It’s time for part two of our house tour. This is our porch.
The seller left us this all-weather wicker seating arrangement. My brother tells me it’s quite comfortable and a great place to sit and relax. Unfortunately, I have not been blessed with an opportunity to do so.
There’s definitely potential to make this porch more inviting. I’d like to put some outdoor cushions on the wicker seats to add color and comfort. A small side table to set a drink or a book while lounging would also be great. Add a small area rug to define the seating area, and you’ve got something.
I’m totally amazed by the amount we got done around the house this weekend. First, Steve made some amazing progress with the weeds in the back yard. I didn’t take any before and after pictures because I didn’t expect him to be outside too long, or to make too much of a dent in our forest of weeds. Boy was I wrong! He cleared a huge area along the back fence and around the patio, and the yard is actually starting to look, well, pretty. I also did a fair amount of weeding myself, and got started with a little painting project.
This is our family room. It sits just off the kitchen, and because we’re getting started with its make-over, it will be the first room on our house tour (although logically a bit out of order). We’re tackling the family room first because: (1) the family room and the kitchen are probably the two most used rooms in the house, so we want them to be comfortable places that we really enjoy being in; and (2) it’s pink. Really, really pink. And the seller left us some fabulous curtains.
We’ve got a whole plan for the family room here. This weekend, I started by painting the ceiling. Of course this involved a bit of prep work first. I removed all of the curtains and hardware, removed and/or taped off the light fixtures, and laid out drop clothes before slathering a coat of paint on the ceiling.
Just taking down the curtains made a huge difference and really lightened things up. I started with just the ceiling because we’re taking baby steps on the painting; neither one of us wants to spend a whole weekend painting, so we’re doing it one wall at a time.
It’s a spacious two-story house with a good sized yard. We’ll be taking you through room-by-room as we get each room camera ready. We’ll also have a page for each room documenting our progress (and hopefully keeping us honest so we don’t slack off on the work we want to do).
I went to HD yesterday and bought some 2 inch wood screws to secure our hat rack into the studs. I thought it would be pretty simple to replace the 1.5 inch screws one at a time. Not so much! The thing pulled out of the wall while I was replacing screw number 1. With Steve’s help, we got it back in to place and got all three screws secured into the studs and the rack is now ready to accommodate hats, sweatshirts, etc. Sweet!
Flat surfaces in a house tend to be problematic because they collect stuff. Every day, when we get home from work, a pile of mail, a purse, and messenger bag gets dropped on the kitchen table. Often some shoes end up underneath it as well. We needed a spot for this stuff to keep it from cluttering up the living area. Enter the entryway. We have a pretty large entryway with a big blank wall pretty much equidistant from the front door, where most visitors enter, and the garage door, where we usually come in from the car.
Our blank wall.
We added a shoe rack that I got from Ikea years ago. I’ve never actually used it as a shoe rack before. In fact, it’s been a TV stand for most of it’s life, with baskets in the compartments holding stuff. Ikea also happens to have a matching hat rack, so I picked that up and assembled it, and up on the wall it went. Here’s the finished product:
Our new mud area.
We thought it would be a pretty simple task. My dad (and my mom, and my brother) was even here and he helped us out with it. The pre-drilled holes, however, were not spaced at 16 inch intervals like the studs, so we had to drill some new holes. One that was done, we drilled the holes in the wall and unfortunately were off by about and inch so we didn’t hit the studs. Measure twice, cut/drill once, people! Anyway, after some trial and error, it made it up there.
I bet you are wondering why there are no purses, coats, etc. hanging on it to dress it up. Well, we only had 1.5 inch screws, and as it turns out, that’s not long enough to get into the studs. Oops! So although it’s up and it looks nice, until we can get to HD and get some 2 inch screws, it’s not strong enough to hold anything and it will remain bare. Sigh! Hopefully we will be better prepared next time we tackle a project.
The chairs came! I posted a sweet deal I found on chairs at JCP here, and in record time they arrived on our doorstep via FedEx. We put them together this weekend, and let me tell you, assembling eight chairs and entertaining two mothers over one weekend has left me a bit tired! But, the chairs look great. I think the only way we could’ve found a better match was to order the actual matching chairs from Crate & Barrel. Here they are:
Our fab craigslist table with its new chairs.And now for a close up.
The assembly was not terribly difficult, just time consuming. Unfortunately, I blistered the palm of my hand on the first chair, so assembling the remaining chairs was not terribly comfortable. Note to self: next time you assemble furniture, put on your work gloves from the get-go! I couldn’t be more pleased with the result, though.
