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 […]

Somewhere around Sunday afternoon on our drive back from camping in the mountains of West Virginia, I got hit with a huge surge of energy and motivation. With a week of vacation in front of me, and literally nothing planned, I suddenly saw a sea of possibility. I could hardly wait to dive in to […]

We just returned from a weekend camping trip in the mountains of West Virginia, and like any good diy’er we ended up coming home with tools instead of souveniers. We were wandering the dusty aisles of an awesome fleamarket in Harper’s Ferry with my sis-in-law Eilis and her fiance Ted – two highly-skilled treasure hunters […]

Notice anything about our site lately? Like, our eternally slow progress and general lack of projects in the queu? I think it’s official: We hit another wall. A big one. If I had to guess, I’d say we hit the wall the day our master bathroom was finished. Since that day, our motivation has been […]

Every homeowner will tell you they make certain sacrifices for their house. Especially fixer-uppers, whose every extra penny goes directly into whatever project needs funding at the time. We’ve made all sorts of sacrifices over the past 2.5 years to keep Dirty Gert happy. Our honeymoon luxury cruise turned into a week in Florida so […]

The life of a fixer-upper can be pretty chaotic. And I’ve got terrible short term memory. TERRIBLE. I sometimes wonder if I have early onset dementia and will soon be putting the dogs in the refrigerator instead of their crate. I don’t think it’s a crappy brain so much as too many things to remember. […]

Last night was full of excitement – if you’re lame and don’t get out much, and consider small animal rescue exciting. When I pulled in to the driveway last night, Teague was leaning over a patch of flowers near the base of the porch. He called me over to see his find – a homely […]

As an admitted house voyeur, I know that pictures are the best part of any good house blog. It’s like peeking in all your neighbors’ windows without the fear of getting caught. That’s why I sit around and obsessively organize our Flickr albums. Well, also because I’m an anal person and I like to see […]