Autumn Leaves

We've taken a break on home improvements after the Housewarming Party and decided to focus on the holiday season instead. But that doesn't mean we could ignore standard cold-weather preparations. And so today we tackled the leaves...

We raked the front yard once shortly before our party, but had deliberately ignored the back--which no one can see from the street--until most of the leaves fell. By late November, "fall" was over. D used the blower while I raked (I wanted too--I needed a post-Thanksgiving work-out). We filled 5 tarps-worth of leaves, which we dragged to the front curb. Fortunately, our neighborhood has curbside pick-up that runs on a cycle, so we don't even have to bag the leaves. There are still a lot of leaves in the back but we made a nice dent in it. We also re-raked the front yard. I'm sure I will be sore tomorrow.

We also finally got around to shutting our outdoor faucets. It took a while to find the right knobs, since we completely forgot that kind of useful information we got during our home inspection. But we figured it out, and have the outdoor faucets open with the indoor part shut down. As soon as we find them in the garage, we will also dress the faucets with the cute little booties my parents gave us.

What didn't we do? Well, we have some unfinished wood on our back steps that we planned to weatherproof.

The problem, which we just noticed today, is that Thompson's Water Seal requires a few days of dry, warm weather. The instructions state that 2 days of above 50-degree weather is necessary. We may have missed the boat on this one. Hopefully the wood won't take too much of a beating this winter and we can take care of it in the spring.

Another thing we didn't get to, but that is on our fall prep list, is fixing our window sills. The front bay window was already on our list of to-do's:

Then D's dad noticed that we have some rotting outside our upstairs windows, and that we should treat it before it rots too deeply.  The upstairs bedroom window is much worse than the bay window. It's practically hollow in there:

We need to buy some wood filler and exterior primer and paint. By default, we tend to go to Sherwin Williams; but I think this job doesn't require a particularly nice paint, so we'll probably just go to Home Depot. Paint recommendations are welcome. We're also considering just replacing the upstairs windows, which are original to the house and do not have storm or screen windows. If we do that, the sill will get replaced too. Alternately, we could just install storm/screen windows to the existing structure, which means that we will still have to fix the sill (that could be a tongue-twister). We're still doing research and it's all pretty expensive, so we'll probably just stop the rot and deal with the bigger issues later.

A Warm House

I've been meaning to post a quick thank you to everyone who came to wish us well (or wished us well from afar) at our housewarming party a few weeks ago. Over 40 people stopped by and I think fun was had by all, so our inaugural house party was a success. Best of all, we did not run out of food (thank you, Costco, despite your daunting quantities). Here are some pictures, all of which we took before our guests arrived. I planned to snap a few at the party but was too busy having fun!

Thanks to D's aunt, who sent us a beautiful flower arrangement that arrived with perfect timing, our table looks complete.

The only ones not happy about the party? The cats. Can you spot them both? Our skittish one is that lump to the left of the gray one. He dove under the covers the second the doorbell rang.

Chandelier Hanging

Our house included a free, already installed chandelier in the dining room.

Unfortunately, we hated it.

So J got a second-hand chandelier for a nice discount and I promised to install it. I took down the old fixture, begun unraveling the electrical wires, and got a minor case of "electrocution". You really DO have to turn the power off. After tripping nearly all of the circuit breakers (poorly labeled box!), I turned off the power. I took it down, picked up the new fixture, and quickly realized I had a problem, as was chronicled by J on October 2nd.

I resolved (after re-installing the old chandelier) to worry about other things. Unfortunately for me J REALLY didn't like the fixture, so she began pushing me to get an electrician. Which I was 98% against since it SHOULD be easy.

Fortunately for us, my grandfather read the blog and (in short) told me it WAS easy and gave me some pointers. I was concerned because the box we had didn't have the corner screw holes to attach the cross-bar. My grandfather pointed out that these boxes are standard and the holes almost certainly hiding underneath the plaster. Yes, he was correct. The next problem was that the center nut/U-bolt system to hold the fixture up didn't fit together. A trip to Home Depot yielded an adapter to make them work together.

