Around the house

I know you've all been dying to see some grainy iPhone pictures of the current state of our home.  Well, your wish is my command.

Without further ado, I give you:

1.  The blue velvet couch. My favorite piece of furniture.  Also, a self-made parsons table and a pillow with inquisitive zebras on it.  Because who doesn't need a flock of zebras looking at you incredulously every time you sit down?

2. The entry way.  (For the record, this is not an iPhone picture...it is courtesy of Blake and his camera skills).  I love the way it looks when it's so sunny.

3.  Flowers from the garden on the kitchen counter.

4.  My new coat hooks.  Do I love them? You bet giraffe I do! (That joke never gets old.)

5.  New (cheap!) pillows for the living room couch.  I've since re-arranged them so that the patterns aren't both facing in the same direction. It's absolutely driving me crazy in the photo below. Alas. First world problems.

And that, my friends, is a quick tour of our house as seen through an iPhone lens.  You're welcome.

And then I redeemed my week...

Last week was a week of mishaps, but all-in-all it wasn't so bad.  In between the madness, I got to see a lot of friends (these ones, these ones, these ones and more), ate a lot of really great food, went out for a night-on-the-town with my brother, and caught up on some much-needed housework. 

By the time it got to the weekend, the only plans Blake and I had made was to go to the pool and relax all day.  Well, it rained steadily all day, so that plan was a bust. 

It's a rare day that we don't have anything planned, so we took advantage and puttered around all over town cutting our perpetual, mile-long to-do list down to size.  We got our break lights replaced, went to a farmers market, went to a garden center to look for a lemon tree (I really want one for our dining room, but no dice!  They're surprisingly hard to find.), ate a leisurely lunch, went to Lowes to look at lighting options, went to IKEA to find inspiration for a side table and to give ourselves a headache, and then went to a really fun birthday get-together with friends.  It was a full day, but even with the rain it somehow felt relaxed and chill.

It's pretty slow-going furnishing a house.  It's takes a lot of money (which we usually don't have) and time (which we almost never have), so it's a continual work in progress.

We picked up a lamp on clearance from my favorite store (Arhaus) a couple weeks ago and it has been looking pretty forlorn on the floor next to the couch.  So when we were out in the IKEA direction on Saturday, it sparked my memory of an IKEA-hackers post about combining two Lack side tables to make a faux Parsons table. 

It was such a simple Sunday morning project, but for $25.00 I don't think it looks half-bad.  It's probably a little more modern than what we usually go with, but I'm really happy with how it turned out and love the way it looks with the navy blue couch. 

I want to get a large basket to put in it to hide games (yep, we're finally stepping up to our Mormon heritage and collecting some board games...I never though I'd see the day!).  But, design friends, is it blasphemous to ruin the clean lines with a basket?  What do you think?

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th started a little early for me this year.  It's basically been a whole week of mayhem.  You know how bad things tend to happen in 3's?  Well, I'm over that limit and still going strong.

1.  I got sick last Tuesday and am still sniffling.  I went through approximately 5 Gatorade's and 2 boxes of Kleenex per day for the first few days, spent half of my vacation in bed, flew with a sinus infection (which, I'm pretty sure is on of the seven circles of Hell), and still missed a couples days of work before dragging myself out of bed and back into reality. 

2.  Somewhere between packing in Pebble Beach and unpacking in Maryland, I lost my favorite watch.  The beautiful one that Blake gave me for our anniversary. 

3.  Last night I came home exhausted from my first full day back at work to a home that smelled distinctly of laundry.  This is not a smell I dislike.  But yesterday it was a smell the confused me seeing as I hadn't gotten around to doing laundry since our return. 

I wondered if I were just making it up.  My nose, after all, was pretty stuffy and I couldn't be sure I wasn't having an olfactory hallucination. 

But after sniffing all around the house, I opened the door to our laundry/unifinished basement and discovered that my almost-new, Costco-sized detergent had fallen off the high shelf, burst, and spread all over the floor. 

It's under the washer and dryer, under the shelves, soaked into the lawn bags, goo-ing up the vaccuum.  Not only did it restrain itself to the huge puddle you see here, but there were also splatter marks across almost the entire length of the room.  You name it, the blue goo got it. 

