Apparently winter can't last forever

The weather is warming up finally down here in South Jersey, which means that with each rise of the mercury my mood is correspondingly rising as well. The rise in mood helps me to remain positive even while working outside on the garage and renovations, funny how something like spring can help you recapture your motivation to work hard. I still have to double layer my pants when I work over at the Wee house, leggings under jeans, but no longer do I need to wear a fuzzy hat and gloves!

Last weekend we got a ton of stuff done for the house- including taking an entire load of cement to a recycling center and DIY disposing it for free! Sure you have to drive back into an extra creepy looking desolate back woods South Jersey area, complete with humming high tension wires, to get to the deposit pile. However anywhere we can save money during this renovation is so helpful, especially when you factor in how much the cement chunks would have cost to throw out at the dump, so I'll take the atmosphere of a slasher flick to save money. I'm guessing we're saving about $400 to DIY ourselves like this, which is a sweet chunk of change that we could use on other things instead.

In other related news, we got our first failed inspection for the garage barn. The demo permit could not be closed out yet, due to all that nasty piles of concrete and cinder we have laying around. The bright "fail" sticker is so sad looking on our table. We're working on rectifying that failed situation and out of sympathy for our neighbors who've been staring at all this leftover shit for over a year.

Warmer weather means a lot more work to get done around here. After such a long blah winter though, I'm ready to step it up in the home department.

I heart distractions

If diversionary and self-distraction tactics was a class, I'd get an A+.

Currently I'm using up all my old banked yoga classes to breath deep and cope with the fact we just got told about the current state of our townhouse rental, and it isn't pretty. I'm fuming mad that adults would treat a decent property like it was some crack house in Camden. Then I remember that shitheads are all around and in the course of renting to college students I'd be sure to get some doozeys. Like the time our old tenants didn't want to tell us the toilet was broken and we got a water bill that was the equivalent of filling two Olympic swimming pools. Part of me wants to send pictures of the place with all the damage to their parents...

This all leads to me to two things.

The first is a favorite mantra of mine, I repeat it myself when I'm having a rough go of it and feel a little down. "time marches on". In a day, week, month, year...I'll be somewhere new. Feeling something else. Knowing that despite what it going on in my life, time will go on and my life will change with it.

The second is my current obsession with hunting down the *perfect* Chesterfield sofa. I have an obsessive personality, so expect to hear about this couch about 9,775 more times in the coming days. Also expect for me to never actually purchase a Chesterfield, but only to feverishly stalk one down in my free time.

Remember: commitment issues + a cat whose radar is set on "destroy all furniture" + garage build budget + current couches in decent condition = not the greatest idea for me to buy a couch. However, this hunt is the perfect diversionary tactic from our townhouse issues of late. Something else for my scattered mind to focus on, rather than just being cranky about the rental.

My poor husband bears the brunt of my "omg I love this" craigslist find random emails. They usually go something like this...

In regards to this posting:

A LEATHER COUCH I BOUGHT NEW AND HAVE OWNED FOR TEN YEARS.

SLIGHT WEAR NO TEARS OR HOLES TOTALLY RE-SPRUNG

CAN BE SEEN IN KENNETT SQUARE PA. BY APPOINTMENT

3800.00 CASH ONLY !!!

From: Eva

To: Peter

Wizzing with happy over this gorgeous couch Boo on the price though. http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/fuo/2309015131.html

From: Peter

To: Eva

CRAP WOW that’s expensive for a 10 yr old couch that the leather looks bad worn, not nice worn! Color is kinda neat but not too sure about it. But still, the price? They have to be kidding. What are they $6k new?

From: Eva

To: Peter

They range in price, but you usually aren’t looking at much more than 6-7k for a new one. Even the ones from Restoration Hardware aren’t as much as this one! I thought the color was awesome! It’s “unexpected” :) But the price? Really? Someone is high.

From: Peter

To: Eva

That’s just ridiculous. If you pay $6k for anything new, you have to expect to lose 1/3 of the value as soon as you walk out of the showroom. Even most cars are close to that. That comes to $3900 and that was in 2001 – and that’s if the 10 yrs is true which I have my doubts.

From: Eva

To: Peter

Sometimes I wonder about these CL people. What logic goes through their head as they looked at the couch and said “ Self. That couch is worth more than a 10 year old Toyota. There are going to be buyers lining up to my purchase my circa-1994 blue sofa for sure”

If it was 90% off that price I’d buy it. Or at least think about buying it.

The End.

Faux Shopping

Happy April Fools!

