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Before & After Bliss: Painter's Paradise to Official Office

I know everyone is dying to see at least one semi-finished interior room! To be honest, most of our rooms are still "in process". We've posted an update about our laundry room, including our tone-on-tone paint job, which is proving very popular, but we haven't quite finished any other room as most of them still need to be painted and/or repaired and/or both! However, we have completed all of the heavy lifting (literally) in our new office, minus accessories! But before we dish the goods, you have to know where we came from. Here is a pretty nebulous before:

Not much to look at, right? It may be hard to see from the picture (as it is rather small on blogger - this page will be moving in the coming weeks to a more robust website), but we had a Painter in residence prior to our takeover! In fact, judging from the grubby fingerprints on the door jamb, I'd estimate this artist's height at around 3 feet tall :-). This was definitely a multi-talented artist, utilizing acrylic paints, crayons, and colored pencils to boot! The artistry was evident around the room, including on the closet doors:

This artist's mastery was not limited to the static arts. Our base moldings also were recipients of this artist's treatment, perhaps in the form of *martial* arts. Needless to say, this room was in need of some serious repair work (did I mention the house was a foreclosure?). So here are a few pictures of the after artistry on behalf of J&L, two budding homeowners just trying to make it happen.

The iMac Workstation, where most of the Tell'er All About It magic happens

The newly painted closet doors, courtesy of J's artistry

Our PC workstation, lovingly housed in the heaviest piece of furniture in our home,

ironically contained on the second floor!

Our brand new base moldings, upgraded from dowdy MDF planks to

substantial and carved MDF! How do I love thee!

So what else did we change? The wall color, for one. Remember the Builder's Buttercream Flat paint that I love so much? (that was a joke, by the way) Well, that was in this room as well. I painted this room by myself over a period of two days in Glidden's Water Chestnut - such a delicious name, don'tcha think? I was able to cover up all of the dirt, paint, and Crayola to a warmer, but less yellow-y color. In fact, I love it so much I bought 2 more gallons of it and I can't wait to paint another room in that color! We may be in Water Chestnut overload before this year is done...

When we started to prep for paint, we realized that the base moldings were not worth saving. The builder used cheap MDF "planks" at a meek 3.5 inches around the entire house and the ones in the Painter's Paradise were in desperate need of a paint job to say the least. Since the previous owners took all of the touch up paint with them, J&I made the executive decision to just rip out the old baseboards and make the office our first attempt at replacing the baseboards throughout the house. With a fresh coat of paint and a more substantial 5.5 inch base, the room feels rich and luxurious! And check out the hubs' awesome handiwork on the exterior corner in the room with caulk!

We also painted the interior of the closet as it was also painted in a "flat" finish, which meant that every scrape of a hangar over the past 4 years showed up like a "Who's Who" of bad wardrobe and paint choices. And since we brought in a new tone on the base molding, we also painted the closet doors to match.

And perhaps our greatest achievement in this space was moving our 300+ (?) pound computer armoire from the garage up to the second floor. It took the combined efforts of both J&L from Tell'er All About It and L's Mother just to get it upstairs - and neither my Mom or I are professional movers! The most fascinating aspect were all of the neighbors who stopped what they were doing just to watch! You know what they were thinking - "We should get a video camera just to have evidence that there really *are* people buried under that Armoire in the front yard!" Really, we shouldn't have been able to get it upstairs. The weight alone was daunting, but the shape is just absolutely ungainly, particularly with a 90 degree turn and a rectangular shape that doesn't fit on a square landing. But we did it! And my arms and legs are still aching from the strain! However, we may advertise this as a selling point when we go to sell the house - Armoire FREE with purchase! Phew!

So there ya have it! Our updated (yet still unfinished) office! It was an adventure! More to come, so stay tuned!

xoxo,

J&L

Home Discovery: Blackberry Bush!

Hello, Readers! We are still writing and updating about our new (to us) house. I actually completed my first full week living here and I have many aches, pains, bruises, and pricks to prove it! Keep reading and sending us comments and let us know how we can improve the website and what we might be missing. I am in the process of developing a new site through iWeb (a Mac-based program) and I'm hoping to research some new websites to see who might be the most user-friendly so that we can have more functionality on our blog. Keep checking back for updates as we will be updating often!

But back to our home's tastiest discovery; a blackberry bush over the fence! We have a fence that separates our property from the school behind us and we found a blackberry bush was gently dropping berries on our property - finders keepers! Here's a view of one half of our yard with the blackberry bush on the right growing over the fence:

So while Mom was in town last week, we went out to pick a few berries to have for dessert and, OUCH! We found out they are worse than rose bushes when it comes to pricklies! I guess that explains why they are so expensive in the store - hrmmm.... So our Blackberry bush discovery became both a happy accident and a massive pest, all at the same time! Yet another trivial nuance about the Pacific Northwest - berries grow like weeds out here! There is something about our very acidic and volcanic soil which they absolutely love and so we have every berry varietal known to man growing wild (and cultivated) our here: blackberries, boysenberries, raspberries, black raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, marionberries, huckleberries, berries eeeeeverywhere! Here's a close up view of our blackberry bush:

But back to this blackberry nuisance. One of the best parts of our property is actually a tree that is just on the other side of our property that grows shady over our backyard. It's great for privacy and it's big and leafy and green, so it's really great for eating breakfast outside in the morning as it covers up most of our Eastern sun - score! So when we started picking these blackberries, we noticed that this blackberry had literally "infested" the bottom of this tree with its stickers and prickers! My Mom, being a wonderful gardener, told us that if we don't take care of it, the Blackberry will suffocate the tree and it will die - oh, no! So it was either the shady tree or the blackberries. Not to mention all of those blackberries were coming out the Magsters (our dog) on the other end - yuck! So we spent most of the day Friday clearing out blackberry bush and trimming back overgrown ivy, which was weeding its way under our fence and up our evergreen trees - never a good sign. We also cleaned up our backyard of construction debris (yes, 4 years later!), and began the painful process of weed pulling and Round Up treatments. Here's a little in-process photo:

But what about those pesky (yet tasty) blackberries?

