Sat & Sun, the last 2 days

Saturday was a productive day as the weather gods were kind to us (As they were not to most of the east coast and we have had you all in our thoughts) as it never got too hot to be outside.  In attempt to once again avoid sanding and working on the house siding (I was also on Ben watch), Ben and I turned to the north side of our house which is just a mess of a forest.  Anyways, we pulled out most of the weeds and then Steve finished up later.  He also took out an old tree stump while he was at it. 

Late in the afternoon, Steve talked me into a quick trip to wood waste management to picked up a 1/2 yard of hemlock mulch (we like the dark color and especially like that it is splinter free) in exchange for happy hour at McMennamins Kennedy School.  Steve went to town spreading mulch as soon as I got home.  We like the results!  What a difference about 45 minutes of work does.  We still need to figure out if we want to keep all the used bricks (from our chimney and a past dumpster diving trip)...I am opting to let them go  (at least most of them) in attempt to clean out the casa.  Long term we plan to extend the back yard gate further out in the side yard. 

Saturday I also patched and glued the rest (or so I thought) of the siding on the back of the house. 
Sunday morning we sanded a ton and then Steve found a bunch of spots that I forgot to glue (oops).  We decided to not finish gluing and instead prime the wood...well, we got halfway through priming and we hope to finish up the priming during evenings this week. 

Day 12

and I promise that my last day for counting and this challenge will be Sunday, day 14.  I think it has almost gone on long enough and I am now in the mood to work on this old casa and get it looking shiny new   back to the early 1900s just how we want it

So today, I got a babysitter in the am (I know, gasp, what a splurge) because shopping (the browsing and thinking about how it would work in your house type of shopping) just doesn't go hand in hand with a 16 month-old.  He's cute and all and maybe could help me score a discount (just so they can get me out the door so as to not risk the babe breaking their precious goods), but no fun.  So I hit up one yard sale that I just happened upon after hitting up a terrible (and I mean terrible) estate (year right, more like yard) sale. 

While I still came home empty-handed as far as bathroom adornment goes, I did find a couple fun items and enjoyed myself immensely.  

some fun vintage faux-wood bangles for $3

Initially I was thinking that maybe I would spray paint them white and put them upstairs in the guest room to add a fun twist.  At only $2 for the owls, I didn't mind playing with some paint.  But then I realized that being solid brass and ~7" tall with a nice patina going on, they might work well in the living room. I also love how the lines in the table are similar to the lines formed under the crossing of the branches.  I used to have a plant under our little living room side table.  However, the plant was not fond of no light and baby hands pulling at it.  I have wanted to find a replacement item for the little shelf but could not think of something baby proof.  My only worry is that this could possibly hurt some toes if it fell being that it is pretty heavy.  Ben is pretty good at understanding "no" right now and knows that table is off limits.

Well, those are my finds.  I will spare you pictures of the little plastic tractors I found for Ben for $.50 a piece.  And, yes, I promised pix of the fun metal chairs from 1979 (you can see the engraving of 79 on the side and underneath the chairs, written in sharpie is Burbank Ward 7/79) that I scored yesterday on Hawthorne while in a vintage store. 

Days 10&11-Weds & Thurs

and I'm behind and quickly forgetting what I did when so hopefully I will get caught up.  The hardest days to blog (they all seem hard with a million house project and a little one running around) are Monday and Tuesday because I have two kiddos under my wing (although I often get in some hard core blog time during naps).  So really those are probably the easiest days for me to blog. 
Let's try this again.  The hardest days are actually Wednesday (yesterday) and Thursday (today).  Have you all heard that obnoxious song about how After Wednesday comes Thursday-cracks me up BUT at least I have a song to refer to when I forget the song about the days of the week that I learned in preschool.  or wait, didn't I also learn it in Spanish class (can hear it now... lunes, martes...)?

anyways, terrible but cracks me up at the same time.

Soooo, because Wednesday comes first, that is where I will begin.

But back up to Tuesday as Steve also worked more on sanding on Tuesday night while I sorta putzed around outside trying to come up with excuses as to why I could not part-take in helping to fix the siding or sand.  I ended up hanging up the little $.50 yard art that I bought at that garage sale last weekend and also glued some more boards together.

sorta cheesy but better than the deteriorating fence

OK, so on Wednesday (drum roll please) we did absolutely nothing.  Except share some delicious homemade lasagna and a bottle of vino.  How fantastic.  Steve's bro had to cancel our hoard fest so we just cancelled work all together for the evening.

