Suburban Eden

I planted my first vegetable garden this summer. It is very likely that it's an overly ambitious first garden. I'm not good at reining myself in when it comes to new hobbies. I have four different types of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pole beans, English peas, yellow squash, carrots, pumpkins, and lettuce and a full complement of herbs in containers (except the cilantro, which arrived later than the rest).

Perhaps I should be selling farm shares? Probably not. I will, however, be canning, pickling, and freezing my vegetable bounty for most of July and August.

Of course this is all assuming that there's no tomato blight, drought, pestilence, my own debilitating laziness, bunnies... The litany of potentially destructive forces to be driven down upon my defenseless chicken-wired garden by vengeful gods is long and frightening. (Inflated sense of self, much?)

My neighbors must think I've finally gone 'round the bend. Sometimes I just stand there, looking down on my tiny plants with a maternal expression. Oh, look, Squash has a new set of leaves. Mama's so proud!

The best part right now is the early harvest. My herbs are going crazy and the lettuce is beautiful!

So green!

Big Boy Bed

Last Friday we made the transition from crib to bed, and I was, to say the least, apprehensive. I underestimated my little munchkin, not to mention my own parenting skills. I know how to transition. I've been there before, and the the tee shirt is old, stained, and holey.

He took to it beautifully, even "helped" the delivery guys set it up (and by "helped," I mean he played with his GeoTraks on the floor nearby, and chatted with Jackson, the truck driver, and his assistant). He's slept in it happily for a week, and has been on the phone to both Memere and Gramma to tell them the news. He even brought our friends upstairs to see it when they were over for dinner this past weekend.

From a design perspective, it's a little big for the room, and should be oriented with the headboard against the wall, but until I'm sure he won't hurl himself out, one side stays against the wall. I only want to buy one bed rail.

Things I love? The robot sheets I found at Home Goods, and the cars & trucks duvet from IKEA. The quilt and bed skirt came from Circo by Target. The bed came from Bob's Discount Furniture. Nothing fancy, no Pottery Barn, no Land of Nod, no pricey theme. Oh, and storage drawers? In a room with a teeny closet, those are a godsend!

So, here it is. The Big Boy Bed:

I love his 80's stylin one leg up on the jammies. Also, it took him less than two minutes to start using it for trains. Kid is seriously a vehicular junkie.!

Felix's Nursery (with Bonus Video)

With all the home improvement posts I've done, I've never really posted much about the nursery. I am so very proud of it, too. I only realized this while I was mentally shuffling furniture around for his Big Boy Bed, which arrives tomorrow.

I thought, Wow. I should take some pictures of the nursery before it's gone.
My baby's not so much a baby anymore.

When we were expecting, I thought about the nursery all the time. I could picture it behind my eyelids when I was falling asleep. I wanted something authentically ours, but also something both playful and put together that our little boy could put his stamp on. There are a lot of family pieces and hand-me-downs in this room--that means a lot to me. There are also more than a couple oooooh!-impulse-buy-for-the-nursery items from my beloved Target and IKEA.

So, to start off my wee tour, I'll show you some befores. I lurve me some befores.

Before: Our walk through, 3/2005

Before: All the baby swag jammed in the room before nesting kicked in. 9/2007

Before: painted, still with a pile of baby swag in the middle of the room. 9/2007

And now, the afters. Yay! Afters!

View from the door, with the bookcase my Dad made me when I was little, and the rocker--which came from Mark's late aunt's estate, and my Mom had recovered.

Perhaps my favorite little bit of the room--these three Pooh paintings were done by my maternal grandmother, whom I never got know. They hung in my room when I was little, too.

The crib, passed on to us by my former employers (I've put four babies down to sleep in this crib!), with the quilt made my all the women in my family, my Mom's old toy chest, and one of the three Roman shades she made for the room.

This is a section of the growth chart my dear friend Andrea, at Bouncing off the Walls Murals, painted for us.

The changing table/dresser came with the hand-me-down crib--new knobs from Target.

Boy wonder himself, showing off his Adirondack style rocker (and making a really weird face).

And now, the minute, thirty-one seconds you've all been waiting for, Felix's big interview. Hang on, kids, this is some serious docu-drama!

(not quite) Good (enough) Housekeeping, Part One

Five half-assed housekeeping points from my weekend.

