Somewhere between "what did I get myself in to," and "this is worth it."

Shortly after the first lady and I purchased our home we roughly guessed the state we would be in on November 1, 2013. Putting our two obviously novice brains together we figured that we would be completely done with the upstairs and the kitchen by now. I am happy to report that we accomplished our goal. NOT

Home renovating is a painstaking process that is rife with underestimating. From how much lumber you will need to when things will be done, you will always underestimate the amount it takes. The second thing I did in this house was to tear out the old bathroom. That was back in April. As in 7 months ago April. We officially have all of our walls up and our tile purchased. And it feels like a victory. That is not to say that after all the work that has been done in there that it should have been a quick project. The number of man hours put into a 11 by 5 space is crazy. But I can not wait to finally take my Sunday morning paper in there and relax on my throne.

There is no greater feeling than the feeling that your hard labor made something that will hopefully last for a long time. The victories are few and far between in this process but this weekend was a huge victory. We finally finished the big bedroom flooring and trim and we are now done with all the wood flooring on our upper level. I put up the baseboard in the room yesterday and it is looking great. I know that it is pretty rough right now without furniture, but it is going to be really great soon.

The first lady and I leave our house at 7 am and don't get back until 6:15pm. We unfortunately work jobs that suck away a large amount of energy and motivation each day. But putting in another 14-18 hours every weekend is actually a relaxing time. I can't wait to have every one over to show off our house. If only my prognostication skills were accurate as to when that will be.

Garden of my Dreams

Holy Moses do I love my garden.  I like to talk to it, I like to sit next to it, I like to pull weeds, and I like to harvest things that I grew in my honest-to-god-backyard.   It is my favorite place in the entire house and I have already had a huge bounty of crops.  Besides the arugula and spinach, which are earlier summer veggies, I planted beets, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, brussel sprouts and peppers. 

Here's a small beet I pulled so that the other beets could have room.  You can't let them get too  crowded!

My cucumbers were doing very well and then Jon built me a cucumber trellis for them to climb and the plants on the trellis dried out (even with every day watering).  So, I moved them off of the trellis and am hoping for the best for my diminished cuke crop.   I have a serious pickle addiction that needs to be fulfilled!

My tomatoes have exploded.   I am learning several things this year about gardening and one is that I must have larger tomato cages next year. This is necessary to contain all of the tomato branches, I want them to extend upward, not outward!  My cherry tomatoes cannot be contained and they have become some sort of mutant tomato plant that extends into all of the other tomato plants.  Plus, there are hundreds and hundreds of cherry tomatoes.  We are going to be eating bruschetta for months.  It is still early for tomatoes and I've picked a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes almost every day for the last week.

I have also learned that we are drastically expanding the garden next year.   I need more room than 25x5 to have the perfect garden.  Plus, as a previous container gardener, I didn't anticipate that my plants would get so big so quickly.  Everything is huge!  And, that, makes me the happiest gardener in the whole world.

Happy Gardening!

J & J Electrical: At Your Service

This weekend, Jon picked out some beautiful ceiling fans for the back bedroom and the master bedroom.  He also tried out his internet-earned electrical skills and installed both of them!  They look great and it is nice to finally have working ceiling lights in the rooms.

 

We bought the Hunter 52 in ceiling fan which you can find at Home Depot.  It is a really nice fan with a remote control and pretty dark wood blades.  It is neutral and goes really well with the flooring.

We only had one minor incident of electrical shock when Jon tried to jam a screwdriver next to the electrical socket without turning off the power.  He didn't fall down, so we judged it as a very minor shock.

Then, Jon finished the baseboard in the back bedroom while I spent a lot of time outdoors with Moe.

 

The base looks great with the greyish color that I vetoed for our master bedroom.  We weren't about to waste that paint!

Finally, we went to IKEA and bought new hall lighting.  The old lighting was wretched and the new lighting is much prettier.

