Irvington Bungalow

Find Simplicity

2011-06-20T15:28:00.000-04:00

This should be my mantra living in a fixer-upper:

the bathroom

2011-06-12T09:44:00.001-04:00

after years of planning {literally} the bathroom project has officially started. as some of you know, it took us months to finally receive our custom tile. where did we order it? American Restoration Tile. let me say that the tile is beautiful. it really is. the floor is a replica of what we have now, only in different colors. everything is handmade and hand colored. it is just gorgeous and exactly what we were hoping it would be. BUT, what is up with the dude who owns the place, i have no idea. maybe he is a perfectionist, maybe he is super busy. but what i DO know is that he totally lacks communication skills. omg. we ordered the tile and then we just didn't hear anything. i would not recommend going with this place at all. i know we'll be happy with the tile in the end but the waiting was such a pain. anyways, this is what the tile looks like:

here's a peek at what our bathroom currently looks like, at the beginning of the project.

this is the space where our new shower will go. can't wait to have a new bathroom!

living room

2011-05-22T16:28:00.001-04:00

what do you think of the new blog look? i love it.
so another room i'm mulling over lately is our living room. currently it looks like this:

please don't judge us. i did finally take care of the laundry after i snapped these photos. anyways, we are aware that it is horrible. we are living {as usual} under construction so there are boxes of bathroom tile all over the house.

back to the the living room. see the problem {as i see it} is that the room is long {24 feet}, the woodwork is beautiful but it is dark and we will not paint it and the rugs have made the room dark. {we had to put down two 9x12 rugs so the floors wouldn't get scratched up by dog and baby.} throw in a dark brown leather couch and ... do you see where i'm going with this?

so i think we are going to paint it a light sage green color {i really want to do a sandy tan/cream in the dining and living room but chad wants more color}.

so i am going to need to lighten up the space with the accents. i am thinking of repainting our side table and coffee table in an ivory color. and then throwing down a smaller rug.

found on ebay

from ikea

i think either of these would lighten up the space. and then i found a chair at a thriftstore that i want to buy and have reupholstered.

did you know at joann fabric's website you can design your own furniture and accessories. now you need to have time and patience if you are going to check out it out because it keeps getting stuck. but what do you think of one of these?

some throw pillows in some different colors and then something done with that desk area. that's for a different post. i need some cute storage too. any ideas for the desk area or storage?

Ideas Abound! {outcomes to follow}

2011-05-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

Let's just get it out of the way, it's been like eight years since I last wrote. I know, I know. This is a habitual problemo with me. And I'm sorry. I really do always want to do better but somehow I can't seem to find the time (or energy) to write in a consistent manner. I'm sure all two of my readers are super duper upset.

Anywho, can I just say that I am really excited about some of the things happening at Irvington Bungalow? First of all, life is just so much more interesting and fun with Ainsley. She is definitely the bright spots in our days. When work is sucky and the house is a total disaster (both of which are daily occurrences) at least we have this to look forward to:

That face! OMG.

But ALSO, our bathroom project is {finally} underway. And if a cute, babbling baby doesn't make you smile, surely a new bathroom will, right? (I should take some of my own advice when the baby is crying and the bathroom is dusty with plaster droppings everywhere).

We finally received all of the tile about a month or so ago. And it is beee-u-tee-ful. Chad is in the beginning stages of demolition with full throttle remodel happening in a few weeks. But, WAIT. There's more. Only I'm not going to give it all away but let's just say this: I'm totally over my kitchen. And like the "I'm never satisfied" person that I am, I'm already complaining about when we can start the kitchen project. Since I know it is a few years away, I've been schemin' up ways to give my nasty kitchen a face lift. Nothing that will cost a whole lot but somethings that will give it the oomph it needs so I can stop stammering and making excuses when someone walks into it for the first time. Think: chalkboard paint, beadboard, paint colors in white, grey/blue and a deep red or gold/yellow (or both!) for accent colors, open shelves, organization, and some spiffy adornments. I can't give too much away because Chad reads this blog and it is all a secret until I can present a plan. Right now, I can show some inspiration:

paint colors:

possible accent color, found here:

another accent color, found here:

chalkboard paint, inspiration found here:

new cabinet hardware, found here:

So none of this is official because I can't do anything without talking to Chad yet (that's how we roll, for better or for worse!) and I'm still in the ~~scheming~~ planning stages. But I'm SOOO excited to possibly get a kitchen that I don't loathe. Wouldn't that be nice??
ps: don't get an iPad because then you will spend all of your spare time sitting on the couch, getting ideas for which you really don't have the time/energy/money to implement.

pps: most of my inspiration came from two blogs I'm recently obsessing over, found here and here.

goodbye, 2010

2011-01-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

another year has come and gone here at irvington bungalow. 2010 was perhaps our most eventful year yet, both housewise and otherwise. the biggest change? well, baby, of course. but we did get to cross the following off of our house to-do list:

refinish floors
repair plaster walls
install drywall where needed
repair ceilings
prime and paint bedrooms
start bathroom/ new plumbing (only demo and purchasing so far)
new HVAC/heater/AC (this was unplanned)

still on our to do list for 2011:

finish bathroom/plumbing
paint LR and DR
hang pictures
make outdoor table

the bathroom continues to be an ordeal. i can't even tell you how disappointed i am with the place we ordered the tile from SIX months ago. this better be the best tile EVER.

happy new year!!

more ainsley pics

2010-11-30T13:04:00.001-05:00

creative title, uh? here are some pictures of the little bug -

hanging out after bath time ...

shelby and ainsley checking each other out ...

chad snuggling with his little girl ...

lovin' a little naked tummy time !

celebrating thanksgiving at talena and chad's house

hope everyone had a great thanksgiving!!

ainsley's firsts

2010-11-17T11:18:00.000-05:00

the third week of life held some firsts. a first real bath in the whale bathtub, a first shopping trip, the first time mom and ainsley ventured out alone together, a first bottle and the first time to meet chad's grandparents - mema and papa. i guess when you are less than a month old there will be a lot of firsts, right?

ainsley really enjoyed her first bath....

until she didn't anymore. which thankfully was when we were just about finished anyways.

ainsley, mom and nana went on their first outlet mall shopping trip. who says three weeks is too young (well, mom was thinking this actually but it turned out to be an okay trip.) mom didn't realize that she had her camera with her the whole time so all she got was a picture of ainsley's loot.

and ainsley met mema and papa, chad's grandparents, for the first time. they were in love - and who can blame them?

ainsley at two weeks

2010-11-08T10:17:00.002-05:00

for friends and family near and far...here is an ainsley post for you.

two weeks (almost three) into this beautiful life! we returned from the hospital very late, almost midnight, on a thursday evening. the next week mama (chad's mom) came to stay with us to help out while chad was away at work. the week after that nana (carmen's mom) helped out. both grandmas were extremely helpful in assisting with the baby and house duties. not to mention all of the wonderful friends, family and neighbors that have brought food and other goodies to the house. we would have starved without all of the cooked meals you provided!

ainsley is a good baby overall. i believe she mostly has chad's disposition - very laid back about most things. she does, however, seem to have carmen's short temper in some situations (like when she decides she is hungry - from zero to sixty is how mommy likes to describe it). she also tends to have some of carmen's looks come across her face (kinda like she is thinking: what the hell is going on here?)

she sleeps well, anywhere from 2 1/2 hour to 4 hour stretches at a time. last week, however, for a few days we had a growth spurt and she only slept for about an hour at a time and wanted to eat, eat, eat every time she woke up. i won't go into details here but...ouch. that's all i'm going to say. on saturday she lost her cord stump (gross), so tonight she gets her first "real" bath in her whale bathtub.

this is what ainsley looks like right after she eats. we call her "punchy" or punch drunk love. she just gets so sleepy!

some of ainsley's favorite things right now:

sleeping
eating
her flannel blanket made by mama
going for walks
music (baby mozart and rockabye baby U2, Led Zep, and Pink Floyd. she has good taste.)
her swing (or maybe mom and dad love it when she is in the swing)
her daddy
whiskers felt on her face from her big sister, shelby
being held
singing (by her daddy)
did i mention eating???
car rides

and never to forget our first baby. this is what poor shelby looks like in the middle of the night when the crying and feeding frenzy ensues. i love this picture. i feel like shelby is thinking: can we get some quiet here so i can sleep?

till next time!

changes to irvington bungalow blog

2010-11-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

since everything else in our life seems to be changing, i've decided to change the blog a tiny bit. from now on i'll be posting about our daily and family life on this blog as well as our house. with some of our family living far from indy, i thought i would post about ainsley and our trials and triumphs as our life changes. of course, the house will still be a main focus too. so as we progress with our projects at irvington bungalow (can anyone say: bathroom??) i'll still be posting about that. hopefully there will be changes to the overall look as well, but this might be a bit ambitious. stay tuned!

home improvements and baby have arrived!!

2010-11-05T15:10:00.000-04:00

so a LOT has happened since my last post. the most important is that baby arrived on october 19. coming in a very close second and third is that the floors were refinished and we now have painted walls in ... (wait for it) ... not one but three bedrooms and a hallway. some people might be like: what's the big deal, paint? but seriously, i have waited six and a half long years for these precious moments. and we're enjoying the baby too, thank you. :)

here are some before and after pics

living room before:

living room after:

dining room before (sorry for the poor quality):

dining room after (during, actually. this was after the first coat of polyurethane, hence why the floors are super shiny in this picture).

this is a pic of the nursery in late july:

this is what it looked like about two weeks ago. it actually looks a little better now but i haven't had time to take a new picture! {uh, babies take a lot of time, did you know that??}

and the holes from our insulation have been filled & sanded, new drywall put up and the walls painted. chad worked so hard during this entire year to get the house in shape for baby. we're so lucky to have him (and the paint). life is better with color on the walls. and, please, pay no attention to the lack of decoration. all of this work was finished the night before i was induced and we didn't even live here for the month before that day. so all we had time to do was get the basics moved back in for us to come home from the hospital.

the guest bedroom last year. notice the walls. that is what most of them looked like even in september.

guest bedroom after:

bedroom:

our biggest improvement, Ainsley Harper:

we're still waiting on the damn tile for the bathroom. but we hope to have that project completed by christmas. we'll see.

update - "to do" list slowly dwindling

2010-09-16T14:34:00.000-04:00

as usual, it's been awhile since i've last posted. things have been moving swiftly here at irvington bungalow. a lot of our neighbors have been seeing chad dragging in drywall, stripping furniture and noticing family members at the house helping out. the joke is that we maybe we should have decided to have a baby sooner!!

no pics to post just yet as work is still finishing up (and it better be soon since we have four short weeks before our due date)! however, just wanted to post a quick update. blinds have been ordered, floors will hopefully be refinished soon, the drywall is up in all of the bedrooms and only one more room left to mud and sand. soon we'll paint and finally (FINALLY) decorate. the one setback is that the bathroom tile is due to arrive next week which is just too late in the pregnancy to start that project. we're postponing till early winter. but that is okay. stay tuned - before & after pics of the rest of the house to post within the next couple of weeks!!

drywall

2010-08-14T21:36:00.001-04:00

last weekend chad and his dad cut the drywall for the baby and spare bedroom:

today my brother, chad and i hung the drywall:

before:

after:

after this weekend i'll have pics of a more complete drywall job.

last weekend i finally finished removing the glue from the baby room closet:

before:

after removing glue:

meanwhile baby is getting closer. this is me, 31 weeks. we started our baby classes. i've had two showers (out of 3 or 4) and we're getting closer to receiving the baby supplies we (think) we'll need. i just need to find a place to organize it all while the baby room is being finished!

things are moving along. hopefully paint, floor refinishing, and the bathroom/plumbing will happen soon. keep you fingers crossed. till next time!!

here we go....

