Catching Up

It's been over six months since our last blog update, but that doesn't mean we haven't been working. While we have been chipping away at a host of home improvements, our progress has definitely been a bit more scattered as we:

• graduated from grad school
• vacationed in New York
• traveled to a number of weddings
• celebrated our one year wedding anniversary
• rooted the Giants along to a World Series win

The room we last left you with was the downstairs bathroom. The final touch was figuring out a replacement for the cabinet doors above the toilet. Let's just say our male guests didn't need a mirror reflecting their "release." We chipped the mirrors off and Ilana re-purposed the old doors with some amazing tiling work:

The final product:

One of the other rooms that we left you with was the den. As you may recall, we took out the old closets (again for mirror-related reasons -- why did this place have so many GD mirrors?). We wanted to replace the built-in closet with something that offered more shelving options and could, if necessary, be moved. So, as we so often do, we looked to the brilliant minds at IKEA for a flexible and affordable solution. Here's Ilana working on Phase 1 (of many, many phases):

And here is the start of Phase 2:

A couple of phases later, we had:

And eventually:

The next project was to extend out our 2-inch mantle to something that you could actually put something on. Here's what we started with:

And with Seth's awesome woodworking skills it became:

We then turned our attention to the upstairs bathroom. It's funny that when we moved in, we felt that the bathroom was the nicest space in the house. It was the only room that had actually been upgraded since the initial 1969 construction and seemed so futuristically mid-80s in our otherwise oh-so-70s abode. But after making almost every other room in the house our own, the bathroom seemed out of place. We stink at remembering to take before shots, so the light is in this picture is new, but the rest is not:

Another shot, minus the rusted medicine cabinet mirror, but including the cracked sink and broken vanity:

Out with old (demo is never as easy as they make it look on tv):

The mirror hole gets sealed up:

And to get the cabinet shelf to fit with our piping, a small late night modification had to be made (luckily, the Unabomber was in the neighborhood and is handy with a circular saw):

Behold, a new bathroom:

We also painted the walls, but the color is light silver, so it's difficult to see the different in a photo. Also, that cabinet in the corner used to have a mirrored door:

But since we can't ever just leave things be, Ilana used her special spray paint + texture technique to transform it:

Boy, we really hate mirrors.

After the bathroom, and just because she's so good at it, Ilana finished up the caulking of the crown molding in the bedroom:

That brings us up to date. We have a ton of touch-up work to do on all of the rooms, but our attention is now turning to the grand finale: the office. So, be on the lookout for our next entry. Quite a cliffhanger we're leaving our four (maybe three depending on how busy Abby is these days) blog readers with...

But before we bid our loyal fans adieu, let's end by celebrating the completion of an entirely different type of project. After months combing Petfinder.com and meeting all kinds of dogs in all kinds of random Petco parking lots, we proudly present Benny, a new addition to our family. He's a fabulous dog, but much like Seymour, refuses to engage in manual labor:

Updating the Tiniest of Rooms

Slowly but surely, the den is coming together, so expect another update on that soon. But, in the meantime, we've been simultaneously working on the littlest room we got: the downstairs bathroom. A few changes here, a few changes there, and now we have a bathroom from this decade.

The first thing we tackled was the light, which resembled what the future looked like back in 1969. Man, were they ever off on that. The light illuminated a rusty mirrored medicine cabinet.


Since we didn't need the storage (a Seth and Ilana first!), step one entailed removing the medicine cabinet:


We sealed it up, but not before leaving a special message inside for any future occupants crazy enough to cut into the wall.


Ilana, as usual, was called in to do the spackling:


Next, the light fixture was replaced (stay tuned for a photo of that). We then turned our attention to the sink fixtures, which built on the silver and gold theme of the light above:


Removing things always seems more difficult than installing them, and that has definitely been the case with our place. You'd think that after all these months it wouldn't surprise us anymore. But it does. Things were put together with a sense of permanency that confuses and frustrates us. Notice the joy of removing one of the tougher pieces that was practically welded onto the sink:


And the disgust of removing one of the grosser ones:


Finally, all the old pieces were removed and the new ones put in. And the water flowed like, well, like water. Pay no attention to bucket situation -- that was only for testing purposed. The water now exits through a pipe, just as God intended it to.


