How’s It Hanging?

We’ve been bad at updating lately. It’s not that we haven’t been chipping away on projects — it’s just that most of what we’re working on is in progress. Plus who really wants to see pictures of us plastering for the 23,408,324th time? Snoozefest. The things we’re working on right now aren’t super exciting, but whatever, we’re going to post ‘em anyway. Starting with the one project that we fiiiiinally just finished and are thrilled with.

Remember the vintage lighting fixture we found in a northern Pennsylvania thrift shop? It used to look like this:

It looked like this momentarily:

And then this:

After that, it got a serious facelift:

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a local specialty lamp store and picked up all of the parts we needed to wrap this project up because we were in a big hurry to finish up this project. This place ended up being waaaaay overpriced. We got a ceiling cap, 2 feet of chain, some silk electrical cord, and a socket for about $50. Blurgh — not great considering we paid $50 for the actual fixture itself. But we did save a ton of time by not waiting for things to be shipped to us.

First order of business: make the different parts match the fixtures.

We used the same oil-rubbed bronze spray paint that we used on the pendant itself. The ceiling cap looks so much better in ORB than glossy black.

We decided not to paint the chain and socket because we liked the way they looked:

The chain in old, so it has an aged, rusty look that we loved. And the socket is brass — not shiny, tacky, ’80s brass, but dull, aged brass. So we left it as is.

We threaded the silk wire through the chain, then connected the chain to the pendant:

Once the socket was wired up, here’s how the pendant looked:

And here’s how it looks today:

We weren’t sure whether we would hang the fixture at the top of the staircase or the bottom — both areas had crappy old fixtures that needed replacement. We decided to go with the top of the staircase to add a little drama to an otherwise boring area.

Bam. Success. Check out the way the light plays on the walls around the fixture:

We haven’t decided what color we’ll be painting the walls, but we plan on taking the lighting pattern into account.

We went with a long Edison style bulb so we get a nice overall glow without getting blinded when we look at the fixture.

That’s it for our vintage lighting fixture project. We had two goals when we started searching for lighting for the hallway: 1) we wanted something unique that draws the eye up to showcase how ridiculously tall the ceilings are, and 2) we didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. We think we nailed both goals.

The entire thing cost us a hundred bones — $50 for the fixture and $50 for the parts. We did a quick check on our last trip to Home Depot to see what a standard off-the-rack fixture of a similar size would cost. We couldn’t find out as big, but we did notice that a lot of the nicer looking fixtures were well above $100. And ours definitely brings more glam.

What do you think? Did we do this fixture justice?

How To Find a Find: Our Thoughts on Thrift Stores

We got absolutely no work done last weekend. Instead, we went camping. We spent the weekend hiking, fishing and huddling up around a campfire with the dogs.

Our motto is, “Why do it when you can OVERdo it?” And that’s basically what we did last summer and fall. We were in a zone. Every week was spent working on work stuff, and every weekend was spent working on house stuff. There were entire months where we didn’t do anything but work, work, work. Remember how all-work-no-play made Jack Nicholson go all axe-wielding maniac? We decided we’re going to put a stop to our workaholic ways before we get to that point.

Instead of work-work-work, we’re going for a work-play-work. That way, we don’t totally burn out like we did this winter. Added bonus: getting out gives us the chance to score some sweet finds for our house. We’re talking thrift shopping, baby! On our way back from camping, we stopped at an antique store and took a look around.

We didn’t find anything on that trip, but we did recently acquire some vintage stuff that we later found elsewhere for more than what we paid. Remember these chairs that we nabbed for $6 a pop at a Salvation Army?

While we were sanding those puppies down, we found a manufacturer’s stamp:

It’s basically a little metal coin that’s set into wood so it sits flush. We didn’t notice it before because it’s in a really discreet spot on the leg. We Googled and found out that the W.H. Gunlocke Chair Company is now known as just Gunlocke, and they’re still producing chairs.

Based on the logo on our chairs, these suckers were built sometime between 1940 and 1969. A little more Googling and we found a few places selling those same chairs for way more than $12 a pair. A pair sold for $300 here. There’s one chair for sale on Etsy for $300. Yeah. $300 for one chair. And these are in “vintage” condition — they need to be refinished and reupholstered. So nabbing a pair for $12 was seriously lucky.

In case you’re wondering what the status on those chair is, we managed to completely sand one down before we ran out of sanding pads. We haven’t stopped by the hardware store in a while, so the chairs are just sitting there, waiting on us to get moving again. As far as fabric goes, we’re considering leather. Upholstering leather makes us a bit nervous, but we’re studying up on YouTube and trying to figure out where we can score some vintage cigar leather.

Another lucky find happened just a couple of weeks ago. Bradley’s boss owns a cabin in a teeny town in northern Pennsylvania. (We’ve been calling it Upstate Pennsylvania, but it’s not catching on.) We spent a week there in April, and learned the hard way that teeny towns don’t do street signs. We saw some people sitting around outside a barn, so we stopped to ask for directions. When we got a peek inside the barn, we realized it was actually an antique store. Way out in the middle-of-nowhere.

