Bedroom almost complete and our new kitchen is amazing

Hi there reno. fans,
   It's been a while, but the end is in site so it's time for an update! When we started this reno in March 2016 we had over 100 projects and that's not including replacing the roof, endless fencing issues, plumbing leeks, switching from oil heat to gas, and misc. other surprises an old house throws at you. We got through all that, marriage in tact, and now we are almost at a point to sit back and enjoy it. So here is what's new...... Let's start with our bedroom, which went from looking like a seedy 1950's motel room to downright amazing. When we moved in it had a ratty ass shag carpet whose original color was impossible to figure out, tan puke walls and the most inefficient closets I have ever seen. Other than that we loved it. Being an expanded cape our bedroom has great weird angles, and 3 nice windows so we knew there was potential. This is what we did- ripped out the carpet (which stunk)  to discover beautiful but a little worn dark wood floors, ripped out the big closet and replaced with an open shelf system, we redid the smaller closet by changing the direction of the hanging bar which made it actually usable, painted the room a cool green color with white trim, framed and hung a suite of new collages, bought 2 matching white dressers  and 2 new wall sconces from Ikea, and I am in the process of painting a mural on the angled wall over our bed. All that's left to do is make a headboard which will happen a little later.
  The kitchen was the big money project and we used the same contractor who did our upstairs bathroom to do the job (we are getting a little smarter as we get older, and have less free time) I really wanted usable butcher  block counters and was thinking maple till we went to Lumber liquidators and discovered charred oak which looks like walnut with a hint of cherry and has beautiful variations in color. Jim finished the counter with  mineral oil and it got more beautiful with each coat. I will continue to oil it so it does not dry out. It's so great to not have to use cutting boards anymore and the cuts are barely visible as they blend into the dark wood. On the counter surrounding the under mounted stainless sink we used a great solid surface made by Formica called "All the jazz". It's very festive with tiny specks of color. Then our favorite part is the 1 inch square random white glass wall tile by Modwall. It just pops!
  We put in all new simple modern white cabinets made in USA (Jim insisted they be actual wood not MDF) with slide out drawers for pots and pans and kind of old school stainless handles with that super sexy slow self closing feature. And last but not least we added a whole new section to the kitchen where there was nothing before and created a baking section with a sealed butcher block counter and 3 large cabinets for all by bakeware and  a permanent home for my blender, food processor and stand mixer. Plus Jim just made me custom shelves to organize my spices, he's the best!  Enjoy the photos! Cheers


                                                         The original project list

Hi again, just found this "before"

                                            photo of the kitchen and thought I would add it!

Pearl and Guld have a new bathroom and its GORG!!!

Hello my people,
   We wanted to share our joy at the completion of our brand new and much improved upstairs bathroom. Due to excessive leakage, not once, but 3 times, we finally called our home owner's insurance people and got cash to fix it all, so we upgraded and now we are soooo fancy it almost makes washing up fun!
    This is what they did, I say it that way because this is the only room we did not have to do anything. We hired an amazing contractor who made it all so easy, yes money does help. So all new plumbing , new electrical, added lights and outlets, new tile on walls and floor, new tub, toilet, vanity and medicine cabinet, new window trim and window shade, and a great new shower head.
    So just to recap:
It will be  two years we have been living in our house in March, and during that time we have completed 74 of 106 projects. All that's left is the major kitchen reno and our bedroom. Stay tuned!

                                                                       Before:

going to miss that crazy red heatlamp

After

The  overview, we went with dark grey grout between the classic subway tiles and a black glass accent line before the bullnose.The floating vanity has a quart top, and tons of storage, and we love the huge medicine cabinet, but stupidly it only came with two shelves, so Jim is going to make us 2 more. We also added an LED light in the shower and the light over the mirror is also an exhaust fan!

                                          Love these ceramic corner shelves, and we decided
                                              to stick with the classic white Venetian blinds

                                        Finally we can get to the toilet paper, the old
                                bathroom had an inset roll holder which was way too small
                                we painted the small about of wall space a lovely blue green
                                        which is actually the same color it was pre-reno.

