People think I'm crazy.

I bought this table on Craigslist. It has a rusted zinc top.


The paint finish is...rustic. My mom went with me to look at it and she sat in the truck praying that I wouldn't buy it.

But, as with our currently "rustic" house, I can see the end product in my imagination.

Here's the plan:


These two bathrooms, I think from Cottage Living? have been my inspiration, especially the first one. I have this sink:


That will go on top of the table. I'm taking the zinc top off, cool as it probably once was. I'll touch up the paint & leave the top unpainted. It will go here:


White subway tile, white mosaic floor tiles, pale grey walls, white painted medicine cabinet, clean toilet & no boxing glove in the corner. It will be fabulous. I've said that before, haven't I? One of these days I'll show you all the fabulousness for real instead of just talking about it.

Oh, and Vino doesn't think I'm crazy. He likes the table. That's two of us!

Family...Food...Football...Caramel Corn

We are at my sister & brother-in-law's house for Thanksgiving this year. It's not as exotic as spending Thanksgiving in Tunisia where we were at this time last year, but we're thankful to be with family! This is the first time we've been to their house (they moved here a few months ago). I really like it! I'll include some photos of my favorite decorating ideas that my sister has done.


My mom & my sister making stuffing.


Brother-in-law, Brad, cutting the bird.


Niece Julia.


Nephew Evan.


Nephew Isaac.


Niece Emma.

My sister Shelley and I have similar but not identical design taste. We both like rustic, but I like more of it than she does. She goes for more new furniture & house while I like old & worn in. We are both currently into the same color scheme, though. Neutrals with beachy muted aquas & greens. We're also both into cheap or free.

She has cottage style in a distinctly non-cottage house. I really like the way that she has combined vintage & beachy pieces with her newer stuff & home.


In the living room she has hung another one of the windows like I used in my parent's basement. I think it looks great on the big expanse of wall over her sofa.


She rescued this "O-So Orange" pop-bottle crate from my parent's garage & filled some of the cubbies with shells she collected on beaches in North Carolina. Perfect. And absolutely free.


I made that bowl in college. It's very thick & heavy. I was painfully unsuccessful in my pottery class but I really enjoyed it. I think I gave all my pieces away!


Shelley said that she wants to replace the chandelier with a large outdoor looking lantern, like the ones currently being sold at Restoration Hardware, but not like the prices. Oh, I got that birdcage for her years ago at a thrift store.


Love the ladder. She picked it up at a little antique store in the town where we bought our little house. She dry-brushed it with a little aqua paint (which doesn't show up in this photo) before she hung it.


I want a sea fan. Shelley brought this one back in her carry-on from a trip to North Carolina. I tried to take the photo without getting a glare. I was not successful.

It's now the day after Thanksgiving. The house is full of friends & family watching the Nebraska/Colorado game. The Huskers are currently ahead 13-0. Yessss. Vino is making caramel corn. We're all looking forward to that. It's the best ever. I'm not biased. You can watch his tutorial video here.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We'll be back working on the house next week and will hopefully be able to move in before the first blizzard of the year!

Tiling the Bathroom

We've been putting some work into the bathroom lately. Remember this?


You can't see very well on the photo, but the floors are in pretty rough shape. You can't smell the photo, either. After we hauled all the trash out of the house, most of the stink leftover was in the bathroom. Specifically, IN the floors. I am a hardwood floor lover, but these HAD to go (along with the wallpaper, border, green paint & cheap-o vanity.


As Vino ripped up the floor boards the stink stank worse.


The hardwood flooring AND the diagonal sub-floor boards had steeped in liquid for a long time. And not just water. Some of it was rotten.


The toilet had been in peril and we didn't even know it. The sub-floor boards in this area were short & one even fell out into the basement.

Voila! New sub-floor over the old to stabilize the surface for tile. Backer board on the wall for the new subway tile. I know, white subway tile is like Starbucks. Everyone does it and thinks it's cool. It's on every shelter magazine street corner. Figuratively. Now it's old hat. But I don't care. I've wanted a bathroom with white subway tile for a long time. AND, it goes well with the age of our home. What does old hat really mean, anyways??


