First Projects of the Year

Hope you are all faring well in 2012! The year is off to a bit of a rough start for me thanks to a nasty cold. Though we had planned to have a mostly quiet month on the house front, unfortunately my cold has slowed things down even more. Still, we've kept moving forward on a few things here and there. . . .

One of the projects on our "to do" list for a while has been to replace the doorknobs upstairs. Thanks to the prior owner's painting prowess, most of them looked like this, with paint all over them:

The brass wasn't really our style, anyway, so we decided to upgrade with some new nickel-colored knobs. The little things can really make a difference!

The biggest project of the last couple of weeks has been acquiring some furniture for our place via Craigslist. We've wanted several new pieces for the house and I really wanted to start with used items first to save us some money, keep some things out of the landfill, find some solid pieces (rather than the particle board stuff we usually end up having to buy), and maybe even find some things with a little character. Our first purchase was a really nice futon that we picked up to go in our spare bedroom (a.k.a. the junk room at the moment). It will be so nice to finally have some extra sleeping options when we have overnight guests!

The other item I've been looking for is an entryway bench for our living room. Someone who shall remain nameless tends to start shoe collections in our house near the front door, and I thought it might be nice to use the empty space on our living room wall to create a spot for us to take off our shoes, pull on some slippers, keep our work bags, etc. I'd been browsing around for something for weeks and weeks now but hadn't found anything I liked--all the benches I found were either too expensive, too short, or I just didn't like the way they looked. What I really wanted was just a simple, plain wooden bench with open space underneath where I can put baskets or a nice shoe rack. Ideally, I wanted something that looked kind of old and worn, but this seemed hard to come by. I kept checking Craigslist, though, and eventually I came across exactly what I wanted, and at a great price!

The person that we bought it from said that he purchased it from an antique shop and was told it was about 100 years old. Of course, I have no idea if what he said is true, but it does, at the very least, have the look of being a nice old piece! I'm planning to make a cushion for it, toss on a couple throw pillows, add some baskets and a shoe rack and make it a nice little welcoming spot right inside our door!

Returning to Normal

Dan and I are back from a beautiful visit with family and friends and are settled back in at home. So far in the new year, our house projects have been limited to one: purchasing and picking up a futon from Craigslist, which we got on Saturday. It's actually a pretty nice piece of furniture, and I'm always happy when we can keep something out of the landfill and save some money by buying something previously owned. We've had indications from a number of family and friends that they'll likely be visiting here in the next several months, so we thought we'd get going on some extra sleeping quarters so we can be ready for guests!

The only other piece of news is that we had someone come to take a look at the blocked pipe which runs from our gutter out to the street. We were a little worried at what the problem might be, but what the plumber found wasn't at all what we expected. . . it turns out, it's no longer blocked! We're not sure how this happened, as we tried to run water through there previously and it was definitely not coming out, but when the plumber came to check it out, sure enough, there was water (slowly) coming out into the street! He told us that there was really no reason to fix it and that it might do more harm than good to look at it further, so we can cross that one off the list! Yay! We'll definitely keep an eye on it, but hopefully we won't have to worry about it for some time to come.

We have a number of small-scale projects on the horizon, but for the next few weeks, I expect we'll mostly just be enjoying our house. From July to November, we pretty much worked non-stop every weekend on home improvements and were then carried through the hustle and bustle of the holidays. The months of projects followed by the holidays have really thrown our usual activities and routines off-kilter, and while I'm so proud of how far we've come with the house, I've really been craving getting back to our old normal.

Today, we spent a quiet morning reading and writing. We had an impromptu visit from friends. Since we've moved I haven't done a very good job taking care of my health, so today I got back to putting together my exercise plan. And this evening, for the first time in months, I sat down and did a bonafide meal plan for the week--one filled with healthy, nourishing comfort food. I can't wait for the house to be filled with the smells of homemade butternut squash soup, roasted vegetables, and my first loaf of made-from-scratch bread in our new house!

While our work on the house thus far has been truly rewarding and satisfying, and while I've enjoyed so much of the process, getting back to our routines feels so great. As I was sitting with Dan at the table this evening, listening to music and meal planning while he read up on home brewing beer (a goal of his for this year), I told him that I felt like I was coming back to myself. Working on the house has been great, but of course, what we're really looking forward to is living in it! And so, for the next few weeks, I think we'll be taking things rather slowly. I still have some small projects I'm planning, so I'll still be here (please keep checking back!), but winter feels like a great time to just cozy up and enjoy how far we've come.