We bought a DSLR for our upcoming trip to New Zealand. One of the fringe benefits is that the pictures we post on the blog have always been iphone quality and should now be getting much better.
We went as Lady Sybil and Branson from Downton Abbey for Halloween.
In other news, as the holidays approach and you find yourself searching for the perfect gift for the Free, libre, or open-source fanatic in your life turn to the “2012 Libre Gift Guide” at https://uniluug.org/wiki/2012_libre_gift_guide
Since we finished up with the work write up that went through the bank things have slowed down significantly. We do have a couple big projects we’re looking to take on, it’s just a matter of designating the time and going for it. Here are some of the smaller tasks we’re tackling these days…
Mums on the front porch. They’ll be purple when they bloom.
Changing all the locks on the house. There were A LOT of people with keys to this house so this is pretty great and has the added bonus of pairing down my key ring.
Transplating my black raspberries out of the container they lived in this summer. They’re looking a bit floppy but they bend over and plant shoots, so I think they’re OK.
Plant azaleas on the side and mulch (but not enough since we ran out). Chris’s Dad also installed the light fixture you see, which is a motion detector which is only active at night. While he was in town he also got our motion activated flood lights out back to work and wired an outlet for our washing machine so we don’t have to use an extension cord anymore.
Plant 3 dwarf gardenias up front. The azaleas and the gardenias are white and will be completely beautiful when they grow a bit.
Gardenias, once again we ran out of mulch. Chris also put Rye grass seed down in the front yard. Apparently it will help prepare the soil for us to put down sod in the spring.
Mary Kyle and Annie came over to work on Pinterest projects and I made my giant sheet music wall hanging. It’s “Autumn” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” I also made one for winter, so I should be set for 6 months. We need to get all the screens out of the hallway, I think we’re going to donate them to the Habitat Restore here in Durham. The foyer is my favorite room so I’m trying to come up with the exact right things to put in there.
Friday was our final inspection with the bank which wrapped up all the work from our original workwrite up. The contractors just have to make a couple little changes and send pictures and then they’ll be done. We will, of course, be a long way from done. However, looking forward the work seems a lot less like jacking up the house and a lot more like cosmetic changes and updates. We’ll still hire out work from time to time, but for now we’re looking forward to working to our own schedule.
We did have lots of little projects to finish this week, including finishing the floors, finish painting the foyer, painting the entrance way to the second floor, putting a threshold into the bathroom, etc. We did a lot of work this week and were very pleased to pass the inspection.
Saturday we celebrated by doing nothing 🙂 Nothing with the house that is. We actually went to Bible study, checked out 2 downtown bike shops before buying Chris a new bike, cleaned a bit, Chris went to a *Space meetup, had my family (including Rane) over, and went to eat food trucks with everyone plus Mary Kyle. It was a pretty good day!
Chris taking his new bike to church. We’re going to keep it inside, in our bedroom actually, and I have lots of ideas on how to make a little spot for it.
The foyer! Walls painted and some furniture/ decorations starting! and… what’s that in the back room? A BED? We totally slept on it last night and it was a 800% improvement to the pull out couch!
Remember this guy? Neither do we 🙂
2nd coat!
This weekend we rented a floor sander from Home Depot and set about tackling our new wood floors. Chris used 120 grit sandpaper and 4 passes. We also had to scrub the pencil marks off and do the edges by hand. (We used 80 grit on the edges and it turned out pretty uniform).
The next step was to apply conditioner and then rub it off. This photo shows the floors with conditioner, it didn’t look any different but you could definitely feel a difference.
Then we applied the stain. Unfortunately the color was very anti-climatic and basically looked exactly the same but with some shine. We used stain and polyurethane seal in 1 which is probably why the color was so light. We’ll try a second coat today and see what happens. We have to sand it with 000 steel wool before applying the second coat though.
Here you can see the color of the living room next door, the color of the raw wood without any conditioner or stain, and the color of the stain. It’s easy to tell the difference between the stained and unstained here, but you can see it has a long way to go to look like the rest of the house.
We’ve got the back downstairs bedroom to tackle today! I think now that we have a system it’ll go a lot faster.
I owe so many updates! I have no excuses except that we’ve been really busy. 2 weeks ago we volunteered with the Interfaith Hospitality Network and stayed over 2 nights plus brought dinner another day for 3 homeless families in the rotation. 2 weekends ago we went to Ohio for Chris’s family reunion, and last weekend we went to Wilmington to visit Rane. We slacked a bit on the house and blog updates as a result.
So many new things though! Yesterday we had this bad boy and his dryer-comrade delivered. Unfortunately they need to stack and I hadn’t bought a stacking kit. The weird thing about this was the overwhelming feeling of deja-vu this gave me. For now the washer is scooted out from the walls but you can kind of see how much space there will be. They’ll come back next Saturday to stack them (I think the salesperson should have sold me this, I was buying stack-able units after all) and then we’ll be able to install the sink.
Here are Chris and I painting in Mary Kyle’s unit. We’re doing accent walls so this room will stay the light blue color and just this wall will be pink. It’s a big wall but I think it will look more accent-like once she hangs curtains.
Paint 🙂 This first picture is without gutters and the second two are with. We LOVE having gutters. Everything was all kinds of crazy without them. Any time I’m outside I want to just look at the house and sigh. Although you can tell that the yard is completely out-of-control now, but that’s on our short list now. As soon as the porta-potty leaves we’ll be out of excuses.
With some free time in the evenings we’ve even been putting things on the walls! Just in the living room, but we’ve hung some mantle art in the form of 3D flowers (once we paint this room gray this will not be quite as feminine), we’ve started my gallery wall, and we’ve hung one hanger for a big mirror across from the gallery wall. Things are still a mess but they’re looking up!
We’re going to Ohio this weekend so I got off work at lunch to find PAINT! I’m completely in love with it, both the siding color and the trim. You can see on the front porch that we will be replacing the back 2 columns of the porch so they haven’t been painted yet. I’m definitely going to be some anxious to get rid of the porta potty and warning signs since a little bit of landscaping and a cared for lawn will make this house the most beautiful house ever! (A bit biased perhaps?)
This house won’t be “finished” for a very long time, possibly ever, but having a functional construction-free zone is so close I can taste it 🙂
Primer complete!
…and whats this? PAINT?!?
Starting to look like we live here…
A covey of Covis! 