Turn Right at Lake Michigan

The Conundrum of L'Nursery Un, Part One.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:41:00 +0000

So I have the feeling that this is going to end up being a quasi-series of posts about a lot more things than just a single space in my house, but we're going to just start at the beginning and see where it goes.

It's been a long time since I've properly addressed Duder's room, a perennial work in progress since the day we found out he was nine months away from turning our lives upside down. His addition, actually, is pretty much what spawned the majority of the projects we've tacked since -- in order to make space for him (and later, his sister) we had to get some serious work done around here.

But in all the hubbub of renovations and diagnoses and added children/cats/stray dogs [nope, no owner found yet ...] Kiedis' room has really kind of fallen into shambles.

For the most part, it has to do with the floor.

It is the only space in the house where the parquet remains.

It also is an effing train wreck.

As this blurry-action-shot of me karate-chopping the floor right in front of the doorway into the room illustrates, we have ourselves a hazardous situation.

And more often than not, for reasons that span a lack of time and give-a-damn to some very delicate complexities we'll get into in a later post, this little tract of floor is more likely to appear as such:

And there are a handful of spots exactly like this throughout his room, mostly in the main foot traffic thoroughfares, waiting to pinch/stab/splinter/slash/etc your foot when you least expect it.

It's truly atrocious.

This is only flanked by the severe variance of the floor actually meeting up with the walls of the room:

The hodge-podged trim chunks pretending to be baseboard:

And the terrifyingly unsafe electrical work that we're basically blessed that little fingers have never explored:

THERE'S NO BOX. JUST AN EFFING PLUG AND SOME WIRES IN THE MOTHER EFFING WALL.

There's also another outlet that used to work but suddenly stopped one day and despite switching out the plug housing it still doesn't work, so lord knows what that actually means.

And, lest we forget, the closet project we started back when this was our bedroom that has been fairly much untouched since 2007:

And it's pretty safe to say that Kiedis' room is quite the cluster.

Now, I know some of you must be horrified that we even let a child in this room at all, never mind assign it to him as a bedroom, but all along choices have been made based on what was at the time best for him and as he's grown and we've learned more and more about his hurdles and complications his room has borne more than it's fair share of the brunt of those revelations and struggles.

But that's something I'll get into a little more later on.

Life, Interrupted.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 09 May 2013 02:53:00 +0000

You guys, I have so much I want to talk to you about, it's actually causing me to spazz out a bit because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get it all down before I forget it.

But then, then sometimes a puppy comes bounding up to your husband out of nowhere and is obviously well taken care of but without identification, so you spend your time trying to get a young dog that loves men, small children, other dogs, and is passionately curious about cats, home.

If you're local and recognize this pup, shoot me a line. If all you see is a sweet face, please spread the word. My heart is breaking knowing a family is missing it's new best friend.

We'll get back to house stuff next week.

Backyard Dreams, The Tour.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:31:00 +0000

Okay, this post won't make sense unless you look at Tuesday's post, so scroll on down, take a peek, then come back.

It was supposed to be one big long post, but I was summoned to Kiedis' preschool and had to bathe and you all are terribly bored by this story but it involves baby chickens and them being terrified of my son while he was enthralled by them and yeah, intervention.

So.

On to a SketchUp tour of what I think maybe I want my backyard to look like.

As you recall, this is the mock up of what I think it could look like, from an aerial view, with my house being at the bottom.

I had fun learning how to make thing 3D in SketchUp, so bear with me, because we're essentially going to step into the model.

Let's start from right out the back door, where things change very little.

This is essentially the set up we already have for the part of the yard directly out the back door, along the fence with the easement and power lines. The main difference would be tearing up the weird concrete slab out the back door and creating a grid of sunken pavers for us to put our already-owned lawn furniture on without them sinking into the ground. Those would stretch from essentially the back door to the raised garden beds, and would leave enough space for the chiminea to be lit at a comfortable distance from the furniture. I think we measured a rough six feet from the fence line, which here the chain link has been replaced with privacy fence with lattice trim. So basically a patio without all the visual weight of a deck or solid pavers, so it doesn't feel even smaller than it is.

If you were to step out my back door, then turn to the right, you'd be facing west (and the redneck neighbor's spotlights). Right now, there's a 4ft high rusted metal chicken wire fence separating our yard from our elderly neighbor's yard. In my mind, I'd like that to look more like this:

We'll start with a privacy fence with lattice trim along the top because I like to be fancy. To the right in this image is the back gate, which we need to replace with matching fencing and gate. We're going to tear up the terrible concrete job they've done along the back of the house, but a stepping stone would be good for when you first enter the yard (I think). To the left of the image is where there is now an awful chain link fence with those metal slats woven into it, and to sort of block that out without building a fence inside of a fence, we're thinking a lattice screen and a small rock garden in front of it, partially encompassing the magnolia tree we planted a couple of years ago. This is the widest part of the yard, so if we were ever to get a swing set for the kids, this would be the place for one.

Okay, now if you were entering my backyard from the gate or basically standing with my house directly behind you, you'd see something like this:

The white siding there is my back neighbor's garage (which we can't do anything about) and here you can more clearly see what I mean about the lattice in front of the slat-filled chain link. Where you see a white platform we currently have just a small concrete slab that we think maybe has something to do with the gas lines, so we're leaving it. The white platform is a kind of small deck, big enough for a couple of lounge chairs or a dog house or a kid's plastic playhouse or something of that nature. It'd be flanked by the raised garden beds and the rock garden, so really just about anything could go there. And if we ever got a projector (and could block out the spotlights) we'd put it there, on the garage, so this gives us a clean, defined space that otherwise we can't do a whole hell of a lot with.

Lastly, if you were standing by the magnolia tree with the garage behind you, you'd be looking at my house, which is this-ish:

I want to replace our current back door with a more inviting French door, because what we have right now is very ... ugly and cold and it has a weird peephole and why does your back door need a peephole? Then we'd make or get one of those little screen covers for around the non-functioning A/C unit so it wasn't so big and ugly in the middle of the yard. Now, the backyard actually slopes slightly down towards the swing set (in these drawings) so I'm not sure how plausible a flower bed would be right there, but it does get a ton of sun throughout the day and it's a whole lot of house with nothing really going on save for that one tiny little kitchen window. I thought a flower bed with big bushes or something could look really pretty, but I really don't know. Also, not drawn in, would be a small storage shed to the farthest left, kind of behind the swing set on the inside of the gate, so we could have a place to put away our various outside tools.

So basically, that's it, however horribly explained.

Now if only I could convince Kyle that something like this could totally work back here as well (since seeing it yesterday morning pretty much changed my life) then I think we'd be all set. Oh, and also a pergola, somewhere, because reasons.

Anyway, thoughts, comments, criticisms, volunteers?

Backyard Dreams.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:08:00 +0000

After working on this house for the last five years, I've gotten pretty good with envisioning what I want the interior to look like. I've got fairly decent spacial-relational skills, and there's something about essentially stripping something down to a blank box that just makes sense to my right-brained mind.

This is less truthful when it comes to the exterior of my home.