2010-07-25T19:06:00.004-04:00

so here we are. 11 weeks before baby is due to enter this fine world. the A/C officially is dead. it went out but was temporarily fixed (leaking freon - nice and "green", i know) but two weekends ago the motor died. or something like that. all i know is it is HOT. and i am miserable. but they are almost finished installing our new HVAC system. yeah!

meanwhile, the bathroom tile has been ordered!!! yes. ORDERED. can you believe it? should be here in 6 to 8 weeks. leaves a tight time frame, but it is ordered and that apparently is a big step for us here at irvington bungalow.

good news around the house...

the garden and our flower beds are looking good:

the garden is a bit unruly and many things have died off but it is producing ginormous heirloom and grape tomatoes, so i'm happy.

but. the day i had my first baby shower chad had to begin demo of the bathroom. when i left the house, the bathroom looked like this (warning, if you are a hard-core preservationist, run away from your computer and this blog post immediately. you will HATE us for this.. but guess what? it's our bathroom.):

when i returned it looked like this:

yes, yes. very, very painful to have to do this to the original tile. but after years of deliberation we decided it had to be done. and this has to be done now because the vent in the bathroom is being relocated since the original vent sits where the entrance to our new walk-in shower will be located. i hated to see this go but we just felt like it is the best thing to do since we plan on being here long term. judge us if you will.

so the next few weeks will be a challenge on many, many levels. thank God we can stay at our in-laws. for rillz. till next time.

SLOWLY but surely

2010-07-19T20:13:00.000-04:00

progress is, in fact, occurring but it is happening slowly. wouldn't want to switch it up on all of you, now would we??

baby room -

we cleaned out the room, including the closet. and i have been removing wall paper with the added bonus of a layer of paint! so fun.

the closet progress. i still need to remove the glue and then i'm officially finished removing paper in the baby room. two more closets to go and i'm officially FINISHED!

we took an impromptu day trip to columbus, OH recently. we went to an architectural salvage store and then out to eat in an area called german village.

we bought a coal shoot door (just like ours but in much better shape), a cold air return grate that matches our original grates we have in the house currently and a pair of sidelight windows.

close-up of the glass:

LOVE this glass! we're going to use them (eventually) when we finish the attic space for the bedroom.

work still progresses on the duct work for the HVAC. the tile still hasn't been ordered. i have no idea why. ugh. till next time.

end of june progress report

2010-06-30T20:43:00.001-04:00

so here we are. the last day of june. fifteen weeks left until our little bundle of joy is set to join us here at irvington bungalow. and where are we in the progress of work on this old house? read on, my friends.

bathroom - we received the tile sample for the floor.

this is the design and basically the colors. we put white pieces of paper over the gray colored tile the tile guy suggested we use (you can see it in the top row of the whole sample). the picture on the right shows a hex shaped tile but that is just to portray the actual shade of white that the tile will be (since the paper was a bright, stark white).

in the next couple of days we'll order the tile. so excited and a bit apprehensive as this guy has been taking FOREVER to get back to us about anything. so annoying. but i'm trying to be optimistic that once he has a down payment, things will move more smoothly??? maybe??? hopefully!!

air conditioner - did i mention our A/C unit went out a few weeks ago? yes, it has been a fun challenge to add that huge project to our list completely unexpectedly. after four quotes, we finally found a wonderful contractor who helped us out and temporarily fixed the problem for us because it turned so hot outside. we're getting a whole new HVAC system installed within the next week. so excited. complete with duct work to the attic and basement which will one day be finished out for living space.

chad poured a new concrete slab where the new unit will go. he is so proud (and so am i). it looks great!

and that's about all that has happened since the last time i wrote. things are moving forward, faster than they probably have up until this point. from here on out it will be a whirlwind until the baby is due. here is my wish list, not in the correct order:

walls painted in the whole house

floors refinished in the whole house

nursery finished (new drywall installed and paint)

guest bedroom finished (new drywall installed and paint)

wood blinds purchased and installed in the bedrooms

new HVAC

new bathroom

new plumbing

we can get this done in 15 weeks. right??? hahahahaha...........

till next time.

bi-weekly update

2010-06-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

what has been happening here?

well, we finally got our floor tile sample. FINALLY. seriously. looks great. confirming the colors and the numbers and then we will order. so thankful and maybe i can finally feel like i can relax. a little.

chad worked on the future baby room. removing plaster.

oh, so sad. but it was so loose from the wall we had no choice.

this is the other side of the room. only a little needed to be removed here.

check out this horsehair in the plaster. it's true: they REALLY do not make things like they used to!

weekly update

2010-06-02T19:49:00.001-04:00

let's see, what's been happening at irvington bungalow? well, first we just returned from a long holiday weekend in pensacola, FL. thank God we were able to have our annual visit before stupid BP ruined the beaches. jerks.

shelby enjoyed herself swimming in the bay. and we enjoyed watching her!

and this is chad and i, post beachtime, outside our favorite beachside eatery - Peg Leg Pete's.
that's Peg Leg, of course.

just in time for the weather to turn warm (hot) and for me to be 20 weeks pregos (and have a summer cold), our air conditioner broke. unfortunately, we have to buy a new one. great. i've been promised that this will not compromise the bathroom project. this fan is my favorite heat relief:

our garden decided to grow by leaps and bounds while we were gone:

finally, i did finish removing the wall of wallpaper and glue last week before we left for vacation:

top two pics: left - before removal, right - before glue removal

bottom two pics: left - after glue removal (thanks Mom for helping me!), right - don't tell my doctor that i was on a ladder in 85 degree weather, with no air, removing wall paper.

still waiting on our bathroom floor tile sample. can't wait to tell you NOT to use this tile place.

till next time!

weekly update

2010-05-23T11:47:00.003-04:00

this week seemed SOOO long. here's a summary:

work sucked this week, so i'm sure that had something to do with it. plus i haven't been sleeping well with this pregnancy and it is making for long days and short nights. no fun.

bathroom - we're getting a 9" x 9" sample of the layout of the floor tile. i'm excited because we picked out two of the colors and the third is a color that was a custom color for another customer that he thinks will look good with our choices. crossing our fingers!

baby room - today i am finishing stripping the wall paper from the final wall in the house, in the baby room. why i thought i was finished with the wall paper is beyond me.

our newest nephew was born this week! cole matthew. and he is the most adorable thing ever.

i finally finished organizing my scrabook and card making supplies. last year i organized them on our gorilla shelves in the breakfast nook. but in preparation of bottles and other feeding necessities for baby, i'm thinking more storage will be necessary in the kitchen. so i "stole" an old built-in cabinet chad brought home and took it over for my personal use. it is now my craft storage in the basement:

i know this is kind-of weird but i work in an old building retail building that has been repurposed as several offices. anyway, i love features of the bathroom in the lobby so i took pictures:

love the schoolhouse lights! not sure if they're original or not but i love them either way.

and this old wood door and marble partitions. so old-timey. i promise i was NOT using the restroom when i took this picture. gross. the restroom did have the original sinks with the original hardware until about a week ago. so i thought i should take pics of these before they are gone too (but hopefully they will remain).

i'm off to strip paper....till next time....

updates

2010-05-12T18:09:00.001-04:00

obviously my two-posts-per-week goal is too much for me. i must try to aim lower.

we have indeed been working on the house. still slowly despite the fact that baby will be here in about five months. yikes. we have a lot of work to do. our two most important projects BB (before baby) are the bathroom renovation and the baby room.

the bathroom update:

we finally received our custom color sample a few weeks ago:

it is difficult to tell on the picture but there actually is a difference between the two colors. the smaller one is a bit more blue and the larger one is more of a green-blue color. so we're going with the larger one. this will be the color for the subs on bathroom walls and shower, trimmed in black tile. now we've asked for a floor tile in the same color. hopefully that won't take us months like these two beauties. we ordered and received (!!!) our radiant floor heating system. SOOOO excited about that.

baby room update:

well, as you may remember, there are two places in the ceiling that need fixed as well as one place on the wall. there was also a ton of junk in the room. it was our holding area, NEVER to be viewed by persons that do not live here. we managed to sift through and donate most of it. thank God for amvets. love that place. they pick your junk up for you!! so great as i'm not a host-a-garage-sale type of gal. too much work. chad filled the holes from our insulation project. and last weekend he dremmeled (that's a word, isn't it?) a portion of our plaster ceiling away in prep for drywall.

for some reason i removed the ENTIRE house of wallpaper except for a small portion of this bedroom. so i must do that soon. then chad will work on replacing some of the walls with drywall. there was water damage or something at some point previous to our ownership.

other than that we've been working on the yard, a garden specifically. i decided to ditch the CSA this year and focus on growing the items i know i'll eat. and then let the local farmer's markets fill in the gaps. i chose a spot near our future outdoor dining area. chad poured a concrete barrier to build the bed up a bit and steer the water in the correct direction.

this is a pic of the garden today. and i already picked my first strawberry!

till next time. hopefully not a month from now. no promises.

