Ollie Ollie Oxen Free!

Les and I have been waiting to have a yard, before getting a dog.  Since last fall we've been researching what we wanted and last November we met a local breeder of Hungarian Vizslas.

 They're very sweet and very high energy hunting dogs.  Judging from
all the information out there, I'll be getting a new pair of running shoes!

We picked a male puppy and have decided to name him Oliver.  We'll be brining him home at the end of May.

Sans puppy proofing the house, we also need additional storage for Oliver's things.  The house has very little closet space and next to nothing for
storage outside of the kitchen cabinetry.

I found a great idea from Pottery Barn, which combined pet storage and bedding.

Of course the product is no longer available and we'd like to build it ourselves to our own specifications.

Below is the 3D Model Les and I designed to fit in our mudroom.  Eventually we'll build lockers for ourselves to match Oliver's for additional storage and seating in the mudroom too.

 Ollie's puppy locker.

 Concept for the people lockers.

 

Some like it hot . . . Les

  Les was starting to get a bit of the blues,  and tired of being chilly.  We always thought that a bright orange would find it's way into our color scheme somewhere and decided to put a little heat . . . in the office.

The room we're using as the office is part of the addition put on the house in the 40's or 50's.  It has no closet, but does share walnut floors with the rest of the second story of the house, which we intend to leave in place.

Initial peace-talks about color started with some leftover carpet samples from work, and trying to keep blue still in the picture.  Eventually we'll use the carpet tiles as a rug for the office.

After some deliberation and a little bribery, we chose a color called Salsa.  Ole'!

I found a great how-to article in This Old House magazine, about painting patterns and thought a pattern might help calm down some of the color shock.

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/intro/0,,20440297,00.html

Les helped me with snapping the chalk-lines that would be the framework of the pattern.

After the chalk lines were in place, I used the templates that I downloaded from This Old House's website and traced around them in pencil.

Using the framework and template lines, I free-hand painted the star design using Benjamin Moore color, Vellum.  Overall the process only took about an hour and a half.  

For the dots, I used Jamaican Sea acrylic paint, from Folkart.

Fun With Furniture

For office furniture Les and I have been eyeing Ikea's, Galant desk series.  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/workspaces/18960/

But we couldn't find a configuration that would actually fit the room, let alone sizes that would fit our needs.  We have lots of books, plus Les has three monitors he works from and I have two.  I also wanted a space to allow me to work on crafts.  

Les custom designed our desk using Ikea's framework and legs and made our desktop from leftover OSB board.  We got the exact desk we wanted and cut costs in half.  We're integrating Ikea's storage products for drawers and plan to install overhead shelving for storage too.

This is the result of being delusional and building furniture late at night.  We found that I fit inside of an 18" wide Ikea mobile pedestal.

I would like a project table like the Pottery Barn one pictured below, so that I have a surface I can make a mess on and a place to store pretties like ribbon!  We're going to use Ikea components to get the same result.   Les Sr. also gave us on old tractor seat that we're going to try and make into a stool to go with the table, like the one from Restoration Hardware (shown below).

Pottery Barn Bedford project table

Restoration Hardware Tractor Seat Barstool

More office design to come!

Running a Little Behind

So it seems that 2011 got out of the gates a little faster than we did.  After several requests from family to update our blog, we figured it was about time . . . Actually Les figured it was about time that I get back to updating everyone, ha!

To date we've renovated the living room, dining room, and entryway, designed our kitchen, and started building the furniture for the office.

Living Room 

Stairway from Living Room

Looking toward Dining Room

Dining Room

Family tree, picture collage.  We'll be adding more pictures of family as we go!

Ringing in the new year

Ringing in the new end of the year.

So the doorbell has been another of our little projects that just wasn't coming together. We moved in and there was a cheap wireless doorbell setup that needed batteries on both ends. The box and the button.  Something about a wireless doorbell that was going to continuously need batteries was just a problem.  And it certainly did not play into the aesthetics of the house.

We pulled the doorbell box down to find that it was battery powered.  But behind was the original doorbell wires leading to the basement. (Ignore the ugly walls, we are still in the process of pulling down paper in the kitchen)

So for the last 3 months we have done without a doorbell.  It makes people coming to the door difficult now that the winter months are here and we keep the door closed.  (Our next door neighbor has lived in the house 2 years and they don't have a doorbell either, for the same reason)


Well about a month or so ago I was walking through an estate / garage sale at the edge of town and came across this old phone. A conn Electric Intercom.  Turns out this "phone" was only part phone.  It was an in house intercom for a clubhouse somewhere here in Michigan. But the coolest part was some of the old labels were still intact, the oak box was in great shape, it had the bells on top, and it was fairly low profile.

