Running to Keep Up!

Whew, every time I manage to get these photos online, they are already out of date. The kitchen cabinets, for example, are now painted a dark, chocolate brown - well, except for a few places that need a third coat. It looks so beautiful! As soon as they're dry and the white knobs are on, I'll post a new photo, but this is from a week or so ago.



A few other things happening around here...








The new siding got primed... still haven't decided on an exterior color.




The study is perpetually a mess because it's functioning as our living room, office, and dining room, but once the living room is done (soon!) we'll whip it into shape. In the meantime, it's a pretty cozy space. Click to see the panorama larger.




Yesterday the new living room windows went in!! Barrio has this funny trick where I'll come home from some errands or a meeting, and as I get out of the car he'll tell me that there were major setbacks (materials shortage, something's uneven, something broke, etc.), and then when I go look, some huge project is actually DONE, in about half the time I expected! Then he giggles a lot and tells me to trick Matt, too. I'm catching on, but Matt believed me yesterday when I told him we had to entirely redo the windows because Barrio broke one. Barrio loves this.



This is my neighbor Jennifer, who bought the house immediately next to ours, and is about to begin her own renovations! I am really excited... the folks who owned it before her never did a thing and I can't wait to actually have an active neighbor making her house beautiful. She and I are also working on revamping the neighborhood blog, with a new interview about ready to go up, and some design changes underway. Anyway, this is Jennifer standing in her house, considering things.


And this is a reminder that not so long ago, almost all the houses on our block sat empty and unloved, and squatters were not deterred by a stupid locked door in the way of getting inside.


(Actually, this print may have been left by a realtor who forgot his keys.)

While I was at Jennifer's, I caught a glimpse of our house that I don't usually see:


Here's Jennifer interviewing Rich, who lives in Jackie's house across the street from us.


Rich's awesome dog, Bucket:


Some asshole neighbors' contribution to Ellerbee creek:


And this is Bronx. He actually lives around the corner, but at the moment he has no fence and no shelter, only a short chain. Matt and I, bleeding hearts that we are, had been slipping him food on our walks (he's pretty skinny), but on a morning last week that dumped freezing cold rain on the poor guy, I offered to take him into our yard for a while, where there's a dog house. He's been her about 5 or 6 days now. Not sure what's going to happen or whether his owners are going to be able to get a proper setup for him soon, and give him adequate care. We're looking into ways to help. Cleveland does NOT get along with Bronx (which makes sense, given such differing locale names), and wants his yard back. But Bronx, while a little nutty, is sweet as can be.

Inside-Out

It's hard to remember what it was like living in the kitchen, now that we have the whole entire bedroom and study essentially finished. Eventually, the plan is to get that couch reupholstered in a similar blue to the filing cabinet (in a double-oops a few months ago, Matt stained one of the cushion covers with a pen, and then I took it off, put it in a plastic trash bag to take to mom and dad's to wash, and then... took out the trash). I wonder if we'll spend as much time in here once our living room is done and complete with furniture. For now it's a pretty great all-purpose room.

Speaking of the living room... here are some photos from this morning. Note the newly installed french doors, the completed wall opening, the built-in shelves, and the awesome morning light.

The first shot is taken with the front door behind me, looking slightly left.


This one is standing in the living room looking into the kitchen; the sunroom is directly behind me, and the hall is to my right:


Here's the opposite view, taken from the kitchen; note my attempts to find the perfect green (I am having some trouble):


A couple kitchen shots... the insides of the shelves will be painted green, and the front painted in chalkboard paint for writing lists and notes. And poetry.


The cabinets will be a dark chocolate brown; apple green below. Not sure about the bigger walls yet.


Here's a panorama for ya. I'm standing with the living room window behind me, facing the hallway. Obviously a little distorted, but you get the idea.


Ahhh, look at that gorgeous light! I can't WAIT to finish those floors! Shouldn't be too long now.


Donna and her team have pretty much finished the siding on the outside of the sun room. Now we just have to decide on colors and try them out!! Soooo much pressure, and this was supposed to be the fun part! I dream in color schemes.


Looking into the sun room from the porch. We still have to paint the walls and floor and trim out the windows inside.



And a picture of Barrio, standing in India's house, just 'cause.


Coming soon: final paint colors, new living room windows, and... and... oh dear. So much more to go.

My neighbor Jennifer and I (her construction blog is now linked on the right) are going to be reviving the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood blog soon - I'll let you know when there's a new profile up!

One last thing: our wonderful little neighborhood is most likely about to be included in a historic district. Here is the description of our house from the application - can you believe we have the oldest house on the block?? Can't wait to have a centennial celebration in 2011!

What We Have to Show for Six Months

So much has happened in lapses between posts. I take pictures constantly, but am hardly poised to post when more changes happen and already my post is out of date. Instead of scrambling to show you everything, here are a few highlights from January-Oh-Nine.

Remember our awkward little sunroom, sticking off the front of the house? Overwhelmed at the projected cost of removing it and restoring the porch to its original size, we decided (yes, Dad, you were right) to chock it full of windows and call it a sun room. Albeit: a sunroom that doesn't really so much get any direct light. We'll call it more of a "watching-crack-heads-and-other-colorful-characters-room." Here are the windows getting delivered.


