Our Current House
Post Haste
There’s a vicious cycle going on. We blog about something and then we live with it. And while we do, we tackle other stuff and blog about that. Lather, rinse, repeat. So we’re not always good about keeping you posted on those older things that we’ve already talked about since we’re so busy gabbing about new stuff. Which probably explains why we get asked for updates on a handful of things nearly every day. In other words: it’s about darn time we followed up. So here’s a nice juicy post full of a bunch of those updates for everyone.
Cloth diapers: Believe it or not, we’re still using the very same original 12 cloth diapers that we got back in 2010 before Clara was born. We haven’t bought any more, replaced any, or bought liners. And two years later they’re still working really well for us. We do put Clara in a disposable overnight (she finally started wetting through the cloth – something we heard might happen for a while, and finally did), but one a day is only seven a week, so it’s not bad at all. As for their shape, they’re still holding up really well. We do have a busted snap here or there (we’ve lost one snap on two of the twelve diapers, but it doesn’t keep them from staying on since there are multiple snaps on each side to hold them). Their color and fabric is in great condition and they look pretty close to new, actually.
Here’s the inside of them (these pics were taken yesterday):
We’re thrilled that we haven’t had to buy any more diapers for our stash or add extra liners (they’re all-in-ones, read more on them here) and they really do seem to be one size fits all since they’re still working for us even with Clara being about 300% bigger than she was at birth. So that’s the update on the cloth diaper front. Here’s the original post all about cloth diapering (which has tons of info in the post and the comment section) along with a one-year-in update post on the subject.
Karl The Sectional: Love him. Still looks the same and feels just as comfy after over a year of kid/dog abuse. The dark slipcovers (we went with Dark Sivik Gray, which is almost like denim and super durable) hide almost everything. So much that we haven’t had to wash them much, but when we do we use our own washer and dryer at home (ya don’t need an industrial one or anything) and they go back on and look great. I think different Karl fabrics have different rules – the Dark Sivik Gray fabric says “machine wash” but other fabric choices might be “dry clean only.” Our one minor complaint would be that the hold-it-in-place velcro to keep the chaise cushion from slipping out and hanging over the chaise like an overbite doesn’t catch correctly (it doesn’t seem to line up) so that cushion migrates out slowly over time. So every few weeks I notice and shove it back into the sofa. No biggie. Probably could just add a strip of velcro on the back that lines up to solve it once and for all. Here’s the original post about getting Karl.
Ed The Bed: He’s the other man in our life from Ikea (Swedish product names like Karlstad and Edland made for some pretty easy nicknames) and we’ve been very happy with him. Still sturdy and comfortable, so when we collapse into bed at 1am after some DIY extravaganza (gotta get stuff done while the kiddo sleeps) we’re happy to be there. Here’s the original post about getting Ed.
ORB’ed hardware: This is something a bunch of you guys have wanted an update on, so here it is, complete with pics. Stuff still looks mint. Admittedly we don’t use the front door (or the doorknocker) very frequently, but here are some shots that I took yesterday of them:
On the other hand, we open the sunroom slider and the door that leads outside at least ten times a day to let Burger in and out and they’re also still doing great. So we would definitely recommend this method (sanding them with something very high grit is going to be our approach when we tackle the interior knobs someday) and we’ll keep you posted if they suddenly start giving us trouble.
Kitchen lab stools: We have only had these bad boys a few months, but we sit on them numerous times a day and usually eat dinner on them, and for $33 a chair, they couldn’t be better. Would I want to lounge in them for six hours while watching The Titanic on repeat? No. Are they comfy for proofreading book layouts, eating dinner, writing cards, paying bills, laptop usage or any other thirty-minute-to-an-hour-long activity? Absolutely. I would warn you that to get them without the back might seriously compromise the comfort-factor, since the awesome flexing back seems to be one of the things that makes them so comfy. Here’s a link to the original post about finding our kitchen stools.
Chair in Clara’s room: I probably logged five hours a week of nursing Clara for fourteen whole months in this chair, along with John and I sitting down to read Clara the occasional story (which still occurs) – so for our family, this chair has been great. That’s not to say that some of my very best friends don’t swear by a cushy rocking/swivel chair, but perhaps from getting used to nursing everywhere (in a parked car at Target? Check.) it’s actually one of the more cozy places. The rounded shape supported my arms in a nice way (an armless slipper chair might be a nursing challenge if you’re completely zonked and want somewhere to rest your arms) and we always keep an ottoman or pouf nearby for putting the ol’ feet up. Totally worked for me. Here’s a link to the original chair-finding post and the nursery reveal post about our $20 thrift store chair.