Of course my little creaky gears start turning.  Need = bell,  this has = bell.

 So I get the patient home and start tearing it apart right away to 1. see what kind of treasure I brought home, and 2. see what it would take to accomplish my little doorbell of a dream.

Back of the box.  The striations are cuts to recess the wires from the wall. Very different than your modern manufacturing processes.

So I got my litle joy home and soon realized the knocker for the bells was broken. (right) Since it was broken it did give me a chance to start testing some electrical on it, sure enough it worked great with a little juice from a battery. 

Although the ringer mechanism was broken, a little web research I found a guy in ohio that restored old phones.  I emailed him my delima and what I knew about my little box of magic.  Of course that didn't get far, so I sent a picture.  That did get somewhere, $10 and wait a week and you get parts from similar devices.  The ringer on the left is from the same brand of phone but I had to bend the arm straight to mimic the original. But for a few bucks, we were getting closer to business.

Patient with it's new heart.

So it has taken a few weeks of work but I finally got wires ran 3 to be exact. from our chosen location in the kitchen (where there was a previous phone) to the vicinity of the transformer in the basement. The patient is all hooked up and ready to go.

 

Of course being the crazy nifty guy and gal we are we couldn't stop there.  With an anticipated bonus room in the basement it may get difficult to holler upstairs and someone downstairs to hear.  So with all these nifty buttons something had to be done.

That is where this little guy comes in.

 

 

 

With a button that says "Dog House" how can one resist.

 

Well the walls are ugly as can be since we started pulling down wall paper but the little box fits right at home. The doorbell button on the front door rings the phone. And if you need someone's attention in the basement.  Well..just ring the dog house.

We are trying to figure out how to upload video so we can share the fun, but until then

-cheers

What to do with a boring closet door....

 Well....Once again I failed to get much on the before pictures.  But none the less our front entry closet has been a topic of what to do for some time.  With all the work on the tile floor, we hated to cover half of it up.  so changing the panel of the door out to glass sounded like a good idea, A nice antiqued frosted glass with a logo in the middel calling out the room as a closet.
Well after a little research and a realization that new glass was uber expensive that little project stalled.  So I found free glass.  Tempered sliding doors from a back window wall.  Great....except I can't cut tempered glass.
So back to square one......

Eventually we realized chalkboard paint would work great there.  This is when Amanda told me about chalkboard markers.  They are like paint pens except they are chalk.  So off to sanding I went.

 A little elbow grease, some tape, and some paint she was on her way to being a door again.

 After hanging the door, I contracted some artistic expertise from the neighboring residents.

Not to bad for a couple kids from the south.

Notice the door hardware, that was the stuff that was gunked with all the paint.

 

And the greatest part is we can change it whenever we feel like changing the decor a little.  The markers come in a 4 pack, so we bought 2 packs so we have a variety of colors to play with over time.

till next time -cheers

Thank God for Cover-alls

So something about owning a house in a quaint little neighborhood really brings a different joy to holiday season.  Even when ol' man winter shows up before the first day of winter.

Although we had our first dusting over what seemed like the last week solid nothing stuck until yesterday.  But as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds, it all melted.  But the beautiful snowfall we woke to this morning continued all day, expecting to leave us overnight with 5" of fresh fluff on the ground.

Much better perspective of the snow.  From inside the house.

Hope everyone's Christmas season is finding them safe, warm and joyful.

GHOSTED!

I came home late one night this week to find that we'd been ghosted!

We have 24 hours to come up with goodies for (2) other houses in the neighborhood and ghost them under the cover of darkness!

We in turn let everyone know that we've been ghosted by taping a flyer to our front door.

It's great trick-or-treating for adults!

We carefully picked our victims, snuck gifts onto their porches and ran!  Amazingly almost every house within 3 blocks had been ghosted by Halloween.

Pumpkins


Instead of carving pumpkins, I picked my picked my favorite templates painted them, they'd looked great and were super easy.

Templates from Good Housekeeping, Country Living, and Photoshop

I taped the templates to the face of the pumpkins and traced them out by puncturing the outline with a sewing needle.  After removing the template we played connect the dots using sharpie marker.

Outlined pumpkins

After they were outlined I went back a painted them with simple black acrylic paint.  After letting them dry overnight they went out onto the porch.

We went to the neighborhood party and I handed out candy as Max from "Where the Wild Things Are"

Happy Halloween!