The people were nice enough to give us really detailed directions on how to get to the nearest highway, so we had to stop and take a look. They twisted our arm with their niceness. And this amazing pendant that was peeping out from a corner:

That’s a huge brass pendant. There’s a spot inside for a bulb and a hook at the top so it can be hung on a chain like a chandelier. The two pieces on the floor next to the pendant were removed at some point (probably for rewiring) and they need to be reattached. Easy fix.

We knew right away that this was The One — the fabulous lighting fixture for the top of our staircase. We walked away with the pendant and a huge gold frame (that we haven’t photographed yet) for $65. $15 for the frame and $50 for the pendant. We didn’t haggle over prices because a) they seemed like really nice people and b) we’re pretty sure that, based on the location of this shop, we were their only customers all week. We thought $65 was totally reasonable when we took that into consideration.

Cut to a few weeks later and we’re trolling through Emily Henderson’s blog for color palette inspiration. Emily is the host of HGTV’s Secrets of a Stylist, which we think is the only show on HGTV worth watching. We loooove her and her show, so we were kinda floored when we saw this pendant she posted about:

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Pretty similar to the one we found, no? Only the price tag on this one is $375. Ours is a bit bigger and more ornate, but it’s basically the same style — and we spent $50! It’s going to take about $15 and 2 hours of labor to get ours fixed up. We need to weld two spots and spray paint it. We might also change out the wiring. Not hard, time-consuming or expensive. So we think we got an amazing bargain.

As for the frame, it’s going to be spray painted and turned into a mirror for the half bathroom downstairs. We just need to have a mirror cut for it. We haven’t decided on a color yet, but we’re thinking something bold like matte black. Or something unexpected like a bright teal. We’ll figure it out once we start renovating the bathroom. Pictures of that find soon — pulling it out of the garage to photograph has taken a back seat to a couple of other projects going on right now.

Inspired by our recent good luck, we’ve been making more frequent trips to thrift and antique shops. We know it can be totally overwhelming — how do you figure out what’s A Find versus what’s junk? Here’s what works for us when we go shopping for vintage housewares:

• Partner up.
  It’s inevitable: when we go to an antique shop, one of us will get all googly-eyed over something and the other one will give it a “meh.” We’re both designers and we’re both extremely opinionated on decor. A lot of time, those opinions clash. That goes tenfold for vintage items, which can be really bold statement pieces. When we clash on those, we really clash. We have a rule that we won’t buy something unless both of us agree on it. Getting a second opinion hasn’t failed us so far.
• Take cash. But not too much.
  We usually don’t go to antique stores with more than $100 cash on us. If we see something we love that costs more, we’ll go to an ATM and take out more cash. That gives us some time to think about whether we love-love it, or whether it’s a heat-of-the-moment thing. It really keeps the impulse spending to a minimum. And, so far, we haven’t even had the urge to go to an ATM.
• Don’t force it.
  We’ve found that one of the best indicators of whether something “belongs” in our home is whether we can imagine where it will go. Usually this is a gut reaction. We saw the brass pendant and immediately thought it would look great at the top of the staircase. We saw the frame and knew it was the perfect size and shape for a above-the-sink bathroom mirror. If we find something and can picture exactly where it will fit in to our house, then ring us up. If we find ourselves hemming and hawing over where we would put something or what we would use it for, we move on.
• Is it worth fixing up?
  The best deals we’ve gotten have been on things that need some work to restore. Restoration equals time and money, so we try to balance that out against the initial cost. The pendant, for example, needs spot welding and spray paint. We have access to a welder for free and spray paint is cheap, so we jumped on it. We’ve come across other objects that are awesome, but need a ton of work that we just weren’t willing to put into it. Why buy something that’s going to sit in the garage, right?
• The antique shop is not the boss of you. You don’t have to buy anything.
  A couple of months ago, we drove to a huge antique warehouse about an hour away. We made a day out of it. We took the scenic route, we had a nice lunch at a brewery nearby, and we planned on coming back with a car full of treasures. We looked at every frikkin’ thing in that warehouse, and it was a total bust. We didn’t find a single thing that jumped out at us. At one point, we felt like we had to buy something or the day would have been a waste. But what’s actually a waste is buying something that’s not right for you or your house just because you feel like you have to. We left empty-handed, but still spent quality time together and had a lovely day off.
• What’s it worth to you?
  Here’s the thing: when it comes to vintage stuff, the worth of something is pretty much a made up number. So we make up a number. If we find something we love and think it’ll fit into our home, we’ll mentally put a price point on it before looking at the price tag. Then if we look at the price tag and it’s equal to or less than what we anticipated, we’ll get it. If it’s way more than what we expected, it’s not such a great deal for us. There are lots of shops where they don’t have set prices and the owner will just ask “what are you offering?” Or they’ll throw out a number and see how we react. In that case, we might have to…
• Haggle like a pro with a conscience.
  When it comes to haggling, we kinda don’t. We hate feeling ripped off but we also hate ripping off the shop owner. That $10 that we might be arguing about is their livelihood. More often than not, these people aren’t exactly making six figures a year. We try to remember that we’re not haggling with a vending machine — we’re talking to a human being — and we all walk away happy. That doesn’t mean we’ll shell out more money than what we think something is worth. (Remember, you don’t have to buy anything!)
• Talk to the face.
  When a shop owner throws out a price we don’t like, we let our faces do the talking. They might see us pulling a =\  and adjust the price down right away. Or they’ll ask us, “what did you have in mind?” and we’ll tell them the truth. There’s no point in low-balling, because if we think a frame would be a great deal at $15 then it IS a great deal. If they accept our offer, awesome. If our idea of what something is worth doesn’t mesh with theirs, we politely let them know it’s out of our price range and walk away. If they’re willing to lose a sale, then it’s obviously worth more to them. We don’t feel ripped off. They don’t feel ripped off. No harm, no foul.

