The Master Bedroom Continues . . .

Ok - so now that we've figured out how to put video on this thing, you're going to get the whole multi-step process we went through . . . next up: the walls are finished! At the time this video was made, I believe we had been sleeping on the couches downstairs for 2 nights in a row - now remember, these were not the comfy lovely couch we have now! These were the couches that we THOUGHT would be comfy enough to make do with while we were still moving things in . . . .yeah, that lasted for (the aforementioned) 2 nights - then we came up with a new solution, as you will see . . .

luv!
caitlin

A Mish-Mash

Hi all - we've got a couple of (we think) fun new pictures to share :)

Our new big-kid couch came in - yay!! FINALLY . . .1-2 weeks normal time = 5 weeks (plus several phone calls and the need for Jesse to use his stern 'teacher voice') in Dunk&Bright time - we may think twice before using this furniture store again . . . but we have to admit, we DO love the big, fluffy couch - plenty of room for the both of us to fall asleep in front of the tv like the wild and crazy pair that we are . . .(jesse has just informed me that sometimes we fall asleep in front of the fireplace as well)


While we're not prepared yet to deal with the weeds around the house OR do any formal landscaping (we can't wait!) we did want to get a LITTLE bit of greenness and yummyness around the house - container herbs are the solution! And yes, those ARE South Park pj shorts with Cartmen on them ;)


We had our first delivery as POD leaders for the CSA! Produce from Grindstone Farm in Pulaski, NY is delivered to several sites in the greater Syracuse area - Fellows is 1 of 3 University-area Point of Delivery sites where members who have bought a share in the farm can pick up their share of produce once a week from our garage! So on Tuesday we met most of the members belonging to our POD, including a very nice, friendly veteran of the CSA named Dianna - she met the truck at the house for us (since we were both scooting home around 3:30ish from work and school) and got us newbies settled in. The first delivery had asparagus, broccoli, collard greens, radishes, red lettuce, shallot greens, arugala, bordeaux spinach, mint, sage, mizuna, baby lettuce greens - all delish!! The asparagus we grilled up with a little salt, a little pepper, and some olive oil - holy crappers! They barely made it out of the pan they were so good!





And here is a black squirrel spread-eagle on our garage roof.






Lotsa love
Caitlin and Jesse

Master Bedroom: Appendix A: Clown Collar Colors

HaHA! We have finally figured out how to post videos to this blog!!! So, here is the infamous footage documenting our brief but very real doubts in regards to our color choices in the master bedroom. Without further ado (?), a peak into our process . . .

(***WARNING*** We do drop the "F-bomb" a few times, tho in our defense, we ARE directly quoting Big Lebowski, so don't blame us, blame "The Dude" . . .and "Walter" . . .we hope you can forgive us!)

Master Bedroom transformation...

It's still not finished, of course, but the master bedroom is at least livable. Of course, it was livable from the beginning, it was just really really ugly. There are these 11 panels on the walls with somewhat attractive trim around them. However, the paint used in the middle of the panels was a thickly textured popcorn paint. Really ugly. There is thick molding around all the doors, windows, and along the base of the walls. It took us some time to come up with the colors of the room; Cait was really the mastermind behind it.

When we started the wall preparation, we knew that we had to tackle the plaster cracks and the popcorn paint. Thank goodness we had Lukey Dukey around that week to guide us through our learning process. We originally planned on making a plaster of paris mix every hour. On one of the trips to Lowe's Luke brought back a 5 gallon container of joint compound that saved us hours of needless mixing.

And so began 4 days of wall preparation. We tried scraping the popcorn paint off the wall panels, but didn't want to further damage the plaster underneath, and realized it would probably take decades to finish. So we purchased a belt sander to flatten out the textured paint. I went around the room, one panel at a time, sanding the most thickly textured panels while Cait and Luke followed behind spackling each panel with the joint compound. We had to sand and spackle a second time to get each panel really flat. We also did this on all the other cracks around the room and the holes in the window molding. This was our first experience with wall preparation and I think its why we haven't tried tackling another room just yet...

