Making Progress: New Window Trim

My last update on the girls’ rooms showed them  freshly painted and no longer sporting primary colors.  The new paint was a BIG improvement, but the skinny, 80s wood trim just wasn’t doing it for me.  I knew I wanted something more interesting and way beefier (just like I like my men – oh come on! you know you were thinking it to!).

Although I knew exactly what I wanted to do, it took me a while to actually get started.  I went to a couple of different hardware stores several times with the intention of bringing home a bunch of moulding so I could get started, but every time I went, I’d leave empty-handed and with a fresh case of sticker shock.  Is it just me, or has the price of wood really jumped up in the last few years?!

After the third or fourth trip, I finally bit the bullet and came home with everything I’d need to do the windows and doors in the girls’ rooms and got right to work.  It took me about three hours to do the first room and four to do the second because I spent, at least, an hour repeatedly unjamming my nail gun (thanks to Mr. Neighbor for helping me with one of the more heinous jams).

Several more hours of painting later and here we are, all put back together!

This is Thing 2’s room.  Both the girls chose the décor for their rooms (with some input from me – no bright pink carpet, for instance) and I think they did a pretty fabulous job!

Here’s a pretty decent shot of the detail on the window and door trim. (please ignore the missing baseboard trim – it’s coming soon!) 

 

The header piece is made up of 7 (!) pieces of trim. I tried assembling the whole header on the ground before putting it up but I could never wait long enough for the glue to dry, so it all fell apart when I put it up anyway. I finally decided it was just best for me to cut all the pieces and dry fit them downstairs, then take them upstairs and install them with my trusty nail gun.

(Take note of that beautiful door there!  More on that to come!)

I had to get a picture of the lazy kitty, sunning himself in what could be our last bit of sun until Spring!

 

Thing 1’s room also got the treatment…

I like how, even though their rooms are nearly identical and they have many of the same items in them, they arranged and decorated them differently, so they each have their own unique feel.  Thing 1 decided to make herself a reading nook:

(I like to decorate with cats whenever possible.  It makes your rooms seem so cozy, don't you think?)

*******

I can’t even tell you how much I love these two rooms now.  There’s not much that makes me happier than seeing white trim popping against a pretty, painted wall.  I tell the girls that these rooms are now the nicest in the house.  Better get to work on my bedroom soon!

Whole Wheat Pizza and Calzones

This evening,  Thing 1 made us calzones for dinner.  As she read the recipes that I use for dough and pizza sauce, we both noticed how often I said something like, “yeah, but I don’t do it that way”.  After the third or fourth time, we decided that I needed to type up my modified versions of these recipes and put them somewhere accessible.  I told my daughter I’d put them on the blog and dedicate them to her.  So, my girl, here you go.  I look forward to many more evenings of homemade calzones and pizzas!

 

(Please don’t laugh at my pictures.  This is not a food blog for a reason.  I’ll never be able to hold dinner to set up a beautiful shot that makes your mouth water.  It’s good to know your limitations!)

Honey Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

The pizza dough recipe is from here. I didn’t actually change the ingredients, but I changed the steps, since I proof the yeast first.

1 cup warm water (~110 degrees)
1 tablespoon honey
2 1/4 teaspoon yeast
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 wheat germ
1 teaspoon salt

1. Combine the honey and yeast in the warm water to proof the yeast.  Let sit for about five minutes until yeast is foamy.
2. Combine flour, wheat germ, and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer.
3. When the yeast is ready, pour it in with the dry ingredients and mix in your stand mixer with the bread hook. 
4. Mix until all ingredients are combined and the bowl is clean, then let it knead for a little bit longer.
5. Let dough sit for about 10 minutes.

 

Papa John’s Pizza Sauce Recipe

Our pizza sauce recipe can be found all over the Internet and is a Papa John’s knock-off. The recipes I found, though, call for 1 can of tomato puree. Since I never, ever have tomato puree in the house, I always fake it with tomato sauce and tomato paste. Except that makes twice as much puree as I need, so I always double the recipe. Here it is, doubled for your cooking ease.

