can someone say DEMO!?

Earlier this week...

My mom got started painting some of my bedroom dressers with espresso... they're naturally birch which I'm not so much a fan of. Work in progress.

mom finishing up the first coat of espresso!

Weekend Accomplishments...
While I wish I could say more, I did no more than merely finish painting the utility room and painted some of the trim on the dining room entry door which still needs finished.

showing off the rest of my family room / entertainment space... loving the wall color!

utility room before painting

getting started on the utility room painting

The Result!

However... I do have some noteworthy mentions from this week...

A - I finally found lamps (Marshalls, $39.99 each) for the living room! I love them. They have cream/greyish shades and the base looks like tree branches. I bought two, which I plan to sit on my Great Grandmother's sofa table my mom is generously letting me use. Along the way, I also picked up a neat bowl (Marshalls, $5.99) wrapped in branches that I can use to hold mints or candy, or perhaps just decoration. I was having quite a successful shopping trip on Monday.

My new living room lamps + decorative bowl

B - Tonight, my mom's handyman Nick came over to take down the kitchen cabinets. At first I was a little hesitant as my mom, Adam and I struggled to get them to budge but apparentally, all we needed was a 240 lb man with a lot of manpower. He made it look so easy! His son Noah also helped picked up the pieces, talk about a cutie. We have one piece of cabinet left to remove, but Nick will need a saw as the cabinets were installed before the plumbing. Which means the cabinets don't have holes cut for the shuts off, so we need to saw them to make space. Nick has Thursdays off from work, so if all goes as planned - we may have new cabinets in place by the end of the week. This would be amazing considering the kitchen is the biggest project so far! He definitely is looking for some projects to work on ... so we may just add to his list: adding tile in the bathroom, pulling up the back carpet, installing the plumbing spring door, adding the extra fence and plenty more. He also offers great prices. Just to take down the cabinets he only charged us $30. I definitely know my mom and I couldn't have done it ourselves.

Kitchen when we bought the house


Before the demo began...

one cabinet down ...

our handyman nick removes the counter top


demo'ing of the other cabinet begins

... and then there was one.

To be continued ...

And lastly ...

Just to plug my love of Tremont...

A Cookie & A Cupcake makes a mean salty caramel cupcake.

The peanut butter lover wasn't too bad either. :)

Peanut Butter Lover (left), Salty Caramel (right)

spring has arrived ... #pressure

Accomplishments for this weekend include ...

• Finally picked out a paint color for the backroom with the bar. It's called 'Hope Chest". Can I just say, LOVE? It's a greyish color with some purple and brown tones. Perfect. I think I might like it more than the purple in the dining room. I got 2 1/2 walls painted... 3.5 more to go. I don't think a quart of paint is going to cut it.

Hope Chest (left) and an unsuccessful brown match (right)

Before Painting:

After Painting:

• My mom (along with my nephew) helped clean up the yard, it's starting to look a lot better. I imagine now that my nephew knows about the house, the whole world will know. Talk about being bombarded with questions yesterday, haha.

Loaded leaves and debris from the yard

Clean Deck, Yay!

• The refrigerator and dishwasher have been removed! talk about a pretty pathetic looking kitchen now!

My appliance-less and floor-less kitchen.

• My friend Lee and I finally got my L-shaped computer desk put together. I'm still not sure exactly where it will stay, but for now it's in the bedroom. Next comes the printer stand.

Lee hard at work on my new desk

My new computer desk, fully assembled

• Doorbell is installed and up and running. Thank goodness the new one I bought actually worked. The former owner took the doorbell unit itself, so I bought a wireless set with two buttons. Now I'll just need to have Chet, our electrician, removed the "wired" buttons from before. I have a westminster chime at the front and "ding" at the side. Kind of wishing there were more options.

Oh ... and i met the neighbors on all sides of me... we'll leave that for my next post haha!

out with the old ... literally.

plans for this evening/weekend include ...