Ben beating the heat Weds night

Thursday:  I put in my time hunting for the perfect little adornment for our stark and plain bathroom wall.  I went to quite a few local thrift shops including lounge lizard, a 60s/70s shop on 20th-ish & hawthorne, ReRun on 7th and Fremont and Seek the Unique on SE 6th & Taylor.  It's right near Rejuvenation.  Also went to a cool little Store on ne 33rd-ish & hawthorne and bought some sweet kid's metal folding chairs.  I will need to post a pic soon as they are in the car and need to come into their new home.  They were a screaming deal on sale for $5 a piece, marked down from $10.  These things could withstand a nuclear bomb they are so sturdy.  Ben is still a little small for them but can't wait to put them by an equally cool (and sturdy) little table someday. 
Here are a couple cool finds (did not purchase) at Seek the Unique.  I forgot to take pix in the rest of the stores-got too excited at the prospect of shopping without little man by my side.

lure the spirits?

jewelry?  bills?

and Thursday night I blogged and tidied the house while Steve did some more sanding outside.  He hopes to have the back all primed and ready for some Green paint by Saturday evening.

doesn't look too different from last week but we promise that it is gettin' there

Week 2 of Challenge

It's already been a week and I managed to work on at least a project a day-enter pat on back. If you recall back to 8 days ago, I challenged myself to work on a house project for at least a few minutes a day to get myself back in the mood of working on the house and get some of those little projects crossed off the list. 

this wall above the toilet is screaming "adorn me"

Day 8: nothing, remember, I told myself I only needed to get things done 5/7 days.  ok, well I should say nothing to show.  I have been wanting to get some art for above the toilet in the bathroom and have wanted to pull some blue (gasp!-I generally use no blue in my house and have pretty much avoided it at all costs to this day) into the bano.  I am thinking something peacock-y and have been doin' some lookin' on etsy and ebay.  Have some ideas in mind but would like to hit up some local shops first-I will keep you updated.  Hope to get blue towels to match.  Mix it up a bit.  Add in something unexpected.  Our home is a bit to predictable at the moment. 

Day 9: Tuesday.  My friend Chris, lighting extraordinaire came by and helped me hang the awesome light that I bought off of him last month when we were selling things together at a little antique/salvage rummage sale in front of Old Portland Hardware here in Portland. 

Well, I love the light, but it has a few issues and most will be able to be fixed pretty easily.  

laundry chute

another view of laundry chute

hangs so low that Steve, being 6'2", almost hits his head on it each time he walks by

1. move hideous make-shift "bathroom" cabinet.  This requires building a built-in to go in front of the laundry chute in the bathroom-hopefully will get this done in the next 6 months, that will be almost 2 years since we started the bathroom remodel.  Timely, right? (enter sarcasm, which I try to use often)
2. raise up light several inches and adjust wiring accordingly.  Chris is able to help with this but needs to bring over the right tool to do so
3. get 40 watt bulbs, easy, just a trip up the street to the local home do-it store.  All I had at home was 60 watt and I need sunglasses to use the light right now...got some!  way better
4. possibly get new shades for the light.  The ones on there were free from Chris and are pretty but not quite my style.  Thinking of getting ones to match the ones in the bathroom.  Harmony is bliss.  
5. this is the tricky part, it appears that this fixture still has knob and tube wiring and is therefore whonky as is the bathroom light.  Needs a new box and wiring.  This project will have to wait until we demo our upstairs. 

But none-the-less, I heart this light and really think it is pretty.  I hope to re-use the previous light upstairs at some point...maybe in the stairwell.  However, I don't think the stairwell is equipped to handle any sort of light fixture right now, do you? 

light fixture that previously hung in the hallway and below the shade, ignore dust, I will blame it on constant construction instead of lack of dusting :)

looking up our stairs to the attic.  check out the hot ceiling work and lovely 80s wallpaper

more hotness

from Rejuvenation

 Also, I love how the new light in our hallway goes so well with the one in our bathroom (yes, feel free to scroll up to check out the way the new light looks again:).  It will look even better once it has square shades to go along with the other square shades. 

Days 6 & 7

and got a bit done.

Sat am we walked to breakfast at Bumblekiss on Fremont and sat on their patio and enjoyed a yummy breakfast with perfect weather.  On the way home, I picked up this ~14"x14" decorative grate for $.50 at a garage sale we happened upon and plan to nail it up on our backyard fence sometime soon-that fence is hideous so can use any help.

Steve and I spent a couple hours working on the back of the house.  The lapboard siding paint has flaked horribly-we think it is do to the wood sitting for several months without being painted (we stripped the paint 4 years ago in the spring but did not get it painted until early fall) and getting tons of sun and heat during the long summer days.  The shingles part of the siding is just fine.  We are trying to re-prep it for a new coat of paint by the end of the summer.  We also used flat paint on the siding which is probably contributing to the demise of it.
Steve stripped (with a heat gun). scraped the paint with a 4" scraper and sanded (combo of 60 grit paper and orbital sander) the chipping paint while I glued back together some of the boards that have splintered badly. 

