A Farewell to 2013

Thirteen of my favorite memories of 2013 (in no particular order):

1. Meeting my nephew, Lucas Ryan, for the first time
2. Sunset picnics on Pine Point Beach with my best friends
3. Visiting an old friend and the Tesla Museum an Belgrade, Serbia
4. My birthday serenade in Skopje, Macedonia
5. Waiting in line with my sister-in-law for hours to see Darren Criss perform Teenage Dream like a beautiful songbird.
6. Asking Dallas Green if I could shake his hand
7. Welcoming friends and family into our new home at our housewarming
8. The Sanibel Island Mystery Ride we gave my in-laws for their thirtieth anniversary.
9. Befriending Jonathan Woodward
10. Celebrating the marriage of my dear friend Morgan and her husband.
11. Tombstone pizzas with Nicholas and Megan before their departure to Liverpool.
12. Declaring my second major
13. The series finale of Breaking Bad.

Housewarming Party!

 

 Since our anniversary was just days before our housewarming party, we decided to incorporate the traditional and modern themes that represent a second anniversary into our party! The traditional theme of china inspired our modern tea party!  

 

 

The morning of the party,  I gathered loose local flowers from our farmer's market 

& Sheepscot Flower Farm. As hard as I tried, I couldn't find French Macarons anywhere locally, so I ordered them from this really great Etsy shop in California called Sparkles Macaron.

 

For last year's guestbook, I had everyone write their names on small paper triangles that I turned into scrapbook bunting. I hadn't put any thought into what to do this time around, so at the last minute we broke out Jacob's Diana and left it out for people to take group photos with. Not many people did it, but luckily one of our guests grabbed it and started snapping shots! We haven't developed them yet, but I am so excited to see how they turn out!

Food had the potential to be an insane undertaking. We were expecting 40 guests, and I had this crazy thought that sandwiches would be the easiest thing to serve. Thankfully, I couldn't sleep past 6am so we had plenty of time to put it all together! With the help of my mom, mother-in-law, and Jacob's aunt we had enough food to feed everyone!

I spent a few weeks collecting old teacups at Goodwill, and hit the jackpot! Once I started finding them, I couldn't stop! Jacob made some delicious lemon sugar cookies to go with them which we wrapped up in wax paper bags with lace doilies.

Menu:
Cucumber Sandwiches with Boursin
Egg Salad Sandwiches
Black Forest Ham & Smoked Mozzarella Sandwiches
Italian Pasta Salad
Susan's Famous Baklava
Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
Cheese & Vegetable Platters
French Macarons
Unsweetened Passionfruit Iced Tea
Perry Party Punch

Perry Party Punch

1 liter lemon-lime soda

2 bottles sparkling blood orange juice

1 pint raspberry sorbet

ice

Two Years!

Two years ago today, Jacob and I were married.

Our house is appropriately the second chapter of our married life, and we can't wait to see where this adventure takes us!

Master Bedroom: Check!

After two months of hard work, Jacob has finally completed the initial renovation of our bedroom. I can't say our bedroom is "done," because I know that we will have many things to add and change in the future. Once the wallpaper was finally stripped, it only took two weeks to make the space livable.

It took two large tubs of Spackle for us to fill all the holes, patch up the crumbly plaster, and mend where we had taken down the molding. Originally we were going to keep the molding intact, but removing the wood panel had left a large gap between it and the wall. After taking it all down, it was clear we would have a lot of plaster to repair. The most painful part of this process came when we sanded down the Spackle which resulted in a lot of dust that even our face masks couldn't keep out. This process probably took us two full days because we could only do a small patch of wall before we were forced to let the dust settle and come back later. If we had filled every imperfection we would have been set back about a week, so we left a few scrapes alone. Personally, I like the character it gives the walls. Our house is old, I don't need to lie about that. Would it be impressive if a room originally built in 1918 looked incredibly modern? Yes, but it wouldn't be the look we love and feel at home in.

It was so nice to see the clean layer of primer on the walls. The room had looked so bad for so long that a smooth coat of Kilz really looked like progress. Two layers of grey paint and it was hard to believe the work was done. Looking closely at the walls you can tell it was a quick paint job. Despite taping, we still somehow managed to get huge smears of grey paint on the ceiling. Our edges aren't clean, there are drips on the baseboards, but it is livable and far more beautiful than the wood paneled nightmare we were living in before. Down the line, we may have some real painters come in, but for now I enjoy waking up and seeing the little smudges of grey paint here and there. It makes our home feel real. Ours. Once we add some art to the walls, no one will notice the rough edges. We thought about framing a picture of how the original bedroom, just as a reminder to ourselves of how it started.

 

One day while I was at work, Jacob and his father had ripped up the carpet and sanded the hardwood floors. It was so full of dust and old wallpaper bits that it would have been more work to clean the ugly thing than to rip it all up. Underneath it was a huge mess. When Jacob showed me the before pictures I couldn't believe the work they had done! In the dining room we were lucky enough to find that there was only carpet glue around the edges. The bedroom, however, was completely covered. A power sander and 4 hours later, the floor was tolerable.

After investing in our very first brand new mattress it really feels like a grown-up bedroom. We will probably refinish the floors next spring or summer, but right now they feel smooth on our feet and we won't be putting them at risk for any damage. We are just some curtains and art away from our dream room!

Slow and Steady

Our lack of posting is not the result of disinterest, but the result of the fact that we have just been plugging away slowly at several daunting projects. The master bedroom continues to be our largest project, but we are almost to the next phase. Jacob has stripped 95% of the walls, and I hope that by next Monday we will have our first layer of primer done. We finally found a second bureau for $20 at a yard sale which we painted to match our newly repainted antique bureau. I have my fingers crossed that we will have the bedroom mostly done by our housewarming party on October 5. I am mostly just really looking forward to not sleeping in our spare room any longer.