                                      The floor tile kills me, I love it so much, and the Charles Eames
                                      pattern shower curtain was ordered from Cafe Press

Winter Update

      Where has the time gone? There is so much to report so let's start with the garden, which thanks to all Jim and my hard work was a stellar success. The chicken wire, the fencing, and the marigold border all helped to keep the rabbits and squirrels out and most everything flourished. Tomatoes were the superstars along with ample greens to get us through the whole season. Matter of fact just this weekend I harvested some beautiful Tatsoi and some winter Kale which as my pal Val told me, is even more delicious then summer kale, who knew? As usual I learned so much this year...I learned to plant less carrot seeds as the greens were so abundant but the carrots had no room to form. I learned some herbs are happier in pots (like tarragon and Dill), and I learned that next year I need to add phosphorus if I want the broccoli to flower. I did put in garlic at the end of the season so I am looking forward to a July harvest and I think I am going to try to grow strawberries and plant a few heirloom fruit trees in the spring.

     Jim put up the dining room shelves so I can display my Nambe collection and beautiful platters.We re purposed the steel uprights we brought from New Mexico and built thick white shelves which show off the silver of the Nambe beautifully.

    In the fall we had more plumbing issues with the upstairs bathroom and had to rip out the soggy ceiling for the second time. We were not happy to say the least! Jim made the call to get the insurance company involved because it seemed to be pretty major, and it was an excellent call. First they sent out a mitigation team to dry out the walls and floor.They set up 3 huge loud dehumidifiers with deafening fans on them which ran for 5 days.Then the insurance adjuster came out. This is an amazing story. This older gentleman arrived and slowly walked up our stairs and into our house. He apologized for moving so slowly and said he had some health issues from an incident. Turns out he was one of 14 survivors of the World Trade Center collapse. He was on the 24th floor doing business when he got a call to evacuate the building so he took the elevator down into the lobby. Things started falling around him so he put his coat over his head and headed towards the door when he was buried alive, yes buried alive for 4 days standing up. All the debris compressed him and stopped him from bleeding out. He was in a coma when they rescued him, and took him to the hospital where he remained for 3 months. He had to learn to walk again, had a number of corrective surgeries, and is now 2 inches shorter.What an amazing man! Unfortunately he said he relieves the experience every single night. All this being said , he was so happy to be alive he was very generous with his estimate of what it would cost to fix our bathroom. So we are now doing a gut rehab and getting a brand new fancy schmancy bathroom , and we don't even have to do the work ourselves! I promise to document the process in it's entirety! We are going from retro mint green and black (which we love) to classic black and white. Should be cool.

    Next project we are going to tackle is our bedroom which I always say to Jim feels like we live in a sleezy hotel. Closet needs to be ripped out and reconstructed in a much more efficient way, we need to make a headboard for our bed, we need to paint, and maybe we will sand the floors. Will keep you posted.After that all thats left is the kitchen which we will hopefully attack in the spring. Okay now you know everything!

All great stuff…….June update

Hello friends and family, Today the sun finally reappeared so we were able to get more done on the deck.It used to be brown stained and quite worn. We decided to give it a bit of a facelift so instead of stain we filled the holes, power washed it, and then hit it with Behr smooth "Deck Over" slate grey paint. So odd how different it looked in the can.It seemed subdued but elegant which appealed to us, but when we spread it on the deck to our delight it had a rather vibrant blue purple hue which pops against the rich greens of the garden. We love it! I have ordered bright red cushions for the banquette seating and we have purchased a simple square glass table so dinners on the deck are around the corner. Jim found a great option at Ikea to use for part his model cabinet extravaganza. He purchased two of these cool steel and glass cabinets with glass shelves to display his tanks and dioramas. Next he is going to build a third wall mounted piece for more display space with glass sliding doors and shelves. While at Ikea he also found these cool cheap wall mounted wine racks which we added to the dinning room. Next weekend second coat of paint on deck, and we will begin to build the radiator cover for the dining room heater. After that perhaps we will work on the shelving unit for the dinning room which will use 2 steel supports we brought from Santa Fe and some walnut shelving so I can display my serious Nambe collection. And a little vegetable garden update……everything is popping! So much rain lately I have mushrooms sprouting as well. Lets hear it for organic matter! Nibbled on my first French breakfast radish yesterday. Looking forward to major crops.

