Happy Mother’s Day

I’ll take a break from random photos of my house for a special mother’s day note. Our pastor read this blog post this morning and I really couldn’t say it better:

(Original post here)

To those who gave birth this year to their first child—we celebrate with you

To those who lost a child this year – we mourn with you

To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains – we appreciate you

To those who experienced loss through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or running away—we mourn with you

To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment – we walk with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this harder than it is.

To those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms – we need you

To those who have warm and close relationships with your children – we celebrate with you

To those who have disappointment, heart ache, and distance with your children – we sit with you

To those who lost their mothers this year – we grieve with you

To those who experienced abuse at the hands of your own mother – we acknowledge your experience

To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood – we are better for having you in our midst

To those who have aborted children – we remember them and you on this day

To those who are single and long to be married and mothering your own children – we mourn that life has not turned out the way you longed for it to be

To those who step-parent – we walk with you on these complex paths

To those who envisioned lavishing love on grandchildren -yet that dream is not to be, we grieve with you

To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year – we grieve and rejoice with you

To those who placed children up for adoption — we commend you for your selflessness and remember how you hold that child in your heart

And to those who are pregnant with new life, both expected and surprising –we anticipate with you

This Mother’s Day, we walk with you. Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst. We remember you.

 

So happy mother’s day to my mom and mother-in-law. I am so thankful for you. 

 

 

Be Gone With Yew

We’ve had a very late spring in Chicago this year, including a mid April snowfall. Lane and I have tried to use this to our advantage by finishing up a few more things indoors and doing some clean up outdoors before the prime growing season.

Here’s where we left off outside with new garage doors

See that snow covered yew? We always hated how obtrusive it was when you were pulling out of the driveway or on the sidewalk. We hated it even more when we learned that it’s roots were growing into our waste water pipe and costing us a heft plumbing bill to have them removed. So you can imagine how our hatred for the yew grew.

Last Sunday, Lane decided to start attacking it, only to realize a few hours later what a beast this thing was. Eventually, we dug out and cut the side roots and then cut off the top of the trunk. Add stump killer (I was desperate) and backfill the dirt and we went from this

To now this

Honestly, I think the bare landscaping is a huge improvement from the untended mess that we had.

Now that we are done with the yew, I have moved to digging up daylilies.

These things are growing everywhere! And apparently they will keep respawning from leftover roots still in the ground. Yay. I have been digging up as much of the roots as I can and taking aggressive measures on the root remains. Thank you neighbors of old for sharing your weeds with us…

Next up was a bit of stump removal. I drilled holes in the stumps, filled them with epsom salt, and am now waiting for nature to run it’s course. Also we cut down the stump from the dead tree that we cut down in the back yard last fall.

We also have this bank in the backyard by the deck stairs where the grass doesn’t seem to like growing, so we planted creeping myrtle. We have enough grass to take care of, so I am trying to use alternative ground cover whenever possible.

Speaking of mowing grass, we bought a reel mower on Amazon. We will see how we feel at the end of the mowing season, but so far we are loving it! It’s a good workout and it’s very fun to watch the little grass shards fly in front of you. And we don’t have to worry about gas or maintenance!

Lest you think we’ve been lazy outdoors, we also painted some hand-me-down patio chairs a bright blue. Lowe’s ran out of the spray paint for a few weeks, so I had to wait a while to pick up the last couple cans so I can finish them up.

Lane and I aren’t the only ones nesting this spring – a robin has moved in under our deck. Also I was cleaning some leaves out of yet another daylily “garden” and picked up what I thought was a mess of straw. It started squeaking at me and some sort of teeny baby rodents popped out. Whoops.

We still have a really long ways to go outside, but it feels nice to get a head start!

Dining Room Updates

Between Lane’s week long sinus infection, a long weekend in Florida, and my cold, we went through a stretch where we didn’t accomplish much on the home front. That’s okay – sometimes you just need a little break. We were right back at it this weekend, however, starting with the dining room.

The dining room was probably the room in our house that needed the least amount of work. We were ripping up the carpet and refinishing the hardwood on the main floor anyways, so all that was left was paint and moving the oddly-located light fixture.

Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house:

Yikes. The picture doesn’t represent it well, but the light fixture wasn’t lined up with anything. Not the window, not the old table location. Not sure what the logic was there, but it had to be moved. I’d hoped it would be a quick and easy diy project, but a quick trip to the attic revealed ridid conduit coming out every side of the fixture box. Whomp Whomp. Yes, I am an electrical engineer and although I deal with 5V circuits on a daily basis instead of 120V circuits, I could probably figure out how to chain a new fixture box to the old one. But our electrician can do it for less than $50 in one hour. So….

Yes, Lane’s new golf clubs are still sitting in the corner of the dining room…I think I am supposed to remove the stickers off the clubs at some point in time.

We now have a nicely centered, appropriately sized chandelier! Conventional design wisdom says that the dining room should have a chandelier that is centered over the table (and in line with the island in the adjacent kitchen) and hangs approximately 30-36″ above said table. We measured the chandelier hanging at 30″ and thought it felt low, so we raised it just a bit until it felt right.

I lourve the vintage looking Edison bulbs that came with the chandelier. Fun fact: I originally ordered this (http://www.westelm.com/products/eclipse-chandelier-w754/?pkey=cchandeliers-pendant-lighting) from West Elm last year, but it was backordered until March 2013. After A) hearing a lot of horror stories about WE’s backorder track record and B) thinking that we would hang the light well before now, I cancelled the order. As things would go, the WE chandelier is now in stock. It’s still my first love, but our current Menards fixture is also handsome it’s own right and was half the price.

