Making the Great Room Great, Step Four: Painting
As anyone who has painted a room (myself included) knows, prep work is what takes the most time. Once everything was prepped and primed, the…
Category: Interior
Making the Great Room Great, Step Three: Priming
Once the dropcloths and plastic sheets were taped into place, the painters got busy. The four interior doors were removed from their frames for painting,…
Making the Great Room Great, Step Two: Paint Prep
In mid-August 2019, our regular house painter slotted some time to paint the great room. There was much prep work to be done–the old furnace…
Making the Great Room Great, Step One: Deciding on Paint
Once the great room floors had been refinished and the chimney column stripped of paint, it was time to make the room our own. I…
More Furniture Finds
After buying the lovely table online at Michaan’s, I started visiting in person during their preview hours and, thanks to a friend, also discovered their…
Blue Room Refresh, Part 2
Continuing from the earlier post–in early February 2019 we ordered a Murphy bed from murphybeds.com, and it arrived at the end of the month. I…
Lick the Cookie
One bit of decor we’ve added to the house is a long (and growing longer) row of patent plaques that Agent Smith received from his…
Console Tables
(Sorry, no witty/punny title came to mind for this post.) In early 2019 I started scouring the interwebs for some tables for the foyer. A…
Teaky Teak
Before the teak that runs through most of the house could be refinished, a lot–and I mean a lot–of repairs had to be made. There…
Craigslist, Chicago, and Lumber Liquidators
It’s been a while since regular posts have gone up, and even though we’re under a shelter-in-place order, we’ve been incredibly busy with projects. From…
Under the House
After the furnace work was completed, I took a lot of pics and videos of what is under the interior of the house. We worried…
The Pantry Revisited
Before the dust even settled from the great furnace replacement, we had to start putting the house back in order. The first step: put everything…
Getting Off the Diesel, Part 1
In May 2018, we started the very large project of decommissioning our twin diesel furnaces. Even though we had nursed them through two winters, cleaned…
Replacing the Second Water Heater
In December 2017, we had the second water heater replaced. Our house has two water heaters: one for the north end of the house for…
Last Studio Details: Blinds and Curtains
Continuing on from the last two posts–as part of the studio renovation, we ordered remote-control motorized blinds via Blinds.com and matching drapes. Installing the blinds…
Studio Painting
Before lights and rugs and blinds were installed in the studio building, we had our regular painter come and give the space some love. I…
Sealing and Lighting the Studio
The long, drawn-out saga of the studio building has taken longer to write about than the actual work took to complete! Past posts detailed the…
Fast Kitchen Makeovers, Part 3
One last recent kitchen addition was so simple, I installed it myself the same day Agent Smith and his father took apart and cleaned the…
Fast Kitchen Makeovers, Part 2
The last post covered the simple fan controller changes we did in the kitchen, which got me thinking about the powers of Amazon and the…
Fast Kitchen Makeovers, Part 1
The previous owners of the house had rather questionable design taste, evidenced by the kitchen and bathroom remodels they completed prior to relisting the property.…
Finishing Touches in the North Office
Continued from the last post–after repainting my office space, work still had to be done. I decided to repaint the rather tired wooden blinds that…
Office Recoloring
When we bought this place, just about every room was painted the same blah, light poop-brown. My office was no exception. Below are what it…
Revamping and Repotting
According to the Doc and the original plans of the house, there were built-in planters on each side of the front door in the entry…
Finishing the Kitchen Chairs
Continuing from a post waaaay back at the start of this year… Once the metal kitchen chairs were disassembled, it was time to obtain new…
June 2017 Walkthrough!
Over a year ago I shot this vid and, while working to weed through a small mountain of videos that were shot, transferred it to…
Purgatory Printing
One of the projects finally completed but not written about (until now) is the redecoration of the guest bedroom. Yesterday I finally “finished” the room…
Stuff on the walls
I’m dealing with jury duty this week, so while sitting among a few hundred strangers, I searched for some quick and easy things I could…
What Lies Beneath
A great portion of our house sits on top of a concrete slab, but–and here’s the interesting part–3/4 of the house sits above this foundation via…
Fire in the hole
Embedded in the floor of the great room (and outside it, believe it or not) are a plethora of these Steel City (now Thomas &…
The Kitchen Table
Way back in 2000, my grandmother moved out of the house she had lived in for close to fifty years, and as part of the…