Mission Accomplished/Crisis Averted

We went to see the other house today.

 I LOVED it. 

I could see myself living there, easily. It has weird quirks and tons of character. And the space! The bedrooms and closets are huge. Three, yes three bathrooms. Built-in drawers with original cup pulls in the closets. Original hardware on all the built-ins. Extra storage space galore. A work bench/room. And the attached garage! Attached, people. This is really a serious thing when you won't live in a house that was built after 1930. The outdoor space was amazing, complete with a pear tree.

The amount of work needed in this home is exhausting, though. The rooms with original hardwoods need to be re-sanded and stained. Nearly every light fixture needs to be updated (ohh and how I nearly died when I opened an attic storage space and spied the original dining chandelier), and there is a lot of questionable electrical work. There were holes in some of the plaster in the closets. One bathroom needs to be entirely ripped out and started over. Plaster needs work in spots on ceilings. One room has teal carpet and a dragon mural. The basement is finished but not waterproofed. And last but not least, the kitchen needs a complete overhaul.

A big part of me wished it could be our next house, but it isn't going to be.

And yet I left the property feeling very happy about the whole experience. 

Six years ago, we would have looked at this home and dismissed it out of hand. We wouldn't have known how to estimate what a bathroom or tear-out would cost. We wouldn't have known what to do when refinishing floors or even what we want and need in a kitchen. We would have been terrified of all the unknowns that don't really bother us now. This would have been an insurmountable project for us back then.

Now that we've been homeowners of a an old house, we know what we are capable of (and what we aren't). As we walked through, Andrew and I were evaluating cost, process, and complexity - all things we couldn't have possibly understood as first-time home owners (and certainly couldn't have tackled while preserving our marriage). 

Seeing all those blank canvases (with old house bones) made me feel excited about our next home - we will certainly be able to find that perfect old house and make it ours, while restoring as much of its original character as we can in the process. We can take on more next time, and it will work out beautifully.

Seeing that old house also made me realize that I want to enjoy what we have and what we've done with this house for a few more years before starting from scratch.

So speaking of that, may I present my messy kitchen:

Oh yes, all that hardware matches.

Here, too.

The fridge doesn't quite fit centered, but it's not as off-centered as it looks here. Just an angle. And please pretend that you can't see my sink full of dirty dishes.

And of course there is a story about those dang knobs. Because this is a long post already, I will summarize a little bit.

Lowe's called in the afternoon that my order was in. So after work, I stopped by (on my way to meet the realtor).

Me: hi, I'd like my order

Lowe's kid: I have no idea what I'm doing

Me: hi, I'd like my order

Lowe's kid: I have no freaking idea what I'm doing. Why don't I make you stand around for awhile, since I'm sure your time isn't valuable.

Me: I'm trying to be nice, but I really hate doing business here.

It went something like that.

Wouldn't it be nice if that was the end?

Do you already know where this is headed?

Wrong dumb stupid freaking knobs.

We returned them, had dinner out, and then went back to Menard's and bought the knobs.

And some dots. 

Andrew has a candy weakness for dots. Since dots are located near cabinet hardware at Menard's, every time we've been there (and Andrew has been grumpy), I've suggested getting Dots. We hope this is the last cabinet-related outing to Menard's, so this time Andrew got his favorite Tropical ones.

I was a little bummed out about "losing" the savings that I'd found at Lowes, but I used my $25 visa gift card that I won in a weight-loss challenge at the Y. So at the end of the day, there was a $5 difference in price, but we wound up with $2 cash savings on out of pocket expenses. So I can still say that we spent only $30 on cabinet hardware.

That's the recap of our evening. One project done (well, mostly done but that is another post for another day), one house visited, and one house to be loved and appreciated by us for a few more years to come.

Bungalow Love (and why we are looking at a house on Tuesday)

Yesterday I started drafting a post that was basically an open love letter to my house - how I've learned to deal with (even appreciate) small closets, a small kitchen (that was huge to me when we first moved in, because I'd seen so many teensy galley kitchens in our house-hunt), and how small spaces mean that you get cozy with the people you love and live with. We are not bursting at the seams in our two-bedroom house, mostly because we've learned to live in a way that uses space efficiently with less stuff (and I still have a lot of stuff, frankly). The lightness - literally and figuratively - that our space has allows in a lot of happiness.

And moreover, our house has a history - long before us of course, but a history with us, too. There are scratches in the floor in the guest room where you can see how my grandpa, who is no longer with us, was much more efficient at sanding the floors than we were. There are Motawi tiles that I grouted into the hearth - a gift from Andrew when we went to Des Moines to celebrate my 29th birthday. Our families helped us with projects here, and we learned so much by learning how do to do all those little things on our own, too. This house is very loved.

