Let’s get you caught up on things we did weeks ago so I can then catch you up on things we’re doing now!

We got a sweet counter height dining room table just like I wanted:

(click to enlarge)

It’s perfect for our small space. And it was retarded cheap, my favorite.

If you will recall (HERE) I mentioned that I painted our bedroom. I didn’t show very good pictures. And I bet you’re wondering why. Well, we had these to deal with:

Really uncool closets. So, we ripped out all the shelves and hung sliding doors from a runner on the ceiling. It was a lot of wood:

 We would have bought fancier doors, but these were on sale at ikea for 1/5 of the price of the ones I wanted. Had to. I think it looks sweet. 

Then I had to paint the inside of the closets grey, they were yellowy-orange for no good reason. Then I did the trim white. Now the whole room matches. Except for the fireplace…

We got some neon colored bed linens at ikea too, which really kicked up the room.

We then took the two mirrors I had painted out of the bathroom and put them in the living room, and got one big bathroom mirror. I love the way it looks. It feels clean and sleek. 

Here are the doors all cleaned up and in action with a glimpse of our home-made bed:

Also lately we’ve pulled out a leaky toilet (in the master) shoveled tons of snow, taught someone to ski, had a birthday, taken over a VIP lounge at Sundance, and planned my brother’s birthday trip. It’s been a busy month!!!

What does this look like to you? A pretty nice wall?

Well, that’s because MK sealed up the doggie door! He insulated the gap and put wood in. Then I spackeled and sanded and painted. So it used to be a giant door that let cold air in. You can totally see in the pic that it isn’t perfect since the doggie door was put in all junked up. We did the quick fix but from far away since it’s on the floor you totally can’t see the little hump there. And no more cold air!

On the off chance we do ever get a pet, someone’s going to have to let it in and out.

We I painted our bedroom. Grey. I love it.  Pretty much anything would beat the forest green that it was when we got here. Then I primed and painted the trim white. Painting trim attached to a wall with a carpet under it sucks. We’re eventually going to replace all the carpet and trim so it was just a for-right-now deal. It was miserable.

Upon finishing the room and basking in the cool freshness of it, I turned toward the master bath and gagged. With the green bedroom, the bathroom just looked off-white. With a grey bedroom, the walls turned to manila envelope dirt walls. So I painted them grey too. Just the bath area, not where we will eventually be redesigning the master closets. They’re going to get some white, eventually. Even half-finished, the bathroom has gotten a facelift. We took down the light fixture, tore off the mountain tree scene (we live in the mountains, it happens) flipped the fixture upside down, and painted the mirrors that were already there white too. Even though in the spring we will give this place a major renovation, with the plan being black stained awesome tile wall to wall and a walk in shower, no tub, closet wall to wall in the corner from Ikea- for now it has gone up in usability 80%. MK has even stopped using the basement guest bath to get ready – we don’t have pictures of that since it’s the only room we didn’t have to do anything to besides buy a rug.

It’s been forever since I lived in a place with a carpeted bathroom. Why would you ever DO that? I am vacuuming all the time to get my hair off the floor. It’s awful. Really looking forward to pulling that all up. Vacuuming is funny – I’ve done it more in 2010 in this house than probably the last three years.

The pictures don’t do the rooms justice. It was hard to find a good angle!

Every time we talk about the blue bathroom, I feel a little guilty. We found this room with a moose and bear shower curtain, red walls, and a blue toilet and shower. It was the worst room in the house. It worked perfectly fine, there was nothing wrong with it, but it was blue. And technically, it still is. We need a big strong man to come visit and help MK install a new potty. Until then, I had to make it useable.

I painted it green with leftover living room paint just to stop seeing the maroon. I ripped down the shower curtain. After the trim was done we decided there was nothing wrong with a glossy all white bathroom, and repainted the whole thing. We got new door handle hardware for the cabinet under the sink and the doors to the closet.

MK replaced the sink faucet and we bought a new mirror and light fixtures. It’s the nicest, cleanest, most done room in the house now. It’s so nice you don’t even notice the blue toilet or shower. But they’ve still got to go. Soon, I hope!

Duh, comments reminded me you might want to see the potty. Funny story: That shower curtain matches perfectly. We’ve had it in storage for three years.

Never thought I’d see the day – a toilet. My toilet, on my blog.

You might not care, but I’m forging ahead with house updates. The snow is melting too fast and as much fun as skiing is there’s not much to say about it besides I’m getting better, and we rarely take pics on the mountain, since I’m the least attractive thing there.

So where were we? I think before the holidays I told you about our adventure in furnace-breaking and fixing. The point was to figure out what circuit breakers did what. Having accomplished that, MK set about changing all the outlets and switches, to make sure they were grounded and update the house. We started with a mess of random ugly wood of all different hues, and ended up with sleek screwless faceplates that add a modern touch to the rooms.

You might be surprised if you’ve never checked (maybe only if your house is as old as ours) how much air was coming in the cracks of the outlets. MK sealed them all up tight to prevent any heat loss.

Then, some of the wiring was a total cluster. More MK expletives.

But he got them all changed out, and they look super nice.

There were a lot of switches to replace. Lowe’s is still out of stock in two stores.

Not a problem anymore, not here. You tell us it’s messed up, we rip it out. Or, more accurately, MK does. Before I’m even out of bed. The two fireplace guys said the woodstove was a lost cause. So now it’s sitting on the porch, we hope someone steals it, it’s very heavy.

Well, at least this is a pretty funny story.

As you may have noticed like Dadd did in the guest room, we pulled all the faceplates off to paint (duh). They were yucky pretty much every where. MK found the super sweet screwless kind but for sure thought the plugs had to match. So we had some electrical work to do.

