Clarity Upstairs: New Windows

Last summer, we spent money held in escrow for new windows throughout the downstairs.  This year, we didn't have money in escrow, but we knew we had to replace the upstairs windows anyway.  (Why is it so much easier/more fun to spend other people's money?)

Not only were the upstairs windows failed (hard to see out of), but most of them were sealed shut and the ones that did open would slam closed guillotine-style…hardly fit for a house we are trying to get licensed for foster care.

We bought the cheapest windows on the market at $169 a piece for white vinyl that matches the downstairs.  We didn't install the windows ourselves, but we did replace the old aluminum blinds in the second bathroom with faux white wood blinds that look much better.

New blinds in the second bathroom.

So, after two months of waiting, all the new windows are finally in.  Even thought they aren't fancy, they are much clearer, they cut down on outside noise, and help with energy savings.  Best of all, you get to keep your fingers when they open and close!

New clarity in the guest room.

Cushion Conundrum

During my journey to find an inexpensive custom window seat cushion for our seat (which is about 82 x 25 inches), I learned that upholstery foam is outrageously expensive, and that only rich people buy anything custom.

Plan B took us to World Market where we noticed 17-inch square chair cushions were 20% off, bringing the $16.99 price to under $14 each.  We could fit four of these yellow chevron patterned cushions along the seat, and figure that we'll fill in the back and sides with accent pillows.

It's not perfect, and it's certainly not custom, but for $54 total, it was the easiest and most affordable solution. Most importantly, Maya doesn't seem to care as long as it's soft.

Simple Project: Pot Lights

If you're looking for an easy house project/home update, we found it…replacing old pot lights.  If your house is over 20 years old, like ours, and has recessed lights (aka pot lights) of any variety in the ceiling, chances are the casing is cracked, dirty, and discolored.

This is a project we put off longer than we should have because we thought it was going to be more difficult than it seemed (as most house projects are), but it probably took a total of 10 minutes to replace four pot lights in two rooms, and it made a huge difference!  It's also not expensive ($7 to $12 per light.)

The eyeball lights in our living room were discolored and the "eyeballs" were coming loose, so fixing them was important.  The recessed lights in our kitchen had black interiors that stood out from the white ceiling and called unnecessary attention to how ugly and dirty they were.  Changing them to white not only better matched the ceiling, but also reflected a lot more light into the kitchen.  It's the small things that make a big difference.

Tommie was so excited about accomplishing an easy house project that it inspired him to stay up all night painting cabinets in the laundry room.  I wish we had more pot lights to fix to get him in the mood!

(New pot light versus old pot light…and one happy camper.)

PVC Pipes in the Bay Window

Because I am in love with our large replacement windows in the dining room bay window, I didn't want to cover them up with blinds or heavy curtains.

These light linen (Alton Print) curtains from Bed Bath and Beyond ($35 per 84-inch panel) were exactly what I had in mind, and the contemporary branch-stenciled design is a perfect reflection of our style: natural, contemporary, and light.

When the curtains are closed, they provide just enough privacy while still letting light in, and the branches look like they could be shadows from the trees outside. The grommets are great for this kind of set-up as well; sliding easily and fitting the rod perfectly.

Because I wanted to be able to slide the curtains all the way over and to the small gaps in between the windows (so as not to cover up the prairie grids), the hanging method was tricky to figure out. Thanks to a lot of Googling, we decided to give simple PVC pipes a try. This required a couple ten-foot 3/4-inch PVC pipes (cut to size), two 45-degree angle PVC connectors, two PVC caps, and five curtain brackets.

For the brackets, we chose these circular ones from Allen+Roth at Lowes (about $7 each) into which the pipes just barely squeezed (this was probably the hardest part to figure out).  

The whole contraption was given a couple coats (2 cans) of spray paint with Rust-oleum Metallic in Flat Antique Nickel. There is one curtain panel on each side, and two for the big picture window in the middle.

By strategically placing the brackets, and being able to slide over the little connectors, the curtains can hang in just the right places without blocking the beauty of the windows at all. 