The splintered boards were previously covered be a HUGE (and that is an understatement) deck built by the previous home owners that stretched the width of the house and covered 2/3 of the backyard, making a less of 10' area of useable ground.  We hated it being that a. it was ugle b. it was up high so you felt like you were on a perch and anyone walking on the street behind could see you c. we had virtually no grass d. it was ugly.  I digress.  Steve uncovered the lowest two boards a couple years back in a frantic rage of needed to deconstruct something mindlessly.  While this can be good and has led to our awesome brick patio, it has left ugly siding and a truly hideous deck.  Anyways, hoping to have the siding prettier by the end of the summer. 
For gluing, I used a very scientific method to get out the slightly hardened (yet new unopened bottle) of Gorilla glue, the I wet the wood I wanted to glue per the directions, squeezed glue onto nail using scientific method and smeared on wood.  The we pushed wood together by either nailing below using a finish nail (easy to go back and patch as most areas glued would not accept a clamp) or clamped the wood.  Last I scraped off the extra glue using some old cardboard and then we waited for the magic to happen.

used a dental pic (from the Hoard which Steve's dad used for model planes) to take out any extra paint flakes in the cracks; monitor is vital as the babe was sleeping and we were takin advantage of the precious time sans babe

think it needs help? Think there used to be stairs here?

scientific method

spreading glue-this is actually time consuming

removing extra glue to cut down on sanding

There is still quite a bit of sanding that needs to get done and I need to glue the other side (to the left of our back door) of the siding

Day 5-Friday

Friday marked day 5 and yes, it was a success!  Steve took the day off work as he had to travel to San Fran for the day Thursday and it ended up being a day that lasted from 4:30am Th to 1am Fri do to a super delayed flight.  Anyways, he slept in while I snuck in a couple house projects.

we still need to caulk around the tub (and yes, it's been a year since we had it reglazed), so I cleaned the grouted areas really well and hope to get that finished up this weekend

Also, fixed up a few things in the babe's room.  Took down the adorably cute handmade mobile as I realized this week that Ben could totally grab it (for some reason I guess he hasn't realized yet that he could) and then it would be a potential strangulation hazard.  you should have seen me standing on the crib rail trying to reach up to the 9' ceiling to take it down.

and re-hung the Audubon print that some how fell down (and thankfully landed in a pile of pillows, therefore not shattering) a couple weeks ago.  Yes, I realize that one of the prints fell down in the frame but I hesitate to add any adhesive to the back of the print because it is part of an antique collection and I do not know if it has value.  Any ideas on how to fix it?  I have tried putting paper behind in and some foam but it does not seem to work.  Maybe I need larger foam or some cardboard.

Also finally hung the Rejuvenation Copper No Soliciting sign that we have had sitting in our front entry way with a drill and drill bits for the last month.  I realize that this is a total splurge at $37 but I justified it being that I found no other pretty signs after searching for several years and I hate solicitors.  My friend suggested that we just try making one but first of all, do I have the time?  NO.  and I figured that by the time a got a custom cut piece of copper and all the supplies, I wouldn't save much money.  Also, we have spent drillions of hours working on the outside of our home and tons of money and dag nabbit, I want a pretty sign that tells annoying strangers to stay the bleep away and not bother us.  :)  Anyways, got a 20% coupon for one item at Rejuvenation a month or so ago and since we had nothing else we needed at the time, I decided to go for it.  AND we luv it!  Totally worth the cost.

After doing that, we took a quick trip to Winks hardware (they are only open M-F) to return the fence gate latch that did not work with our small gate between our driveway Ben pen and backyard (yes, nice gate hardware that works with our setup is apparently a bitch to find) and bought a new latch for our large Ben pen gate (and no, sadly, our the hardware we ordered for the front gate did not work either).  I luv winks, those people are so helpful and they seem to have it all.

new Ben Pen gate hardware

 While we were at it, I wanted new Black (and yes, they cost too much) stoppers for the door stopper we plan to put on our bathroom door to keep the glass doorknob from hitting our little cabinet by the sink each time we open the door.

After all that, we took off to Sauvie Island beach for the afternoon and went blueberry picking as well.  The weather could not have been better and we had a blast. If you are going to Sauvie Island beach, I highly recommend driving all the way past Collins Beach (unless u are into nude beaches and want to just stop there) to the little area a mile or so further down the road.  The beach is gorgeous and the water is shallow and warm.