No jokes here, mainly because I'm terrible at playing jokes on people. My face can't stay still and before three words of the prank are out of my mouth I'm doubled over in a giggling fit. Can we say, sure give away? This is why I can't play poker, despite being part of the same body my mouth has a mind of its own and I'm always apt to blurt out things that need to stay inside!

Since I'm still a wee bit of a grump over the house renovation and situation stuff I've now turned my attention to my favorite form of house therapy- Pretty pictures and imaginary shopping. That usually helps me refuel with inspiration and ideas for the future. So here is a smattering of the random shopping that I've been obsessively looking at lately: Ralph Lauren Talmadge Hill Bedding:

Specifically the large plaid duvet cover of the collection. I got my hands on the duvet at the outlet and it was very much still out of my price range, but I did marvel over what a quality item it seemed to be. The fabric was luscious, warm and inviting for long winters naps. I think the Americana Preppy plaid look fit into our houses colonial cottage styling well. Our old duvet cover is getting a little worn after three seasons, so I'm going to make it my personal challenge to procure this RL duvet for our bed by next winter at a great price.

Chesterfield Sofas: Specifically a well broken-in used Chesterfield. Something about their stately tufted lines makes me weak in the knees. Even if a good 50% of my friends say they scream "lawyers office". Each week I comb through Craigslist to see if any are available within a four hour drive and if they could be 'the one' for me. Certainly we don't need a new couch right now, especially because I think I would crumple to the floor in hysterical tears the first time my cat used the couch as a scratching post. Even though there isn't likely to be a new sofa that crossed my door in a long long time I still love to hunt for one.

I think I'm one of those extra weird people who enjoys the search for an item way way way more than actually owning it. Which would explain why I'm terrible with commitment to things. Except Pete. He's awesome and I'm very committed to him. But I don't really think of him as a "thing".

Next up on my obsessive search is a rug that is as perfect as the Dash and Albert Cat's Paw rug for our dining room but one that fits our budget better. I did a little measuring and we need a 7x9 or 8x8 rug on the dining room floor so it doesn't look like someone wearing a tiny coat. The Cat's Paw jumps from 5x8 (too small) for $400-ish right on up to 8x10 for $800. Way out of my pocketbook's comfort zone right now for a rug. No matter how awesome and perfect it may be....And despite my constant searching I just can't find anything that makes me jump up and down with excitement yet.

Here is what I'm looking for in a vauge, short descriptions:

- Would like it to have yellow in it

-Vintage looking a plus

- No comtempory designs

- Doesn't look cheap ( hard to tell over the internet)

- Light and colorful

- Under $300

Lately I've been checking up on PB twitter account, to see if they are going to run any special promotions on rugs for the outlets. I've been there before when they ran a "take an additional 50%" promo, so my fingers are crossed that is coming again this spring. I'll for sure drive my rear end out to Lancaster to see what kind of potential deal could await there.

Anything anyone else is obsessively fake shopping for lately?

Crank Pot is Me

New Jersey missed the memo that it is currently spring. We're dealing with January temperatures here where the mercury dips down into the freezing zone at night and barely gets enough sunshine out during the day to do a damn warmth wise. It is so cold for March that we had to turn out heater back on, after we though we shut it down for the season two weeks ago.

In this weather it tends to be the wind that does you in comfort wise. Turning an otherwise enjoyable sunny cold weather day, into some sort of horrible blustery experience where you curse the sky for taunting you with cold sunshine and whatever the reason is that makes you be outside. It's been in that cold sunshine where we've been spending some quality weekend time at the garage lately.

However, once there I've been maxing out after two hours of work because the weather and house situation makes me incredibly grumpy. Pete witnesses his normally way perky wife morph into some sort of snappy bitch from hell in about 90 minutes. The last half hour has got to be torture for him as I stomp around the place ready to snap necks, complete with eye rolling and glares. Until I finally give up work in a fit and go to the warmest place in the house to stew in silence alone. Sitting on the plastic wrapped screen porch on top of an empty dresser. Staring at the rusty screens and astro turfed cement, wondering what the hell I was thinking with this house, with all our houses, until it is time to leave.

The worst part about my fits is that I can't stop it from happening and nothing short of leaving the work site gets me back to normal. My natural disposition is to be an optimist that has a perma smile plastered on my face. That crummy attitude isn't who I am at all. But the houses are just draining me right now. I feel like they're four giant leeches that I can't shake off even though I so desperately want to be rid of them and move on with my life.