Shelby is Five

2010-04-13T19:07:00.007-04:00

Shelby turned five last week. We bought her an ice cream cone.

another one bites the (plaster) dust

2010-04-12T18:52:00.001-04:00

it was only a matter of time. about two weeks ago chad asked if a crack in the ceiling in our bedroom was more pronounced than it had been. i brushed it aside. then a few days later, i said, i think you're right. our ceiling might fall down. both of those admissions were difficult for me.
saturday morning i was laying leisurly in bed, staring at the ceiling because if i'm not sleeping, what the hell else am i looking at? and i noticed that LITERALLY a portion of the ceiling might fall at any second.
so later that day a portion of the ceiling came down (chad helped it along). sometime this summer drywall will be installed. at least it matches our other bedroom now {silver lining}.

a week in review

2010-04-09T15:07:00.004-04:00

a week has passed since my last post. my 2010 blog goal is to post twice a week and already i've fallen behind. so here's a post about the comings and goings at irvington bungalow this week, sans pictures (boring, i know):

last weekend more shifting and sorting occurred as we try to clean up the house and make room for baby in the fall, currently stuff is still sitting in the dining and living rooms waiting to be donated or organized and stored.
we have decided to not participate in our local CSA this year, instead i have been planning some container gardens and a very small garden in the backyard. i'll supplement with trips to the farmer's market. this weekend i'm going to plant lettuce, carrots, broccoli and maybe garlic.
we received the tile samples and have decided on one color (post to come this weekend). we're still trying to decide on the floor colors. i should say we're still trying to agree on the floor colors. i'm afraid the bathroom is going to be too "art deco".
we also received the light from rejuvenation for the baby room. i LOVE it except that i think it may be too large. chad will have to hold it up so i can get a visual.
chad is busy with work and the neighborhood and a walgreens that wants to tear down a house in the hood. not cool.
i am busy trying to enjoy my entrance into my second trimester. i'm starting to get a little belly and am driving myself crazy thinking about baby stuff. hence the garden planning now! i need a break.

i'll post again this weekend after we download some pictures! happy friday.

more bathroom

2010-04-01T09:40:00.005-04:00

well, some good news! chad talked to the tile place and we are supposed to have our color match sample by tomorrow. and he said that once we place an order it should only take about three weeks to have the tile made. for me, this is a huge relief. i had a hormonal pregnancy moment last week and i was like: you tell him we are on a DEADLINE. baby irvington bungalow can't be in a bathroom with lead paint chips floating in his/her first bath. i think that is illegal or something. :) i make fun here but seriously. this is no laughing matter!

we are ordering our wall and floor tile from American Restoration Tile. the floor tile isn't the issue, it has been the color match for the subway tiles for the walls. anyways, this is the floor tile we are going to order. the style is a replica of what we have now but the colors are different. this is just a pic from their site and are not the colors we'll be ordering. we're not having the border that is in the pic. we haven't decided on the color placement of the tile but it will have white, a gray/green/blue color and a black. very similar to what is below.

other than the tile and the plumbing supplies we have everything else already. we need to strip all the woodwork and repaint, including our built-in cabinet and a medicine cabinet we bought off of craig's list. the only other major outstanding item is the bathtub. we have a fabulous pedestal tub we also got from craig's list but it needs to be refinished. so. not sure what will happen there. probably not in time for baby but i think that will be okay.

cross your fingers we actually receive the tile tomorrow. otherwise it might be back to square one.

hello! we're still here!

2010-03-30T10:52:00.003-04:00

yes, it has been a LONG time since i last posted. well, really, you haven't missed much.

an update to the last post i made. the church was saved!!! many thanks to Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana and local people who took the time to write letters and attend the final hearing. it is good to know that there are some people out there willing to fight corporate america in order to save our local culture and history. yeah!!!

so work is getting ramped up here at irvington bungalow. we're still waiting on our damn tile sample color match from American Restoration Tile. right now we are having some issues with them and i'm a little peeved. but we'll see, i'll keep you posted. we'll be buying the Pex plumbing supplies next month. we've met with the person who will be laying the tile for us. now it is just getting the tile and then the project can start.

and we're on a timeline now. we're expecting a baby in the fall so there are some projects must be finished by then. we have to finish the bathroom and the walls in the entire house need to painted. but i would also like to finish the guest bedroom, refinish the wood floors and rip up the nasty kitchen linoleum too. of course there are still 1,000 other projects but those can happen post-baby.

we started cleaning out the future baby room this weekend. omg. we had boxes of stuff from jobs we left in 2005 in there. so it was in major need of cleaning and sorting. it felt good to purge some of our things.

oh! and we bought the light above for the baby room from Rejuventation. LOVE LOVE LOVE that store. once the kid is older we'll put a ceiling fan in that room and move this light to the basement bathroom. i mean, once we get around to actually doing something to the basement instead of filling it with more junk.

more to come soon!

help us save a church!!

2009-10-29T18:31:00.004-04:00

i know i haven't written in a while - but you should be used to that by now! what have we been up to? buying stuff for the bathroom (seriously, don't you love rejuvenation?). chad finished redoing the siding on the garage bump-out. not to mention he finally finished the fence!! pictures to come.

the real reason i'm writing is to inform any local readers about an eastside church that is being threatened for demolition. i've lived on the eastside of Indianapolis almost my whole life. i have driven by this church a million times. i was a matron of honor in my best friend's wedding in this church. guess where this picture was taken from.....the parking lot of a walgreens. take a wild guess what is proposed for the spot where this church has stood since 1914? a cvs. gross!!!!

help us save the church! if you are local and you have a connection to this church and you want to make a difference in saving history then please write a letter to the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission by November 3. even better, attend the public hearing on November 4 and tell your story in person!!! read about this issue here.

new couch

2009-09-26T10:45:00.003-04:00

it was requested that i show a pic of the new couch in our living room. i apologize ahead of time for the poor lighting in the pictures. which is why i'm taking a photography class!

here's our old couch. still in good shape for the most part. now it will reside in my mom's cabin in the woods. don't ask. it was her couch to begin with anyways. and for her hospitality at letting me/us use it for the past 9 years, i threw in the couch cover we've been using, as seen piled in a heap on the couch. how nice am i?

here's the new couch. seriously, so sorry for the lighting. this room is so weird that i can't get the lighting correct with my point and shoot camera. you get the point though, the couch is much more our style. although it was bigger than i expected it to be. we almost could not move it through the front door. which made me laugh - the thought of nice leather couch on the front porch was funny to me.

one day when we have the floors refinished, the custom made tables and the walls painted i'll take a better picture! until then i will be happy with this major purchase out of the way!

another step in the right direction

2009-09-22T11:40:00.003-04:00

we went to buy our bathroom tile this past saturday. again, for the third time, we left the store without making our huge tile purchase. but this time it wasn't because of money. we were advised to have a meeting with the guy who will be laying the tile before we make the purchase - to make sure we are ordering all of the pieces he needs to install everything correctly. i mean, this isn't tile laying on home depot's shelf so i think this was great advice!

so .... since we were on that side of town we decided to stop by a couple of other stores. and we ended up buying a couch. very spur-of-the-moment. it was at a local furniture outlet store so it was a good deal. the same couch we've looked at for years but half off since it was a floor model.

we're so excited we finally purchased grown-up living room furniture!! we've been relaxing on my parent's 20 year old ethan allen couch i used in college. granted, still a great couch, but very cream/blue/peach (can anyone say 1980?) and very flowery and well, not ours.

(now if i can just work on getting rid of those 15 year old hand-me-down ikea tables.)

guest bedroom

2009-09-12T12:53:00.003-04:00

last weekend chad's best friend and his wife came to visit. which meant we had to get the guest bedroom in working order. there is no plaster on two of the walls in our guest bedroom - only exposed lath. we bought drywall to finish off the parts with no plaster about four months ago. too bad by last weekend the drywall (some 12' long) were still sitting in the same place - blocking access to the bed. i suggested just setting the Little Giant next to the drywall so they could climb the ladder over the drywall and into the bed. chad did not think this was funny.

instead we just moved it to the side wall, cleared out the tools and the baseboards, and cleaned.
and you know what? our guests didn't complain (not to our faces anyways).

the other (*sigh*) issue about staying at our house is the fact that our bathroom still hasn't been renovated. we have to turn the toilet on and off at the valve in order to flush. poor guests. i had to leave them this note on how to use the toilet. JUST the thing you want to see after a long flight. haha!

bathroom accessories

2009-08-25T13:09:00.003-04:00

we've finally purchased some items for the bathroom renovation project. how much do you love rejuvenation?? seriously.

we bought these lights and shades to flank the medicine cabinet.

we bought the metal shelf shown in the picture below. we're going to place it in approximately the same place as the picture too. our bathroom will be arranged very similarly to the one shown below.

we also bought coordinating towl rack and ring and some really cool arts and craft style house numbers for the garage.

a unique table

2009-08-20T14:52:00.004-04:00

for those of you that read this blog i think you know that at irvington bungalow, we seem to do a lot more planning/wishing than actual purchasing items or finishing projects. why stop now, i ask you?

for years i've been on the hunt for furniture. mostly living room furniture and mostly for years because we have not had any extra money to actually buy the furniture yet. but also, it is because i want to have furniture that reflects our style, the period of the house but also pieces that not everyone has in their own living room.
as i've mentioned several times we have some beautiful, old weathered barn wood we're using for an outdoor table. i'm hoping to have some leftover for a living room table. something a la this:

from sundance, mentioned here in a previous post.
or this, below, from pottery barn.

when in doubt, google. the other day i typed in something akin to: handmade metal welded furniture. what popped up but Fosterweld. and can you believe that he is located right here in Indy? i emailed him to see if the table would be something he would consider creating for us when the time comes. so far, he has been so nice and down-to-earth. i think it would be so cool to have such an original piece of furniture in our living room!

outdoor lanterns (for my fictional outdoor dining space)

2009-08-12T11:27:00.010-04:00

once i get started thinking about something, i tend to obssess a bit. can't help it, it is just in my nature. so i keep thinking about when my outdoor table is finished (come on, chad!) i can't wait to have outdoor parties.

a few years ago we bought some oil rubbed bronze string lanterns for the backyard. they're still in their boxes in the basement. the other day i bought paper polka dot paper lanterns that are super cute. i was trying to find pictures online for both of these lanterns and ended up finding a ton of other really cute outdoor lanterns. check them out.

all of the above i found at walmart.com. the top set looks super versatile because they could go with almost any decorating style. and how cute are the tiny coleman lantern string set? those are solar LED. maybe i should get them for my mom (she just bought a fixer-upper cabin in the middle of nowhere). the last image is of martha stewart paper lanterns that don't light up. that doesn't stop me from loving them. they would be great hanging from the ceiling of a baby room or for an indoor party.

finding the LED colemans made me groove on the idea of hanging solar LED string lights in the backyard. here are some interesting ones i found surfing the net (when i should be working).

i like the above because they are plain and simple and, again, versatile.

these are a little more decorative. the bottom two images wcan be found here and here. the last picture is handblown glass but i would want the amber color - more cozy and warm feeling.

and i my absolute faves are these lanterns handmade by an etsy artist. although they are no longer in her shop.

i want, i want, i want...