And here's the final shot, with everything put together. A new light, a new mirror, and new sink fixtures:

We Call It The Den

There is a room in our place that we don't know what to call. So we call it the den because that's an east coast-y term and we like to infuse a little NY into our CA lives.

Although the bedroom technically isn't done yet (we still have to caulk the molding, touch up the paint job, and hang artwork), we decided to move on to this so-called den. Here's the best we have for a "before" shot (we really need to get better at taking the before shots!). This is where the hideous floor-to-ceiling mirror and brass closet doors used to be. Not only were they ugly, but they were constantly falling off their tracks, getting stuck, and causing other problems that caused profane language to come out our generally mild-mannered mouths. Plus, the incredibly inefficient use of space pained us. So, when the new floors came, the closet left.
First, we had to cover the tracks of, well, of the tracks from the old closet doors. I have watched enough home improvement shows to know that this takes really hot water, a scraper, and a ton of patience.
Meanwhile, Seth battled the 40-year-old screws. And won.
Sometimes it really amazes me that I'm going to school for policy instead of spackling.
Or spray texturing.
Moving on to the rest of the walls, I *swear* we went into this endeavor with the intent of doing a bold color. We tried 10 different colors, including dark reds and bright blues (a shred of evidence is in the top photo). But we got scared. And then proceeded to obsess over which shade of tan we liked best. We are who we are. (The award goes to Leone for picking the winning shade!)
We may pick boring colors, but you can't argue with the great results.
Our fans may be getting sick of me showcasing Seth's crown molding prowess, but I just can't help myself. The boy's got mad skills. (Thank you, Frank, for the gift certificate that got us the brad nailer!)
I'm guessing that I am the only person in my grad program who spent the last night of spring break caulking molding and touching up paint.
And, finally, the happy family on our new couch. (Admittedly, Seymour looks more surprised than happy, but trust us, he's happy.) This is our very first couch from an actual store and not off of craigslist, purchased with an inheritance gift received from the sale of Grandma Bea's house. We would be remiss if we didn't tell the world how much joy it bring us to have such a lovely -- and pragmatic -- reminder of Grandma in our home.

2010's Been Good To Us

Hard to believe that we haven't posted an update since last December. Lots has happened since then, but I guess we've been doing and enjoying at the expense of blogging.

Here are some of the highlights...

1) Slow and steady progress on the bedroom. We finally bought some end tables for the side of the bed. And then Seth and his dad, Frank, did some awesome crown molding work.

They make a good team (along with Seth's fancy new brad nailer) and are especially proud of the "corner work" they did by the closet.

It's now on me to caulk and touch-up the paint job -- soon, soon...

2) With some help from our new friend, Bristol, we painted the hallway, stairway, and upstairs doors. Little by little, we are wiping out the 1970s and bringing this place into the 21st Century. It truly is amazing the difference a fresh coat of paint makes.



















3) The mother of all home improvements: new flooring! We can't take much DIY credit for this one. We pooled all of our wedding gifts (thank you, thank you, everybody!) and, with huge grins on our faces, actually hired someone to pull up our old ratty, stained, cat-puked-upon carpet and put down beautiful bamboo flooring. Special thanks to Linnette Edwards, realtor extraordinaire, for giving us some great advice on what to get (and what not to get) and Danny Fox at the Floor Store for getting us a great price on the bamboo.


Note that the before photos don't adequately convey just how bad it was. Trust us. It was bad.

Sometimes we get a little sad seeing the old stuff go. Not this time.

Here's a side-by-side shot:

The finished product. We still like to sit around and bask in the glory of these floors. Seriously.