through the roots to make a level surface probably wasn't the best for the health of the tree. (See, Mom & Dad, our them there college edumacashuns is good for sumfin!)

We settled for making the base as level as possible and doing the best we could.

It took us a few weeks to bring home enough topsoil to fill up the planter (36 forty pound bags, for the record). We plan on planting impatiens or some other shade flower next summer, but for now we just topped it off with cedar chips.

The finished product isn't too shabby, even if it is more of a tree curvilinear planter than a tree ring planter. Because of the roots, it's not perfect, but it will hopefully allow the tree to survive.

While Ellen was hauling landscape stone and swearing at tree roots (which are not generally very responsive), Craig was in the hot sun finishing off the chain link fence for the backyard. As Ellen is writing this, there may be a lack of witty commentary about the process. My apologies.

Anyway, we have half-baked ideas about adding a deck that would encompass the side entry in a few years, so we elected not to mix and pour concrete for the fence posts. This doesn't make for the sturdiest fence in the world, but it keeps 13-pound Phoebe in nicely.

This way, she can run around the backyard without being on a leash or a long lead. Here, she's discovered some sort of mouse hole in the corner of our garage. She barked at this spot for quite a while, and was so intriuged that she even ignored Craig and the lawnmower passing five feet behind her.

It is a very basic fence, but it does the job. It also provide a nice solution to the problem of who mows what in the space between the two houses.

Even slower.....

2005-08-09T13:57:00.000-04:00

While uploading some photos, I discovered that we had some quite nice ones that I forgot entirely about. These are mainly from the 4th of July weekend.

Phoebe likes picnics....

and Carl likes fireworks.

Carl & Tenley waiting for fireworks.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I mowed the lawn for the first time ever when Craig was on crutches. I'm not sure why I never did it growing up, but I was really enjoying having that be one of the things I had no experience with. There goes that excuse.

Yes, I'm slow.

2005-07-15T23:25:00.000-04:00

Here's what else has happened in the month since we last posted:

Craig officially became a State of Minnesota employee on June 29. Now he has vacation and sick time and benefits, just like a real adult!
Possibly still in shock from hiring Craig, the State of Minnesota government shut down for a week or so because the legislators couldn't agree on a budget. It didn't affect us too much personally, but did cause a lot of problems with the grants in Ellen's department.
We still didn't see the third Star Wars.
Craig hurt his knee while trying to grab Phoebe after she slipped out of her collar and leash. Three doctors appointments, two weeks of crutches, and an MRI later, he's doing okay. Nothing is torn and there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage.
We had a nice 4th of July with Carl and Tenley.
Craig approved of the Twins' pickup of Bret Boone.
Ellen read Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons and didn't like it much.
We went to a 4th of July Westie picnic in Wayzata.
We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary on July 14.
We forgot about and then remembered at the last minute the Minnesota Scottish Fair and Highland Games. Mmmmm, scones.

When you find random sailboat parts in the cabin garage, there's only one thing to do - sail!

2005-07-15T14:02:00.000-04:00

We spent another enjoyable weekend at a lake cabin in northern Wisconsin with Dan, Barb, Doug and Kathy. Many thanks to Bob and Diana Jensen for allowing us to take over for the weekend. There was some confusion and disagreement between me, Dan, and Mapquest about what lake we were actually on, so suffice it to say that we were about 30 miles north of Hayward.

In Hayward itself is a giant muskie at the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame & Museum. What is there to do other than pose when you see freaky, larger-than-life statues of odd things?

As the title suggests, Dan and Doug found an old sailboat in the garage. Despite the fact that the rudder was held together with duct tape, they took it for a spin.

The wind wasn't really cooperating. I could keep up with Craig by paddling on my pink plastic float.

Eventually Doug had to be rescued and pulled in by the rowboat.

The lack of wind didn't make for good sailing, but it did turn out a nice picture or two...