How about you? Find any amazing vintage goods lately? How do you feel about haggling?

Fun Finds.

There’s a small, local shop in our town that sells everything. Literally everything. From candy to light bulbs to fabric — they’ve got it. A few days ago, we wandered in to check out their fabric selection (planning out a new project!), and found these:

We think they’re stocking hooks for mantles, but we’re not sure. We picked up both for $5 and we have big, big plans for one of them. Here’s what we’re thinking: remove the hook, paint it black, and turn it into an amazing finial to top off our staircase baluster:

I can’t believe the only picture I could find of our baluster was this hideous shot before we removed the carpet. Yiish. There might have been a finial on the staircase at some point, but currently, this is what it looks like:

We plan on painting the staircase black to match the floors. And we think our new DIY finial would fit right in. We admit it: we’re a little bit goth on the inside. Just a little. We embrace our inner Lydia Deetz:

We’re not sure what we’ll do with the second one, but we’ll figure it out.

Check out what else Bradley found:

Two stumps. And they’re the perfect size to make side tables for our couch! We love the way this one is shaped:

We need to dry them and strip the bark off the sides. Then we’ll sand them smooth and finish them off with a lacquer. It could take a while — just the drying is going to take about a month. To speed things up, we’re going to haul them inside and put them next to the fireplace.

By the time we’re finished, we’ll have something that looks like this:

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Except ours will be free. Whooooo!

We’re smack-dab in the middle of a big project right now. We’ll be back tomorrow with some updates. Stay tuned!

Step By Step

Hey peeps! If you celebrate a holiday, we hope it was a good one. We took the low-key, no-pressure route — no tree, no decorations, no nothing. Except this one little thing:

We totally dorked out and did stockings for the pets. The two on top are Margot’s and Jabba’s. The green one on the bottom is Smokey The Cat’s. And the Hello Kitty stocking on the left is for Bradley’s boss’s dog Paulie. He’s staying with us for a week while his people are in Paris.

Not gonna lie: we had way too much fun with that.

Both Bradley and I have the week off — kinda. Bradley really has the entire week off. I have to work for a couple of days. Boo! Hiss!! Luckily I don’t have to go into the office. While I worked, Bradley knocked off a couple of projects from our To-Do List.

The first task of the day, was to prime the staircase and hallway outside the master bedroom. Bradley started by dusting the walls:

Next up: one coat of primer.

The staircase looks so fresh and so clean-clean with a coat of paint.

And the space outside the master BR looks so much better:

We’ll eventually paint the walls a different color. This is great for now. We were pretty tired of staring at plastered drywall on our way upstairs.

The next day, Bradley finished removing the staples from the stairs:

We’ve spent days — literally 3 full eight-hour days — pulling staples from the stairs, but we still missed a bunch. Whoever put down the carpet went seriously overboard.

Once that was finished, Bradley tackled the wonky stairs that lead to the guest bedroom wing of the house. This is how they looked before:

The wood is split on some of the steps. And the face of each stairs — the spots with the white spray paint — is looking a little haggard.

Bradley’s solution was to take some 1/4″ birch plywood:

Cut it down to fit the face of each stair:

And nail it into place:

He did that for all 3 steps that lead up to the hallway:

Then he used wood putty and silicone to fill in the cracks and gaps. This made the steps look more tidy:

The entire staircase area looks much better:

We’re almost ready to sand and paint the stairs, but it’s going to require some careful planning. The guest bedroom wing is basically our headquarters right now. The bathroom is up there, plus we’re sleeping in the guest bedroom now. And we’re working hard to finish up the office soon so we don’t have laptops and cables scattered all over the house. Since we’ll need 48-72 hours for the paint to cure, we’ll have to work the painting around a trip out of town.

We’ll be back with more updates tomorrow. We have a ton of projects going right now, and we’re really, really close to crossing everything off of our To-Do List. Come back soon!

Smash’em Bash’em Sunday

Guess what? We’ve been demolishing things! Whee! Enough with all the sanding and painting and fixing — we woke up Sunday morning wanting to destroy something. So we did.

We started by removing every bit of furniture from the dining room. Not an easy task because it was serving as both the living room and my office. And storage for IKEA goods we’d purchased for the guest bedroom. Annnnd we usually ate dinner on the couch, so it was still functioning as a living room at the same time.

After the room was empty, we took our official before shots:

That’s the doorway that leads to the kitchen. The hole in the wall is a recent addition.

We’re having an old-school wood-burning fireplace installed this weekend, and that hole is where it will connect to the chimney. Our chimney guy told us we’d be better off demolishing the room before the fireplace is put in. The thing is pretty massive and it’ll be hard to work around. Plus we don’t want to risk damaging the chimney or the fireplace.

