Earning our Stripes!

We've earned our stripes! Well, not literally, but we did paint horizontal tone-on-tone stripes in our upstairs converted cave of a laundry room! Don't mind the grody Washer & Dryer - we got those for a deal on Craigslist until we pay off the swank Refrigerator and Range we just purchased and then we'll upgrade to a big-kid set! PS Do you notice the tray under the washer? Mad props to my Dad for that little safety tip for a second floor laundry room...now we're all in the know.

I'm here to dish the goods on just *how* and *why* we did this. My inspiration actually came from my new favorite website, Young House Love, and their recent bathroom paint job. I loved the technique and the subtlety of the transformation and how it made a small little room seem fresh, vibrant, and fun without being a bright vibrant over-the-top color! In my humble opinion, it made a pretty bland color an exciting focal point! Since I was out to do something fun and vibrant for our oh-so-boring-and-dark-and-bland-Builder's-Buttercream-blah room, I thought that this could be a fun first step to making this room stand out in a way that wasn't bright blue, green, or orange! Here is our laundry room before we put any color on the walls.

So how did we do it? First off, do not attempt this technique if you don't have a few very important tools!

1) Tape measure

2) Gobs of painter's tape

3) Laser Level (or just a regular level)

4) Pencil

5) Patience!

Secondly, if you are dealing with bare walls, then this project will probably take about a weekend to complete as you need to wait for the paint to dry completely before taping. Let's begin, shall we!?

Step 1: Choose your colors wisely! Obviously, you can use any colors you want, but we went with a tone-on-tone scheme as the room is pretty small (5.5'x9'). I went to Lowe's and just browsed through some multiple sheet color swatches. Typically, when you go to the paint store to pick out colors, color swatches will come in sheets with 3-4 colors of the same tonal family, just different color saturations. You can't go wrong if you pick a medium tone and the lightest tone for the walls! And if you're in doubt, always go slightly lighter on a smaller room, especially if it doesn't have any windows! Be sure to do one overall color in the whole room and allow it to dry overnight before attempting to tape it up.

Step 2: Measure your ceiling heights and divide! We have exactly 8 foot ceilings on our second floor and we didn't want to have to tape too much, so we decided on 6 horizontal stripes. For mathematical purposes, we probably should've gone with 8 to make the division easier, so you can learn from my mistake going forward (8 feet = 96 inches - 3.5 inches for the molding = 92.5/6 = 15.4167). Hrmmm....are you noticing a problem here? We did too! I don't really have a tape measure that specific, so we cheated and just rounded to an even 16 inches. Much easier on the brain!

Step 3: Lasers and Pencils! You can totally do this step without a laser level, but we found it to be pretty invaluable. However, considering we have textured walls in our laundry and throughout the house (more on that conundrum later), somebody had to stand by and hold the laser level in place for a good two hours to get the lines perfectly straight, but it was well worth the wait. Start by making pencil marks every 16 inches (or whatever measurement you decide to go with) as frequently across the room as you can. So long as they are level, then this will be invaluable.

Step 4: I love's me some blue tape! Be wery, wery careful - we're hunting wabbits! My recommendation for taping up the room is to use long strips of tape as they are easier to get straight and it becomes a real pain in the patootie (is that a word?) to perfectly marry two strips of tape together. Be sure to tape on the *outside* of where you plan to paint. Don't forget to tape your ceilings and label in pencil the areas that are to be painted - you're painting over it, so it will never show and the worst possible thing you could do would be to paint the wrong stripe. Be sure to communicate with your painting partner on this one ahead of time - hehe! Once you're all finished you should have your very own blue tape art project:

Step 5: Glazing! Mmmm....I want cake...or a doughnut! Now this is an optional step, but as I mentioned before, we have textured walls in our laundry room so a simple tape job is not going to give us a clean line as the other paint will seep through the tape and will give you some sort of weird Jackson Pollock-y type of effect and that certainly isn't what we were going for. This could probably happen on a flat drywall as well, so I'd suggest implementing this step just to be safe. You can find Clear Protective Glaze in almost any hardware store in the country and you won't need much - perhaps just an 8 oz. sample will do ya unless you have a massive room you are painting. We just happened to go with Valspar's Clear Protector as it was on sale (I love's me a bargain!). It has the look and consistency of Elmer's glue, but it will dry clear and give you a good seal on your tape. You need to "glaze" only on the tape lines themselves to "seal" the tape to the wall so that you won't have any leak through on the paint. And be sure to let it dry before you begin painting so that you get a good clean seal.

Step 6: Paint on! Roll it on, baby! Again, be sure you're painting the correct stripes! Depending on your paint, you'll probably need two coats.

Step 7: Tear down this wall! Well, maybe not the wall, but definitely the tape. DO NOT let your last coat of paint dry, otherwise your paint will stick to the tape and you will get a jagged edge. You will probably have to go back regardless just to touch up a few areas, but you can do this with a small edging brush.

So there ya have it! Horizontal stripes. Easy weekend project, huh? I'll be seeing you do this in your homes, right? HA HA! Hopefully this will help you out on your next DIY stripe project. They're all the rage right now and it's a lot easier to paint over a stripe project than dowdy wallpaper, so no worries on hurting your resale value later on down the line!

We have many more plans for this Laundry, but those will have to wait for another post. Bit by bit, the house is coming together! Like I said before, it's an adventure, I hope you'll stay tuned for the journey!

J&L

Goodbye Old, Hello New!

Hi, Readers! (all 2 of you!)

Mad props to my Mother-in-Law (wow, that's a lot of hyphens) for trekking to Portland today to help me clean out the old house! It's as good as, if not better than, it was when J and I moved in a year ago! How time flies! The house was full of great memories and I really will miss it! Even though it was just a rental, it really felt like "home".

