4 Out Of 5 Babies Prefer Porter Cable

Hamming it up at Lowe's

The Utah Method?

You'll rarely find the men in our family working on anything without a beer in hand. In truth, I'm not sure the husband would remember how to do construction without a cold one. This particular ritual was dubbed the "Utah Method," by family members who renovated and sold a fixer-upper in that state.

The Utah Method has it's place, but when something absolutely, positively has to get built:

There's only one way to go :)

Exterior Paint Colors

Toying with the idea of painting the outside of the house. Here are a few options we really like. The green and purple is pretty, and fairly commonplace up here, but we're worried it might be a bit too outlandish. We LOVE the gunmetal and red, but maybe it's a tad too modern?

You can vote on your choice...poll is located just to the right. Sorry about the image quality of the first two paint chips; was the best I could get, unfortunately. But do let us know what you think! We need help!

The "Battleship" Option:

The "green and grape":

Green and Cream:

Gunmetal and Red:

Quick Update:

The weather sucks! It's scheduled to rain all weekend, which is going to severely curtail progress. I know I shouldn't complain- we moved from a state with virtually no rain to one where moss is a damn noxious weed.

Paint and stain are taking 24+ hours to dry, so pictorial evidence of our industry will be slow, but I'll get them up as soon as possible.

French Doors

When we bought the house, the door to our bedroom was a grievously wounded hollow core. So, we used this for a while:

Ever tried waddling over a baby gate with a 20 pound kid attached to your hip, whilst 6 months pregnant? Yeah, it's fun. So, we went to Lowe's just to look. Just looking turned into calling a very, very good friend with a truck. Said friend will remain nameless, because, admit it, you'd want to borrow his truck, too.

But, the French doors were a tad bit wider than the existing space:

Incidentally, the husband hit an actual 2x4, kiln dried, that melted the saw blade. This is what the inside of 90-something year old wall looks like:

Lots of wood and concrete. Actually, that used to be the outside wall where you see the thick shingles. Our suite was a later addition.

2 days later, the doors are up! Still need to stain them, add trim, and put the rest of the hardware up, but here's what we've got so far:

Pics of finished product to follow!

Full-Blown Renovations Begin Next Week!

Whoohoo! Our construction budget came through, so we're going to be full-steam ahead in about a week!
 Project #1: French doors to the master suite.

Living Room Before and After, Courtesy of Kilz

 After spending 3 years in battleship grey barracks rooms, the husband's only request when we moved in was that we paint everything as brightly as possible. Actually, purple&green is pretty tame for us. Remember when A&M lost in 2008? He painted our bedroom in Texas Burnt Freakin' Orange!

Our eggplant and sage 

But, we're going be getting the house on the market soon, and we realize that not everyone shares our enthusiasm for the color wheel. I was really dreading covering up the three layers of purple that we'd slathered on the walls, but it actually only took 1 coat of Kilz and 1 of topcoat. Hint: tint the Kilz the color of your topcoat.



The finished product with mom's painting in the background.