Summer bucket list...

... errrr, Winter bucket list? It's always a little hilarious to me when I set a date or time frame for home renovations. Projects always take longer than expected. We always have busier schedules than anticipated. And on and on. My personal struggle with being very type A has eased considerably and I'm pleasantly content with any sort of progress being made. A couple of weekends ago, Jeremy and I FINALLY got a couple of coats of paint on the house! We've been preparing for paint since June, how crazy is that?? All of our windows are installed and trimmed out. We ordered/assembled and installed the new front door. We finished our roofing and installed all of the flashing. All of the fascia has been scraped and primed. Holes have been filled, all of the scraping, priming, pressure washing, random hardware removing, caulking, etc is totally done. Now, we are waiting for the weather to improve to finish the following:

-Prime/paint office exterior door and trim
- 3rd coat- front/sides fascia
- 1st/2nd/3rd coat back fascia
- Paint exterior doors: office, shop, kitchen, second office door
- Stain front door

We were so lucky to have had a couple of extra hands on the second day of painting and were left with very little to complete.

We also completed a third set of shutters. Now every window have shutters in the front of the house.

 On the left is the door when we first installed it. Since, I ordered Baldwin door hardware and a dentil shelf. Eventually the door will be stained a deep red and the front porch will match.

 The top is the after view. I love how the gray hue accentuates the ranch style house and the beautiful white trim around our brand new windows. The shutters are such a great touch. *pats self on the back

 Pretty great, right?

Windows

All of our windows are finally installed and the outside trim is done. We are now in the process of replacing the old/mismatching trim and by the end of the month we are scheduled to paint the entire exterior.

The house will be a creamy gray, trim will be off white and our shutters are black

House Reno: Summer 2012 Bucket List

"Hunny, what house projects should we work on this summer? What should be our goal to finish?" ME

"Why don't we start and finish the dining room addition?" JEREMY

"Yea, that would be really nice to have done." ME

(After thinking about it for a day or two I am regretfully excited to tell you that we will NOT be doing the dining room this summer. WHAT?? Well, Jeremy and I plan to have a very work busy summer this year. Logically, I would prefer to not get into something like an addition without being able to completely finish it.)

Boo. Kind of.

So, instead, we will be finishing a lot of the projects that we have started already!

1. Finish roof (we re-roofed over a year ago and it's still not finished), fascia,  flashing, prime and paint entire house.

For reasons like this ------>

<------- And this 

2. New front door installed, framed, trimmed out.

New Door:

(Something similar)

3. Finish (ie: wood floor/windows/trim/baseboards/closet shelf system/closet doors/bedroom door/everything) future baby room.

(Obvious "before" photos)

4. New windows in the entire house

5. Possibly finishing the front porch (post columns, railing)

So, there you have it! Wish us luck!

The Laboratory

I know I told you about my exciting job as the office manager at Agate alley Bistro. I am now the office manager at both the bistro and our new big sister restaurant Agate alley's Laboratory. We specialize in experimenting with culinary excellence serving Northwest cuisine with some Latin and Asian flair. I'm also the assistant event coordinator for our catering events. The space that we've turned into our home was a Shoji's for years and we've totally renovated it. The Lab just opened for lunch today and I did the sandwich board to advertise for it. Much like the method I used for the family sign I made.

And for a quick tour of the restaurant:

We'll start upstairs:Downstairs:
And behind these doors is our banquet room

My office:
Now that we've been open for about a month and the renovations are complete we are looking forward to theming out the restaurant a little bit more. I love coming here everyday! We're pretty proud!

An Exception to Completion

The guest bedroom is finally complete with it's decorations and furniture. I'm sure we'll be adding to it here and there with theme appropriate doo-dads in the future and will be most certainly doing the finish work on the room (at the moment it is without base boards/new closet/new window/new closet doors/etc) but for now we're happy with the foundation we've set.

I love the collaborative effort of things that we've purchased-both bargain and expensive-and things that we repurposed and things that we totally made from scratch. It's been a fun to theme out a room with the challenge of keeping the color scheme similar to the rest of the house eliminating the risk of it looking like the crazy room that doesn't fit! I'm happy to let our guests sleep in this room, for now. And for now, it can be our room that's basically complete with the exception of a few things. Our exception to completion.

Paint Color Has Been Chosen

Pretty exciting stuff eh?

Well it is to us!

This color choice (a long process to arrive here) means that we are now able to paint closets/trim/casings/ baseboards/our pantry.......and............ once our cabinets are decided upon, this will be the color of our kitchen cabinets as well! Very, very exciting!

Here are the painting jobs that I could not wait to have done once the choice had finally been made!

This is brand new trim that Jeremy put up in record time after work one night
We primed/sanded/filled in holes last night and painted it this morning.

We also finished painting our pantry that was primed several months ago its second coat went on this morning and the trim will be finished with its second coat later today

We asked the paint guy to use the recipe from our wall color and add a fraction of it to a semi-gloss white and we are stoked with what turned out! Choosing from color swatches would have looked far too green/pink/etc against the wall color. I am, however, not really looking forward to living out of the guest bedroom closet when I start to paint my closet ;) but stoked to get it finished!

All I Need Is a Roof Over My Head....

Well, that would be nice within the next week or so. But for now I am so thankful that Jeremy has somehow made some time in his unbelievably confusing and nutty schedule to re-roof our desperate roof. I am so very blessed beyond belief to have such a handy and talented husband to get jobs, like these, done. This particular job is very messy, noisy and going to be sooooo worth every bit of the hassle once it's finished.. for several interior reasons...

REASON #1
REASON #2
REASON #3

All of which were completely pointless to patch or fix until the roof was re-done. So, once the roof is finished we'll be able to finish our ceilings and the painting will be finished once and for all in the rooms that we've started them in.