The World Surrounding Me

While we’re overall quite satisfied with our home, there are a few things about our house that Matt & I don’t love. Many of them, unfortunately, stem from bad style decisions of the former homeowners and the fact that the 1982-era builder-grade features aren’t exactly our favorite. These two sources of problems show themselves in [...]

Matt has owned our house for about a decade; he bought it before he even knew me. I consider myself pretty lucky to have not only married a great guy, but one with good taste and his own home! But, I will fully admit that both he & I don’t like a few parts of [...]

It’s past the middle of April, so here’s an update of how I’m doing with my April-resolutions. I hope the others who are trying this are doing well at theirs! Soda:I can count how many times I’ve had sugary soda since April 6th. So, this resolution is going well! I’ve had it twice at Rudy’s, [...]

Drywall repair / installation people were at our house today, and patched up the holes after our electrical work. The kitchen looks so much bigger now that the big box-light and the resulting hole from removing it is gone. Next decision will be what kind of lights to hang over the island. We’re considering blown-glass [...]

The electricians came today for our lighting re-do project. Here are some “in the middle” photos (you’ll see why I say that instead of “after” as you look below. This shows the kitchen ceiling after the old box was removed. This is the strangest bit of sheetrock/drywall work I’ve ever seen – it was dropped [...]

Here are additional photos from our kitchen. Read more about this in the previous post. This photo is from the breakfast/laundry area (back of the house) looking thru to the dining room. Notice more honey-oak cabinets. When Matt bought the house (about a decade ago), the walls had a faux-southwest-motif. He changed that to this [...]

I think Matt & I (both of us – but especially him, who’s lived here the longest) will celebrate tomorrow, providing the electrician we’re hired does something with this monstrosity: It’s a light fixture, built into our kitchen ceiling. The wood (we call it a cheesy ’80s honey oak finish) matches the cabinets. What we [...]

We demolished our half-bath on Saturday. Here are some pictures. The bath had bright red walls – a color from the historic homes collection. The walls had wallpaper before, so as you can see in this photo, the red color didn’t quite cover. There was a white cabinet with a marble-looking top. The cabinet bottom [...]

Yesterday, a major milestone happened at our house: all traces of clowns were removed. No, we don’t have a clown-phobia, but we were tired of the cute clown border that’s been up in our office (apparently the prior homeowners used that room as a nursery). We stripped the wallpaper border (which actually came off easily [...]