2009-08-09T12:30:00.006-04:00

these chairs to go with my outdoor barn wood table chad is going to make me. i posted about the barn wood we inherited last fall for the table. you can see the wood here and what the table will look like.

i love how they are old timey looking. from crate and barrel. you can find them here. we'll probably have two benches and then two of the chairs.

and this umbrella, probably in an orange, red or green, from pottery barn.

and i want to put this on the table with candles in it. i found it at an antique store a couple of weekends ago.

walls like pottery barn

2009-08-08T11:10:00.004-04:00

for once i've looked through a pottery barn catalog and said: wow, this looks like my house! instead of, ugh. i wish my house looked like this.

check out the wall in this bathroom:

in this pic the wall looks stucco or something but in the catalog it just looks like an old plaster wall. discolored and cracking. when i saw it, i felt an instant kinship. could pottery barn be coming around to our sense of DYI style? is it possible that the residents of irvington bungalow are actually trendsetters and not just a couple of old-house loving, idealistic, lazy, too-many-projects-not-enough-time/money/energy people?

take a look at my pottery barn walls:

but, wait. we have them in the living room too:

really. you have to have a sense of humor or the fact that my walls have looked like this for five years would drive me to tears on a daily basis. i have to go submit my house for the next PB catalog now.

kitchen voyeurism

2009-07-29T17:09:00.007-04:00

my mom just had her kitchen remodeled. love it. i'm kinda pissed because this is exactly the style and color of cabinets that i want for our kitchen and i REALLY hate to do something on my house after someone else i know does it. it's just so unoriginal. however, i really love the cabinets so i might have to make an exception. they were handmade by an amish guy in northern indiana. i wanted to use the same guy (i am NOT opposed to using the same contractors) when we get around to the kitchen but apparently our cabinets are going to be handmade by a non-amish guy that lives in irvington bungalow.

things i like about the cabinets: handmade locally, the color, the inset doors, the shaker style doors, the hardware, the crown which actually mimics an older cabinet that was installed too. you can see it if you scroll down.

my mom probably would not be too happy to see this picture of here on the web. however she won't know because i'm pretty sure she doesn't even read this blog. i wanted to show how, even though the kitchen is small, they made the most out of the space.

this was an old cabinet my mom has had for years. i love how she incorporated it with the new cabinets.

love the compact, red stove. really great accent.

symphony in the park

2009-07-22T09:21:00.007-04:00

last night was one of the great summer traditions in irvington. the indianapolis symphony orchestra played in ellenberger park. it is so fun to sit outside with friends, family and neighbors, drink wine and listen to the orchestra - all for free!

more landscaping

2009-07-12T10:49:00.010-04:00

although there are a thousand projects to be started, completed or somewhere in between, the main focus this summer has been starting the bathroom remodel and the landscaping. more about the bathroom later, this post is about the landscaping.

chad has been busy implementing his landscape plan developed a few years ago. time and money have forced us to complete it in stages. last year it was the part of the back yard, part of the south side yard, and the north side yard. this year is continuation of the back yard and the south side yard. hopefully next year will be the front yard.
the above pictures show the back yard, the newest bed in the lower left corner and then a new tree, a river birch, with flowers given to us by chad's aunt. the bed in the back left is still under construction. it's our "holding cell" for replacement plants at this point.

this is the side yard. we have three types of hydrangeas in three different beds (hydrangeas are my favorite). currently i have tomato plants and some herbs in this new bed in the side yard but they will be gone at the end of the summer. i'll have to find a new place for them next year!

flowers from our yard

2009-06-30T09:45:00.003-04:00

isn't it such a great feeling to display a vaes of flowers cut from your own yard? this is my favorite vase, too. bought it at the penrod art fair last year. love the color.

My Fundraising Page

2009-06-15T07:26:00.002-04:00

My Fundraising Page

Warning! This post has nothing to do with the house.

I'm running a half marathon in the fall (which is major news for me) and I'm also raising money for cancer research as a team member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you would like to contribute, learn more and find out about my progress then follow the link above.

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paint decisions have been made (finally)!

2009-06-03T08:15:00.005-04:00

does anyone read the onion? omg. i think it is SO funny. if you have ever struggled with decisions regarding paint then you have to read this article: "Study Finds Paint Aisle at Lowe's Best Place to Have Complete Meltdown". i was laughing so hard when i read it because it is so so true.

anyways, i thought that would be a good lead in to tell you that we've FINALLY made our paint color decisions for the living and dining rooms. we have even bought the paint. this should make me feel more comfortable that these will be our final decisions but we have already bought paint for these rooms and never used it. oh well.

the problem was finding the "right" shade of green for the living room. while our LR is large for the size of our house, we have really dark and wide wood trim throughout. chad wanted a darker green shade while i wanted a lighter shade. in the five years we've lived here we have managed to never paint the walls but to adorn them with about 8 shades of green and two shades of yellow.

the paint swatch collection has actually increased since this picture was taken in 2005. but the wall pretty much looks the same.

we've decided on a two valspar paint colors from Lowe's. Epic for the LR - a dark-ish green/tan color (very similar to the 3rd color on the right, above) and Lyndhurst Estate Cream - a super light creamy-yellow for the dining room. hopefully we'll be painting in a few weeks!

rain, rain go away

2009-06-03T07:27:00.002-04:00

the rain we had over memorial day weekend didn't stop chad from planting in our newest bed.

don't i need this for the porch?

2009-05-24T16:30:00.005-04:00

we have more room on the porch so i've been wanting to add a glider for a while now. i can picture me lounging and gliding...gliding and lounging. i'd like this one. it matches the rockers we have already so we'd just have to stain and assemble.

i'm not really sure how comfy it is because i've yet to actually see it live and in person. and, or course, i'd have to have a cushion for it. i'm thinking this for the cushion:

and this material for the throw pillows for the glider and also some lumbar pillows for the rockers:

we could do all of this for about $300, a little elbow-grease and some of my mother-in-law's fabulous sewing skills. don't you think i need it??

a clean slate (or concrete, rather)

2009-05-19T07:03:00.005-04:00

this weekend will be five years since we moved into the house. it's hard do believe that this is possible. minus the groovy wallpaper and layers of old dirt, irvington bungalow virtually looks the same.

that is not the point of this post. over the weekend we borrowed a powerwasher to clean the front porch.

a few weeks ago i stripped and painted an old ikea table that was in our living room housing a defunct printer. here it is before:

i painted the table the same color as our backdoors. we loved our front porch before but now we really have a great little space to sit, unwind and watch the neighborhood go by this summer.

pedestal tub

2009-05-05T07:42:00.004-04:00

craigslist to the rescue again! we've been looking for an old pedestal bath tub for our bathroom remodel project. we almost bit the bullet and paid a few hundred for one at a local salvage yard. but considering how much it is going to cost to have it refinished we didn't. and good thing! chad found one on craigslist over the weekend. we bought it for $45. now we're going to transport it to st. louis for some one-of-a-kind refinishing technique. don't ask.

closet organized

2009-05-03T19:50:00.005-04:00

the weekend of work didn't pan out as we planned, which seems to be business as usual for us. i did get started on cleaning/organizing one of the spare bedrooms but decided it would pointless to finish until we are closer to the yard sale. otherwise it is basically moving piles of crap to the other side of the room. more organized piles of crap, though. i did get my closet organized, though! i mean the closet is like really tiny but i feel like i accomplished something anyways.

the floor - all my shoes were in a tub or on the floor.

now all of my winter boots are in one tub and my flips in another.

on either side shelves held random shoes and shoes in boxes:

i kept the shoes that had boxes in their original boxes. i bought plastic shoeboxes and then took pics of the shoes and ahdered them to the outside. this is so much easier than digging around in a rubbermaid tub!!

living room furniture

2009-05-02T15:09:00.005-04:00

i'm in the middle of cleaning out one of our spare bedrooms. i had to take a break because chad and i are getting into squabbles about what to keep and what to pitch. why is it so difficult??

anyways, i'm sure i've mentioned this before but we still have the same furniture in our living room that i had in college. hand-me-down ikea tables and a 20 year-old couch from ethan allen. granted, these things work, but they are by no means permanent (or are they????)

for awhile i wanted an old trunk for the living room table but i can't seem to find a functioning antique one that isn't huge. the good thing about never actually buying anything is that you can change your mind - cost free! so now i think i want this table for our living room:

i like how it is glass and doesn't appear to take up much room. our living room isn't tiny but it isn't huge either. we already have a rug like the one in the picture.

we have an armoire for the tv and stuff right now but i'd like to replace that will a small console table and a flat screen tv.

and i LOVE this armoire for extra storage of movies and books.

why is my wish list always so long?!

spring cleaning

2009-05-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

last weekend was so warm that i decided to do some spring cleaning. i swept the front porch (although you can't really tell it now!). planted the flower pots and cleaned off the rockers. i'll be adding the outdoor rug and a table soon.

decided to put the spring sheets on. love the yellows - so cheery.

this is the first time you've been able to see the table in loooong time. i was so sick of seeing my craft supplies out in the open constantly. i finally put things back where they belong.

this is this weekend's project. organizing my closet, one of the spare bedrooms and the basement. fun times ahead! i bought plastic shoe boxes and am taking pictures of my shoes to adhere to the outside. i can't stand digging through piles of shoes anymore!

scratches & bruises

2009-04-29T14:55:00.005-04:00

sometimes old-house renovation is hard. sometimes it results in scratches & bruises. sometimes these happen to your vehicle. so while trying to do some good to the house, some damage happened to chad's truck. this all happened a few months back, around thanksgiving actually.

basically chad was transporting 3/4" plywood sheets for our attic project in the back of his ford ranger. okay, okay - the sheets were larger than the bed of the truck and so...they came tumbling out at an intersection despite us doing similar stunts in the past and getting away with it. luckily some nice passers-by stopped to help him reload but there was some considerable damage done to the tailgate - as shown in the pictures above.

after months of searching craigslist, chad finally found a similar replacement for about $30.

i love unique furniture

2009-03-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

recently i found this armoire at a store that refinishes furniture. i think she mostly does the shabby-chic type of look and i'm not totally into that. i like it here and there but the whole house is a bit of an overload for my taste. but i thought this piece of furniture was so cute...i thought maybe for a future baby room or even in the dining room for extra storage. i bought it white and will paint it when i figure out what i really want to do with it. the other day at lowe's i found this burnt orange paint color. it was among their mess-up custom colors. it was only $5 but was the top of the line pain, which saved us like $35. granted we're going to have to prime the hell out fo the armoire, but i'm so excited to see what it will look like (one day!)

another post about bathroom tile

2009-03-14T15:28:00.002-04:00

i know i've posted about the bathroom tile sometime last year. we're basically at the same point in our bathroom remodel now as we were then. what's the hold up, you ask? money. same ole' answer. but if this bathroom remodel isn't completed by christmas, santa will be delivering divorce papers.

we went back to the tile place last weekend to revisit our quote and to check out the tiles again. because not only are we poor, we are terribly unorganized and lost our quote. the above pictures are the two contenders, which are the same as in the post from last year. i really love the color on the left but i love the crackle style and the "un-rounded" square shape on the right. mind you the tile will be subway, not 4x4 as shown in the samples. they are actually both glossy as opposed to a true matte tile but the picture doesn't really reflect that. anyways, we are working on the renovation budget to see when we can order. if the cost of all of our tile wasn't so damn expensive we'd be finished with this by now. why can't we just be comfortable buying white subway tile from the chain big box stores like everyone else??? (there's my house snob coming out. sorry.)

Foam insulation...why now?