My husband made fun of me for saying that my vision for the dinging room was "elegant, whimsy"…I wasn't sure how to pull it off, but I think the new light fixture and the curtains help a lot.

(Dining room on day 1)

(Dining room today)

Opening a New Door

Even though my parents came down for a holiday vacation, it's been more of a working vacation for my dad, whom I presented with a list of house projects before he arrived.

The trade-off for them to escape the -20 degree temperature in Maine is to help Tommie and I with the projects we're not skilled enough to tackle...which is a lot.  We pretty much max out on anything that requires more than a hammer and a paint brush.

Since it was warm when my parents arrived around Christmas, we first tackled a couple of indoor/outdoor projects.  The old owner's left a play set in the backyard, and even though we don't have kids, I wanted to replace the rotted support beams because during our move-in I found one of Tommie's 21-year-old co-workers enjoying a good swing.  Better to be safe.  A couple new 2x4's with a pressure-treated one on the ground should do the trick.

While shopping for 2x4's, we noticed an entryway door on sale at Home Depot for $159.  Our wood door was swelling and contracting a lot with the temperature fluctuation in North Carolina, and we would have to replace it at some point, so I added it to the "daddy to do" list.  It was a big project to tackle, but everyone helped.  

The new white, steel door has a half-circle window and it helps brighten up the entryway a lot.  It's also really good at keeping out the drafts compared to the old door.  I was able to unload the old door to someone on Craigslist who bought it for $25.  Cha-ching.

Front door before (above) and after (below).

Entryway when we bought it

Entryway now with new paint, light fixture, and door.

Outside with old door & old paint

Outside with new door & new paint. Bam!

Turkish Triptych

Remember this big blank wall behind "Maya's" new couch?

Well, we finally ordered a piece of art to display on it, and we love the way it came out.

It's a scene of the city of Istanbul that Tommie took during our honeymoon to Turkey in 2011.  

We were toying with the idea of getting panoramic prints for few of Tommie's photographs, but prices for large images can get expensive…add to that any frames and we were quickly looking at over a couple hundred dollars for just one piece of art.  

We have ordered several of Tommie's photos on 16x20 canvas before and have been really pleased with the quality, so when we noticed that Canvas On Demand was having a 70% off sale for a three-panel "PhotoSplit" (triptych), we jumped on it.  It cost $75 for what was normally $350.  One of the benefits of canvas is that no frames are required, saving additional costs.  

It took us a long time to decide which image to use.  Finally, we decided on the sepia mosque scene because we figured the coloring and the image itself would look great above the couch.  Even though it is one image broken up into three sections, serendipitously, each panel has two marionettes in it and could almost exist on its own.  (Each panel is 15x30 inches with a two-inch gap in between.)  

Our advice for choosing an image to use for a triptych is to go for a scene that was captured fairly close up and includes a large impact subject.  Each panel should look good on its own as well as together, and don't choose something that will be ruined by the breaks.  The hardest part is, of course, hanging them so they line up perfectly.  Let's just say there was a lot of math involved (not on my part or else they'd be way off.)

Perches on the Front Porch

It's great having a covered front porch, especially in a quiet neighborhood.  

By the end of November, porch-sitting season is just about over, but since we just got the house painted, we wanted to spruce up our outdoor seating.  

Our house came with a nice wooden porch swing, and I got a sweet $20 rocker from Craigslist.  

The rocker got a fresh coat of white paint and compliments the new white trim.

Since the painter's ended up power washing all the cobwebs off our porch swing, we broke out some of the leftover gray shutter paint (Sherwin William's Gray's Harbor Superpaint in satin) so that it better matches the house and seals up any splinters in the wood.

  (Porch swing and house before and after.)

Come spring, our little perch on the porch will be completely refreshed and ready to enjoy.