If I take things a tiny bit at a time, like a flower bed or a fence, I've got a handle on it. But I struggle with being able to see how everything could fit together when there's a little bit less of a defined space to work with. Also, our yard is the size of a postage stamp, so that's a struggle for this suburbs-raised girl.

So one rainy evening last week, I spent some serious time with SketchUp.

This is essentially the layout of my backyard as it is now, rough dimensions.

Not very thrilling, right? (Kyle thinks it's longer than this from left to right, but honestly I was too lazy to go outside and measure in the rain, so I guessed from what I could remember of previous measurements and what I could see from the back window.) This is essentially an aerial view with the house at the bottom.

Here's another perspective, from the short fence that separates our yard from our elderly neighbor's yard (and the redneck neighbor's yard and stupid spotlights):

You can see the weird concrete job from the back of the house, the raised garden beds I started last year, more weird concrete in front of our rear neighbor's garage, and the magnolia tree I planted a couple of years ago.

Not much to work with at all.

It's hard to find a balance between a family friendly yard (despite the lack of space) and a small urban oasis given that we don't have a whole heck of a lot of space and it probably would be easier to xenoscape the whole damn thing, despite that we've managed to grow a pretty decent lawn in the wake of the concreted-in urban farm/weed sanctuary that came with the place.

But I think I might be on to something.

This is where I say that I'm obviously not an architect or landscape designer or really a professional anything at all, so please don't laugh too hard at my rudimentary mock-up here. But after a lot of Pinterest stalking and just staring at the backyard I think I have something going that kind of excites me.

I've just been requested at Kiedis' school, so we'll have to save the tour for Thursday. In the meantime, let me know what you think or any ideas you have because I'm always open to suggestion, especially when I don't particularly have a vision.

Real Estate Stalking, The Run Edition.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:27:00 +0000

So despite living in a sometimes shady neighborhood, I try to take pride in what I can that's good about it -- like sidewalks that are mostly well lit, clear thoroughfares, lots of hills -- for running.

And on one of my runs a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that a house on my course is for sale.

And by house, I mean giant Tudor style mansion.

It took a few days, but I finally looked it up on Zillow and you guys. YOU GUYS.

LET'S BUY A HOUSE.

I first noticed this house about two years ago (as it's tucked away from the main drag a little) when we took the kids trick or treating in our own 'hood (as opposed to the suburbs) for the first time.

This is my little family on the back steps of the Tudor mansion, being greeted by super friendly older folk and being generally oohed and aahhed at. Bonus trivia: I sewed those costumes.

Anyway, so here's what she looks like now, apparently after being somewhat abandoned between then and now:

Obviously in need of some serious TLC, but she's OVER 4000 SQUARE FEET OF HOUSE.

The porch from the famliy photo:

I couldn't find good photos of the yard, but it's on a solid acre and was once a lovely garden. Stone paths and little groupings and all.

Inside is damn near inspiring for someone like me:

I mean, look at those mouldings! And how tall the ceilings are!

Look, I could build a whole new window seat!

Okay, long, and kind of creepy, but I can get behind that!

The rest of the photos online (I ganked these from Zillow) are pretty much crap, aside from illustrating that the entire basement is a tiki bar.

Not. Joking. Click the link and see for yourself.

Zillow has it last listed at 50K(!) which is STUPID CHEAP but also it's as-is and apparently one bathroom is gutted and needs redone and there's the damn tiki bar to contend with, but hot damn, if we could swing it would I breathe new life and love into this mansion and the life we could live and the books I would write and LE SIGH, THE BEAUTY. Even if it is in the ghettohood.

Further research has several sites saying that it was taken off of the market in February, and one site says sale pending, but there's still a sign in the yard that I keep forgetting to actually stop and read when I go by. Usually I'm just trying not to hyperventilate while running and it skips my mind.

The historical church next door to it is for sale, too, but it's A LOT more expensive. Good sign that it should retain some value once it's fixed up?

A girl can dream of a dilapidated old Tudor style mansion, I guess.

Spring Cleaning The Basement.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:56:00 +0000

So, let's take a break from outside and talk about the basement for a minute.

As I said before, we didn't elect to do a yard sale during Spring Break this year because (a) it's an awful lot of effort for not much of a return, never mind a day used completely up by sitting on the front steps and (b) it snowed.

So most of the stuff we'd be gathering to maybe possibly sell we ended up donating to the YWCA downtown, because it felt much better to give stuff to women and children who desperately need it than to hock it out to our neighbors.

There were a couple of things that we did actually sell on Craigslist/Half Price Books, but that was only recently.

Sure enough, after donating, selling, and then finally unpacking a few boxes that hadn't been touched since we moved in five years ago, we've made a dent:

You couldn't even get to that shelf back there before. And now, that shelf has my shipping materials for my Etsy shop. So that's nice to have that centralized.

Kyle worked on the other side of the basement:

Which admittedly doesn't look a whole heck of a lot different, but I assure you, it is. Mostly because we finally purged some boxes from things like our circular saw, my stand mixer, computers we don't even have any more, that kind of thing. Apparently I have inherited the box hoarding after all.

Of course, we still have quite a ways to go:

But thanks to the IndieGoGo campaign of the fall, we have just enough to be able to take a load or two to the dump of old construction debris and random non-useful cuts of wood/drywall/cement board, which will be nice to clear out.

Our goal for this year is to get the basement as cleared out and organized as possible so that we may be able to start demoing all of the awful moldy bits and mapping out our finished spaces.

Of course, if we have something you need/want hanging out here waiting to be disposed of, let me know and we'll work it out. We're all about sharing the the bounty over here, because you all have always been so generous with us, so pay it forward and all that jazz.

Urban Farming, The 2013 Edition. {Detail #4}

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:15:00 +0000

Basically, we're at this shit again. But with a plan. Sort of.

Last year, we bought some plants, threw them in the ground, and prayed. Then we got plants so huge they fell over and more tomatoes and eggplants than we knew what to do with.

That's not entirely true. We ate them, that's what we did.

So this year, knowing that (a) the location of my raised beds in direct proportion to the amount of sunlight received in a day and (b) my novice gardening abilities are really not issues, I actually went towards this year's garden with a half-baked plan.

Of course, this involved Pinterest and some infographic I'm hoping actually is full of viable information and truth and not a bunch of malarkey that's just going to piss me off in the end.

So, here's about half of what we have done, from what we could pick up at the Depot while we wait for the plant sale we found deals at last year to happen the first week of May.

The Pinterest infographic (sourced from here) had this whole layout thing about what kinds of plants go where in this grid and how they interact and so I thought, well, worth a shot. This is broccoli, cauliflower and romaine, iceberg, and butterleaf(?) lettuces in the ground. We hope to get tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and some squash at the plant sale to round this baby out.

The smaller bed has sweet onions and asparagus and is waiting on green onions, garlic, and if I'm lucky some pumpkin to fill it up.

You may also notice the large metal grate thing there, just chilling. We decided to upcycle the decorative/protective part of our broken screen door once we removed it from the frame (kudos to those of you who caught that little change on Tuesday) as a garden trellis-ish thing. Because nothing is better than free when it comes to usefulness around here.

