Adventures in "new" home ownership

Furnished & Finished

2004-11-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

More than once we've been accused of being an IKEA showroom...but it hasn't stopped us from shopping there. We love that place - not only the price & convenience of being able to grab the stuff from the shelves, but the designs are great. And because you're dealing with veneer and such, you don't have to feel guilty if in 5 or 10 years you want to spend money on a new dining room set.

SO, we drove to IKEA in New Haven and got a bunch of stuff for our unfurnished rooms on the second level of our house (basically my office & the guest room). We now have a great futon (with a nice spring mattress) for our many guests that come through here. I also have a new desk & chair for my office - no longer do I have to stuggle with using my sewing desk as my computer desk...it's great! I'm at it right now and my knees aren't hitting my sewing machine.

We also got some sconces for the front hallway to replace the ugly brass ones that are there now. We bought a shelf that will become our mantle when we dismantle our current mantle and put slate tiles over the old brick...it's all very exciting!

We just now have to find the time to do it all.

Well, this is my last post for my class, and altho this one is late, I am hoping it counts...I probably should've broken up some of those long ones about Europe (we're supposed to have a minimum amount of blogs). BUT, who knows, maybe I'll keep it up...it's just that whole not-having-time-to-deal-with-my-life thing!

Abolishing the Raspberry Trim & Toying with Curtains

2004-11-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

Finally. I have things about the house to blog about.

Mike and I spent about 5 or 6 hours painting the trim of our front porch today. It was sort a raspberry color before (the house is white), which wasn't awful, but Mike really couldn't stand it. SO, it is now a gray-green color and looks great. We also spray painted our mailbox chrome, which will add a something to the house too.

Yesterday we went to a fabric store. We got it in our heads that we would do the whole thick horizontal stripe on our dining room wall (circa Trading Spaces or some of the HGTV shows) with curtains that have the color of the stripe as the bottom panel. Well, after looking at all sorts of fabrics (thinking we'll buy the fabric first, match the paint to that), we realized that it might be cheaper to just buy curtains we like and modify them with the stripe afterwards. I am not what you would call a seamstress, so this idea appeals to me!

Has anyone done that whole two-toned curtain thing? Do you know what I'm talking about? Basically you have a solid curtain and the bottom 1/8 or so is a different color, which matches a horizontal stripe around the room in both position and color. If anyone has, I'd love some tips before I invest in fabric and make a mess of it....

2004-10-23T08:43:00.000-04:00

View of the Eiffel Tower from my company's Paris office roofdeck

2004-10-23T08:40:00.000-04:00

The Grand Place square in Brussels

2004-10-23T07:57:00.000-04:00

View of London Parliament & Big Ben from the London Eye

Back in Beverly

2004-10-23T07:41:00.000-04:00

I thought I would have time to blog more while I was over in Europe last week, but it just didn't happen. I was there for a week for work. I worked 2 days in London, 1 in Brussels & 1 in Paris. It was quite a whirlwind tour of some of our offices. But, the meetings I was having went well, so that's good. BUT, I didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing or anything.

London
I did have the weekend in London which was good. Mike came to join me (he'd never been) and we got to see quite a bit in a short time. We saw all the stuff that wasn't there the last time I was in London ('98): the millennium bridge, Tate Modern, London Eye, etc. I highly recommend the Tate Modern - just don't go on Saturday afternoon like we did. We should've known better, it was packed - we just didn't have a lot of time to play with. The museum is open late on Fridays & Saturdays though, so that's nice.

The weather wasn't so great, but we weren't expecting much. We met up with a couple of friends while we were in town (one a Brit, one a Boston friend living there for work for 6 months) so that was great. We also got some good Indian food and of course, bangers & mash and fish & chips. How touristy of us. :) Oh - forgot to mention. Thursday night in London we went to Oxo Tower for dinner. Not a cheap place and I don't know if I ever would have gone if work wasn't footing the bill. But, the view & the food were both great - just a little too pricey I think. Then again, London itself was just ridiculously expensive.

Mike left from London Sunday afternoon & my coworker & I took a puddle-jumper to Brussels.

