Whew – it’s good to be back! My week away, spent partially in Southern Maine and partially at a design conference in Boston, was fabulous. I was inspired, energized, educated and de-stressed. I got to spend quality time with my parents and the ocean. Minus missing my husband and my pups, it was the perfect […]

Our holiday weekend was jam-packed. We spent alot of time with family, stopped by the New York State Fair , and still managed to squeeze in a full day at the house. God bless the 3-day weekend. After doing some research and cost estimates for the proposed deck, we decided it could wait. There are […]

With the kitchen exterior. Can you believe it? It felt like this day would never come. It was no small project! One door still needs flashing in, and there’s a bit of touch up painting left to do, but after a very long weekend of painting and putting up trim, we’re calling it done. Teague […]

Though it sometimes seems we’re moving at a snails pace, we’ve been priming, painting and putting up more trim on the kitchen addition. I took a day off of work to paint, paint and paint, so the outside now looks like this: Ooooh, color! And one side is completely trimmed and painted except for the […]

This past weekend, a good friend and I took a trip to Toronto to visit the zoo, where we spent a good long while trying to get the animals to pay attention to us, or at least come out from behind the rocks for a split second so we could tell our friends what a […]

We’re still working on the kitchen exterior, which seems to be consuming our lives. It’s painful how long this project has taken, because we’re both pretty much bored to tears at this point. I keep saying “we’re getting so close!” only to find that there are ten zillion other small details I’ve managed to forget […]

With each new course of clapboard we nail into the exterior of the kitchen addition, we get closer and closer to tackling the INTERIOR. If you haven’t started renovating your kitchen yet, be prepared for the giant pile of decisions to be made. It’s not like the living room, where a paint chip and a […]

Another big milestone reached – the french doors are finally in, and WOW, do they make a difference. Now the back side of the house has some character, and the kitchen has lots and lots of sunlight. I’m still glad we chose old doors, but they did bring a few unexpected challenges. One door has […]

This morning, I felt very at one with nature. You wouldn’t believe the kind of sunlight you get when you take out a wall. Yesterday, we knocked out the back wall of the kitchen. We had to knock it out before we put the french doors in so that we could lay down the floor […]

On Saturday, I got one of those rare burts in energy that makes me want to run around the house tackling the largest, most tiring projects I can find. Maybe it was the break in the 90-degree weather, or the 4 cups of coffee I’d gulped down that morning. Or maybe it has something to […]