Soak it all in, peeps. The burgundy carpet. The seafoam green crown molding. The ceiling tiles. That fan. It’s all got to go.

One of the walls features a window waaaaay over on one corner. Another window to balance it out would have been nice. But we’re working with what we’ve got.

There are 3 doors on another wall:

From L to R: the basement door, the door that leads to the front of the house (and upstairs), and the living room door.

And then there’s the window wall:

The door in the middle leads out to the porch and back yard. When we viewed the house before deciding to buy it, we didn’t see any of the crusty features of the house.

It’s like we had blinders on and could only see the cool features, like the 130-year-old solid wood doors, with their skeleton keys:

Still totally charmed by those! Not so charmed by stuff like this:

We’re not really sure what happened in this corner but the molding and the floral border doesn’t line up. At all. And, in case you didn’t notice, it’s hideous. That molding, by the way, is not original. It’s a later addition, and it’s painted the most atrocious shade of grandma green. At least it matches the floral border though, right? Right?? (We’ve been dreaming of ripping it out and smashing it to bits with a sledgehammer.)

Then there’s the ceiling:

We’re not huge fans of fans, but we do plan on having 3 ceilings fans in the house (in the dining room, guest bedroom and master bedroom). We’ll need them to help circulate heat from the fireplace and to keep us cool in the summer. We decided to not have air conditioners in the house. Even when it’s 90 degrees outside, our house stays pretty cool in the summer. We do have a window unit, but it sat in the garage all summer and we didn’t miss it. Added bonus: our electricity bill averages $35 a month now! Squee! But I digress…

We’re having ceiling fans, but not that ceiling fan. It’s outta here. The ceiling tile is also gone-zo.

We have some patching up to do in some spots, like the place where the radiator pipe meets the ceiling:

You can see right up into the guest bedroom through that hole.

We plan on stripping the paint off of the radiator and leaving it bare. But radiators aren’t exactly pretty to look at, so we’re making covers for all of the units in the house. That way they won’t collect dust and we don’t have to maintain a paint job. Low maintenance living!

We have a few wall warts to rip out — ugly, unnecessary wall fixtures like phone jacks for land lines. We haven’t had a landline in 7 years and we’ve survived.

And we have 2 original windows that need to be replaced. It’s starting to get cold outside, so our single-panes look like this most of the time:

The room isn’t insulated at all and has 2 walls that face outside, so we have our work cut out for us. But first, we have to demo.

We sealed off the doors that lead to the living room (currently our bedroom), the stairs and the kitchen with thick plastic sheeting:

Then we gently pried off the original molding. We want to preserve the original stuff just in case we can use it in other parts of the house.

Behind the molding, we found a big gap between the floor and the wall. Stuffed inside was some old-school insulation:

Newspaper! We carefully unfolded the delicate pieces of paper and looked for a date:

December 12, 1932 — the newspaper is nearly 80 years old.

We were pretty geeked. This confirmed what we’d suspected for a while — the “new” part of the house was added on in the 1930s. That includes the kitchen, both bathrooms, laundry room and office. The original house was already 50 years old at the time. Crazy!

Once the molding was off, it was time to get serious. Our plan for the day:

• Expose the big brick wall
• Tear down the ceiling to expose the rafters
• Remove all the carpet from the room

Did we mention we had less than 8 hours to get all of it done? Annnnnnd we were off:

This is the same brick wall that we exposed upstairs in the hallway and office, so we knew the brick would be in good condition. It came off pretty easily:

We didn’t bother covering up the carpet because we knew we’d just roll it up and throw it away at the end of the day. It made things so much easier.

The only downside to the jackhammer is that it’s insanely loud. We waited till 11:30am to get started so our neighbors wouldn’t hate us. I was also worried about how Jabba the Mutt would react to the noise since she was hanging out in the next room. This is what I found when I went to check in on her:

She was curled up on the couch, napping right through the jackhammering. What a trooper.

After de-plastering the wall, Bradley showed me how to take down the ceiling tiles (just yank on ‘em on a little):

That hole wasn’t always there. Bradley punched it out to see what was behind the tiles. No shocker there: it’s lathe and plaster. I took over tile removal while Bradley “fixed” the doorway:

Just like the doorway upstairs, we wanted to get rid of the wood frame and have exposed brick sides:

And, just like upstairs, we have a neato header sitting above the door.

Those scars are chop marks from an axe. And the wood is so old that it’s turned grey — we love how a little bit of natural wood color peeks out from the scars. It adds a lovely bit of texture and dimension to the room.

We salvaged the original trim and the planks from the doorway just in case we want to use them later.

We already have big plans for the planks — they’re going to be reborn as nightstands for the guest bedroom! We’ll post the step-by-step on that when we get to it. But, rest assured, that pile of wood will eventually look mega-fabulous.

After all the tiles were out, it was time to pry the furring strips out:

The furring strips were nailed to the original lathe & plaster ceiling and the tiles were stapled right on top. After that, things got a little dusty:

We’ve demo’d our fair share of lathe and plaster walls, but never a ceiling. This was, by far, the dustiest job we’ve done in the house so far.

Bradley tore down the ceiling while I bagged debris. We learned a lot from our last big demo upstairs, so this time around, things were surprisingly fast. Everything seemed pretty under control, and then this happened:

A rogue lathe strip fell from the ceiling and crashed right through our single-pane window. The funny thing is that this was moments after I told Bradley not to break a window.