The Garden, Year 2, Getting Serious

Well, well, well it's now cold wet and damp and its mid May. Doesn't really feel like spring except the 2 super hot days a few weeks ago, when I was deep in soil sifting mode and soaked it sweat. Tulips, crocus, daffodils have all come and gone, Azelas are in all their splendor along with the rhodendrums.It makes me so happy to be greeted with all this color when it reveals itself in our yard. Still in the process of taming this beast of a task.I did enlist the help of professional gardeners to clean out the giant back ivy bed (The bed of death). Years worth of decaying leaves twisted inside dense ivy vines, power tools were necessary! Last year I set up a makeshift garden with what was easy and fast because we had only moved in a few months earlier and the amount of projects was out of control.At that point I was extremely naive as to the horror that are little garden bunnies and spunky squirrels.They killed me.I yielded almost no usable produce.Enough said……. This year Jim and I have built The Fort Knox meets The Bellagio of vegetable gardens,(as long as no deer show up). We are taking raised beds surrounded by fencing.We used nylon mesh, chicken wire, hardware cloth,pressure treated lumber, reinforced corners,terra-cotta pavers, and the finest blend of local (sifted clean of debris)soil, combined with humus, manure, peat moss, mulch, organic composted soil, and love. Behold here is the project in photos:

Home gym by JIm and me

Hello fellow busy people, I am very happy to report that another long time dream of mine has become a reality thanks to the list of Craig and my husband. I simply do not have the time to go to a gym. This has been making me cranky. Jim and I decided we would create a workout space in the basement. Finding a good piece of professional grade equipment took longer than expected. Jim's devotion to my quest for the elliptical of my dreams was impressive. This morning my used, but in perfect condition Precor elliptical was moved into the basement in a corner I painted bright white and we lined with great thick rubber mats. Jim only had to do some small parts removal to fit it down the staircase, but it was back together this morning and I had my first at-home workout. I hung 2 mirrors so I can keep it real and posted my workout.I have enough space next to the elliptical to do my exercises. I am really serious at this point. Next a little decor, maybe some art on the walls, and I need to work on the lighting.I hung a vinyl curtain (shower) to separate the space and semi-hide the hot water heater.

Now all I need is a lap pool…..just kidding

Time for an update ……. March 2, 2017

It's been a while since our last post and we have done quite a bit! First of all Jim completed his first project in our spectacular new wood shop, a gate for our deck.Up until now we have had a ratty piece of green wire fencing to block Kookoo from wandering off into the neighborhood.Somehow that flimsy baricade keep her in the yard.Yes she is super smart and got through the old fence in a variety of locations but the wire scared her. Now we have a beautiful gate which is designed to match the existing deck and as soon as it warms up we will stain the deck and gate to match. I have been working on the staircase.First removing the stinky carpet, then painting the stairs in a gradation from white to middle grey. Last weekend I painted the hallway walls a pale blue grey and kept all the trim white. Then I got to do the fun stuff, hang up the family photos.It's been a few years that my photos and artwork have been wrapped up and in boxes.It's like visiting old friends.We have photos of our entire life together.From all the themed dress up Solstice parties, to parental wedding photos, and newly added photos of our New Mexico friends. It makes walking up and down the stairs so much fun. And finally last weekend we put up floating thick white shelves in the living room. Our original plan was to make them from scratch but when visiting Ikea to pick up some small kitchen stuff we saw these shelves which were exactly what we wanted and so cheap, we could not make them for the price.So we bought them and 2 hours later they were done. Enjoy the photos!