The other project that has been taking up our time has been the dining room. Mostly just unpacking, creating piles for Goodwill, and figuring out just where we will stick everything when it is finally time to sand and refinish the floor. Unpacking is always a much bigger process than I ever remember, and even though our house is only 30 sq. ft. smaller than our apartment was, things don't fit in quite the same way (especially with 1 main room out of commission).

It is really hard not to get started on all of our dream-plans at once. I really want to get in touch with a contractor to begin getting quotes for the renovations we have in mind for  down the road, but it is important for us to not get too ahead of ourselves. Not only will we need to prioritize, but many of the things we want to do would all have to be done at once. It's hard not to dream big in our cute little house, and maybe someday we will have something to show for all that dreaming.

Project #3: Antique Bureau

About 2 years ago, I got this bureau through Freecycle along with a few cans of paint. The bureau was originally white, but I used one of the cans of weird green paint to give it a new color. I thought it looked great, it kind of went with the ceramic knobs that came with it. Jacob has always hated this bureau, but I'm not really sure why. It could be because of the color, or maybe because it really doesn't fit a whole lot, but I love it. It is quirky and ancient and a pretty decent piece of free furniture. 

However, as with many of our old gems, it was time for a face lift. On my inspiration board for the master bedroom, there was this gorgeous navy blue bureau. I knew that with enough patience I could transform my beautiful old gal into that navy bureau. 

I bought 1 pint of Olympic paint and some new brushes and went to town. The color was perfect, it was exactly what I had envisioned. We began to move it upstairs, but the more I began bumping around the drawers, the more we noticed how easy it was for the paint to peel away. My hope is to touch up the scraped areas once we get it in its final place, but I am not sure how well the paint will stand up over time. I did want it to maintain its antique look, but there is a big difference between "antique" and "beat up" although sometimes that may not seem like the case.

The ceramic knobs broke off as I tried to remove them, which is just as well because I had intended to replace them anyway. Lowe's didn't have the selection I had hoped for, and I couldn't find any interesting vintage knobs on Etsy that came in sets of 6. Yesterday, however, I wandered into the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It was wonderful! They had everything you could imagine: hardware, paint, tools, old doors, furniture, bathtubs, and KNOBS. I picked out these gorgeous gold knobs with floral painted ceramic center for $1 each! I couldn't believe what a deal I got! The cashier asked me to come back with a photo of them in action and said that they always love to see how customers use their items. I fully intend to bring photos next time I visit!

Progress on Master Bedroom

Jacob has been working tirelessly on the master bedroom. As I have said before, when we first removed the wood paneling, we had discovered wallpaper over what we thought was painted sheetrock. After weeks of delicately removing the wallpaper, careful to keep the teal "paint" intact, Jacob made a discovery. He accidentally dug the knife in too deep and discovered that the teal was not paint, but another layer of wallpaper. Beneath it lay another layer of wallpaper...and one more under that.

Now you might just say, "Guys, enough is enough. You could just paint over it!" You're right, we could. However, that is the route the previous owners took for almost 100 years. Just cover it up. We are starting a new life in this house, not only for us but for the house itself. We would rather peel away all of the coverups even if it reveals some larger problems than continue to layer on more crap. That is why it is all coming up. 

After discovering the new challenge of the room, Jacob demanded some real wallpaper removal materials. We made a trip to Lowe's to buy three things:

 The Piranha scoring tool, liquid spray, and scraper. The first scoring tool broke immediately so we went back for a replacement. This combination took Jacob a good 2 hours to get half of the first wall done. It was quicker than just using his putty knife, but still not ideal. A lot of people had been recommending the use of a steamer, and since we were hoping to have the bedroom completely refinished by October we definitely had to get things moving. Jacob borrowed a steamer from a coworker, and within an 30 minutes the entire wall was finished. Last night he spent another hour finishing the other wall. At this rate, all of the walls will be stripped by the weekend and we can begin phase 2. Our plan from there will be to patch up the rough spots and put Kilz primer over the plaster.

Project #2: Kitchen Cart

When we moved into our last apartment, Jacob's parents gave us a kitchen cart as a housewarming present. We had been eying it for awhile, and we were absolutely ecstatic when they surprised us with it! It had two doors on the front, a towl rack on the side, and was a nice clean white color. Our last apartment had a large kitchen, but not a lot of counter space so this served as a production area during that time. Our house has a much smaller kitchen, but what it lacks in size it makes up in glorious amounts counter space. Not only would this cart not fit in the kitchen, it just isn't necessary. However, we really wanted a place to store company plates, store the wine and cider we are fermenting, and have a place to serve drinks and hors d'oeuvres for guests. We removed the doors and towel rack and began painting!


I had purchased a sample of light grey that we thought we would use for the master bedroom, but it just wasn't right in there. I used part of it to paint the interior of the cart (the rest was used on Jacob's record stand) as Jacob painted the outside of the cart a mint color to match the fourth chair. We wanted to refinish the top of the cart, but wanted to make sure it would still be food safe in case we ever needed to use it for prep again, so we chose Watco Butcher Block. I love the mint against the coral half wall, and am really happy to see how our little cart has become a whole new creature in our new home. We plan to install some wine glass racks on the underside of the countertop to make for some extra room.

Introduction: The Kitchen

Day 1: Before

Taken the day of closing

Our Yard!

Day 1: Before

Taken the day after closing. Fence on 2 sides, reeeeeally long grass!

 After: Full Fence & Partial Garden!