1 can (15 0z) tomato sauce
1 can (6 0z) tomato paste
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in sauce pan, bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

Pizza

It’s pizza!  Pretty straight forward…

1. Prepare pizza dough.
2. Prepare pizza sauce.
3. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
4. Chop up pizza toppings and grate mozzarella.
5. Roll out dough into a pizza-ish shape on a pizza pan or cookie sheet.
6. Pre-bake crust for 5 minutes in hot oven.
7. Spread pizza sauce on cooked crust, then add mozzarella and your toppings.
8. Bake pizza for another 5 minutes.
9. Enjoy!

 

Calzones

A friend served calzones at book group one night.  I loved them so much that I had to have the recipe!  Luckily, they’re almost as easy as pizza.

1. Prepare pizza dough.
2. Prepare pizza sauce.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
4. Chop up calzone fillings and grate mozzarella.
5. Roll out dough into a large rectangle on a pizza pan or cookie sheet (I actually use half of the dough recipe and freeze the other half for next time).
6. Spread pizza sauce, mozzarella, and your toppings down the center (length-wise) of the rectangle.
7. Using kitchen scissors, cut slits about 1.5 inches wide down the length of both sides of the rectangle making “tabs” on each side of your fillings (I usually get about 7 on each side).
8. Pull the tabs across the fillings to the other side at an angle, alternating tabs from each side so you’re creating a lattice-like pattern across the top of your filling.  Fold over the ends so nothing falls out the end.
9. Bake for 20 minutes.
10. Enjoy!

(Seriously, don’t make fun!  We were all starving and this was the best I could do!)

Taming the Blue

Happy Halloween. everyone!  Hope you all got lots of Trick-or-Treaters at your door, but still have plenty of candy left to hoard in that top cabinet where no one else will find it!  What?!  You know you do that too!

*****

First order of business on the new house definitely had to be the girls’ rooms.  They were part of the upstairs that hadn’t yet been updated and I think they had clearly been painted for two young boys a looong time ago.

Thing 1’s room was a study in primary colors: red walls, yellow ceilings, and blue blinds. 

 

Thing 2’s room was light blue on top and bright blue on the bottom with a wallpaper border around the center of the room with, I believe, palm trees and race cars.

 

Plus they both had the original, 23 year old carpet! Definitely time for an update.

The very first day we were in the house, I started patching the holes in the walls.  Every single door in the upstairs (and some downstairs) had a circular hole, shaped suspiciously like a door knob, in the wall behind it.  Definitely young boys used to live here!

Three days after we moved in, I was ready to paint.  My good friend (and new neighbor) volunteered herself and her mom to be my painting buddies, so we were able to knock out both rooms in one day (after, of course, one of my helpers removed the wall paper border and the other spent several hours cleaning the walls).  I was (pleasantly) surprised that each room took only one coat of primer and one coat of paint to cover those bright walls.

We’re planning on replacing the trim around the windows/doors and baseboard, so we didn’t have to be careful about not painting that, which really helped speed up the process.

*****

This house is 23 years old, so the floors are really getting squeeeeeky.  We had already scheduled the carpet installers to come in another week, but we decided to pull up the carpets right away to give us a chance to see what we could do about those squeaks.  Of course, this meant the girls had to live without carpet for a week, but I think the promise of super-soft carpet laid over nice quiet floors made it palatable.

My husband had done some research and found this product called Squeeeeek No More that did the job perfectly!  It’s basically special screws that you drill into your subfloor and joists, then you use a special tool to snap off the top of the screw to just a smidge under the subfloor, so nothing sticks up.  The kit also comes with a doo-hickey that stops your drill when you’ve set the screw deep enough.  You can use it on carpeted floors, as well as hardwood and laminate!

They didn’t ask me to say this, but these things were AWESOME!  Completely easy to use and they did just what the package said.  Plus, they were pretty fun to use too!   I had a great time bouncing around on the floors like a ballerina finding squeaks for my husband to obliterate. 

Most of the squeaks were very easy to deal with: they just required one or two screws to tighten up the subfloor, but one of the rooms had a ridiculously tenacious squeak RIGHT AS YOU WALKED IN THE DOOR that we could not get rid of.  I’d convince myself that it didn’t matter, that we could live with it.  Then, I’d walk back into the room and SQUUEEEAAAAKKKK!  There it would go again.  We must’ve sunk, at least, 20 screws into this area.  I was just about to finally give up (because we were almost out of screws), but decided to try one, last time.  I drilled in one more screw and, lo and behold, it worked!  No more squeak!  I can’t wait to use them throughout the rest of the rooms too!