2009-01-17T12:29:00.015-05:00

Many within our family and a few of our friends have asked why would I undertake this specific project right now, given that there appears to be many greater needs/projects which should come first. Notice that I also said "I" instead of we because Carmen was not that enthusiastic about this project but agreed to come along for the ride. (She is great!) For me, the answer is simple; first do the major systems and then finish with the eye candy. In addition to this philosophy, I firmly believe that we should first complete the projects which will begin to pay us back. This is how I arrived at the insulation.

Having spent many hours in the attic, I knew our old insulation was insufficient at best. Coupled with that was the fact that the second layer had disintegrated into a fine powder. Whenever I needed to do some work up there, I could guarantee that I would come back looking like this:

like Bert the chimney sweep (Dick Van Dyke) in Mary Poppins only without the smile. Additionally, this insulation dust would continuously migrate down to the first floor making it futile to keep the house clean (or at least dusted). So Carmen and I took a long holiday weekend and some cooler than normal weather to begin the demolition and clean-out phase.

In my December post I also said I would show how I modified the rafter areas the create a continuous air channel that runs between the roof deck and the insulation. Many will say that it is overkill, and I would tend to agree. However, I am the kind of person that prefers to do things once and am fond of overbuilding to make sure I achieve this goal. And given the fact that once this insulation is in place, there is no modifying it without the need to completely redo it. So, here is a diagram of what I did:

This is a photo showing the actual installation:

The hope is that with a continuous air stream running directly underneath the shingles, the heat load will not be allowed to build where it causes the temperature in the attic to be drastically different than the first floor. The other issue came to warranty of shingles. I remember when I was researching foam insulation before we did our exterior walls a few years ago, many shingle manufacturers where not warrantying their shingles if foam insulation was sprayed directly on the back side of the roof deck. This may have changed since some of the roofing manufacturers have gotten into the spray foam arena (Owens Corning in particular).

In the end, I can sleep easy not having regrets that I should have done this or that. If things turn out that this effort wasn't really worth all of the work, then so be it. At least I will know that I did everything I could to make this space comfortable.

Finally, the one project that had eluded me until right before the insulation was sprayed was the rewiring of our doorbell. Why is it that something so easy turns out to be one of the hardest things to complete? Before we had our exterior walls insulated, I tried to run a new doorbell wire to replace the existing wire because it had been cut in half prior to us purchasing the house. Long story short, the remaining wire snapped off in the wall as I was trying to pull the new wire through and I was never able to run a new wire. Even after carefully removing the trim around the door, I could still not locate the wire in the attic. After working three hours and boring a new hole through the wall, I had success in getting the wire upstairs. Just don't ask me how long it is going to take me to get the door bell functioning.

Quote of the Week: What happened to your doors?!

2009-01-15T19:27:00.008-05:00

We've been asked this question by neighbors a lot lately. No, no one broke into our house. No, our house hasn't been vacated or abandoned (tempting as this may sound). No, we do not prefer the look of plywood to an actual door. I can't blame them for asking - both the door above and our back door to our house looks like this.

Don't worry, it's only temporary. We're having the doors stripped, repaired and repainted. In fact, the door above is already finished.

Above is the door before. I think it was original to the house. However once our door guy had it he said it was beyond repair - large cracks and it was way uneven and slightly warped. So we found a very old similar door to replace the old one (below). We ordered hardware to match the hardware we bought when we bought the house for the portions that were not original when we moved in.

Below is the new old door being stripped and starting to be primed.

Finally, here's the new old door painted and installed. Still needs some touching up with the paint and some scraping along the windows (it was just installed today). It is painted Rookwood Red by Sherwin Williams. Love it.

off to a good start

2009-01-09T15:07:00.005-05:00

what number was "general organization" on our 2009 goal list? i can't remember right now but it was most likely near the bottom. if you live in a fixer-upper then you know organization is often the last thing to occur.

however last weekend i feel like we got off to a good start. one of the items on my christmas list was a shelf for our breakfast nook area. i've been married long enough to know that if i asked for some fancy shelf from PB or something that this wouldn't happen. so i asked for a shelf that could be used again once we remodel the kitchen and it was no longer needed in the breakfast nook. we got a gorilla rack. looks like we specifically have the GR 7304N.

no monkeying around (sorry) this thing is HEAVY-DUTY. dual purpose, too. now it holds our overflow kitchen items and all of my hobby supplies (shameless plug, sorry). one day, post kitchen remodel, it will live in our garage.

i really wish i would've taken a "before" picture of the this area. up until a few days ago this small space housed the dog's food, an old wall mirror we removed from the LR like four years ago, an antique umbrella, the microwave (still there), the dog's food (still there), an air compressor, various tools and boxes of nails, a stool, chairs, a folding table (still there), boxes to recylce, a basket full of old magazines and shoes, and a pile of junk to go to Goodwill. ah. isn't it better now?! for this feat alone i should be able to cross one item off of our goal list.

2009 goals

2009-01-07T21:24:00.002-05:00

on the treadmill today my mind started wandering back to this house. as usual. i remember that i had posted a 2008 goal list early last year. so i decided to check our progress on that list.

1. (most important) Fix the attic insulation. As in suck out the old and foam in the new. DONE.

2. Remodel the bathroom. It will be so fun and innovative to be able to flush after every use. Grossed out yet?

3. Fill in our insulation holes in our walls / fix the plaster walls.

4. Paint the walls.

5. Refinish the wood floors.

6. Purge unnecessary items from spare bedrooms and basement. / General organization.

are you serious???!! that is the ONLY thing we accomplished from our list in a year? well. in our defense, i was out of work for one glorious, warm, vacation-taking, book-reading summer. {sigh} of course those carefree days do come at a price. as in no checky check. as in no work on the house. so that's our excuse. but the insulation is a huge timeandmoneysucking item to cross of the to-do list! so that's the silver-lining, fellow DIY-ers.

An item accomplished that was not even on our list was continuing work on the landscaping. We installed landscaping on the south, east and north sides of the house. man. i hate looking at the posts from summer. makes me sad for warm weather.

as usual, i've totally digressed. here's our 2009 goal list (many with carry-overs from last year, i'm sure):

1. have the back door and the entry garage door stripped and prepped for painting

2. weatherize same doors as well as our entry doors

3. work on bedrooms - fix walls and ceilings

4. pick out exterior paint colors

5. fix other walls and paint

6. bathroom remodel

7. refinish floors

8. finish landscaping (front yard, install a small raised bed garden)

9. generally organize

now that's ambition. good luck, irvington bungalow. good luck.

Insulation update

2008-12-29T19:03:00.001-05:00

Take a moment to recall the movie Ghostbusters, more specifically near the end of the film where Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) and Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) had to fight the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man to save New York City and all of mankind.

The Stay Puff Marshmallow Man is symbolic of our trials with insulating our attic space in two respects: First, in what seemed like a relatively easy (albeit labor intensive) job to get to the point where could have our attic foamed, we had to remove everything within the area in order to start with a "clean slate". In my mind I thought a couple of weekends and we should have it ready. What a joke! Referencing back to the symbolism of the movie: the thought of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man as something evil seemed a bit off.

Below are pictures giving an example of what we started with. The attic was partially finished off in what appeared to be the mid to late 70's. It was not our style and therefore would need a certain amount of attention regardless. Add to the fact that the knee walls were further to the interior of the space than what we would like, it made sense to demo everything.

In this picture you are looking towards the east (or the back of the house) at the portion which was finished.

This view is towards the west (or the front of our house). This area was never finished which puzzled me as there were two additional windows that could allow light and fresh air in if needed.

The second reference to the movie is when the 'Busters were able to roast the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. The two pictures below show the foam insulation installed, but not completed. After this picture, our contractor (Architectural Sprayers, Inc.) preformed an inspection of the foam and noted any areas that were either lacking in coverage or happened to shrink after being foamed.

The picture below shows one of the areas after being trimmed and marked after inspected.

This is of the same area after the deficient areas were addressed.

My next post will detail the specifics of how we modified the rafter areas to accept more insulation while also creating air channels to keep a positive air stream flowing from the eaves to the ridge of the roof. I will also explain why we undertook this project right now as well as detail a project which was also completed during this project that had proved elusive.......until now!

ask and you shall receive

2008-12-13T12:05:00.003-05:00

i already received my big item on my christmas wish list for this year. a new vacuum! yeah! this thing is awesome and supposedly the best for all hardwoods. thanks dad! i wonder if i can use this directly on the dog?

on other house topics. chad is finishing up on the attic. next weekend we'll have our insulation foamed-in. can't wait. it is a little chilly in here. thank God we have a fireplace!

all i want for christmas ...

2008-11-23T10:36:00.004-05:00

... is a vacuum.

can you believe we've been using our shop-vac as our house vacuum cleaner ever since we've moved in four years ago? ugh. it is totally disgusting and almost a waste of efforts because a lot of the dust just blows out the back end of the vac right back onto the floor and countertops. granted, the shop-vac is awesome when pieces of the plaster ceilings or walls fall onto the floor, which unfortunately happens more often than i care to think about.
so this christmas i'm asking for a real, grown-up vacuum cleaner. and true to my style, i'm not going to walk into the local big-box retailer and buy any vacuum sitting on the shelf. this is the one i've been after for a few years:

this is the miele capricorn. and this puppy is not cheap. therefore, i might have to rethink this wish list item. i'm also thinking about this one:

this is the miele S-163. it's compact and marketed for small living spaces, which i totally love. we have limited storage/closet space as is and i don't want to have to dedicate an entire closet area for my freaking vacuum cleaner. after lugging around the damn shop-vac for years, i'm really wanting something lightweight, made for wood floors (all of our floors are hardwood, tile, or linoleum), and that will actually work well - you know, with all the filtration bells and whistles.

any suggestions from hardwood floor owners out there???

our ole' screen door

2008-11-15T11:23:00.005-05:00

this is our original screen door for the back door off the kitchen. when we moved in this was found in the garage along with some storm windows. we recently had a quote done for weatherizing all of our outside entrance doors as well as stripping two of the doors. there are a few things that we just are not going to tackle ourselves and stripping doors is one of them. at the last minute chad handed this screen door over to the door guys. we went and visited the workshop this week and here's our door! besides the insulation this is the first project we've contracted out and let me tell you. it felt good. how nice to leave something in one condition and get it back in better condition! this is so novel for us.

i wish we would've taken a before pic but it was so last minute that we decided to have it stripped. we'll still need to install a new screen and we'll also paint or stain this once we do the same to the outside trim on the house. but can i tell you how excited i am that we are going to be able to have breeze come through the kitchen this summer? yeah!!

we also went to the workshop to view some doors that are being refinished for some of the houses chad is working on for work.

for some reason, i pictured this guy working with steel wool and a little can of stripper. how stupid of me. you can see what this door looked like on one side and then how it appears after the stripper has worked its magic. he says this door is very old wood and probably dates back to the late 1800s.

attic work, i've lost count

2008-11-03T18:42:00.003-05:00

i used to number the posts related to the attic work but i've honestly lost count. so far this year we've unfinished the circa 1960 finished attic. we've ripped out, bagged up and sweated through removing countless truckloads worth of insulation. then we took a few months of any work on the house due to finances.

now the attic work is back on. yeah! which is how we were introduced to our friend, the hole. right now the house work is focused back on the attic as chad shop-vacs the cavities between the joists to make sure we get ALL the old nasty insulation outta there as well as the loose plaster keys.

we're set to have a quote from our insulation guys later this month. here's hoping all this work makes the less dust and cozy toes this coming winter!

ah, my new friend, the hole.