Me: “I’m gonna go outside and eat a sandwich. Don’t break any windows.”
Bradley: “Yes, honey, duuuuuh, of coooourse I won’t break any windows.”

Moments later, glass smashed inches from my turkey breast on whole wheat:

Mistakes: we make ‘em, too. The only difference is that we taunt each other mercilessly about them for at least a week afterwards.

We finished up everything — carpet removal and all — at 9pm on Sunday night. We were too exhausted to take after pictures. Plus it was too dark and dusty anyway. So we decided to wait a few days and let the dust settle before we did that. Those pictures are coming up later today. Get excited peeps. We are!

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What we learned:

We actually learned what not to do from our demo upstairs. So this time we had it down to a science. Here’s how we streamlined the demo and cleanup process and got it all done in one day:

• Leave the carpet till last. We took out the carpet before we demolished upstairs. If we had left it in, we could have just rolled up the dust with the carpet and tossed it all out at once.
• Bag the plaster, not the lathe strips. The wood has nails in it and they poke through the bags.
• Sort the lathe strips into 2 sizes: long and short. Bind the piles together using twine. Stack the bundles together like firewood.
• Use shovels, not dustpans, to gather up the smaller debris and dump it into bags.
• Cut the carpet into strips and then roll it up instead of rolling it all up in one piece. Bind each roll with twine. Waaay easier to carry.
• Cut the carpet from the bottom instead of the top. Your knife won’t snag.

Working hard or hardly working?

We’ve been MIA, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. It’s been kind of a crazy week for the east coast: first an earthquake (which we felt way out in the boonies!) and then Irene (more like a bad thunderstorm in our ‘hood).

We also had some visitors. Bradley’s mom and her sisters were visiting NYC for the weekend until Irene screwed that up. Turns out their hotel was in the evacuation zone. Instead of just evacuating the zone, they decided to evacuate the state. And they hopped over New Jersey, too, just to be on the safe side.

We felt so sorry for them — can you imagine thinking you’re going to see New York Effing City and then you end up in Middle-of-Nowhere Pennsylvania? With two dorky hosts who just moved here and don’t get out much? The best we had to offer them was this: “There are lots of Amish people here. ….and farms.” (Sorry, ladies. We have a Lonely Planet book now and we’re studying up on rural Pennsylvania awesomeness for your next trip.)

Bradley’s mom hung out with us while Irene blew through, and we wasted no time putting her to work:

Yup. We’re the worst hosts ever. Our big project for the day was making 3 cement window sills for the hallway. This is our second time making cement window sills, so we’re total experts now. We’re also total cheapskates, so we reused the wood strips and masonite boards from our last batch. We simply flipped the masonite over so we had a fresh, smooth surface to work with. (Bee tee dubs, you can read all about our first batch of DIY sills we made for our guest bedroom and office here.)

Jackie (aka Bradley’s mom) sanded the old wood strips to get rid of any cement debris left over from the last batch. She’s a pro at the whole DIY thang. She and Bradley’s grandfather basically built an entire house from scratch, so she’s no stranger to power tools. We didn’t feel at all guilty about the forced labor asking her to help us out.

Everything went way faster this time because we’ve already done it once. After Jackie was done sanding, Bradley assembled the frame and caulked the seams on the inside.

The last time we made sills, we used regular caulk and it didn’t work out all that well. It sort of dissolved because of the water in the cement mix. This time, we used plumber’s caulk — the kind you’d use around a toilet, sink or bathtub. It’s water resistant, so we hoped it would give us sharper edges. The only downside was that the caulk has to set for 4-6 hours before it can come in contact with water. We leaned our molds against the garage wall to dry:

We went upstairs and put Jackie to work sanding the office window sills:

Jackie was a trooper — she worked all day and never complained. (Thanks, Jackie!)

Have we mentioned that the office is plastered and ready to paint? Squee! So exciting! Here’s what it looks like now:

Bradley installed 3 recessed lights down the center of the room. The ceilings are really low, so our options were pretty limited, but right now, we like the look of recessed lighting more than track lighting.

Our plasterer did an amazing job with the trimless windows. Look at these clean lines:

The edges are so crisp I could shave with ‘em. But not until we have curtains up. The neighbors already think I’m a weirdo after they saw me doing an Insanity workout in the living room. It was awkward. For them. I just kept going because I’m 93.7% shameless.

Anyway, here’s how the hallway is looking these days:

Outside the master bedroom:

And down the staircase:

I wanted to give our plasterer a big wet kiss when she finished. It took her 30 hours to do the office, hallway, a few spots in the guest bedroom, the whole area outside the master BR and down the stairs — and that included tall walls, ceilings and 8 trimless windows. It’s basically a third of our house. The whole shebang cost us $600 and saved us a whole lot of time. It would have taken us 6 months to do all of this. Seriously. We only have time for reno work on the weekends, and we’re way slower than her. She’ll be back to do some of our other rooms (and maybe next time we’ll take pictures of her working on her stilts!).

While Jackie sanded the cement sills, Bradley cleaned up the base to set them in. He had to shave a little wood from some of the windows so the sills could slide in easily.

