Once this year, while Josh and I shared our everlasting house struggles, a friend mentioned that she thought it was a helpful thing for me to run a blog about home renovation in the midst of real life: Josh works full time and goes to grad school; I work more than full time, generally with […]
From the first realtor’s tour two Decembers ago to this month’s freezer upheaval, the basement has been our arch nemesis. I’m sure there’s some kind of motivational talk / Bible study material here — you may be cute and quaint with lots of potential, but if your soul (basement) is flooded and rusted and rotten, you’re still as much of […]
Something beautiful happened today. I almost can’t believe it. THERE IS HEAT IN MY HOUSE (Josh took a space heater to the house to keep our pipes in the basement from freezing and found that it was already warm in there.) The heating system’s not done, but it’s working. I’ll take it. All we need now is […]
The former home owners left us lots of little presents, but nothing tops the freezer. Apologies to those of you still trying to forget (you know we are), but here’s the deal – No ordinary appliance, this giant metal horror film prop had sat, unplugged, for years before we bought the house. Besides being ugly […]
Well, things are starting to get weird around here. Last night I dreamed that my husband killed someone . . . for their Lowe’s gift card. If there are stages of DIY lunacy, this is definitely one of them. Specifically, in my DIY-overdose-induced nightmare, my almost pacifist (in real life) husband plotted an elaborate assault […]
Well. The HVAC folks determined that we needed to replace our gas line and alter our bathroom plumbing. HAD WE BEEN INFORMED ten weeks ago when the project began, this would have been simpler. But now we wait. (Do we do anything else?) Gas people showed up, said there’s no problemo, turned on our gas, […]
I’m the one with the spec sheets. I’m the one who thought of this project in the first place. I’m the one who lost sleep wondering, “Pine or cedar?” and, “How will I know if it’s been responsibly harvested?” I’m the one stockpiling paint chips and stain samples. I memorized the item number! He hasn’t […]
Allow me to answer sixteen questions at once: Yes, it is summer. No, we cannot move in without heat. Not unless you want these guys hanging out on your ceiling: See? I didn’t think so. We opted for radiant heating. If you’re new to the concept, here’s my short layman’s description: hot water shoots through tubes […]
It is possible that we have acquired a chain saw. Josh’s dad let us truck-sit last week while he was out of town, and we filled the eight-foot bed fifteen times with brush from our quarter-acre wilderness. And then had a huge, wet, reluctant bonfire. It’s a good thing for the wilderness that my father-in-law returned when he did. […]
This one, I’m sorry to say, is a bit less glamorous than the dining room. Part of this is because it’s a bathroom. Unless you have unreal amounts of moolah at your disposal for their renovation, they don’t always turn out especially glamorous. This one, though. It required extra special levels of bravery (and youth) (and […]
la corbeille 