White cabinets: Sometimes people ask if white cabinets get dirty or are hard to keep clean, and perhaps we’re just used to them (we had them in our first house’s kitchen for over four years before moving here) but we always think they look clean by nature (after all, they’re bright white). And since cabinet paint is completely scrubbable, they definitely don’t seem high maintenance to us. It’s not like white fabric (which can be stained) since cabinet paint like the alkyd stuff we used is slick, durable, and can be cleaned with a wet rag, sponge, or paper towel (you know, because spaghetti sauce happens).
We probably wipe away some random cabinet splatter once or twice a week for a total of sixty seconds spent cleaning them. As for dusting them, we have yet to do this since painting them in December, and they still don’t have any dust collecting around the inset rectangle part, perhaps because it’s pretty shallow and angled as opposed to shelf-like (it did collect there in our old kitchen with shaker cabinets, so once every month or so I’d run a microfiber cloth over them – no biggie). Here’s a link to the original cabinet-painting post with more info about the process/result in the post and the comment section for ya.
White Corian: We’re much happier with our Corian (in Glacier White) than we feared we might be. We worried it would be a pain to keep clean and although we read that it was nonporous, we worried that something would somehow seep into it and stain. But so far, we have had zero staining issues (even with things like strawberry juice and spaghetti sauce), zero scratches (we hear white Corian is the best about not getting scratched up), and they’re easy to keep clean. We always wiped down our old counters every night before bed anyway, and they were veiny granite so nothing showed – which was a problem! We’d find a glob of peanut butter from three nights ago on the counter that we somehow missed. So gross! It’s nice to see everything and just swipe it all down and wake up to a sparkly white room.
The one thing we’ve heard is that you can crack Corian by setting a searing hot pan down on it, but in our last house even with granite we used trivets, so that’s just part of our routine anyway. But the best thing about them has been the zero seams thing. In our first kitchen crumbs would build up or get caught in the seams, but without them our entire counter with our undermount sink is truly seamless, so it’s so nice to sweep things into the sink without hitting any little divots where those seams are. When we ordered our Corian we didn’t even know it was a seamless material, so that was a total unexpected bonus. Here’s a link to our original post about choosing Corian and a post about getting it installed, both with tons of info in the post and the comment section for ya.
Open shelves: Love is a conservative adjective for how we feel about them. Sometimes I want to kiss them. Open mouthed. They’re definitely not for everyone, but we use the things on them so frequently that they don’t have time to get dusty. And you should see me unload the dishwasher or set the table, it takes two seconds. It’s also a lot easier to do things like pour a bowl of cereal with a toddler on my hip. Seriously, we’re so sold we’re a little sad that we didn’t work open shelves into our first house’s kitchen – we were totally missing out. Here’s a link to a post about choosing open shelves and a post about building them and loading them up.
HP Photosmart C4780: Truth be told, I tossed this guy in here because it felt like we were giving too many glowing reviews. So I racked my brain to think of something we don’t like. Hah. And it’s this poor guy. He just can’t be trusted to wirelessly print something (sometimes it inexplicably shoots out one page of something and then takes ten minutes to print the second page or never even prints it at all). It’s just a bit too quirky for our tastes, but we did have an Epson that we loved a few years ago (it didn’t print wirelessly, so we later upgraded to this one). We’ll probably go back to that brand and see how their wireless capabilities are someday when we get mad enough to want to throw this guy out the window (sometimes we’re thisclose).
Nikon D3000: Other than still learning how to use it, which is to be expected (we’re faaaar from pro photographers) we’ve been really happy with our camera. We saved our pennies for a while before taking the plunge into DSLR territory, but with a baby on the way (Clara) we thought it was time to upgrade from our little point and shoot. We’re so glad we did, because we definitely get better pics of our family and better photos for the blog. Our only gripe used to be that they didn’t make a cheap nifty fifty (an inexpensive 50mm lens) for this type of Nikon (it only worked with D90s and others closer to that model) but they came out with this one about a year ago and we got it (we don’t typically use it for any blog pics since it’s not as wide of an angle lens as the stock one that came with the camera, which is better suited for interiors). But it’s great for a moving kid or dog in low light, so we like it for Clara/Burger pics and general family stuff (like her interesting hair fashions). Here’s a post about getting our new camera with lots of info in the post and the comment section for ya.