So there you go. That's the summary of the post that was swimming in my head yesterday.

So with all that love for our little bungalow, why on earth are we going to go check out a new property on Tuesday?

What is "insanity," Alex?

I always have an eye out for our next house, mostly because we very clearly know what we want, and I want to reassure myself that this mythical house exists. 

In our next home, we have a pretty crazy wishlist. It includes:

Everything that our current house has ---

Air conditioning and modern heating

A new roof, furnace, etc

Built ins and character (unpainted woodwork)

A finished basement

At least 2 bathrooms

Outdoor living space

A decent sized, well-thought out kitchen

A decent yard

2-car garage

A good neighborhood

Plus ----

A specific zip code east of the one we are in

A specific neighborhood east of the one where we live

Dining room built-ins

A working fireplace

Bigger rooms, in general

Bigger closets in the master bed (two closets would be grand)

1-2 more bedrooms (would be okay +1 bedroom and a non-conforming guest bedroom)

Fully fenced yard

The problem is that when you add what we have to what we want, we exceed what we could reasonably spend. So Andrew and are in total agreement that what we want to find is a home at has the bones of what we want, but cosmetically may need some work. For example, I can deal with ripping up carpet and sanding wood floors. I can deal with taking down wallpaper. I'm not afraid of bad ceiling fans or ugly light fixtures. And I can work with outdated kitchen cabinets, floors, and counter tops.

We also hate moving. Our next house is one that we plan to be in for a long time. So it needs to have space for us to adapt, change, and grow into.

So that's why it's a little crazy when I said to Andrew, "I think I found our house."

It's the price we want, a bungalow, 4 bedrooms, finished basement, attached garage....and no one has painted the woodwork. French doors. Sconces. Glass door handles. A partially wrap-around porch. Fantastic bungalow exterior style with brick and stucco. 

And, the carpet and paint is awful, the kitchen out of date, and the yard a little overgrown.

I spent most of the evening mulling over what would happen if we fell in love with it. I thought about it this morning, too. Would we move? Could we?

Spoiler alert: ultimately, I don't think we're moving any time soon. It doesn't really make financial sense, since we've planned our past major improvement projects based on the idea that we stay in our current house five more years. And even if we did love this other house, the neighborhood is not the one that I have my heart set on. If a house is my dream house, the neighborhood has to be right, too.

Even though I can't imagine leaving our little bungalow it's fun to step outside just for a few minutes and wonder what another house might have in store for us.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

I said I'd wait until Christmas to get hardware when I saw how much the hardware I liked cost (my first estimate was $97 - kind of a lot when you have perfectably serviceable hardware).

But then on my way back from the dentist last week, I had this brilliant idea. Since we weren't really sure what hardware we wanted, we should try out some of the styles. (I say we pretty much in the royal sense, because Andrew wasn't really seeing a need for new hardware).

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the contenders. I really loved the look of bin or cup pulls, and thought that was the direction we were headed. And I really liked antique bronze or oil rubbed bronze.

But in my random grab of hardware at Menard's, I spied a style that was decidedly mission and decidedly cheaper than its mission-style peers. And it was "antique pewter" in color, a finish that neither Andrew nor I had considered.

The second I held them up to the drawers and cabinets, Andrew and I were completely on the same page (and he didn't even know they were cheaper!)

Hello, gorgeous!

But somehow, even though the pulls were on supersale ($2 instead of the $5-6 ones I'd thought we'd like), the knobs (since we need 14 of them) were bringing our total up to $75. Yuck.

So I returned all of the mismatched hardware - with that cash refund, I bought 7 more of those super cheap pulls since the sale was ending soon (Total of about $18 after tax).

And of course Andrew went to work putting all those handles on, since I'd totally made a mess of measurement back in 2008 when we moved in. Because the handles had holes for 3in and 96mm (and most of my drilling previously wound up somewhere at 3 1/4in - I have no idea how the precious handles somehow attached somewhat correctly), Andrew had some seriously odd measurement math to do. 

Most of the drawers use the 3in hole on the left and the 96mm on the right (sorry to whoever buys our house someday..I really hope you like arts and crafts style, which you should if you are the someday owner of our house). But, it worked to attach the handles with no evidence of my prior handiwork.

If you are playing along at home, we now have lovely antique pewter arts and crafts-style drawer pulls and brushed nickel knobs. Which leaves us with this awesome look:

Pretty, eh?