• removal of the refrigerator and dishwasher, to which i say "on with the kitchen renovations!" these two appliances were left at the house when we bought it, but don't work and frankly, bt my mom and i, it will be a struggle to move ourselves so my mom contacted someone to come out and take them.
• my neighbor chet will (hopefully) finish up the lighting tomorrow. crossing my fingers, so necessary.
• build my ikea entertainment center. my initial attempt was disastrous. i think this is a man's job. (adam, halp!)
• participating in my first cleveland garbage day. i swung by home depot and picked up a 45-gallon trash can on wheels ($29.97). hoping toremove someof the debris (kitchen flooring, yard leaves and such) for pick-up tomorrow.

updates coming shortly...

Oh look, here they are!

so in continuation from yesterday ... little was accomplished. :/. the appliance collector never showed and when my mom called to follow up, she got a voicemail. i attempted to install the wireless doorbell I bought from Lowes, but couldn't get it to work. thinking it could just be me (as I've had little luck with house projects on my own thus far), i had adam take a look when he arrived later. lucky for me, it's the doorbell and not me. phew.

we took some trash out to the curb (mainly flooring and the old toilet), so that is a win i suppose. adam came over late in the evening to lend some manly strength (i'm

nixing the use of the phrase "man muscle" from here on out, i didn't realize how dirty it sounds) to help me build my ikea entertainment center. i must say, the building went just fine and my main setback was I guess I used the wrong piece in the first step. However ... I think the e-center might be a little small for the space I was going to use it. Not that all entertainment centers are created equal, because I realize they're not, but I expected it to be proportionate to a standard room size. It needs to be a little taller and perhaps wider... maybe I can create the illusion with a shelf. oh lordy, no winning this week. hopefully, we'll have some more lighting up and running this evening ... on this very rainy cleveland day.

Fully assembled Ikea Entertainment Center

before i forget ... earlier this week, my mom installed a mini vinyl blind ($3.96, Home Depot) for the side entry door. talk about a difference. all the blinds in the house are white, so i bought a white blind. however, the door itself is somewhat off white / cream so i'll have to paint it to match. but still a huge improvement from the hideous curtain that used to hang there. see below.

Side entry way, pre and post mini vinyl blinds. Thanks Mom for the fine work!

who doesn't love a good deal?

So i found this vase at Gabriel Brothers a few weeks ago and was debating whether to get it or not. At the time, it was $19.99 and I wasn't sure exactly where to put it. Anywho, I stopped in the store again today to take a look around and came across it again ... but 50% off. Now I don't know about you, but for a good sale - I can find a place for it. I'm thinking probably an accent in the dining room. :)

we have a working toilet - kind of a big deal!

so my mom met our furnace/plumbing/handyman Tim out at the house today to finish up the work from over the weekend. we had to wait to wrap up until today because Tim needed parts that he couldn't get on Saturday. To make things short and sweet, all plumbing and heating is intact which means we finally have a newly installed working toilet, running cold AND hot water, and no leaks outside. :)

Here's Tim's accomplishments for the day... can't wait to head over after work!

• Put a new spicket on the outside of the house
• Put a new shut-off on the gas line the kitchen (for the stove), the other was dated and more proned to leaking
• Installed the new toilet, the other had a crack in it
• Fixed the faucet in our utility room
• Installed the wand sprayer for the shower
• Turned on the hot water tank, necessary!
• Fixed bathroom faucet, it was loose last time he checked. we bought a new one to replace it but didn't need it. Love the savings.
• Fixed the water line, no more leaking on the side of the house!
• Cleaned the bathroom fan, and it needed it! It was super loud when running.

