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.