Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Quick fix meriting a quick post

 My closet in the morning is significantly darker than above. Solution?

$6 worth of LED lights inside the door. At least I'll be able to see what I'm picking out in the morning... Maybe not the color, though. Colleagues, don't judge.




Sunday, August 28, 2011

Storm Fun


Jeremy's well-themed birthday card from my parents. If Jonas the scaredy cat could've had a snorkel, he would've. The flooding is starting to subside, but the wind's still kickin'. We didn't have much damage from the storm, other than lots of leaves and little branches down. I'm mostly making this post on the account of the last few pictures in it...

Some shots of the backyard flooding. Down by the basement corner.



Limb on the gazebo.



100 foot path down to the creek. Rather, creek busting its banks up the path...


Tiny visitors from last night! We  had 10-15 baby snapping turtles taking shelter on our porch. Here's a little bit of the herd.






Saturday, August 27, 2011

Scaredy Cat

Jonas says:

Let's evacuate. I'm ready.



I say:

It's just raining. The hurricane isn't even here yet.


Jonas says:
I stay in box to be safe.



Thursday, August 25, 2011

Natural Disasters

We weathered the earthquake just fine. It was sudden, but over quick. Now we're busy worrying (me) and preparing for the impending hurricane. I have a plan in place and we're stocked up on water and food. Jeremy and I spent time tonight filling gallon bags half-full of water so that we'd have blocks of ice for our freezer when we lose power.

Transport method to the downstairs freezer.



Also, in our food run we picked up coffee filters and coffee. I'm a major tea drinker but Jeremy is commuting to work now, so coffee might be nice for him when winter hits. Good news for our overnight visitors. The Gibb household: NOW WITH COFFEE! Some of our readers might recognize a cleaner old friend...


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

MyGyver Style

We have an interesting curtain situation. We either need an L-Shaped Rod or a long rod that goes all the way across. Since it's a pretty big span, a tension rod isn't really an option. I'd seen these wire curtain holders from Ikea that I was interested in. However, we haven't had the chance to get there since we bought the house and I was hoping to have the shower online before I went back to school. We decided we'd make our own with some materials from Home Depot. The whole project ended up costing $8, so even if we switch over to something else eventually we're not torn up about it.





I was going to shower tonight in the new shower. I tried caulking Sunday but the caulk we got was expired and didn't work. Took at 7.5 hour tubing trip yesterday, so it didn't happen then. Today we got caulk. I was ready to go. Then the caulk gun when crazy and the caulk busted out the back of the tube. Tomorrow we'll try some new caulk and a new caulk gun. I'll just have to take my shower in the blue bathroom tonight *sigh*.

Party Time!

Had some guests over on Friday night. They stayed overnight so I had to do a pretty thorough cleaning of the house to make sure it was presentable. I went so far as to wash the ceiling in the master because it was really dirty.






After washing the ceiling, floor, and walls I built a beautiful cardboard box nightstand and put a curtain over it to "fancy it up." Overall the room didn't look terrible. At least it was clean. I meant to take pictures of the rest of the house but we had a few mishaps (Read: Buick broke down, other car's leaky antenna getting fixed. Stuck in the rain for a while. Had to get towed. Party guests had to pick us to get to our own party.)

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Grout It.

Got around the tub grouted. Soon enough it'll have caulk (Friday?) and handles (Sunday?!). I didn't take very good pictures because I was being lazy.


 Mocked up cabinets.






View of the cabinets if laying in the tub fully clothed.

Also, this is spiderweb off our top deck. I like it. I'm keeping it. It's invisible during the day. I just hope he evens out the gaps in the web. I understand though, our house is under construction too.


Tile Update

Okay, so the elves didn't solve my problem, but I worked it out. Cutting those little tiles in half proved to difficult/time consuming for me. I am the sole tiler, so I was too frustrated with it to fight with it. Also, I really love my fingers. Anyways, so I got some white, ceramic pencil tiles and fit them in the space. I think they look pretty good. I did have to trim some of them down, but being six inches long I wasn't as afraid to shave the edges off. Plus they were measures easier to cut than the other tiles I've been using.

Here are some pictures from around the tub! Hopefully it'll be grouted tomorrow and I'll be showering in that bathroom in no time!





The other aspects of our bathroom? Well, they're on hold for the time being. I read some reviews online for the sinks we bought and they're all horrible. They say that the sink is poorly designed and doesn't drain all the well--even when installed properly leveled. Luckily they've just been ordered and haven't arrived at the store yet. We can return them before we take them home. Only problem is now we've got to find new white sink tops :-/. Well? Maybe we'll consider a solid countertop now.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Excitement

I am literally so excited about my bathroom getting finished (it's not, I'm just imagining) that I can't sleep.

Monday, August 15, 2011

On our way to a shower

Sunday was a busy, busy day. We got cabinets and countertops (sort of... they'll be here in 7 days). We also picked out the backsplash and tub 'round tile.

I started the install on the tub tile right away. The sooner I don't have to shower in the blue bathroom, the better.
So, I started on the back wall. Maybe I should've started in the middle of the middle wall, but I don't care. I decided I was looking for progress, so I started there.








I finished around the tub and decided to stop. It takes a while, so I was ready to sit down and watch some Design Star.

I have an eensy dilemma between the tub and bottom of the tile on the skinny sides. The tile saw refuses to cut the tile long-ways into half inch slabs. When I try the backer on the tile dissolves and the tiles go off in every direction. I think the space is a little too big to fill with caulk. Right now I'm leaning towards one of those decorative tile strips along the base. Bleh. I wish the problem would go away (preferably without the tile just falling off the wall---that would be ideal.) I mean more in the terms of "magically resolving itself" or "elves come and fix it in the night."



I asked Jeremy to take some pictures of the tile. He usually just takes pictures of me smiling sitting in the midst of my work.


Friday, August 12, 2011

I've waited my whole life for this.

Let's be honest. I've waited my whole life to have a house to decorate. I never spent hours dreaming about wedding or the man I'd marry. No. I wanted a house. I drew so many floor plans. Now I have one for a month and I really haven't gotten around to much decorating other than paint.

Today was the day. I decided to work on my picture wall. I've been collecting frames here and there for a while now. Nothing too special... just black. Most people seem to be going with white, same-sized frames lately. I chose black because a lot of our furniture is blackish and we have light walls and wainscoting to begin with. So, most of the frames I already had were good to go. I had on frame that Jeremy gave me with a rainbow (that he drew--obviously, considering the order of the colors) that was more of a pine color so I fixed that with a little spraypaint.



Black undercoat, satin finish.


Laura, why'd you buy all that spraypaint? Good question. I didn't. When my parents moved to Colorado they couldn't take the flammable containers with them. Hence, spraypaint.






Alright. Now fixing up the wall.

Here's the blank wall I started with.



First I laid the picture frames out on the floor in a pattern that I liked. I wasn't too concerned with having perfect, measured spacing between the frames because the frames are all different anyways. I wanted a more eclectic look--mostly because I'm lazy and it's much less work.

Then I cut out pieces of newspaper to the size of the frame and poked a hole where the "hanger" for the picture was on the back of the frame.

Then I taped my pattern up on the wall and nailed the nails into the hanger marks.




Then I ripped down the pieces of paper, hung up the pictures and voila! Worked perfectly for me. I didn't make a single "extra" hole in the wall. Whole project took me an hour and a half.





Pinwheel from our wedding! The background is some neat, handmade paper that Megan got me for Christmas. I've been waiting for the perfect occasion to use it :-)