So there you have it. Hope that was helpful. What do you have in your house that’s been surprisingly awesome? Or surprisingly disappointing? Are there any brands you always love or products you wish were different? It’s so great to hear about stuff that you guys like, and learn from your don’t-get-this warnings.
Psst- In the mistakes-we’ve-made/what we’ve tweaked vein, check out this post, this post, and this post. We definitely make our fair share of mistakes! We just try to keep learning as we go, and allowing our house to evolve over time.
A Time of Transitions
Since sharing this photo over a month ago, some of you have asked for more detail about putting the transitions around the cork floor in our kitchen (and around the fireplace’s floor surround).
Oh but remember we’re eventually going to be refinishing the rooms with the orange wood flooring to match the darker cork tone, so it should look something like this down the line (pardon the bad photoshop):
Finding the right thing for the job was a bit of an effort on our part since our Lisbon Cork doesn’t come with matching transitions. In fact, the guy at Lumber Liquidators recommended against any kind of cork transition because they’re not as durable as a harder wood when it comes to the kicks and bumps that transitions may have to withstand. Lumber Liquidators sold oak transitions that we could’ve stained to match (I think the price was around $45 for a 72″ piece), but I found an engineered option at Home Depot for $27 that was a pretty darn close match already. The only bummer was they only carried 48″ pieces in stock, so I had to special order the 72″ pieces (and then wait a few weeks for them to arrive at the store where I could pick them up) which is why only our shorter doorways got transition-ed back when we finished the floor in March. So yeah, it was about time we got on the rest of them.
When it comes to installing transitions on cork floors, there aren’t a lot of tutorials out there (at least not that I could find) so while I’d love to create one, I’m not sure I’d call my methods perfect – but I’ll tell you guys about my process so at least there’s something out there on the ol’ internet. Since I didn’t photograph the process of putting in the transition above back when we finished the kitchen, let’s follow the story of this guy instead (who we finally tackled last week).
Since we installed our floating cork floor over an existing floor (due to an asbestos liner under our vinyl tile), our transitions have a smidge of a step down. Around 1/4-1/2″ because the existing floor was already a tiny bit higher than the original hardwood in the dining room (keep in mind these rooms didn’t connect like this until we made them). In instances where hardwood floors aren’t the same level, you need a transition piece called a “reducer.” I’m sorry the photo below looks like a hand puppet choking on a giant piece of wood, but you’ll see how one side slopes down and one side steps up – that’s how it connects a slightly lower floor to a slightly higher one without making a big bump that everyone trips over. The key to the most seamless look is to keep it gradual and not go for anything that looks crazy curved, like the letter C.
Once I stripped the plastic off of them (that’s what looks marked up in the third picture), I drew a line with a ballpoint pen where I needed to cut it in order to get a good fit. Then I made the slice with my miter saw.
Some of the tutorials I read suggested using adhesive to keep the transitions in place. All of the transitions in our house are nailed in, and that’s how the transitions were in our last house too – so I decided to go that route again. Since we haven’t purchased a nail gun (although we do plan to take that plunge soon), I pre-set the nail into the wood before putting it into place in the doorway by partially banging it in with a piece of scrap wood underneath to get it started (pre-drilling a very small hole could also work, especially if you worry about your transition splitting).
Here’s how I was positioning the transition along the doorway. Since this was the most drastic drop, I actually rested the small lip on the high end on the top of the cork to keep it in place.
After banging it all in to get things flush (tip: we like using a $3 nail punch to avoid denting the wood), it actually came out looking pretty good. And now it’s no longer the toe-stubbing hazard that it’s been for the last four months, though we’ve somehow dodged getting tripped up on it (perhaps because the for-now floor color change makes it so obvious).
The transition along the hallway was pretty much the same exact process, so I’ll skip right to how we finally tackled the unfinished fireplace. It was an interesting case since it has corners that I had to miter, but I just cut 45 degree angles with my miter saw after measuring the length of each side. You might remember seeing the raw edge most recently in this post.