I guess it was a sign that I should do laundry.  In order to save some of the goop (detergent is expensive!) I dipped the clothes directly into the puddle and then threw them into the washer.  No additional soap needed.   

Embarassing?  Yes.  White trash?  Maybe.  But Genius?  Yes!

I spent about two hours trying to clean up the mess, but only made it about halfway before giving up and leaving it for a weekend project. 

At least my floors will be clean.  If anyone feels like having a picnic on our soon-to-be-pristine cement floors, let me know.

5.  Oh, and today I fell in the shower.  I'm not sure if I'm 26 or 86, but there you have it.  I was minding my own business, pumice-stoning my foot, and before I knew what was happening I had hit my knee, hip and head on the tub and tile in rapid succession. 

It must have sounded a lot worse than it was, because Blake came running up the stairs to make sure I was ok.  I briefly considered claiming amnesia (re: The Vow) and screaming at the "unknown man" invading my shower, but I kept calm and decided to dry off and call it a morning instead.

At this rate, it'll be a miracle if I can make it through the weekend.

In other news...

...the unfinished portion of our basement still looks like a scene straight out of "Hoarders."

This weekend the madness ends and the organization begins.  Our new couch is scheduled for delivery tomorrow morning and after it's in place I'll begin the Great Stuff Migration back to that side of the basement.  Yep, only the great stuff will be moving.  I'm sensing a yard sale in our near future.

Sneak Peak

It's been so busy at work and the weather has been so beautiful lately that I've completely focused on those two things and almost forgot to post the "nearly done" photo of the basement.

We've still got a bunch of paint touch-ups to do and we still haven't moved furniture back in, but it's looking beautiful, no?  We're hoping our couch will be delivered in the next couple weeks and then we'll have a real christening party.  As for now, well, we're just enjoying the floors, the higher ceilings, the lighting and everything else by pumping up our iPhones on various Pandora channels and rocking out.

Adios UFO's

For those of you who might be wanting to see progress on our basement...remember when I spent a week painting the pine paneling back in January of 2010?  Well, the basement reno has basically been stalled since then while I attended to the scads of other project ideas whirling around in my mind.

The catalyst that finally got us moving on our wish list was the sump pump installation.   As you can see from previous photos, the installation left us with a half cement/half linoleum tile floor circa a 1950's grade school cafeteria.  It was fun while it lasted, but that combo had to go. 

Our contractor team is wonderful.  They've been working non-stop since Monday morning and have transformed the place.  It's not finished yet, but so far they've:

-Removed the horrible UFO drop-lights.
-Torn out the recycled paper tile ceilings.
-Installed 13 (it's finally light down there!) can lights.
-Rewired the light switches and installed dimmers.
-Removed existing crown moulding.
-Installed drywall on the ceiling.
-Created a drywall box for some of the exposed duct work (we're leaving some of it exposed so as not to use up any of the precious ceiling height).
-Installed new crown moulding around the ceiling.
-Installed a new entry door, moulding and thresh hold.
-Created a built-in media console in the wall by the fireplace (it's all dead space under the stairs, so we decided to make use of it by building something in, rather than taking up space in the narrow room with a piece of furniture).

Phew. That's a lot.  I'm tired on their behalf.

Today they're going to:

-Paint the ceiling, window casings and crown moulding.
-Remove the current baseboards and shoe moulding.
-Prep for tomorrow's flooring installation.

Anyhow, here's some pictures of the progress.  We rush home every night after work and are consistently blown away by the quality and beauty of their work!  It's like Christmas morning every time we get home and walk down the stairs to check it out. 

I can't wait to show off (I mean, let's call it what it is, I'm totally showing off, but I don't care because I'm sooo excited about it!) the finished product.  You may just die seeing it. 

P.S.  If anyone in the DC area is in need of a fabulous contractor, let me know.  Tony does stuff for Blake's whole family and always does a fabulous job at rock-bottom prices. 

Damp no more.

Ahh the sweet, sweet sound of (jackhammering) home improvment.

Some things take me a long time...

Remember this post from January of 2010?

I claimed then that days of our old dinosaur of a washing machine (age 43) were numbered.  After my I-Love-Lucy experience complete with sparks, smoke and a washer bouncing across the flooded basement, I just about threw in the towel. 