~assuming that the dishwasher has done its job, that there isn't a smear of sterilized leftovers in your favorite saute pan, and simply putting it away without checking.

~substituting sunshine and fresh air via open windows for actual cleaning, ie: vacuuming and dusting

~washing and drying the laundry on a weekly basis. folding it bi-monthly. putting it away seasonally.

~hiding that which you can't (or won't) deal with in a guest room until a later date. five years later, regretting that decision.

~leaving the dinner dishes until morning

Another Complete Room: Downstairs Bath/Laundry

This room has been 95% done for quite a while now, just awaiting a few last punch list items, and a chunk of time for Mark to make up the cabinet door fronts. Older posts pertaining to the bathroom can be found here, here, and here. Just to bring everyone up to speed:

This is the space when we first saw the house. That closet over there on the right had vinyl floors and the washer/dryer hookups. What looks like a white wall on the left is actually a 2' square pillar around the chimney that sat awkwardly in the crook of this L-shaped room. We will not discuss the awful emerald green carpet.

Here is approximately the same shot today. We've taken down and put up some walls to reconfigure the space. Now the bathroom occupies the closet and adjacent area, and a wall divides everything to the left into a small office/library (whose door you see here), and the wall facing the camera encloses the office and makes a front parlor/entryway of sorts.

And now, a short video tour of the new bathroom:


It's very exciting, after living with a house in transition for so long, to finally have so much of the space not only livable, but the way we dreamed of it when we bought this sad, neglected house.

The Family Room: Five Year Evolution

Inspired by the awesomeness over at Orion Victorian, I'm going to show you all the most recent update to the house. This project actually happened over five weeks in October and early November of last year, just in time for Felix's birthday.

This is what it looked liked when we first looked at it. It was far more turquoise in real life. ::shudder::

Here it is, poorly lit, with all the furniture heaped in the middle, after I repainted, which was the first thing *I* tackled in the house. By this time, Mark had already gutted the adjacent dining room, and rebuilt the floor joists.

This is what it looked like for most of the interim. Mark put in new laminate flooring, and we covered the icky brown vinyl windows with reed shades. We occasionally "stage" the room with "friends." It makes our claims of a social life seem plausible.

Flash forward four and a half years, and it's empty again, stripped of window trim, and awaiting its fate.

Exterior shot. Look, Ma, no insulation under the siding!

And the walls come down...

One new wall up, one old wall down.

Windows in, trimmed, and drywalled.

Present day, renovated and checked off the list!

I'm thinking about doing a five year retrospective in April when we celebrate the anniversary of the closing. What do you think?

Orion Victorian! Go Check It Out!

I have, from time to time, posted about Mark's progress on the house. Various projects are underway, but nothing that's finished enough for a post (save one, but that's for another day). Over our five years here, I've developed a healthy appreciation for real life home remodeling (as opposed to the foolishness you see on This Old House, or anything on HGTV or DIY). It doesn't hurt that I married an exceptionally talented carpenter/general contractor...

But for today, I turn your eyes towards a friend of mine, and her new home adventure in Michigan.

She's wonderful, they're adorable, and I can't wait to see the soon-to-be three of them settle into and make their mark on their new home!

Confessions of a Suburban Murderess

Weeds. Not People. Let's just get that settled straight away.

I have these weeds. They plague me. I spend hours plotting their demise. They have deep, strong, hardy roots, and grow up from underneath the old concrete of our driveway. I dig, I pull. I cannot get the roots up. I cut them back and they sprout like hydras. It's obscene.

I'm loathe to use commercial weed killers because of the kiddo and the dogs and the healthy shrubs and perennials I have on the property, so I called my old friend, the internets, to find a home remedy for the problem. After a few sites, I managed to cobble together a rudimentary understanding of the remedy.

Here's what I made*: 1 T. strong spirits (gin, preferably, though I didn't have any, so I used vodka), 1 T cider vinegar, & 1 T dish soap in a 16 oz. spray bottle. Top off with hot water. I would not use this is in a broad application. It kills indiscriminately from what I've read. Also, you would need gallons. It's not super concentrated.

I cut back the foliage of these nasty, invasive chard like weeds so that the stalks were raw, and then I sprayed the bejeezus out of them, right up in their faces, so to speak. I am optimistic that they won't come back this time.

Mwah ah ah ah....