My mom said the work Tim did would have cost over $400 had we called a plumber out, but when you're able to find a good handyman who does good work for a great price, you can get a great deal. With all the parts and labor, this project was $188 + $99 (toilet).

plumbing / heating

saturday, 3/26
Seeing that my brother was in town, my mom and I took this to our advantage and had him help us move my dining room set from our rental in Willoughby to Tremont. The table is super heavy! Shortly afterwards, my mom and I met our furnace/plumbing repairman Tim at the new place to take a look. Notably, heat is not rising to the second floor and there was a noticeable water leak when the Water Co. came out. Tim found that in the gas line, three valves or vents (I forget which term he used) were closed. He guessed these could be for upstairs, so he opened them up. Another suggestion he had, in case that wasn’t going to do the trick, was to install “dampers” or magnetic rectangular strips on the downstairs vents so that the upstairs will heat first and then the furnace will work harder to maintain temperature downstairs. He said that’s the best solution considering the house was old. Regarding plumbing, we learned the toilet had a crack in it and would need replaced. This would explain the leak from when my mom flushed the toilet. He found the crawl space to get to the plumbing and learned there had been a space to access the plumbing in the family room that had been closed up. Since Tim didn’t have all the supplies he would need to get the plumbing up and running (some would need to be bought), he’s coming back out today (Monday) to install everything. My mom, Adam and I made a trip out to Home Depot to buy our new (elongated) toilet ($99.00), Magnetic Damper Strips (2 pkgs - $4.47, 3 sheets in each pkg) and a small utility door to access the plumbing ($11-$14). Once it is installed, we can just paint it and it should just blend into the wall. While the inspection was happening, I worked to touch up the upstairs bedroom / future closet.

Having a little fun in Home Depot. :)

I think Adam and I are young at heart

I think she found us a toilet!

Adam felt the need to test out the selection.

sunday, 3/27
Sunday was the ‘big reveal’ to my brother. My mom told my brother she was taking him “on a field” trip which ended at the house. He said he was definitely shocked but had a feeling something was up when she started driving towards Cleveland. He seemed generally pleased with the house, mentioning he’d like one of his own and for the price we paid – it was a great deal! We walked down to Lincoln Park where C-Town Chow Down was wrapping up. All but one of the food trucks was still serving food, but the line was still 15-20 people long so we just walked into Civilization and grabbed a coffee and croissants. Then I drove my brother around Tremont a bit, so he could get a feel for the area. He has never been, other then by the Christmas Story House. As my brother was driving back to D.C. that day, he didn’t stay long. However, I decided to stick around for more touch ups and to get some purple paint on the wall.

I decided to play it safe and start on the dining room wall opposite the living room. I painted enough wall that I could really visualize how the color would look. Standing in the living room staring at the wall, I became perplexed. I was surprised the purple looked as shocking as it did. Was it too much? I called my mom immediately to question her thoughts. She thought maybe because the walls had been white it was natural for it to look shocking and suggested I just finish the wall as she could take a look in the morning when Tim returned. Instead, I decided to paint the opposite wall (seen from the kitchen, looking into the living room) as I thought the purple would look nice against the brown in the living room. Yes, love. I love the purple and against the brown looks great. I finished the one wall before it started getting dark, and frankly I’m not sure how to proceed on my next visit. Perhaps, rather than painting the whole room purple, a light brown, deep tan would complement the brown and purple. We’ll see what my mom thinks.

A fresh coat of purple for the dining room.

Lastly, I learned one of my good friends from high school, Danielle, and her boyfriend are moving to Tremont. Her boyfriend works in Akron so the commute should be interesting. However, Danielle has voiced her desire to move downtown when she finishes up grad school (she’ll be done in July, she’s studying in England) so I think it’s a compromise. All I know is he found a cheap place for $400 and lives near Lolita, across from Fat Cats. All I know is the more “community” I have from the get-go, the easier transition so I’m excited to have more friends in the area. :)

And just to keep track on the furnishing process, my brother was nice enough to swing by the Ikea in D.C. seeing that it was only 20 min away (as opposed to me having to drive to Pittsburgh from Cleveland) and picked me up some things.

• MAVAS entertainment center for the living room ($79.99) http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40140635
• 3 - SPONTAN Magnetic Boards ($12.99/each) http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30159442