But, we made Dino last another year and a half.  Sure, we may have only been able to wash on cold.  Sure, we may have not been able to run more than two loads in a row without risking another explosion.   And sure, our whites may not have been as bright nor our clothes as sterilized as the average consumer.  But we did it.  We made it work.

Then a couple of weeks ago we officially became old and boring.  I got a small bonus from work and when we looked at the check we both immediately said: "Pefect! This will cover a new washing machine!"  See.  We're old.  And really boring.  But I digress.  Back to the main event:

Bye bye, dinosaur:

Hello, my beauty:

This sucker has a 4.0 cubic feet capacity and is, consequently, the new love of my life.

On my Conscience.

Meet Jiminy.  King of the crickets.  He currently resides in the back corner of our basement, terrorizing me with every hop.

Oh and before you judge me for being afraid of a harmless cricket, just to give you a feel for size: the moulding and baseboard on which he's currently lurking is about 4 inches tall.  And he can jump to eye-level.  I am justified, I tell you!

Some days...

We're going to need a new washing machine sooner than I thought.

Here's how I know.

I thought I'd do both of the loads of laundry I've been putting off.  I put the first in and headed up to the office and schoolwork and a certain vat of chocolate chip cookies. 

Three typed pages and two cookies later, I went down to swtich the laundry and start another load. 

For those of you who haven't been to our house, you may not know that our washing machine is 40 years old.  Yep, it's a classic.  Still going strong (even though all of the buttons are worn down and the previous owners had to draw a big, sloppy, indellible arrow to show us how far to turn the dial to start the thing).  Still going strong until today, I guess.

Instead of being connected to the sewer with outgoing water pipes, our dinosaur empties directly into the utility sink that resides next to it.  That's great.  I mean, we get the added bonus of the sound of rushing water, along with the sonic booms every time the machine changes gears.  Well, usually it's great.  Except when the water does extra rushing and the machine does extra booming.

I'd left a paintbrush out to dry on the corner of the utility sink last night (by the way, our kitchen is completely finished now, hooray!), and all the booming and shaking of the machine made the brush fall down into the sink instead of staying on the corner where it was supposed to.  That would have been fine, except it landed in the exact right (I mean, WRONG, VERY WRONG) spot and clogged the drain.  So, when I came down to switch my laundry, the floor was covered in an inch of water all over the unfinished portion of the basement.

THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

That's what I shouted.

I contemplated crying, but I figured there was already enough water involved and I should just get to it.

One linen-closet's worth of towels, two rolls of paper towls, two hours, and much gnashing of teeth later, I had the basement cleaned up.  And I mean CLEANED UP.  I had to mop up and wipe off every single thing we had down there.  So much for being green and saving all of our boxes from moving, hello soggy mess.

So, I cleared out the sink and the drain with my trusty tuperware pitcher and decided to give it another go.  I needed to wash all of the towels I'd had to use for operation wet washer, and so I put them in the beast.  I sat down by the washer for 10 minutes to make sure all was well, and when I saw it was properly draining I went back up to question number four, cookie number three, and a bowl of soup.

Ten minutes later I heard a wailing from the basement.

I ran down. 

WHAT NOW?

Smoke.  Smoke pouring out of the top of the washer.  Oh no!  I didn't know if something was on fire, or if we'd blown a fuse.  So, I did the fastest thinking I was capable of at the time and yanked out the plug.

With the basement door open, it was smoke-free in no time.  So, I turned the water to cold, and hoped that I wouldnt' blow anything up when I turned it back on (I needed it to drain out the dirty water before I could really turn it off.)

I sat down by it again and waited.

Everything seemed fine.

Same drill.  Ten minutes later, and halfway through my next cookie, I heard a horrific thumping. 

You know in old movies when the washer breaks and it literally hops around the floor and spews things.  Who knew that actually happened in real life? 

It was hopping, thumping, booming and spewing smoke.  I unplugged it permenantly.

I think it's dead.

UPDATE:

See, I told you it's 40 years old:

Buttons.  Hand-drawn arrow directions.

DINOSAUR.

Yep.  Hello.