Whisk me away
When we got married, we were lucky enough to get all new pots and pans. You see, prior to our nuptiuals, we owned one pot, and one pan…and they weren’t in the best condition. We love to cook, so lucky for us, we were able to get some really nice non stick Calphalon cookware. The only problem with these pots and pans is that you can’t really use a wire whisk in them without scraping the bottom and ruining the nonstick surface.
So a few weeks back, we happened to be walking through Wegmans when I noticed a whisk that was made out of silicone, and specifically made for non stick pans. The only thing I didn’t see, was a price tag, but I figured it’s a whisk, at most it’s probably like $10 (and I was over estimating).
When we got to the register and checked out, I was surprised to see the price come up as it went across the scanner, $24.99…for a whisk! I should also mention that I failed to notice it was a le Creuset whisk, which if you don’t know, anything by le Creuset is ridiculously expensive.
The good news is that we’ve already used the “golden” whisk, and it is awesome with our cookware. I have about a half dozen recipes that call for whisking in the pot, and I have never done it, only used a wooden spoon…so I am excited to see if it makes a difference. For $25, it better make it amazing. And if you want amazing, you should make this. I do…unbelievable.
Read More
Another weekend with nothing done
If you are an avid reader of this blog (and I know who you are), you were probably expecting something to have been completed from this weekend. Sad news, I didn’t do anything. I should say, that isn’t without trying, I just didn’t end up accomplishing anything. We had a friend’s wedding to go to on Saturday afternoon, so most of Saturday was catching up on our other weekend tasks, and Sunday my folks came up to visit and see what we’ve done with the house.
The best news of the weekend though, was that our ceiling is FINALLY fixed. I meant to take a photo of it, but it really just looks like a white ceiling again, nothing special. And since we still don’t have furniture in the room, it’s pretty bland.
With all that said, it’s my goal this week to sit down and really figure out the next few projects. As I told my dad this weekend, the list is ever growing. On the docket so far, fix the gate and possibly make up plans to build one of the three following things:
a) build a desk from one of the doors I replaced. I’d have to cut the door down some, build a base and then stain the whole thing. All in all, it doesn’t sound too hard.
b) build shelves for the basement. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, something like this:
We saw these at Crate and Barrel last week, and really liked how the different sizes worked together. I have plenty of spare wood, I just need to draw up the plans.
c) build a dining room table. I know…what!?! I originally saw the plans over on Ana White’s website, which has plans for just about anything you can build. So what am I looking at here…see for yourself.
Here is a link to the actual plans, in case you are thinking of doing it yourself. It looks amazing, and if you compare that at the store, this would run you between $500-$1000, and the lumber costs about a total of $50, it seems to make sense to try. That all being said, I still have some work to do with the power tools, so I may just hold off on this until I do some smaller projects.
So who knows what I’ll actually do, but I know I need to fix that gate, and no project I have done yet has been a “quick” fix. What I’m saying is that it could take me all weekend. Let’s plan on that, and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t, okay?
*photo from: ana-white.com
Read MoreWhen it rains…
Lately, our area has been hit with a huge amount of rain, along with other natural disasters. We’ve had an earthquake, a hurricane and remnants of a tropical storm. Last week it rained…a lot, and the ground was so saturated that the water had no where to go, causing major road closures and a fair amount of damage. Our friends, who live about two miles from us, saw part of their road literally wash away, creating a gap about 20 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. It was an incredible sight, that I failed to take a photo of. Sorry for that.
On thursday night, MC and I left work around 5:30pm, and finally made it home a little after 9:30pm. This drive, about 20 miles, normally takes us 45 minutes, but thanks to so many road closures by our house, we had to make several detours. Once we finally made it home, I opened the fridge to grab a beverage and wind down, only to hear an odd sound, a clicking noise eminating from the fridge. Along with that noise, was an odd smell, almost like burning. I also noticed that the fan to the fridge would not kick on. Our long commute home was about to be accompanied by appliance failure. As I opened our freezer door, it was evident, everything was thawing and our fridge wasn’t working…at all.
As you can see, our fridge is nothing fancy, and in fact, is relatively new, so this latest blow (after our plumbing fiasco) was just another “when it rains, it pours” scenario. I should also mention that we had just finished a massive “freezer” shopping trip at the grocery store, so watching everything begin to thaw was rather aggravating. We packed up our cooler with everything we could, a few freeze packs, and drove over to MC’s folks place, since they live nearby and had plenty of spare freezer space. We went to bed contemplating what to do next, buy a new fridge and be out a lot of money we hadn’t planned, or call our home warranty company and see if they can get it fixed. I know, it seems like a no brainer, call the warranty company and get it fixed, but we’ve dealt with them on many occasions and it hasn’t always turned out well.
Sidebar. The reason we decided to redo our entire half bathroom was because the toilet was leaking, and we had called our warranty company to fix it. The plumber they sent out came over three times, tightened some bolts each time, and the leak continued. Fed up with paying the deducible again and again, we opted to just take care of it ourselves, hence the renovation. Also, I had to figure out and fix the oven door myself because it wasn’t covered, even though that the heat resistant glass was falling out. The reason, the oven still baked, therefore it worked. Even though it was extremely dangerous, it performed it’s basic function.