We took Phoebe with us, and she seemed to have a good time. It's funny how dogs can instinctively swim - despite never having been in a body of water larger than a bathtub, she paddled right to shore when we put her in.

Mikki & Nova, Expert Consultants for Hire

2005-07-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

Ellen's mom and Nova the delightful Springer Spaniel came to visit in June. Mikki is very good at handling the "I know I want to do something with the yard, but I don't really know what" sort of questions. Having raised Ellen (and Anne), she is very patient when it comes to vague indecision. We talked a lot about plans for the house and shopped.

The dogs had fun, too. We went to the dog park Saturday morning, and all involved got a little dirty.

Both pooches got a bath. Lucky Phoebe fits in the kitchen sink and got to be bathed in warm water. Poor Nova had to make do with the hose in the backyard.

Later Saturday evening, Dan & Barb came over with Haley so we could indulge ourselves by dressing the dogs up in matching bandanas. (Note Dan in the mirror trying to get the dogs' attention. Next time, we'll have to try food.)

Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee...

2005-06-16T14:41:00.000-04:00

...or thereabouts, anyway.

We made a trip to Rome, Georgia, to attend the wedding of Craig's cousin, Kayla Haase. She married Bradley Pogue, an officer in the Air Force, and will be moving to the DC area. The ceremony was held on the campus of Berry College in Rome, Kayla's alma mater. Her sister Kylie also attends Berry, and their mother Diana works there as well.

The ceremony and reception were beautiful, and the entire weekend was really enjoyable. It was good to catch up with Craig's extended family. Someone's got to get on the ball - there's no wedding scheduled for next summer! (As far as I know.)

We stayed in the Berry College guest cottages, which were just a stone's throw from the chapel where the ceremony took place. Dan, Barb, Craig, and I shared a nice cottage with two large bedrooms and a sitting area. We felt very distinguished - Denzel Washington stayed in Dan and Barb's room while he was filming "Remember the Titans" on the Berry campus, and Lance Armstrong stayed in our room not too long ago. I was half expecting to find a stash of yellow LiveStrong wristbands under the bed, but no luck. Our room:

It seems that every wedding I attend requires some sort of new dress. Here's a little warning for the future - buy the dress before you buy the wrapping paper. Otherwise you might coordinate a little too much. In this case, though, anyone who didn't know about my plight could just write it off as Northern weirdness!

In the Northern weirdness department....Diana now has her own stuffed loon that makes a loon call sound when you squeeze it. Every time I bumped my carry-on bag in the airport, we were treated to a loon call. The last time we saw the loon, it was riding on Diana's dashboard. Enjoy!

I haven't spent much time in the South (well, no time, actually), so it was interesting to see the landscape. They don't have that many trees in Iowa, and they don't have that much humidity in Minnesota. I did spend some time sampling that Southern delicacy, sweet tea. Final verdict...not too bad, but nothing I'll be making at home.

The rental car place in Atlanta was out of mid-size cars, so we were upgraded to an SUV. Craig had a good time getting some red Georgia clay on the tires.

We got the mud on our tires while driving up to the Old Mill on the mountain portion of Berry's campus. Students apparently used this to mill various crops produced on the campus farms. The wheel stands 42 feet high, and dwarfs the gaggle of preteen campers who were visiting at the same time as us.

Here's a shot of the wedding party just outside the chapel. We have more pictures, which we'll try to get online in some sort of album soon. Details to come...

Kayla was a beautiful bride, and it was universally agreed that the bridesmaids were exceptionally cute!

Before leaving on Sunday, we walked around the campus a bit and saw where Diana worked. Kylie discovered a swing...

Diana's office has been in this complex for the past few years. She'll soon be moving to a different building, and isn't too happy about it. Gee, wonder why?

Phoebe goes to the groomer!

2005-06-16T13:37:00.000-04:00

The pooch was getting pretty shaggy, so while we went to Georgia, Phoebe had an extended vacation at the groomer's. She got to hang out and play with Piper and Sami, the resident Westies, as well as Rascal, another visitor. It sounds like they played well together once they got their pecking order sorted out.

