Note to those thinking of buying a fixer-upper: it takes a toll on your outward appearance. I was the proud owner of some really beautiful shapely fingernails for about 24 hours. My sister-in-law’s bachelorette party was on Saturday, and we hit a local spa for some serious pampering. (Soooo much fun, so very needed.) I […]

Judging by the deafening silence over here at Fixer-Upper, you probably think we’re whiling away the summer hours making s’mores and drinking cold beers out on the porch. I won’t lie – we’ve had a few s’mores. But we’ve been working HARD on the house lately. Harder than we’ve ever worked, perhaps…. or at least […]

Blame it on all the doll houses I had growing up… I have a real thing for teeny tiny versions of regular sized objects. Case in point: my cat-sized dogs. So these mini-tools from Atwood Knife and Tool totally make me want to whip out the credit card. I mean, how cool would one look […]

I can’t walk down the street without critiquing the entire neighborhood while simultaneously taking mental notes on the features we want to emulate. So I spend a good portion of our TV time flipping between remodeling shows on HGTV and TLC – especially now that Grey’s and The Office aren’t in season. Some of those […]

I fell off the radar last week, and for that I apologize. I have a good excuse – I’ve been spending all my spare time sanding drywall and painting our two spare bedrooms, which up until a few weeks ago were not at all conducive to sleeping or any other type of human habitation. I […]

We have been cranking through some of our more boring projects, hence my lack o’ interesting posts. I mean, how many times can I complain about drywall sanding before someone comes to the house and cuts my Road Runner cable just to shut me up? As I mentioned in this post, we’ve been working on […]

Too cute not to share…. We don’t have many social gatherings at our house – I think we forget it’s not a hellhole anymore! But if we did, I’d totally want to serve dessert using this cake server from Uncommon Goods : Have a DIYer in need of a gift? You can buy it on […]

My entire reason for living is to check things off of to-do lists; I’m a David Allen groupie, and I recently stuck a mini whiteboard to my car’s dashboard so that I can write lists on the move. (I know, not the safest addition – but it beats searching for a pen and a slip […]

I took a break from house projects this morning to run my first road race – a 15K called “The Boilermaker” in Utica, NY – with my friend Katherine. It’s the largest 15k in the nation, with over 12,000 runners this year. The race ends at the Matt’s Brewery. (That’s me on the left) Not […]

As I often note when I post pics of our stairwell, we’ve yet to put railings up. About a year ago we ripped out two false walls that had been constructed where the railings originally were, and despite my most optimistic hopes there were no beautiful Victorian railings hiding between said walls. We’ve been living […]