Anyone whose ever done any home renovations who didn't tell you that they hit low points along the journey is full of lies. Lying to safe face about their decision. Lying to themselves. Or so pumped full of something that makes all work blend into a happy fuzzy haze.

Overall, I'm frustrated at our shitty homes and a little burnt out. Those feelings are just my reality right now. Will I turn around again? Yes. I know I will. Being cyclical with my emotions is a standard MO for me. Sometime along the line I'll get my optimism back, my drive and the ability to pound out 12 hour shifts of hard work for our future on our craptastic houses. But currently, I want to stew in the cold non-spring weather being a miserable bitch about everything house related.

There you go.

True confessionals of a DIY'er.

Pretty new air nail gun!

Our air nailer is dead.

Died. Gone. Bought the farm. Bit the spoon. Finished.

You might remember this is the same air nailer that pooped out some time back in September. When it up and left Pete up on the roof high and dr, where he had to start swinging a hammer in order to finish the purlins. At that time we debated buying a new nailer, but being in the midst of shelling out big bucks for the garage construction we really didn't want to part with the $200 it would cost for a spanky new air nailer. Thankfully Pete was able to apply his ridiculously mechanical brain towards the nailer, opened it up and spiffed it back up to life.

And then a few months later, Pete fell from the second story of the garage. During that fall, he dropped the air nailer onto the cement floor and then landed a sheet of plywood combined with his entire body weight on top of the nailer. Apparently all those things are a deadly combo for an already on the brink nailer, because shortly after all that happened, the nailer ceased to work indefinitely.

In case it is not abundantly clear from my posts- WE NEED A FRAMING AIR NAILER.

Since we try not to look at dropping two Benjamin's lightly, a ton of research went into finding a new nailer. Almost immediately we discounted getting the same air nailer, a Porter Cable, again. Overall we weren't thrilled with the longevity performance. It wasn't that old, only about 6 years, and did break once before dropping it onto cement. We don't count the falling incident against the performance, since it was human error. Frankly I would expect something to last longer given the amount of use the nailer got combined with how well we (mostly) treat our tools.

Shopping for a new nailer at ye' olde orange warehouse store.

There was much debate about using clipped head vs. round heads, as well as which brand we should go for between Bostitch, Dewalt and Hitachi. Why those brands? Bostitch is the brand of our siding nailer and we've been pleased with that so far. Dewalt because I'm a total whore for their brands and believe they make a quality product. Hitachi is another brand we've heard good things about and is aimed at Pros, so we thought it could handle the amount of work that we'll be throwing toward it during this renovation.

Ultimately, it was the clipped head Hitachi that won out.

Which I find, strangely enough, really pretty. That just excites the girly girl inside of me to use it more!

Happy St.Pat's!

For our first anniversary back in 2009 Pete and I took a trip to Emerald Isle...




He got food poisoning and I drank my weight in Guinness and Bulmers.





Once Pete was on the mend, we spent a lovely morning learning about our favorite beer






and I finally got to see a real castle!

although I never did pretend I was a princess when I was little. Usually my imagination had me as the stable hand or had some equally not glamorous position within the castle walls.




This uber lame and extremely last minute photo essay (which is composed of snatched pictures from facebook) covers about 1/10th of our Ireland trip and is my way of wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Stain boo-boo

This weekend marked my first ever solo staining project...the stair treads for our spiral staircase.

Let's just say, my staining for this project wouldn't be categorized as winning.

The truth is the physical process of staining the wood was incredibly easy. Brush on, count to ten, wipe off and then let dry. The frustrating and non-winning part came when I tried to get a uniform stain on the wood. Despite using a wood condition prior to the stain, my warm honey colored stain came out looking like I dropped melted red crayons onto the stairs and then chiseled the wax off with a putty knife. Random spots drank up a lot of the red and parts of the stairs ended up looking uber splotchy. Overall the stairs look great and I'm really happy with the actual color of the stain, just sad that it looks so blotchy.

I'm not sure if I need more practice, another type of wood or a different color stain all together I've heard that darker color stain is easier to work with because it just cover so much and makes the imperfections a lot harder to notice.

Sigh.

Since these imperfections are noticable (especially to me) I'm not sure about the next steps I should take to fix/hide them. The option is out there to sand down and re-stain every stair but I'm afraid that would just leave me in the same predicament and would eat up a lot of time. Currently my favorite option is to remind myself that the stairs are going to be set in a darker corner of the condo, away from direct sunlight and are going to get stepped on by a whole host of not-so-gentle feet over the years. When I tell myself that, 'perfection and show quality' isn't what is what is exactly needed there. Also, I may have deluded myself into thinking that a coat of poly will help. Don't ask me how or why, I just hold on to the thought that poly will make it all better.