I know the garden posts are boring to you guys and I apologize, but there's something about physically making our exterior surroundings beautiful for anyone and everyone to see that really makes me feel like we're making a difference in the 'hood. And being able to cook with food I grew myself? That's stupid amazing to me.

Plus I love watching the kids be interested and excited and having them help me. It's family bonding without electronics involved, and that is precious and rare.

Being outside has also caused us to really think about how our now-functioning green space can be of best use to us as a family, and we have some pretty awesome plans brewing so long as we can get our hands on the proper tools and materials ... and figure out the financial backing for said plans. :/ We have to talk about all that next week, but for now I'm just trying to enjoy the re-planted tulips that cross-pollinated into red and yellow striped pretties and the smell of fresh flowers and cut grass and staying outside as long as we can, while we still can.

I'm pretty excited, you guys. And I miss feeling like that.

That Time Of Year. {Detail #3}

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:26:00 +0000

So I was going to have this witty repartee about the Gardens of Babylon and how, in a strange twist of fate, I've gotten into gardening after demolishing everything that was here before (well, I didn't demolish it, but that's another story for another time) but then the Boston Marathon happened and I made myself go for a run because I am able, shin splints and weak ankles be damned, and so many people will not be able to ever again, so this post will be a lot less funny than I planned.

I apologize in advance.

UPDATED: I just thought of a quote I've seen floating around that may or may not be something Audrey Hepburn said, but the jist of it is that gardening is the practice of unwavering hope for the future. Apt, I think. So here's my hope for the future. Anyway, the weather got stupid warm stupid quick, so over the last couple of weekends (after Spring Break and Kyle being out of town) we worked on sprucing up the outdoor portion of L'Casa.

We replaced three of the front slope bushes that didn't survive last year's drought:

And that crazy-ass hollyhock is coming back. It better effing flower this year or so help me I'll light it on fire, stupid plant.

The rhododendron also did not survive the drought, so we picked up some more azaleas plus some violas, primrose (insert Hunger Games reference here) and some other creeper things to fill in the void.

The daffodils I was told wouldn't survive from my friend Rachel's memorial service are two years strong now, and my kids love the lewoah fowers and pretend to smell them every morning, which I know is Rachel being with me, with us, and enjoying our happiness by spreading it.

A close-up:

We still need to mulch all the things, but we'll hopefully get there this week.

The most laborious (and for me, exciting) thing to develop is this little grouping here:

I know, crazy angle, but I wanted to get all three in together.

Those are lilac bushes planted into the hill right by the lattice fence and the maple tree, between our house and the renter neighbor's. The plan, here, is to create a more natural boundary to drown out ... basically everything that goes on over there while creating something beautiful. We planted them far enough down that we can still build a fence coming off of the lattice, with the plan being to then build up this whole slope into flower beds so we don't have to mow it and to keep the neighbors (and their kids, and their trash) out of our yard.

But for now, this will do.

And I'll leave you with this tidbit to lead into Thursday's post ... just try to guess what's different here. Winner gets ... something? A sticker, maybe? Some leftover wallpaper? Meh, I'll figure it out.

Good thoughts and vibes and prayers and whatever you all may be into towards Boston. As a newbie runner, as family to Bostonians, and as a human being, my heart is with you all.

We're Back.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:17:00 +0000

Sorry to be gone for so long -- things have been slightly crazy around here, including Kyle being gone for a business trip beginning today. Oy.

So, I missed it, but on Tuesday I was on Offbeat Home & Life again! YAY! It was a post I completely forgot I wrote never mind submitted, so that was an awesome and welcome surprise. If you want to know my super-secret spray painting tips, head on over.

So over Spring Break we didn't get a whole lot of projects done, per se, as we did just massive amounts of CLEANING. Well, aside from me being sick for half the week, that was no fun. We didn't do a yard sale like we have the past couple of years because in February we actually donated almost everything we'd been collecting as no-longer-needed to the YWCA downtown. We felt giving the stuff to women and children who truly needed it was way better than selling it for our own (small) gain, so that was that.

Once the snow from the beginning of the week cleared, we actually got outside and did some minor work, nothing too exciting, except for this:

We finally(!) got the last bits of all the construction debris off of the side of the house. Of course, we'll be creating more soon enough, and that doesn't count the situation in the basement, but it's a start.

Speaking of the basement, we've been working on that some too, but I think we'll talk about that next week.

Have a great weekend!

Snowy Spring Break.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:35:00 +0000

So it's Spring Break for Kyle & Kiedis, we have like a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and I'm fighting an AWFUL sinus/ear infection because Ohio weather is just too much for my poor senses to handle any longer.

So I'm going to go ahead and call this week a break and hope I get some things done between chugging hot tea, bundling up, and dealing with two stir-crazy kids and a husband with cabin fever.

Have fun and stay safe out there, and happy holidays if you're into the spring ones.

Detail #2: The Magical Kohler Toilet Seat.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:34:00 +0000

Okay, this is going to be a wee graphic for a minute. Brace.

So when we were working on the master bathroom and changed out the toilet for a new, eco-friendly model (that I installed all by myself, thank you) we were blissfully unaware that toilets don't actually come with seats anymore.

Lucky for us, at some random trip to IKEA months prior we found a whole bin of clearance plastic toilet seats for $0.99 each, which is like stupid what in the name of what cheap. Plus they were black, which was a bonus since, you know, everything else in the bathroom was too.

Anyway, so that was about last June, when we put that all together and gave ourselves two functioning toilets for the first time since we moved in five years ago?

Well, we should have bought at least ten of those suckers.

Because lo about Thanksgiving, the seat cracked. And because I am somewhere between a master Girl Scout and apparently frighteningly white trash, as a quick solution I used packaging tape to get that stupid seat to stop pinching our behinds whenever we sat down.

Because yeah, we left it cracked for a little while because we ... had bigger concerns. Until the seat drew blood, then obviously a MacGyvering was in order.

But the problem with that is then, for our general purposes, it was fixed.

And we left it.

And it got gross.

Apparently, I have no shame. LOOK AT MY GROSS TAPED-TOGETHER CLEARANCE TOILET SEAT. LOOT AT IT.

Sorry if you were eating. It gets better from here on out, I promise.

So after hemming and hawing about what kind of toilet seat to get and being completely shocked at (a) how many there are out there to choose from and (b) how much they cost, we finally settled on the Kohler Q3 Cachet Quiet-Close Seat in Black because reasons.

I mean, we're still over the moon about our kitchen faucet and Kohler seemed to have the best selection of shapes and features and this one fit our budget, so we bit the bullet and gave it a whirl.

Seriously five minutes after I had it out of the box, I had it installed. It took longer to remove the old IKEA one than it did to install this beaut.

And if ever a toilet seat could be beautiful, this one certainly is.

SO SHINY. And no packaging tape. WIN.

But then, a completely unintentional discovery:

TA-DA! May little (or big) fingers never get pinched again. And may I never have to listen to my kids slam a toilet seat over and over and OVER AND OVER because at times THEY ARE SADISTS.