Brussels
We got to the beautiful and peaceful little city of Brussels in the late afternoon (another nice hotel which gave me the realization that traveling with work in Europe DOES have its perks over backbacking and staying in hostels!). Apparently our company's office isn't right in the center of the city, so we had to take the trolley into town. There, we walked all around, saw the main square, the palace and all that stuff. I was SO excited to have some Belgian beer. I studied abroad in Maastricht, NL in '98 (only 1 1/2 hrs from Brussels) so I was pretty familiar with the beverages on hand. I got my Leffe beer (site in Dutch & French) and was very content. Only a bit sad that we were only going to be in Brussels that one night.

The next day: worked in our Belgian office from 9:00 - 5:30. Then we hopped a train to Paris.
(my thoughts are getting lengthy - hope I'm not putting anyone to sleep out there)

Paris
Ah, Paris. The city of lights and love. Let me tell you, going there for work was a different experience! The city and its grandness was taunting me the whole time I was there (~40 hrs!).

My co-worker & I got to Paris and took a taxi to our hotel. Our funny concierge gave us some recommendations for dinner. He kept trying to send us to fun and funky places where we'd meet people, but we were pretty insistent on a quiet, nice dinner. We really didn't have any interest in meeting anyone as the general tired feeling of traveling was setting in.

We had dinner at Willi's Wine Bar where after quite a bit of a wait (it was after 10pm before we sat) we thankfully had a wonderful dinner with great wine. It is a small place, but highly recommended.

We worked the full day on Tuesday and had lots of meetings with our French colleagues. It was a long day, but ended with checking out the amazing view from our company's roof deck. Not bad at all.

That night, we went to dinner on the Champs-Elysées at Le Montecristo Cafe. I think it was more of a Salsa bar, but we were there early enough that we just had a fantasique last European dinner.

I'm going to stop now. No need to recount going to the airport and such. (Altho in the morning, I did have a little time to take a long walk to Notre Dame and took the metro back). The best thing about coming home was that I got to see my boys beat the Yankees in Game 7! What a homecoming. I got in at 3:30 to Logan, so plenty of time to nap before the game.

I can't wait for tonight!

(so much about blogging on the house. i'm sure one will come later this weekend now that i'm back!)

Jetlagged.

2004-10-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

I thought I had the perfect plan.

Stay up late > wake up early > fly to during the day London > drink some wine > fall asleep = no jetlag.

Everything was going according to this plan until I finally decided to go to sleep at 1am London time. I turned on the "tellie" for a little background noise & lo and behold...guess who was on...Red Sox vs. Yankees! And I thought I'd miss them. Now, I had to meet my co-workers in our hotel lobby at 7:30am, so really I didn't have much time to sleep as it was, especially with my newfound distraction. I probably got at least 4 hours of sleep. I was doing fine until around noon today and now my brain is mush. Luckily we just had our last meeting, so we're going to leave soon. Altho I'm not sure napping is the best solution.

Ugh. Usually I fly to Europe overnight and I'm fine, but this whole flying during the day thing just isn't working out for me. At least the flight was good. The movies were a little messed up (funny how they have mini screens at each seat that show the calculated time of arrival, altitude, speed, etc but they can't successfully load their VCRs with the right movies).

Well, it's just about time to go back to my swanky hotel. I like modern design in general, but this place I'm staying at is almost a little too much. I feel like that older couple in the Expedia.com commercial. You know the one, the kids want to send their conservative parents somewhere special, there's a daydream about the parents in the hotel and it is a total disaster (turning the shower on each other, etc). I sort of felt that way last night. You should have seen me trying to figure out how to flush the toilet. Turns out it was malfunctioning, but still, it was rather funny.

Clearly I am jetlagged. What did I just write? Anyone else out there currently jetlagged?

Retaining wall woes

2004-10-10T14:37:00.000-04:00

Somehow a week has gone by since my last blog. My fall has been so busy work-wise (and school-wise) but not house-wise. Mike & I went to church this morning and someone asked us how the house was...I really had to think. How is the house coming along? Very slowly. I think we hung a curtain this week...that was about it.

We had a housewarming party in August, which really served as our primary motivating factor for getting most of the painting & initial work done (that and who can REALLY relax in a cotton candy pink living room?? We sure couldn't). Now that our party is long past, we need a new motivating factor...I'm thinking a Christmas party might do the trick. We're suckers for entertaining, and our new house is perfect for get-togethers with friends & family.

The retaining wall...
This past week we didn't do too much on the house, but we DID spend time in our back yard. This is an area in which I do not mind admitting that Mike & I have absolutely NO experience or knowledge. Apparently, the previous owners of our yard did. This was something that actually drew us to the house in the first place.