Finally, we could get down to the fun stuff - actually painting! Before Luke went to join Ellie on their camping trip, he and Cait were able to prime the room with a grey primer - suggested to us by the Lowe's paint guy because we were going with a dark red for the main walls. We still had to do 3 coats to not be able to see through the red, but I'm sure it still made a difference. As Cait and I were doing the actually painting, we were having a hard time seeing the final product and kept questioning ourselves. "It's so dark!" we kept saying.

The day before Luke left, Friday, we tried figuring out how much time it would take to finish the room off. It was a relatively fast drying paint, so, we figured, that we could go back and forth with the kitchen and the bedroom every two hours, and be done with both rooms by the end of the day. We were so naive... Just the taping around the molding also took so much time. After the third coat of red, we were ready for the "spice". Cait told me it took her an hour and a half just to take the tape down! And then we had to put tape back up on the walls when we began the second color. At this point, it was already Monday or Tuesday, and we had been working through the weekend. As you all know, we are complete beginners at all of this, and advice and tips are always welcome.

We started the spice color with the panels; anything that could be rolled, we attacked. We bought smaller rollers for the smaller panels and the flat parts of the molding. Again, we were struck with doubt: with the blue tape, we were skeptical about the colors chosen. Cait compared it to a clown's collar. At least it was moving along fairly quickly. Until we had to do all the detailed sections of the molding with brushes. Working together it still took Cait and I 5 hours to finish the molding. I think when Luke and I were figuring out how long it would take we forgot the part about applying the paint. We were talking as if the paint would just apply itself, or as if it'd be up in 10 minutes like the ceiling paint. Not so much...

All this work was in the week leading up to our move, which happened on Saturday. So, we left the 3rd color, "Old Rose #6" (not pink...), which was going to be for the window seat, for another time. We really wanted to move into our room, because we had been sleeping on our couches in the living room for a few days, and Cait was done with that. So, we threw our mattress on the floor and called it a success!

We still have light sconces to put up, the doors have to be refinished (there is no handle on our main door), one of the windows has to be fixed, and the outlets need to changed, but its certainly better than when we started. All the experience accrued fixing the cracks, and applying the joint compound will serve us well when we start on the other rooms in the house. Next up is the tenant room in about 2 weeks. Lots of love, and can't wait to see you all soon!


Disregard (or make fun of) Cait's expression in that last picture - she had woken up about 2 minutes prior...

Calling all Plant and Weed Enthusiasts!

Ok, so the sudden gift of a couple of pots of herbs/useful weeds from a neighbor a few doors down has inspired me to wander around our own property to try and identify what green growth we've already got going on here at Fellows. Most seem to be common weeds but some are definitely useful ones (ie dandelion, plantain) and I think we may even have a couple leftover pretty perenials from a previous gardener. So I am calling upon the knowledge of the aunties, the mommies, and anyone else who might be able to help me identify these plants. Here goes!

I'm pretty sure these are two kinds of plantain - the first, more round-leaved one I believe is common plaintain, the second one with more narrow leaves a buckthorn plaintain???

This guy (from my brief internet searchings) looks like some sort of Dwarf Columbine?













I'm having trouble figuring out what this next one is - at first I thought it was some kind of 'dock', either curly dock or a broadleaf dock. But none of the pictures I've seen so far online look like they are big enough to match up to these big boys - they are huge! A little hairy on the top of the leaf, just a bit tho. I don't think they are hairy on the underside. No flowers yet, just these big broad sprawling leaves. And it's not like there are a bunch of them - they seem to be plopped invidiually throughout the yard :)












We had lots of pretty pretty violets in early spring - you can't see the flowers here but you can see the heart-shaped leaves. We've got them pretty much spread throughout the entire yard - they were one of the first bits of color after a long winter!







So, the last one I can kind of identify looks like a yellow woodsorrel. I thought it was clover at first, but after looking it up (plus it does have some yellow flowers!) I think it's woodsorrel instead.











