Category: Our First House

Our first house, a 1960 ranch home.

Guess What We Did?

Published on by Our Humble Abode17 Comments

Last Saturday, Ben was baking banana bread while the boys and I ate waffles at the dining table.  Ben got annoyed talking around the upper cabinets separating the kitchen and dining rooms.  He jokingly said he wanted to take the cabinets down.   After a second, I said, “Go for it!”  I thought about where we could move our plates, bowls and cups.  After breakfast, I cleared the cabinets out and moved everything to our newly empty cabinets thanks to Jen’s 30 in 30 challenge.

Then, Ben got his drill and started removing the cabinet doors.

After the doors, the cabinets came down.

It was a quick process.  If only our entire kitchen renovation would go as quickly.  Just 18 screws, 5 minutes, and a little dancing to get a brighter, more open kitchen.

Now, we have a nice, open view to the dining room.

It’s amazing that the kitchen is so much brighter without the divider.  Remember the old view?

Just for kicks, I asked Ben to hold one of the cabinets against the wall, just to get a feel for the new cabinet layout.  This one is larger than what we’ll actually have.

The walls behind the cabinets haven’t been painting and to be honest, I’m debating whether I want to or not.  The screws left a little damage and the holes should be filled.  But, I’m lazy and hopefully we’ll start renovating the kitchen this fall, so it won’t last too long.  Right?  Most likely, I’ll get sick of looking at the mismatched paint and touch it up.  We’ll see.  Haha.

Now you’ve seen the results of our impulse decision.  It’s strange to go to the cabinet to grab a cup for Vincent and see plates.  We’ll get used to it soon.

 

Have you made any impulse home renovations lately?  Did you paint?  Retile?  Maybe you did a little demo work?

Blog Fest: The Past Year

Published on by Our Humble Abode6 Comments

I saw this idea on Young House Love and I thought this would be a fun post to honor our actual 1 year blog anniversary.  We’ve come a long way since starting this blog last May.  Here are our stats and numbers.

Over the course of a year, we have written 281 blog posts, for an average of .77 posts per day.

434 readers have subscribed to our site, not counting any that may follow along through a reader or by checking in each day.

At the end of May 2010, our first month of blogging, we had 253 total blog views.  I was so excited when we had 70 hits in one day.

In April, we had 49,006 blog views.

Our highest month, March, had 63,362  blog views.

Jen at IHeart Organizing was the first person to feature one of our projects, my office bookshelves.  We’ve been blog friends ever since.

Thanks to Young House Love’s feature of our dining table, August 6th had 11,305, the most page views in a single day.

Over the course of the year, we’ve had 428,673 blog views.  With 186,607 views in 2010, with a daily average of 804 views.  So far for 2011, we’ve had 242,044 total views, averaging 1,882 views per day.

We’ve uploaded 1,178 pictures and have 38 posts in our drafts folder.  Many of which are simply ideas or plans for things we want to do but haven’t.

We’ve held 20 giveaways,including our current art package, and have plans for more.

Our awesome readers have left us 3,471 comments while WordPress has blocked 5,690 spam comments, most of which contain the word, Lolita.  Yeah, you can guess what they’re ‘advertising’.

Adventures in Building a Dining Table is the most viewed post after the Home Page, Grand Tour, About, and Etsy Shop.

Since Ben bought our house in 2004, {2 years before we met, hence the lack of true before pictures}:

We’ve completely renovated 7 rooms and partly renovated 1 room, the laundry room.

We’ve also finished 1 basement with 6 rooms, starting from concrete walls.

1 room is waiting to be touched, the kitchen, which will be our largest, most expensive, time-consuming project to date.

50 fake birds occupy our house.  0 real birds live here.

We’ve added 4 built ins to our house including two entertainment centers and two ‘offices‘ if you count the laundry room as Ben’s office.

Ben has built 4 pieces of furniture (and counting)  for our home.  A nightstand, bookshelf, dining table, and our bed.

21 thrifted, garage sale or hand-me-down large items are in our house.  We’ve only purchased 5 large items at normal price from large retailers.  Two Dolce lounge chairs from Target, two Flor rugs, and our theater room sectional from Costco.

