Moved everything we could to prepare for future work.

I spent my entire Sunday replacing the columns on my porch. They were rotting from the bottom and were pretty ugly to begin with. We decided on some colonial style columns from Home Depot. All that's left to do is give them a nice coat of exterior paint. The next project is trying to get my power washer to start. The house is filthy and needs a paint job.

We installed Jack's desk top under his bunk bed. He's pretty thrilled.

Six days later, after the wall was finished with stucco.

Joanna with a new powered painter roll tackled painting the ceiling.

Billy's job has been to take all the flooring that we pulled up out to the backyard to be burned.

This is my newly installed toilet flushing. And better yet-- it is flushing without leaks. I had someone help me carry the toilet upstairs-- after that I did all the installation myself.

Fuck yeah! Go toilet go!

I replaced our leaking faucet and part of the drainpipe today. This was the creature that had been living in the drain. The first two feet of the creature, mind you. The remainder escaped down the sewer pipe and must now be plotting elaborate revenge. I especially recommend a 1:1 zoom if you aren't planning on eating soon. Color and contrast aren't accurately represented since I had to reprocess a lot to fix the exposure. Just imagine it in glistening dark grey, with chunky spurts of black silty water.

The color on this is a little bright since I was using a flash. The reds in our carpet are deeper than it shows.

78 sample splotches of paint. HELP US DECIDE!

Planned Changes:

-Remove wallpaper

-CHOOSE A PAINT COLOR

-Wainscoting below chair rail

-New paint above chair rail

-New fireplace insert (it's gas)

Grandpa came and helped on the third day. We got a lot done but there's probably 2 more day of work left. About half of the remaining sheets can be hung without needing the lift but another rental will be needed at some point.

The finished paint job. Looks a bit purply sometimes, but I think grey was a good choice with the pink tiles.

Looking the other direction, from my office into D's office.

Started the flooring in our bedroom which is that last one. We should be able to move back in about 2 weeks.

Water seeping in from a leaky basement window destroyed the carpet and walls of this room

We were fortunate that we got a few helpers to do this project. We got a good 3/4 of the project done by the end of the first day.

Water seeping in from a leaky basement window destroyed the carpet and walls of this room

The finished product.

The lock in our front door has been sort of crappy and prone to sticking since the day we moved in; we've pretty much always used the back door only for the last couple years because we wanted to make sure not to get locked out of our own house.

Until today! Some drilling and some chiseling and some screwdrivering and some futzing and, blammo: a front door we can actually use to leave the house through.

Add in the mirror and the painted out medicine cabinet. Et voila! We have a bathroom!

Last step for the day

"The American Home"

September 1948

Installed to create a utility room in the back corner.

Once upon time, in a quiet village, stood a small bungalow, which suffered from neglect because its owners didn't have any money to maintain it properly. A sign "for sale" had been standing in the front garden for a very long time, but nobody was interested since the bungalow was of very modern design, which was a sharp contrast to the rest of the historic village. Day after day the wood rotted away and nature slowly took over the garden, until only a complete make-over could help the bungalow to survive...

Joanna putting the outlet cover back on. The hallway has been repainted and we finished replacing the underlayment.

Our kitchen is well-used. We love to cook, and cook at least three dinners a week at home. We also try to eat breakfast together and we eat at the table. When we have one or two guests we try to eat at the table too.

But our kitchen could do better in terms of comfort. The overhead fluorescent light makes it a very cold space at night, when we usually have guests. The wall spaceabove the kitchen table is underutilized and makes the room seem bare and overly functional. The ironing board stashed over my sewing machine in the corner doesn't help with that.

My favorite spot in the kitchen is the windowsill. This is one of the places in the apartment where my herb collection resides, and I adore the way it looks.

Another detail I like is our fridge magnets. They're a combo of marble magnets and vintage soda caps.

This is the only room in the house where the walls have color. Our landlord (well, actually his wife) made it clear that we shouldn't paint in dark colors, and since he'd hired someone to paint we complied with a soft lemon yellow. It's a little "country" for my taste, but it's acceptable and warms up the room a bit.

It's weird, but the herb plants may be my favorite thing about our apartment. I think they sort of summarize what I'd characterize as my style (since the book asks you to describe your style in three words) - organic, bohemian, a little messy. Looking at all the examples on AT lately, I feel like a bit of an outsider. Everyone's taste seems so ultra-modern, and while I love to look at those examples they strike me as somewhat sterile. That's not me. At the same time my style is a bit unfocused. Part of me looooves the Bauhaus and Danish modern stuff - my parents had a good bit of this type of furniture in our house growing up - Wassily chairs and stuff. It's just mostly out of our price range, even Ikea versions (our price range is generally "free" since we are both full time students in NYC).

edit: actually, maybe the best way to describe our style is "wabi-sabi."

New washer and dryer

Once upon time, in a quiet village, stood a small bungalow, which suffered from neglect because its owners didn't have any money to maintain it properly. A sign "for sale" had been standing in the front garden for a very long time, but nobody was interested since the bungalow was of very modern design, which was a sharp contrast to the rest of the historic village. Day after day the wood rotted away and nature slowly took over the garden, until only a complete make-over could help the bungalow to survive...

Time has finally come to add a few rooms into the outbuilding for future use.

Those of you who have been keeping score at home on the progress of my kitchen renovation have heard that there would be a backsplash, but I hadn't shown you what it was going to look like. Until now.

1" glass mosaic tile in a green pattern is being sandwiched between layers of 3"x6" white subway tiles. There will be two more layers of white above this because the space under the counters is 15"; there were various thoughts about putting in a two-line row and how to lay down the recycled green glass sticks but decided that since only 1/3 of the work would be visible due to the cabinets to just do it this way, and the recycled glass would be used in whatever accent is created over the stove.

And no, the upper three rows will not be in a subway pattern... I don't want any half-tiles on the ends of the runs, they're going to be smooth.

Yes, that quick. Seems like it was only four months ago I installed the pendant lights because it was, but really, it had to go. Maybe I've mentioned before that I hate how the IKEA light I put in didn't hang straight, didn't put out enough light because it used candelabra bulbs, and had slightly yellowish glass bells that made the room look like a 2 pack a day smoker whiled away the years here. It looked a lot better in the store and now I'm giving it to charity.

So I went looking for a replacement that was better hung [huh huh], looked better, and actually lit the room. (By the formula Width * Length * 1.5, my diningroom needs 172 watts of incandescent light -- the old fixture, even with 10 watt fluorescents, was still only getting an equivalent of 150 watts.) So I went with a more solid and non-hanging light which takes regular sized (up to 100 watts per) bulbs, and obtained three 19 watt fluorescent bulbs (75 watts incandescent equivalent each) to bring the light degree to 225 watts of light. Holy Reddy Kilowatt, Buttman, now one can see what's on the table!

Blinds were installed yesterday. I would have done it myself, but the window frame is metal. I don't do metal.

Everyone who participated signed the floor for whom ever pulls up our work in the future.

Water seeping in from a leaky basement window destroyed the carpet and walls of this room

Here is the final walkway out in front of the house.

This is how the stairs used to look.

Does that look sage to you? I saw the green when it was drying on my hands, but as yet it's not evident between the tiles... but colors do change a little once it's dry.

Finally replaced the original lights for the house.

Amazing how clean windows are sans GLASS.

Grandpa helped hang a bit of insulation today in the outbuilding. Billy joined him for a picture on the lift.