The new haircut looks great, and she's ready for summer.

Before:

After:

She's still growing hair around her muzzle and the Westie "skirt," but Phoebe is well on her way to being a gorgeous girl.

Right?

It was a tiring weekend...those puppies and 2-year-olds are a lot for a dignified lady of 5 to keep up with!

Special for the CLC crowd

2005-06-16T12:42:00.000-04:00

Here you go, ladies! I didn't get a chance to use the gift certificate I won from the Philly group, but here are a couple shots of my shoes. I realized while packing that they are nowhere near as cute as I thought they were going to be, but I did promise.

My everyday shoes (and a shaggy Phoebe). I wore these on the plane, and basically can be found in them whenver I'm not wearing anything black or needing to dress up. They are Danskos, very comfortable, and well worth the money.

The shoes I wore to the wedding. I actually bought these to wear to the rehearsal dinner at my own wedding, so they've been around! You can also see the cute hem of my dress and my I'm Not Really a Waitress Red toenails.

More Phoebe

2005-05-26T23:49:00.000-04:00

Phoebe has been settling in very well - she seems to be more comfortable with us than she was to begin with. She can go up and down the stairs by herself, and she's a pro at staring down the German Shepherd next door. She's becoming a friendly, happy little girl.

On Sunday the 15th, we met up with a group of other Westie owners in the Twin Cities for a walk around a park. There were at least 30 little white dogs there, so there was lots of frenzied sniffing going on. Afterwards, we went to one of the participants' backyards and let the dogs run around and play.

We'd kind of expected Phoebe to hang out in back where no one was behind her, but she took off at the front of the pack.

In front on the right hand side is Sue Storms and her Westie Booker C. McDuff. Sue and Booker came to visit us and make sure we would make good Westie owners.

A whole bunch of Westies (and one Weimeraner).

Over the past week, Phoebe's been discovering her toys. She absolutely loves her Kong, which is a heavy-duty rubber toy that can be stuffed with a treat. It's great for when we're away at work, but it does tend to get stuck under the couch...

Tennis balls are not safe in our house - luckily we have a few to spare!

We're having fun!

Phoebe

2005-05-16T12:22:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, we added Phoebe, a 5 year old West Highland White Terrier, to our home. Phoebe came to us from a woman named Carol in Fort Dodge, IA. Carol had rescued Twinkie (as Phoebe was formerly known) from a breeder at the end of January. Carol thinks that Twinkie spent most of her first five years in a cage. Unfortunately, Twinkie didn't get along well with Carol's other Westies and needed a home where she could be the only dog.

One of Carol's friends posted on the Terrier Club that Twinkie was in need of a new home. I was looking through posts, and saw this. A few e-mails, phone calls, and visits later, we were on our way to Clear Lake, IA, to pick up Twinkie and bring her home as Phoebe.

Phoebe sat on my lap all the way from Clear Lake to St. Paul - a little more than 2 hours. She trembled a little as we left Clear Lake, but settled in well and enjoyed being petted and watching out the window.

When we got home, we explored a little in the yard. The garage door closing was kind of scary, and Phoebe didn't like being on her leash right at first. We put her on a long lead in the back yard and let her sniff around - that was better. With the help of a Milk Bone and petting, she started to come to us on her own.

We went in the house and explored the kitchen, too.

You can see in these photos that she's a little leery of being touched, even though she loves being petted and cuddled. Later in the evening, she'd start coming up to us, wagging her tail, and put her paws on our leg or the chair, wanting to be petted. But when Craig or I would reach out to pet her, she'd shrink down. Once she got into the chair or on our lap, though, she was great.

You can see her special flower collar - what a distinguished dog!