Because I am a super competitive shopper, of course I found those antique pewter hammered knobs way cheaper. After slogging though pages and pages of hardware outlets, Amazon, Wayfair, etc - I found the cheapest price at Lowes.com. Where I happened to have a gift card with a remaining balance on it. Yes!

Luckily, I called the store first and learned that those knobs are a special order item. So I special ordered them online with my gift card. And...they aren't slated to arrive for nearly 2 weeks.

With my gift card, though, I ended up spending a total of $30 for new hardware, which means for less than $100 total and a lot of elbow grease, it's going to look like I have a brand-new kitchen...

...in 2 weeks.

We have another small project to do tonight (lazy Susan will go back to being useful! Hooray!) 

and after that, I guess I'll just be sitting in my kitchen imagining how those pretty new hammered pewter knobs will look...

...in 2 weeks.

Scrubs of Redemption

Andrew says this is basis for redemption. 

Lazy Susan before and after:

Here's the full-size after:

I'd say he definitely earned a decent amount of redemption!

Andrew did a second coat of Motsenbocker's and then scrubbed like heck to get the stain out of the grain. He then carefully wiped everything down. And mowed the yard.

When it came back from class, he insisted that I stain both tonight, so we can get a poly coat on tomorrow and hopefully have all the cabinets replaced by Friday.

I keep thinking this kitchen project is almost done. But there are just a few pesky things remaining.

What's the buzz

Everything more or less has a place back in the kitchen, though there were a few misfit items that had to be re-arranged after our pantry/cabinet adventure last week. 

When we moved the cabinet into the pantry nook, I had to move the memo board where Andrew and I keep things like ticket stubs, cards, invitations, etc. Once or twice a year, I'll take the whole thing down and keep a few items in a memory box of that year, and then the whole process starts all over again.

The most logical spot for the memo board was behind the swinging door in our kitchen. However, this is where I keep my apons on a couple of command hooks. So now my aprons were displaced.

While I'm typically opposed to putting new holes in woodwork, the aprons needed to be in the kitchen and I liked how they had been behind the door. It just made sense to me to have them there. I debated just getting new adhesive for the command hooks that is been using, but I wanted something permanent and prettier to go along with the other upgrades we'd made for the space.

In our basement remodel and in my closet, we have these awesome dragonfly hooks that I love. They are a pewter tone and definitely fit with the "bungalow thing" that I try to have going on in decor. Andrew isn't a fan, because he doesn't like dragonflies. Uh...ok. But he put up with my dragonflies nonetheless.

So I went straight to Target.com to get another dragonfly. And of course, my dragonfly no longer exists.

But there were some other fun options. A few months ago, my favorite DIY bloggers at Young House Love created a line of hooks sold at Target. While YHL's asthetic is not at all like ours typically, we've relied on several of their tutorials for help when we've had ideas like putting in a paver patio. And I do love their playful style.

Back when they announced their new line, I actually tried to think of a use for this octopus hook, but there really wasn't a place for that in our home. So naturally, I'd  also completely forgotten about the bee hook.

And...it came in dark cocoa bronze. Score! I decided to order it without consulting Andrew. I figured if he was going to have a thing against dragonflies, he probably wouldn't be down with a bee, but since it would be out of the direct line of sight most of the time and holding my aprons, and less than $10 (yay for RedCard) - minor decor choices don't really need a quorum, right? I clicked the happy "add to cart" button and said "hey, we need a hook, so I just ordered one from Target." Since we were knee-deep in all my other projects, this statement may have registered with him. Not sure.

Last night, I came home from class and there was a pretty big box waiting for me. Even though I'd seen these in the store, I was expecting a much smaller hook. And box. But, this was a good thing, because I have a hefty collection of aprons. Aprons need a good sized hook. I tore into the package and proclaimed that Andrew should go get his drill to put up my bee-hook.

"My drill? Wait, the back of the door? A bee?"

He had a lot of questions, but thankfully, he'd had a long day so he gave up quickly. I marked the spots on the door with a sharpie, and in a lickety-split second, viola!

And here's another blurry shot. Yes, it all looks cluttered but it's behind the door.

I asked Andew what he thought, and to my absolute shock he said,

"It's cute."

"Cute?"

"Yeah."

I have never heard Andrew proclaim anything as cute other than kittens, puppies, or babies. And all of those things share in common things like a pulse, the wonder of creation, and eyes and noses and such.

But apparently, my bee hook falls into the same category.

Our estimates were off...

Andrew and I are used to projects taking much longer than we expect. Since we had a busy Sunday, we were shooting for just having the kitchen tidied up and ready for doors and drawers to be replaced Monday night. Boy, were we surprised by how the day unfolded.

