Sushi
Another reason we will claim that has kept us away from house blogging is sushi. We have a small hobby (very small…) of making our own sushi, since the store bought stuff is usually quiet pricy. So we figured we would throw a picture out there of what we have made.
Heavy Lifting 2
A few of you may know that we own an arcade machine. Open Ice hockey, to be specific. We got it for cheap through a local auction about 2 years ago with the intentions of modifying it into a MAME arcade machine. That project has been back-burnered ever since. The hope is that now that we aren’t saving for a house anymore that we can finally put some money into modifying this beast. Anyways, when we first bought it we knew it would be a pain in the ass to move, and it was. When we first brought it to the apartment 2 years ago, we had to force it up a rather steep hill to our patio, then remove the patio doors to fit it into the living room. It was about as much fun getting it back out of the apartment in May. But as bad as it was with the apartment, we were in for a new challenge with the house. We know we have small doorways and were expecting it be tight fit. Here’s how it went…
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Heavy Lifting
We knew when we bought the house that getting a washer and dryer down the basement stairs would be a challenge. Read about our tribulations after the break.
A Much Overdue Welcome!
Before we even bought this house, we had planned to have a blog that would let everyone see what we were up to. We had the name picked out well before closing day. We had the website purchased within a few days of closing. We have over 5 GB of pictures from everything we have done so far. And, I’m saddened to say, we are very behind on sharing it with all of you.
My plan is add a few new entries every week. I have enough material to keep that going for a long time. I had hoped to be adding all of it as the projects were being completed but life got crazy and that didn’t happen. But its all news to you guys, so it’s not really a big deal.
For those of you who haven’t see our house yet, I will be adding plenty of pictures of the interior and exterior, along with, for you design junkies, what my color schemes are.
There are many posts on the main page here for your reading pleasure. But also check out the projects page for some of our current and future projects (link up top or on the side).
I hope you enjoy what you read and continue checking back! Please feel free to comment, we’d love the feedback!
A small teaser of what is still to come on this blog:
- How we got our arcade machine and washer/dryer in the house (they were a challenge)
- The gross state of the kitchen floor before I cleaned it
- New and improved kitchen sink strainers
- The story of why adding gutters to the north side of the house is so important
- Some updates on the re-finishing of the porch floor
- Our many new IKEA purchases and what we did with them
- Some of our landscaping projects
The Purple Paw Print Paradox
On the day I put the first coat of a deep purple paint on the walls of our office, there was … an incident. I realized it a while after the miscreant had left the scene. I came back to discover some suspicious purple markings on the, otherwise beautiful, hardwood floors. An investigation ensued. In exhibits 1-3 we can see the purple markings, thought to be paw prints from an adult feline.
Exhibit 4 shows the weirdly untouched wall, a mere foot, behind the “paw prints”. You may also notice the open window, where it has been theorized that a feline creature may have been exploring. It is still unclear if the striped “cat toy” may have been involved.
Now the lack of witnesses to this thoughtless activity makes capturing the suspect very difficult. Also, it is still unknown how the purple paint was transferred from the wall to the floor being as there is no direct evidence that the wall was ever tampered with.
We do however have information from an unnamed source ,who states that they saw a feline, Pez DeOtis – age 7 (pictured below), later that day with a purple paw.
Unfortunately, the suspect had cleaned off the evidence before we could take samples or photographs. As such, it is hard to definitively pin it on this particular feline. He does however have a long list of previous incidences (spilled water dishes, knocking items off tables, etc.) that make him seem good for it.
We will continue our investigation into this vandalism, in hopes to get justice for our floors and their horrible defacing.
Closing Day
We officially became homeowners at about 3:30pm on Friday May 7, 2010. It was about a month from the time we made the offer on the house to when we got keys. Possibly one of the longest months we’ve had in many a year. It was torturous waiting for everything to fall into place and making sure that all the paperwork was in order. Not to mention the worrying about whether we had enough money to close. But it all fell into place.
The quick and dirty about the house itself. It was built in 1906 and has 867 finished sq. ft. It seems small but it doesn’t feel it when you are inside. Each room, except the bathroom, feature marvelous 10 foot ceilings that make the space feel very open. The bathroom and kitchen were remodeled by one of the previous owners and while they don’t really keep with the charm of the rest of the house, they are very nicely done none-the-less. The basement is what I would call semi-finished. It is obviously on its way to becoming a finished basement but someone stopped short of a full renovation. This basically means that it was framed off into smaller rooms, drywalled, and wired but the floors and ceilings were never finished. There is simply a lot about this house that is better shown through pictures (and we have plenty!) so I’ll leave it at that.