So far, we've had a great time with Phoebe. She's still getting used to us, but we can tell that she's a real sweetie and will be a wonderful companion. She slept all the way through the night in her kennel without making a peep, and took a little walk around the block with Ellen this morning. Check back for more pictures - this may become the Phoebe blog instead of the house blog!

Ducks...

2005-05-16T11:55:00.000-04:00

I woke up the other morning and was getting something out of the upstairs closet. I looked out the window, and saw two ducks sitting on the ridgepole of a nearby house. If you look closely through the rain and mist, you can see them. Somehow this never happened in Iowa.

A few house-y updates

2005-05-16T11:53:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated in a while, mainly because we haven't done much with the house or yard. It's been rather cold and nasty lately. It even snowed a little bit on the first of May.

My parents, Bob and Mikki, came to visit last weekend. We gave them the grand tour of the house and neighborhood, and introduced them to our fencing gear as well:

They brought with them the last piece of furniture that's going to fit in our living room - a 1940's waterfall style cedar chest. It was originally a gift to my grandmother from her mother. We need to add some furniture oil to the chipped part on the bottom, but other than that, it's a beautiful piece of furniture with family meaning for us.

After having brunch on Sunday, we went to Linder's to find a little bit of color for the yard. We ended up with a really simple solution - a hanging basket of pansies. I have much bigger plans, but for now they look nice.

I also divided the hostas in the front planters, so that they'll fill in the space a little better. It remains to be seen whether I killed them or not!

The grass that Craig planted is coming in nicely - we're starting to look like we have an actual yard.

Someone should really start this business...

2005-04-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I'm at home alone while Craig is at the Twins game with his judge and a few other guys. Sounds like they've got good seats close behind the plate. Twins tickets from work would be great, but all I'm hoping for right now is that the fan pumping cold air into my office would shut down. I should not be shivering in an angora sweater on a bright sunny April day.

I finally ate The Salmon that Would Not Go Away for dinner tonight. I had planned to make Lemon-Soy Grilled Salmon last Saturday. So I bought a big salmon plank and cut it into filets and froze them. Then on Saturday I thawed out four and started to marinate them. Then I decided I wanted pizza instead. So I froze them again in the marinade. Today I thawed them out again. I came very close to not eating them again, but decided that another freezing cycle would be one too many. It may have been one too many as it is. So if I'm violently ill tomorrow, you'll know why.

I made one of my rare ventures into the land of sewing this weekend and overhauled some plain tab top curtains from Target into cafe curtains for the kitchen. After pondering some patterns at the fabric store for a while, I decided that I'd be much better off altering something that someone else put together for me. I bought one valance and one package of "tier" curtains. I cut the valance in half - each half covers one of the windows in the kitchen. Each "tier" curtain got cut in half and hemmed to make the bottom curtains that can be drawn back if I want to open the window. I also shortened the tabs so that they didn't overwhelm everything.

Here's the finished product:

And here's the assembly. (I even look kind of surprised that I'm sewing in the picture.) With all the stuff spread out, I can only imagine what a disaster it would have been if I had been cutting out fabric as well.

My sewing machine used to belong to my Grandma Black - it's a Singer Slant-O-Matic Special, model year 1958. The instruction booklet has beautiful drawings of wasp-waisted women in heels with manicured nails exclaiming over their sewing machines. It does what I need it to, though.

We also added picture ledges that hold old family wedding photos to the living room. You can also see a bit of one of the red pillows I added to the couch. I contemplated sewing those, too, but the trajectory was the same - I thought about it, then just got them from Target. The women in the sewing machine manual disapprove, I'm sure.

We also received our television armoire. I'm kind of perturbed that I had to take vacation time to sit and wait at home for this to be delivered. Someone should really start a business that contracts with furniture stores to deliver big items after normal business hours. So if you know anything about shipping logistics, there's an idea for you. I'm very happy to have this, though. It allows me to shut the doors on the tv, dvd player, and all that other electronic stuff while I pretend that I'm not just going to open them back up again to watch American Idol later tonight.

