Anniversary…last week
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we have owned our house for a full year, and I can’t believe I forgot to celebrate it on the blog! Whoops! Well, last week was not only valentines day, but the following day was our one year anniversary of the house. How fun! In reality, we didn’t move into the house until April, but on February 15th last year, we signed the papers, went to Home Depot and bought paint supplies and began to make our house our home. So, let’s take a quick look back at what we accomplished in the first year of home ownership, shall we:
The very first room we tackled when we bought the house was our bedroom. We had already picked the paint color (since we had painted our old apartment bedroom this color) and figured it would be nice to have finished a room to relax in. So it was a lot of hole patching and painting to get rid of the yellow walls, but in the end, it was a huge difference.
If that awesome yellow wasn’t enough, it was in the bathroom too. So, while we didn’t do much in there, we did paint the heck out of that too.
We then took to transforming the living room/dining room area as we ripped out the old laminate floor, (hired someone) to put in new hardwood, took down a wall, added new lights, painted, built TWO tables and got all new furniture. We also had a leak that ruined our ceiling, but luckily got that fixed. Again, such a big change.
The last bit we did before actually moving into the house was the kitchen, which in retrospect, we probably should have done first. We were waiting for paint to dry the day we moved in, so it was a bit dicey at first, but here’s what we did. We ran the hardwood through to the kitchen, painted the cabinets, added recessed lighting, fixed some appliances, removed the wallpaper and the textured paint and painted the walls and ceiling. Can you see a difference?
Finally we moved in, and kept working away. We tackled the basement by adding a mantle to the fireplace, painting, building a workbench for the work room, put in some shelves and a pub table, and plopped down and watched some tv…finally.
With the help of some awesome friends, next on the list was to redo the little (disgusting) half bathroom on the first floor. This was a big undertaking for such a small room. We ripped out the vanity and mirror, tiled the floor, put in a new toilet, painted, added a pedestal sink and a new door.
Those were the MAJOR projects we did in the first year, of course I am leaving out many many details but hey, if you read the blog frequently, you already know all that. If you don’t, then do yourself a favor and go back and read some. Extra points if you find my typos, there is at least one in each post (I’m guessing). We have big plans for year two, as I’ve said numerous times on here, but we’ve already begun working on some of the other rooms. The year two summary will hopefully be more fun, and a bit more interesting. All in due time 
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Add us to your home screen
I know I know, there haven’t bee many updates as of late, but I promise I am going to Lowe’s this weekend to pick up a few things for some small projects around the house. Then after that, HOPEFULLY I’ll get some new projects, and be able to keep up with the blog a bit more. I do promise that as soon as the spring rolls around, this blog will be busy with stuff again. You can hold me to that.
In the meantime, however, if you enjoy the blog and you have an ipad/ipod/ereader, you can add us to your home screen. For ipad/ipod users, goto our webpage through your browser, then select add to home screen.
Once you do that, you’ll get a fun little icon on your home screen, and with one simple touch, you can visit our blog! Exciting, I know, but if you’re like me, you like to make things easy, so I’ve made reading our blog even easier. You’re welcome!
New blog posts coming next week, with more fun home improvement, even if it’s the little things
Productivity
This past weekend seemed to be pretty productive for us, even if most of it was just cleaning or planning out ideas for down the line. I guess most see winter as a time to work indoors, and while normally I’d agree with you, I find it to be more difficult. The main reason is that I would normally begin working on a project during the week, trying to get everything prepped so that when the weekend rolled around, I had everything ready and could really knock out what we had planned. In the winter, however, it becomes more difficult because by the time I get home from work, the sun has already gone down and for whatever reason, I feel the need to plop down and relax. That could be because one of the main things I want to focus on lately involves electrical work, and the last time I tried to do this when the sun was going down, it was very difficult. So I do apologize to the avid readers looking for new content, that we’ve been a bit slacking on that. Hopefully that changes soon.
With that said, we did get some work done this weekend, which also happens to correspond with me losing my camera (I found it last night). The big thing we got done was to get rid of a television that was just sitting in our spare room. It was an older tv, that probably weighed around 100 pounds, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Luckily for us, some friends had told us about a monthly recycling program offered to county residents, and it was free. We joined forces and recycled their television as well, which for some reason weighed about 150 pounds more than ours. We hauled both tvs in the element to the recycling center, where we profusely apologized to the gentlemen hauling out the tvs. Strong men, we felt bad, but they had fun with it, seriously. That frees up an enormous amount of space in the spare room, and hopefully I can empty out some of the other things just lying around. It has slowly become a force of its own in there, quite scary.
Also in finishing up our productivity were our taxes. I love doing taxes, I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I never owe and so it’s nice to think of receiving free money (when in reality, it’s far from free). Anyway, I like getting our taxes done early, as to not wait until the mad rush of people trying to get them done at the last-minute. Hopefully that also opens the door to get some new work done on the house. I’ve got plans people, I swear I have plans.
We also made it back to my hometown this weekend to pick up some tools for the folks, as well as make plans down the road. What I really want to do is pick my dad’s brain and have him help me build some night stands for our bedroom. He has a table saw, which I’ve never used, as well as a whole lot of knowledge stored in that noggin of his, so I’m really REALLY looking forward to that. I hope to do an entire week of blogs to that once we get started. Should be fun.
So, I’m sorry we haven’t updated in quite a while, but there is a lot of work coming, that I promise. If only building stuff and blogging was our full-time job, you’d have so much more to read. Stay tuned, more is coming…soon.