I was browsing some archives of a blog I recently stumbled upon, and the writer raves about a great deal on a rug from JC Penney. I loved the rug. I have a hard time finding area rugs that I like when I shop. I see them in other people’s homes, but I can’t seem to find them myself. 2 years later they still sell the rug at a great price. I haven’t purchased one because I’m not sure what room I would use it in or what color I would get, but while I was on the site I decided to browse other furniture, just to see if there were other good deals lurking.
I mentioned in this post that, now that we found a great new-to-us dining table, we needed some chairs to go with, and I was torn about the hefty price tag on the matching C&B chairs. As luck would have it, JCP had these chairs on clearance for $99 for a set of two (down from $250!).
Travis Chairs
They are not solid mahogany like the C&B chairs, but they are solid wood with a mahogany stain, and as far as I’m concerned I can live with not mahogany for that price difference. The one review on the chairs is poor at only two stars. But I discount the comments a bit because (1) the complaint partly had to do with chipping paint, and I ordered the stained, not painted, option; and (2) the writer also complained about difficult assembly, which I’ve found to be the case with virtually all chairs that require assembly. Also, I’m just a wiz at putting furniture together. I get it from my dad, I think.
We made our first mortgage payment today. We have less money in our account now, but I’m still excited about it because it means we now own 25.1% of The House (as opposed to 25% based on the down payment). Woohoo!
We got our mortgage through ING, and I have to say, I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been saving with ING for at least 5 years, and I enjoy that the interest rate tends to be a bit higher than elsewhere and it is easy to set up an automatic savings plan. But the mortgage has been amazingly hassle-free. ING touts its morgages as low cost because its costs are lower: you are required to make automatic electronic payments and they don’t send you statements. Frankly, I try to pay all my bills online anyway, so there is no downside here. Our closing costs were low, and our real estate agent said ING was incredibly easy to work with and got everything on its end done super fast, so we were actually able to close early.
If you haven’t checked out ING, you might consider it. ING will give you $25 if you open an account with a minimum balance of $250 through a referral link (and the referrer will get $10). Here is a referral link, if you are interested:
Last night, our dinner dishes washed themselves while we kicked back and watched “Mythbusters” on DVR. Yup, we actually accomplished a task on our to do list by replacing our dishwasher drain hose. Here’s what we did:
Under the sink, before.
We actually did not have to replace the entire drain hose, which made this project much easier than anticipated. The only problematic hose was the connection between the “air gap” and the garbage disposal.
For those of you not blessed with an air gap, in some areas, building codes require that a dishwasher not drain directly into the disposal. Rather, the drain connects to a vent in the top of the sink (the “air gap”). A second hose goes from the air gap to the disposal. You can see in this picture the hose connecting the air gap to the disposal is a bit kinked. It’s not entirely closed off, but you can see that it is bent at too far of an angle, narrowing the passage of water. As a result, when the dishwasher drained, excess water that couldn’t make it through the small space leaked out the air gap.
You can see the hose flattens out where it bends, allowing less water through.
It’s pretty simple, really. First, you loosen the bolts on the hose clamps, the little metal strips wrapped around the ends of the tubing that hold it to the connections on the disposal and the air gap.
Here is S trying to get the hose off the disposal connection after loosening the hose clamp.
Once you’ve loosened the clamps and removed the hose, you just reverse the process with the new hose. Remember to check the size of your existing hose before you go to the hardware store to buy a new one. We forgot on our first trip. Our hose has a 7/8 in. internal diameter. Most of what they had at Home Depot was 3/4 or 1 in. , so we had to get some hose specially cut. We purchased about 4 feet of hose, just to be safe.
Place the hose on the connections at the air gap and disposal, and tighten the hose clamps. Viola! You are done. Here’s our new, extra long hose:
Under the sink, after.
It looks funny, but we couldn’t find any other way to connect the air gap and the disposal without creating a kink in the hose, just like we had before.
This post is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and is not intended to be advice. Please consult a professional. Also, before doing any home improvement projects yourself, remember to take all appropriate safety precautions (for example, but not limited to, turning off electricity or water, etc.).
My name is Erin, and I am a craigslist addict. I first experienced the magic in 2004, when I purchased my fabulous metallic red Ford Focus, which I adore to this day. Now that I have an empty house to furnish and an empty wallet, I’m constantly trolling the listings for furniture. It takes time, but eventually you will find a gem. The latest? Our new dining room table. Solid mahogany, seats up to 8, two removable leaves, originally $700 from Crate and Barrel. Our price: $250. Woohoo!
Our gorgeous new table.
We bought it from a couple getting ready to move. Unfortunately, they did not have the matching chairs, which run $180 new at C&B. At that price, eight chairs will cost almost six times as much as the table. Probably not going to happen. It looks like the table will be lonely until we can find a suitable alternative.