He smeared a little construction adhesive along the base of each window:

He moonlights as a cake icer. Not really. Cakes don’t last long enough around him to get iced. Don’t be fooled by his lithesome 160-pound boyish figure. With the wood shaved, the sills slid right in:

Sorta. Some of them needed a little extra whacking.

After that, he checked to make sure everything was level, and viola:

They look fantastic looking down. The sides needed a little more finagling:

Nothing a little plaster can’t fix:

Bradley put on 3 coats of plaster, and we still need to sand the area smooth, but here’s what it looks like now:

Funny story about the mug: we were in Jamaica when we found out our offer was accepted. It was halfway through our trip, and we had to scramble to fill out forms for our mortgage on our laptop in the hotel lobby where we had wifi access. We had to Skype with our realtor to get things in order. There were a million trips to the lobby to check our email to see if there were any updates. We lay out on the beach all week talking about all the renovation ideas we had for the house that wasn’t ours yet — but we knew it was The One. And there was even talk of starting up a blog to document all of our renovations. That’s what I think about every time I have coffee in that mug, and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or that could just be the coffee. I’m a junkie — I get the warm and fuzzies just thinking about coffee.

More updates coming. Hint, they involve this stuff:

All together now: FIIIIINALLY!

Meet our grande olde livinge roome.

We realized on our last drive to Brooklyn that there are still 5 rooms of our house that we haven’t showed on our shelter blog:

• Upstairs bathroom
  This was updated a few years before us and is majorly boh-ring.
• Downstairs bathroom
  Hot mess.
• Kitchen
  The only thing that’s functioning in there currently is our fridge. If it wasn’t for our grill and rice cooker, we’d probably have starved to death by now.
• Dining room
  Currently my office / our living room. Ugly, but functional.
• Living room
  Currently our bedroom while we renovate upstairs. Uh-may-zing, but needs a lot of work.

Most of these rooms are in such a state of disarray — ahem, downstairs bathroom — that it’s totally embarrassing putting them out there on the interwebz. And there’s that whole weird thing of having your coworkers see your bedroom. Are we the only ones who find that awkward? For the sake of keeping it real, though, we’re gonna put it all out there. Fast. Like ripping a band-aid. Ready? Deep breath. This is the view from the doorway connecting the living and dining rooms:

The ceilings are enormongous — 10’3″ tall — and the bed is queen-sized, if that helps put a scale to things.

If you ignore the burgundy carpet, the room is kinda beautiful. The huge windows with their thick, dark woodwork. The plaster ceiling medallion. Even the damask wallpaper that’s so old that it’s come into and gone out of and come back into fashion several times.

We’re not huge fans of wallpaper, but we fell in love with this white-and-gold pattern so much that we’re considering re-wallpapering the living room with something similar. If we can find damask wallpaper that doesn’t add up to $1000+ for the room. Yiish! Who know wallpaper was so pricey?

The ceiling is in rough shape. It’s covered in wallpaper and has some sags and cracks going on. The plaster needs a little love. In any other room in the house, we’d just rip out the lathe and plaster and put up a fresh, new ceiling, but not in this room. We love the old world olde worlde feel of the room, so we’re going to keep all of the old school details — the huge plaster medallion, the trim, the woodwork, etc. So, yeah, in short: this room is going to be a huge pain in the butt to remodel. We’re probably going to save it for the last room we redo.

Remember when we talked about furniture designer swag? Here’s another one of those perks that ended up in our house:

My shoe closet! This cabinet was a custom piece for a client who loved high heels (yeah, yeah, stereotypical New Yorker!). All of the shelves are adjustable and tilt down to accommodate different heel heights. I fit 19 pairs in there, and the rest are still in boxes. Or, um, stacked on / around / in front of the radiator.

The radiator is easily the biggest I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s been painted a flat gold, and we might keep it that way.

Next to the radiator is our closet:

Insert saddest face of all time here.

It’s true: we’re still living out of wardrobe boxes. A lot of our stuff is in boxes in the attic or in the garage, but that’ll start to change once we finish up the office and guest bedroom. We’ll move into those 2 rooms and be able to spread out a little more. Anyway, if you ignore the boxes and the carpet, you’ll be able to see a hint of the woodwork in the room. We’ll get better pictures on a sunny / less overcast day and share them — it’s pretty awesome.

We plan on refinishing the 2 grey pieces of furniture. The one on the left is a shelf full of our jeans, and the one on the right is an old, old dresser we found & reclaimed. The dresser needs new pulls and the drawers are a little tight, but those are pretty easy fixes. And, as is the case with most reclaimed furniture, paint will make the biggest difference.

Here’s another piece of reclaimed furniture we found and finished:

This used to be a very hideous 1940s-grandma-green dresser. We sanded it, stained it, lacquered it and gave it some fancy new pulls. The dresser itself cost $0, and the redo cost about $20 in supplies. Expect to see more of that ’round these parts!

We’re also in the process of redoing our bed, which is why it looks a little funky at the base. We have an IKEA Sultan Alsarp:

Source

Al, for short. The entire base lifts up hydraulically to reveal a whole lotta storage underneath. Perfect apartment bed! Unfortunately for us, there was an incident, and we’re stripping down the cushioned base and replacing it. IKEA hack time! So far, we’ve removed the foam, and that’s the yellow stuff you can see in the picture of the black dresser. That’s all the detail I’ll go into for now — it’s coming up soon!