Aside: I'm writing this at 1:15 AM on Thursday morning after two of three days of Kyle having late meetings at work and he came home today to tell me he's being put on some panel at some conference in the middle of April and he will be COMPLETELY GONE for 3-4 days and I think I might break, you guys. I'm not built for single parenting. Cheers to those who do it by choice or by circumstance. I would be in the looney bin for sure. Point being, if I'm punchy, now you know why. NO REST.

So while this may seem silly in comparison to our first Detail of the year, this has been an issue that's been on the joint to-do list for a while and sitting down and discussing the pros and cons of various toilet seats is actually more complicated and draining than you think.

SO PRETTY. AND SHINY. AND NOT STABBY.

And now we can potty without fearing being cut by our own toilet. It's really the little things, you guys.

The Window Seat Wrap-Up.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:55:00 +0000

This one's a bit long, so get comfy and get a beverage.

First up, the seat cushion:

I knew when we started this project that I wanted a cushion for the seat part, because I have terrible hips and hard surfaces are ... well, hard. That and the sound of my kids jumping on the wood made me cringe.

So I went about researching cushion tutorials and upholstery foam and quickly had a coronary and cried into my duvet cover because DO YOU KNOW WHAT UPHOLSTERY FOAM COSTS? A KIDNEY A YARD, THAT'S WHAT.

Also the cushion tutorial I found that was only similar to what I wanted/needed was translated from it's original Portuguese and my head, it throbs.

So I set out to do my own tutorial throughout this whole process. And then promptly stopped because about a third of the way into this ordeal I realized that my sewing skills are sadly lacking and very much made up and not at all something to be emulated and plus, I wasn't sure it was all going to work out in the end so really, here's the English-from-Portuguese tute if you want to attempt something with actual directions and a nice end product. I just made my stuff up.

Honestly, If I hadn't spent all that time deconstructing our old Ektorp cover when I tried to revamp the ottoman, I'd have quickly found myself up Shiitake Creek without a paddle, if you catch my meaning. So self-taught slipcover making ahoy!

First, to deal with my foam issue, since the original plans we were hacking intended this to be a day bed, we ended up buying the cheapest foam twin bed mattress IKEA sells because it was literally a third of the price of buying rolls of upholstery foam and it was only a wee bit larger than we needed it to be instead of having to piece together smaller sections of foam and hope no one fell in the cracks when they sat down.

If you were paying attention back in February you might have caught the hint of that on Instagram:

But just in case I did manage to snap a couple "real" photos of my kids camping out on the random twin size mattress we had no real place for while we were finishing the actual building of the window seat.

Between this and Tova's early adoption of the seat before we even had it painted, I was pretty sure we'd hit the jackpot with this project.

Anyway, after removing the outer shell you see there (oh so easily with that all-the-way-around-zipper!) using a large serrated knife from my cutlery set and super precise measurements (ha!) I cut away two squares for the bookcases and trimmed a couple of inches off of the back smallest part so there wouldn't be any overhang off of the front of the bench.

Then, like the super pro I am, I draped the crap out of the IKEA fabric I'd picked out and somehow figured out how to make 58" wide fabric cover a 72" long mattress with the stripes all matching up because I am slightly OCD about things like that. And then I had the bright idea to add the lime green piping for character and more clean-looking finished edges despite never actually sewing piping in a seam before, so that was fun.
If you can call maddening fun, I guess. The hardest parts were the back corners -- to get the edges straight so it fit the cushion well and kept the stripes lined up and had the piping not look a jumbled mess.

Just if you ever find yourself at my house, don't look too carefully, okay?

Anyway, in order to attach the piping and then, of course, make the cover removable because of the general menagerie that is my house, I had to devise a way to make the back, angle-y part open and close enough to get the mattress out if need be and not look a wreck.

Some 2" wide Velcro did the trick, while also testing my sanity and patience and sewing abilities.

Oh, and of course I wanted the whole thing to be flippable so it can get twice the wear, so ALL THE LINES, THEY HAD TO MATCH UP. The Velcro actually wasn't as bad as trying to sew the flaps I made for the Velcro to be sewn to onto the bigger cover pieces with the piping tucked in and having everything line up and look as straight and clean as possible. It was a lot of fabric to shove through my little 10 year old sewing machine. We did it, though, and now our cushion can be sat on either side, has cute little piping, and is completely removable and (fingers crossed) washable for the inevitable disasters that may befall it with the kids and the cats and frankly us using it all the time.

I'm pretty proud of it.

Next, I promised you a peek into the drawers.

Here's the small, middle drawer, which is roughly 2' x 2':

It opens up pretty much to the pony wall, which was a factor we didn't consider until we'd pretty much finished the whole thing, so go us for accidentally doing something right. And obviously we painted them white as well. We talked about getting drawer liners or something for the insides, but we couldn't find anything we liked so for now, it's just paint on wood.

And here's the long one by Tova's door, or farthest away from the stairs:

I think that's about 2' x 3' but I'd have to check. There are a couple of things I'd change about the plans for these drawers -- first, we actually used 1x10s as the sides instead of the called-for 1x8s because the seat definitely had the height and obviously I hate wasting prime storage space. Second, we used thicker plywood for the bottom than called for so that they'd feel super sturdy, bear weight, and could stand if a child climbed into one because it's only a matter of time, let's be real. The one thing I wish we had thought about and done differently but didn't is how the boxes were constructed -- I'd have squared off the corners of each box with the front and back nestling inside of the sides instead of the other way around, just so it had a cleaner, more finished look from the side. But nothing's perfect, so just a point of reference.

Lastly, I also put these on Instagram the other day, but I've been hoarding them for a while now while the blog caught up to the build, but I thought you might like to see the finished product in action:

I think it's safe to say this was a very good idea for not only our first project of the year, but for our family.

Detail #1: The Window Seat Completion!

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:03:00 +0000

O hai! Max wants to know if you want to come upstairs and see his new giant cat bed.

Of course you do.

Ready?

TA-DA!

You guys, I'm so excited I could spit.

DETAIL SHOTS:

I'm going to talk a bit more about this cushion next week, but suffice it to say that it's a custom deal contrived by yours truly and her trusty 10 year old sewing machine. It has lime green piping (OMFG THE PIPING) to boot, because if nothing else I get a perverse kick out of impeccable coordination.

Those pillows are extras from the living room we never use. I think we got them at Pier 1 forever ago. I plan to acquire make more to really flesh it out to be more like a daybed (because it's big enough) but for now, these will do.

To the side of each book case I re-hung the kids' baby announcement/first shoe memory boxes:

And yes, they're kind of ridiculously high on the wall, but there's a reason for that. Partly to make room for other awesome that (fingers crossed) will be coming in the nearish future, partly so that little hands can't reach them and knock them down and break them. Or that our heads don't do the same.

I also moved things on the higher shelves already:

I moved the brown geode from Kyle's childhood collection to the topmost shelf to operate as a bookend, and I did the same on the other shelf with the chunk of amethyst that I think came from my high school boyfriend's dad's family vacation one year? Not that I went, they just got me something.

I also added a picture of us from our winter trip to Florida right after we got engaged with two little apothecary jars I found at the thrift store eons ago and filled them with little crystals of citrine and amethyst that were part of our wedding decorations.

