Anyone who has visited a tree nursery lately knows how expensive landscaping can be. A nice tree or bush can cost $100 - $200 dollars or more. So we’ve been doing piecemeal landscaping whenever we can. Last year we stole a few trees from Teague’s parents’ yard (see this post) but half of them were […]

Yep, we’re still NOT working on the house. It’s lovely. I have seen my friends and family more in the last few months than I have in years! The house is nearly spotless… no drywall dust, no caulk guns lying around, no extra lumber being stored in the kitchen. The physical and mental chaos created […]

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s not much going on at the Fixer-Upper worth bragging about. Teague is working hard on other people’s houses, and I’m just enjoying the much-needed break. Instead of charging ahead on renovations, we’re working on paying our remodeling bills off (I absolutely despise credit card debt) and squeezing in as […]

TA-DA!
A great and powerful light should be shining out from within that closet, because this is truly a hallelujah-worthy moment. We have a closet in the master bedroom! No more running from room to room to find my clothes.
(Note to Dad - that’s Cody’s flag up there, he left it at our house. Ours is […]

Hey, look at this. I’m actually posting when I said I’d post. You can’t see it, but I’m patting myself on the back right now. Which is pretty hard to do while typing - luckily, I’m double jointed.
This is the larger of our spare bedrooms, a.k.a. “Tracy’s bedroom” because it’s the room my best […]

I’ve been promising photos of our two spare bedrooms for about a month now, and I’m FINALLY ready to share. It took forever because the rooms were piled high with crap, because carpeting the upstairs meant moving furniture and clothes and random doodads from room to room as we went along. It was actually a […]

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 wrote […]

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 one […]

Yep, the mania continues. Fueled by fresh ground Starbucks (from the bag, we’re not fancy enough to have a Starbucks in town. I think we’re the only town in America without one, actually.) we spread our chaose into one of our spare bedrooms this past Saturday. Overall, it’s not a bad room at all. […]

When we gutted our stairwell and hallway about a year ago, we got rid of any door and window trim that wasn’t original. Basically, we got rid of a bunch of 1″x4″ boards that had been haphazardly nailed up. That left us with 3 doors and a window looking incredibly sad and trimless, and 2 […]

We had a small attack this morning. As we stumbled out of bed and down the stairs, grumbling about coffee and aching joints (we’re not even 30 - why so much aching?), we noticed 4 honey bees bouncing around on the stairwell window.
Still half-asleep, I grabbed a magazine and whacked one. Then another. Teague started […]

Last year, I bought a peony bush with 2 scrawny little blooms on it. This year, it grew exponentially. At last count, it had about 15 big flowers with other small blooms working themselves out. I know they’ll all start flopping over soon from the weight of such large flowers, but right now I’m just […]

Nearly dark, hurrying to finish putting pretty little fence caps on the gate and corner posts.

Yesterday I got 4 more panels done, and have the sunburn to prove it. 9 to go……….

Tags:fence

We finally got some rain-free weekend weather, so after three days of half-hearted painting, we’re about 1/10th of the way to a white picket fence. We’re using Olympic solid stain in “Snowflake” (white, but not completely glaring) - because, as one of our readers helpfully pointed out, stain won’t flake or peel the way paint […]

This weekend was a hot, sticky, dripping-sweat-just-sitting-around kind of affair. Summer seems to have descended upon us in one fell swoop. We didn’t ease into it the way we usually do, but I’m not complaining. I will take warm and humid over cold and snowing any day.
Since both days called for rain, our plans to […]

In part one of our little fence adventure we dug holes, poured concrete, and set our posts. Part one was kinda drawn-out and sucky, and carrying the 2-man digger around made my back hurt. So I wasn’t exactly looking forward to part two - putting up the panels. But it turns out this is […]

The fence debate has been decided. It wasn’t an easy one - it turns out there are many factors to consider when choosing a fence, and 3 different ways to tackle the project. Well, 3 we considered anyway…

How could we not fence the lawn in, when Bruiser looks so pathetic in his teeny-tiny fenced-in area? […]

We decided most definitely NOT to paint the exterior of our house this year (time and money being two key factors) but that doesn’t mean we’ll be slacking off all season. Some type of progress must be made, because right now I don’t know what to do with myself when the weekend rolls around there […]

Today, I am going to set aside my anal retentive nature for a split second so I can share some craft room photos with you. Because despite my best efforts (involving a rubber mallet and a stream of profanities that’d make the cast of Charm School blush) I couldn’t get the aforementioned shelf put together. […]

Guess what? The craft/laundry room got a fresh coat of paint on Monday night! Above is a photo of the room after priming, before paint. Pretty boring, right? But ohhhhhh….. you should see it now!
I’m beyond excited. I haven’t had full use of my craft room (a big, lovely open space for making large and […]