Right now the fireplace is lower than the cork, so we needed to use the reducers again. It’s kind weird, but it’s only temporary (once we find tile that we love enough not to feel like we’re settling, we’re planning to retile this area, which will raise things up so it’s all flush and we’ll scrap these tide-us-over-for-now transitions).
But for now, our transition trim actually works pretty well. It’s so funny how sometimes these little steps like trimming something out can make such a big difference when it comes to something looking polished and complete. Three cheers for no more raw edges!
Here’s a view from the hallway of the new transition in that doorway (and the fireplace beyond it). Oh and yes, that is a giant faux clam shell in the fireplace. It was the item from our Joss & Main collection that we bought for ourselves (you know how Sherry is about giant fake clam shells…). It’s huge and probably weighs twice as much as Clara, but oddly enough at least five of our friends/relatives have asked where they can get one for their empty fireplace. Haha, let’s start a clam-shell-in-the-fireplace movement.
And now for a shot of all three freshly transitioned-areas at once. Ta-dah! We have officially trimmed out our way to a completed cork floor. Don’t mind the place-holder rug in there (it’s leftover from our first kitchen, but would love to replace it someday).
Anyone else have any transition adventures? Or need to take care of some doorways around their house? I was so surprised there weren’t as many cork transition posts on the interweb as I thought there’d be. In the words of Keenan Thompson: what up with that?
Used Toilets And Door Trimmings
And now for a fourth chapter of The Sandbox Chronicles. Just kidding. It’s time for some toilet talk. Remember the almond toilet that came with our master bedroom (which we recently switched out for a taller and cleaner-looking white one)? Well, for a while the old almond guy – who looks oddly white in this picture below – just sat in our entryway. What, is that weird?
The reason? We decided to try our hand at Craigslisting it. Once John found out it was an over $1300 (!!!) toilet by Kohler (more on that here) he was convinced we could get some money for it from someone in search of an upscale almond toilet. You’d be amazed what people buy on Craigslist by the way. And a few days later… we sold it! For $80! The nicest family (a man with two young boys and a baby girl) came over to grab it after work one night last week. I know it’s nerdy, but it felt so good to know that our old john was going to a loving home. Haha. The funniest part was that when they all left with the toilet and we were waving at the window with Clara (she requires that we wave at everyone walking away from our house) she said “I go in car too!” Yup, the girl apparently liked the toilet and the new family so much that she wanted to leave with them.
Although we were initially looking at the $80 that we made on the sale of the old “fancy toilet” as a nice little credit towards our new one (which was $88), a few days later we heard about a sweet local family (a single mother named Chevelle with six children) that Habitat For Humanity is helping out. And we learned that for an $100 donation we could buy them a toilet for their new soon-to-be-built house.
So we happily put our $80 Craigslist profit plus twenty bucks of our own into an $100 toilet donation for Chevelle’s family. If anyone else feels like helping them out – here’s the link. Habitat is such a great organization. We’re fans. But anyway, now that we’ve covered the subject of used (and new) toilets, let’s get on to the whole door trimming thing.
You probably remember us mentioning that the bottom of our bathroom door needed to be trimmed so it would open all the way instead of getting caught on an air vent in the floor.
Not only was it annoying that the door wouldn’t fully open due to grinding up against the vent, but we also couldn’t have a bath mat because the bottom of the door would just wad it up and push into it since it couldn’t just pass over even the thinnest options. Which meant wet puddles on the floor outside the tub every day. Which just happens to be right in front of the toilet. Do you know how gross it is to go to the bathroom with your feet in puddles? Granted they’re clean bathwater puddles, but still – your brain can go to a dark place. And if you have socks on and you walk into the bathroom: wet socks. The worst.
So this week’s bathroom door-trimming update is also this week’s Dude Get On That Already challenge, because… dude…. how have we not gotten on this sooner?
To remedy this situation, we cut down the door. It really wasn’t bad at all. First we removed the door by removing the hinge screws to slowly release it (two people = the best way to do something like this to avoid the door slamming down to the ground and scaring the bejeesus out of you).
Then John and I carried the door out to the patio where we had set up the table saw. John pushed the door against the guide next to the blade as I pushed the door slowly into the blade to get a nice clean cut off the bottom. Update: Matt very kindly taught us a safer way to cut down a door, so read about that here. Safety first!