*****

After that, we were FINALLY ready for new carpet.  When the day arrived, we moved everything out of the girls’ rooms and into the master bedroom.  I wish I had taken pictures of that because our room was packed!  The carpets went in and lickety-split, we had livable rooms for the girls!  We had decided not to get new carpet in our room, since that carpet was relatively new, but MAN are we sorry about that decision.  Now, you walk from the upstairs landing into our room and it’s a complete let-down for your feet.  That decision definitely needs to be revisited!

Anyway, I’ll give you a progress shot of the newly re-painted and re-carpeted rooms.  They’re definitely not done (most notably, the trim needs to be replaced with big, beefy casings – Oh, and new blinds are one the way!), but they’re muuuch better already.

 

One could even sleep in here!

What TODO, What TODO?!

In my last post we toured the new house.  In this post, we’ll walk through and make a list of what I hope to do in each room.  This house is mostly great as is, but it doesn’t really look like our home, so we’ll be making lots of changes (and using lots of paint!) to make this home feel more like us.

The Foyer

• Paint a new (more-me) color
• Change out the light fixture
• Get rid of the angled corners on the doorway into the piano room and, possibly, add a transom window up above (like this)
• Beef  up trim around doorways
• Remove the door from the coat closet behind the front door and widen it to become a bench seat/landing station (like this)
• Paint a fun color on the back of the door
• Different wainscoting treatment (?)
• Refinish wood floors in a darker color

 

Kitchen

Possibly some day, down the road, we’ll replace the cabinets and re-work the kitchen, since it’s not actually very functional the way it is, but for the foreseeable future, we’ll work on making it prettier and as functional as possible:

• Paint the cabinets white!
• Change out knobs and pulls
• Paint the walls
• Cut missing shelf for one lower cabinet, so we can actually use it!
• Build pull out drawers for cabinets
• Get rid of the angled corners in the doorway
• Beef up trim around doorways
• Refinish wood floors in a darker color

 

Pantry

(This isn’t even my mess – mine is much, much worse!)

• Paint walls
• Paint shelves
• Add baskets and containers to organize this mess!
• Replace door with 5-panel door

 

Family Room/Eating Nook

• Paint walls
• Change out knobs
• Beef up trim around windows and doors
• Replace light fixture in eating nook
• Tile over red brick (possibly just paint white in the short-term)
• Re-build mantel to be bigger and chunkier
• Replace carpet with hardwoods

 

Powder Room

 

• Paint walls
• Paint cabinet
• Replace knobs and drawer pulls
• Replace sink and faucet (the sink is very pretty, but it’s shallow and hard to wash your hands in!
• Replace door with a solid, 5-panel door
• Refinish wood floor

 

Dining Room

• Paint walls
• Beef up trim around doors and windows
• Replace light and ADD MORE lighting!
• Widen doorway and get rid of angled corners; possibly add transom window above (like this)
• Possibly a different wainscoting treatment (?)
• Replace carpet with hardwood

 

Piano Room

• Paint walls
• Beef up trim around doors and windows
• ADD ANY lighting!
• Replace carpet with hardwood
• Possibly a different wainscoting treatment (?)
• Possibly add built-in shelving (?)

 

Office

• Clean up this disaster area!
• Figure out a desk situation! and how to also make this a guest bedroom
• Paint
• Beef up trim around windows and doors
• Replace door with 5-panel door
• Replace carpet with hardwoods

 

Laundry Room

• Remove wallpaper border
• Paint walls
• Replace cabinets with either shelves or different cabinets
• Build folding counter over machines
• Replace flooring (possibly just with stick-on tiles – or maybe paint it!)
• Build drying rack
• Replace door with 5-panel door

 

Stairway

• Paint walls
• Replace carpet with wood treads and white risers
• Add white wainscoting to lighten up the area
• Create gallery wall
• Replace lighting with something bright and dramatic

 

Upstairs Landing (aka The Hall of Doors)

There are 6 (yes, that’s SIX) doors in this tiny landing!  It’s like something from The Ministry of Magic…or Twin Peaks!