My dad was a huge help to us putting in the tile, since neither one of us had ever done it before.


We sure learned a lot. Tiling doesn't scare us anymore. Maybe the time & sore muscles do, though...

Vino did a great job laying the floor tile in a house where hardly anything is square. We discovered that white grout with white tile camouflages a lot of imperfections!

There's a pretty big height difference between the bathroom floor and the hallway floor. We'll have to get a substantial transition piece. It would have been higher if Vino hadn't torn out the old floor boards. By the way, he drilled holes in the sub-floor from the bathroom and from the basement ceiling. Whenever he did that it smelled like burnt pee, the sub-floor had been so saturated. Don't ask me how I know what burnt pee smells like. We will be Kilz-ing the basement ceiling.


Oh, look. I actually did some work in the bathroom, too. I cleaned off all the grout from the tile surface, painted the upper walls & trim and sealed the grout. I'm ready to take a bath in here. Problem is, though, the tub isn't ready for me.


Neither is the toilet.


We're getting close, but it's taking longer than I want. I'm SO ready to settle in. Have I said that before?

The Place We Didn't Buy & Another That Was SO Much Worse

In our search for a house, we spent only one day actually looking at houses in person. I think there were five that we toured. Because our budget was so low and we knew that we wanted to buy in one particular town, the pickins were slim. The house we eventually chose to buy was the least expensive by thousands of dollars, and it was also had the least amount of problems to fix. Yes, it had the most trash, but trash can be picked up and thrown away for free! Take a look at one of the houses we toured.

View from the living room looking into the dining room. That's carpet on the dining room wall, too.

Our realtor warned us before we went in that there was a lot of shag carpet but nothing could have prepared us for the reality. Who puts shag carpet on the walls? In several different colors? Then we went into the basement to be greeted by this:


Why? Why? Why? I'd be surprised if this house sold. The smell of mold was so overwhelming Vino was sure he got lung cancer just walking in there.

By the way, I found a before & after recently on design*sponge. Our house was a museum compared to this place. Kudos to the people who could see past that bathtub. I've tried the link to more photos but it doesn't work anymore. I would have loved to see more!

Transformation: The Miracle of Paint!

This is my 50th post! I could have passed that milestone months ago if I'd blogged regularly, but it is what it is. Happy 50th to me! :)

Thank you friends old & new who have given me encouragement in comments! This house renovation is not for the weak willed or olfactoraly sensitive. I believe I made up a new word. Anyways.... Remember this?


It has now become this:


Ahhhh. Grey. That's Vino's sister Renita who came to help us paint one day. Our friends David & Treva came the day before, but I wasn't there to take photos. Thank you to all of you!! Especially for painting the ceilings, the most dreaded of painting duties. You all did a fabulous job! Here's another view:


And a close-up of the paint against the wood trim (which could stand to be re-done, but that's a project for another lifetime).


The cutting has been done in the kitchen, now it needs a couple of coats on the walls, then the trim:


Remember this room (front bedroom)?


The accessories are gone (except a giant tv which has become a resting place for small tools), and the walls are primed for paint:


The back bedroom has lost its 80s wallpaper border and is in the process of being primed. Can't wait to paint the trim white! This room will one day be a nursery. We have great hope of that one day!


The paint is all from Behr. The wall paint is Behr Flat Enamel. I love it because it goes on smoothly & dries with a velvety finish that minimizes the flaws & bumps in the plaster walls. The trim paint is a Behr semi-gloss. I don't have the colors available right now, but I'll post them later.


Vino has been documenting this whole process on video that he will one day put on his YouTube account. We trade off being host. Doesn't he look cute in his bandanna? Kinda gang-like cute? :) He's worked really hard on this house while fitting it in with his job, too!


