Moving On In

The Living Room/Storage Zone

Dominic Working in the Office

It was official. Right after the holidays, a little over six months after the project began, we moved in. Not that things were finished. Not that we really had a place for the stuff that we took out of our storage space. But we were actually living in our house. It was sort of like camping at first, but we were grateful to be at this critical stage.

Satisfaction

If you ever need a boost, I recommend laying a pine floor. Unlike our tiling endeavor, we really got into a groove with this part of the project. Liking the rustic look and relative affordability of pine, we ordered our wood from a seller on EBay if you can believe it (I wouldn’t recommend doing this, as we had some scheduling frustrations with the shipping company). Putting the floor down was easy and sort of rhythmic and Zen. We rented a floor nailer, put down the underlayment, and went to work laying down random lengths of tongue and groove boards (at first my Virgo self actually wanted to lay out the whole floor before nailing, but Dominic assured me it wasn’t necessary). The progress was so evident, and the different knots and grains of the wood were so gorgeous. We started in the bedroom, and then did the office, living room, and beginning of a kitchen. Staining (ironically, we stained our pine floor with “English Oak”) and finishing the floor were next, which was also so encouraging and fun because it was a surprise to see exactly how it would turn out. And it’s convenient that our style is “shabby chic,” because that made the inevitable gaps and irregularities in the wood “quaint” rather than “messed up.” We love the floor!

The Magic of Electricity and Plumbing

So, we had light switches that actually turned on the lights in our house! And water actually came out of the faucet! It was just so exciting. I was in awe that these things were really happening and that we were returning to civilization.

Sharon

Have we told you about Sharon yet? She came with the house (originally the previous owner was going to come get her, but it never happened). She also seems to have a bit of a dark side, but she keeps the rodent population down. We appreciate her efforts, though I’ve received enough “presents,” thank you very much.

The Fight

Professional tilesetters, we salute you. Tiling is HARD. Fortunate to be gifted with leftover gray tiles from Dominic’s dad and stepmom’s remodeling project (note: it’s a good strategy if your low budget renovation coincides with the higher end renovation of a loved one), we loved the look of tile and were eager to begin tiling the shower. We didn’t quite have enough tiles, but it was fun to add accent tiles (we used white and these beautiful, iridescent, blue-green glass tiles) in a random pattern. It all looked so easy when we laid out the pattern on the bedroom floor. However, it was considerably less fun once the tiling actually began.

Tiling our shower was very geometric and very unforgiving, and also led to the only real fight of our home improvement project. When we returned to the house for a second, arduous day of tiling, we found that the oozing mortar that we had failed to properly clean off the wall had hardened, necessitating a round of drilling before we continued to tile. It was around this time that Dominic began grumbling that he hadn’t wanted to tile the shower in the first place, and I responded by growling that those comments were very useful halfway through the tiling project. I stormed off, and a few minutes later Dominic found me eating cookies on the front porch. We decided we were done for the day even if the tiles weren’t done. Over the next few days we returned with renewed energy, and completed the tiling and grouting. One of Dominic’s sisters commented that the alignment (or lack thereof) gives one sort of a feeling of being on a boat, and Dominic vowed never to tile again, but it was done, it looked pretty good, and we were still speaking to each other.

Deep Thoughts About Toilets

Toilets can be beautiful, both literally and metaphorically. I found ours to be both, as it represented an important feature of a house where modern human beings can actually reside. Our friend John worked in the plumbing supply industry at the time, and got us some great deals on many of the components of the bathroom.

Click here to see the gorgeous Memoirs line from Kohler.

The Coolest Home Improvement Outfits Ever!

You get a little crazy sometimes when you're fixing up a house. Those funny moments are an important part of the process. Anyhow, we painted most of the house a sunny yellow, with the exception of our bedroom, which is an "Ocean Breezes" pale blue. The bathroom is white, as are all of the ceilings because I read somewhere that painting the ceiling white creates the illusion of space. Our outfits, on the other hand, created the illusion of OUTER space.