Matt turns the big three oh! (And we get new floors!)

I had wanted to throw a party for Matt but he was against celebrating him turning 30. Not so much he doesn't want to turn 30... but rather he thinks it's not that big of a deal and definitely doesn't want to draw attention to himself. (oh, how differently we feel about birthdays!) So following his wishes I didn't plan anything. Looking back now, I'm so glad we didn't -- Matt's birthday weekend ended up being a bit of a mess. First neither of us were feeling well -- Matt was sick last week and then I was sick over the weekend. It was a headache / sinus pressure / congestion type of sick and we pretty much both just felt miserable.

But the other reason why it was a mess is because my birthday present was finally set to be installed on Matt's birthday. That's right - the year long hunt for new floors is finally over! I had been slowly working on clearing out the office to make way for the nursery, but last weekend (9th-10th) we really focused on emptying it out. Then during the week and throughout the weekend, we cleared EVERYTHING out of the main floor and moved it to the lower level or garage. Saturday night we had almost everything moved and went out to Flying Mango to celebrate Matt's bday with his parents, my parents and the siblings. (Just thinking about Flying Mango now makes my mouth water - so good!)

  

Happy 30th Birthday Matt!



On Sunday my parents came over and helped. Matt and my dad ripped up all the carpet (family room, hallway, 2 bedrooms) and pulled up 2 layers of linoleum in the kitchen. Apparently best practice says that you should pull up linoleum before placing down a new layer, but the last homeowners bucked the trend. So unfortunately for the boys they had an extra layer to scrap off, but fortunately for me, it was fun to see what the original floors looked like!



Original floors

I tried to capture a few pictures of all the craziness that was going on, but the pictures don't really seem to caputre how chaotic or messy it really felt. Maybe being 7 months pregnant just made it feel more chaotic and messy in the moment.


Garage -- plywood to go under the new floors, the pile of old carpet, temporary storage for our furniture



 

our "master" bedroom



empty nursery



A glimpse at the chaos in the basement



Oh - I forgot to mention... we decided to paint all the doors and door frames white. Matt took all the doors off their frames and applied 2 coats of primer to them and to the door frames. Then when my dad was there on Sunday he helped apply the glossy white top coat. In case you're curious, in the hallway we have 2 closet doors, a bathroom door and 2 bedroom doors and then there is an accordian door in each bedroom --- so 7 doors in total.



Dad applying the glossy white coat

Despite the craziness, we were able to get everything done prior to Matt's 30th birthday when the installation guys showed up! Matt spent his birthday supervising the crew, putting his feet up and keeping Gable calm. We found out from the install crew that the bedrooms aren't level and would either require a contractor to come in and level them before they could put in the pergo floors, or we could put in carpet instead. So when I got home from work, we went out to dinner in Ames at Old Main Brewery and then picked out new carpet. It's amazing to me what a deadline can do - It took us a LOOOONG time to pick laminate flooring that we liked, but because we HAD to make a decision right away about the carpet, we were able to pick one in an hour. haha!

Here's what we selected -- Very curious as to how it will look when we see more than 3 inches

It's still feels chaotic in the house since the bedrooms are awaiting carpet and we're sleeping in the basement. It's also super dusty because the bedrooms just have floor boards and every morning I track dirt/dust from that room (need to get to the closet) into the hallway which spreads throughout. Plus they made some of the flooring cuts in the house so there's pergo sawdust still lingering. Matt still needs to install the base boards but without futher ado... here are the new floors!!!  

Blackberry Wine

Sounds delicious, right? Well, actually it looks delicious! It's the color that we picked out to paint the front door. As you can see here I was definitely leaning towards the purple family. Turquoise, blue, or green all would have been fun too and they really would have popped, but we (Matt) didn't want the door to completely stand out and be obnoxious. I think Blackberry Wine was a great choice for us - enough interest to make the door feel more like home but not enough crazy to scare off the neighbors (or Matt).

So here's our before....

And now the after...

It's not perfect but it's way better and looks much more like us! Now time to create an autumn wreath!

