Bedroom before and after...

The color scheme in our bedroom was shocking when we moved in.

Master bedroom "before"

Why didn't we show you this before? We really felt we needed you to fall in love (or at least like) with the house before showing you this room. When our family and friends came to see the house initially, this room--without fail--always brought a funny fake smile to everyone's faces with comments like "Oh, this is nice." Once we explained that we hadn't painted the room, people--without fail--always said something to the effect of "Thank goodness. I was hoping that you didn't pick the colors."

In fairness to the previous owners, we think this was a child's room. While the color scheme may have been fun and bright for a kid, it wasn't very restful for two grown adults. We have big plans for this room--it will eventually be a master suite. And, so far, we've done quite a bit of work to that end.

First, we borrowed some space from the adjacent bedroom (what will eventually be Max's bedroom) and created a walk-in closet. When you walk in the front door of the room, the closet is located just to your right. It's hard to tell in the pic below, but it is L-shaped, about 5' x 7' in the main area with another 2' x 4' section. Kansas City Closet Co. will install a custom closet system (complete with hanging racks, shelves, and laundry bins) in about two weeks.

New master closet

Next, we had the floors refinished, and painted the closet and trim. We actually lived in that pink and orange room for a couple of weeks until, last weekend, we couldn't take it anymore. We chose chocolate brown bedding and window treatments and painted the bedroom a pale blue. Sherwin Williams calls it Honest Blue, which--as Joe pointed out--makes it a good choice for a married couple's bedroom. The old ceiling fan didn't work (and wasn't too attractive), so we got a new model with a remote control that has become Max's new favorite toy.

Master bedroom "after"

We still need to hang things on the wall and I'd like to get a big, fluffy rug, but we are SO happy with the end result. I think it is exactly what we imagined and it really is quite relaxing.

The old closet, however, is not so relaxing. In fact, it makes me tense almost every time I open it. Right now, because we can't use our new closet yet, it is just chock full of junk.

Old master closet--future bathroom.

Eventually, this closet (and the attic space behind that door), will become a full master bathroom. But, for now, the mess behind the old closet door will just be our little secret.

I Love My (Crazy) Husband

When you last heard from me--on January 30--it was moving day. I know it sounds cliche, but it seems like years have passed. We've been working around the clock to make this house our home (and, incidentally, have been compiling loads of "before" and "after" pics for upcoming posts). We've made lots of mistakes, wasted lots of time, and shared more than a few cross words with each other. We're older and wiser and maybe just a bit more cynical. And, frankly, I expected that to happen. But even though Joe and I have been married almost 8(!) years, living in this house has revealed a new, unexpected side of him. For better or worse, I think yesterday is the perfect example of my new, slightly crazy, husband.

Yesterday, it snowed. Hard.

Gratuitous picture of Max

Sure, Max looks happy and care-free playing in the snow, but that was after-the-fact. Yesterday morning and afternoon, it was windy, cold, snowy, and wet. Max was visiting his Nanni, so Joe and I decided--on such an awful day--that painting (inside) would be a good project to tackle. So imagine my surprise when, after I finished rolling some paint in our room, I couldn't find Joe. I searched the house and finally went outside. Here is what I found:

The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Joe, what are you doing?!?!"
Joe: "I'm putting these extenders on the gutters."
Me: "Do you really need to do that now?!? It is snowing and the wind is blowing 40 miles per hour!!!"
Joe: "Yes. Can you hand me that white bracket on the back porch?"
Me: "This white bracket? Here you go. It is entirely too cold to be doing this right now. You are psychotic!"
Joe (dead serious): "Kendra, there's nothing psychotic about keeping water away from your house."

What do you say to that? I threatened to take his picture and quote him on the blog. He was undeterred.


He told me he would be done in a second and asked if I wanted to get lunch at the local restaurant, the Hungry Mule. I told him I needed to go grab my scarf. Two minutes later, I opened the back door and this is what I saw.

I honestly have no idea why he was shoveling the walk while it was still snowing or how he had managed to shovel all that in the short time I had been inside. All I can tell you is that he was shoveling as furiously as I have ever seen anyone shovel.

Don't get me wrong--I appreciate that these things needed to be done. I just question whether they needed to be done in the blowing snow, especially when there were plenty of indoor projects he could have been working on.

Is there a twelve-step program for obsessive older-home owners? Or perhaps a support group for their confused, concerned partners?

I just think that yesterday, Joe could have benefited from a safe, warm place where he could have gone and said, "Hello. My name is Joe and I own an old home..."

Joe's Home Improvement Week: 1 Win, 1 Loss

I'm sure everyone out there on the Internets can't wait to hear the conclusion of my gripping tale that is the plasma tv saga. Well Peaches fans, wait no more. I present to you, the finished product:

I'm not the one watching Rachael Ray, I swear.

Also, note the old-school NES. That's how I roll.

Victory! The TV is up with the cords deliciously hidden behind the wall. In fact, it's been on the wall for five days now, and it still hasn't come crashing down. I think I'm in the clear.

While most of you are likely unimpressed with my "ability" to accomplish a very simple home improvement task, there are probably two or three folks wondering how I got this done. First, I purchased electrical boxes better suited to my needs -- the new ones secured themselves to the existing wall pretty well. Then, I attached the switchplates directly to the plaster with self-drilling screws to give the electrical boxes a more finished look. With the help of the future brother-in-law, I was able to lift the TV onto the bracket.