Yes, I decorated the tables at my wedding with real semi-precious stones. Our birthstones, to be exact. Because it sounded really awesome at the time. Now I just have a bunch of rocks I'm not entirely sure what to do with. Well, except for these ones, these found a use.

Now let's look at that valance:

It's not perfect (lord, nothing I do ever is, especially not when I sew) but I think it helps balance out the stripes of the cushion well and adds some whimsy.

It's held up by a wide curtain rod at the top by the ceiling and then tented out by a tension rod:

It was an idea I saw on Pinterest literally before Pinterest was a thing. It also makes this valance stupid easy to take down to wash or whatever. I like things that can be easily fixed.

As a reminder, this is what this area started as after we'd moved in:

And here's that same angle now:

A wee bit closer, but semantics. And I just realized that that picture of my (now dead) cat Sammy has made it full circle around this house and essentially back to where she started, albeit in a new frame. Aww, poor old Sammy. She had the personality you would assume would go along with this face but she was loyal and sweet once you got to know her. She had awful breath, though, truly awful. But she was my very first cat and my baby and now she's just a photo on a shelf, watching over my family as it grows. Sniff.

Anyway. I want to replace that fan because if you stand on the seat (as a full grown adult) to reach those top shelves it threatens to decapitate you, but Kyle and I are in heated discussions about that. So we'll see where that goes.

But for now, there it is! Thanks again to PureBond for helping us out with this project (by making it a possibility and then a reality), and next week I'll be breaking down the nitty gritty of how I made that cushion, giving you a peep at the drawers (eek!), and my closing thoughts on this build over all (FEELS, I HAVE THEM).

Have a great weekend!

The Next Five Year Project.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:51:00 +0000

While we revealed all the hard work we'd put into our master suite last summer, I was pretty quick to admit that it had been a long, sloooooooooooow process. It took nearly five years, in fact, from the first steps of demolition to having a 98% complete, liveable space thanks in part to pregnancies, an almost-divorce (that's not a joke, that legit happened and for more on that you should go over to home base) budget woes, and plain old TIME.

DIY is time consuming, people. I'm not sure enough bloggers say that. What you don't pay someone else in labor costs you're putting in yourself, often more than a trained professional because you're learning as you go. While you may save some dollars in the bank, you're definitely spending your nights and weekends and vacations and summers and sanity to accomplish yourself.

Never mind the minor to slightly major injuries, the favors called in to friends and family for everything from borrowed tools and child care to straight up loans and help-us-we-are-in-over-our-heads calls, and the fast food consumed by every party involved because you are just too damn tired to cook yourself some mac and cheese or make a PB&J.

Just for a few pretty pictures on a blog.

Anyway.

So it takes a long time to do a major project and do it right.

With that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to our next long-series, The Next Five Year Project.

This series will likely stretch the span of ... well, the next five or so years of our lives as long as we're in this house. Partly due to time, partly due to funding, and partly because we like to spend time as a family sometimes NOT covered in dust/paint/glue/stain/sweat/blood/tears.

Strange, I know.

And what is that project, I'm sure you're dying to know?

We're going to finish the basement.

I'll talk about our plans more a little later on, but there you have it.

Come back Thursday to see the 100% completed Window Seat!

Detail #1: The Window Seat Is BUILT!

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:37:00 +0000

I am BRIMMING with EXCITEMENT, you guys.

Despite illness and birthdays and snafus and what have yous, we bust this thing out and made it functional instead of, you know, letting it sit for six months half-built and shrugging our shoulders and telling ourselves we'll get to it except we wait until the last possible moment, say, before we have a crapton of people over for something or other and then we whirlwind complete it not to what we imagined but just to what will work and call it a slightly defeated day.

NOPE. NONE OF THAT THIS TIME, KIDDIES.

Anyway, I know you're here for the photos, so let's get to it:

ISN'T IT SO PRETTY?!?

Obviously, things have changed a little bit since the last time you saw it. After living with the shorter BILLY bookcases and the purple painted backs for a week or so, two things became apparent: the bookcases were tragically too short, making the whole space feel crunched and that the purple wasn't translating as fun and bright as we'd hoped.

So we made a trek to IKEA for the taller BILLYs and I let Kyle pick out a color for the first time in ever.

The taller bookcases were actually about two inches too tall for the set-up as we had it, so we hacked them (literally) to make them fit while still keeping their structural integrity. Years upon years of building IKEA furniture will allow you to do that with ease, I'm afraid to say.

We used casing to act as a small crown around the top to hide our hacking, and used the wall-mounting brackets that came with the BILLYs to really secure them in place, lest a child gets curious.

We also used a wider chair rail around the entire bottom of the seat to mask the bottom of the bookcases and to add some extra protection where little hands and feet and claws and butts will often be.

The color Kyle chose out of our stash in the basement is the lime green from the kitchen -- and at first I was really afraid that it would look awful since the berry purple became kind of a bloody wine cooler color without direct sunlight. But, as he pointed out, both kids have lime green as accent colors in their rooms and it would echo the bright yellow of the bathroom upstairs.

And he was right.

Our kids' book collection looked a bit sadder with the taller cases, so I pulled some of our books out of the basement, as well as some I'd been hoarding in Tova's room (along with her book ends) and some random bits of decor from around the house to fill in the gaps.

None of it is permanent -- in fact, I've already moved some things around, but that's the beauty of bookcases, right? Things are meant to be moved about.

I also took down the old curtain rod (and moved it to Tova's room where it's making her curtain sitch 1000% better than that cheap thing we had going on before) and since IKEA re-introduced the TUPPLUR roller blinds sans choke hazard, I picked one of those bad boys up to keep the privacy from our neighbors without creating a lot of fuss.

Painting the window seat and trim kind of forced me to touch up the window trim here, too, so it's extra fresh and clean looking. Now I just have to do everything else upstairs to match.

Moving on to the DRAWERS!

I know I showed you the trim on the front before, but here it is in full glory. The big decorative bumper there, if you will, is a piece of the wide chair rail and then a thicker, more ornate rail on top of it. I think it really seals the look of the built-in.

I also showed you the framed-off fronts before, but here they are with hardware. I opted for something clean, classic, and elegant to match the rest of the upstairs fixtures. I thought those half-arch file cabinet looking ones might be too heavy, plus kind of a pain to open without reaching waaaaaaay down to grab it. This I can open with a foot. Because I use my feet to do basic tasks. Like a primate.

And the kind of best thing is that they're just on straight-roll casters, so super easy to roll in and out, I don't have to worry about them jumping tracks or anything, and I can clean underneath them easy peasy. I'd show you the drawers pulled out, but that's really hard to photograph since they're literally at the top of the stairs when pulled out plus it took us about twelve nanoseconds after the paint dried for us to start storing things in them because for the rest of all time we will need every square inch of storage we can get our hands on.

Now hopefully you're aware enough to realize that this post wasn't titled as finished, because, well, it's not. We still have a couple more beasts to tackle before we can officially stamp this as DONE, but I just couldn't wait to show you how beautiful the window seat is all on it's own, without any extras.