Front Door Appeal

While I did just add some fun hawkeye bling to the house, the curb appeal of our house is kinda lacking. Maybe that's not a fair statement, the previous owners put a lot of time and effort into the landscaping in our front yard. And that landscaping looked great... and still does look nice (not as good as when they did it, but we haven't completely ruined it). But the reason why I think our house could improve on curb appeal is because of the shape and color of our house. So what makes the house weird?

• Split level with the upper floor hanging out over the bottom floor
• Door is tucked into the corner between the garage and the stairway and isn't symmetrical
• Our siding is metal
• The colors are brown and cream
• Front door is oak with gold trim around the glass design

Our house in the winter (after putting in the offer, before getting the keys)

The only thing I feel that I can change is the door. I'd love to buy a new door. I grew up always having a screen door plus the entry door. I like how that allows for a cross breeze through the house and being able to keep the front door open with the screen door closed, makes me feel like our house is more open and welcoming. Matt, on the other hand, grew up with a single front door and I haven't been able to convince him that we should get a screen door. 

So the next best thing to a new door, is a newly painted door. But what color? Right now, I'm leaning towards purple. It's not too bright to completely stand out but it would still be fun and unique. Or blue. My parents new house has a blue door and I love it (they hate it - no screen door). Yellow would look gross with  our house colors. Red might look ok but since we're so close to ISU I don't want to go with red. Here are a few purple doors I've "pinned" recently. 

traditional entry design

And some blue ones...

So, now I just need to convince Matt that painting the door is a good idea. :) 

My adventure with a circular saw

When we moved into our house 15 months ago, this is what our mailbox looked like...

Not really my style but cute. The reason the previous owner painted it was because it used to have an ISU wrapper around it. So this is MUCH better than an ISU themed mailbox. They actually gave the wrapper to the neighbors and I think it pulled off some of the paint when they took it off so she created this to fix it. So for the last 15 months here's the full view of mailboxes in front of our house...

A couple months after we moved in, Matt went to a home improvement store and bought this new mailbox. It's just a plain black replacement.

This box sat unopened in our garage for a year. I know, ridiculous. We bought it towards the end of the summer, then Matt got busy with work in the fall and then the snow came along. By the spring, I think Matt had completely forgotten this was still in the garage. Last month, after a long walk with Gable, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Gable was in his kennel napping and I thought it wouldn't take long to replace the mailbox. 

I didn't have any problems taking off the flower garden mailbox but the board I found underneath was a mess. 

 Yikes! Luckily Matt had some extra wood in the garage from a little building project of his own in his work truck. The only thing standing between me and my new mailbox was a circular saw. I needed to cut down the plywood so it would fit inside the mailbox. Then I could screw the plywood onto the stand and then screw the 

mailbox onto plywood. I was super nervous using the circular saw by myself but I'd used one before, it had just been awhile. I don't have any pictures of me using the saw because Matt was at work and there was no way I could stage that picture and feel safe about it. My first attempt was a little off... huge bummer. My wood was a half inch too long. My next cut was super tricky but I got it trimmed down with all my extremities in tact. yay! 

I added the tigerhawk decal after I got mailbox mounted. Doesn't it look fantastic! Way better than the ISU one next to it. Plus it's pretty fun to know that I replaced it myself... and got to use a circular saw. 

With Hawkeye football kicking off yesterday, I added a few other Hawkeye details earlier last week too. 

 I bought this at the craft fair at Huxley's PrairieFest last weekend. I carried this heavy cement piece home 7 blocks, with Gable also on a leash. I was pretty sure, he'd see something intriguing and take off, jerking the leash outta my hand and causing me to drop this. But luckily he didn't and we made it home in one piece.  Here's a close up..

And I also put out our GIANT flag that I bought last fall.  

Let the IOWA / ISU rivalry week begin!

Basement Update

When we bought our house last year, this is what our basement looked like (old homeowner's furniture and all):

I knew the ugly paneling in the basement would have to go -- or at least it needed to disappear. Interestingly, Matt actually liked the wood paneling. He thought was appropriate for a man cave - made it feel rustic and cabin-like. Really? Gross. Plus the drop ceiling did not help the look at all.

