is now lying upside down in our back lawn. Teague is pretty sure the neighbors watched with bated breath while he pushed and pulled and cut and chopped, hoping the whole house didn’t collapse on top of him. As you can tell by the photo, he put in another LONG but productive day: It’s quite […]

With the weather finally warming up, my mind wanders away from the kitchen to the front porch, where we’ll hopefully spend a few lazy summer nights sipping cold beverages and laughing with friends. Yesterday, I got a great catalog in the mail from Frontgate, who call themselves the “outfitters of America’s finest homes”. Perhaps because […]

Mom and Dad rolled into town last week in their new RV, an upgrade from their already giant 38-footer. They’re working their way from Florida to Maine, and braved the upstate climate long enough to say hello and have a few meals with their darling children. Of course, we HAD to see the behomoth new […]

This handsome, extremely dirty guy has a proud look on his face because he’s pointing out his latest work – the framing for the back wall of the kitchen. It’s so exciting seeing where the new wall and doors will be! Teague and Don (his father) were out there like little worker bees the other […]

We do alot of drywall sanding. My technique is getting better, so it requires less sanding now, but I absolutely hate the white dusty film that it leaves on everything in sight. I thought about purchasing one of those $20 vacuum hose attachment deals, until I talked to a guy at the hardware store – […]

When we decided on french doors for the back wall of the kitchen, we went to Home Depot to check out their stock. I looked online at all the likely places, and found a few I liked in our price range. But none I LOVED. Nothing that would really look right staring back at me […]

Our back lawn is very big and very nice, but it’s lacking something….. trees. Our neighbors on either side have lots of trees (you can see some of them in the photo, flaking our lawn) and we have very few. That’s because the previous owners cut them all down. Perhaps to avoid raking? Since we […]

Armstrong has one of those “design a room” tools that you could literally spend ALL DAY fiddling with. You choose a room design (I chose one that looks like the kitchen I want to have someday) and then apply wall colors and flooring choices. Good for testing out color combinations and flooring ideas, especially if […]

Our kitchen extension project is moving along well thus far. No big snags, other than a few very soggy days. April in Upstate NY is extremely rainy. Although, this past week was beautiful and yesterday I actually broke a sweat while outside in a t-shirt! (I was raking leaves, but still…) The drainage system is […]

What’s the perfect place to hold a party for two fixer-upper designer types? An old house turned art museum! Our wedding shower was this weekend, and we had so much fun. My awesome bridesmaids found the location, a BEAUTIFUL old house that is now a community art center. We were drooling over the slate roof, […]