You Have to Clean Before You Can Tidy
My closet is now officially tidied (or KonMari’d, if you want to turn the method into a verb)! It doesn’t look drastically different, especially because the most dramatic change is in the drawers, but it feels so much better in there. No more piles of t-shirts on the top shelf, no more collections of crap on […]
The Life-Changing Cult of Tidying Up
Are you interested in my quest for a less disastrous house? Check out my whole tidying archive of posts! If you are a person who reads the internet, you have probably heard of Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Perhaps you have even tried to read it. Most people who succeed in reading it […]
Oh, The Container Store
The other day we stopped by The Container Store to shop for trash cans. Yes, I have reached the point of my life where I think a trash can is something you shop for. While there I saw they are having a 25% off Elfa sale. We’re having another baby and I totally want to […]
Ikea Undercabinet Lighting
The past few weeks have been a lot of two steps forward / one step back in the kitchen. While tidying up the remaining boxes of kitchen stuff I came across the cabinet lighting, and thought “huh I wonder when I’m supposed to install these.” I’ll tell you…. before you secure the wall cabinets. Oops. […]
Plumbing!
Last week we found out that the drain line for the sink would need to be moved down 3 inches in order to make room for the new, deeper undermount sink. This was a pretty big bummer because in order to to do it the wall would have to be opened up. The wall I […]
Ikea SEKTION Cabinet Install: Day 1
Over the long weekend we capped off the leaky pipes in the kitchen, nailed down the OSB flooring, and finished painting one of the upstairs bedrooms. Now all we need to be able to sleep there is a bed! On Sunday Chris and Jen started assembling the cabinets for the kitchen while I tried to make […]
Visible Progress, Finally
After a lot of trips where nothing at the house changed much (and a few where they looked considerably worse), we finally had a weekend where it felt like things were moving again. We went down Friday after work and I made a plywood cutting jig, following the instructions in this youtube video (hat tip […]
Permits, Contractor Drama
It turns out I need a plumbing permit for the ice maker line and the new hot water heater. Sigh. On Tuesday I went down with my parents to paint some ceilings and fill out the permit application in person. The office is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 4:30. So of course when I got […]
Crazy Ideas
So planning a kitchen is exciting stuff, which is good because dealing with structural problems is pretty boring (but also expensive). But today I’m taking a break from the real world of home improvement and diving into insane(ly cool) stuff. Because I need a break from researching gas installation and hot water heaters. Here’s 3 […]
Fix All The Things
Inspection was last week. Man, 40 year old houses sure to have a lot of shit wrong with them. This is really the first time I’ve had to deal with most of this stuff. The places I lived in college were post-civil-war era shit holes slowly collapsing into the earth, but I was renting so […]
