Flaky Cake —&—

Starting the Dining Room

In Life on 29 September 2011 with 1 comment

Today I ran down­stairs to grab some windex and then sud­denly this had happened:

My din­ing room had some really ornate old-fashioned wall­pa­per that I was plan­ning to remove and then I just decided to try peel­ing and it all came off really eas­ily. The wall under­neath is in pretty bad shape, though. I see a lot of spackle in my future.

Finally: Bedroom In Progress

In Life on 27 September 2011 with 2 comments

I took pic­tures of the bed­room three or four times and then thought, “Oh! I have to wait until I do one more thing!” But I just accepted that it will never end. So, as a reminder, here is the “before” pic­ture (fur­ni­ture is pre­vi­ous owner’s).

I repainted, cleaned, removed 10 slats from the blinds, and moved my fur­ni­ture in. I also bought a rug, a mir­ror, and some pil­lows. Now it looks roughly like this.

Loki is the bump in the bed. Hid­ing from thun­der! Also, apolo­gies for the bad pho­tos. Night­time is not my camera’s friend.

I’m much hap­pier with the soft gray than the deep red. It still seems really unfin­ished to me, but there’s also a lot more to do. In the short-term, I need to put up some art­work, buy cur­tains for the win­dow and for the closet (the pre­vi­ous closet doors were a com­plete mess), and maybe a bench for the bed. Longer-term, I think I need a bed frame, a wardrobe and maybe new lamps and side-tables.

Welcome Charlie!

In Life on 1 September 2011 with 2 comments

No after pic­tures yet of the bed­room because I’m out of town attend­ing a friend’s wed­ding. While I’m here, I’m also pick­ing up the newest mem­ber of my house­hold. Meet Charlie!

She’s a sweet Stafford­shire Ter­rier mix from Albu­querque who I met a cou­ple years ago. She’s really obe­di­ent and friendly and so pretty. Here’s another picture!

Master bedroom

In Life on 31 August 2011 with 1 comment

I’ve been work­ing hard on the house and will have some in-progress pic­tures soon! I’m work­ing on it room-by-room and started with the mas­ter bed­room because I can’t really unpack until it’s sort of ready. I’m finally to the point where I can basi­cally move in.

My house is really a two-story town­house. It has two bed­rooms, 1.5 bath, a liv­ing room, din­ing room, break­fast nook, garage, and den. It has, com­i­cally, three(!) fire­places. When I bought it, it had pop­corn ceil­ings in almost every room. The first thing I did was hire some­one to remove the texture.

The bed­room was a very dark deep red. I was a lit­tle afraid of it, prob­a­bly because I’ve read Jane Eyre a few too many times. There was a tv mount in the cor­ner that was stub­bornly stuck and when I finally got it down, it brought a some wall with it. Here are some before pic­tures:

After fill­ing holes, sand­ing, prim­ing, and paint­ing the walls and trim, it looks like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent room. I still need to buy some more fur­ni­ture and a rug, unpack and dec­o­rate, but I’m so happy with how it’s com­ing along. I’ll bring pic­tures soon.

First house!

In Life on 10 June 2011 with 1 comment

Yes­ter­day I put an offer down on a house! Well, actu­ally a town­house. Then there was a counter offer and a counter counter offer and a counter counter counter offer, which I accepted! I’m try­ing not to get too excited because there’s still a lot to do and a lot that could go wrong, but hope­fully it will work out! Today I have to call a mort­gage guy and a lawyer and sign some papers. Oh, and sched­ule an inspec­tion. But if all goes well, then this will be my liv­ing room in a month (dif­fer­ent fur­nish­ings of course).