                                   


Things are shaping up at BB.  There's a lot yet that needs to be completed, but I'm excited that some of the finishing touches are going up.  We have house guests this weekend for a wedding and we are super excited to show off the place!

So. Long. Between. Posts.

I'm desperately sorry.  It has been so long since we've posted to Brown Beauty that you must have thought that BB burned down.  Knock. On. Wood.

Instead, Jon and I were just burned out.  We worked so hard to get the house ready for our big Open House, that we needed a big break before starting another project finishing the bathroom.  We've still been doing homeownery things, like pulling weeds, mowing the lawn and cleaning.  But, we haven't started any big new projects in a while.

But, we did hire some people to do the next step on the master bath.  Actually just two people, and actually, just for the electrical work.  We got a great deal with someone that Jon's dad knows and he and his son knocked out the electrical work in 2 evenings after work.  So, now, we are ready to drywall the bathroom, put in the plumbing for the rain shower, and finally pick out tile.

Here's what I would love the vanity to look like.  Of course this is just an "internet vanity" from some super expensive store, we will be going with the cheaper-than-$2,000 option.  Or, the fix-it-up-in-the-garage option.

Actually, I really love the walls in this photo too. I feel relaxed just looking at all that gray.











We are also thinking about slate tile for the floors and shower enclosure.  Gray is my most favorite of colors.

 

Anyway, we have a long way to go before we can start placing tile.  But, It is going to be very exciting to have the bathroom completed.

We also have plans in the works for a closet organizer in our master bedroom and we are determined to finish the flooring in the third bedroom before the summer is over.

Stay tuned for updates!

A Shrimp Boil

Sunday was our First Wedding Anniversary and we decided to throw a shrimp boil for a few  forty of our family, friends and neighbors.  As part of the guestbook at our wedding, we left out cards and small envelopes for our guests to write wishes or advice to open on our one year anniversary.  So, Sunday morning, we made coffee on our new Keurig and opened all of our cards.  Let me just say this, I'm super glad we didn't open them in front of our family because when some of our friends get drunk, they write inappropriate things.

Then we prepped for the party!

A Shrimp Boil, or a low-county boil has potatoes, corn, onions, butter, shrimp and a delicious sausage.  So, we prepped 40 ears of corn, 10 lbs of potatoes, 6 lbs of onions, 25 lbs of shrimp, and 14 lbs of sausage.    Have you ever seen that much corn in your life?  Our super cool friends Kim and Mike made us the Shrimp Shaped Sign for the front yard!

Our other friend Mike (we know a lot of Mikes okay?)  brought us the sausage from a sketchy and dangerous grocery store in Detroit.  It is the most delicious sausage in the world.

After it all boils up, dump the boil on crawfish party paper.  Or newspaper, whatever you prefer. And, then you get to eat it: 

We had so much fun!  Thank you to everyone who came, especially my grandpa from Florida who flew in and worked on my house on Friday and Saturday.  He mowed my lawn, mudded the back bedroom, and painted the stairs.  It sure does help to have talented family members! 

 

Of course, we had to get lots of pictures in front of the sign!  Oh, and my dress had seahorses on it, but that's basically close enough.  

A special thanks to my best friends, Natalee and Elizabeth who are the greatest helpers in the world and decorated my tables beautifully, made LEGIT sweet tea and shucked all of my corn.  I appreciate it so much! 

And, to my mother for getting us this cake:  The same carrot cake we had at our wedding 1 year ago!  

Mom:  Draw a brown house on the cake with some stick figures, call me if you have questions. 

It was a fabulous way to kick off the summer and it was so great to give everyone a tour of our new digs.  Thanks everyone!  We had a blast! 

A Real Life Miracle

People!  People!  A miracle happened today.

Jon and I agreed on something.  Without compromise and without a discussion.   It was a huge decision about:

LAMPSHADES!! 

