i am woman. hear me roar.

2 weeks ago I posted this status on facebook:



With good reason. I am a total badass when it comes to home renovations. Take for instance this hole in our wall:



Yep. Not that huge one - we had plans to cover that. But our plan failed. And instead we punctured our wall. Creating a new hole while trying to cover the huge one.

So I decided to fix it. And after watching a 3 minute video on YouTube, our kitchen looked like this:



All because of that stupid little hole.

And besides bringing me tools and lending a helpful muscle once in a while, this guy let me do my thing.

Because I am a woman. And I don't need no man.

(But I like keeping Nic around - I kind of like him a little).



He made few comments critquing my drywall style.



Which clearly, I have a lot of.

After removing two cupboards and a door, with tools in hand, I was ready to get my hands dirty.

After doing a bit of electrical work of course. (This hole in the wall is space for an electrical outlet for our long-gone microwave.)



Since I had to replace the drywall anyway, I decided to just patch up the medium hole too.

I am an expert drywall sawer.



The project was delayed a few days because we had to order in a small sheet of drywall - after calling friends to try to score a leftover piece from larger projects to no avail.

Thankfully, it only took 2 days and then I was back on track.

A few screws, drywall compound, drywall tape, and more drywall compound, the end was in sight.

 

Sanding and painting came next.



 Cupboards were rehung.



And the piece de resistance was hung in place.



And I couldn't be happier.



Fact: We had friends over on Friday night and I took the photo down to showcase my amazing drywall skillzzzzz. I imagine I will be doing this again.



The photo is one I took a few years ago at my grandparents farm. I am so in love with the image and hope my Grandpa is proud that his farm is the showcase of my kitchen.

Fact: We had friends over a few weeks ago for a dinner party and one of them was sure I picked it up at an art festival we had in town a few weeks prior.

I ordered an acrylic print through Shutterfly and could not have been happier with how it turned out, and how quickly it was shipped.

while nic is away...

Turns out, I am uber productive as a single lady. I kind of like it...no offense of course Nic!

I've tackled 90% of the produce I picked up at Washington's and Iowa City's farmers market and had to stop only because I ran out of freezer space! We have a small chest freezer, but it might be time to upgrade.

Here is all of the produce I purchased this week:
 
Iowa City


Washington


I have yet to take care of the apples (apple sauce/butter) and zucchini (bread). Pretty darn good!! I will post tomorrow (hopefully) about what I made.

I forgot to include this photo in the post about the Iowa City's farmers market - check out this sunrise! What a great way to start the day.



Besides working on food today, I managed to sneak in a 16 mile run (8:46 pace). Which by the way, the oatmeal apple cider pancakes did a phenomenal job keeping me fueled for each and every mile! It was a very dreary, rainy run, but I enjoyed it. I listened to the first two discs of "Born to Run." I've read it before, but thought it would be appropriate to listen to it agin with just a few days left before the Twin Cities Marathon.

I also managed to work on getting the house ready for some guests that will be arriving next week. Our good friends, Ben and Debbie, along with their son, are moving back to Washington from Alaska and will be staying with us until they find a house.

We have a long list of things to check off before they get here, and one item was to install new curtains in the guest room. Well (Nic, you might want to stop reading right about now), Bed Bath & Beyond sucked me in its doors yesterday and I walked about quite a bit poorer, but with an arm full of goodies for the house! And a desire to not only update the guest room, but ours as well.

Take a look!

Our bedroom before:


There was a tall dresser to the left of the bed, which I removed to the guest room - hence all of my clothes on the bed.

And after!


New curtains, different dresser, organized books


I repurposed a few things around the house for bookends, love it!

 
Need to figure out what to do as far as curtains for the second, smaller, window. And a rehung painting.


The guest room before:


Normally it is not this messy. Wait, that is a lie. It is normally this messy, but just with piles upon piles of clean clothes that we never fold.

And after!


As a compromise to myself (and to save some $$) I re-used our curtains in the guest room. Not what I had in mind, but it works.

And just to ease Nic's mind, as I am certain he was scared to leave me this weekend knowing I was planning on spending all waking hours in the kitchen, here is a photo of the kitchen from just a few minutes ago.



Rest your weary mind husband of mine, and rest easy tonight! (I totally paid someone to clean for me...)


Jack liked it when I was too busy to clean...


I have a very early wake up call tomorrow, but want to finish watching The King's Speech first. I fell asleep half way through last night.

G'night!

basement renovation take one: carpet

When Nic and I moved in to our house nearly 4 years ago, everything was right with the world. Our first house, it was perfect.

We got to work right away making minor changes (paint, flooring, etc), making the house our home.

And then one summer it rained. And rained and rained and rained.

