Small Wins

Slowly but surely Ryan has been putting the rock tiles together #longestprocessever. Hopefully we'll be able to lay down those floors in the next couple of weeks especially since I'm starting to fear for my life at the laundry mat. Last night was a real trip, the mat was full of um, characters, for lack of better words. The cops came, I saw a lady going through withdrawl and I felt like I was at the Caribbean with a guy trying to sell me socks out of his bag (and not the nice part of the Caribbean). If I had any patience with the laundry mat, it has officially run out.

My sister and her family were visiting this weekend so Kevin helped Ryan put in a transition between the tiles and the floor. We had a mighty large step up since Travertine tiles are thicker than typical tiles so we Ryan had to be creative. He ended up buying wood and basically shaving it down with the help of Kevin.

There were a few trigonometry conversations trying to figure out the angles.

The wood needs to be sanded, stained and caulked but it makes a big difference having that finished. Plus, now we're handicap accessible #winwin. 

Ryan also started putting up molding around the windows. 

We have to paint the trim all around the window and I'm going to make some curtains... eventually, but it's starting to look a lot more finished.

My final excitement was that our counter stools came in and not only are they cute, they're super comfortable.

I'll probably buy another set so we have three at the counter but for now, they're perfect.

Because I didn't get out of my pajamas yesterday....

... I don't have many pictures of Ryan (and Clark's) hard work. We had an amazing time in Connecticut visiting our friends for the weekend so yesterday we were both at the grind. Ryan finished sanding down the drywall in the back room and him and Clark moved the door for the bathroom so that it opened to the outside instead of the inside. This will make life much easier in the smallest bathroom of all time.

Ryan also fixed the dishwasher (that the plumbers couldn't figure out even after my Mom READ them the directions #plumbersfail).

That's a holiday sweatshirt he's wearing that he tried to pass off on to me #nothanks

And changed the facet directions so that the hot water comes out of the red part and the cold out of the blue #wheredidweevenfindtheseplumbers. Exciting things, I tell you.

While Ryan was busy, I was studying (before school even starts #schoolfail) on the most uncomfortable ikea stool that were left behind by the previous owners (I wonder why?). I've been having a hard time pulling the trigger on a lot of the things I want to buy for the house but last night I finally bought us a pair of stools. I figure if I like them I'll buy a second pair since three should comfortably fit and we can use the fourth if we have company.

You like?

I have no idea what they say but I love the black words against the linen. I also think they should be rather comfortable which is a definite win. I want our couch to be a linen color so I thought this would be a perfect way to ensure the two rooms look cohesive. 

And here's a sneak peak of our tiles coming together. Ryan worked on the second sheet last night and they're looking pretttty good.

Don't mind the missing rocks, we'll have to glue them down separately.

Last night we were also looking in to a new door for out back which is proving to be a bit of an obstacle for our non modern 30 inch doorway but hopefully we'll be able to find one and install it within the week or so. Laundry mat, your days are numbered..... crap, have I said that before?! ;)

Update

The other day when we got home (ready to cut up the box and hide it from the world), Ryan noticed  that someone had taken the coffin! #thankgoodness So, I guess putting trash on that corner DOES actually work. Of course, we won't tell that to the neighorhood listserv police.

We also checked out the rocks last night and it appears that our mesh solution may just have done the trick! I don't want to jinx us but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes once we start laying them down on the floor. Pebble floors for our mudroom? Yes, please!

We're visiting friends this weekend but hopefully next week we'll be able to start on painting the back room and do our stripes! EEK! I'm SO excited!

BUSTED

Via our lovely neighborhood gripe board list serv:

"Neighbors,

The corner of 14th pl and g is not a designated place to drop your trash. Can whoever dumped the huge box there please call 311 and put it back in front of your own home for pickup?"

