Susan's gift is almost done.

Back before Christmas I had posted about a gift for Susan. Well we are still working on it, but it is almost done. We've been building a pantry under the planter.

Here is a before shot of the wall.



Once the drywall was removed we had a little bit of wiring to deal with. We initially thought this would be a simple removal but it wasn't. This wire fed every other outlet in the living room. So down to crawl space we went to rewire everything. Removing the wire ended up taking several days and not the 20 minutes we thought it would.



All of the old studs were removed and a new one was placed in the center. This along with the pantry should be good enough to support the brick planter above.



After we built the support for the pantry we relocated the outlet so it would be beneath the pantry and not in it.



New drywall is up and mudded.



After prepping the wall we were able to take measurements and start cutting wood for the pantry. My dad also made a jig and drilled hundreds of holes in the side panels so we would have adjustable shelves.



Pantry cabinets starting to be assembled.







Cabinets are assembled and ready to go in to the wall.



After a lot of adjusting and leveling we got the two cabinets in. However, once we put in a few shelves we realized the wood we were using was way to thin. Luckily we had only cut 3 shelves and hadn't gotten any more wood yet.



We ended up making the new shelves out of 3/4 inch boards with a white vinyl on them. These are much studier than the previous shelves and should clean up nicely in case something leaks. We also put several coats of polyurethane on the cabinets to make those easy to clean up as well. Once the shelves were in we quickly filled them up.



Here you can see how deep the shelves are and some of the many holes made for the adjustable shelves.



Yay for the doors finally going on! It's starting to look like something out of an Eichler which is what I intended.





All that's left building-wise is to put the front trim on.

So the question now is, what color do we do the doors? We plan on painting the trim the same color as the walls which will be white. We are torn between staining the doors and painting them. I know I don't want to paint them the same color as the cabinets because I don't think that will look good. Maybe I am wrong. What do you all think?

That thing in the basement

When we moved into the house there was this giant metal thing in the basement and we had no idea what it was. After a week or so we realized it was a divider that went by the front door. Apparently it was taken out when the floors were redone.

For a while now we have been thinking about putting it back up or possibly using it somewhere else in the house. Today we decided to prop it up next to the front doors and see how it looked.







We like the look at lot. What do you think? Unfortunately the divider is filthy so it will need to be sanded down and repainted. This brings us to our next question, what color should we paint it? The color it is now isn't half bad but you can tell it used to be black at one point too. Would that make it seem too obtrusive if it was that dark?

End of line.

New purchases!

We got some exciting new things today at Highland Row Antiques!

A fun little plant stand for a great price!



We don't have a good outdoor area yet but when we do I will paint it a fun color and move it outdoors. For now I'm thinking it could serve as a sometimes tiny table for our two chairs in the living room.

We also got.....


AN ARC LAMP!





I've wanted one of these for quite a while. It was in pretty good shape and the price was wonderful. Now when I sit on the couch and knit in the evenings I won't have to squint.

Has anyone else made any fun purchases lately?

Suggestions needed

For Christmas Susan's Aunt Sue gave us this awesome Satellite Bowl sold by MoMA. We immediately placed it on our dinning table and stuck some leftover Christmas ornaments in it.



It looked great for the holidays but we are at a loss for what to put in it now. Do any of our readers have any fun suggestions?

Modern on the cheap

We have seen this done on a few other sites so we figured we would try it out ourselves.

First take the interesting owl statue you got for free but is a little too 70's looking.



Clean the surface well to get rid of all the dust and oils from hands touching it. I used Mineral Spirits but rubbing alcohol will work well too. Be sure to use a cleaner that will evaporate quickly and not something that will leave any kind of residue that will mess up your paint job.

If the statue is not painted you will need to prime it. However, ours was so we were lazy and skipped the priming.

Apply 3-4 light coats of flat white spray paint. It's better to do light coats in order to prevent runs in your paint.



Let things dry and step back and enjoy your new modern looking statue. It almost looks like it came from the Jonathan Adler store.



Be seeing you.

Chop Chop Round 2

Ever since we had the goats out we have been slowly removing the rest of the little junk from our backyard. We decided it was time to bring in some people to take care of the big stuff that we couldn't do.

We went with Limb-it-Less Tree Removal which is the same company we used before. Initially, we called them out to remove the logs on the ground and 2-3 standing trees in the back yard. After talking a bit we decided it would be cost effective to remove more trees since the tree guys would already be there with the equipment. 2-3 trees quickly became 7 trees which ended up turning into 11 trees.













I'm shocked this tree hadn't snapped yet. It was one of the tallest in our yard and there was hardly anything to it.



The first thing they took care of were the left over piles I had made and the privets we had not chopped down yet.





A loader was used to carry out most of junk and all the logs. If I had a good looking yard this would have bothered me but since it's all pine straw and weeds I didn't care.



You could never pay me enough to do this job. I'd either fall off the tree or cut my arms off on the first day.



I never get tired of watching trees fall. It's scary and exciting at the same time.





Our neighbors and I were happy to get rid of these trees for 2 reason. The first was because they were leaning towards the neighbor's house. The second is that now both yards can get a little more sun.







All of the stumps plus an additional 15 or so were grounded down the next day. We were so happy to have all the privet stumps done because it is a pain in the butt to dig them up.







It still amazes us how big our back yard is. We never assumed it was this big when we bought the house.

The next steps will be to install a fence and come up with a plan for what we are going to plant back there. We don't want it totally open like it is now but it's nice we have a clean canvas to work with.

It will be a while before we can fence or landscape though. We just found out the county is coming to dig up our back yard (as well as the yards of several neighbors) to get to a sewer line. More on this as it develops.

Be seeing you.

Susan's Christmas Gift

This is just a start. I will post more about it as things get going.