And our basement leaked. And leaked and leaked and leaked.

That summer much of eastern Iowa was devastated by historic floods.

 
source and source

Clearly the water issue we were having paled in comparrison to thousands of others being displaced because their entire house was under water, or floating down a river - but it as a problem that need to be taken care of nonetheless.

During the flooding, we were visiting our friend, Greg, in Alaska. We learned of the floods when a story appeared on the front page of the Anchorage paper. We were not too concerned about our house, as our friends had been keeping an eye on it for us and we hadn't heard from them. However, upon returning to my mom's house, we received a call from Lucky Pawz, were Maia was being boarded, letting us know that they were in the process of evacuating all of the dogs, but to not worry as they were all safe.

When we finally returned home, we got right to work removing a large section of soggy carpet in our basement. As we rolled it up, ready to take it out to the curb, gallons of water literally spilled out the ends.

Thankfully, the entire basement wasn't waterlogged and we were able to stop after removing one large section.

Since that summer, we have talked about future plans for the basement and three years later, we finally took the next step!

On Saturday night, Nic and I got to work removing the rest of the carpet from the basement - step number one in creating an awesome useable living space.

The plan::

• clean up floors, and possibly pour another layer of concrete down and polish it 
• install an egress window 
• maybe sheetrock
• repaint walls - biggest task, the paint that is there currently is peeling
• move my office downstairs

Here are some before and afters (note, currently the basement is pretty much a dumping ground for old crap that we need to sort through and work stuff).

Before::

North end - 


South end - 


 During::

After::

North end - 


South end - 


And we are now officially the white trash neighbors in our hood...



I love the blank slate and can not wait to get started! We are hoping to have a few people over this week to give us quotes/ideas on the floors, walls and windows.

What would you do to make your basement a fun, functional living space?

three years ago today...

(or three years ago yesterday...) Nic and I took a huge step and became homeowners!  I can't believe we have lived in our house for three years already - time flies when you are having fun, I guess!

Although I feel like are house is always a work in progress, it has been a while since we have tackled anything major. However, we had our friends John and Diana down last week and they seemed to be impressed on how much we have accomplished in the last 3 years.  Let's see if I have a recap of most of our projects...

We moved in and immediately started painting. Every room on the first floor of our house has seen a new coat of paint.

We put up a cedar fence, removed carpet from three rooms and installed new light fixtures/fans.

We installed new kitchen floors (while being drugged after having my wisdom teeth removed), built (and later dismantled) three raised veggie gardens, fixed our doorbell, and gave the bathroom a major face-lift.

Our bathroom - 95% done.

After Kurt and Nic designed a simple frame for our bathroom mirror, I decided it wasn't what I wanted and bought a new one.  I still haven't heard the end of this story.

We love using spray paint to give things a quick pick-me-up.

I am known for staying up all night painting. (Sorry, seems that the photos are unavailable for this post)

More of the kitchen floor remodel...including the wisdom teeth story.

We created an awesome photo gallery in our living room (ummm...affectionately known as the blue post it note gallery as I have yet to print photos for all the frames!)

We finally got rid of our hand-me-down furniture and got some new funky stuff.  (Oh, Hi Henry!  We miss you kitty!!)

The guest room got a quick face-lift with a new coat of paint. 

Our room was brightened up with paint and some new curtains - my favorite room of all. 

We increased the size of our house by 10 fold just by tearing down a portion of the wall separating our living room and dining room.

More wall photos.

And more wall photos!  Best project ever.

Whew!! Pretty sure that is all the major stuff.  And guess what? We still have big ones on the list yet - including our basement remodel.  A trip to France and Spain is throwing off that timeline though...

Hey friends - IT HAS BEEN THREE YEARS since we have owned our home...when are you going to come visit, eh?! :)  (Just an FYI - February 1st marks my 5 year Iowa anniversary.)

guest room update

Two coats of paint have been put up on the walls in the guest room, and it looks so.much.brighter. I haven't decided if I love the color yet, and told Nic he was probably right when he suggested that we go with the paint color that was one shade darker.  But you know what, I really don't care.  It looks much better than it did before.  Now we just need some decoration - although that might have to wait a few years.  For now it will just remain the boring guest room.

We for sure need to get some shades for the room which will add a quick splash of color - any suggestions?

In this photo you can see how much I really must like the color I chose, as I painted our dressers pretty much the same color a year ago.  Oh well, in time we will probably just move this dresser out into our 2nd guest room (after we finish the basement and move my office downstairs).

guest room

Let the painting begin!  Here are some before pictures (before the paint, after I tore the room apart).

It is also time to say goodbye to our most favorite light switch plate cover...er - or not.