Amusingly, the guy who delivered them seemed to be familiar with our neighborhood, and asked quite seriously if we "had heat". We replied chipperly, "oh yes! It's very warm." And then we realized he meant, like, packing heat. Oops. We said, it's cool: we have a pit.


Goodbye, crappy window!



Hello, four-over-ones!


Boy, ask me how much I've learned about grills. As in the little pieces of wood between panes, or "pretending" to be between panes; not as in cookouts, or as in being all up in someone's.


Notice the little furry ear peeking out there? Just gotta take a a moment to feature the aforementioned pit. Life is great with Cleveland, and at last I have a new willing (or unaware) model to photograph.



(The bedroom is allllmost done... just need: a new window, three new/old doors installed, some closet shelves, some art.)


Our friend Chris Boggs figured out the issue of hiding the above-the-closets storage in the study: old outdoor shutters turned sideways! Barrio came in and knocked out the framing in a flash, and with his brother Antonio installed two recessed lights in the "reading nook". Now all we need is to hang the shutters once they're painted, and to find the perrrrrrfect armchair to fill the space - big enough to curl up and sleep in.



Here's Barrio, who is absolutely the man. An incredible worker, a true artist, a good friend.


Another set of characters you should know: Tyler (human) and Sancha (Cleveland's bestest buddy).


Thanks to Dad, Cleveland now has a cozy home of his own in the back yard.


Which protects him from this mess - though rather threatened at first, Cleveland eventually embraced the snow and ate lots and lots of it.


Here's what happens to ugly and unnecessary walls around these parts...


Aaaaaand much better:


At this point I'm kind of getting used to the heap of trash in the middle of the floor and may keep it. I've certainly seen less comfortable furniture.

So, that's pretty much it, folks. Once we clean up the joint I'll attempt some more professional-like photos, but at this point it's still rather rough-hewn. But change is happening. Yes it is. Yes we can. See? It works for just about anything.


May 2009 live up to its incredible promise.

Funny Dances

So I'm having some trouble with Blogger's photo upload feature, making photos very time-consuming to resize. We have some new photos posted of our recent floor endeavors (two coats of polyurethane down, one to go!), and you can see them here on Facebook until I sort out the issue.

Befores and Afters

It's probably hard to see this as progress:


Here's a peek into the same room upon our arrival in Durham 3 months ago:


Some would say we're undoing work. Why pull up perfectly good carpet? What was wrong with 8-foot ceilings? We say... it had to get worse before it can get so, so much better. Here's a few more before-and-afters, even though I find the phrase ironic, because our Before stage stretches out into the future as far as I can see. I dream of the day we can post real before-and-after photos of our finished house. But then again: they say you're only truly finished with a house when you sell it... or die.

The hallway, looking towards the front door. As you can see, we knocked out that middle wall to open up the space. Eventually, the ceiling just beyond that arch will open up to the attic, accessed by a narrow staircase. Two skylights in the attic roof will let light into the hall. Our door came from Steve Peter's salvage shop on Foster Street.


Same hall, different angle. The door on the right leads to the living room and will be replaced with French doors:


Here's the hallway facing the other way - a little less of a straight comparison, but you can still get the idea. We tore down the dropped ceiling - hence the two-toned look of the arch. The door at the back is the one current bathroom.


Below is a shot of the back wall of the bedroom, in progress and then as is right now. The other side of that wall will be a small second bathroom, or master bath; the little "nook" we built in will house the sink, which we're making from an antique cupboard. We had to take down some of the old beadboard from the bedroom as there wasn't enough to patch it where it was damaged and it's very hard to find. We're keeping the beadboard ceilings plus one wall, the one to the right in this picture. The floors have also been patched with new hardwood, and will be sanded, stained and varnished soon!


Here's the opposite wall of the bedroom, which is adjacent to the study. The first photo is when we opened up the wall (there were two crappy closets that someone hastily built in), the second is current. The bed will go where the bike is.


(Here's an early shot of the same wall.)


Here's Kim the day she and I pulled up the carpeting, the first real inside progress back in August! Note that the ceilings were still at 8 feet:


And here's the same wall that's at Kimmie's left in the photo, with a built-in closet (minus doors) and nook for a big armchair or small desk. The space overhead is open for now, but we'd like to build in storage cabinets once we find the perfect doors. The ceilings, which had several broken boards, were patched with wood from the bedroom by Barrio, our neighbor and awesome carpenter friend. Clearly we need some electrical help... we're in the process of finding a new electrician.


Couldn't resist this before-and-after: our experimental winter veggie garden, flourishing despite recent morning frosts! Can't wait to get to more landscaping next spring...


Here are a few more images for you from late:





And... may we introduce our new friend, excellent companion and security-system-in-training... meet Cleveland, "adopted" 9/28/08 when he followed Tyler and his dog Sancha home from a walk.


Yeah. We know. He's completely amazing.


Life trucks along here on Mallard Avenue. I'm sorry it's been so long since we've contrubuted to our online epic. Up next: choosing windows, fixing siding, and finishing the bedroom so we can move out of the kitchen, where we've been living for the past two months!