From the moment we moved into this house (almost 2.5 years ago) I knew the exterior paint scheme had to change. It’s not awful, mind you – the paint is not peeling or blistering. And it’s not neon orange – the main color is a robin’s egg blue that is almost (but not quite) charming […]

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a newfound respect for the Valspar paint brand found at Lowe’s. I’ve only used the interior version, but got thinking that maybe their exterior would be worth looking into since we’re (…big deep breath…) hoping to paint the house this spring/summer/fall. We’ve got plenty of scraping […]

This is for all you WordPress bloggers out there…. everyone else can ignore the geekery to follow. A few weeks ago, I upgraded WordPress (the software this site runs on) to version 2.0 – about a week later, I noticed that my tags (keywords chosen by me to help you all find related content – […]

This weekend, we puttered around yet again with the craft room and closet. Skim coating drywall is B-O-R-I-N-G. I hate waiting for one coat to dry just so we can go put another thin-as-can-be coat on it. Good technique means very little sanding. That’s the only reason I haven’t gone beserk yet. The only interesting […]

Nadja and Sean of American Four Square Renewel took our “wallpaper on the ceiling” cheat one step further, painting it copper. And the pictures look amazing! We’ve thought about doing a copper-colored fake tin ceiling in our living room, so I had to bookmark their post. You might recall that we did a quick fix […]

One of our commenters was interested in the colors used in our bathroom, so I thought I’d share the detailed info on our paint choices. I’m terribly in love with the way they came together. We started the process by choosing a shower curtain – because as you’ll quickly learn, it’s infinitely easier to find […]

Last week, Marilyn of Hauser Haus kindly pointed out that when hung the closet door so that it opened inward, we essentially cut our storage space in half. And the minute I read her comment, I went “DOH!”. How could we have mindlessly hung it the way we had, and then how we could have […]

Photographer Phyllis Stewart has a great gallery of Victorian home photos, both interior and exterior. I came across these while searching for exterior color schemes for our upcoming (hopefully? if we can afford it? and if our sanity remains intact?) painting project. Because if all goes as planned, we want to start scraping and painting […]

When my parents got rid of all their personal belongings and hit the road, we became the proud owners of some really awesome antiques. One of my favorite pieces is the Edison Disc phonograph, which came from my father’s family and (I think) dates to around 1915. Here it is in our front entry room: […]

Even though we’re taking a break from major home projects, I find that I can’t stop myself from doing something, anything, to make the house a happier place to live. We toyed around with drywall here and there, but I spent most of the weekend practicing the greatest holiday ever invented: DISCARDIA. In the creator’s […]