Buried!

I have been swamped lately! There are lots of things happening at work (which is good), lots of things happening at the house (which is great), and generally too much to think about (which is bogging down my mental capacities). This is a blog entry, but it’s also a bit of a purge. Here it goes..

We’ve accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. It’s really amazing to watch everything come together.

All the electrical head-scratchers have been worked out regarding three-way dimmers and whatnot, and the house looks amazing! Especially at night..It’s going to be a cool party house J More on that later.



Sconces on the vanity wall in the bathroom. There's a big mirror between them now - pictures to follow. 

The floor sanding went well and I used three coats of water based satin polyurethane to get the color and sheen I was looking for. It’s actually a bit shinier than I had in mind, but I really like it and I know it will hold up to stains and scratches much better than what I had thought. There are imperfections here and there, but I’m leaving them in place because I think they add a ton of character. The house is nearly 150 years old, after all.

A good view of the floors in the dining room. Chairs from PierOne thanks to my sister's discounts! :)

The big project lately has been hanging doors and figuring out how to trim them. I believe I mentioned a while back that all the doors in my house have been “saved” (wink) from the house next door that’s slated for demolition. While this also adds lots of character, it adds its own set of challenges. When these doors were installed, they were made to fit. That means some of the doors have been hand-planed on the edges here or there to account for a floor that was out of level or a door jamb that was out of plumb. Since only two of the interior doors in my house will actually hang on jambs we had a little bit of room to play. The “jamb doors” in my house needed to fit, obviously; the rest will be cut down slightly to fit the openings created for pocket doors. Now all my doors will match – OCD intact. J  

I put second and third coats of paint on several of the doors last night. Hopefully they’ll be dry enough to work with this evening when we attempt our pocket door and closet bypass door installations.

The other thing that will match is the trim throughout the house. Luckily the house next door also had the same decorative trim over the doors and windows as mine. We “salvaged” quite a bit of that and Dad/Roommate and I have planed and sanded everything down to bare wood. Now every opening should have the thick old moldings that the front/original portion of my house had and the later additions lacked. Since the trim will be painted anyway, I’ll be buying new wood for baseboard so all the woodwork matches all the way through the house. 

The bathroom vanity being put to good use...

Odds and ends, too:

·         Something to do with the refrigerator quit working, so I called in the Home Warranty company and had that fixed. Highly recommend the Home Warranty.

·         We’ve brought the washer and dryer back in to their rightful places and even did a test load of shop towels to make sure everything was still working there.

·         The dining room table came home! This is still so amazing to me: we found this wood in the attic space of the old garage and The Genius planed it down and made probably the coolest table ever. He copied the design from Restoration Hardware’s online catalogue and it looks amazing in the room. I’m really looking forward to having people over for dinner now! 

Dining room table with some of the chairs. It's the perfect size...and just plain cool.

·         Mom/Roommate primed the brick on the fireplace and got it ready for painting. I’m not totally sure what color it will be yet, but the living room is so much brighter with the bay window open and the dark brown brick primed a bright, clean white.

·         Dad/Roommate and I hung the closet organizer in the master bedroom closet. It’s pretty straightforward, but I don’t need anything fancy.

Closet organizer in the master bedroom. Lots of room for lots of shirts!

Oh! Speaking of this being a cool party house.. I was at the Brewery downtown a couple weeks back and they had a great band from Des Moines playing called the River Monks. The whole evening was themed around this Monk idea: they were featuring a Dopplebock from a brewery in Des Moines; the author who subjected himself to the 46 day Dopplebock beer fast (as touted by the Paulaner monks of Neudeck ob der Au in Munich for its nutrient/mineral content) was on hand to sign books and talk to us beer geeks; and the aforementioned River Monks were playing their brand of folky, minimalist pub music – it really made for a fun evening.

Anyway, I met up with a couple of the band members after their set and asked, half-joking/half-serious, if they’d play my house-warming party when they returned from their tour at the end of March. They were actually really excited about it, and I think I will set them up in the entryway J Dim the lights, chill the drinks, sit back and enjoy the night with some great music.

Anyway, I think that’s about it for now. My head feels significantly lighter now that I’ve gotten some of this out. Thanks for reading J