I'm so proud of the work we did on this one, and I can't wait to show you what's next.

We are being reimbursed for our use of PureBond products, however all opinions and viewpoints are strictly our own.

When Things Break, Part 3.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:12:00 +0000

Sorry about disappearing last week. On Monday (when I usually actually write the Tuesday posts) I had an awful 14-hr bug that had me bedridden and Kyle had to stay home and the whole bit.

Then Tuesday, when I assumed I might be able to crank out a post real quick if Tova watched Sesame Street while Kiedis was at school ...

I lit the oven on fire.

I was making lunch for Tova and noticed after I took her fish sticks out that it looked kind of like there was a flashlight going off in my oven. It was hard to tell through the door, as we hang our kitchen towels on the front handle of the oven, so I had to open it up.

To my shock, there was a white flame on the bottom coil of the oven, travelling along the coil like a fuse on a piece of dynamite in a Looney Toons episode.

I quickly grabbed the fire extinguisher we keep under the sink (safety first, you guys) and unleashed that upon my poor stove. White dust and the most god-awful chemical smell filled my kitchen, so I opened a window since Tova was just in the other room and I felt my throat close up.

But the fire wasn't out. I tried again with the extinguisher, and it still wasn't out. I ran to the basement and cut the power to the entire kitchen, as I was wondering if this was an electrical fire and it would keep burning until there wasn't electricity going to it.

No luck. Still on fire.

(This is where I point out a new-to-me piece of knowledge thanks to the fire department -- when you hard wire an appliance outlet, it gets it's own fuse in the fuse box, often taking up two spaces as it's a 220 volt current as opposed to the usual 110 volt set up. So while I did cut power to the kitchen, I didn't know my oven was on an entirely separate fuse, hence why the clock on the oven never went off during this whole debacle. The more you know, kids, the more you know.)

So, I panicked. And called 911.

You know what's super scary? To have a dispatcher tell you calmly, yet with urgency, to get you and your child out of the house immediately.

I mean, HOLY EFFBALLS.

And of course, Tova was just in her unders because we're potty training, so like a dumbass I ran upstairs and grabbed clothes for her because it was cold outside and I refused to be that lady you see on the news with naked toddlers and awful pj's on talking about her house burning down on the news.

After I got her dressed and put coats on both of us, I grabbed my phone and my external hard drive and prayed. I'd left the door to the basement open so the cats could get out and I thought about taking Cheech with me, but by the time I got down to the car (where the dispatcher told me to wait for the fire department) I saw his little face looking at me from the screen door and I felt like a terrible person because I left all my pets to fend for themselves.

In reality, I didn't think the house was going to burn down -- I thought the kitchen might end up with some hard core damage -- but I figured they'd probably be okay since as I came out I heard the fire trucks on their way. Bonus of having a station up the street and around the corner. But still. My poor fur babies.

Anyway.

They came, put out the fire (it was a grease fire, they said), talked to me about my fuse box, and let me back in my house just in time for the bus to drop off Kiedis.

The firefighter said he thought my oven should work just fine once I cleaned it out, so once I got the kids down for their naps I started deep cleaning my kitchen like my life depended on it. Because fire extinguisher residue? It gets on EVERYTHING. It was all the way to the FOYER. And I couldn't stand the idea of all that chemical gross on anything my kids even came close to being in contact with, so yeah, I went into full mania cleaning mode, saving the oven for last to make sure it wasn't still hot.

I scrubbed that beast despite my back seizing up (I have muscle spasms in my back that had been agitated by my puking the day before, so it was extra excruciating to be all bent over and exerting force) and by the time Kyle got home it was mostly clean.

But when Kyle went to go make dinner, it started smoking again, and the bottom coil wasn't heating. The stove top worked, the broiler worked, but not the bottom coil.

So.

I'm getting a new oven for my birthday (which was last Wednesday). Color me ... not enthused.

We've been talking about someday in the near future of renovating the kitchen to better fit our growing-up family and we'd been waiting to replace the oven, which research showed is probably from the late '90's, until we knew what we wanted the new kitchen layout to be. But now, now we didn't have much choice, neither of us wanting to buy a throw-away appliance to only upgrade at an unknown date.

So money we'd been saving for a couple of projects to work on through the spring was eaten up by getting a very simple, barely nicer than what we already had, oven. It's supposed to be delivered today, so we'll see how it works out. I mean, a new oven will be nice and all, but it feels pretty awful to not only have to deal with a fire in your house, but to then have your plans for the next three months pretty much dashed thanks to that fire.

Just goes to show, home ownership is never dull. And rarely what you plan it to be.

Detail #1: The Window Seat Gets Some ... More Storage.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 04:29:00 +0000

So once we had the bookcases installed and ready to go, it was time to work on the trundle drawers underneath the seat platform. We built the three drawers pretty much according to the plans, which was still a wee harder than it looked.

Building the boxes was easy, but we were afraid that since we'd picked a thicker PureBond plywood for our bottoms than initially called for that we'd have some clearance issues.

So we tried (and failed) to inset the plywood into the drawer box because that crap is a lot harder than it looks to get plumb, especially when we had the guy at Home Depot cut down the second sheet of plywood for us so we could get it in the Matrix without beheading anyone.

But as I said, we failed. So we went back to the drawing board and added the plywood to the bottom as the directions said to and crossed our fingers that everything would still fit together.

Kyle, fresh off of his last mismeasuring debacle, was smart enough to build the two end boxes first before building the middle one, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, since we had to fiddle with the dimensions of the day bed to get it fit our space, we wanted to make sure that we didn't have some wonky mini drawer at one end or the other, making the whole thing look a mess. By putting it in the middle (where the floor kind of bows up for whatever old house reason) it kept some of the symmetry of the whole piece in tact -- and it's only about an inch difference, so it's hardly noticeable unless you're looking for it.

Second, remember that random grate with the electrical running right under it? It's our eventual plan (once we 100% know where that wire provides power to) to junction it off and add an outlet underneath so we can plug in things like wall lamps or laptops or whatever have you, since this house lacks ample wattage options and we're a pretty high tech family, so chances are that someone at some point will need to plug something in up there.

But to make space for that, we needed to shorten the depth of the drawer. So the middle drawer was the last to be built.

And while Kyle worked on that, I worked on adding some trim to mask the front most 2x4 and to add to the front of the drawers for a look that coordinated with the existing trim, for a serious built-in look.

And that, my friends, is the most you get to see until the big reveal.

Speculate as you may.

We are being reimbursed for our use of PureBond products, however all opinions and viewpoints are strictly our own.

Detail #1: Window Seat Progress!

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:36:00 +0000

Sorry about last Thursday. I completely underestimated the amount of effort it would take to prep a preschooler and a toddler for a Valentine's Day party at school. Holy crap.

But anyway. I have pictures!

After looking at the partly-built window seat for a couple of days, I realized that we needed to amp it up a notch if we really wanted this area to be everything I've dreamed it could be for five years. So I took to Pinterest and perused what other people's window seats looked like and guess what? A great deal of them had flanking bookcases built around them. Eyeballing the space between the window ledge and the back corners of the window seat, I was pretty sure we had just the thing.