We woke up at 8:15. Andrew had set an alarm for 7, but I slept serenely when he woke up and shut off the alarm. The first thing he said was "sorry, I screwed up about church."

I said "No problem, we can still go. I showered last night!" Then I remembered that the early service is at 8am, not 9. Whoops.

So we ate a leisurely breakfast. Andrew topped a wheat crumpet with a fried egg, fresh basil, just-picked tomatoes, and avacado. Not a bad way to start a morning.

We decided to attack the inside first with the poly coat rather than divide and conquer again. We were shocked by how fast it went, since everything was already taped from the day before's staining.

And then we were done. 

The directions said to do 1 coat, sand, and then apply a second. We decided to throw caution to the wind and just do our best to apply one even, thin coat. It worked remarkably well. So we moved on to outside.

And pretty soon those were done, too. We had plans for a movie at 1:50pm, so when it was 11am and everything had a nice coat of poly, we started milling around to see what else we could accomplish.

Andrew brought out the big guns to start working on the jacked up lazy Susan doors.

I found Motsenbocker's on a blog when our floor project had reached an impasse - back in the day. It's a water based paint stripper that is less toxic than other options. It's also pretty effective. This stuff is from 2009, but it still works.

Here's the before of the doors. You can see how the stain caked and the grain of the wood is lost.

A nice smear of Motsenbocker's to begin.

Already a difference.

Meanwhile, I decided that we could carefully put the drawers back. And then I put everything that had been hanging out on our dining room table back into its proper place.

I also organized the junk drawer. I'm very anti- junk drawer organizing. It just doesn't make sense - I feel that it's ok to have just one chaotic catch-all place. But there was a lot of junk in there and the drawer was difficult to close. So I sorted. There is something wonderfully calming to me about sorting (I blame my grandma, who used to give me a tin or mismatched buttons to play with. I could sort for hours. Or 10 minutes).

See? Organized. Well, not really. But better.

By the time we needed to go, the kitchen was actually in much better order.

Once the movie ended, we ran to HyVee for some groceries and met our friends back at our house for dinner. Our friend Andy had just worked a 24 hour shift, and Andrew and I were exhausted from our DIY weekend. So I am not embarrassed to admit that conversation was basically limited to listening Andy's 3-year old son expound topics including the following: setting sail using all the pillows in my living room, his friends, what he thought of our hammock, his like of cake and cantaloupe, and all the characters from Planes 2.

After dinner, Andrew and I went straight back to work on the cabinets. With the exception of one that gave us some trouble, everything went into place with ease. About an hour later, we were taking our "after" photos.

Not a perfect match for the other woodwork in the house, but much more complimentary than the builder-basic yellow tone.

I have plans for the top of that cabinet...

And this morning, I couldn't help but compile some fun before and after photos. Of course, I forgot to take current "before" photos from when we started, but I did have a few on a Facebook album from 2008 and 2011.

Here we go!

Top is from 2008 when we first saw the house. Note there wasn't a fridge in here yet.

These before shots are from 2011. Wall color has not changed - just different lighting.

There's still some work left - despite taping, we need to clean up some stain that ended up on the floor and walls. Obviously, the lazy Susan doors need to be finished, so we will likely get those back in place later this week. And of course, I'm still wishing for darker hardware to make the look a little more Craftsman and less late 90's. But all in all, we are both blissfully happy (and pretty shocked) that our weekend project (mostly) just took a weekend to accomplish. Who knows what can happen with this new-found confidence.

High on Cabinets

We survived day one of our cabinet staining project. Spoiler alert: the two things Andrew and I couldn't stop repeating were "why didn't we do this earlier?" and "why couldn't we do this when we were younger? My body is too old for this."

After Andrew built a shelf for me, we decided to split duties. Since I did an awful job staining yesterday, I decided to stay inside and start properly cleaning the cabinets for staining. I'd finished all the doors and drawers in the morning, but needed to do all of the other surfaces and tape all the interior.

After about an hour, I decided to take a break and check on Andrew (since the picture below was taken right as he had gotten started). I walked out to the garage and he was on cabinet #3. "Don't they look great?" he asked.

I refrained from asking, "Are you high?" Instead I went for "when are you going to wipe off the stain? You have to wipe it off after 3 minutes."

"You have to wipe it off?"

I am lucky that my husband loves me, because he forgave me pretty quickly for the not-nice things that followed from my mouth.

"You didn't read the directions?" I said.

"No, I thought it was like the other stuff we've used." (Keep in mind, we have used every kind of stain in existence at some point in our house.)

"You saw me screw up yesterday and decided not to read the directions?" This was the kindest thing I could think to say. So I kept on repeating it. In a not-very kind manner.