Now that we've closed up shop on the old house, some people have started to ask about the new house and how it compares to the old and why we chose the particular house we did. So here's our mini house hunting story...cue music!

When J and I started looking for homes a few months back, we had created a "grocery list" of things that we wanted. We specifically categorized (of course, me, Miss Organized!) our list into two categories: Neighborhood Wants and House Wants. Those lists were further subdivided into "Need to haves", "Want to haves", and "Nice to haves". The "Need to haves" were absolutely non-negotiable. Those included things like a 2-car garage, a quiet street (this was a *huge* issue in our rental home), closer to downtown and yet still not murder on J's commute, 2-4 bedrooms, a large functional kitchen, and enough yard space for Maggie (our Mascot dog) to roam free without too much space for it to be a maintenance nightmare! Of course, we dreamed of other things in our home, but those were the most essential.

Our house search included bigger and smaller homes, older and newer, cheaper and more expensive, smaller and larger yards, bad neighborhoods and good ones, you get the idea. We probably went to around 30-40 viewings of homes just to get a "taste" of what Portland had to offer (not including the 200 or so we checked out online - God Bless the Internet and Google StreetView!). We seriously considered putting offers in on about 3-4 of those homes and the reason we didn't on those are as varied as the homes themselves. Some houses were too far out, too much hassle (short sales being some of the worst hassles we could have dealt with), and/or too much money for how much renovation we were going to have to eventually put into it. Another consideration for most of these homes were the neighborhoods. After having spent the better part of two years devouring every home show imaginable on HGTV, I started to realize that you should never *ever* buy the best house on the block, nor the biggest, nor the weirdest, etc, etc. If you can live with a little bit of a bad paint job, ugly fixtures, etc, then the best bang for your buck is a house that needs just a little bit of TLC. You can change a paint job or a light fixture but you can never change a neighborhood or location. What are the three most important rules to real estate? Location, location, location!!!

Another consideration for us was a promise that J and I made to each other when we got married, which was our love of travel and our serious desire to see far and away places before kids essentially end our traveling days. We realized that the cute little 1920s bungalows we fell in love with were going to eat up a lot of our time (and money) such that we wouldn't be able to travel as much as we would care. We had to think not just of what we wanted in a house, but what we wanted out of life. This was a consideration that took us awhile to realize was a "Need to have".

So that got us thinking back to this newer-build foreclosure we saw in the cute neighborhood with the school just behind it and a park just in front... It was definitely the worst house on the block and it needed a lot of work, love, and paint, but J and I were confident that it was something we could handle! And we have many ambitious (and bold) plans for our space and we plan to do it all on our own. And so after a whirlwind weekend of "Come to Jesus" moments, we took the plunge and made an offer! More on that story another time!

It's an adventure! We hope you'll stay tuned for the journey!

Peace out!

J&L

PS I really do plan to upload more pics to this site once we get the house a little more "finished". Stay tuned!

Gawk at this!

The big move was yesterday! It took about 7.5 hours and J was safely tucked at work in his cube - lucky guy! The guys at Priority Moving worked their tails off (with me sort of helping) and managed to get everything almost completely right. Unfortunately, our large Computer Armoire is in pieces in the garage - we tried to take it apart to get it upstairs and it just won't go. We will have to get creative on that piece.

I did want to share a little bit of eye candy with you, though. Once this blog is officially up and running, this will be such a fun thing to look back on, courtesy of Gawker! Enjoy! More info on the how will come later!

"Appli" Here

The appliances arrived today! Woo hoo! I have to say that Sears is good, very good! Delivery and the installation ended up being free (other places who shall remain nameless weren't so kind). The installers were super-duper nice and I just have to remember a couple of things, which I shall put here for my own recollection and every one else's:

1) Our range came in perfect condition out of the box, except for a small dent in the drawer. Luckily, Sears was on top of it and they're sending out a replacement which should be delivered on Sunday. I was willing to live with it, but they weren't, so that's pretty awesome - oh, and did I mention that will be free?

2) We have an interior water filter for the Fridge, which is super-duper nice because then it doesn't take up valuable space inside the freezer, which is never fun! I just have to remember to change the filter every 6 months. The delivery person, Tony, let me install it myself and it's just a matter of twist and click. I think I can handle that!

3) The first 2 gallons of Fridge water and the first bucket of ice have to be tossed due to all of the grody water.

4) ...and lastly, I highly recommend shelling out the extra dough for Energy Star Appliances if you can. Not only do they cost less per month to operate, but we are getting a $50 rebate from the State of Oregon for a special program with our refrigerator as well as a $50 tax return from the federal government. Uncle Sam isn't all bad! Not only that, but I feel good about living a little greener. One step at a time, my friends :-).

The only bad news today is that it's about 95 degrees out. Yuck! therefore, I'm hanging back at the rental as we have no A/C at the new house. Sigh...trying to stay cool!

First and Foremost....

It's official! We are homeowners! Sort of....maybe....not yet at all, actually....*sigh*...

Even though we are "closed" in the eyes of our lender, our checks have been cashed, and the Escrow Company thinks we're great, etc - the bank from whom we purchased our lovely Foreclosed property is not so keen. To protect the innocent, they shall remain nameless! Essentially, the Bank (current owners) forgot to sign some paperwork eons ago when they initially took possession of the property and, as such, we are waiting in limbo until "Bank time" catches up with "Teller time". Not to be confused with "Miller time", which is definitely what we will be having when we get the keys.

So for now, we are waiting. In limbo. Patiently waiting....