Hopefully I just needed to step away from the project and revist it with fresh eyes that aren't so critical. Maybe the blotches will have magically fixed themselves yesterday?!

Am I the only one out there that has failed on staining pine with a light color? Wait. Don't answer. I don't think I can handle the truth of knowing that I fubar'ed something that is so basic in the DIY world...

Opperation Staircase... p3.

A weekend or two later, Pete and I returned to beach condo ready to finish painting the stairs. As much as the two toned look works for some people, we wanted the whole staircase to be a pretty glossy black. In the interest of being able to still use the stairs- you know, to access the only bathroom and bedroom in the joint- we had to work using the paint every other stair method.

Which how we ended up with this spunky black and gray painted staircase after the second go-round with primer was applied. The black stairs were dry and we were able to walk upstairs very carefully while waiting for the gray primer to dry.

The poor dog was so confused about why she couldn't follow us up the stairs anymore! We had to carry her up and down the stairs to make sure she didn't end up a mess of white puppy streaked with paint.

Left of the project To-Do's:

Reveal pretty all-black stairs! (They look awesome. so awesome that I forgot to snap a pic.)

Find flexible stair rail. Any suggestions? We threw out the hideous plastic tube that used to be on there. It was really bad looking and we didn't want to be tempted to put it back on there out of laziness/desperation

Router the wooden steps out. It took multiple attempts (last count was 4 tries) but we finally got all the wood we needed for the project.

Stain steps.

Attach steps to stairs.

Show off the new door that Pete built for our heater closet.

Find/make wall art for stairway walls.

Find a free weekend to take the trip down to the condo to put it all together. This alone is going to be tricky for us, suddenly we're on the verge of spring around here and I'm finding our calendars are threatening us having no available weekend free time.

Priming and Painting the Stairs...

Moving back to our current spiral staircase renovation:


We left off with the stairs ready for an application of our heavy duty primer, Shelac Based Zinsser primer tinted a lovely shade of gray. The tint helps to provide a perfect base to our glossy black paint, or any darker paint.

Why Shellac? Mainly because it is uber durable and offers a great surface for the actual paint to grab onto. We really don't want to ever have to repaint the stairs again during our tenure of ownership at the condo, and they get a lot of high traffic abuse during the summer months. You can see in the pictures that a lot of the stairs had some rust stain issues, and even though we were using black paint, we didn't want anything to leak through the final coat. Also, it's made from beetles, like crawly little bugs, I find that pretty interesting...



When it came time for painting, we did the every other stair method for coverage,that way the we could still utilize the stairs, since the only bathroom in the place is on the second floor. Hoofing it up the stairs every other one with no railing is murder on your knees and for people with balance issues (me.).

A few hours later, after the primer was extra dry... we cracked open the black paint and started rolling away. That night we were under an extreme time crunch, so the black paint had to get down and then we needed to get outta there asap. Which worked out because the fumes from the paint and primer were almost overwhelming us. The night ended with us getting outta there without being able to take a moment to step back and check out the transformation taking place.

Look for Less: Couch Edition

I haven't noticed the Oasis at C&B until recently, when it caught my eye in the catalog spread. Very casual in comfy chic kinda way. Something I'd want to put in a sun room or in a shore house. Not that long ago, I got a chance to plop down on the Oasis in the store.

( It was awesome. I love couches that aren't mine)




Then I noticed the Landon sofa at Macy's:
The price comes in at $1,099, which is about 1k off the full retail price of the Oasis.






There are some differences I can spot right off the bat in the picture but you do have to go photo hunting for most of them...The one thing I'd want to make sure of is that the bottom cushions are as cushy and wonderful as the C&B version. They don't look as full in the photos, but photos can be a little deceiving.

Operation Staircase

First of its kind project for us, redoing a metal spiral staircase.

The staircase at our beach condo was in sad ( but still serviceable) shape. The blue carpeting was worn down and perpetually a bit dirty looking. All the spindles and risers had a not so fresh coat of white paint that was heavily chipped and marked with the smudges of countless suitcases and sneakers. But the topper was really the handrail, which was a plastic tube. Like a giant crazy straw.

Those staircase decor items of the 3-d fish and hanging towel? Long gone.

Looking up the view wasn't much better...Hello $30 rickety fan that made clicky noises but provided much needed air flow in the condo.