The opening does dwarf our television set. It's probably a conspiracy between the television manufacturers and entertainment center manufacturers to make everyone feel inadequate until they have a large television that fits in perfectly. But I'll remain strong - 19 inches is quite adequate for watching American Idol. In fact, it may be a little too much.

I also bought a curtain to cover our coat closet area. It's dark red corduroy and reminds me of a red curtain in a high school theater. There will be drama when you put your coat away!

I also did some shopping to get towels that matched the bathroom. I went to Linens 'N Things and bought a washcloth in every color of green that looked like it might possibly match. I took them home and looked at them with the paint, picked out one, and returned the rest to the store. The cashier was absolutely thrilled, I can assure you. I ended up with fluffy white "spa" bath towels and hand towels in a mossy green color. I am just crazy enough to try white bath towels - no more. I also got a couple of white enamel/chrome accessories that look nice with everything else.

And, yay! I figured out how to resize my photos on photobucket. No laughing, please. That is all.

A Public Service Announcement...

2005-04-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

It's been an interesting week for us. Craig discovered the hard way that he is allergic to sulfa drugs. He'd been on some sort of sulfa-based antibiotic for a sinus infection, then came down with a raging fever that wouldn't go away and a allergic rash on his back. Sigh. At least we know now what it is.

I have re-learned a valuable lesson - it is best not to think of your alarm clock as a friendly suggestion. When it goes off, you really should get up.

End of public service announcement....

April 3-4: Yard Work

2005-04-03T21:00:00.000-04:00

We've had a week of nice temperatures, so we decided to start our yard work in earnest this weekend. We raked the yard to get thatched dead grass out of the way, trimmed back bushes, swapped the storm windows for the screens, washed windows, and laid down grass seed. And Craig discovered and moved a (very) dead squirrel that had been covered under a snowbank all winter. That all is enough for one weekend, even on a small lot.

I've heard it before, but I truly understand now how every project for a new homeowner necessitates a trip to Home Depot (and a call to your parents to find out just what the heck you're supposed to be looking for in a hose). The Home Depot list for this weekend (from two separate trips):

two rakes

shovel

hedge trimmers

garden gloves

grill ignitor

grill cleaner

75' garden hose

hose sprayer attachment

big watering can

spading fork

2 small bags "sun and shade" grass seed

1 small bag "shady" grass seed

1 large bag lawn fertilizer

handheld spreader for fertilizer and grass seed

Craig used the spading fork to loosen the dirt in a big bare patch in the front yard before spreading grass seed and fertilizer. He is also modeling the hose and sprayer as he wets it down.

I cut back the bushes by the carport. I didn't take anything out, just trimmed everything back to a more manageable size. They appear to be some sort of berry bush - there were dried berries at the top of the stalks. The big pile of brush is just sitting there until I figure out St. Paul's procedures for getting rid of yard waste.

I washed the windows and put the screens up. The screens were surpisingly easy to put up - they have two hooks at the top and one at the bottom that are hooked shut from the inside. We can hear the birds much better without the storm windows on.

Perhaps most importantly, Craig put our big grill back together with a new burner and ignitor. We really enjoyed having burgers on Saturday night. The first grilled meal of the spring tastes soooo good.

Living Room

2005-04-03T20:27:00.000-04:00

As you can see here, we found the living room painted a brownish color, which didn't do a whole lot for us. The walls are now "Honeysuckle," a nice light yellow-gold color. We're waiting on delivery of an oak armoire to hold our tv and stereo. I'll like being able to shut the doors on all the electronics. That will go in the same corner that the tv is in now.

We're taking it slowly as we put things on the wall, since we don't want to be stuck with something we regret later. So far, we've got the mirror and this wrought iron decoration up.

On the north wall (opposite the wall with the single window), we're indulging ourselves with huge bookcases that hold our books, knicknacks, and CD's (in the black cases with temporary Post-It labels). I ordered these online from the Home Decorator's Collection, and was reasonably pleased. Assembling them almost put us in marriage counseling, but they look very nice against the wall. The lights on top add a lot at night. Sooner or later I'll get the rest of the stuff off the tops.