We are liking this house more and more every day. I'm getting antsy to be done with this phase so we can move in and enjoy it. I lay awake at night picturing us sitting on our Craigslist sectional (to be featured in a later post!) with a cozy throw & cushy toss pillows. Jane Monheit or Stacy Kent are playing on the stereo. We're sipping hot tea & reading under the soft light of floor lamps (yet to be "found"). It will be lovely. I promise!

The Transformation Begins: Hidden Hardwood & Heavy Lifting

This is what was hidden under the vile carpet. I know, it doesn't look very pretty now, but IT WILL. Refinishing the floors is the only thing (besides a few small electrical things) that we will hire professionals to do. I may be cheap & unrealistic about my own abilities in renovation, but refinishing floors is NOT something we want to tackle on our own. But I can wield a utility knife. Which is what I did to the carpet. Cut it in strips, rolled it up & threw it away. Bye bye nasty carpet.


Unfortunately, the carpet pad had been glued down. Like, seriously, the most glue that could have been slathered on those planks. I had to use a heavy metal blade thingy to scrape up as much of the crumbly pad remains as possible.


I know there is beautiful wood under there somewhere...and fortunately I don't have to do anything more to it. The refinishers will get rid of the rest of that pad & glue. Yay!!


Now on to getting rid of more filth. In one day, Vino & our nephew Evan hauled out 2 couches, about 7 recliners, a giant 70's wooden headboard, a king sized bed and boxes & boxes & bags & bags of trash.


Evan saved our behinds. We could have NEVER hauled all that stuff out by ourselves, especially the heavies. Thanks for loaning us your giant muscles, Evan!


Vino cut out the huge pillow stuffing in the pet hair covered couch on the front porch.


Here they all are stacked up.


And the couch gets hauled away. Vino & Evan swore that as soon as the sun hit this furniture the smell factor increased tenfold.


This is the dumpster we rented. By the end of the day it was completely full and then some.


And here we have the fridge. Our home inspector warned us not to open it. After having been turned off for months, whatever was in there had time to rot itself into a powerful death smell. So we believed him and duct taped it shut before moving it out.


Even with all that, it still smelled pretty ripe when we stood close.


Good riddance!

Every day the house smells better. Minus the carpet. Minus the upholstered furniture & trash. We Febreeze every time we come to work but that only goes so far. Next on the agenda: paint. First a coat of stain & odor blocking primer, then paint in soft greys. I can't wait!

Our New Old House

How's your imagination? Mine is pretty active, which you will see shortly.

We knew even before we returned to Nebraska from Spain that we wanted to buy a house, but it was going to have to be a CHEAP house. I tentatively set the budget at $50k - that is, $50k to buy & make the house habitable. I stalked realtor websites for close to a year just to see what was actually feasible in the areas we were considering. Fortunately for us, we are from Nebraska, where housing prices are typically lower than other parts. My other criteria was that it had to be within 30 minutes or less of a city and had to have at least 2 bedrooms. And not be gross.

That's where my imagination comes in. :) We found & recently purchased a house that fit all that criteria (and came in WAY under budget), except that some have argued with me that our house is indeed gross. But imagine with me, if you will, a 1913 cottage with original oak floors, 10-inch baseboards, original built-in glass-fronted oak bookcase dividers, original claw foot tub, enclosed front and back porch, a full basement and a garage. Got that picture in your head? Good. In the spirit of Ultimate Thrifting (which should be a real sport, by the way), come with me on a tour of our new old house and keep an open mind!


So the bushes will most likely be yanked out of the ground in favor of something that doesn't need constant trimming to keep the place from looking abandoned. I'm thinking a row of lavender flanking each side of the walkway. We'll replace the shingles & paint the siding grey with white trim.


This is the enclosed front porch. First impression for guests! Right now it gives, well, the wrong impression. I've got this area decorated in my head really cute. Trust me. You'll love it. Just don't breath through your nose right now. It's not pleasant.


Ah, a breath of fresh air. Kind of. The original oak craftsman style door. Lovely.