While the staircase as a whole wasn't too offending, it was really Dull. Out of the whole 700sq ft condo, the staircase is the only little bit of unique interest in the place. Stuck in the corner of blahvilles that is the kitchen.

Since the kitchen is way out of budget right now (WAY), we decided to focus on the stairs for our winter project. I know, cause we needed a "winter project" like we needed another hole in our heads.

First, Pete took off the weirdo handrail and a top step to use as our template. We're lucky in the fact that these stairs are solid metal steps underneath. I think it helps tons on the stability and DIY ability for this project. Had the stairs been more of an open skeleton underneath I'm not sure I would have felt as confident about redoing the treads as I was.

If you look for the pink ugg in the picture below, you can see we've already replaced the blue carpeting on the landing with leftover laminate from the downstairs. Thumbs up for the improvement and for using something we already owned!

Before painting I got out my bucket of water and cleaned off the walls. I'm sure most of you are like this as well, but I feel compulsive about having REALLY clean the walls before painting. The idea of all that painted in grime makes me feel... like I'm committing some sort of DIY crime. Sometimes I tell myself the amount of prep I do is why my painting projects always seem to take longer than they should, especially compared to other bloggers and their gold medal antics in the speed painting olympics. SomedayI should just face the fact that I'm a pretty slow painter. Call me a easily distracted daydreamer.

Being Mr. Up and Up on safety, Pete measured the stairs and the differences they had in height from each other. Turns out, our stairs were out of code. As not a one was a matching distance or within the right range from the other. Awesome. So in the interest of safety/covering our asses and being within code Pete took almost an entire afternoon to move the stairs. You can see the bare metal on the center pole how far some of the the stairs were moved.

Next up, the ultimate primer application...

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday to my mom! My numbero uno commenter, reader and all around blog stalker. I love you and hope you are enjoying your snowny birthday.

My mom loves herself some blogs, so other readers who are not my mother ( I'm guessing 5 of you) feel free to post your blog links in the comments section! Give her (and myself) some new reading material.

PS: I got you a present! It's from HERE.

No, not baby booties.

Nightmare house

Last night I had a nightmare that we had another house, one I had completely forgotton about. For a few minutes after waking I was panicked that we did acutally own a fishing shack in the middle of a swampy bay area.

Phew.

floor seeking a fun rug. must like vaccuums and pets.

Currently we have a half done garage, a staircase that is missing the actual stairs and an entire house in the middle of being torn down to the studs. And what is the one thing I keep constantly thinking about?



A rug for our dinning room.

More specifically this rug:







the Dash and Albert Cat's Paw Rug.



I love how it's full of fun color and whimsy, while being a little old fashioned modern. Got all that? Those are the buzz words I'm using now to describe my design sense going forward for our house(s).



Ever since we brought home our lovely new table last May, it kicked off our slow and completely unnecessary ( but wanted) spruce up of the dinning room. The two of us shopped for and debated chairs, stools and a settee before settling on our current seating solutions. Seen here for the wrap up of the search, it only took about five months to get to that point. Now I'm back on the rug hunt, estimated time to completion from kick off of project- 1 year. Yeah, I'll be happy if I have a rug on the floor by May.



I'm pretty sure I'm focusing on this rug with such intensity because, well, it's easy. So easy you might meet it under the bleachers after school. Compared to every other project going on, the idea of buying said rug and just simply rolling it out in the dining room is just so appealing.



Now all I'm waiting on is the email from Pete where he tells me the rug is hideous and I must be out of my mind to like it. It's a fun repartee we have going on lately. You should have heard the *spirited* discussion we had this weekend about trim colors in the beach condo...



Your opinion- hideous rug? Should I keep looking? or can you see the appeal?

Checking in

Quick apologies are in order as I've been taking a little break from blogging lately. Everything is Ok! No major upsets or categorically life changing events have happened. I'm just going along living everyday life in New Jersey. Day in, Day out.

My full-time-adult-grown-up job has hit a busy spot though, working those extra hours are zapping my brain cells hard core. By the time I wearily close down my computer at the end of the day I'm completely spent and have lost all ability to form cohesive thoughts for the blog. Since my job gives us the bucks to help pay for our houses, it is pretty important for me to focus on getting my work done before updating here. No matter how much I wish the situation was reversed!

Just because the blog has been silent doesn't mean the projects have stopped! We've been working away on beach condo stairs and are completely done with phase one of the project. The phase where I'm pretty sure I lost my sense of smell due to marine quality oil based paint.