That's right.  Miracles. The one thing we agree on in this house renovation project are the lampshades for our bedroom.  And, if I'm being totally honest with myself, I already told Jon that I liked these and wanted needed them, so he was probably just being nice.  

But, these Target Threshold Lampshades are going to be perfect in our new grey and yellow bedroom.   Stay tuned for the final photos of the complete master bedroom - hopefully tomorrow! 

Stairway to the Upstairs

On Sunday, my dad came over to help us build new stairs.  We are going to lay hardwood flooring across them, but the base stairs that came with the house were very crappy and needed to be replaced.

I knew my dad was smart, but until Sunday, I didn't realize that he was a genius.  Building stairs is hard work people.  The math involved in incredibly difficult and the angles (although just right angles) are super complicated. 

Here are some photos of our progress: 

 

Uh oh!  What's that?  If you guessed a hole where the stairs should be, you are correct!  Jon thought it was super fun to climb up and down from the basement to the kitchen through the hole instead of using the perfectly good basement steps.

No, Jill, 1/16th of an inch off is not acceptable.

My super cool dad hard at work.  The sides of the steps are what take the longest because we had to carve out a part for the bullnose wood at the top step.

The finished product!  We are going to lay hardwood lengthwise across the stairs and we ordered the additional bullnose pieces for the edges of the stairs.  Unfortunately Lumber Liquidators only sells the wood that we need in 6 1/2 foot lengths (and the stairs are 38 inches across) so we had to buy two pieces at a cost of 45 dollars each!   I'm using the rest for an art piece, stay tuned for pictures.

And now, a Haiku about my dad:

Stair building genius. 
Is everything level?  Thrice.
Two steps, eighty screws used.

And a poem from my perspective:

This math is very hard. 
I cannot divide fractions. 
Find an app for that. 




Stay tuned for additional updates on our door installation, our nearly completed (OMG) master bedroom and the wall paper removal from hell.

Happy Contracting! 

The two hundred dollar swing

I apologize for my late arrival to Brown Beauty. I tend to stick my mind to one objective and ignore everything else going on around me when I get stressed. With a new house, new job, and a laundry list of projects to accomplish, these last few months have been anything but a breeze. So to all those I owe a phone call to, my sincerest apologies.

This is a story about a man and a bathroom:

Typically, a story about a man and a bathroom revolves around a long night of drinking, too much Taco Bell, or a lot of reading material. This one is different. Demolishing the bathroom was the first among a long list of remodeling projects that we will tackle on Brown Beauty. It is also the very first place that I realized that I have no clue what the hell I am doing.

It started quite simple. I wanted to move the doorway so that my bathroom door was outside of my vanity and not simply covering the toilet and shower. So I bashed some drywall and felt like a bad ass. Hours later I was still trying to figure out what the hell to do. I cut a hole in the drywall where my new doorway would be located but it looked more like a I suffered a stroke in the process. Suffice is to say, it was far from a straight line to frame in a new door.

At this point in the process I figured it was time to quit. It seemed like I was just puttering around and recklessly swinging my hammer. I decided to just remove one more small bit of drywall and then call it a day.  And so I took a few swings and heard a crack. I swung a bit to hard and on the back swing I destroyed the only good toilet in our house.

Brown Beauty has 3 toilets but only one of them actually worked well. A few days earlier, I even made sure to tell Jill that under no circumstances would I discuss replacing that toilet. And then I took a swing that cost me the only toilet worth a damn.

You don't realize how great a toilet is until its gone.

Tomorrow I will continue with part two of the bathroom. The Deuce.

Paint Party!

Last weekend the hubs and I picked out the paint color for the master bedroom.  We are hosting an open house/anniversary/birthday party for ourselves at the end of May and our goal was to complete the master bedroom before we moved into it.   Of course, by bedroom, I just mean bedroom.   If you saw the last post, the bathroom is a whole other can of worms.   And, at this rate, I'm going to just hang up photos of what things will look like in ten years and then herd everyone outside for drinking games. Because there's no way we are achieving this deadline. 

