Getting better all the time!

This little half bath waited a very long time for paint.  It seemed like a good idea to clean our brushes off from all our other projects on these walls, but eventually, the chaos drove us nuts.   The original paint was dingy brown, as it was in most of the house?!

Another in the "Things You'll do For Love" series.

This is the downstairs ghetto hallway - greyish paint, dirty carpet, bad lighting...  Probably made my clients wonder exactly what kind of massage business I was running in this dark alley...

Gotta love that formica countertop.

We went into a painting frenzy in November sometime and picked out a beautiful new leaf green.  What is it about gorgeous colors that make me want to eat them?















We've had a few other projects pending for which we knew we'd need expert help - most significantly, the Whore House Door.

That peep hole?  Yup, looks INSIDE the house, right at boob level.  Way to go, previous owners!

Seduced by sunshine.

Enter Jason Gerard, finish carpenter extraordinaire!

And now Siri and I can screen our visitors to keep the riffraff out.

Jim's hunter-gatherer instinct is assuaged by nightly craigslist searches.  He found our new door for $20.  We had a new jamb built for it, which Jason installed and tricked out.  If you need attention to detail, you need Jason. 

Jason also did this beautiful thing.

Hey, I know it's just a cabinet, but it was useless, empty space before. 

Today's creature feature:

We hadn't noticed a chrysalis on the tile behind the oven.  On a January afternoon, after making some oven-top tea, I saw this butterfly emerge!  I doubt it's found enough sweet things to eat in our house. 

Before and After

Jim's studio, avant et apres window.  First snow, too!

My massage studio, present- and post-pirate.

Fluffing the innards of the house with ULATION by Davis!  R-39, baby!















And today's Creature Feature:

This is a Northern Flicker.  The bird book says they're the only woodpecker to regularly feed from the ground - which we doubt, considering how often they bang away on our house!  (always when I'm trying to sleep.)  This fellow smacked into our bedroom windows, but recovered shortly thereafter.  I probably should have taken a nap.

2011, in list format

Oh dear, a pile of time has gone by.  After a much needed break from writing, I'm inspired to jump back in by the mere fact that it's already the last hours of January... Wasn't it just Christmas?  And didn't I want to post our New Year's Eve musings?  Here we go!

All the notable moments of 2011 that we could, or want to, remember, in no order whatsoever:

multiple marriage proposals on the couch
Salted Straw ice cream with Miz Lynn YUMMA YUMMA
seeing Sean on my birthday
reading Mink River
having our first Christmas tree and the holidays here in our new house
the Harvest Ride in Hood River and eating at Nora's Table
pork short ribs from Pono Farms
our 1st fire in our new wood stove, which so many of our favorite people contributed to!
starry nights on the deck with Kris and Brian
GF lox sandwich at the Green Salmon in Yachats
taking a watercolor sabbatical in Utah with my friend Sue
our owl
Allison drumming the wedding-canoe into shore
letting the 'rents go nuts with the Tiki wedding theme (Thanks, 'rents!)
so many people reading poems at our wedding(s)
nana and brother Tom holding hands
drinking Nobles Coffee on our Ashland escape
shallow river floats
sage and flowers blooming in the meadow below the house after a summer rain
kayaking on Hosmer, blackbirds sliding down the reeds
driving our new table home atop the Subaru
paddling during wildflower bloom at Sparks Lake
breakfast salads at New Seasons on Portland trips
going bowling with everybody and playing Apples to Apples with Darin and Greg on Christmas day
XC skiing on a 50 degree day in January
thinking the river rushing outside was a left-on bathroom fan (sorry, boyfriend...)
getting our very own Angel-Fridge
playing frisbee, badminton, and petonque in Our Very Own Yard
that amazing meal at Trattoria Sbandati on Valentine's, not sleeping at all thanks to the divine espresso, and then having a snow day complete with breakfast in bed!!!!
seeing great old friends at our wedding(s)
stomping to heavy metal at Chicks with Picks with Miz Lisa, starring Miz Jamie
picking out paint colors for the living room, kitchen, etc. with arrrrrrrrrrrtist Lisa
visiting Miz Lisa at Playa and watching her work evolve!  go girl!
having a sleep-over Thanksgiving with Blue, Janelle, Scott, and Andrea (Thanks to McCarthy's Single Malt!)
finding a great acupuncturist
having our own river loop to run and watching the seasons change on it
the Post writing retreat, featuring soon-to-be famous Miz Jasper, Miz Sara, Miz Lisa, and Miz Jamie
being grateful for great snow tires
eating at Tasty's in Portland with Blue and Janelle, just before flying to N.E. for the wedding
all the visitors who came and distracted us with champagne the 1st day we cleaned our new house
getting consistently fabulous haircuts from Miz Jasper, poetess
getting the dirty, ugly ceiling painted (thanks, Brian!)
drinking Lone Pine's iced coffee toddy at the Bend Farmer's Market
Portland Cello Project x 2 or 3
vacating the Soulless Subdivision
finally getting a window in Jim's studio
the sound of the river in our bedroom, every night, all night
the way the sun moves around our room through the seasons
finding a wedding dress 3 weeks before the event
watching 5 boys try to put our couch back together?!
nana racing Cleo/Chloe up to bed
our wedding cairn made of Tumalo river rock and Swiss and Floridian shells
long, happy trail runs
watching our 11 year old dog racing through meadows or over snow fields.