In other news, our staircase now looks like this:

Drywall is up from top to bottom! And the hallways windows have corner beads:

We had a plasterer come in and give us a very, very reasonable estimate. She seemed totally profesh, came highly recommended, and she’s showing up tomorrow to plaster the office, guest bedroom, hallway and down the stairs. This means we might be painting this weekend. Bradley hyperventilated when he realized what this means: we finally get to use that paint spraygun we picked up 3 months ago! Squee!! So. Excited.

Other stuff going on with us:

• We’re already well into the planning & prep stages for the laundry room / downstairs bathroom.
  We finally came to a decision on the whole bathtub debate and will be doing a bulk supply order in a couple of weeks. Our plan is to start working on those 2 rooms while the floor paint dries upstairs. Not gonna lie: I’m sick of taking pictures of the same 2 rooms. It’ll be so great to switching things up!
• We just got a lot of uber-fancy new furniture.
  We have to fill up a 2000+ square foot house, and it’s no easy task. We’ve been lusting over some pieces that Bradley’s company makes, and last month, we decided to take the plunge. We worked out a deal with Bradley’s boss and got a bunch of furniture at wholesale cost. Score!! We traded in one full month of Bradley’s paychecks for 6 dining room chairs, a media cabinet, a coffee table, a small bench and a bunch of nesting trays. We’ll share pictures of all of that soon.

A new ladder for The Bradder!

We’ve been in the market for a new ladder for a while. Our old ladder is rickety, heavy and hard to set up. It’s also way too dangerous to use on our staircase. So we marched on over to Home Depot and walked out with a  Little Giant Select Step.

Home Depot’s price was marked as $199, but when we got up to the counter, it turned out to be $149. With the 10% off coupon we received in the mail, we ended up paying $135 for this ladder. Cha-ching! We saved 64 bones!

Bradley was pretty much ripping open the packaging as soon as we pulled into the driveway. He was dying to try it out on the staircase. In case you’ve never heard of it, the Select Step is a ladder that adjusts so the legs can be different heights. This makes is perfect for working on uneven surfaces like stairs. Here’s Bradley putting up furring strips along the ceiling:

Bradley’s a little less nervous about wobbly ladders than I am — OK, fine, I’m a paranoid freak who thinks every ladder is going to tip over and spill my brains onto the nearest floor — but this ladder totally gets my seal of approval. I had to squeeze between the ladder and the bannister to get to the top of the staircase for the second picture, and I’m happy to say that the ladder was sturdy as can be. It has heavy-duty rubber grippers on the feet, and they didn’t budge.

It’s also really lightweight and super easy to set up. And it has a bunch of smart design features that we were really impressed by. My favorite: you can attach a bungee cord to your tools and dangle them off of the ladder!

As the victim of several oops-I-forgot-the-hammer-was-up-there accidents, I think this feature is nothing short of brilliant. The ladder came with 2 bungee cords and a lot of other little holes and notches to store tools:

There are slots of all shapes and sizes (even one for a saw!), and there are spots for threading power cords to keep them out of the way. That big orange disc in the middle can be removed and happens to be the perfect size to house a cup of coffee. It’s technically supposed to be a place to hang a drill — but we’re kinda sold on the cup of coffee thing. The circle around the orange disc? That’s the exact size of a gallon bucket of paint. It just clicks right in! Genius!

Another great feature:

Bradley usually grabs a handful of screws and shoves them in his jeans pocket before climbing up the ladder. Occasionally he’ll forget the 1 or 2 leftover screws and toss his jeans in the washing machine, where they fall out of his pocket and end up making making holes in some of our other clothes (there was an incident with a new Gap sweater that I still haven’t forgiven him for). The magnet screw tray might be the best thing ever. Except that there’s this platform step, which is also pretty great:

About halfway up the ladder is a rung with a built-in platform that gives you a bigger surface to stand on. You can put both feet on the platform and stand straight up. This is awesome because the other rungs on the ladder are pretty skinny — they’re actually almost too skinny, but we’re willing to overlook minor flaw that because it’s not a huge deal.

The ladder has wheels on it, so you can roll the ladder instead of awkwardly carrying it. The wheels don’t roll while you’re standing on the ladder — they only roll if you tilt the ladder at an angle. Our backs are happy. Our wallets are happy. And most of all, our sweaters are happy.

- – -

Just in case you were wondering, we weren’t paid or perked for writing this post. We just love sharing cool stuff we find & buy with our readers. Also, if you buy this ladder and fall off while using it, you can’t blame us. Be careful up there, peeps!

Stairs, stairs, stairs.

A couple of weekends ago, we removed all the carpet from the staircase and did a happy dance about how great our staircase looked.

Yeah. Our definition of looks great! might need a slight adjustment, but we were still thrilled to see the burgundy carpet in our garbage pile garage. The next project at hand: removing the 5000+ staples on the staircase. And, since this falls under the early morning cavewoman work category, I decided to get it over with on Saturday.

To make my job a little easier, Bradley found this weird little tool at Lowe’s and picked it up for me:

It’s a tool for pulling out small nails.