These last couple I have no idea! There's a spikey weed that comes up all over the yard, a mint-looking (but not smelling!) leafy plant that grows everywhere, a a viny, round-leafed thing that looks like it has some small purple flowers, and a semi-daisy look-alike. Tho the white petals are very thin, almost aster-looking. Any ideas?

Thanks all! Will post more weed pics if there are requests!

luv luv
caitlin

PS - If you haven't figured it out already, you can click on the individual pictures to make them larger for your viewing pleasure!

Our Kitchen - Part Two!

Our kitchen at Fellows has undergone so many transformations. First it was the ripping down of the gunky wallpaper. Then it was scraping the rest of the gunkiness off the walls and cabinets! Then it was painting our lovely 'Caribbean Sunset' (yellow) and 'Soft Cream' (off-white) theme on the walls and wainscoting . . . and just when we'd gotten used to that we put on the final touch - our 'Deep Peri' (blue!) cabinets!! It really makes the room pop (think 'Holy Blueness Batman!' whenever we enter the room) and it IS nice to have doors to hide all our kitchen stuff - tho suddenly we DO have to make the effort to remember where we put everything; it's not all just freely accessible anymore!

And it was all done with the help of Jesse's Dad and Olga! For this past Memorial Day Weekend, we managed to strike a balance between relaxation and productivity! First on our TO-DO list was the cabinets: cleaned, primed, painted, installed, CHECK! Jesse and Olga even managed to make our yucky cabinet hardware shine like new! The large upper cabinets (see photos!) did become quite the production. If you think that it shouldn't be difficult for 4 grown people to install 4 SEEMINGLY IDENTICAL cabinets with holes for two OR three screws and hardware for two OR three screws . . . think again. Despite the Aunties' efforts a few months back to lable the cabinets (for just such a reason), we still had to play musical cabinets and shimmy things up and down and take two of the 'cooks' out of that crowded kitchen (the ladies left the boys scratching their heads) . . . .and it ended up LOVELY! The cabinets close and everything. Though if you ask Pops Goodglass, he might tell you the last cabinet on the left is about a 1/4 inch too low . . .and don't swing on it . . .

Next was painting the porch (CHECK!) and painting the last color in our bedroom - Old Rose #6 (definitely NOT pink). I think that color will go down in infamy . . . truth be told, in most lights it looks a little TOO similar to the rest of the bedroom (Porcelein Red) for my taste, but it's lovely just the same :) Finally, Jesse's Dad gave all our plants some breathing room in bigger pots and a good soaking outside. I think he must have whispered sweet nothings to them all as well because the next morning they all looked perky and happy to be green! I've been charged with their dosage of TLC and have promised to send regular picture updates - here's hoping none of them kick the bucket on my watch!

After a very productive weekend, we sent our merry painters/planters home to Jersey and loaded up a picnic to take down to Barry Park. Surprisingly our fellow park-goers on this holiday weekend were few and far between - so we got to sit down amongst the lilac forest growing there (most, sadly, already past peak) and munch on turkey sandwhiches and leftover sweet potatoes and sauteed brussel sprouts. We determined the weekend a total success and strolled back home to Fellows :)

Our kitchen!

We had taken Renee's advice during the lead-up to our official move-in and wanted to get at least 2 rooms done in order to have a "sanctuary" even though the rest of the house may be a disaster. Well, the rest of the house is certainly a disaster -- the living room, dining room, hallways, and other bedrooms all have paper on the floors and are filled with boxes of overflowing stuff, most of which we don't know where to put yet.

But the kitchen, yes the kitchen! We had Lukey Dukey up here for a whole 4 days of backbreaking work where he taught us how to spackle and paint like a pro. He put in hours the likes of which Steve and Robbie would quiver at! Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (a week and a half ago) he didn't let us leave the house until at least 10pm and on one of those days it was midnight! He worked us to the bone (or was it the other way round?)...

The trim work and the cabinets are still left to be done, but here's a progression of the work the kitchen has seen over the last few months...Bedroom post soon to follow.

Love ya!