Let me explain. We ordered this HUGE Runtal radiator (I think it's about 8 feet tall or so) so it came in an even bigger box, which... slightly resembles a coffin (no joke I checked inside it the first time I saw it and expected to see a body). So, we had this ridiculous box in front of our house for the past two weeks or so until I finally asked Ryan to move it to the corner, where I thought we were supposed to put things for bulk pick up. According to our lovely neighbor, I am clearly mistaken. Ryan texted me this morning "We have to chop it up and bring it inside. I can't live with the shame.", followed up by "they'll pick it up Jan 19. Oh, the shame." Lesson learned, nothing gets passed these neighbors, I tell you ;)

Back to the house. We were busy this weekend. We installed our wine fridge this weekend (and got rid of our old fridge that was sitting in the living room).

Before

After

Ryan finished mudding the back room. He thinks that he'll need to sand and then we should be ready to paint.

Bathroom

We're going to do stripes in the laundry room so I'll be sure to let you know how that goes. If all goes well, they should look like this:

Swoon....

The last big project that we've been working on is the tiles for the mud room. I had already told you that we had picked up those bags of rocks, well, we've been doing a few test runs on them. Ryan decided that the best way to do it would be to build a sand box to ensure that all of the rocks were evenly glued to the mesh (we are substituting gardening mesh).

Sand box

Sorting

making sure they're even

gluing the mesh

To Ryan's surprise, when we checked last night, the rocks were actually sufficiently glued down. We won't talk about how long it took or how long it will take to do enough of these for the whole room, let's just say we're hoping this first time was our learning curve ;)

My Dad, brother in law and sister were also down this weekend so we managed to install our garbage disposal switch and started trimming the cabinets. We also made a trip to Ikea, my second of the weekend. My Dad joked that they should know my name by now and in all honesty, they probably should. I'm addicted to their organization accessories.

The End of the "Mat"?

This week, Ryan's been working on the back room which will host our laundry room as well as our powder room (it's so small that's probably all you'll be able to do in there). And let me tell you, even though I'm getting used to the "mat", I can't WAIT to be able to put my laundry in and actually leave the room. Maybe, JUST maybe, it might cause me to be this productive:

Probably not, mainly because who has time to do all that in one day? Well I guess that's why you have stay at home Mom's.... 

ANYWAY, so Ryan's been working on putting up walls over the existing yellow, horrible walls.

This is where the washer and dryer will go, after they leave my family room :)

I can't wait to get a new door.

Mudding

Mudded up

I'm pretty excited because once the walls are all painted and pretty in this color:

Cappuccino

We'll be able to put the floor down and get a new door for out back. We won't mention how out back has become a storage area of sorts so it's not looking so hot right now but that door, that door has got to go.

Bedazzled

In many ways. First, Ryan put on the hardware to our cabinets. I like to call it their jewelry and they sure do look fancy :)

Taking off the drawers

Putting in the holes

Coming together

All dolled up.

We also finally put up the right sized foyer light. Third time was certainly the charm :)

You like?

And I put my craftiness to use and finished up our save the dates.

Pre envelope printing where I almost offed myself

The house and wedding are really starting to come together. It's incredible how much time you have when you're not in school :)

New Year New Kitchen

The day has finally come (well last Wednesday technically) that we can cook in our kitchen... and it's glorious.

Last week my Mom came down to help me organize the kitchen and make it cook able. This involved unpacking many, MANY boxes that had lived in storage in our back room. Some of those boxes were packed over a year ago when we moved in to this house (where has this year gone!?) and some were engagement presents that had been stashed away for 5 months. It was like Christmas all over again!

Mom unpacking day 1

Unpacking day 2

We also finished up all of the painting that we hadn't been able to do before due to the appliances sitting in our family room for 10 months :)

AND we cooked the first meal in the new kitchen. We won't mention how my Mom and I also had to deal with FOUR plumbers trying to figure out how to work a dishwasher which ended in my Mom reading the instruction booklet to them.... but I guess you can't win them all ;)