There is landscaping (mostly flowers and perennials) in the front and a whole retaining wall in the back of our back yard (where there is quite a substantial slope). The prior owners had set everything up perfectly. When we first moved in it seemed as though a new flower was budding every week, or even day! It was fantastic. Then, we went on vacation for 10 days. We came back and the weeds had really started to make their mark. I spent a good 6 hours over a few weekends doing some weeding, but that only got me a 1/4 of the way through the wall. Needless to say, our retaining wall is really a crab grass garden right now, but there are still some things alive in there...I hope.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday just pulling up the grass. Good times. Now, I'm not someone with a green thumb, but I do sort of enjoy the methodical nature of weeding. Maybe if I had nothing else to do on the weekends, I would actually enjoy it? Doubtful, but anything is possible.

So, I weeded away. There is grass back there that I swear is 8 feet long. After 2 hours I almost fell face first down the retaining wall slope (it really IS steep). That's when I decided to call it quits.

Hopefully we'll get to do some more things soon, but I'm off to London, Brussels & Paris for work this week. So my blogs from there won't really be about the house I'm thinking...but we'll see.

GO SOX!!! (As much as I am looking forward to going to Europe for a week, I hate the fact that it is EXACTLY the same time as the ALCS games - at least I'll be able to catch the first game before I go.)

Lighting the porch

2004-10-04T10:19:00.000-04:00

My husband & I have a hard time focusing on the more important updates, like repointing our chimney (I'll let you know what that means when I understand it!). For instance, yesterday at a trip to the Depot to buy rubber tubing to extend our washing machine drain pipe (fun, fun!) we couldn't help but walk by the lighting section....

We saw a really cool light that I thought would look great on our sunporch, so we got it. Come on, it's way more fun than a drain pipe, goggles, and paint scrapers (the other items we purchased). So, this past weekend being wedding-free (we have had 5 this summer, 2 of which were last weekend), it seemed like a good time to install it.

Now, my involvement in this really only was holding things like flashlights and the fixture (of course we started this installation at sunset...not the smartest idea). What Mike found when removing the tacky brass fixture that the previous homeowners left us with was that they literally just stuck the fixture's wires into a live outlet. Now I'm by no means an electrician. But, this did not seem safe. So, Mike took out the old outlet and hardwired our new lamp into the wall with great success.

So, for the first time in a while, we were able to accomplish something on our "new" home. It might be a small thing, but our house seems safer now and it is one of the first things you see when you enter the house.

This summer we painted the kitchen, living room, downstairs hallway, my study and our bedroom. So we got a lot done right away, but have been unable to spend as much time on it as we would like. With the weddings and such over for the summer, we should have more time this fall...altho being in grad school part-time generally thwarts weekend plans for me....

The plight of Boston's 20-somethings

2004-09-21T14:36:00.000-04:00

I lived in Brighton, MA my first year after finishing my undergrad. My apartment was a four bedroom unit (really a 3 bedroom with a converted living room) and over the course of the year, we had about 9 people living there at various times. I think there were even 7 of us at once for a week or two. One bathroom. Not to mention we had weekend visitors galour...it was sort of like a half-way house for 19-25 year olds just out of college.

After that, I moved on to another 4 bedroom apartment. This time in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA. Four people and four bedrooms. I was moving up in the world! Two years later, I got married and my husband & I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment down the street from our Brookline apartment. Two years later, we bought a house.

Now the search for a house in the greater Boston area is a tough one. Unless you are willing to shell out a 1/2 million for a condo, you aren't living in town. We wanted a house. SO, our search took us outside the city. After a couple months of searching, we put an offer on a house in Beverly, MA. This is where we live now. We figured, if we had to move out of the city (something we didn't really want to do but were sick of paying $20K a year for rent), we wanted to be near the ocean. One mile to be exact.

Our house was built in 1920. So, even though it is new to us, it isn't new. The previous owners had some interesting tastes (pink living room, purple kitchen, etc). So, my architect husband and I are determined to make this house feel more like ours. Even though the house is in good shape structurally...there is plenty to be done aesthetically.

I'm in grad school part-time. As a matter of fact, that is why I am starting this Blog...an assignment for an eMarketing class. I thought keeping track of our home renovation would make a good topic. We'll see how it goes.