The prongs weren’t quite small enough to fit under the skinny staples we have under our carpet, so Bradley used a grinder to thin out the ends a bit.

It worked like a charm! Way easier than the old stapler / pliers / blood / sweat / tears routine. The only real hazards of this job:

Little tufts of discarded carpet padding would staple themselves to the soles of my sneakers. Very, very dangerous: if I wasn’t careful, this could have annoyed me to death.

Halfway through the staple-removal, I called Bradley over and we decided to do something about this weird platform at the top of the staircase:

It looks like something that was added on, and we’re not quite sure why. In order to go from the bathroom (down the hall on the right) to the master bedroom (on the left), you have to step down and right back up on the platform. It feels clunky and unnecessary.

And don’t even get us started on this:

Just don’t. We could go on for days, and we have way too much work to do ’round here. It has to go.

Bradley grabbed a hammer and a prybar and peeked under one of the steps:

As we’d suspected, there was solid floor underneath. The platform was a later (and confusing) addition. So we happily subtracted it:

We plan on putting up drywall over all of this lathe & plaster stuff in the hallway, so a little crumbling wall didn’t faze us. With the platform removed, we instantly felt like the staircase looked better:

The only thing that’s bugging us now is how the bottom step leading to the hallway ends so abruptly:

But there are a ton of solutions we’ve already started discussing. We could simply continue the step all the way to the end. We could install a big built-in bookshelf that’s the exact depth of the staircase. We could do floating shelves from floor to ceiling.

The floor is totally solid (we did a jump test) and it was nice to see unpainted wood underneath. The plank flooring is actually not bad when you see it without chocolate brown paint and white splatters everywhere. We’re feeling a little less pouty about it these days.

We salvaged the planks from the platform and will use it to patch up the master bedroom floors when we get in there.

After the platform was out, I spent a few hours removing staples, and by the time I took the after pictures, the lighting was completely different:

The staircase looks like a totally different shade of brown at sunset.

With the staples and the tufts of padding gone, the staircase is starting to look less and less hideous. We still need to repair a few loose bars in the railing and secure some of the steps that have gotten wobbly over the years. After that, it’s time to sand and paint.

What we learned from this project:

• Having the right tool for the job makes things way easier.
  The last time I spent 5+ hours pulling carpet staples, my wrist ached for days. The $11 tool made a huge difference.
• Pulling staples is tedious, boring work.
  Our strategy? Throw on some Bob Marley, grab a beer and get to yankin’. We see lame jobs like this as an opportunity to turn our brains off and go on autopilot for a couple of hours. Sure, it’s not fun, but it’s not exactly work either.

Haikus for our staircase.

Entryway staircase
clothed in burgundy carpet.
You make me vomit.

Lets send these old stairs
to live on a nice, big farm.
Pass the sledgehammer.

Burgundy carpet,
covered in crunchy plaster,
I will f#*k you up.

(That last one didn’t count as cursing because of the symbols.)

I’m having a raging case of writer’s block. The kind where you just sit and stare at the blank screen for an hour before giving up and doing something more productive. Like watching grass grow. Or picking your teeth. Or watching YouTube videos of a pug in a toilet. I thought a little haiku action would help get the words flowing, but the only thing my little exercise has done is remind me how much I hate our burgundy carpeted staircase.

The wood is promising. With a little sanding and a little painting, it could be a thing of beauty. But we’re having a hard time seeing past all the ugly right now.

Where there should be a fabulous old finial, there’s a crusty little glass bead.

Where there should be a gorgeous old world chandelier, there’s a shiny brass Home Depot light fixture.

With 3 burned-out light bulbs that we never changed because we’d rather just yank the whole thing out and toss it in the garbage.

One day after work, I decided I’d had enough. I gathered my ammunition and went into battle:

L to R: mini crowbar, pliers, chisel, screwdriver, gloves, coffee, iPhone.

I’m not sure why I grabbed the chisel and the iPhone. The screwdriver came in handy a few times, but mostly just for picking my nails. I am not a role model. Don’t do as I do, do as I say. Only don’t listen to anything I say because I have no idea what I’m talking about 78.3% of the time.

Anyway, I’m kind of an expert at removing carpet now, so in no time, I had the carpet removed and ready to be taken to the dumpster.

Luckily for me, Bradley came home from work at that exact moment. It was a nice change to have an assistant rather than being an assistant.

Especially when my assistant is a total cutie pie:

Hello, assistant,
will you take the carpet out
to the garbage pile?

Your warm, friendly smile
makes me want to pinch your cheeks.
The ones in your jeans.

If I turn up dead,
it’s because he has killed me
for that last haiku.

Still not sure why he puts up with me, but I’m glad I finally had a reason to use one of the hundreds of shots of his Levis-wearing hiney that I’ve snapped in the past 2 months. Bradley took the carpet out to the dumpster and our staircase suddenly looked a whole lot more naked:

I wouldn’t use the word fabulous just yet.

But at least it isn’t covered in burgundy carpet. Every little step towards a non-hideous home counts, people. Bully for us! We still have to yank out all of the staples and fix some wobbly steps before we can sand and paint. But we’re finally starting to see how pretty it could someday be.

One last haiku before I’m out:

I’m a designer.
I should stick to my day job
and not write bad poems.

You’re welcome, Internet.