*Hello, fine print! I am not a chemist, a horticulturist, or even an avid gardener. I cannot be held responsible for you trying what I did and deriving unacceptable results. I'm just sharing what worked for me. Then again, it hasn't worked yet. I'll get back to you on that...

Who Would Have Guessed He's Ours?

Taken in a span of an hour, from Mark's cell phone.

Mama's little reader:

Daddy's little helper:

Renovation Updation. Bathroom: Part 2

I know, it doesn't look like a bathroom, does it? It's not. It's the view from the bathroom. In the foreground is the door to the basement, with latch, awaiting a new doorknob, and cat hole. All of the doors in the house are five panel like this with the brushed nickel knobs and plates. Nice, right?
Now, here's the bathroom. If you look closely, you can see that the cabinets don't have doors yet, so you can see what we're storing, but this is a pretty faithful rendering of the color scheme. Since I took the photos, I stabilized my bamboo stalk with black polished rover rocks from the craft store. Very zen... or something.

The front parlor got it's first dose of color today. Mark painted while Felix was sleeping, and I was helping my Mom recover the seat cushions on our dining room chairs. Totally home-improvementastic!

Renovation Updation. Bathroom: Part 1

I know, not a word. I've been watching DIY Channel, it's making me think in cheesier than normal titles...

So, here's what we've been working on (and when I say "we" I mean Mark). The built-in cabinets that differentiate the laundry from the bath are in, and Mark's working on the face frames and doors, in hopes he'll be able to prime the walls, ceilings, and cabinets before too long.


In the soon-to-be office, the tin ceiling is up, also in preparation for priming.


Next up, pictures of the beginnings of the new front entry!

Bathroom!

Before you get excited, all thinking, "What? They actually finished something over there at the Fallingdown House?" you should know that the laundry is still being done in the front room, and the cabinets and millwork are on hold for a while while Mark gets the front entry back on the house. However, here's what we've got so far (for the last set of befores, check here):

Shower stall with tiled enclosure.

Sink and toilet, with medicine cabinet and accessories.

Layout from upper corner.

With towels (blue and chocolate brown, which didn't translate really well) and the tiny watercolor we brought back from Hawai'i.

The untiled walls are going to be painted "New Chestnut," a warm, nut brown color from the Benjamin Moore "America's Colors" line, and the cabinets and millwork will be white, with a matching gray fireslate counter over the washer and dryer.

Plastered!

Kitchen wall, no longer awful blue!

Kitchen wall from hall.

New bath, looking towards the toilet and shower.

New bath, looking towards the laundry.

Front parlor and old front door.

Office with window.

Parlor, stair view.

Mark, tiling the bathroom.

Rough Inspection Retrospection

To commemorate the occasion of the remodel passing its rough inspections yesterday, I'd like to offer a gallery of it's progress over the last four years. It's a very image heavy post, so just keep scrolling:

This is what the front living room looked like when we first looked at it. Bland, and with awful carpeting, but not overly offensive.
Here it is again, with the carpet ripped up and some building materials instead of a couch.
Completely gutted. Still with the old windows. Like a genius, I forgot to photograph it from this angle with the new stud walls, plywood subfloor, and windows.

Here's the original staircase (with the previous owner's sweet amps - divorced guy with braces and an electric guitar!)

Note the lack of amps and walls, for that matter...
No stairs at all!!
New stairs, and a wall framed for the built-in we're planning for coats and shoes, etc.

The window and laundry closet, in the same room, catty corner to the couch. I wish I could express the grossness of the carpeting, but it would pale to what we found underneath it later.
The laundry closet, with our new washer and dryer, before we took everything apart.
And the walls start tumbling down.
This is the same view as two photos up, the one with the two vacuums in it, after new walls and windows, and before the space was subdivided for bath/laundry and office.
Here's the same view, but with the subdivision framed, and the washer and dryer in their new homes. That's a shower stall there on the right.

The space we carved up was a big, mildly L shaped space with a chimney smack in the middle. This is the bend in the L, with the laundry to the right and the front window behind. Pre-demolition, obviously.
Here's the same space, from the subdivision wall. It's going to be a small office/library.

This happened to every wall involved in the project, but this photo was the most dramatic. Note the old post and beam style framing we found. Turns out this part of the house is a lot older than the rest of it. It's like architectural archaeology.

Here's the dumpster we rented, which Mark packed very carefully to make sure we didn't go over the top (there would have been a fee...).