I am actually all about this space becoming a Man Cave. You know, one with an awesome bar, giant tv, pool table and a cozy fireplace?!?! Unfortunately, all that coolness would require a bit of cash. Plus the one thing we had going for us in the basement, our wood-burning stove, was inspected back in December and we found out it we probably should replace it. Bummer.

We knew replacing the stove wasn't something we wanted to tackle yet, so the Man Cave dream was put on hold and we moved on to plan B. So, off to Home Depot I went for some oil-based primer, a.k.a. the smelliest paint available. We had actually already tried to use some oil-based primer in the downstairs bathroom for trim but it was soooo smelly that I couldn't finish the job. (I did put a coat of white latex paint over this section though, just didn't prime and paint all the trim in that room.)

Basement bathroom

But despite the smell, I knew painting was the best option to get rid of the ugly brown wood. Taking off the paneling was ruled out because we think the house was constructed with the paneling so there might not be drywall behind it. Dry walling was not a project we wanted to tackle! So what did I do to get rid of the smell?

Onions. I researched online and a couple people mentioned placing an onion in a bowl with a little bit of water. When you leave the onion out overnight in the room that you paint, the onion soaks up all the stinky oil-based primer smell. And guess what?!?! It worked! Matt thought it made our whole house smell a bit onion-y, but i'll take that smell any day over the terrible primer smell. Thankfully we only had to put one coat of primer on.

This was definitely a team project. I kicked it off by doing a lot of the priming while Matt was working one Saturday. But since we had to prime and paint (x2) the paneling plus paint (x2) the walls, there was plenty of work left for us to do together.

We decided to go with grey for the walls. Our house is a split-level so the basement actually gets a lot of sunlight since it's only halfway underground. We thought the combo of grey and white would make the basement look more modern, fresh and clean. And the natural light would help the basement not look too dark with the grey on the walls.

One of the gross-est parts of the project was finding spider nests under the baseboards in the cracks between the panels. I didn't actually find any spiders, just their webs but ewwww. We got some super-powered bug spray so hopefully they will stay away. I didn't snap a picture of them, instead you get one of me priming and painting the baseboards in the garage.  

Good thing Matt got those saw horses for Christmas. :)

And here's the finished paint job! Doesn't it look so classy. I was extremely proud of our work when we finished.

We let the paint dry and the room air out for a couple days before we moved the furniture down. Then we waited a couple more days because we had to wanted to wait for our new living room furniture to arrive before we moved the sofa and loveseat downstairs. Here's what the basement looks like now.

I don't think the room looks as nice and classy with the furniture in it. But we weren't going to buy two new furniture sets so the basement gets the leftovers. I do think it looks way better with white and grey walls than the ugly brown paneling and white walls. And I think I'm going to go on the hunt for new pillows. Here's a view from another angle.

 Yes, getting a more appropriately sized tv for the basement is on my list of wants. And on my list of to do's is to hang up some art on the walls. We bought a set of 3 8x10 frames from Ikea that I think will look good but we just need to figure out what pictures we want to put in the frames.

And we need to return the mounted pheasant back to it's spot in the corner. For the amount that Matt paid to get that little guy mounted, we should be displaying it instead of accidentally hiding back behind the stove. 

And I need to reorganize the other items in that area too. I'm a pretty big fan of the chest - I bought it for Matt at a Pheasant Forever auction that he took me to. (If he's going to make me go to a PF banquet, then I'm going to drink. And once I've got a few drinks in me, then I might as well have a little fun by winning him his bday gift. I had no idea that you get such an adrenaline rush when bidding in an auction.)

Also, from these pics it looks like we only put up one set of the blinds. I better go double check on that, since I'm pretty sure Matt bought a set for both sets of windows. 

If you're still reading this, I'm impressed! This was a super long post (which is why it's taken me so long to actually get this written and posted) and the project took awhile to come together too. But it definitely looks 50 times better! And I've actually used this room since we made all the changes, whereas I never used the basement before the paint job. 

So a quick before, during and after....

Before

During

After