Of the 100+ projects we’ve tackled on this house, we’ve only hired out 2 jobs; drilling a well and cutting the concrete foundation for egress windows.

That’s the skinny on blogging.  Did we miss something you’d like to know?  We’ll see what we can scrounge up.

Blog Fest: Kitchen Mood Board

Published on by Our Humble Abode15 Comments

This is a big renovation year for us, just like two years ago when we finished our basement.  Soon enough, we’re going to pour a new concrete patio.  Over the weekend, Ben and I discussed our kitchen.  We already had a general idea of the design elements, so we were talking the nitty-gritty details.  Cabinet layout, whether to go with all drawers or keep some cabinets, assorted toe kick options and things of that nature.  That inspired me to whip up a mood board to give you an idea of where we’re headed.  We’re looking for classic traditional with modern touches, something like this:

Here’s a break down of our major components:

1.  The paint will tie into the living room and I really want a warm, mid tone grey.  We haven’t picked absolutely settled on a paint color, but I like Kendall Charcoal (HC-166) and Cape May Cobblestone (1474) by Benjamin Moore.  Both colors are favorite greys selected by Ben Moore himself, well, the company.

2.  We’ve used these modern cylinder drawer pulls on our entertainment center and love the look, so we’ll use them both as drawer pulls and door handles.  Helpful hint:  You can buy packages of 10 at Lowe’s for about 1/2 the individual price.

3.  Rather than a standard undermount sink, we’ve fallen for the look of this stainless steel apron front sink.  It’s both traditional and modern, all in one.  Oh, the smaller size (6 inches smaller than our current sink) will allow us to move our trash from its current location to the left side of our sink.  By doing this, we’ll also gain another drawer stack.  (Right now we have a small cutting board cabinet).

4.  It’s no secret that we (really, I) love Carrara marble.  We have it in both bathrooms and we’re adding some to the kitchen.  Because our backsplash is minimal, we’re planning a cut it ourselves subway sized, brick-lay marble backsplash.  Something similar to this, but cheaper because we’ll buy 12 inch square tiles to cut ourselves.  Not literally ourselves, but we will do the cutting.

5.  We love custom details and a good price, so Ben has decided to build our kitchen cabinets rather than buy.  The square recessed panel, like the cabinet doors in my office, is a clean style with just enough detail.

6.  Since we love our DIY welded steel and marble dining table, we’d love to add more of the same marble.  I don’t know the name, so I’m sorry that I can’t give those details.

7.  A set of matching LG stainless steel appliances is on our list including a backless range, dishwasher and refrigerator.

8.  A few months ago, we were lucky enough to find 3/4 inch thick cherry-stained hickory hardwood flooring on clearance, so Ben bought what was left.

Some things might change and others already have.  We’re not completely certain on the paint color and we already know the marble remnant we used for our dining table is no longer in stock.  We’re searching for a single hole, pull out faucet in brushed stainless or nickel.  We’ll also need to find the worlds smallest functioning microwave to keep on the counter, or another secret stash.

We have a few projects to tackle before we can start gutting the kitchen, but the planning is on like donkey kong.  While we’re planning, I’m curious what kitchen features you have and couldn’t live with out?  What about the gadgets you thought would be great but weren’t?  Have any kitchen products you’d like to recommend?  A faucet or tiny microwave, perhaps?  Do you have all drawers?  If so, any regrets?

P.S.  Voting ends soon.  Please vote for our office and bedroom to give us a chance at $5,000 for our kitchen remodel.

Blog Fest: Patio Planning

Published on by Our Humble Abode13 Comments

With a year of blogging under our belt and seeing only one renovation project start from square one is a little depressing.  Too bad we didn’t hop on the blog train before we started finishing our basement, huh?  Well, this year, we’ve got some big projects in store and we’re going to take you along for the ride.  Let the Blog Fest begin!  First project on our to do list, rip up the old and pour a new concrete patio.