It's a wonderful life, ain't it?

Painting and Staining

Before (thank God)

 Choosing colors for the living space was challenging, thanks to the abundance of greenery outside our windows, the slate hearth, and all of the wood trim.  And, perhaps, how distracting the ugliness of the room was with the overspray from the ceiling.

Note also that books have replaced the former owner's TV.

See all your wedding cards?

Thanks to the lovely and talented Ms. Lisa Pounders, however, we ended up with some pretty fab colors.  We managed to get our art up and books out about 48 hours before our big housewarming/wedding party.  I'm surprised how much our Stuff made our house feel like home.

Lovely yellow sunlight, all day.

 



We have two ENORMOUS decks, which unsurprisingly, had been languishing in the hot desert sun for years.

I won't bore you with our deck stain debacle - just don't do what we did.  Test your colors before covering 600 square feet with a color you can't stand, and of which you've just bought a 5 gallon bucket!

We figure we have about 2000 square feet total of deck to stain, including the stairs and railings.  By god, we might hire this one out next time...

Another in the 'things you'll do for love" series.

 Jim made a habit of replacing a few outlets every week.  We discovered that most of them weren't grounded, including the ones in the kitchen.  We now fully expect that EVERY house project will include one or several WTF!! moments.

This post's wildlife visitor has us wondering about the lesser known hazards of bicycling in Bend...

New additions and unusual visitors

My birthday is later this month, but we're not waiting to celebrate.  My fab husband took me to a Brandi Carlisle/Ray La Montagne concert last night, and topped it off with a chocolate fro yo with peanuts.  YUM.  That pretty much made up for coming home with one of these

and claiming he had a present for me?!

We also have our very own compost bin, at long last:

Sadly(?), we don't have much in the way of 'brown' matter to feed to it - we've so steadily killed our lawn this summer that we don't have any grass clippings to add to our kitchen scraps.  Maybe we should just get chickens!

Speaking of birds, our freshly unearthed bird feeder provides hours of entertainment, particularly when an unlikely visitor stops by.

We do wonder if we're making lunch (and dinner, and breakfast, and second breakfast, and dessert) much too easy for our resident owl. 

All of this is glorious to watch from our new deck furniture.  (on sale at Fred Meyer!)

I won't tell you how many arrrrrrrrrtists it takes to assemble furniture right-side-up and forward-facing.

A couple more tasks checked off...

The kitchen trim was an ugly McDonald's red when we moved in.  We decided to use the same color for the trim in the kitchen as we would on the 'contrast wall' in the living space.  Here's the trim with the burn-your-eyes out pink primer getting covered as fast as possible...

The things you'll do for love...

And here's that contrast wall.  I love this color so much I want to bathe in it! 

This is the master bedroom window.  We were appalled that the appraiser missed such a glaring problem.  The crack spider-webbed across the entirety of the 70"x46" window.  Uncool.

The guys who did the work were fabulous and fast.  I can't say the same for Lowe's, however, from which we ordered the new window.  This was a heck of a sight to encounter that morning...

And here's the new, gorgeous windah!  It's so clean that it's making me think we maybe kinda need to clean the rest of the windows...  It also provides some much needed ventilation, as there wasn't ANY at all in the bedroom before!

We also got a new garage window.  The appraiser somehow didn't see the big cracks, missing section, and cardboard covering the hole in this one.  Perhaps you're wondering, as we did, whether he actually came to the house?!

And here's a little bit of nature for your viewing pleasure.

Tree froggy on our porch, about 12 feet off the ground?!

What all you've been missing...

It's been a busy few months here, punctuated by some minor interruptions, like oh, you know, getting married.  Here are some of the projects we've been working on.  It's so exciting to feel the house returning from its somewhat neglected state, and becoming OURS.

We hired a creature from the abyss to paint our ceiling.  (Oh wait, that's my husband!)  It had been a dingy gray.  The bright white immediately made us both feel better, and got us excited about how much better the place would look as we got deeper into our LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG list of repairs and improvements.

 We were resigned to sticking with the vintage refrigerator, at least for a while.  Then we found this...

Yep, that would be mold.  On and within, I'm sure, the styrofoam insulation around the icebox.  There's no cleaning that!  Moreover, we're pretty sure the all the fridge fans and stuff were blowing that crud around the house.  I wanted the men in the hazmat suits to come right away, but we did our research and got a great deal on this...

I hear angels singing when I open the doors.  Yup.  Really.

Here's one of the downstairs bedrooms, before we moved in. 

And now it looks like this!  Anybody want a massage?

I'm sorta bummed the previous owners didn't leave us the pirate flag.