2008-10-26T11:39:00.003-04:00

i haven't written lately. that's because i hate this house. yesterday it had me in tears.

but enough about me!! i want to introduce you to our recent house guest. here's my new friend that decided to come and stay last weekend. it's called a hole. in our ceiling.

ahh, but please. don't worry about our new semi-permanent house guest (becuase let's be realistic here people. this thing could be a part of our lives for a long time) he decided to stake out his living quarters right next to his step-brother. whom we like to call "the place in our ceiling where we have exposed lath and no plaster."

yes, i think they will become good, good friends. lucky us.

the great outdoor ... table

2008-09-30T21:51:00.004-04:00

i am SO excited. do you remember earlier this year i posted about an outdoor table from sundance catalog that i loved? i'm on this kick where i really want original furniture for our house. anyways, i'd like for our outdoor table and our living room coffee and/or end tables to be made from old barn wood. well, this weekend we got a step closer to the outdoor table of my dreams.

see that dirty wood leaning against the garage? someone recently gave us some old barn wood! (ask and you shall receive). oh it may not look like much now but you wait.

one day it will look like this. but there will be a matching bench next to it.

i mean, check out that post. it's massive. this thing is going to be so freakin' heavy. and stylish.

just checking in

2008-09-29T14:14:00.004-04:00

so it's been awhile. like i said in the last post, i haven't really been posting on here since i've been out of work and therefore, not much work has progressed on the house.

however....

i gots me a jobby job! how do i feel about this? mixed feelings, really. while it has been SUPER nice having the summer off i'm ready to dive back into the work force (and, more imporantly, a paycheck). i'm really really really ready to get some things done around the house. so you know what this means???

new job = bathroom remodel

as soon as i get that first paycheck we're heading to the tile place to order that beautiful bathroom tile i talked about earlier this year. yeah!

also i was going to be so selfless as to not spend money on the fall mums this year if i didn't have a job. i got one just in time! this weekend we made the transition.

just a small change, i know, but it makes me feel better because i think it makes the front porch look a little less...like we have dead flowers.

hopefully you'll be seeing more of us around in the virtual world again. you're thrilled. i just know it.

a funny thing happened ...

2008-09-12T14:20:00.003-04:00

... on the way back from admiring the new additions on the fence.

we noticed one of the posts on our side entrance/porch leaning against the house. it is NOT supposed to do that. so now it is temporarily gone until we can fix it. both the posts are rotted at the bottom because the POs decided to put wood against concrete. SMART.

this effing house. i swear it is like we take one step forward (nice fence!) and eighteen steps backwards (uhhh...nice rotting posts). argh!

frisbee anyone?

2008-09-03T18:35:00.000-04:00

and the fence progresses

2008-09-03T17:13:00.000-04:00

b.c. (before cutting)

a.c. (after cutting)

b.c.

a.c.

looks fantastic! good job chad! now, let's just get that gate built and we'll be finished.

a historic mini "staycation"

2008-08-11T09:32:00.007-04:00

again, i have to apologize for the lack of posting here. again, i wish i could say it is because we are SO busy working on the house. but it isn't. i haven't posted because i still have no job and therefore no moola to really dig back into our house projects.

a silver lining is that we have been able to actually enjoy our summer! for example, this past weekend my mom visited french lick, indiana and spent the night at the restored West Baden Springs Hotel. omg. it is so so beautiful. there is a lot of history associated with the hotel that i won't get into here. the gist of it is that this is a grand hotel that was built in the early 20th century. people from across the country would visit french lick resort and west baden as their mineral springs were said to have curing powers. as with many magnificent old buildings in america, it fell into disrepair. however both hotels were meticulously restored and re-opened last year. everything looks fabulous and is absolutely beautiful. both hotels rival buildings i've seen in europe. and to think they are in southern indiana!!

front entrance to west baden ~

my mom & i inside the dome area ~

the dome at night. the blue area gradually changes colors ~

the restored original (i think) tile floor of the west baden hotel lobby ~

the french lick hotel lobby ~

quote of the week

2008-07-25T15:45:00.001-04:00

"Old houses mended, cost little less than new before they're ended."

~Colley Cibber

amen! and because i'm jobless right now, this quote best explains why i have nothing house-related to blog about presently.

don't let this happen to you

2008-07-21T10:18:00.001-04:00

it was still too damn hot to do anything on the house on sunday but we had no choice. look at the weeds in one of our newly planted beds! i mean - where are the plants? where are the weeds? who in the hell really knows? the decent amount of rain we've received this summer is not only a boon to our friends, the plants, but to our enemies, the weeds, as well.

so on sunday we bought some cheapo mulch and went at the weeding. omg. i'm waaay too old to be hunched over for five hours pulling weeds. my back & legs are feelin' it today. i bet the neighbors are happy though. looks better.

weekend scavengers

2008-07-21T10:08:00.001-04:00

saturday was just too damn hot to do anything on the house. instead we went to a new salvage store called reclaimed located on the lovely near-eastside of indy. chad bought the cottage doors below for a house owned by historic landmarks.

after that we visited one of my favorite places to go wander on a lazy day, midland arts & antiques. i am in love with this picnic table set. i would've lobbied for its purchase had it not already been sold.

i love ... no, hate ... no, love ... pottery barn

2008-07-16T09:58:00.005-04:00

i have a love/hate relationship with pottery barn.

on the one hand their stuff is pretty cool and i really like wandering around their store, dreaming of the days when we might have fresh paint on our walls, stylish throw rugs on our shiny wood floors and furniture that didn't see my college apartment days. on the other hand, in my humble opinion, the quality of their items (poor) does not adequately reflect their pricing (overpriced). and it bothers me to buy their items because i feel like i would rather find actual & authentic antique products instead of some reproduction stuff photographed in catalogues passed out to thousands of middle class homes across the country. in other words, i'd rather be a little more unique than buy all my home decor at PB. plus, isn't it fun to hunt & gather in antique stores?

shoot! with all of my soap box spew out of the way i'll reluctantly divulge that my admitted love/hate mentality does not stop me from drooling at the mouth when i get a new PB catalogue. man! what is my problem? i guess it is like house porn or something.

anyways, last night i went to listen to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in a neighborhood park. the summer weather was perfect, the music was fabulous & relaxing, i had a glass of wine and slowly perused my brand new PB catalog - fresh out of the mail lady's hands yesterday afternoon. here are some things that i think are really, really cool but will never buy:

this is the "edison" chandelier. you know, because the bulbs are old-timey like when edison first made the light bulb. those PB copy editors. they are creative.

i'm totally stuck on the idea of having our living room furniture reflect a slight industrial look. i have no idea why. i think it is cool.

this picture? in the catalogue they say that it has quotes about books in the background of the canvas. one of my favorite things in the whole world is reading. just the image of books makes me content.

quote of the week

2008-07-12T11:41:00.004-04:00

"i'm sorry but we're going to have to ask you to sign this resignation letter."

i've been a little delinquent in my posts here at irvington bungalow. partly because nothing is happening here & partly because i've been away in florida. and the explanation behind both of those excuses is that i was recently "let go" from my job working for the still relatively new mayor of indianapolis. hence, the fab quote of the week.

the basic gist of the story goes like this: i was hired on as a mayor's neighborhood liaison for our former democratic mayor last year. events unfolded, he was not re-elected last fall and since that time, my colleagues and i have been preparing for the changing of the guard (so-to-speak; you know, we've been waiting for the new administration to fire us and bring in his own people). that day came two weeks ago on monday. the first week i spent still in shock. the second week i spent in florida. still in shock but at least in shock catching up on some reading on the beach.

but now...i have arrived back in irvington. ready to really start looking for something else while trying to figure out how we can still pay for our several projects already in the works and those being planned (i.e. the bathroom remodel).

my job as a liaison was sometimes fun, sometimes stressful, always interesting. i had the unique opportunity of working where i live. i went to neighborhood meetings and got to meet some of the best people i have ever met in my life. case in point. one of my irvington neighborhood groups sent me this bunch of flowers above and a card that the entire organization signed. this was so sweet and a much needed boost to my spirits. thanks to all of the people who made my job wonderful!

quote of the week

2008-07-02T10:30:00.003-04:00

"uh, no offense or anything but i just don't see how you live like that."

this was something that someone actually said to me. a family member. at the time i replied with something like: "oh well, it's not that bad. i just think of the end product. and, really, i mean, uh...after a while you just really start to NOT notice the boxes, and dust, and un-organization."

looking back, i don't think this was my best defense and/or answer. however, i'm not sure what i should have said. actually this comment makes me giggle because it is not an uncommon thing to hear in the home renovation process, especially from this person. it didn't hurt my feelings but it did make me come home, look around and ask myself: "my God! how DO i live like this??!!"

one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) i'll come home, look around and say: "it was all worth it."

won't i????

adventures in tile & other bathroom decisions

2008-07-01T10:20:00.005-04:00

last week we ventured to two stores in order to help through this process of picking out fixtures and tile for our bathroom remodel. the first was Economy Plumbing in downtown indy. joe helped us and he was so nice. we picked out a few fixtures and he priced them for us. he recommended a few high-end lines but also mentioned that one can't go wrong with delta faucets (good to know). currently we're considering this chrome fixture for our pedestal sink. the only difference is we would like to have the cross handles.

ahhh...now on to the tile. over the weekend we went to Architectural Brick & Tile. omg. if you love house remodeling and tiles and flooring you would LOVE this place. beeeautiful tiles everywhere. lots of eye candy. however they closed at 3 and we arrived around 1:45 so we only had time to get down to business...no perusing for the fun of it. our lovely sales gal, kristina, priced three lines for us: meredith, irongate, and sonoma stellar.

so we're probably going to get either the one in the upper left hand corner or the one directly below it. the ones in the top row are from my current tile nemesis mission tile west. but the ones in the middle are considerably more expensive and have almost the exact same colors. so...decisions, decisions.

and to add on to that - grout choices!! pretty excited about this. we're not doing white grout. that's just too boring for us. the colors with the arrows are the ones we're considering.

what about the floor? definitely black, white and then some other color. here are the current choices:

i could have made three different posts out of this one. oh well. so excited about the colors we've narrowed it down to at this point. in my mind's eye it is all beautiful and relaxing in there. can't wait to see it live and in person.

attic work progresses

2008-07-01T10:01:00.002-04:00

before ... after ...

we were planning on finishing up the old insulation removal in the attic over the 4th holiday weekend. however the weather was so amenable on sunday that we decided to get up there and take care of it over this past weekend. although it was only in the high 70s outside, up in the dusty attic it probably was in the upper 80s. still we really couldn't have asked for better conditions given that it was the end of june in the midwest. as you can see from the 'before and afters' above, we're finished removing all the old insulation. YEAH!! what a great feeling. this took about four hours.

next steps - shop vac the bays and then install the ventilation stuff (sorry not technical, need chad for further explanation and official terms). then have the new insulation foamed in. so close!!!

quote of the week

2008-06-25T08:47:00.004-04:00

"Home wasn't built in a day."