• Paint walls
• Beef up trim around doors
• Replace bedroom and bathroom doors with 5-panel doors (possibly just paint them in the short-term)
• Remove skinny closet doors and turn them into shelves and drawers (like this)
• Replace carpet

 

Girls’ Bathroom

• Paint walls (bye bye fishies!)
• Beef up trim
• Paint cabinets
• Replace countertop (in short-term, try painting it)
• Repair broken tiles in shower
• Re-finish bathtub
• Replace flooring
• Add storage

 

Girls’ Bedrooms

• Paint walls
• Paint ceilings
• Replace carpet
• Beef up trim around windows and doors and floor
• Add crown molding
• Paint closet doors (eventually add trim to mimic 5-panel doors)
• Replace blinds

 

Master Bedroom

• Paint walls
• Replace carpet
• Beef up trim around windows and doors and floor
• Add crown molding
• Replace blinds
• Possibly build built-ins (?)

 

Master Bathroom

Short-term

• Paint walls
• Paint cabinets
• Add knobs and drawer pulls
• Fix faucets
• Beef up trim around windows and doors
• Trim out mirror (? – depending on how far out the long-term is)
• Replace door with solid, 5-panel door

Long-term

• Replace vanity with shorter one; replace counter-top and mirror
• Replace sinks and faucets
• Move toilet over to side of new, shorter vanity
• Make shower bigger, tiled, and door-less
• Replace flooring
• Re-tile bathtub surround

 

Seems like we have our work cut out for us!  Best get started!  First up: the girls’ bedrooms!

New House Tour

Welcome to our new home!  I thought I’d start with a tour of the new home before I jump into my first projects.   My husband was smart enough to snap a bunch of pictures with his camera just minutes before the movers came in with the first of the boxes and furniture.  I’m so grateful he had his head on straight that morning!

Let’s start at the front door – seems like a very good place to start…

(Note: this picture was actually taken at our inspection, so those pots and the chair belong to the previous owner.)

As you walk in, you’re greeted by a fairly large foyer and a view of the beautiful, stainless steel apron sink in the kitchen.  If the fact that the kitchen sink is the first thing you see when you enter my house isn’t enough for me to keep the dishes done, I don’t know what will be!  There’s actually a pocket door in that doorway to the kitchen, which could hide a messy view, but it’s super-heavy and (for some reason) unpainted, so I doubt it will get used much.

The kitchen is a fairly standard U-shape with a vaulted ceiling, so it feels very big when you walk in.  After living here for a month and a half, I’m not loving the functionality of the cabinets, but at least it looks pretty good.

To the left of the kitchen is a small eating nook that leads into the family room.

The nook also has a sliding door out to the back deck.

The family room has nice built-ins and a gas fireplace.  It’s a little bit smaller even than the rather small family room in our last house, so this will be a good place to practice decorating for small spaces, since it’s really the place that requires the most furniture (need a place for everyone’s butt when we’re having family movie night!).

Just opposite the eating nook is a small walk-in pantry and a powder room (wow!  this picture is really yellow…):

To the right of the kitchen is the dining room.  This room feels fairly small right now, but I think it’s actually a pretty decent size – the doorways are just small and confining.  The room itself sits above the backyard and is surrounded by trees, so when you’re sitting at the table, you feel like you’re dining in a tree house.  I love that!

Connected to the dining room – heading back towards the front of the house - is the formal living room, though in our house it’s really the piano room.  The piano fits absolutely perfectly in that front window and the room is just a little bit more workable than our last living room, which I’m really enjoying.

And from the living room, you get back to the foyer and can see the stairs leading up to the bedrooms.

The previous owners had been planning on selling this coming Spring and had been working on getting the house ready.  The had done a lot of work downstairs, but nothing upstairs yet, so the bedrooms hold lots of projects for my future.

Here’s the master bedroom.  It’s actually pretty big and can fit our treadmill (if it were to ever be set up again) AND a bed and some chairs.  I think we’ll really appreciate that.

The master bath…big but dated…but with a nice soaking tub surrounded by trees:

The two girls’ bedrooms need absolutely no work and are totally move-in ready (NOT!):

The girls also have a small bathroom upstairs that needs a fair bit of work and there is a laundry room downstairs that I can’t wait to get my hands on!  I can’t seem to find any pictures of those at the moment, though, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

That’s it (mostly – some day I’ll show you our beautiful yards too)!  Thanks for stopping by.

Next post, we’ll walk through again and make a list of all our hopes and plans for these spaces, which will, hopefully, keep me motivated and focused as I prioritize my future projects!