Well, not to be deterred, I sat down outside with garden gloves, tongs, scissors, and a bag filled with blackberry branches and picked myself about 3.5 cups worth of Pacific Northwest Oregon blackberries, all for free! Gotta love livin' off the land! I looked up on FoodNetwork.com a couple of Blackberry Pie recipes until I sort of combined a few aspects of several different recipes to create one that would work with the ingredients I had because I'm lazy and didn't feel like running to the store. So here's basically what I came up with:

L's Better-than-Store-Bought Blackberry pie!

(Yes, it's a smily face - ha ha!)

Crust:

1 Package, Pillsbury Pie Crusts (Freezer Section)

1 egg + splash of water for the crust

Filling:

3.5 cups, Fresh Blackberries (stickers optional!)

1/2 cup, Sugar (I used raw cane sugar and it tasted great!)

1/4 cup flour

Juice of 3/4 of a fresh lemon (I swear by using fresh if you've got it)

Dash of Cinnamon

Couple of Pinches of Nutmeg (from the nut, never pre-ground - oh, it's SOOO good)

Follow the Pie Crust instructions for defrosting. Once defrosted, roll out and place 1 crust in your pie dish. Pinch the sides together so that you have no extra crust.

For the filling. Wash your blackberries and remove any stickers that might be straying. Put them in a bowl and combine with remaining ingredients. Gently mix (I would recommend using a plastic or silicone spatula for this technique - and go slow or you'll have blackberry blood all over you! Don't use a wood spoon - it will stain!). Pour the blackberry mixture into your pie dish and spread evenly.

Place the remaining pie crust over the blackberry mixture and create slits in the top (smily face is optional). Be sure to pinch off the sides as well to get a good seal on the crust. Brush on the egg mixture as best you can and then wrap the sides of the pie dish/crust with tin foil, place on a cookie sheet, and bake! I set my oven for about 375 and it was in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. After about 20 minutes of baking, remove the tin foil and continue to bake until the crust is a golden sunshine-y color. Enjoy!

I'll be the first to admit, the pie didn't last 24 hours! It was so good, in fact, that Mom called my dad on the East Coast at midnight to tell him how good it was. Mmmmm.....

So there ya have it! We're still discovering and enjoying many things about our new home. It's all an adventure, we hope you stay tuned for the journey!

xoxo,

J&L

Before and After Bliss: Our Garage!

What a crazy couple of weeks it has been! I've been traveling and we've been working away on our house bit by teeny bit! My Mother has even traveled all the way from Ohio to help us get more "situated" this week. Lemme tell ya, she's a slave driver! But she's a slave driver in a way that a deep-tissue massage feels wonderful after a long day of hard work. In a sense, it's a very GOOD thing. More on our accomplishments later!

We did want to share our amazing Garage Re-organization with you because it's just too amazing not to share! We have a small-ish 2-car garage and it has never been our intention to park both cars inside of it. It's the Pacific Northwest after all, and unlike the Midwest where you need to park your car inside for the winter, most people park their cars outside because, let's face it, we rarely get snow, hardly any ice, and the rain we do get is so misty that you hardly get your hair wet by the time you walk across the driveway to get into your car. However, our garage was suffering from serious post-move neglect and since we have free slave labor (thanks, Mom!), a re-org was definitely in order. For the groan-inducing before, please read on:

I know, right? Doesn't that just scream, "Help me!" And if not that, then perhaps a wee bit of, "Oh, it can wait until next summer, right?!?" HA HA! We had to move one dining table from the garage (which da hubs was using as a work table - yikes!) and my giant computer armoire that needed to go upstairs - what a chore that was! But once those were out of the way, we set to work clearing, cleaning, throwing away, opening more boxes, etc, etc. Even the Magsters got involved:

Well, not really....

But after about 3 hours, we had ourselves an organized and ready-to-go garage! We have many plans for it, including building a work bench for J, pegboards, ski storage, bike storage, etc, etc, but for the moment, this is as good as it gets!

Beautiful, right?

In more detail, however, here are a few highlights. We created a temporary coat hook and mudroom system with some screw-in hooks we had lying around for our grubby "garage coats" and shoes (the Dyson is an added bonus):

We set up an old Ikea desk from college to use as a workbench until we can build a "real" one. J loves having a workspace and a spot for his multiple toolboxes:

We set up some much-needed kitchen storage for all of those random things you just don't want to keep "on-hand" (i.e. Holiday and Christmas dishes, etc). We also needed extra storage for paper goods and cleaning supplies. And it has doors and is closed away so that sawdust and dust won't get to it:

And, lastly, since we knew we would never park 2 cars in this garage, we went ahead and set up the far side of the garage with sporting goods and painting supplies and left enough room to store our Recyclables and trash in the garage. J's table saws and other things are also set up on that side, out of the way and easy to access for all of the fun projects we have planned (wink, wink, nudge, nudge):

So there ya have it, kids! Our organized garage, courtesy of a slave driving mother, a sleeping dog, a motivated husband, and me as the emergency backup lifter!

It's an adventure, we hope you stay turned for the journey!

xoxo,

J&L

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!