The Next Phase...

Save for our bathrooms, kitchen, and some finished carpentry work, our house is basically finished. Our bathroom and kitchen are serviceable until such a time we can afford to do the level of work we want. In the mean time though, we hope to use this blog to occasionally document our lives and adventures in Durty Durham. We hope to help keep Durham Disreputable.*

We hope you enjoy what follows.

*Apparently Jim Kellough can be credited with creating the "keep Durham Disreputable" tag and bumper stickers.

Wanted: Your Opinion! (For once...)

It's a rare opportunity, folks. Matt and I just picked up a great 11x7' Persian rug off Craigslist last night, and we're figuring out how/whether it works in our living room. There are several factors to consider, so we figured we'd put it out there for feedback. Here are some rough shots of things are they currently are (including a bit of messiness).






Things to consider:

• The curtains. Too busy now?
• The chairs. We always considered recovering the cushions on the mid-century chairs. Should we, and if so, with what color/pattern?
• The wood trim. We've pretty much decided as of late to repaint the trim in this room white. Matt feels like it dictates the other colors in the room too strongly, as well as darkens the room and walls over all. I like it, but am willing to go for it as I've always liked white trim. Thoughts on this, with the added rug?
• Wall color. Sounds crazy, but we're considering going white for this as well - perhaps just a teeeeeny shade off from the trim (if it's white). A cool white.

Okay, I know we asked for it. Go nuts!

*Note: I originally posted this on Umbrella Love, my other blog, by mistake, so apologies to the two of you whose posts got deleted. The perils of managing more than one blog!

4th Annual Home Tour!

Come to our next neighborhood tour! For the past four years our neighborhood has been hosting home tours to try and attract new home owners who are looking to move to a neighborhood to be involved and to engage with neighbors to make this a dynamic place. Our neighborhood is a special place where neighbors get together for monthly potlucks, or semi-annual block party's, trick-or-treating, caroling, and projects like adopting the local parks and working with the city to build a dog park!

We hope you come check out all the good things happening in Cleveland-Holloway!

Our new (to us) piano!

It has been quite a while since posting to this blog, but then again it's been quite a while since we've done any work on the house worth posting.

Just recently though, Jessie's parents wanted to redecorate the family room and move out the old family piano. Jessie was very eager to be the recipient of this family heirloom, even though I was less sure we'd find the space. It turns out that our very wide hallway is the perfect space for it.

After hiring a piano mover, we had to wait a few days for the piano to settle before the tuner could come. Apparently the piano hadn't been tuned in quite some time, and the 5 hours the tuner spent with us attests to that. Of course, as almost all things Durham, our tuner Danny Moses was both talented and warm. Danny chatted with us about the news of the day, and about the best way to rehydrate and cook dried black beans.

If you're looking for a great piano tuner in the Triangle, we highly recommend Danny Moses. Here's his contact info:

Phone: 919.270.3930

Email: thrundr@hotmail.com

3217 Lassiter Street

Durham, NC 27707

The Color in My Head

Look!


I don't know if you can exactly call it smokey eggplant, but I do know that of the ten or so samples that I tried, none of them was quite right. I'm THAT picky. So I took the two closest, which each lacked a bit of the other, and made my own mixture, with just a dash of a third color. Then I tried it on the house, and once satisfied, painted a swatch of cardboard to take to Home Depot for matching. While I was there, I tried to find a matching sample, but couldn't. Not sure what this says about my control issues. But I'm incredibly happy with the outcome.


(Disclaimer: monitor colors may vary. Sigh.)

But I should go back a bit.

North Carolina has been really lovely this fall. Now that I've intentionally backed off my workload a bit, due to back problems, we've been taking some more time to enjoy it. We went to the state fair with my parents, sister, and bro-in-law, for a little local flavor, fried foods, and wild rides.


(Perfect score!)


And we had a great Halloween right here in own own neighborhood. It was great to see a gaggle of kids and adults come together for trick-or-treating for probably the first time in many years, since the neighborhood has been getting safer. A lot of work was put into making it a great night. Matt and I spent the day going door-to-door with neighbors Natalie, her baby Madeline, and Leslie, handing out balloons for participating houses, and making sure everyone knew about the festivities and had candy to give out. We barely had time to get dressed ourselves, but threw together some makeshift costumes.






After that, we spent a long weekend in Portland, OR, with one of my best friends, Meredith.


Portland, as we knew it would, gave us a great sense of several elements that Durham is missing, but could, with a lot of effort and investment, someday have. It will never be as big and urban as Portland... but it gave me a lot of hope for the direction Durham is going in - denser, more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, more progressive and tightly-knit.

When we got back, we collected Cleveland from the farm. He loves being out there with my parents and has lots of room to run around... but he's always especially cuddly when he comes back.





India has started her landscaping project on our front yard. It will take a while for the plants to reach their mature size, but I'm in love with the plan she did, and it's so nice to have a softer, more organic look to our wonky hill. These pictures are from before they actually went in the ground.


We've been steadily organizing the inside of the house, too, trying to figure out where everything wants to go, and how to keep it that way. I'm loving the winter light that's starting to pour in the kitchen windows.








And, finally, the house painting, which commenced Nov. 14. We hired Jose Vera, who's done some excellent work for my parents, as well as James. Jose works with his two sons, and they've all been doing an awesome job.





(The above photo gives a nice view of some of India's landscaping.)



These photos, of course, are already out of date, as the team is outside now, working away. Another post is in order as soon as the trim is finished.

UPDATE: Here are some end-of-day photos of the house. All that's left is some touch-ups on the cream color, and then the red accents. Can't wait to see that pop of color!