This means that I read the Home Depot book and was then an expert. I knew we needed to test breakers. Things were going fine as we ran from room to room seeing what lights went off and checking the toaster and other random plugs and appliances. We were, in fact, almost done. MK said something I couldn’t hear about being glad something didn’t mess up anything when we were something something. Then I heard some swears. He had popped the breaker to the heater. He popped it back on, and nothing. Then I heard MK again. More expletives. No heat.

We opened the heater, which is powered by gas, and shut off the gas immediately. I started dry heaving and noticing how cool the air was getting. MK had more expletives. We started reading the Home Depot book. There is no page called “your friends have their parents in town and you will be sleeping at a hotel if you do not figure out how to get the heater back on it’s 12 degrees out”. MK was not very nice to me. (He doesn’t read this, so I can tell you point blank: If something happens to him in this house, it’s like I WILLED it. I keep getting the anger. Boo.)

I read what the heater said. “Turn the heat low, reset the electricity, reset the gas, crank the heat. Auto lights. Or you’re going to the hotel”. We did those things, since it was late Late Sunday, there’s no guy we can call. It didn’t work. I’m not sure how much time had passed, but it was starting to feel like hours. MK decided to hit the main breaker, change the wiring to a different breaker, and try again. Yikes. That was DEFINITELY not in the book.

HEAT! Glorious crazy heater that keeps me alive! I was totally impressed by MK’s call to action – I don’t think I knew you could BREAK a breaker…but whatever, it worked, and we were warm again! (The temperature on the thermostat didn’t even drop a degree, but I could feel a chill coming IN MY BONES).

Here’s a picture that is so boring, you can’t see anything. It’s a NON working heater:

And for those of you that have never had an insane gas powered heater, here’s a picture of the JETS that look like they could go airborne when they are working (it’s blurry but it’s four giant OPEN FLAMES ARGH – seeing how my house works makes it a little harder to sleep):

The kick to this is that it was LATE. And exhausting. And MK was not done. We were done testing breakers, sure. But it was TIME TO PUT ON THE NEW OUTLETS.

This is out of order but we also did the trim and finished the Utility Room. MK stole some of my pictures so I unveiled the guest room first. I think the funniest thing about the trim was that for the living room we literally pulled it off the wall, primed it, painted it, and stuck it back on. It’s a little loose but it worked. They don’t show you that on TV.

In reality, you have a room where you’ve trashed the trim, like our Utility Room. I’m not sure what else to call it, it’s a huge storage room really, the guy that lived here before us used it as an in-house work room. We cleaned it thoroughly and painted it. It’s nice enough to sleep in now. Not having an in-house work room meant that after a week of sitting in my dining room the trim had to be cut outside. Brr.

MK’s work space on the back deck was hilarious:

We sectioned out the new wood trim we’d picked out, measured it, found studs (well, I was in charge of finding them and I missed one, so we found MOST of the studs) and measured where to cut the wood. As I think I mentioned, I wouldn’t let MK spring the 400$ or whatever for the nail gun and air compressor after reading it’s perfectly do-able by hand. So we drilled holes, sunk nails, and realized the nails weren’t long enough. MK ran to the store for some enormous nails. We also realized that the room is right on the intersection of concrete becoming pier-and-beam so it was a little crooked. Oh well. We made the wood fit, put wood putty over the nail head holes, and filled the seams with sealer. It was hard work since the laundry main goes through the floor in one spot (hoping FIL can put my laundry IN this room when he visits):

But overall we think we did okay. As you can see the floor isn’t that great, so I decided to roll out a rug we weren’t going to use. Made the space much happier. There’s enough room that I’ve kind of been using the space as a workout room too, and it otherwise holds crap, paint, and the ironing board I hope I never have to look for.

It’s all cleaned and there’s nothing on the floor now but that’s another story…

You blog about what’s going on in your life, and I can’t not tell you all these house stories. I really hope you’re enjoying hearing about our misadventures (to borrow a friend’s term) as we learn about home ownership, whether you’ve been through all this before, are shaking your head in disbelief, or are taking notes on what NOT to do when it’s your turn.

Seriously, we could have a HGTV show. No host, (or I’d be the host, it’s my idea) where they film novices reading out of books, consulting the internet, and trying to keep a marriage together while taking on the projects. On the shows they have now there’s someone showing them what a patina is or giving them a 400$ air compressor and nail gun. That’s so not how it is in the real DIY world.

MK and I awoke Christmas Eve to the decision to paint the basement guest room – we have company coming! TB and I picked out a subtle yellow that I was certain would compliment the bed set. Problem is, when I started painting, I couldn’t tell what I had done. The paint was so light it matched the white on the walls at that point. Trying not to cry I finished the job and refused to paint a second coat since it dried a little darker and I was still grouchy. We rearranged some furniture and voila. The trim was acceptable except for one piece, MK was able to salvage a piece from the Utility Room and we were able to fit it exactly to the wall. You’d never know, but underneath is properly sealed. We need some wall art and MK is going to rehang the door so that it opens in the opposite direction just because (I’m lying the house is settling and it’ll be less noticeable that way HA) and that room will be ALL. DONE.

Of note in these pictures: That is my first teddy bear ever. My Dadd won it for me at the St. James Bazaar. The sheets are not that gaudy and shiny in person, it’s the flash. MIL gave those to us and I really like them, so be nice. Can you tell the paint is yellow? I’m thinking a giant wrought iron swirly thing over the bed headboard, thoughts? And finally, NOW ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS. 😉