Andrew got the boot from staining after that, but he did go back to the internet to try to salvage one of the three goobered cabinet fronts by washing and scrubbing it clean. I was able to re-stain and then rub off the goop from the other two. All three now look just fine. 

Ironically, the only two cabinet fronts that I couldn't fix were the two I goobered on Friday (below).

So, that is the story of how I stained all the cabinets and drawers while Andrew finished washing and taping the kitchen.

Pretty!

By about 4pm, we both descended on the kitchen and started staining inside. I knew the cabinet doors and drawers were looking pretty good, but I was curious what the color would look like inside.

We were floored. Above, in the bottom right corner, is a peek of the difference. We didn't want the cabinets to be too dark, but we wanted the tone to be more deep and reddish to match the rest of the woodwork in the house. The stain brought out the grain - which looked really nice, even though we're certain these are pretty basic cabinets from Lowe's or Menard's.

Here's another comparison photo. Left is pre-stain and right has been stained. Subtle, but a definite difference.

Tomorrow we have a crazy day- we've already decided that we need to go to early church, and we have plans with friends later on. Still, we are hoping to the poly coat on everything.

If that isn't interesting enough, we are trying to rush to have our house a little more back together by Sunday night. The lady who had been doing house cleaning for us quit earlier in the summer due to her cat allergy, and Monday is the first time a new person will be cleaning for us. She is highly recommended by a co-worker, so we didn't want to cancel on her (we'd been playing phone tag and had to cancel a few weeks ago when I came down with a fever - so canceling twice wouldn't look good for us), and now I am worried that she'll see our kitchen and walk right back out!

But as Andrew pointed out, anyone who comes to our house on a regular bias should probably get used to the fact that we regularly tear apart our house in the name of progress. True.

Back to tomorrow's plan - I am just hoping that we can get the contents of our shelves (though probably not the drawers) back in the kitchen and not on our dining room table. Bonus if we can get cabinet drawers and doors on by Tuesday.

We pretty much trashed our paint brushes, so we made another Menard's run tonight. While we were there, I couldn't help but dream up new hardware to go with the deeper stain.

This stuff is going on my Christmas list, since we have hardware that is only 6 years old and in perfectly good shape. But a girl can dream. And I did.

And speaking of dreams, I think we will both be sleeping well tonight. Even though we can both tell that this project has been totally worth the effort, we are both creaky and achy (and a little whiny?) - not good signs heading into tomorrow's adventure.

Construction and Destruction

Yesterday afternoon, Andrew and I did some prep work for today's projects. I started distroying our kitchen in preparation for staining all our cabinets. Earlier in the morning while Andrew was still at work, I had stained the wood we bought to make a shelf for the pantry nook. Andrew measured the space about 40 times, found the studs in the wall, and cut down the wood. Then we drove off to spend the evening with friends.

I jumped the gun when it came to staining the cabinets. I didn't clean the cabinets well enough, and I had globbed on the stain, so the two cabinets I did ended up as a globby mess. I was frustrated and angry, so it was good that we needed to stop the project for the afternoon. Since our friends live a little over an hour away, I had some time to look up properly staining cabinets. I learned that my technique left something to be desired.

On our way back home last night at a little after 9pm, we stopped at Menard's to get the supplies needed for the cabinets. We got a cleaner for fronts that would de-grease and prep the wood better, lint-free rags, more stain, and a satin poly.

When we woke up this morning, I insisted we knock out a project before hitting up the Farmer's Market for breakfast. So Andrew went to work on finishing up the shelf, while I cleaned the cabinets and took all the doors and drawers out of the kitchen.

Unfortunately, things weren't going well. Despite Andrew spending time finding the studs in the wall, the banding to support the shelf was not cooperating. He did measure perfectly, though, so once the screws finally decided to cooperate (almost 2 hrs later), the shelf went together pretty quickly.

While Andrew made a quick run to the Farmer's Market on his own, I filled in the shelf with my cookbooks.

All my cookbooks fit perfectly. I had to re-dedicate a few baskets. Since we've been married, we have thrown coupons, info that we don't want to lose, and letter stuff (stamps, greeting cards that we forgot to use, pens) in "the basket." Unfortunately, it was too tall to fit between the cabinet and the shelf. So the old basket is now holding cat toys, but I think the 3 new baskets will help our organization.

Here's another look of the finished pantry nook:

The white space seems to me to be begging for some art, but I think I'm going to live with it for a little bit before adding anything. We still have some art print postcards that we bought during last summer's trip to Europe, but something bigger might be warranted.

Andrew just came back with lunch, so our next step is to figure out how to proceed with this crazy kitchen plan.