It's Been a Long Time

Well I was in China for 2 weeks and didn't do much in the way of the house before that. All our time is taken up with trying to prevent all the trees and new plants from dying in the drought that's affecting Houston!
But I'm back and recovered from the jet lag and it actually rained yesterday, so we are back in business. My next project will be roman shades for my sewing room. I bought some really pretty off-white linen at Joann Fabrics (the horror and it's not even upholstery fabric!). I just spent 2034983290 hours trying to find this inspiration picture on another blog. I love, love, love these pleats and how the shades hang!!!!! I'm not going to line the curtains, since I'll be using sheers and the windows don't get direct sun (oh wait one does, but who cares I'm still not going to line them). That way the fabric should be a whole lot drapier.

More Photos

Last night I sealed the picnic table we got at Lowe's. You know, in case it ever rains again. Oh but MAN it's the start of hurricane season. GROSS and I even saw the weather man drawing those little lines across Florida and into the gulf and into Houston for some depression in the Atlantic. BLAGH.

Also, here are some updated garden photos! I've got a few tomatoes, but I'm really excited about the birdhouse gourd vine.

Hopefully this will be covered in gourds soon!

Here's a picture of the roof repairs, in progress. As well as the old metal windows to be installed (and Emmit).
And here are some more yard pictures. A cute 1920 cement donkey and cart that we got from Dave's grandmother's house and the Adirondack chairs. I can't tell if they ever dried of it enough dirt and dust blew onto the sticky surface that it sort of sealed them.

Memorial Weekend

Well I took most of my photos near the end of the day and since I don't like to use the flash, they are all a bit dark and dismal. Oh well. This weekend, I finally completed one section of the kitchen! And got started on a second section. Hoorah!
This is the closest I have to a "before" shot. We removed the upper cabinets, that's what my husband is doing in this photo.

And then the new section I started! Before (gross so dirty, this is before we moved in):

During:

It takes so long in between coats of paint and especially to let one side of the cabinets cure before you flip and do the other, I also worked on installing the crown molding in the foyer.

 Crown molding is actually really easy to install. Especially with those corner pieces that allow you to make straight cuts instead of mitering the corners. You put the crown molding up, it looks like crap because there are gaps everywhere. Then the magic of CAULK makes everything look beautiful.

Please notice we still are using temporary shades. Booo! Hopefully the windows we'll be trimmed out soon and I can make real curtains for these windows. My husband spent the weekend continuing to work on the studio. He patched the foundation and is working on replacing the roof joists to fix this:

It is going to be so nice when the roof is finally repaired. The major eyesore of the house will be history.

Grill Cover

Last night I rather quickly put a coat of paint on the kitchen cabinet section I'm working on. So I had time to move onto a REALLY important project. Redoing our grill cover. It was so ugly before:

So I bought a cheap vinyl tablecloth (turns out it may indeed be too cheap and not hold up paste one hot Houston summer, but we will see). And added a top layer to the grill cover.

I cut out the circle top first and then sewed on the skirt. Et voila! Much cuter.

But, as I mentioned, the tablecloth was cheap and already ripped a bit while sewing. I may have to upgrade to outdoor canvas. I have plans to redo the cover for our smoker as well. Which is ripped and REALLY ugly! And I'm so mad because it was rather pricey at like $30. It's peeking out from behind the new grill cover.

Painting Progress?

The kitchen painting is slow going. I'm not ready to just destroy the kitchen and take off all the doors at once. I'm moving at a snails pace, tackling one section at a time. Each door/drawer needs some repair work and then with the coats of primer and top coat and the curing time, it's just slow going. I started priming the base of the peninsula this weekend using the odorless kilz oil base primer that I bought.

I also painted the interior of our hall closet. Here it is with our mail slot propped open to let air circulate.

 

Here's are funky mail slot. It's nice because when we go on vacation we don't have to worry about stopping the mail. Of course most of the mail doesn't make it into said slot and just falls on the floor of the closet. Maybe I'll fashion some sort of cover/lid?

I also have big plans to put in more shelves on the bottom of the closet for shoes and misc sporting equipment. Something real Martha Stewarty, maybe like this:

I definitely want some of those really long hooks on the door to hold bags.

In other news, my husband continues to work on the studio renovations. He found out you can make 4 trips to the dump. (If they actually record you've gone. If no one cares to mark it down, you can go even more often.) That's been really helpful because getting a dumpster is expensive (like $800) and can raise red flags for roving city inspectors. And the bagster is really a waste of money.
Here are some pictures of the gutted space:

Oh and remember the outside? Here it is and my vision for the renovated exterior (minus the concrete slab). We have some of those cool old windows which my husband plans to install on the studio, so this is totally achievable.

"Guest House"

So the main draw of our new house was the guest house, which was in such a state of disrepair that it wasn't even considered to be there for the appraisal and all that gunk. There had been a water leak that went undetected for some time, causing all the drywall to be covered with mold.

 It was also filled with junk!

 Lovely hole in the ceiling.

 Gross kitchen

 And then the death blow was a tree felled by Hurricane Ike which smashed part of the roof. The old owners had to be totally SKETCHY because they had a mortgage, which means they had to have insurance, which would have covered the damaged. I guess the took the money and RAN.

Anyways, my husband is going to refashion it into a sculpture studio/wood shop. So he's gutted the interior and is now working on repairing all of the damage.

West U Home Tour

Yesterday a friend and I went on the West U Home Tour. It was so much fun; although, a little hot out and exhausting towards the end. I couldn't have looked at another rich person's house :)

The uniformity of everyone's homes (save Sally Wheat's) was a little weird. Everyone had seagrass rugs and either a cowhide or zebra hide. And nearly everything was bathed in beige. But I was super excited to see my dream kitchen in person (as well as at least 2 other light gray kitchens). I was also super excited to see a few bathrooms with the same marble mosaic floor.

Here's an in progress shot from the bathroom we had redone before we moved in.

And I FINALLY started the kitchen painting. It's a little daunting knowing I have over 40 doors and drawers to paint, as well as all the surrounding woodwork. Instead of priming everything and then painting, I plan to move in stages and finish one area before moving on. I started with 6 drawers.

This is just the primer coat and wow the kitchen is going to be so much lighter once all that wood tone is gone! I'll start color coat either tonight or tomorrow. Then once it's all dry, install the new drawer pulls and pick the next area to move onto. See the orange plastic gloves and bottle of spray bleach barely visible on the left side of the photo. When I removed all the drawers it was so gross behind there I nearly died. All this old paper from the previous owners and evidence of bugs. BLAGH. I put on the gloves, threw everything away, bleached the crap out of it recess.