The Buffet has Arrived

After meeting to look over and make final decisions on our buffet, it was delivered to us 1 1/2 weeks ago and it is beautiful!  We still need to stain it, but that has not yet happened with my being out of town last week.  We tested some colors on scrap wood and will probably go with gunstock by urethane.  We plan to stain the inside and outside of the buffet even though the outside is quarter sawn white oak and the inside is a mix of red oak and mahogany-we saved on cost by using different wood inside and on the back of the piece.  Our craftsman (he was amazing) added lots of extra little details to make the piece perfect.  Now I need to find some cool cabinet hardware.  Hopefully finished pictures will come soon.   

curves to add a little softness and detail...bottom feet match our Haywood Wakefield chairs

sample stain on scrap wood                                                    faux divider cut into door

Mid-Summer Projects Indoors

As many of you know and experience yourselves (unless you live in California and have year-round summer, as I did for the first 25 years of my life), when summer comes, projects move outdoors as there is such a short window of opportunity to get them done.  However, we have managed to fit a couple indoor odds and ends onto our summer list.
      Progress is going really well on our buffet; we are going to go view  it and hand over the salvage hinges we got from Rejuvenation and slot screws from Winks hardware on Thursday and Mike reported that he may even have it completed and drop it off to us by Friday! 
   Steve has once again entered a clean out phase on the house and the current project is selling books, CDs and DVDs from his parents house as well as some of my text books from grad school (I am happy to report that most of them were actually still worth some money 4 years later and they are selling fast).  Here are a couple pictures of the upstairs front room which is embarrassing-ly messy (mostly with things from Steve's parents house that we need to sell) as well as the bookshelf we set up with all the things we have listed on Amazon.  I would like to say (but not sure if we were ready to take on the project) that we might have started this process a couple years ago when we sold the parents house, but items need to be shipped within 2 days of sale which made it impossible with a full-time job. 

I have also been dealing with our "leaded glass."  After unpacking the glass, I realized that it is not true leaded glass, rather it is a sticky lead material that sticks onto a full panel of glass.  While the doors look awesome, I am very concerned about how well they will hold up with a toddler in the house and I feel that the cost is too much for a project I could have completed on my own.  I contacted the place that made them and she sympathized with me and told me that she would get back to me with some options on what we could do about it (she said that she almost always explains that it is not true leaded glass) but I have yet to hear back several weeks later so I left another message today. 

Friends are exploding with babies as well so I have kept busy making baby quilts, burp rags and baby towels which I enjoy doing...sorry, I keep forgetting to take pictures but hope to soon.  Ben keeps telling me how excited he is to have all these friends coming.

Rejuvenation Bath Sale

Maybe we'll get some lights for our basement bathroom!   Act fast, ends August 15th!

Note: Offer ends 8/15/2010. Excludes tax and shipping. This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. Not applicable on previous orders.

Mid-Summer Projects Outdoors

It is amazing how time flies and that summer is already half way over....especially because summer weather only started  a few weeks ago and our garden is just starting to give us a few veggies but tons of lettuce (some things died from all the cold weather & hail and we were lame on what we planted this year).

Anyways, here are a few pictures of things we have been working on.

Steve has been back to stripping paint.  He is currently focusing on the garage which I did two sides of 2 years ago but did nothing last year being that I was preggo and all.  Steve just finished stripping that paint off of the back of the garage last weekend but now needs to sand, prime and paint.

Now to finish the other side and the house rafters.  

Mulch.  Has been on our list since spring but we wanted to finish planting the front yard plants.  Well, just 5 plants left and no motivation to plant so we mulched-a whole yard worth-this weekend and we think it looks great and better yet, we hope it will keep the weeds away.

Three weekends ago, we sifted what seemed like 18 million rocks using our neighbors rock sifter (chicken wire mounted between 2x4s and had a pile big enough to fill the back of the pickup.  After two weeks of having an ad on craigslist, the last load was picked up over the weekend.  The result is some awesome dirt and a more built up look in our parking strip area....plants probably won't come until next summer unless we get super ambitious and can get a plan from my brother on what to plant.  We are thinking some low maintenance plants, including bulbs (I am hoping to add some yellow so maybe with bulbs), evergreen shrubs and grasses...maybe some more roses to carry on the theme.   And yes, our elm is finally taking off after 1 1/2 years of almost no growth-it has already sprouted over 3' this summer!

Other outdoor projects include tending to our tiny garden, finding a pot for our half column and the general never ending clean up.  We also had some water drainage issues with our new stairs due to the house re-settling after being lifted last summer so our contractor Ben was nice enough to come back and cut 1/8" slits in the back of the stairs as well as prime and paint to avoid the water pooling...however, it hasn't rained since he did it so we have yet to find out if it works (yes, we could hose it down but in doing that it would make sense to clean the porch and well, that is a lot of work).