And wouldn't you know it, FOR ONCE, some old Ikea Billy bookcases were the PERFECT FIT.

That never happens with Ikea. It's always some weird European standard size and you have to hack the crap out of it to make it look like it fit to American standard sizes and it's so rarely worth the hassle.

We took the bookcases from the living room that had the kids' books on them, took off the back MDF, spackled the ridges, and tucked those babies right into place:

And speaking of babies, mine were pretty stoked about this whole development:

They pretty much thought we'd just built them a stage for their shenanigans, and acted accordingly:

But you know, it was nice to see them excited about this project between their bedrooms and to take an interest in it. The jumping on the window seat, though, that was not okay. Mostly because it was loud and I was having terrifying visions of them launching off of the window seat and down the stairs to a very expensive and uncomfortable ER visit. But we got a handle on it.

And after a little zhuzhing, this is what we had:

I used some leftover paint in the basement to paint the wall behind the bookcases a deep berry color, and after that dried and the kids were in bed we loaded their books back into the shelves and hoped that this change of situation wouldn't cause them to freak out upon discovery.

No, the next morning as I climbed the stairs to get them up for school, this is what I found:

My little early riser had been silent as a mouse (she's usually yelling HI HOW'RE YOU HI HI HI down the stairs or just coming into our room and screaming until we pull her up into bed with us after terrorizing her brother awake and into a horrendous mood) reading her books on the half-built window seat. We hadn't even explained this whole get-up to them because it wasn't finished yet, but apparently they needed no clarification.

What's been great is that every night now, right after their baths they run to the window seat and scramble up, asking us to read books to them and reading them along with us and we sit there as a family and read together, no TVs or phones or computers stealing anyone's attention. Just us, the kids, and the board books lovingly inscribed to our children by our friends and family back when they were still just feti.

This is exactly, exactly, what I'd hoped for. I'm getting verklempt even talking about it now. This was exactly what I'd dreamed it would be for us, this communal space to share a love of reading and togetherness without all the extra-ness of society cutting in. And it wasn't even finished yet.

So our window seat project has already exceeded our expectations of usefulness and importance in our daily lives.

Now we just have to make it pretty.

We are being reimbursed for our use of PureBond products, however all opinions and viewpoints are strictly our own.

Detail #1: The Window Seat Emergeth!

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 04:07:00 +0000

As you last knew, we were stuck with two end braces for our hacked window seat that were two big for the space intended because measuring things is hard.

Well, good thing we got that straightened out:

Also, I'd like to point out something here:

Kyle kept the braces' locations straight by putting the initial of the child who's room was on the same wall. Presh. Someday, when other people live here and they inevitably tear down half of the things we've done, they're going to find all sorts of things like this, which makes me all squishy and warm inside. Not that they'll tear them down, mind you, but that they'll find traces of us and our family if they do and then maybe the choices we've made won't seem so strange to them.

Of course, not everything was perfect:

But that was to be expected, as the two spaces weren't evenly across from one another, so we'll just cut down a piece of the old baseboard and pop that right in there, no worries. A couple quick countersunk screws in appropriate places mounted the ends to the walls, and it we could finally say we had solid progress.

After that, it was pretty much a cake walk (of careful measurements) to build the platform for the seating area and attach that to the ends, and hot snot we have something legit-ish forming:

Now, now was the moment of truth.

It was time to commit to SparkleMotion and cut the PureBond plywood.

Kyle did most of the cutting while I helped brace the huge piece so we could get straight lines and because I am prone to maiming myself when handling anything above 9V. He liked that it barely splintered along the cut edges and that there was no god-awful stank that exploded from the plywood once you cut it. Apparently that happens. I wouldn't really know since the last time we cut a bunch of plywood it was for Tova's bedroom floor and I was forbidden from having any part of that process because I was hugely pregnant.

So! Kyle likes how this plywood handles itself while being hacked into pieces, and I liked how smooth and even it felt -- barely needs to be sanded, even on the edges. Which is awesome, because I hate sanding.

Anyway, two cuts later we had our seating platform:

Which was pretty awesome, to see this finally becoming real. And yes, since the plans are based off of those for a twin day bed, this thing is quite huge for a window seat, but there's a reason for that. We'll get there.

Now, as you can see there's still some plaster peeking out from underneath there, and I quickly expressed concern about containing that after watching the dust fly while screwing the PureBond down on the frame. This window seat is supposed to have some substantial storage below, but the last thing I want is for the stuff I hide away to be covered in plaster dust. It took about five seconds to figure out how to remedy that:

We just used the cut pieces from the seating platform and trimmed them to fit inside the nooks created by the frame and combo glued & screwed them into place, which actually gave the underneath of the seat a more finished look while supporting the wall and containing broken bits of plaster.

And this way, we didn't waste a square inch of the 4'x8' PureBond sheet. Because resourcefulness is the name of our game, homies.

Anywhoodle, we needed to get back to the Depot to pick up another sheet of PureBond and the wood to make the drawers and of course, it snowed like gangbusters. Luckily, if nothing else, I am an epic player of the "What if we..." game, and on Thursday you'll see the stroke of genius I pulled out of my butt (if by butt I were to mean another room in this house, but you catch my drift) plus probably some pictures of my kids being ridiculously cute because it'll be Valentine's Day and I'm a giver like that.

We are being reimbursed for our use of PureBond products, however all opinions and viewpoints are strictly our own.

Detail #1: The Window Seat Hits Its First Snafu. Of Course.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:33:00 +0000

While I was busy showing our kids how to properly do minor demo and exploring the innards of my home, downstairs Kyle was in the kitchen working on the first step from the plans -- building the sides of the base:

Everything was all peachy keen, the kids went for a nap, I went for a run, and Kyle ... started mumbling once he took the end braces upstairs to screw them into the walls:

Of course.

Meanwhile, I love that Kyle wrote notes to himself on the braces. I mean, aside from the measurements. Dude didn't want to get it wrong. I appreciate that.

A close up shows a clear overlap into the door frame of Kiedis' room, by almost exactly two inches.

At first, Kyle was like, it's totally cool, I'll just brace it from behind and it will completely work, no big.

But from my view standing on the stairs a couple down to be on an even keel with the braces, this was all I could see:

Not. Acceptable.

And one look from me expressed that clearly to him.

He was pissed (at himself) for having to undo the work he'd already done, and we were both a bit confused at how directions that had the exact measurements that we needed somehow didn't fit in the space.

So we checked the other side, by Tova's door:

WHAT THE SWEET HOLY CRAP.

THAT'S LIKE THREE INCHES!

Now, the two doorways are not directly across from one another, and we knew that when we measured to see where we wanted the seat to stop. But what was most befuddling about this singular step was that we (read he) measured TO TOVA'S DOORWAY because it's the shorter one from the window wall.

The solution actually was very simple. Kyle did his math wrong and didn't account for there being two vertical 2x4s (one at each end) added to the length of horizontal 2x4 when he computed the measurements. In other words, he measured for only one end 2x4 and not, you know, two, so it's an honest (albeit amateur and really, five years in here you'd think we could figure out how to measure for a freaking square) mistake, but an annoying as all get out one.