We probably took between half an inch and a third of an inch off since it was such a tight fit before and we wanted to make sure it would clear the vent on the floor and the future bath mat that we’d be adding to solve the whole puddle problem.
Then I sanded the bottom of the door to clean up any roughness before we rehung it (since once we rehung it we’d have a hard a$$ time getting sandpaper under it to smooth that area out).
Then we rehung the door about a half-hour later by using the same screws that we removed from the hinges.
Oh happy day! We cleared the vent! Still have to do some quick paint touch ups along the bottom lip, but it’s looking pretty good.
Then I took a minute to add a doorstop on the bottom right edge of the door so the towel hooks on the back of the door wouldn’t slam open into the art that’s hanging on that side wall.
So now our bathroom to-do list looks like this:
paint the walls so they have some contrastreplace the boob lightpaint the cream trim whitehang some bathroom-friendly artcraigslist the toilet and replace it with a classic white onedo something to add privacy to the windownix the ugly and cluttered showerhead caddyremove the door so we can shave the bottom (and add a door stopper so it doesn’t squash the art)- finally get a bath mat
- replace the border tile around the room (maybe in phase 2?)
- move the blue pendant light to hang centered in front of the window (phase 2?)
- replace the floor tile down, just to break things up since there’s so much of it (definitely phase 2)
John and I are still discussing when we’ll tackle things like cutting out that border tile and replacing it (along with rehanging the light to be centered on the window) so we’ll keep you posted if it’s right around the corner, and will be back with a full budget breakdown for all of Phase One if we decide to hold off on that other stuff for a little while. But enough about us. What about you guys? Have you sold any secondhand toilets? Bought any new ones? Cut down any doors?
Psst- To follow this bathroom sprucing project from the start, check out this planning post, this painting post, this light-swapping post, this art and trim-painting post, this toilet-updating post, and this window frosting and shampoo wrangling post.
The Sandbox Chronicles: Part 3, The Remix
Yes, just when you thought the sandbox-citement was over – it continues. We chatted all about how we built the base of the box here and how we made the lid with a locking system that secures it to the fence here – but it still wasn’t done. That’s the funny thing about DIY in general – you might expect a kitchen reno to run across 35+ posts and to last four months, but you never think that something like a simple sandbox will be a three part process. On the other hand, sometimes projects that we think will be really complicated end up being no sweat and we wonder why we put them off so long – so I guess it all balances out in the end. Anyway, when we last left our heroine, she was enjoying her freshly completed box – cover and all.
But the next day, as we disposed of all of the empty play sand bags and put two extra ones in the car to return them, Sherry noticed this warning on the back of the bags.
To anyone having trouble reading it, it says: This product contains small amounts of crystalline silica, a common mineral found in natural sands and stones. Excessive inhalation of respirable silica dust may cause cancer and lung disease. Avoid breathing dust. Wear approved respirator in dusty area.
Cancer and lung disease? Wear approved respirators? Isn’t this labeled “play sand” and meant for sand boxes with children who sit in that dusty mess and pour it everywhere? With red flag officially raised, we turned to the Internet to see why the heck a bag of something meant for children would have a warning that it can “cause cancer and lung disease.” Soon enough, Sherry came across a string of articles (like this one and this one and this one and this one) indicating that the type of play sand that we bought may not be the ideal option to have our daughter romping around in (not to mention that Clara left her first play session with clothes and hands covered in a white chalky dust which retroactively freaked us out).
Although we all may have played in sand as children and we’re perfectly healthy (or are we? I guess there’s still time to find out, haha) the way sand is manufactured and where it’s found can change. So if you grew up playing in river or beach sand, which may have been more common than manufactured “silica or tremolite” sand, that would explain why the newer sand containing that potentially dangerous stuff is an issue today. Here’s a screen grab from WebMD with a particularly helpful summary that we found:
So we decided to make a sandbox switcheroo – just so we wouldn’t have to think twice about letting Clara play in there for hours on end for years to come. And frankly, our alternative rocks.
