HAPPY 8 YEARS, HOUSE!

Thanks to the magic of Facebook Memories™ I woke up this morning to the news that exactly 8 years ago today, we were handed the keys to our house! 

I thought that called for a little trip down memory lane and some new pics to celebrate! 

Here is what the house looked like when we moved in: 

And here it is today! 

I really didn't give much thought to painting the trim and soffit last year but in these photos it's like "BAM! 100% improvement!" and it's going to look 200% better when the whole house is done. 

And now, for a little (long) trip through the past eight years of home-ownership bliss ; )

As I mentioned, we were handed the keys on April 20, 2009 after a couple of months worth of hemming and hawing with the bank about the lack of heat among other things that come along with a foreclosed property. 

With a village worth of help, we put down sod, 

painted some interior rooms, and got married in the backyard on July 18, 2009

We wrote our very first blog post on October 6, 2009! It had exactly 0 pictures and an actual list of all of the things wrong with the house. It was written by Conan and you can really feel his "what the h did I just sign up for?" seeping through. But he ended it with ~

"IT REALLY IS A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE."

A few weeks later we gave a long overdue interior tour of the house: 

Missing cabinet doors, sagging ceiling, impossible to clean floor and an oven that didn't actually have a 220v outlet behind it. ~Those were the days~

This is the room where mismatched salvation army chairs go to spend the rest of their days, apparently.

Here are some other things we wrote about that year:

- Our honeymoon in Colorado (awwww)

In February of 2010, we *finally* got central heating installed in the house

A few months later we learned our first BIG lesson after we hired a fly by night company to replace the roof. It ended fine but it was...a journey to say the least. 

For my birthday that year, my dad built the living room shelves that basically made us famous on the internet ; ) 

Here's what they look like today

Some other things we wrote about that year:

- "Old" photos of our old house
- Heating the house
- Our first offer on the house!
- Removing one of the broken radiators
- New bedroom lighting
- Conan's little red sports car
- More radiator removal

In March of 2011, we started our first major interior renovation with the upstairs bathroom

The whole remodel took just a little over a year to complete. Here's what I wrote about during that year: 

- Cleaning up the guest room (round 1)
- Driving to Kansas City to buy an antique sink
- Buying escutchions
-The 1919 trash we found under the stairs in the bathroom

- Stripping and re-finishing the old door

- Painting
- Tiling the bathroom floor
- Tiling the shower

- Grout & more Grout 

- Refinishing a clawfoot tub

- Moving a clawfoot tub up two flights of stairs

- Turning an old TV cabinet into a linen cabinet

Our big project in 2012 was a tiny budget remodel of the kitchen. If you'll recall, the bathroom had leaked into the kitchen causing those ceiling tiles to droop so we decided to just tear the whole thing down and paint it white. 

Here's the before: 

And the after: 

Maybe the biggest thing in 2012, was the purchasing of our vintage camper and starting up Lamphouse Photo Co. 

Here's what the ol' girl looked like almost 5 years ago: 

And here's what she looks like today! 

Here are some other things we wrote about in 2012:

- Showering in a washing machine drip pan for a year

- Moving a clawfoot tub up two flights of stairs

- Turning an old TV cabinet into a linen cabinet
- Painting our old fridge with chalkboard paint
- Refinishing our kitchen floors
- DIY Antique Trouble Lights
- Finding a vintage Roper Stove at a garage sale for $45
- Saving our sash windows
- Being featured in This Old House Magazine
- Our first David Bazan Living Room Show
- Using the 1940 census to learn about our house
- Talking to the granddaughter of the family who lived here 1938-1944
- Being featured on Houzz
- Stumbling upon photos of our house from the late 40s
- Being in This Old House Magazine AGAIN!
- Being given a piano

Our big project for 2013 was the downstairs bathroom, affectionately dubbed the "toilet closet"

Here's what we started with:  

And here's the finished product: 

Here are a few other things that happened in 2013:

- We gave you guys the deets on our vintage camper plans
- We got a very cool antique camera cabinet
- We added a darkroom to our vintage camper
- Slow decorating
- We refinished our FREE dining room table
- Finding the perfect sink for the toilet closet

In 2014, we did a few little things like sprucing up the guest room to use as an Airbnb: 

Visiting Yellowstone National Park

and how the chalkboard fridge was holding up

We also did some work on the exterior of the house and added our beloved Birdie Booth to the Lamphouse lineup!

Here are some other things we wrote about in 2014:

 - Our second David Bazan Living Room Show
- Replacing the front porch steps
- More chalkboards

2015 was a pretty slow year for the house but we did manage to add built in shelves to the dining room: 

We built a second Birdie Booth to keep up with demand and put a "pool" in the backyard : ) 

We also got back to the business of painting the house. Picking colors

Climbing around on scaffolding, etc. 

In 2017, Lamphouse became our full-time jobs (INSANE!) so that occupies pretty much 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Still, we're hoping that the house will get some attention this year as well. 

This year, our big projects are working on the exterior of the house and installing a privacy fence in the backyard.

A lot has happened in the past eight years and it was a trip to see it all laid out in front of me in pictures! I know we're not the most punctual bloggers but we really did leave a nice record of our time in the house so far. 

Thanks for hanging around these past eight years! 

Keep Smiling! 