This is what you see when you walk through that lovely craftsman door. Please look beyond the nasty, nasty carpet. See the built-ins! They really make the house. You're standing in the living room looking into the dining room and beyond into the kitchen.


Now we've walked into the dining room and turned around to see the living room. Like the glossy paint colors? Neither do I. They have inspired me to choose a calm grey palette for the whole house. I want to relax in this place, not be jittery all the time from color overload. I don't know if you can tell, but the previous owners PAINTED the glass on the french doors in the living room. Thanks. Fortunately, it peels right off.


Now to the kitchen. Oh, hello. There's Vino & the leg of Mary, our lovely realtor (who reads this blog - hi, Mary!). Stop looking at the floors, all of you. It's all getting ripped up. The kitchen will be tiled and the living & dining rooms will have refinished wood floors that are currently living under the carpet-o-filth.


Under that trash is a cute little enclosed back porch with original beaded board ceiling & little closets. This will be a mud room/pantry. It WILL be cute. Very cute. Let's keep moving. It creates a slight breeze that makes the smell more bearable.


This is the back bedroom. Not much to say here. It was really clean compared to the rest of the house. Not being a fan of wallpaper borders, this one will go. It's also around the top of the wall just under the ceiling.


Just down the hallway we encounter the bathroom. Someone put a lot of work making this room homey. Hunter green faux woodgrain wallpaper & double outhouse borders. It has been loved & served it's purpose and is no longer in good shape. Filthy, actually. AND since it's not anything close to my taste, it also will be coming down. I hope it goes easily. Same with the rose stencils on the tub. Side note on the tub. I'm a bath girl. Since we have been married, 8 years, we have NEVER lived in a place with a tub. I am ecstatic beyond words to have a deep soaking tub. And yes, I will clean the living daylights out of that thing before I set my body in it!


Here we are in the front bedroom. Oh, look. The previous owners left us some electronics, several cassette tapes from the 90s (Cher's Greatest Hits!) and a stained king-sized bed. Anyone need a scanner? The sponge painting, sadly, will be going bye bye. I'm not super big on faux finishes myself.

So that concludes the tour of the main floor. But what about the basement, you say? Are you sure you want to go there? If not, stop reading right now. If so, put on your haz-mat suit.


This is our intro to the basement stairs, from the kitchen. Nice. I think we're safe to assume that there were large dogs living here at one time. They have left other clues besides this.


That's Vino back there checking out the toys on the floor. That's the part about this house that makes me sick. Adults, I suppose, have the right to live in their own filth & let their pets do whatever they want in the house, but when children are involved, it's really more than sad. Enough said.


Like my laundry room? Even my imagination can't come up with something cute for this space. I think that to start with it will be basic, clean & utilitarian. I'll work on cute later.

And now for some shots of the Special Things left behind for us to clean up.


In the living room. Hiding in a dark corner. Cat? Raccoon? Very small dog? This, for sure, is gross.


I found a pizza in this pile. Just keep in mind that this house has been vacant for 5 months.


I told you not to look at the floors, but I wanted to show the full heinousness of the carpet & linoleum before I rip it all out with my carefully gloved hands. Those would be pet pee stains, not oops-I-spilled-the-apple-juice-stains. And one of many cigarettes. The man of the house apparently lives on these with a Mountain Dew chaser, as evidenced by the plethora of bottles & butts around the place.


This is a sad little vignette.


Well, thanks for sticking with me to the grisly end. Hats off to Mary (pictured above with Vino) for trudging through this place in her cute little kitten-heel sandals. You deserve an award. Funny enough, though, of all the houses we looked at this day, this one was BY FAR the best. Not the cleanest, but the most potential. Thank goodness Mary & Vino have as much imagination as I do! Stay tuned for updates on the house progress. We want this re-do to be nice but inexpensive. We want to think outside of the box when it comes to fixtures & furnishings. You might be surprised when it's done. You might just think it's a place you would actually want to live. I hope I do!!