The top of the bookcases seemed like a logical place to display our fencing sabres. And if we get really mad, we can drop everything and duel.

I found these pillows at Home Goods. They're nice and silky, and have sage-y stripes and little red accents that didn't come through in the picture. I'm planning on making some bigger red or burgandy pillows to go with them.

Here's a close-up of our Persian rug, which was a wedding gift from Richard and Judy Black.

The entryway has a nice shape to it, and the front door is really beautiful, and will be moreso after I clean it up a little more. I'm planning on putting up some sort of curtain - probably red or burgandy - to hide the coats.

Master Bedroom

2005-04-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

I'm really at a loss about what to do to this room to make it look any nicer. I feel like all the furniture is pushed to the far end of the room, but haven't figured out a way to arrange it in a good way. I thought I liked the wall color when we were looking at the house, but once we moved our things in, it revealed its true nature - olive-y. It's quite dark. This is probably the next room to be painted, but it may take us a while to get there as we recover from painting the living room.

Kitchen

2005-04-03T18:55:00.000-04:00

The kitchen is much, much bigger than what's been in any of our apartments. It's bright and sunny, which is also much different than any of our apartments. We have room for a little table:

The back door opens right into the kitchen, and leads to the basement stairs.

The appraiser identified these cabinets as pine, and I am in no position to argue. Eventually I might like to refinish/stain them, so they're not quite so brassy. That's eventually. More in the short term, I'm planning on adding cafe curtains with a valance to this window and the one over the table.

Here's our itty-bitty portable dishwasher. At 18 inches, it fits perfectly in this space. We roll it out to hook it up to the sink or access the cabinets to the left.

One of my favorite things about this kitchen is this built-in cabinet. It holds one layer of cans or bottles or spices, so I can see exactly what I have. Since I've been known to find four-year-old cans of artichoke hearts in my cabinets, seeing what I have is a definite plus.

Here's what they look like closed:

We're generally fairly clean, but Haley apparently found something good under the stove.

Dining Room / Bedroom

2005-04-03T18:37:00.000-04:00

We're using the second bedroom on the main floor as a dining room. In the rare occasion that more people than just us are eating a sit-down dinner, we can gather in here. Since that hasn't happened yet, this is a room-in-progress, and has become the repository of Stuff That I Don't Know What To Do With. I'm kind of embarrassed to show it, but here's where I'm starting out.

You can just barely see my "Cafe Terrace At Night" Van Gogh print behind the chair. That will go on the wall you can see.

The "Latte" sign that's sitting in the basket will go on the wall above the shelving units.

Upstairs

2005-04-03T18:30:00.000-04:00

Upstairs is our office and a home for all of Craig's baseball cards. It looks like a mess, but it's quite cozy. This could become a bedroom if we ever need more space. We'd probably get rid of the wood paneling if we ever want to do that.

Basement

2005-04-03T18:29:00.000-04:00

I'm very happy to have a basement where I can put things that the rest of the house doesn't have space for, but it really isn't very exciting. Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like a basement.

Here are two views of the main semi-finished area, which will probably be a nice family room somewhere down the line. Right now, it's just a place to store stuff.

The other half is your typical basement laundry and utility room, where the furnace and hot water heater are. We did, however, find this old map of Minnesota inside one of the cabinet doors. It is old enough that it doesn't show Craig's hometown suburb of Woodbury. Instead, it shows Oakbury, which we think must be a combination of the current towns of Oakdale and Woodbury.

The other room in the basement is our robin's egg blue 3/4 bath. It's technically 3/4 because it has just a shower, not a tub. In our case, though, it could also be 3/4 because it only has three solid walls. The space where the fourth should be is open to the underside of the basement stairs.