Bathroom Paint

Some of you may remember that one time when we were all totally certain we were going to subway tile the bathroom walls. Well kids, things happen. Money happens, time happens, getting sick and tired of showering in the basement happens. You get the idea. Long story short, we went with beadboard. But don't get the wrong idea. This was not in any way a let down or a concession. This was actually something that was both practical and turns out, exactly what we wanted.

See, a few weeks ago I spotted this picture of this wall and I was like, "THAT...is my bathroom."

I realize that you can only see a tiny sliver of the beadboard down there but sometimes that's all ya' need.

So then I had a color idea and a decorating idea (salon style hanging) and I knew at once that making the decision to go with cost effective beadboard was the right one. It would give the room a different texture against all of the smooth, shiny porcelain and it would add color to the room as well. So, speaking of color. As of now, we have one coat on the beadboard and we went with....

Valspar Montpelier Madison White!

from their very cool partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Now, in person it's a little more of a putty color if that makes any sense. It almost has a tinge of green to it which is just going to siiiiiing against that black and white tile. The top of the wall is still just primed with Kilz but we are going to paint it a white that has just the tiniest warmness to it. It's going to look great, I swear. Now, speaking of that singing tile, I'm off to buy grout. Tobacco brown or charcoal? Hmmmm....



It Has Begun

Sorry for the dramatic title you guys but after eight months (of weekends) of showering in a spider-y basement I think this moment of our bathroom remodel deserves a little drama.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have started....TILING THE SHOWER!

Just the floor but hey, it's a start.

So, here's how it all went down on Saturday.

In the two weeks prior, my dad had constructed the shower pan using something called a Quick Pitch and it had been given ample time to sit and get nice and hard for the tiling to come.

So on Saturday, we started laying out the tile in the shower thinking that since it was such a small room it should just be all white tile instead of the two parallel lines pattern that are going to be in the rest of the bathroom (see the inspiration here). After a few "That doesn't look right"s we decided to try running the pattern from the bathroom into the shower.

A few minutes into that and it was obvious that trying to run the pattern from the bathroom into the shower along the same line wasn't going to work. It made it too close to the wall outside the shower and it just looked no bueno. Maggie's passive stare tells me everything I need to know. Try again.

Okay. So. I went and printed my inspiration picture out (I know, I know should've done that first) and we tried just putting down the pattern in the bathroom without trying to continue it into the shower.

And....success!

Then there was just the matter of oh yeah, tiling the shower which we had to figure out. We tried little black daisies, random black tiles here and there and nothing seemed to work. Finally, we landed on just making a pattern like the bathroom has inside the shower like it was it's own little room. Perfect. 

The next step after we decided on how the tiles were going to be put down was popping out the white ones in the shower and replacing them with black. Then we took the whole thing out very carefully and rearranged it outside the shower. We also cut out the tiles where the drain was. Don't worry, we're not that dumb : )

Then we chalked the shower into four equal sections, mixed up the goo that goes under the tiles and...

Buttered the floor. One delicious section at a time. Then the tiles were carefully placed beginning at the drain and working out to the sides in each section.

My wonderful parents ran the tile saw until it was dark outside while Conan and I went on a Boba Tea run. About two or three dozen tiny little sawed in half tiles here and there later and...

Wouldya' look at that!? We have what appears to be almost a shower! I keep sneaking into the bathroom to peek at it and make sure this is really happening. Sounds crazy, but like I said earlier, showering in a basement for 8 months will make you a little cray-cray. 

Next up, we grout. And also, I swear that the bathroom door is ALMOST done. A progress report on that coming soon as well as a decent picture of the paint color in the bathroom whenever Conan has time to show me how to take a good picture of it. For serious though, this bathroom has the best/worst light for taking pictures ever.

Morning

If you've inspected any of our photos closely or you just have a pair of eyes you might have noticed that we don't have any curtains. Well, I take that back, we have one verrrrrrry sheer pair in the guest room but they filter about as much light as a piece of clear glass so...

Someday I plan to put shades up but I honestly have just never seen a pair of curtains that I really liked. Ever. So, for now at least, it's no curtains or shades on the windows. And aside from constantly being badgered about not having any privacy, it's working out pretty well. Just don't walk around downstairs in the nood (misspelled on purpose for comic relief) and don't have a giant flatscreen TV in your living room : ) I kid, I kid. But serioulsy, to our critics I say come over at about a quarter to 9 in the morning and feast your eyes on all of the beautiful light cutting through the house. It really is our best feature.

The guest bedroom gets the best morning light. Our two guests have raved about this room. For real.

The light in the landing is pretty terrific too. As is that picture (I swear it's straight in person) that I got Conan for his birthday from here.



Done Priming & Door Progress

That's right! The title doesn't lie. As of about 15 minutes ago, I am officially done priming the bathroom. And in about an hour I'll be well on my way to painting it. Well, the beadboard anyway.

What color? Well, you'll just have to wait and see!

FYI: Those "eyes" are where the hot and cold knobs will be for the sink

(if you didn't already know, we bought a sink with no faucet holes in it)

and also FYI: Naked Berry Veggie is the most delicious of the Naked beverages. That is all. 

And an update on the stripping of the bathroom door.

As of today it looks like this:

It's not the most beautiful door but once I'm done with it, it will be. Swear.