Tag Archives: home renovation

Workout Room Updates

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Just a quick update and a photo dump from my camera, as I do great when it comes to taking pictures of our progress but not so great at actually doing anything with them.
Since I haven’t updated in weeks, I’m long overdue.  I’ll explain what’s been going on in my life the last few weeks in another post… but I’m too tired to even go there.  More on that later.

I did get the storage cabinet painted and the door to match.  I decided to leave a stained wood trim around the edge so the sliders could move more easily.  Paint ….

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The Great Wall of TROUBLE

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architects office

There’s The Great Wall of China, and The Wall in Manhattan…. the Lennon Wall in Prague and Pink Floyd’s THE WALL…. but our wall is not the kind to be celebrated, and I’m pretty sure it won’t attract tourists. One thing I am sure of is that it’s been nothing but trouble.  After three years of waiting we finally conquered this hideous beast.  Lets look back and see what all the fuss was about.

I’m still in my workout room but we are making progress each week.  Richie and I have about a day and a half each week to work on the house ….

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Lit Up!

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Just a quick post as I’ve been working … or rather “piddling” around the house… not really accomplishing too much. With school about to start it’s been pretty crazy for Richie as he switches gears from carpenter, painter, bed builder, and all around worker to “teacher”. It’s a bit of whiplash, but he accomplished a lot during the summer!

Work on the bedroom has been slow, as we’ve had to turn our attention to other things. When you’re working on a renovation and focused on getting things done, you tend to ignore things… so I had to address the “other” stuff. ….

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Closet Doors

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Closet Doors

As August pushes it’s way through..(way too quickly)…I’m trying to wrap up projects like the bedroom closet. When we rebuilt the closet I left the doors as they were with the intention to refinish them. It was the last major project on my master bedroom list. Glad to say they’re finally finished. Wheewwww!!!!

 

 

The first order of business was to order up the special laminated shoji screen paper and tape required.  These special papers are amazing because they’re very thick and then they’re laminated to keep them clean, strong, and very easy to work with.

As usual this project has taken on ….

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King Sized!

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DIY Platform Bed

After lots of work and a failed attempt at making our king sized platform bed for the master bedroom I’m happy to say “roll over and stay on your side”….. IT’S DONE!  Well, almost… I still need a mattress (minor detail).

Poor Richie… check out the sweat drip coming off his nose in the 100 degree weather. Wonderful husband!!

Boy does it feel good to say “it’s done”.   I know Richie just about had a heart attack when I told him I wasn’t happy with our first attempt at making this bed.  If you read a recent post that we ….

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Leftovers

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donated grass

I love leftovers! Yes, not having to cook is always a good thing at our busy house… but I’m actually talking about grass! I know… that doesn’t help much and now you might be completely confused. While we are currently working on some pretty big projects there are always small things that sneak in between and sometimes I stop and realize those small things are the tiny wins that get us that much closer to the vision in our heads of how this house will “someday” be.

Back yard of our old house. I couldn’t find one of the front ….

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All this for a TV?

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Well, it’s still raining here in Texas, but at least not non-stop. We’re doing our best to work around the down pours.  It looks like the upcoming week shows some improvement and we’ll see the return of heat and humidity. Never thought I’d be so excited for the return of both!

I have been taking advantage of the fact that there is always an indoor project to do when the weather doesn’t cooperate. So LUCKY ME, I’ve been working on a portion of our media cabinet. Yes, aren’t you jealous?… I know you are. If dirty, messy, stinky, and sticky are ….

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“Who’ll Stop the Rain”

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mushrooms in yard

Credence Clearwater pondered it, Prince colored it purple, Adele set fire to it, Gene Kelly sang in it, Led Zepplin were fools in it, The Cure prayed for it, Husker Du stood in it, Willie Nelson saw blue eyes crying in it, The Jesus and Mary Chain were only happy when it happened, the Eurythmics let it fall on their heads, and Bob Dylan knew a hard rain’s gonna fall…….  but I’m just SICK OF IT!

My drive to work most days looks like this.

Every day for the last 12 days it has RAINED!  I know, I know, most of the country ….

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This, that, and a red arrow

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red sign arrow

Time to get back to business around here. Summer is in full swing and we’ve been a little crazy with house projects. With the heat so bad we try to have at least one outdoor project and one indoor project going so when it gets unbearable we can move inside to work. It’s going good but now we have crap scattered everywhere which tends to make me crazy. Oh well.. I’m just happy to be “doing”.

Our bedroom project is still going, but it’s mostly my fault for being slow and wanting everything just so. So this post is about the ….

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Is it done yet?

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Refinished Drawers

After starting our re-finishing of the built-in cabinets/dresser in the master bedroom I was feeling really great about how it was going.  My plan to get this done in 2 weeks seemed doable. The stripping seemed to be getting the finish off and the sanding was revealing some really beautiful wood under it all.  YES, finally a job I could complete and have fabulous before and afters. WHATEVER! Then reality hits.  So the answer to is it done yet is simply a sigh of NO, not yet.  Unfortunately it’s always something and this time it’s my job slowing me down.

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Stripping Down

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sanded drawers

Weekends are made for fun! Right? So now we’re starting fun weekend project #568. Okay I’m exaggerating it’s probably more like #425 give or take a few. Time to start refinishing the built in cabinets in our bedroom.

When you’re having to live in a house that you’re renovating (as so many of you do) and you’re going room by room and trying to continue some sort of “normal” life in this mess, it’s almost more difficult than if we had moved out and tore up the place. Every time I get to a room it sometime feels like I’m going ….

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This and That in the Bedroom

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Roof Support Beams

Oh… get your mind out of the gutter. It’s not that kind of post. HA!

The weekends come and go so quickly that I’m not sure I even had one last week. We didn’t make a lot of progress on the Master Bedroom because there were so many other things that needed to be done.

You know things have gone too far when you star seeing cobwebs on the artwork like we’re living in some haunted house, there’s “pink slime” in the toilet that even the FDA wouldn’t approve of and you go to get the cat off the couch and you ….

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Sunshine on my shoulders….

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… makes me happy!  Yes, that’s a John Denver song.  Sorry, my mom loved John Denver and those records and songs are embedded in my brain. But it does make me happy.  (not necessarily the song, but definitely the sunshine) So I decided to skip out on the master bedroom reno for a while and take some time to work in the yard.  The temp got up to 88 degrees this weekend so I figured I better do some work before those 108 days get here.  It seems WAY TO EARLY for an 88 day.

That’s not to say that I ….

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Sunday bloody Sunday

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Open Window

….. and how was your weekend? HA HA! Mine was bloody good, thank you.

HEY, home renovation is NOT for wussies! You got splinters…too bad. Your legs ache from standing on a ladder all day… too bad. You’re blowing black boogers out of your nose from sanding disgusting windows for hours on end … FEEL PROUD! (yes, we share our sanding boogers with each other. It’s true love. :-) LOL
At the end of the day that’s what it takes … and so that’s what we do. And a good time is had by all.

Did you believe it when I ….

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Master bedroom: baby steps

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Hope you had a great weekend. I think my oatmeal cookie bars really paid off, because we worked well, and accomplished enough this weekend. I say “enough” because there’s only so many hours in the day and the way I see it, whatever you accomplish, big or small is enough. So I’ll take a minute and give an update on “just enough” in the master bedroom project. Baby steps seemed appropriate for the title of this post because that’s exactly what it takes around here.

The walls are done, the beams and door frames stained and now we turn to the ….

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