I’ll pause to record a point in my “rock pun” column.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before – my sister actually had a rock box for her kids a while back (they’re now tweens/teens and are way too cool for it) but they loved it back in the day. Obviously it’s NOT a good solution for kiddos who still put things in their mouth. Clara did that until about a year old, but now routinely plays with rocks and pea gravel wherever she can find it without ever trying to suck it down (true story: at Home Depot there’s an outdoor planting bed with pea gravel and she loves it more than the playground). Clara’s also less likely to leave covered in rocks and track them all over the house than she was with sand. So I started the not-so-fun task of digging out all of the sand (and hauling it in the wheelbarrow to be dumped in the woods far behind our house – the very back of our almost-an-acre property).
I wouldn’t put it on the top of my “most awesome DIY tasks ever” list, but it wasn’t that bad. Although it was kinda sad to see it all empty and barren when I was through. Pardon the tree’s muddled shadow in this pic (it looks like some sand is still lurking but we swept that baby dry).
Then we turned that frown upside down by dumping in what I will now call my inaugural bag of pebbles. Things were looking up!
But upon closer examination, things were also looking kinda dirty.
Now, I realize it seems kinda prissy to be surprised that rocks are dirty (“Gasp! And water’s wet?! The horror!”). And if we didn’t mind Clara getting a bit dirty, well, we wouldn’t be making a outdoor play box now would we? But the pebbles were all covered in a sort of gritty dust that just kinda bothered me. I felt lazy just dumping them in so dirty when I could easily remedy the problem, so I decided to give the rocks a quick bath in my wheelbarrow.
I felt kinda silly doing this at first, but when I drained my first batch and saw how much dirty water was coming out it didn’t feel like my efforts were worthless at all.
But enough rock washing. Let’s get rockin’ and rollin’ onto the finished product.
Remember the lid is secured to the fence with metal hardware to keep things safe (more on that here).
I used around 20 bags to fill the whole box to the point where it was pretty much level with the ground around it – meaning Clara didn’t have a big step on either side, and she’d have a few inches of depth to really dig into. Oh and the bags of rocks were actually cheaper than the bags of sand at Home Depot. They were around $2.50 a pop, so it was just under $50 to fill our 25 square foot box up. Not free but worth the peace of mind for us. If only we had seen the warning on the sand before opening it, we could have actually saved money filling things up with rocks from the start. Oh well, live and learn.
We also took this opportunity to mulch around the sandbox, er, rock box (excuse me) so everything would look a bit cleaner when we presented it to Clara (she was with her grandparents the afternoon we made the change).
So how did Clara react to the change? See for yourself.
Honestly we expected a bigger “Where the sand go?!” reaction, but I guess it’s probably best that rocks instantly erased any memory or care for the old stuff.
All she cared about is that she could get her dig on.
Which actually was reassuring to see, since I worried the chunkier rocks might be harder to dig and scoop, but she’s had no problem – even with the flimsy dollar store shovel we got her. Plus she can scoop rocks with a shovel but also pick them up with her hands (not true with sand) so she seems to have a lot of fun with that. For example, she likes filling the front part of her truck with one rock carefully shoved through the window at a time. It’s the little things, right?
And luckily the rocks have proved to be less messy than the sand. Yeah, we may occasionally need a bath afterward – but the sand involved a rigorous pre-going-back-into-the-house-dust-off that the rocks have yet to require. Upgrade!
But in the end, as long as Clara is having fun – who cares how messy she gets? Oh and see those white things around the sandbox that sort of look like rocks? It sort of looks like there was lot of rock fling-age going on, but they’re just white petals dropped by our dogwood. We may be jinking ourselves, but so far Clara has been happy to keep the rocks in her rock box since we explained that’s their home and it’s where they need to stay for her to play with them.
Rock on, Beansie. Rock on.
So that’s the long circuitous story – told Hunger Games style, as a trilogy – about…
Have you guys ever done something and then decided to tweak or redo it in the final hour? Do some projects that you think will take forever end up being easier than you thought and then later you tackle some project that you assume will be super simple and that’s the one that randomly ends up being a bit more involved? Ah DIY, you’re a fickle creature, but we can’t help loving you.
Psst- Speaking of things you don’t always get right on the first try, we’re over here chatting about picking paint colors.
Pssssst- To read The Sandbox Chronicles from the beginning, here’s Part 1 (about building the base of the box) and Part 2 (about building the lid which secures to the fence for safety reasons).
