Sari closets

Well, it's been a while...and I'm afraid I only have crappy pictures to show for it. Would you believe we've lost our camera again? I think it's the only casualty of our move but still, no camera. So we're back to old iphone pics for the time being.

Anyway, I finally got around to the kids' closet doors. Except that they're not doors at all! Our house came with your standard sliding closet doors, which I'm not a huge fan of. They never slide as well as I think they ought, and they're pretty boring to boot. So I asked Liel if she wanted to use one of the saris she bought in Bangalore for her closet, and she was quite enthusiastic. The down side was that the sari she wanted to use is a very slippery synthetic silk, something which is far beyond my ability to control and sew into curtains for the closet. Luckily my friend Heidi came to my rescue and suggested I buy some curtain rings with clips on them and just clip the fabric up. Done!

Here's Liel's closet now:

She's quite pleased with is, and so am I.

Now, as it happens, when I first started thinking of ways to use saris in my house a few months ago, my friend Laura said she had a sari she'd had made into curtains, and that she didn't have any place for them and I could use them at my house. I'd thought to use them as actual curtains, but the placement of heat/AC vents in our bedrooms means that long curtains are probably out (side note: I have no idea what length of curtain, other than long, might look good. Suggestions, please!). But as I was laying out the fabric for Liel's curtains, Zion saw the already made ones from Laura and commented on how pretty they were. And I thought, "Hey, those would be perfect for Zion's closet! Stupid gender stereotypes, keeping me from thinking that up in the first place!"

So I hung the other sari in Zion's room for closet curtains, and they look fabulous. They're blue, and match the blue tones in his room really well.

They also match his legos and shoes all over the floor too, don't you think? :)

So there's the latest on the house! More curtain posts to come, as I sort out bedroom curtains for all of us, plus curtains for the sunroom. We threw out the 70s era blinds the sunroom came with, and in the summer I prefer the windows bare. But I think curtains will be nice in the winter, and probably help keep the room warmer, too.

House in progress

We've been living in the House Without Warning for nearly 3 weeks now! And we love, love, love it, even though we haven't unpacked everything, and still have piles of crap laying around, as you'll see.

Earlier this week we had an ailing pine tree and many an evergreen bush removed from the front yard, which got us one step closer to our master plan for growing. I also ordered blueberry bushes for the front of the house! Since then my dad and I have spent some time brainstorming how we might be arrange fruit trees and build an enclosed garden (deer, deer, everywhere!) without, um, bringing down the tone of the block. So to speak. I guess chicken wire in the front yard isn't hip these days.

At any rate, here are some pics now that we're 3 weeks in. None of the basement and basically none of the backyard. More eventually, I'm sure! Probably even better ones ;)

Ok, here's the newly bare front of the house. Re-painting the shutters, garage door diamonds, and front door (not shown here, because of the storm door in front) is on my to-do list as well, as soon as I choose a color or two.

Kitchen.

 Pantry!

More kitchen. Sadly small oven. Someday we might take out the oven and the range, and put an entire stove where the range is, and fill in the oven space with more cabinets. The cabinets are a rather boring color, but they are solid wood! Also, the counter desperately needs replacing (it's partially held on with TAPE), but now we're wondering if we shouldn't wait til we sort out our oven/stove issue first, since that would change the size of counter we need.

Kitchen table, covered in crap. And also flowers a lovely friend brought over.

Dining room, entering from kitchen, looking towards living room. Awesome room divider view 1.

Dining room as seen from living room. Plenty of crap on this table too.

Living room. Awesome room divider view 2.

Hall. That's our room at the end. The doors on the right are bathroom, linen closet, and extra closet (there's a whole 'nother coat closet!).

Zion's room. Obviously.

Our room. The door is to our half bath.

The closet. Because seeing our slightly organized clothes is a treat!

Liel's room. Far messier than usual. I pointed this out and she sighed and said in a put out voice, "I know, mommy. It's just hard! And I'm being kind of lazy."

Sunroom, with deck out the window.

Sunroom with backyard out the window.

Sunroom with more backyard.

And more backyard.

So, there you have it! At least for the moment :)

Pictures!

Our niece, Hayley, came to visit us in August. She is completely fabulous, and we had a great time with her! And what's more, she took family pictures for us, something we had neglected to do for, oh, 7 years. Last night we sorted through them and came up with our top contenders for prints. But there are too many, especially of me and Robert. It was much easier to narrow down the choices for the kids and whole family ones, because Zion tends to have sleepy eyes in pictures, and Liel hasn't learned to smile naturally on command (instead she does what Robert calls her "pirate grimace"). So honestly for those categories we pretty much went with the ones where most of the subjects looked halfway decent.