Basic rule of DIY violated once again my my loving husband -- measure twice, cut once, with a caveat of have your wife double check you before you go all gangbusters and waste an afternoon's naptime.

Of course, the kids woke up right as this was all coming to a head on a sunny Sunday afternoon, so we had to wait until the next weekend to continue building because life doesn't stop for a DIY snafu and there were things to do like laundry and eat and so on.

And now you'll have to wait the weekend to see what we came up with.

Clementine Could Win It All.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:18:00 +0000

On Friday last week I got a sweet little email that had quite the surprise for me:

You guys, I'm beside myself with glee. Look at Clementine. She's famous!

Also, THIS OLD HOUSE OMFG. I grew up watching this with my parents (albeit often begrudgingly) on Sundays back when Bob Vila and Norm were the only two guys on it and that may have been what planted the little tiny seeds of what my life is now like today.

THIS OLD HOUSE, YOU GUYS. HOLY CRAP.

If you're so inclined, you can go HERE to see the post (or just click the photo) and to look through all the other entries. Apparently the contest is open until mid-March and winners will be notified by the end of May and I have no real idea if we have a shot or not but you know, it's just pretty cool to have my house on their website regardless.

We'll get back to our projects on Thursday, promise. I just thought you'd all like to share in my humble brag.

ALSO, it's super-big-time important that you click over to my other blog and read that post so you can share in some other, bigbigbig news and so things in February make a wee more sense to you, okay? I'll bake you cookies if you need a bribe.

Detail #1: The Window Seat.

noreply@blogger.com (Tabatha Muntzinger) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:38:00 +0000

This post is one in a series I'm doing in conjunction with PureBond Plywood. I'm being reimbursed for my purchase of their product, but if you've been around here a minute or so you know I'd buy their stuff anyway because it's green and we try really hard to be so it all works out. Click the icon to learn more about PureBond's products, which are available at Home Depot.

On the first day we step foot in this house, I remember walking up the steep, painted, rubberized stairs and being surprised by the space I found at the top. What I assumed would be a short, small hallway actually stretched farther back than I anticipated, as I didn't yet understand gabled roofs and dormer windows, and was actually quite spacious for being this odd little space at the top of the stairs, between the two upstairs bedrooms.

It was the first time I gave serious pause to the idea of living in this house, after initially scoffing at the drop ceiling in the living room, the torture closet that was the downstairs bath, and the paneling in the downstairs bedroom, for starters.

Sidebar: it was the kitchen that did me in, along with the surprisingly copious amounts of sunlight that came in the large, updated windows. Later the knowledge that the roof and the siding were fairly recent as well sealed the deal. Should have listened better about the furnace, though. Oh well.

Anyway, so once we moved in I struggled a little to figure out how to utilize that space. It was definitely big enough for a sitting area, and I plotted a small space where Kyle and I could sit and drink our morning coffee together, or where I could sit and talk on a vintage-styled landline phone to ... people who wanted to spend long amounts of time on the phone with me. After a little bit of shopping, this is what I came up with:

Not bad, right? And sometimes we did sit there together and talk, but not nearly as often as I thought. And Despite having that surface landline tie-in right there, we never bought phones for them.

Meanwhile, RIP chairs. You were so beautiful before the cats destroyed you. (We still have them, I just desperately need to reupholster them.)

Anyway, as time went on and more cats joined the colony and human babies were created and brought home, I realized exactly what I wanted to do with that space to make it better used by everyone for everyone and was a kind of secret teenage fantasy-room want of mine that never came to be.

That is, until I bought my own house and realized I could do whatever I damn wanted, thank you very much.

I decided we needed to build a window seat big enough for at least one adult and two small children to sit on, preferably with as much hidden storage as possible.

And a couple of weekends ago, we began to do just that.

Here is the landing, as we call it, after moving out the blue chair (her sister is at the dance studio I sometimes work for) and the white table and cleaning up the 438297432897 cat related items, not to disclude some hidden dried up puke and a toy I swore I threw away three years ago:

All nice and clean. We're also going to get to that grate here in a minute, but for now, ignore it.

Our plan is simple: to hack these Ana White plans (OMFG WE'RE FINALLY BUILDING SOMETHING!) because they are 99% the same measurements of the space we have and is pretty much exactly what we were looking to create. Except, you know, we're going to attach ours to the wall and make it permanent, but you know, semantics.

First step, then, was to remove the landline wire:

Which had since been snipped by us because while in 2007 it seemed slightly weird to not have a landline even though everyone we knew had a cell phone so we left them be while not really using them, by 2012 it was clear that ain't nobody got time for a landline no more and we cut those mother effers out because they were nothing but danger magnets for the kids and the cats:

Complete with the slightly surprising evidence that these walls had been robin's egg blue once upon a time. Huh. Bonus points: removing this allowed us to FINALLY pull the wires out of the other side of this wall in Kiedis' room, which were a horrible awful cat hair trap and something I HATED that he played with. I'm so glad to have those wires gone, I can't even tell you.

Next up were the baseboards, with a great deal of caution and care to not (a) damage the baseboards because we plan on repurposing them (keep your eyes peeled for that coming up) and (b) not destroy the obviously-only-being-still-held-together-despite-huge-cracks-by-the-eighteen-layers-of-paint-on-the-damn-walls plaster, uh, walls:

I hate plaster walls. But at least, true to form, the baseboards were only randomly nailed in at odd intervals and came out rather easily (and shockingly were able to be back-hammered out of the planks with a great deal of ease as well. Only one bent on me, so that was exciting, because these are the things that are now the highlights of my life.)

The thing with this house is that you always expect the worst, brace for worse than your imagination is capable of, and pray for things to just go smoothly. For once, things went smoothly, especially when you add in that both kids were "helping" me with this phase of the project while Kyle was working on the next phase, which we'll get to next week.

I will say this -- nothing made me prouder than to watch Tova and Kiedis get out their play tools and pretend to hammer and pry things right alongside of me. Tova even used a little wooden flat head screwdriver like a chisel and hit the end with the matching hammer and you guys, I almost lost it. MAH BAYBEEZ. *Sniff* *Sob*

Anyway, the three of us made quick work of removing the baseboards:

And I took to that grate to investigate the sitch there.

See, there is no duct work that leads to that grate. Pretty much all we can tell is that it was a hole through which you could see straight down into our now-master bathroom as Max the cat so lovingly depicts in that post, and that you can peep at the layers of a 115 year old house, if you so felt like digging out an old Sephora gift card holder mirrored compact and your industrial work light and holding them both at weird angles so you could take photos of the guts of your house.

WHAT. I WAS A GIRL SCOUT. SHUT UP.

Found: a metric ton of cat hair (most of which I tried to vacuum up); spiderwebs like whoa; lots of gross broken plaster; and look really carefully in the lower left hand corner of the mirror on bottom. See that thick wire there?

THAT'S ELECTRICAL, KIDDIES. FUNCTIONING, LEGIT ELECTRICAL.

Things just got A LOT more exciting.

But we'll get to that here in a bit.

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When Things Break, Part 3.

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Detail #1: The Window Seat.