Wednesday, November 26, 2008

This Old House - Upstairs Edition

It's almost Turkey Day! This year will be truly an authentic Thanksgiving since we will be celebrating in Massachusetts...the home of Thanksgiving!

As promised, here are some before and after pictures of our upstairs bedrooms. You will notice that the guest room had been a shade of pink (surprise, surprise). The "master" bedroom was green. I put master in quotes since it's just a regular bedroom with the exception that Rick and I sleep in it.

"Master Bedroom"

Before





After









Guest Room

Before





After





Doesn't the guest room look inviting now? If you come visit we'll make Phoebe get off the bed.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-Liz

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

This Old House - Dining Room Edition

Last Friday I cleaned my paint brushes, recycled my cardboard "dropcloths" and retired my painting tools and leftover paint to the basement. After a month of painting I am ready for a break.

As promised, I am sharing some befor
e and after pictures of the rooms that we painted. We never met the previous owners of our home, but I can only assume they were either colorblind or had an unhealthy obsession with all shades of red.

The pictures below are of the dining room with the previous owners furniture. You may notice that they have three dressers/bureaus, a dining table and a piano. Yes, all of that was in the dining room. The whole house was "overly furnished" when we first toured it.






Here are a couple more pictures of the old red paint color with their items moved out. You can get a sense of how suffocating the room was.






And now I present our wonderful newly painted, undecorated (cut me some slack, I've been painting for a month non-stop) dining room...










Future installments of my painting adventures will follow.
-Liz


Sunday, November 16, 2008

Climbing with loaded weapons

Back from deer camp '08 and have just finished turning a deer into food. Yes, one lucky deer volunteered "him"self to become steaks, burger, chili, stroganoff, and jerky, thus saving "him"self from potential fates including starving/freezing to death and being eaten by wolves who probably don't even know how to make a red wine reduction. I put "him" in quotes because he didn't have antlers, and I was pretty shocked when I flipped him over and saw deer nuts under a buck.

In non-hunting news, tales were told, friends and relatives visited, whiskey was passed, cribbage played, and wicked wind and cold were endured. In other endurance news, I shared a futon with my dad in very small log cabin. For those unfamiliar, he is a prodigious snorer. I compare it to the sound of a chainsaw cutting through a haunted iron bathtub filled with snot. His ability to reach full volume 37 seconds after lying down, and recovery rate after a rollover nudge are second to none. There are three people in the world who are in the same league:

1: Justin Peik, who brings his own tent to the BWCA and puts it up as far from the respectable folk as possible.

2: Liz's mom Patty, who scores high in sheer volume. Always knowing when your girlfriend's mom was asleep had absolutely no advantages whatsoever.

3. My freshman year roommate, Mike, whose ragged, irregular sleep breathing inspired smothery thoughts.

One aspect of spending upwards of 8 hours in a tree while attempting to remain silent and motionless is perseveration on thoughts either pleasant or unpleasant. Ear worms, whether actual songs or just ideas, are a constant hazard. One day I was thinking about metallurgy and medieval weaponry in the context of a global zombie infestation (had just finished the book World War Z, a fun read about the inevitable zombie apocalypse). For some reason I thought of the phrase "bellows evil" thinking that the double meaning of something bellowing evil and an actual evil bellows would make a cool lyric to a dark and overdramatic rock song.

So, working backwards from "bellows evil" I envisioned a bell or a person's voice sounding like a bell signifying something ominous. I thought about the bell being forged by damned people (which rhymes with evil) in a cursed town or possibly one of Uday Hussein's torture houses with fire smuggled up from the bowels of hell and an evil bellows. In the end, I opted for:

With a voice like a bell that was cast in hell
By desperate people
Using iron that was salvaged from a fatal shipwreck
And bellows evil

So that took up about three hours. Fortunately, by the time I got around to figuring out who would be saying such ominous things or what that message would potentially be, I'd pretty much lost interest. By the third day or so, thoughts become mostly incoherent so nobody has to hear about those. It was a good sittin' year all in all. Was very glad to get home and see Liz and all the hard work she had put in on the house.


Monday, November 3, 2008

Trench Drainage 101

This past weekend Rick and I completed our first major home project (I don't count painting as major). Because our house is built into the side of a hill, it is important that a majority of the rainwater coming down the hill is diverted around the house. I found a potential problem spot in our back yard and had my suspicion confirmed by our home inspector.

So I did a little good ol' fashioned research. I went to the library and checked out landscaping books. I then sketched up a diagram of our backyard and the drainage system that I wanted to install. I also drew a nice diagram of Rick digging a trench...all part of the plan.

So we started on Saturday (1 trip to Lowe's, 2 trips to Home Depot). Here is Rick expertly digging a lovely trench.










And completed the project on Sunday (1 trip to Lowe's, 2 trips to Home Depot).




I think it turned out pretty nice. We'll be planting some lovely shade loving foliage on the right hand side in the spring. Suggestions are welcomed. Otherwise it's back to the library to do some research on shade plants.