Young House Love

Put a fork in ’em, cause they’re done. Actually, on second thought, please don’t get anything sharp or scratchy near the new hardwood floors. It took two full days, but the floors are officially in and officially awesome. It’s mind-blowing how they (along with all the wider doorways) totally enhanced this part of the house. It looks completely and amazingly updated…well, except for the still-gutted kitchen. Here’s documentation of the transformation: Old linoleum covered in construction dust… is now glossy hardwood. 4 different foors in 4 different rooms… become only 2. There’s plenty more to share about the flooring adventure, but it’ll have to wait because right now we’re enjoying our “new wing” too much.

…can my contractor be? Danny Parker, my up-until-yesterday-pretty-good-contractor must be sittin in a tree, cause he’s M-I-S-S-I-N-G. He said he would be here late Friday or early Monday and now it’s Tuesday and I haven’t heard a peep. I’ve called him 3 times in the past 48 hours and just got voicemail every time. Thankfully I haven’t paid him for the outstanding work so I’ll only be out some time (and not money) if he continues to be the invisible man. I guess I’ll have to stare at my sad little taped off doorway indefinitely. At least my floor guys are here making some noise and some progress. Happy Little Update: We never ended up

7:30pm, Monday- SHERRY: Floors are looking great so far, right? JOHN: Definitely. You agree, Burger? (Burger stands in silent agreement) SHERRY: Do you think it’s weird that there’s no baseboard here against the brick? JOHN: No, it’s fine. SHERRY: Yeah, you’re right. It’s fine. 11:00pm, Monday- SHERRY: I’ve been thinking, it is weird that there’s no baseboard there. JOHN: What? No, it looks fi- SHERRY: TOTALLY weird. JOHN: Okay. So what do you want to do? SHERRY: Get a baseboard and have the floor guys install it. JOHN: But the floor guys’ last day is tomorrow and we can’t buy any baseboards tonight because Lowe’s closed an hour ago. SHERRY: Can you get it tomorrow

So, it looks like our new hardwood floors are actually a two day job. I guess “After” photos will have to wait another day. But Burger reports everything’s looking good so far from where he’s standing.

“Not funny.” That’s what I said when a tree branch across the street fell and took out our power yesterday, a mere two minutes before Richard-the-mason and his crew arrived. Luckily, widening a brick wall is mostly manual work – and chipping out bricks and cinder blocks isn’t contingent upon electricity. When the power hummed back on about an hour later, the crew hardly noticed (picture me jumping for joy in the background while they continued to chip and hammer away). By the end of the day, the brick doorway was finally widened to a glorious 5 foot opening…and the house didn’t fall down in the process! Check out the end result of a project

“Im in a bubble again. This time of the mason’s making.” That’s the text message I got from Sherry yesterday, announcing the surprise arrival of Richard-the-mason. We weren’t expecting him until today, but were psyched to see him and his crew show up early to start the brick doorway job. And man is it a messy job. They’ve hung plastic membranes everywhere and coated a couple floors with brown paper, but it still feels like there’s not only dust, but brick and cinder block crumbs everywhere. Not to mention the crew’s half-empty water bottles and used dust masks. They’ve promised to clean up more thoroughly today when they’re done (cross your fingers…that they finish and

The verdict is in: our house is a mess. And we have to admit that we sometimes yearn for the old days when shelves housed decorative items like photos and vases instead of cereal boxes and light bulbs. In clearing out our entire kitchen for the renovation we’ve been forced to find creative places for all the stuff that we used to have crammed into cabinets. I don’t know if you have paused to think about how many things you have in your kitchen cabinets and drawers, but IT’S A HECK OF A LOT OF STUFF. So when John suggested we clear off our pretty decorative Ikea shelves and use them as a makeshift pantry,

HOODWINKED! As in, we did the hoodwinking. After months of having our eye on a stainless steel chimney hood for above the stove in our new kitchen, the $1579 price tag was still hard to swallow. And then something that can only be described as a miracle happened. We found one for $350. It turns out that a high-end European brand wanted to break into the US market, so they offered their swank chimney hood exclusively to Home Depot at a staggering $350 price. Home Depot gladly accepted and within weeks it had sold out. But not before we snagged one! And get this- according to the salesman, the company is so known for its