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Our Old House
In March 2011 Mary and Ryan bought their new old house. This is the story of our journey.-
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Mary and Ryan’s wayback machine
Oil sucks
We’re having our energy audit tomorrow morning so that we can get some nice rebates for our new boiler. At this point, I don’t think I could be happier with a piece of heating equipment….
Here's what's happening in Hopewell
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Oil sucks
We’re having our energy audit tomorrow morning so that we can get some nice rebates for our new boiler. At this point, I don’t think I could be happier with a piece of heating equipment….
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Hello Seattle / Owl (Gray) City
I liked Owl City a lot more when they were called Postal Service… any who – here are the finalists for our siding colors. The winner is Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl 2137-60 for those of…
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WO-O-WG-Bl-WBl-G-WBr-Br
Meow baby – we’re talking about cat-5 – or category 5 twisted-pair cables for the uninformed. Due to a happy mistake by our awesome electrician, we have an extra set of data cables in our…
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Slate!
As an Phillies/Flyers/Eagles fan, it pains me to say that Pennsylvania is inferior than say, Vermont… (actually, Vermont is superior to PA in just about EVERY way, other than professional sports, come to think of…
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Put a bird on it
We’ve been enjoying Mary’s grandmother’s dining set for the past few months, but the fabric on the seat cushions needed a little bit of updating. So we put a bird on it and reupholstered them. It’s…
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Our latest do-it-yourself project…
On a surprisingly snowy and power-less weekend in October, we welcomed our new baby Pearl Margaret! So we’ll be a little busy with our other DIY projects for awhile… big sister is and Mom are…
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You load
1610 tons… and what do you get?St. Peter don’t you call me… ’cause I can’t go… I owe my soul to the company store. In this picture the driveway kind of looks pretty nice, but the fall has a way of…
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Another postcard (with chimpanzees)
and every one is addressed to me. I don’t think I’ve posted this before, but as a closing gift from the prior owner we received a framed print of a postcard showing our house…
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Better to shower the people you love with… water
It’s been a long time coming, but FINALLY we have all the parts to turn our clawfoot tub into a shower. Every plumber I talked to… every plumbing supply place I went too… every ‘expert’…
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I’ve been hanging around this town…
Let’s hang cabinets! There’s a real for storage in our mud/craft room next to our kitchen. To solve that little puzzle without spending a whole lot of money, we went with a pair of 24″…
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We’re you’re backyard friends…
…and we’ve got a backyard, again. Every once and while we’ll check in with some changes to… or when it’s really time to bore everyone away… maintenance of our landscaping. This weekend… after everything else was…
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…and my porch smells of rich mahogany
Apparently our porch is made out of mahogany. Who knew? Somebody painted it brown and let big chunks of it rot away… and patched some (but not all) of those chunks with the softest…
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Star light, star bright
…first star I see, porch light! We’ve finally (okay, this was me) put up our Moravian star light. This one is from Meyda Tiffany out of Yorkville New York. You might remember the old little…
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Mary, Mary Why Ya Buggin’
Is it wrong that I’m buggin’ about the display in the china cabinet? Yes, Ryan slaves on actual work around the house and I figure out where the knick knacks will go (does this go…
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This is not a post about tomatoes
…this is a post about our no-longer-empty dining room! Here’s a before shot… and here… …is the after! We now have a ton of storage for all of our china, etc. and for our butts…
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Full circle
Before we got here, our bathroom had this great floral wallpaper. We’re not exactly sure how old it is… it’s not completely original to the house, since there at one point was a big…
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Swing arms?
Apparently we don’t have all of the parts for our shower after all. I need these “swing arms” the ones from our old faucet are threaded differently… grrr. More to come.
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Is our sink racist?
So we have this awesome stainless steel “Tracy” sink from the 1940s. In doing some research on it, Mary found this… uh… less than awesome ad for it. Yikes! At least the sink itself is…
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Dishes are done, man
Nothing to see here folks… oh wait, only pictures today. Enjoy! (I’m going to try to put some captioning in the gallery… but until then you can just think up your own snarky comments for…
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Just a sneak peek…
I guess we’re done? Of course we’ll never be really done. Bathroom? Check. Working appliances? Check. Things unpacked? Uh, half-check. Nelson lamp installed in the dining room? Check. Cool Coca-Cola bottle opener returned to…
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Blinded by the blinds
While putting up our new blinds in the living room I got something in my eye. Not cool. But do you know what is cool? The custom blinds we got from justblinds.com! Not crazy expensive…
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Same as it ever was… (same as it ever was)
We’re letting the days go by… (let the water hold me down), but the new faucet is all hooked up in the butler’s pantry. The faucet is from the Delta “leland” line. It’s a pull…
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Unfailing the blind flailing
Last week we installed some really cool (and inexpensive – woot!) bamboo woven roman shades in the dining room. As you can see – the stupid mounting brackets are not quite up to our standards, unnecessarily…
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Honey Comb’s big! Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s not small…no, no, no
Actually… not big at all… these honeycombs are small, with lots of tiny tiny grout lines. D317 hex tiles from DalTile. Mr. Blurrycam apparently got these tiles for us… just under 100 square feet in…
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Backsplash to the future
Tip of the day (it’s actually a rule): if the grout lines are 1/8″ or less, you can do unsanded grout. If it’s 1/8″ or greater, sanded is the way to go. Anywho – tiling…
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The edge of glory
I’m tired of being a wanna-be-lawn-guy… I wanna be a lawn guy! So it’s August and we haven’t gotten a lot of rain and I don’t really have time to really do the right thing…
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Gloria’s chandelier
Gloria’s beautiful purple room has a sweet, super-girly chandelier now. Here’s a picture of the one we got at Home Depot of all places before it was fully jeweled up. Interestingly enough, the price currently…
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Billy!
There’s not a whole lot of room in our kitchen for a real pantry – so Mary found a bookcase at Ikea that will give us lots of storage, without really sticking out into…
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At worst I feel bad for awhile, but then I just tile, I go ahead and tile
Mary was in Brooklyn this weekend for a baby shower (congratulations!) so I really turned the house work into high gear. First, the ceiling and closet in the bathroom got painted, and while that was…
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A little at a time
My sister and Justin came to visit yesterday to move around boxes (sweaty work in this heat wave) and my mom came today to help empty at least 10 boxes worth of dishes, glasses, stemware,…