Carport Area

2005-04-03T17:39:00.000-04:00

We're lucky to have a two-car garage, plus a carport. There's a little shed on the right hand side of the carport, as shown in this picture.

Between the shed and the alley in the back of the house, there's a garden area with a bunch of bushes. I'm not sure what they are, but they look like some sort of berry bush.

More bushes. I'm not sure what they are, but I think they could probably benefit from some pruning.

House Exterior

2005-04-03T17:21:00.000-04:00

Not much has budded or started growing here in Minnesota, so everything on the outside of the house looks.....brown. Repainting the exterior to a more interesting color is in the long-term plans, but I think we'll probably concentrate on doing some landscaping and getting new plants in this summer.

House front - left. The neighbors on this side have several large dogs. The only time we've really seen the people who live there, they were in their backyard practicing using numchucks. (!)

House front - right. There have been very few signs of human life from this side of us - just some lights on at night and occasionally a black dog in the backyard. Oh well....quiet is good.

Entryway. For lack of a better place to relate this, we have met the neighbors across the street. They're a nice couple about our age with a four-month-old daughter. They brought us some good cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood and do not appear to have any hobbies involving deadly weapons.

Planting area on the right side of the house. There are a few shrubs in the upper part of this planter. The MLS listing picture of the house indicates that there were some other plants in the lower part, but I don't know if they were perennials or annuals. That's the window to our bedroom. I took these pictures as we were trading out the storm windows for screens, so the screen is just sitting there.

Planting area on the left side of the house. This is just below the picture window in the living room. There's a solitary shrub and an empty container in the planter.

Side entry. This leads into the kitchen, and is the door we use the most. This is taken from the back of the house.

Another shot of the side entry, from a little further back in the yard.

Here's the rear of the house, air conditioner, screens, ladder, and all. The location of the air conditioner and the electric boxes above it really limits what we can do in terms of planting and landscaping.

We have a small sunny space here where there's a gap in the neighbors' privacy fence. The previous owners had some plastic containers here - I may want to do something more permanent.

The main flower bed in back is up against the garage wall. It's hard to see here, but it's just two railroad ties with some bare earth in between. I have no idea what might be in here.

The previous owners left a strange little garden figure and a plastic sunflower pinwheel. Gives the yard character, right?

Here's the last corner of the yard - not much here but the chain link fence.

Bathroom

2005-03-31T13:25:00.000-05:00

We found the bathroom painted minty green with vinyl floor in shades of white, green, and tan. The picture is kind of dark, but the color really is fairly light and minty.

This presented somewhat of a problem, as all our towels and bathroom things are yellow, navy blue, and red. We're currently using the yellow and navy blue as they are least offensive.

I'd like to have sort of a "spa" look for the bathroom overall. To this end, I found a really nice white waffle weave shower curtain at Home Goods.

I also really love the pedestal sink. With the right accessories (read: not these) I think it will work with the theme.

I'm wanting to buy new towels and a rug that will fit better with this theme. I've been going back and forth between a tan or taupe color and a greenish color that is close to the color of the checks in the floor. I think these in Eucalyptus or Silver Sage might look nice (depends on how they actually are in the room), but I don't really want to spend a fortune on Restoration Hardware towels. We could paint and remove the mint from the equation, but I think we're stuck with the floor for a while.

Living Room Repaint

2005-03-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Here are a few before- and after-painting shots of the living room.

The original wall color is "Covered Wagon." Ummm, brown.

Another shot of the brown living room. You can see a test patch of the new paint color above Craig's head. Behind him is the bare wall where our bookcases are going to go.

Detail of the lovely brown color and the ceiling moulding.

Here's the room after painting. The picture may not show it well, but the overall feel of the room is much lighter. We will be getting a large oak armoire to hold the tv and other various electronics, so we can shut the door and hide them if need be.

Detail of the new wall color. On the walls is Ellen Kennon's "Honeysuckle." The moulding around the ceiling is a slightly lighter color, "Buttercream."