January 2008

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

January 28, 2008
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It’s day six of getting dressed in the kitchen. I am so ready for this to be over! Despite most of the furniture being covered in plastic, there is a fine layer of dust over absolutely everything —— kind of like when you come home from the beach and you’re thinking, “Whoa, how did sand [...]

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A Fine Mess

January 23, 2008

Phase II of the stripping project is well into its second week. As of yesterday the woodwork in the living room, dining room, foyer, hallway and two bedrooms have been stripped of all their paint. They waited as long as possible before starting on the master bedroom, but yesterday was the day. We moved all [...]

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Oops, I Did it Again

January 21, 2008
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Why I shouldn’t be left alone on a cold Saturday afternoon: I went to Home Depot to get a new doorbell (the current one is hideous) and found myself in the paint aisle. I ended up buying a 4-inch wall scraper (in addition to the doorbell). First I tried the scraper out on the bedroom [...]

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Dining Room Update

January 18, 2008
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Barely a week has gone by since I was pondering dining room table ideas. I said something about wanting to find “the perfect antique dining table”. Well, I must have put the Antique Dining Table Vibe out there, because not three days later we found it at an antique store in Michigan which specializes in [...]

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Is it Houseburn?

January 17, 2008
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Remember when you were a sun-worshipper in your (foolish) younger days and you’d lie out in the sun way too long, slathered with baby oil, lemon juice in your hair trying so hard to be as blond as you were at age five? No? Oh wait, I guess that was me. Nevertheless, I’m sure you’ve [...]

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They’re Baaaack!

January 16, 2008
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After the nice job they did on our window restoration, we knew we would have the Stripp Joynt back sooner rather than later to finish the woodwork in our house. So they arrived Monday morning and got right to work on the living room and dining room baseboard and door frames. I was filled with [...]

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Before-and-After

January 12, 2008

In case you haven’t noticed, I started a new, permanent Before-and-After section on the site to provide a synopsis of some of our major projects. It’s accessible via the Tabs at the top. The first two projects highlighted are the Basement and the Windows. My definition of “after” may be a little loose. In some [...]

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Catchin’ Rays

January 11, 2008
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Dining Room Ideas

January 10, 2008
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I’ve been thinking about the dining room a bit and formulating some ideas. Our dining room set is really our old kitchen table set which I bought from friends (along with lots of other stuff that I still have) before they moved to Maui almost twenty years ago. I took over their apartment too (this [...]

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In Gear

January 8, 2008
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Guess what? My last post got me going and I made some phone calls: first to the village for general information about building codes and then to an architect. Woo hoo! The village said that staircases should be three feet wide, but it sounded like they’d be somewhat lenient if it were a little smaller [...]

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