In the natural vein of things at Brown Beauty: 

1.  Drive to Home Depot and pick out Gentle Rain by Behr which looks like this: 

"What a sweet, nice gray.  Not to dark, not too light."  You say to yourself, chuckling slightly because this project is so easy.  

2.  Paint walls. A large swatch of wall.  

3.  Realize that the paint is actually dirty white. And hideous. 

4.  Ask yourself whose fault this is.  Your options are: Home Depot, your husband, Moe, yourself.

5.  Come to the conclusion that Gentle Rain just totally sucks as a color and is not gray. 

6.  Return to Home Depot (third trip of the weekend) to choose a better gray paint color. 

7.  Wear a gray shirt to Home Depot and compare all of the paint swatches to your gray shirt.  

8.  Find Gray Area by Behr.  

9. Home depot employee comments that the color is similar to your shirt.  "Yes! Exactly!  That's what I was going for!"

10.  Show the paint to your dad who comments that the wall must first be patched, mudded, sanded, mudded again, and then you can paint. 

11.  Hang your head in defeat because Nothing. Is. As. Easy. As. It. Seems.  

This is the color that I picked.  It is Gray Area by Behr. 

And let me tell you, I'm wishing and hoping that this is the final paint purchase for the master bedroom. Someday, the paint will actually be on the walls! 

Bathroom/Flooring/Gardening - Weekend Contracting continues!

It has been awhile since we've updated but the weekends are just so crammed full of weekend contracting excitement that I don't have a spare second to create a blog post.

This weekend, I started my 25' by 5' garden!  I love gardening and I come from a long line of gardeners.  One of my favorite memories as a kid was going into my grandpa's backyard and picking a sun-warmed tomato and eating it like an apple with salt!  It is one of my most delicious memories and I have wanted my own backyard garden for basically my whole life.

So, this weekend, my dad brought the tiller and we mapped out where the garden will be:

 

It was VERY hard work.    My dad has never let anyone use his tiller (except me!) and that's probably because it feels like a baby elephant is pulling you forward chewing up the land.  You literally have to lean backwards with all of your weight and dig in your feet to keep the tiller in place.  My shoulders and upper arms have never been this sore!  But, it was all worth it because after we framed out the garden with some pressure treated 2 x 12s, I got to plant my cukes, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and brussel sprouts.    I'm also putting in beets, carrots, potatoes, various lettuces and an herb garden.

I am so happy to have a yard and place to grow food.  I don't have to have chase that elusive garden fresh tomato taste anymore!

 

Here is a gratuitous picture of Moe, jungle cat.
"Who the hell planted all this grass out here and why am I just now finding out about it?!"

We also finished the demo on the bathroom, which was not as easy as they make it seem on HGTV.  I might be done with that channel.  What type of new tile would you like? is probably the very last question you should ask yourself when putting in a new bathroom.  They don't tell you that the marble tile used by the old owners is super heavy and has been glued on  by some alien crazy glue previously unknown to man.  They also don't tell you that pretty much every toilet installed in the 70s has leaked at some point in the last 40 years and you have to replace all of the plywood before you put down cement board, a resurfacer to make everything level and then you can do the tile.  But, you also have to do 700 other steps, like secure the vent, hire an electrician, fix the shower drain that  dad cracked became cracked in a freak accident, purchase drywall, replace the insulation, install plumbing for a rain shower.  The list is endless.  

This is what my master bathroom looks like right now.  In all honesty, it is very exciting to have a completely blank slate to work with.  I can do anything I want in that space and I couldn't be more excited about the rain shower!  I wish I had that super cool animation software utilized by the notorious Property Brothers to show exactly how the bathroom is going to turn out. 

Sorry it took so long between posts!  I'll try to update more frequently!  

Weekend Contractors out.