Jane Ace, The Fine Art of Hypochondria

{this picture from the attic in 2006 is proof. this was the beginning of the end for our "finished" attic, and the beginning of our electrical re-wiring project. neither of which are completely finished - but who's counting? i'm going to remember and recite this quote every time one of our family members gives us crap about the status of our house.}

bathroom tile dilemma

2008-06-24T08:18:00.005-04:00

so we started thinking about our bathroom remodel months ago. at that time we were hoping to have started and completed the darn thing already. we haven't even started. part of it is we've been distracted by fabulous weather ... thus the landscaping and time spent outside. the other part is my utter disgust with the dust issue ... thus the attic project. the landscaping is probably finished for now (more to come next year) and we will finish our part of the attic project over the 4th weekend.

so here we are back to our bathroom dilemma. the third reason for our procrastination (always must have good excuses, er, reasons for NOT finishing projects) is the tile. omg. i thought picking out items was supposed to be the easy part. the tile is becoming such a burden. we were originally going to order our tile from Mission Tile West. but we have had so much trouble with them that i think that is off the table. i'm going to save my ranting & raving post for later, just in case we need to actually order from them but all i'll say is this: for the amount of money we were going to spend on this tile their customer service is crap. terrible. i highly would recommend not even bothering beginning a conversation with these people.

i'm pushing for us to make a decision on our tile so this weekend we're going to go to a store locally called Architectural Brick & Tile. we're going to check out the Meredith Art Tile line. online this line looks like what we've been thinking about doing. i'm crazy about this color which is way different than the pink we were thinking about buying. it's called 'seaglass'. we're still going to do the 3x6 field tiles but not sure about the rest. i'll update after we look this weekend. yeah!

flafoos

2008-06-19T10:30:00.006-04:00

think that's a weird title for my post? according to my parents that is what i used to call flowers when i was little.
over the past few months we've installed about 1/4 to 1/2 of our landscape plan. some of you may know that chad is a landscape architect and we've also joked that for the past 4 years our neighbors probably don't believe that fact because our yard has been not great. the only thing we've done up until now was tear out whatever landscaping the POs had in the ground. (we did this immediately so as to fool the neighbors when we first moved in. here they thought something was going to be installed in place of the things we tore out. silly.) chad did tear up the entire back yard and re-seeded which has given us beautiful thick really green grass. also, we've planted like 9 trees or something. but now we have flaffoos! yeah!
these pictures are not the greatest but you can get the idea. here are corabells (i really don't know if that is the right name) in the front of the bed, the daisies and in the back are hydrangeas. i am SUPER excited about those.

in the next picture you can see the dead grass where the bed is going to be extended to our future sidewalk. we'll work on this part of the bed this weekend. (and by "we" i really mean chad.)

this is one of the beds i posted about over a month ago. while i was in florida chad planted hostas and corabells in this bed. and finally our dogwood is doing well. that thing has been a wimp for the past few years but i think it is coming out of its slump.

so nice to see some actual progress! also i apologize if i butchered these plant names. plants aren't my thing and i'm really too lazy to go look up the proper spelling and stuff.

happy anniversary

2008-06-13T11:01:00.002-04:00

sometime in the last week of may we celebrated 4 years of proud ownership of the irvington bungalow. oh if i had only known then what i know now ...

happy anniversary to us !!

i've come a long way, baby

2008-06-13T08:49:00.005-04:00

i really don't know why i used that title on this post. i'm been remiss in writing lately partly because i was in florida all last week and then have been swamped at work this week. but now...ahhh...it is the weekend so i can breathe a little easier now.

oh and both of our cameras are on the outs. i'm going to have to get a new one but just don't have the energy to think about it at the moment. so needless to say, not a lot of housework to talk about or to show which actually renders this post almost totally useless. however i didn't feel right disappointing my one reader (sorry about that tree Brian) so i thought i would post something.

here are some pictures of what i dream our attic bathroom will look like one day. not crazy about that sink, a little too grecian or something for my taste. but you get the general idea.

cottage living design assistant

2008-05-30T16:37:00.002-04:00

does any one else get stuck on cottage living's design assistant for a looooong time looking for house ideas? i used to have this picture above saved somewhere and i couldn't find it so i had to get back on their site to find it again. i am in LOVE with those painted wood floors and the beadboard walls & ceilings. this is what i would like our attic to look like when it is finished. i am going to refuse to have carpet installed. a major reason we cleaned out the attic is for improved indoor air quality. the last thing i want is all the chemicals used to make carpet seeping into my nostrils.

so then of course i started looking at kitchen pictures. i love this kitchen....well, not so much the mint-green cabinets. that color just doesn't do it for me but i adore the style of the cabinets and the 3x6 matte subs. and seriously? who doesn't love schoolhouse style lighting?

below is another picture of painted wood floors. i'm kind-of obsessed with the idea of having checkered flooring somewhere in the house as well as painted wood floors somewhere.

attic when we moved in ~ 2004

2008-05-29T17:27:00.003-04:00

i didn't think we had any pics of what our attic looked like when we moved in. but i foud some! they are beeeee-autiful. see the nasty carpet and the paneling? gross.

attic fun, days 2, 3 & 4

2008-05-29T16:50:00.007-04:00

days two & three

pretty much more of the same on days two and three - just slowly removing the insulation from each cavity between the joists. the picture below is the entire north side of the attic behind the knee walls all finished.

day 4

day four was our final day off from work. we were really hoping to get all the insulation out by this day but unfortunately we did not. i think had we not tried to use that damn machine we would've accomplished our goal. oh well, you live & learn, right?

the picture below is the attic looking west, end of day 4. all cleaned out except for the middle section under the flooring. so, technically, there is probably another day of work ahead of us. ripping out the floor and then doing the same with the insulation under there. after that we're going to shop-vac the small stuff left behind.

cleaned out drop ceiling, end of day 4. this is interesting - under here is the pantry that is original to the house. ~

our final load at the dump. how cool is that trailer?

here is the load. disgusting. also - doesn't look like much, that's a whole days worth of work right there! of course, the insulation is compacted. i feel badly that we had to take this stuff to the dump because i do consider myself an environmentally conscious person. if you have a problem with this let me know, present your case and i'll gladly go ahead and defend our actions. otherwise, i'll just let it go. :)

so our next steps? finish taking out the old insulation, shop-vac and then contact the guys who foamed in the insulation last time. remember this?

attic fun, day 1

2008-05-29T08:20:00.006-04:00

day one
during day one we removed all the batting, some of the larger pieces of paneling and wood that were just sitting around from previous demolition efforts and sucked up some of the wool & cellulose as was shown in the previous post. here are some pics of what the attic looked like after day one's work was completed.

attic from far end looking east, day one. you can see the closet framing & insulation batting are gone! really opens the space. ~

attic looking west, day one. batting removed from knee walls and ceiling. ~

now this is what we had to contend with. you can see the joists along the floor. we had to remove all that insulation by hand. good times. ~

below is the same space as the picture directly above just from a different angle. you can see what it looks like once we removed the insulation between the joists. you can also see where i gave up at the end of day one (the left hand side, i was supposed to go all the way to the planks in the middle of the room). i just couldn't take it the dirt, heat or dust any longer. ~

attic fun during memorial day weekend, the beginning

2008-05-29T07:49:00.007-04:00

the beginning
every now and then for about a year and a half we've been demolishing the finished interior of our attic. it was finished by the son of the POs probably sometime in the 60s. there was gross mustard/tan colored carpet, wood paneling and a closet. there was also lots of insulation, which oridnarily is a good thing. chad began to deconstruct the attic when we updated the electrical work almost two years ago. ever since then the dust problem in our house went from somewhat annoying to down right disgusting - making me question the air quality in the house. so we decided to gut the "finished" part of the attic, take out all of the old insulation, have the foam insulation installed and eventually finish the attic off as a master suite. (after we figure out how to build permanent stairs to the attic, of course). the following posts chronicles our fun four days of removing the insulation in the attic.

we rented a trailer and a machine that blows in insulation. the thought was to try to reverse the machine so we could pump out the old insulation (wool & cellulose) into the trailer. ~

attic looking west, the beginning ~

attic looking east from far end, day 1. the wall with the batting insulation is the closet that separated the two "rooms" in the attic. the part we're standing in taking the picture was never finished. check out the light in the right hand corner. that is the orignal dining room light. ~

attic looking east from other side of closet, the beginning. this room was the finished room. the paneling and carpet were mostly long gone. ~

first we removed all the batting insulation you see along the walls. it was also installed along the "ceiling". this actually took a lot longer than i had anticipated. this day was nice outside but fairly hot inside at one point reading 90 degrees. later in the day we began to remove the wool & cellulose insulation in between the ceiling (the house ceiling, the attic floor) joists. this proved to be a not fun job and using the system with the hose didn't turn out as we had anticipated. this is because we couldn't actually use the hose to suck up the insulation, we were hoping to figure out a way to do this but it just wasn't there. so we had to carry loads of the insulation down the pull-down attic stairs and then dump it into the machine that sucked it through the hose out into the trailer. this ended up taking way too long and was SUPER messy. plus things would get stuck in the hose occasionally. we lost an entire hour because a tiny old metal tobacco tin got stuck and cause a back-up.

below is a picture of chad dumping a load of insulation into the machine on day one. by day two we figured out that this system was a complete waste of time and nixed using the machine. instead we just carried our loads to the trailer and dumped. much easier, much faster, much smarter. ~

community supported agriculture in irvington

2008-05-17T12:52:00.002-04:00

i am so excited because this year we've decided to participate in a community supported agriculture (CSA) right here in our neighborhood. last year i wrote my graduate thesis on how CSAs can contribute to revitalization in urban and rural areas. (uh, if you're interested in reading a 100+ page paper on this topic just let me know. i'm sure my in-box will fill right up.)

researching this paper i learned so much about the "evils" of our corporate food system, from seeds to distribution of the produce. even buying organics isn't the best way to go - buying as much local produce from near-by (hopefully independently owned) farms is a much better way to contribute positively to the environment and your local economy. the local economy is a vital but often overlooked element of the environmental argument.

omg. sorry about the tangent on my soapbox.

my point is this: YEAH!! we got our first pick-up today. albeit very small since it is so early in the season and it has been a bit cool lately. how fun is it to walk up to some one's house in your neighborhood and walk away with fresh produce from a near-by farm? i love it.

this time we got: potatoes, eggs, asparagus, mint, chives and popcorn. i hear by mid-summer i'll have so much food i won't know what to do with it. thank God that i know a lot of vegetarians to share the goods with later.

ps: please note the great basket. got it as a gift for Christmas and it is coming in handy now!

i heart this barn

2008-05-16T15:28:00.006-04:00

one of my dreams is to have an old barn and convert it into a house. there was a TOH article not too long ago with pictures of barns that people had converted into homes. what a great idea. lots of open space and design possibilities. not to mention the environmental impact - how much "greener" can you get than to use an old building for a new use?

this is a barn that is available through an organization that i've mentioned before on this blog - Historic Landmarks. i really love this barn and would like to get it. ehhh...pretty sure it is not in the budget right now, though. enjoy the pics and dreaming about the possibilities!

check out this old door. how fab is it? ~

inside / open area ~loft space # 1 ~loft space #2 ~isn't it just great?

plant this !