Back to our fridge. We did decide to call the warranty company, and they sent someone out the next morning. We really had no idea what was wrong with it, just that it wasn’t doing the one function of a fridge, keeping things cool. Turns out, the culprit was an auto defrost timer in our fridge, that has a 30 minute cycle so it doesn’t freeze up. The timer was stuck, and constantly defrosting, thawing everything we had, and wouldn’t run the cooling fan or compressor until the defrost cycle stopped. The smell was our fridge just defrosting constantly (it smelled like freezer burn) so a new switch was installed, and we haven’t had the problem again.
In the end, the warranty company came through, but every time something breaks (which has been more frequently lately), we’re always on the fence if we should call them or not. They don’t have the best contractors associated with them, and no one really seems to care all that much about helping, they just want to make it as basic and functional as possible.
*I would like to note that the weather caused a mass amount of damage to homes, and we were lucky to escape that. I am not at all comparing our situation to those that endured massive damage, I am only making a relative story that when one thing goes wrong, it seems that more things follow.
Read MoreThe Hall of Music
News flash, I used to be in a band. Actually, I used to be in many bands, for a very long time. It was a good time, full of lots of memories and ridiculous stories. Anyway, I have since stopped playing in bands for many MANY reasons, but mostly because I got older and my body, along with my sleep cycle, won’t allow it anymore.
All that being said, I have always been a sentimental fool when it comes to my old bands. I have kept nearly every set list, every photo, every video and any other random piece of memorabilia that existed. So, I wanted to incorporate this into our house somewhere, but hadn’t quite found the right spot…until now.
We have slowly made our basement family room into more of a hangout spot, full of fun and quirky things. There’s the Monopoly posters, a ceramic Redskin player that my mom painted in the 70′s, and now the music wall.
I like walking past this everyday, it makes me smile. Maybe it’s the memories, or maybe it’s the all to real bobble-head that MC had made for me last year. Plus, this gives me easy access to my bass, when I do feel the need to play and run through an old set list, if I can remember how the songs went.
I’ll go through the old archives over the next few months and see what I dig up, and what will be added to the wall. Chances are I’ll put up an old set list, a Ticketmaster ticket that had our band’s name on it and some photos. Good thing the wall isn’t that big, or else it would be cluttered with a lot of that stuff. This will probably be an evolving wall, full of randomness. Here’s another shot, right before we put up the bobble-head.
Read More
So what’s next?
Since we finished the bathroom, and that project monopolized the blog for the past month or two, the question is now “What’s Next?” To start, today I decided to make a few changes/additions to the webpage that I hope you enjoy.
First, if you look at the top menu, you’ll notice it looks a little different. You can now learn a little more about us (woot woot), select blog posts based on rooms, contact us easier and best of all, take the house tour! The house tour isn’t overly comprehensive, but at least it will give you some nice before/after shots based on the various posts I’ve done so far. Anyway, give it a walk through, and imagine me pointing at things as you read it. It will save me the trouble of actually doing it in real life.
As for actual projects, we’ve talked about a few small ones that will hold us over for a little bit, at least until the hole in our ceiling is taken care of. One thing we’ve begun to work on is to replace a closet door in the basement to match the rest of the 6-panel look that’s going on down there.
It’s funny, because even in the picture, you can tell the door is a different shade than the bi-fold doors. So, we’ll paint a new door and replace the boring one that is there now. Another project that we’ve been discussing is replacing the ceiling fan in the kitchen with something like a drum pendant shade.
We never use this fan, or the light because it’s way too harsh. Something subtle and colorful would be fun, and shouldn’t be too difficult to change out. I say that now, but nothing is ever as easy as it sounds. This is kind of what we are thinking for the area.
We’ll see. You can see more of the ideas we have for this here on Pinterest. Of course, we still want to work on some of the other rooms in the house, like the guest bedroom, the guest bathroom and our other spare bedroom. We’re just not 100% sure what we want to do with any of them just yet, so we’re playing around with ideas.
As far as exactly what the next project will be though, I have a good feeling exactly what it will be, and unfortunately I don’t have a photo to share. I want to fix the gate to our backyard, because it’s becoming nearly impossible to get open. My guess is that the gate has just sagged over time, and gets caught up on the ground. I haven’t snapped a photo because it’s been raining here for many days, and it wouldn’t be a very pretty photo. So, in hoping that the rain decides to finally subside this weekend, chances are that’s what I’ll be doing, that is until 1pm on Sunday, when the NFL season kicks off. Then I’ll be on my couch, with a beer, watching football.
Read More
About Matt and MC
We just recently bought our first home, and we decided to share our story of our adventures with you. The ups and downs of home ownership, and all the fun we'll have in between. Ignore the typos and just have fun, that's what we're here for. 