I’ve already shared my annoyances.  First, I think it would be helpful to share the layout of our current patio.  The walkway to the garage is completely covered with dirt, so I didn’t bother drawing that in.

The grey us where our current patio is, the dark grey as rock and the brown circle toward the top is the Ash tree, which we will cut down at some point.  The south-east corner doesn’t extend completely.  The new patio will, like this:

Over the weekend, we started planning the layout by pounding long nails into the corners.  Vincent had to help, of course.

 

With the stakes in place, Ben wrapped string around to form a perimeter.  Then we moved a few nails to tweak the design and took a few walks around to test the layout.

We decided on an angled path from the main patio area to the garage.


In addition to breaking up a ton (or several) of concrete, here is the plan:

Our current patio is roughly 8 feet wider than the planned patio will be, but will remain the same depth from the house.  We’ll add an angled walking path from the new, smaller patio to the garage.  The concrete will go around the basement bathroom window well (the half circle), up to the house.  A walking path will sit a few inches from the edge of my office window well (the white box with rounded corners), leaving room on either side of the window for rocks with a small plant.  I’d also love to have a row of hydrangeas along the eastern edge of the patio, to soften the edges and act as a pretty barrier between the yard and patio.  And because I love hydrangeas.  And because our yard slopes there and it may be tough for little feet to manage.  And because I love hydrangeas.

We’ll keep the concrete stairs because they are in perfect condition, just need a good cleaning.  The new concrete slab will sit a few inches higher than the surrounding grass to help keep dirt off, but three or so inches below the bottom stair.  This should help explain.

Because we’re removing the area where the grills are, we’ll have to relocate the grill.  Probably to the right of the stair was you walk out, south for the men reading this.  Why is it that men always use North, South, East and West when giving directions while women usually use right, left or straight?  Or landmarks.  When we pour the concrete in the back, we’ll also pull out the pavers in our front walkway to pour a seamless concrete slab extending from the stairs to our concrete driveway.

Some of the pavers will be repurposed as the grill platform.  How about a little side by side plan comparison?

What warm weather projects are on your to do list?  Have you ever poured a concrete patio?  Or completed any sort of patio?

Rain Checked Spring

Published on by Our Humble Abode7 Comments

Spring officially began March 20 and I was so excited to say au revoir to winter.  Then, mother nature played a mean trick on the folks in Montana (and several other places) by giving us a dose of winter mid-April.  We made the most of our snow day and the snow melted by evening.  Now, our temps are about 20 degrees below average and I’m not liking it.  Our fruit trees don’t seem to mind, though.  Ben is happy he hasn’t had to worry about a late freeze killing his prized trees.  We’re already in May and our plants are just beginning to turn green.

The bleeding hearts on the shady north side are doing swell.

As are the neighboring lily of the valley.  Last year, these had already bloomed.

Before we filled our front flower bed with roses and rocks to eliminate weeding, we had tulips and Allium.  A few obstinate tulips have popped up from under the layer of landscaping fabric and rocks.  Such a sweet surprise.

Notice the rose bush behind.  One tiny leaf shoot?  Seriously, I was hoping for tons (literally, one ton) of roses this year.  That and two tons of apples from our trees to make apple crisp.  Speaking of trees, this is depressing.

Where’s the beef green?  This day lily might do something this year.  The past three years have only given us green.  Sad, because the flowers are a deep purple.  Don’t ask why I haven’t removed the tag…

One thing that hasn’t had a problem growing or photosynthesizing is our grass.  In fact, it has over-grown our side-walk.

Ben and Vincent dug up the grass and our side-walk is about six inches wider.  More good news.  We stained our fence last fall.  Because we had never used the stain, we wondered how well the finish would hold up over winter.

Luckily, the stain is still in mint condition.  Yahoo to not re-staining this year.

Have you been stuck in a winter rut like we have?  Or are you a lucky duck and live in a warm climate?  Have your flowers and/or trees bloomed?  What is your favorite plant in your yard?  Are you like I am and wish a magnolia tree would grow in your climate?  What other plants do you wish you could have?  I can’t wait to get some plants in our window boxes and for the fruit trees to flower.  Just a little longer…