2008-05-10T21:35:00.001-04:00

unless you count trees and new grass we've done little landscaping since we've moved into the house almost four years ago. this year some of that is changing. chad has been reworking his landscape plans and ordered several types of plants from a couple of online nurseries. this is what he accomplished today. we actually started on the side of the house where people hardly see except for our next door neighbors. i'm sure they are very happy about the improvements though. MUCH better than weeds, don't you think?

flats before planting ~

yard before planting ~ ~ yard after planting

May is Preservation Month

2008-05-04T19:45:00.007-04:00

Bush Stadium, built in 1931, was one of the greatest minor league parks in the nation.

When the Indianapolis Indians moved downtown to Victory Field in 1996,

the stadium was left empty. This was added to the 10 Most Endangered List

released a few days ago by Historic Landmarks Foundation.

May is Preservation Month! Today we attended a lecture sponsored by the Historic Landmarks Foundation. The lecture was led by the Executive Director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. She talked about some of the historic neighborhoods in New Orleans, how her organization and the National Historic Trust have teamed to help reduce the number of demolished homes in the aftermath of Katrina. She also discussed the importance of historic preservation planning before a disaster occurs. An important part of her group's mission at this point is advocating and educating homeowners about the pros of rehabilitating their home instead of tearing down and building new. This is something that many people could use a lesson on in many cities around the country (in my humble opinion).

Open up this link for some great before and after pictures of cute shotgun homes in New Orleans. And be sure to check out your local preservation office for special lectures and/or classes to celebrate Preservation Month!

P.S. The lecture included a complimentary dinner from Yats. omg. If you ever visit Indy be sure to make it to this restaurant. It is quick, cheap, local and so freakin' tasty.

real simple ~ renovation handbook

2008-05-02T17:14:00.004-04:00

apparently the magazine Real Simple is jumping on the renovation bandwagon with a series of articles related to "sprucing up your home." the first is an article about cabinets and countertops for baths and kitchens. some of the advice is probably old hat for us house renovators (ha, ha) but on the third page of the online article (here) there is a great breakdown of the different materials available, price comparisons and some of the pros & cons.

i think i'm still voting for soapstone countertops for our future kitchen but the paper composite look cool too.

Spring !

2008-04-29T21:38:00.000-04:00

Despite a slight dip in temps tonight, spring is in full swing here. Our trees are beautiful !

This is proof that sometimes (albeit, rarely) I am on the other side of the camera.

i need this stool

2008-04-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

In a recent post I mentioned how we have a Chambers stove that we are considering having restored. Of course Chad has been researching the heck out of Chambers now. I found this picture in a manual or cookbook we found online. It is a pic of the "Home Economics" kitchen in the Chambers factory (now gone, of course) in Shelbyville, IN.

What I LOVE is that stool.

Check it out! It is a step stool...but flip it over and it is stool you can sit on. What a fabulous idea for the "not so big" house! I wish I could find one. I'm going to have to find someone to make me one. Any takers?

bathroom update

2008-04-22T08:49:00.007-04:00

We still haven't started the bathroom renovation yet. We're currently waiting on some more tile samples for the floor. We have simplified the tile design for the wall and tweaked the color scheme a bit so that's why we ordered new samples. Here is a pic of what the wall tile will look like but in a different color scheme. We're not taking the tile around the mirror but I do think we're going to order those sconces. Cute, uh? This is a scanned page from a 2006 Rejuvenation catalog that I just found sitting around the house the other day. Crazy what you'll find around here if you dig deep enough.

salvaging for parts ... in our own home.

2008-04-18T13:34:00.006-04:00

You know what is particularly amusing about my last post? The fact that we have enough old "stuff" accumulated throughout our home that we don't really need to go to a salvage store. Okay, okay...it's much more fun and useful to look through others' junk (uh, architectural salvage). Besides...we love looking.
Anyways, just thought I'd show some stuff we have either inherited, saved from becoming salvage for others to buy (read: got it from the trash), or actually purchased for future use in the restoration of Irvington Bungalow.
i love this sink...we hope to use it in our future laundry room ~

an old Chambers stove...we're considering having it restored for use in our future kitchen ~

a beautiful door for which we have no use ~

a stained glass window (one of several we now own)...we're going to restore it and hang it above the fireplace mantel ~

an old Coke machine...i have no idea what the hell we're going to do with this but it's cool ~

We actually have several other things sitting around however blogger wouldn't let me post any more pics. Besides the weather is fab so i'm going outside to enjoy the day!

Salvaging for Parts

2008-04-13T14:18:00.001-04:00

The weather this weekend turned back to winter - cold and rainy. We decided to use it as an opportunity to go to one of our favorite places, White River Salvage. Chad wanted to look for pins (I think that's what they are called) for the kitchen window hinges. We've never been able to open our kitchen windows because the pins were missing. There are currently nails holding the hinges together. Very classy, I know. We also just love to look at all the stuff there. Tons of old doors, windows and just a lot of ... stuff! That's the only way to put it. If you look close enough in the top picture you'll see a Ronald McDonald. Maybe we should get it for our front yard.

Weekend Work

2008-04-07T16:49:00.001-04:00

Before After

With the weather so wonderful this weekend (is that an alliteration?) we decided to start some work on the attic in preparation for the insulation we're going to have foamed in eventually. Gotta complete that envelope. Basically Chad tore out this little room that the POs had used as a closet when the adult son was using the attic has his bedroom. You can see the walls/insulation still standing (adjacent to the brick) in the first picture (top) and not standing in the bottom picture. The plywood is actually the entrance to the front part of the house. The next step is to rent a dumpster to haul the debris and then suck (or bag it) all the insulation that is between the ceiling joists (attic floor). Good times in our future. I'm not looking forward to this project - surprise - but it will be great to see if this cuts down on the amount of dust that collects on the main floor of the house.

Before After

The other project we worked on was installing some landscaping in the backyard. As far as I know this was impromptu. We were given the limestone last year by a co-worker at the time. I thought for sure this pile of rocks would lay in our back yard for years but, ta da, here it is in an actual landscape. We ordered a good amount of plants for some parts of the yard so soon (we promise neighbors) our house will start to look not-so-sucky on the outside.

My New Love = Sundance Catalog

2008-04-06T17:43:00.004-04:00

I am aware that the Sundance Catalog is not new. I JUST now fell in love with it though. I'm pretty sure I need all of these:

For the living room ~

I have an obsession with bowls and these are fab ~

An outdoor dining table (this is honestly what I had in mind to have Chad make us one day) ~

I just love these ~

Ugh. I need to win the lottery or something.

Out & About

2008-04-05T14:12:00.004-04:00

Yesterday my mom and I went antique-ing in Centerville, IN. We explored the area few years back but have not been there recently. A couple of months ago the town was featured in the Indianapolis Star (see the article here) so we decided to make a day of it. I didn't buy anything significant but a couple of cute things that you wouldn't find anywhere else. The day was gross and dreary so I didn't take any pictures of the cute buildings. Hopefully we'll get back there when it is nicer outside and we can explore the little town in more detail.

Last night I went to a concert at The Vogue in Broad Ripple. Some of my friends and I usually try to see local band Margot and the Nuclear So and So's when they are in town...this time it was for a good cause, Rock for Riley. All the proceeds are donated to Riley Hospital for Children. The show was GREAT despite that I am super tired today (that's because I'm old and the average age of the people there last night didn't help me feel better about this at all - pretty sure it was around 22). Anyways, Margot are from another historic neighborhood in Indy - Fountain Square.

So anyways, today is beautiful so we're going to do some yard work and work on the attic in prep for the insulation. Happy Spring!!

Marmoleum Kitchen Floor

2008-03-22T11:40:00.004-04:00

I was a little bored yesterday so I searched online for pics of marmoleum floors. I stumbled on this photo taken from the 1916 Portland Bungalow blog. Love love love this look for our future kitchen. Even the colors. I think we would consider doing the checkerboard at an angle. I've read that this makes the room look larger. With our limited kitchen square footage we need all the optical illusions we can to make the space look bigger than it is in reality!

Repairing Plaster Walls

2008-03-20T10:54:00.000-04:00

We were unlucky enough to have wallpaper on every wall in our home when we purchased it. However we were lucky enough to have all of the original plaster walls (in our opinions this is lucky). The problem is that in some places the plaster was literally being held together by the wallpaper. Even before signing the closing docs we knew that at least one portion of a bedroom wall would have to be replaced completely with either new plaster or drywall. In another spare bedroom we recently decided that portions of the plaster were not stable enough to stand the test of time. We removed large portions of the plaster (enough to fill three tubs shown in the right hand picture). We looked into having the walls re-plastered but for all the work we still need to do on this house we just feel it is going to be too cost prohibitive. We're going to incorporate drywall into these walls with the remaining plaster. For us, not the ideal solution but one we can feel comfortable with.

Reclaimed Furniture

2008-02-22T09:21:00.003-05:00

We received our This Old House magazine yesterday. This month they have a section dedicated to small spaces, which I love since we have a small house. I am in love with these tables:
They have a small footprint so they are great for smaller spaces AND the wood tops are salvaged wood from demolished houses. Obviously, I'd prefer to not have houses demolished but since it does happen at least the materials can go to other causes. You can see more furniture like this at Viva Terra.

2008 Goals

2008-02-12T17:30:00.001-05:00

Is it too late in the "new" year to post our house goals for the year? It will be fun to look back in Feb 2009 to see how much of it we didn't accomplish (way to be optimistic, right?)

Btw, these are numbered in order of importance. To me.

1. (most important) Fix the attic insulation. As in suck out the old and foam in the new.
2. Remodel the bathroom. It will be so fun and innovative to be able to flush after every
use. Grossed out yet?
3. Fill in our insulation holes in our walls / fix the plaster walls.
4. Paint the walls.
5. Refinish the wood floors.
6. Purge unnecessary items from spare bedrooms and basement. / General organization.

Before I bought this house that organization thing would have been higher up on the list. So would flushing after every use. My values are sadly slipping.