But, as I said, too many of me and Robert! Help us narrow it down :) What are you top 2 from among these?

(Don't my tattoos look amazing in black and white??)

Actually I have a few too many choices for pics of Zion and Liel, too. Thoughts?

Edit: for my mom...here are the other pics (so far) that are our favorites.

House updates

Today Robert and I spent the day working in the sunroom at the new house (which we have named "The House Without Warning").

When we bought THWW the sunroom had this sort of pinkish/reddish industrial carpet with flecks of blue, yellow, green and red sprinkled throughout. It wasn't terribly attractive. And worse, it smelled awful. It smelled so awful, in fact, that after we'd bought THWW and it was too late I started to fear we'd never be able to get the smell out.

Our first step was removing the carpet. That revealed an ancient underlay with what appear to be cat urine stains. We removed the underlay (which, incidentally, gave Robert a rash from carrying it out), and discovered that the cat piss had in fact soaked through not just the carpet, but also the underlay and into the plywood subfloor.

Oy. Also visible in these pictures is the original wood paneling on the walls. I point this out because I a little bit regret not taking a picture of the carpet when it was in. Our "before" pictures are rather lacking.

At this point we didn't even know what we were going to do for a floor in the sunroom, but we obviously had to do something about the subfloor. We considered just sealing it all with something that would allegedly seal in the smell, which, in the absence of the carpet and underlay, was much fainter. But in the end we decided we couldn't risk that. I'm a super sniffer, and damn do I hate cat pee!

So we bravely began removing the subfloor. And we went to Home Depot and bought more plywood. Like big kids!

Happily, we discovered that the cat pee hadn't soaked all the way through the subfloor. Puzzlingly, we discovered that there was a subfloor under the subfloor. We briefly considered just removing the top layer of subfloor and calling it a day (and I must admit I was a fan of this seemingly easier approach) but our friend Stan, who was a carpenter for many years, advised against it. And since we're total home improvement greenhorns, we take the advice of those more knowledgeable than we pretty seriously.

So we prepared to lay a new top subfloor.

Bonus: in this picture you can see how the wood paneling is now covered in primer! You can also see the blinds that we aren't keeping.

It took a few more trips to Home Depot, but by 11am this morning we had the new top subfloor installed, and were ready to start putting down actual floor. At this point my enthusiasm for more floor work was so keen that I suggested we just coat the plywood in deck paint and call it a day.

But instead we pressed onward, and by 5pm our sunroom floor looked like this:

Not too bad, huh? Of course when we got home we pretty much collapsed, but rest assured that tomorrow we'll be back at it. Except that the "it" in this case is packing, because this is what our living room in our current house looks like.

Sadly, the rest of the house is far less boxy, and needs to straighten up, fly right, and start resembling the living room. Wish us luck!

Oh, August.

This month has been insane. Some of the insanity has been fantastic, some of it...less so.

On the fantastic side: we bought a house! I'm super excited about it. It's on 1/2 acre, it has a lovely sunroom, 3 bedrooms, and some fantastic period details (it's a mid-century modern ranch).

In the mixed bag file we have the fact that the house needed some work. Nothing major, but hardwood floors needed to be refinished, entire house needed paint...those are nearly done, and very nicely too.

In the slightly stressful file are the things that remain undone: the floors in the sunroom need replacing (we've torn out the carpet and pad, and found that the plywood subfloor had cat urine damage. We've removed 1/2 of the damaged plywood, but the other half remains, and of course we haven't put down new plywood yet, nor the floor. Hell, we haven't bought the floor), the counters in the kitchen need replacing (not sure yet how that'll get done, it's well beyond our capability), both bathroom sinks need parts replaced, and we have packed about 1/8th of our possessions and the move day is Friday.

Quite honestly, I have no idea how this is all going to get done. And that's somewhat terrifying.

Additionally, I need to finish converting my syllabuses to the new class timeframe. And our car needs its annual inspection. That's this week too! Furthermore, I've got a bit of knitting work that needs done (contract and gift work, so there's a timeline), and Zion has been having some health problems, which (it appears) are going to require a fair bit of time and brainpower to unravel.

I just...yeah. I don't like to use the blog to complain, so I'll try not to! And with a bit of luck a lot of this will be cleared up in a week or so. Please say a prayer for me/send me good energy/come help me pack!