Let’s take a closer look:

I don’t think I have shared this before, but back in January Lane and I scored a Hemnes cabinet for 40% off in the Ikea As-Is section. It now houses all my pretty Crate and Barrel china.

It has a scratch on the right side, which we knew would go against the wall. Convenient, eh?

In other news, we are creeping along in the master bedroom. I keep going back and forth between sharing a progress update and waiting for a dramatic reveal. It’s turning out to compete with the kitchen for my favorite makeover!

Garage Doors

The thorn in our side has been removed!!! Our previous garage doors barely worked and we knew that they were on their last leg of life and would break any day. And there was the part where none of the remotes worked and we had to go inside to open them every time we came home.

So we threw some money at it. (love those projects)

And went from this:

Look closely – the doors aren’t even the same

To this:

Oh yeah, and we added a little extra snow in between Our contractor for the doors was great – they worked a long day during one of the worst snow storms of the season without one complaint.

The downside is that the new doors make the rest of our house look a little extra shabby, so we are already planning how to change things up a bit. The first things we plan to do are clean the siding, dig out the dead and obtrusive bushes (all of them fall into one of those two categories…) and paint the shutters a dark brown.

The leading contender for the shutter color is Turkish Coffee by SW which is a darker shade of the perfect greige we used all over the interior. (http://www.sherwin-williams.com/homeowners/color/find-and-explore-colors/paint-colors-by-family/SW6076-turkish-coffee/)

It’s very exciting to get a jump start on operation curb appeal before the spring! The other houses on our street are well manicured and we are tired of being the ugly house on the block.

Living Area Updates

While waiting for master bedroom progress to start, we kept trucking along in the main living area of our house. Our living room, dining room, and kitchen are all open to one another so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to refer to them as separate rooms. And since this area is so exposed, having it looking 50% complete is not cool.

Dude get on that project #1: Magnetic Chalkboard Wall

Who doesn’t have 2 dozen pins of awesome chalkboard paint projects? And it was super simple: 3 coats of magnetic primer and one coat of Martha’s chalkboard paint recipe. Boom. Wall of awesomeness. Right now this space hosts our grocery list, calendar, and baby shower invitations (because that’s pretty much a constant thing in this household), but I like that it can also be home to kid scribbles when our friends visit.

Dude get on that project #2: Hide Us From The Neighbors

I love having a huge window in the main area and it lets in so much natural light. I don’t love how exposed our living area is to everyone on the street. Enter bamboo shades.

I should add a night picture later so that the shades are a bit more visible, but so far we are loving them. They add a nice warmth and natural texture to keep the open space from feeling too open. And they sort of diffuses the inside of our house so that you can still see outlines, but everything isn’t super clear and on display. The light still shines through which is another huge plus. If we ever want more privacy down the road, I can add liners to the back.

These blinds were a story of “Jessica and Lane fought the drywall anchors and barely won”. Blinds are the thing that always take us four times longer than planned to hang. Grr! Thankfully Lane was able to get some super duper drywall anchors from work (the many perks of working for an industrial supply) and this was only a two day project. And the very valuable lesson learned is that you should immediate toss the drywall anchors and screws that come packaged with whatever you are trying to hang and just use your own.

Most importantly, the whole reason I have time to blog right now is because I am waiting on our garage door guy to show up! Garage doors have been the thorn in our side for the past 2 months since we moved in, so today is a BIG day! Stay tuned…

Let’s get it on

In the spirit of Valentines, Marvin Gaye, and renovations, we’re going to start master bedroom renovations this week!

When Lane and I first toured the house I could see the potential in every room, but when we got to the master I froze. No ideas were jumping out at me. There were some weird things in this house, but the glittery stalactite ceiling is the weirdest.

Exhibit A

Yuck. The picture doesn’t even do it justice. This makes a 90s popcorn ceiling look chic. But there’s good news. Tomorrow, this will be covered with smooth new drywall!

Oh, but then there are orange walls to worry about.

But that’s nothing primer and paint won’t take care of. Here’s the plan:

We may change our minds, but right now we’re leaning toward cream walls

And we already scored an upholstered bed similar to this one

Which will be flanked on either side by wardrobes, which will be Ikea hacked Jessica style (hint – they’re not staying white)

Then I’ll top it all off with some new bedding and curtains. I just have no idea what kind of patterns I want to bring into the room, but that will come to me once I see the other pieces in place. This should be a good distraction from all our other unfinished projects…

Temporary Bedroom Reveal

*Edit* I had the bright idea to post from my phone and the wordpress app failed to upload pictures. Should be good now.

When we first saw this house, I wasn’t really overwhelmed by the yellow carpet, the falling apart kitchen floor, or the ash tray basement because it was pretty obvious what to do with all of those rooms. The room that got me was the master bedroom with its yellow and orange walls and stalactite ceiling because we didn’t even know where to begin. The fact that we
still haven’t touched that room provably proves that we still don’t really know where to begin in there…

So our plan became sleeping in the guest bedroom for a few months until we renovate the master. This room has reached the “Done for Now” status.

We painted the walls grey – blue (upward but Sherwin Williams) and reused our old bedroom furniture. The original metal closet doors got a few coats of white spray paint.

To finish this room off, I will eventually hang artwork, change the duvet, add a ceiling fan, and figure out a solution for the too big nightstands in there now.