Read MoreResolutions and ideas for 2012
I’m a few days late, but that’s okay (being prompt wasn’t a resolution). It’s that time of year where everyone makes bold resolutions and comes up with ideas and accomplishments for the following year. Since it’s starting to get a bit colder outside, I won’t be doing any woodworking over the next few months, at least, not until spring. So I’ll need something to blog about, right? Well, here are a few (of the many) things on my list for 2012.
1 . Paint – We still have at least three rooms upstairs (both guest rooms and a bathroom) that need a new coat of paint. Our main guest room will be pretty easy once we decide on a color. The other, smaller bedroom will take a bit more effort because of the “awesome” blue trim that goes all along the base of the room.
2. Another bathroom remodel (maybe) – As mentioned above, we have a bathroom that needs a coat of paint. Okay, it needs a lot more than that, but as I learned while renovating a half bath, I hate doing bathrooms. That being said, we need to do something with this bathroom, because it is a true eye sore.
3. Replace the kitchen ceiling fan – I’ve blogged about this briefly, but it has to go. Now that we’ve done so much work on the first floor of the house, this (along with the ugly “boob” lights) are all that remain. So, it’s time to bite the bullet and get rid of this thing. 
4. Build more stuff – Once spring time hits, I’ll hopefully be outside building more furniture. On the list of things to build are side tables for the living room, nightstands for our bedroom and potentially a farmhouse bedframe for the guest room. Yeah, we want our guest to be sleeping in style.
*image courtesy of Ana-white.com
5. Landscaping – This is a tough one, because neither of us have a green thumb. The yard, as small as it is, isn’t too bad, but there are a few areas that could use a little love. Mainly, we have a tree in our backyard that is sectioned off with small old tree stumps. Those tree stumps now have grown a mushroom like mold and they don’t look that great. It’s time to ditch those and come up with a long term plan that is functional and looks nice. Oh, and mulch…boy do we need mulch.
6. Blog maintenance - This one is a doozy because it’s all background work that you’ll probably not even notice, that is, unless you are like my mom who can’t see any of the photos I post because flickr is blocked at her work. Lame. So, in order to remedy that, I will hopefully migrate all the photos onto this site directly, and then everyone should be able to see them super easy, and it should also help with page load times. Again, it’s a little thing, but hopefully effective.
7. Learn something new – Anything really. I am someone who needs to constantly be learning, it’s just in my nature. I learned how to create webpages, blog, build stuff, fix stuff, yell at stuff…and so on all by just doing it. I hope to keep that moving forward over the course of 2012, and by year’s end, have something completely new under my belt, and ready to try something different in 2013.
8. Decorate more – Lastly (for now), one thing we really need to do in our house is make it more personal. We both know this. We don’t have much on our walls around the house. Part of that is because we haven’t had a lot of furniture until recently, so it’s hard to come up with a plan when you’ve got nothing. This year we really want to get more photos up, some art, and other things put up around the house. It’s the little things that make the biggest difference, don’t you think?
So there you have it faithful readers, a list of 8 things I’d like to accomplish for 2012. I left a lot off the list (and yes, I actually wrote out a list), but these are the main areas I’d like to focus on for now. Notice “go to the gym, eat better, be proactive” aren’t all on the list, because that’s a given, and usually by my birthday I’ve given up on most of that. I will, however, eat more cookies, that I do promise.
Read MoreCarving time
With Halloween just a few days away, it was about time we got to our pumpkin carving. We haven’t had the best of luck with pumpkins this year. While we were away on vacation, we bought a pumpkin to carve and it was completely rotten inside, so that never happened. This time around, we got a nice solid pumpkin, and with one of those stencil books in hand we were ready to go. We picked the stencil, got it ready, only to find out that our pumpkin was too small for it. DoH! We just decided to free hand it, and have a bit of fun…and so, here is our angry pumpkin! Oh, and the other pumpkin in the background is ceramic…so that’s why that one looks so good.
It sure is quiet…but that’s about to change
Oh me oh my, I haven’t been doing a very good job of home projects, thusly I haven’t been doing a very good job of updating the blog. I had planned to do a post about fixing the gate, which I did, but it was so uneventful, that all I could say is “I raised the gate.” Not a very exciting post at all.
This past weekend, MC and I visited friends all weekend so we weren’t really around. She went back to her alma mater, and I headed up to see the great people of Baltimore. The plan, go to the Maryland Renaissance Festival and enjoy fun, food and beverages. Now, I am not one who likes to dress up (I actually don’t enjoy halloween), but one of our friends’ mom actually stitched, from scratch, nearly 30 costumes for the group (we had more costumes than we had people). How can you NOT dress up. Let me tell you, she is amazing, and so I put on a costume with glee and joy, grabbed a stein (plastic cup) and cheered with the king and people of the Renaissance Festival. Huzzah!
So with that said, and with a three day weekend approaching (because we both work full time), I’m about to embark on my first major wood working project. That means I’ll be fining up the saws and drills early saturday morning, so things won’t be so quiet around our house for a few days. I’m excited, nervous and worried that I won’t be able to pull it off, because as much as I plan, something always goes a bit wrong. But thanks to a friend lending me his miter saw, another helpful blogger’s plans and sheer determination, I believe that this will be one of the most fun projects I have ever done. What is it that I’ll be building? Well, you’ll have to wait and see…I need you coming back to this blog eventually, right?
Onward, to the lumber yard!
psst…Thanks Kelly for the photo
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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. 