At that point, the job was finished, except for one thing. There was no functioning power outlet near the TV. There used to be an outlet there, but it was on a knob-and-tube circuit that was removed before we moved in. It was my mission to run a new outlet to that spot. First, I had to enlarge the existing hole in the baseboard to make way for a new, code-approved electrical box. This was easy with my pocket saw--until the saw handle broke. Ugh. I was determined to finish the job without another trip to the hardware store, so I just put on some work gloves, grabbed the saw blade sans handle, and hacked at the baseboard until the hole was big enough. Surprisingly, I accomplished this without hurting myself or any bystanders.

Then, I tapped into a functioning circuit in the basement, ran the wire up to the electrical box, and connected the outlet to the wires. This was the first significant electrical work I had done to the house (there will be a future poston all the electrical work I have done so far--oh, I am such a tease). I flipped the breaker back on, and everything is working perfectly.

You'll notice the title of this post -- 1 Win, 1 Loss. The high of getting the TV up was quickly diminished by the low of my experience with the thermostat. Last Saturday, I purchased a programmable thermostat to replace the old one. I figured it was the right thing to do in that we would save some money, and also do our part to reduce our impact on the planet, being the conservationist that I am.

Installation was a snap (just a matter of connecting wires to screws) . By Saturday afternoon, everything was great--it was all programmed and running. We were saving money. We were saving the planet. I figured a congratulatory phone call from Al Gore would come at any minute.

Then, on Wednesday morning, the temperature in the house was 65 degrees. I fiddled with the thermostat for probably an hour that morning, but couldn't get any heat to come out of the registers. Not wanting to take any chances (with it being the dead of a Missouri winter and all), I called a heating and cooling guy to come take a look. He diagnosed the problem as a faulty thermostat--that fancy programmable one just wasn't sending the proper signals to the furnace. He put a basic, non-programmable one back on for us, and by the time I got home on Wednesday evening, the house was nice and warm.

Final tally for my thermostat misadventure, including the service call and the price of the (now useless) programmable thermostat: $190. Ouch. It's not like we'll go hungry or anything, but I would have preferred to just have kept the old thermostat and saved the time and money.

So, final score for the week: Joe 1, House 1.

One Room at a Time

Being in the house now, we've already noticed that our home improvement patterns have changed. Obviously, projects aren't limited to the weekends anymore, and we've also developed a better understanding of which projects are a priority for us actually living in the house, and which ones are more superficial. For example, we do not have any functioning lights in our stairway/hallway. This is a little dangerous, and very annoying. Since this involves a level of electrical work that is well over my head, we've got an electrician coming to look at the situation next Thursday.

From here on out, Kendra has a developed a "one room a month" plan of attack. We pic out one room that is going to be fixed in a month's time, and all the home improvement efforts are concentrated on that room. For February, that room will be our master bedroom. So far, we've already refinished the hardwood floors and changed the window treatments. I don't have pictures right now, but the master bedroom still needs some serious help. We will be changing the ceiling fan, re-painting the walls, and pimping out the closet.

This seems like a very modest to-do list, but I think this is the approach we have to take for now, or otherwise I think we risk spending all of our time doing home improvement and suffering some major burn out.

Plasma

We are still going through all the fun that you encounter when you move -- forwarding mail, changing addresses, and setting up utilities. Yesterday, the satellite TV guy came, and hooked up our service. This is the first time we have had cable in about 4-5 years, so it's a bit of a change for us. The good part is that we will finally take full advantage of our HD plasma tv. We've had the tv for 3 years now, but--without cable--we were only pulling 5-7 of the local HD channels over-the-air. Now, thanks to DirecTv, we have 20+ channels in full HD goodness.

Since we have cable now, I thought it would be a good idea to try to mount our plasma to the wall. I had done this before in the urban highrise, but with the plaster walls at the country estate it was going to be a little more complex. Here is my step-by-step guide on how to mount a plasma tv, Joe-style.

Kendra and I already decided the TV was going in the corner of the living room by the pocket doors. There's a cable jack on that wall, so we are covered there. I even flexed my home improvement muscles and ran a new telephone wire up from the basement for the DirecTv service. There's no outlet there, but I am planning to add one into an existing cut-out. So far, so good.

Next, I used my new stud finder to find two studs. I'm attaching the wall mount directly to the studs with lag bolts, so I drilled four pilot holes, then attached the mount. Thankfully, it came out level.
Next, I took a utility knife and cut through the plaster to make two holes: one for the cords to go into the wall behind the tv, and one for the cords to come out of the wall and into our various components.

Then, I took a pocket saw and cut through the lath:

With my cable holes finished, I took two electrical boxes and cut out the backs using tin snips. I could have just ran the cables through the open holes, but I want to finish the holes out a bit, which ultimately proved to be my undoing. Here's one of the electrical boxes I used.

Mounting the box was tricky. One of my holes was cut perfectly -- I just slid the box in and it fit very snugly. It's not secured, but I don't think that's necessary right now. For the other one, though, the plaster crumbled a bit as I was cutting, so it didn't fit quite so snug. I had to rig it up using a toggle bolt I found in my toolbox. That keeps it in place, but it's got some play in it.

Next, I ran the cords through holes and electrical boxes:


And this, loyal readers, is where things went to hell. I went to install the switch plates I purchased at Menard's. I purchased oversized plates, thinking they would allow more room for the cords. But, come to find out, oversized plates do not fit standard electrical boxes. Shit. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of cords dangling from the walls, and my plasma tv sitting pathetically on its stand. There's no way I'm mounting this thing, only to have to take it down again to put regular-sized switch plates on.

Back to Menard's, I guess. I suppose I'll keep my TV on an entertainment stand for now, like some kind of barbarian.