1. That even on Christmas we can’t keep from doing some sort of home reno.
2. That working on the house CONTINUES to be SO much more appealing than working on our dissertations.
3. You shouldn’t ignore big lumps in the wall when you’re painting, even if you’re totally burnt out and want it to be done. Later it can come back to bite you in the ass!
4. Painting will never, ever be perfect…no matter how hard you try/how OCD you are/how many tools you have. It just won’t be.
5. Our stupid uninsulated walls are not only cold but destructive.
6. There was an office underneath all my crap – who knew?? (No comments from the peanut gallery…(mom))
7. Each graduate student kills like 2.4 million trees during their college tenure.
We here at F2F hope that each of you had a wonderful holiday celebration whether it be Christmas as we celebrate, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus – holidays are all about good food, good times, friends and family.
Typically Christmas time is a whirlwind of family events for us; one year I had 5 Christmas celebrations in one day! (Spread over about 200 miles…) Did someone say bring you buffet pants?!
This year however was different. This year our family celebration consisted of Micheal, myself, and three kitties. It was definitely a laid-back, albeit quiet, Christmas Day spent eating good food, opening presents, seeing family via the miracles of the internet, and of course…home renovations. Take a day off? Nah…we’ve got plenty to get done!
Micheal worked on finishing our buffet project, a pretty standard piece of IKEA furniture that we picked up off of Craigslist for FREE (!!) last month.
We decided to punch it up a little bit with Glidden’s Wild Truffle as the main paint color and then painted the inset of the cabinet doors a darker merlot color and added some new hardware. The fabulous before and after pics will be posted on Tuesday!
Over the past few days I’ve tackled my office which had become a dumping ground for all things random that I didn’t want to find a place for and Micheal began working on the bedroom ceiling by sanding down the old nasty paint and saying goodbye to the beautiful glow-in-the-dark stars.
With some extra time over the next few weeks I’m really hoping that we can make some progress on the house and maybe there need to be a few New Years Resolutions about making progress!
Enjoy some pics!
Prepping to go dig ourselves out!
Our poor cars!
The kitties out for their snow adventures!! Kali (on the right) went in face first.
Our neighbor came out a few times to try and knock snow off this tree to keep it from falling over! It’s a little scary, especially since his car is parked right under it!
Micheal having fun in his truck – he had quite a bit of fun and got stuck “mildly impeded” a few times. ;)
All day Thursday and Friday weather forecasters were calling for a major snowstorm that would drop anywhere from 10 to 20 inches of snow on the DC Metro area. Micheal and I were skeptical since anytime such accumulation was called for in Kansas we ended up with a lame dusting.
Despite our skepticism we went to the Home Depot to stock up on a few items needed to winterize our home in the even that the supposed “snow” did bury us.
First we set out to get the supplies to prepare the outside of our house for winter. Before we moved in the lovely bank bought us a new A/C unit which we wanted to cover with a tarp. We should have done this before all the leaves fell, but in this case it will keep the snow buildup out of the A/C. We used a tarp with a built in drawstring like this:
It worked out great! Definitely was a two person job but we were able to secure the tarp around the bottom of the A/C and protect it for the remainder of the winter!
Next we bought faucet covers for the two outdoor faucets we have. To do this you need to:
water out of the line.
As might be expected in a house that was not well maintained we have several spots in the house that are essentially holes to the outside world. The downstairs exterior door is one of those holes that lets in a nice continuous breeze. So we purchased a window sealing kit to cover the slatted window. This will help make our downstairs warmer and cut down on our energy bills!
Well, it’s a good thing we did these things since the weather forecasters were right…
So crazy!!
Hey all, I know I missed this post last week – many many apologies. We made some progress this weekend with the trim and I’m stoked! The refinished baseboard trim looks ah-mazing, looks like new and the choice of the trim vs the round has a clean polished look.
Well, without further ado…
1. When experimenting with design on any project (particularly furniture) try it on one piece first to see if you like it. If you don’t and you paint it on every drawer…and then you hate it…you’re going to be super annoyed when you have to sand it all off.
2. The Montgomery County Police department has an excellent response time – people need to find another dark street for their shenanigans!!
3. We need to invest in security lights, pronto.
A review of handy dandy edging tool to follow!
5. The Community Forklift is like a meat locker in the winter!! It was fa-reeeezing, so cold in fact we couldn’t even stay to shop! We’ll be bundling up next time!
6. Pottery Barn charges 85 bucks for 3 pieces of 1/4 inch pine glued together – crazy! We’ll be using this inspiration to build some floating shelves for the wall in our bedroom.
7. We TOTALLY should have made insulating the attic a priority, our house gets COLD!
It's a year of firsts for Micheal and I including our first Christmas as a married couple, our first Christmas in our first home and our first Christmas with both of us away from our families.
The first two are of course very exciting and we’re trying to embrace that excitement to distract from missing our families this holiday season. As we have always celebrated Christmas with our families we don’t have a ton of Christmas decorations for this huge house, but I’m trying to make due with what we’ve got!
I have ALWAYS been a “real tree” kinda girl when it comes to Christmas trees. Unfortunately we found out two years ago that Micheal is very allergic to real trees so we went for a fake tree this year. My beef with fake trees is that I don’t think they can ever really look real no matter how much money you spend. So instead of getting the standard fake tree I went for what I’m referring to as a “decorative statement” – a beautiful white tree!
For the past two years we’ve been buying a few new special ornaments each Christmas to add to our tree. We seem to be gravitating towards vintage looking metal ornaments.
Ornaments 2009
The kitties have been getting into the spirit as well…
After
Deciding whether to post my dresser, following Kari's restoration is a difficult proposal. We picked up this dresser for free on craigslist, the owner had tried to refinish it but had succeeded in wedging the drawers shut. The dresser was painted black, not just painted, but every inch was covered. The drawers would stick because the 1"x1" wood pieces that act as drawer guides were painted and the sides of the drawers were also painted, causing the two surfaces to disagree. The most interesting aspects of the dresser is that all the drawers have key locks and the dresser is assembled with rough dovetail joints and old t-head nails (think small railroad spikes). 