After some gentle tugging and twisting (we have old and crusty canvas-coated wires) we got it installed.

Our cat P immediately demonstrated his confidence in my fixture hanging.

It's been hanging for about a month now with no issues, so I'm calling this mini-project a success.

Next on the agenda are windows! We've still got the original windows, drafty and sans screens. I'm inclined to keep them warts and all since I hate getting rid of something that's lasted 60 years. We plan on getting some quotes for storm windows. That should help with the draft and screen issues.

A Dining Room, at last

One and a half months after ordering our Basque dining room table, bench, and chairs at Crate and Barrel, they have arrived! We are very excited to welcome they into our home where they will be filling an almost-completely empty room. While waiting for them to arrive, we hung blinds (Roman shades, to be exact. I am slowly learning the vocabulary of window dressing.) and even successfully hung the lamp that caused us so much trouble last month (maybe D will write about that in a little more detail later), after getting more advice and doing more research. We're still working on table decor and other little details, and will eventually get a nice, bright-colored sideboard to contrast the sturdy lines of our table as well as a rug, but otherwise, the dining room is DONE!

Isn't that wine rack cool? A cheap find at a garage sale in our neighborhood. I think I'm going to like living here.

Incidentally, this is so far the only room we haven't had to paint. I love the soft brownish green the previous owners painted in here. We have yet to go through the old cans they left us in the garage--I hope we can find some of this color for some touch-ups.

State of the Living Room

Our $1000 media wall is now complete:

Before we became homeowners, $1000 would have seemed like an insane amount of money to spend on a single wall. After spending large amounts of time comparison shopping, $1000 is actually a solid value to outfit a wall of this size (142 inches wide, about 95 inches high). (That price is not including the TV, books, stereo, etc. Just the cabinets and shelving system).

Our criteria for this wall was: cabinets (important to hide clutter), book shelves, space for a TV, and <$1000. Another issue was the a baseboard runs along the wall, so ideally, whatever we choose will rise above it so as not to insulate the room from the heater!

When trying to find a source to create a media wall our first inclination (and still is for any furniture need) was to see what Ikea had. The Ikea Billy would be the easiest option. They have multiple colors and a wide variety of accessories to integrate a TV into. The problem is that the Billy isn't the sturdiest or most attractive furniture set. The system is plastic veneered fiberboard masquerading (poorly) as wood. It does the job, but not in a aesthetically pleasing way. Most depressing of all, a Billy system to cover the wall is nearly $1000, which we had set as our unofficial budget for the wall.

                                   

The next option I seriously considered was the Ikea Ivar. It's made of unfinished pine wood, which after being stained or painted could be a very attractive piece. It also has options for cabinets, which though plain could be enhanced by gluing some trim to the doors. It would only cost around $600. The major deal breaker was the TV - the shelves are only wide enough to accommodate a 32'' LCD. Which happens to be the size we currently own, but we hope to upgrade to something a little bigger in a few years. I looked into making wider shelves, but the Ivar shelves have a custom metal bracket on each end that would have been very difficult to fabricate.

After two strikes, I came up with my best and final idea. Ikea kitchen cabinets for the base (~$600), container store elfa shelving brackets (~$250), and premium pine shelving that I would cut to size and have J stain (~$150). It's a strange idea on (e)paper. Kitchen cabinets? Closet shelving system? But it gave excellent flexibility in determining the width and height and had the added benefit of the cabinets rising above the baseboard heat. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. We did buy handles for the doors, but I think we will keep them off. The "expanse of wood" effect would be lost with some handles sticking out.

So, along with the fireplace wall,

the living room is coming into form. We still have to design the entry way portion of the living room:

                                      

The current plan (at least in my mind), is to replace that arm chair with a love seat. Behind the love seat will go a Ikea Expedit arranged horizontally. The two rugs will be replaced with one large, rust-colored wool rug. Beyond that, I'm not sure. We'd like to have a coat and umbrella rack. More book shelves and storage could be nice. I'd like to leave some wall space available to hang paintings or photographs. Maybe some modular cubes arranged like a triangle? Lots of options....