Blank Slate Backyard

We have a good-sized, mostly flat backyard, but with renters living in this property for the past several years, it's been neglected.  There's a gully in the back filled with leaves and rotting trees, shrubs and vines gone-wild, and the only thriving grass--monkey grass--took over a primo spot in the center of the yard.

Monkey grass is used as a hardy ground cover in the south, but it spreads like wildfire, breeds mosquitoes, and I don't want to worry about Copperhead snakes hiding in it.  So, when we moved in, I created a listing on Craigslist for free monkey grass if people wanted to dig and haul it away themselves.  It's a great way to recycle unwanted plants and it saves us the back-breaking manual labor of digging it up ourselves.

I thought we'd have enough for a few people, but I ended up having about 15 different people come by and leave with car/truck loads full of monkey grass.  It was never ending!  There are still some root systems that will continue to produce the pesky grass in our yard but hopefully clearing out the bulk of it will make it more manageable.

From past experience, it seems to take about a year to get a yard cleared out and uncover the blank slate we have to work with.

 (Monkey grass and "Jabba the Hutt" bush on the back fence gone. More open space for Maya to run!)

For some reason, we have the most trees on our lot out of any of the homes around us (front and back).  We plan to hire someone to chop down a few of the tall dead ones, but in the meantime, we're clearing out shrubs, vines, branches, and smaller trees with nothing but a pair of branch cutters and a hand saw.

Apparently Tommie is all about multitasking--here he is up in a tree, saw in one hand, cell phone in the other discussing grants with his boss.  Don't try this at home, kids.

As for taming the weeds, ivy, and vines, I didn't want to use any harsh chemicals with our dog (or with us, for that matter) so I found a recipe online for a natural plant killer (white vinegar, salt, and a little dish soap).  I found that if I sprayed it on a warm sunny day, the leaves soaked up the vinegar and withered away.  It's not fool-proof but it does make the plants retreat, and therefore, easier to clear out.

(Above are the weeds and vines before, then browning below about a week after spraying salt and vinegar on them.)

(A few weeks later, we cleared out the withering vines, so the fence is clean and invasive plants aren't spilling over into our yard.)

We learned that it's important to keep the vines at bay or else they overtake the trees.  Some of the pricker bushes invading our yard from neighbors' had to have reached 50 feet up some of our trees--it was like Jack and the Beanstalk.  Below is Tommie fighting against the vortex.

Long-term, I envision a beautiful, multi-section yard/garden with a grassy area for Maya, a play area for the swing set we inherited, a game strip for Tommie's corn hole, a garden for me, a patio with a fire pit, and a screened-in porch.  For now, we're just clearing out, trying to get a blank slate to work with.

Fully Furnished

We've always lacked sufficient seating in past abodes.  Even though most of the time it's just me, Tommie, and the dog, it barely seems like there's enough comfortable seats for the three of us, let alone any one else we have over.  Mostly, I blame Maya, who for a small dog, uses her length to her advantage, stretches out, and takes up the space of three grown adults.

In our new house we found ourselves with more space than we've ever had before, which meant we could finally accommodate more seating.  Due to the narrow shape of our living room, we settled on this small-space sectional on sale at Macy's (called "Clark").  It's stylish, compact, and even has a chaise, which I've always wanted.

When the delivery men came to set up the couch Maya got scared of the truck and hid in a closet, but when the coast was clear she came downstairs and it's as if she thought, "Oh, that's nice, they got me a new couch." She jumped right on it and fell asleep--ignoring the old couch which we hoped could become "her's." 

Couches are one of the few things I don't look for on Craigslist.  Tommie has a fear of used upholstery, and I agree that a stained couch is worse than a dusty table.  So, while we splurged on the new sofa, we saved on this used dining room table.  I found this solid piece on Craigslist for $80.  

It's in great shape and will be perfect for holiday meals (we're rumored to be hosting some of those this year).  In the meantime, it serves as our home office with a pretty view out the front bay window.  

I also scored a set of four dining room chairs on Craigslist for $10 each.  You know I love a good deal.  Our homes have always been a mix of the old and the new and I love the challenge of putting it all together.