At long last

We have finally finished painting the first floor, unless the inside of the kitchen pantry counts.* We'd been working on the laundry room and half bath for months and I finally finished it up this afternoon. Michael hung up some shelves in the laundry room for additional storage, which has freed up a little space in the pantry. We might be addicted to Costco, so that coupled with the little storage space we have presents a bit of a problem. But we're working on creative ways to store all of our crap, albeit a bit slowly.

I've also been meaning to post pictures of some curtains we now have up on the first floor. Since these windows are on the back of the house and face the alley, we weren't in too much of a hurry to hang something for privacy. But my lovely mother and aunt were generous enough to make some curtains for us. Here are the custom-made kitchen and bathroom curtains:


We did not have time to paint the pantry walls before we moved into the new kitchen; it'll be a weekend project sometime, probably when we get more storage in the kitchen and will have to shift things around anyway.

What a difference two years makes

On Friday we went to get our Christmas tree and decorated the living room. Last year we were living with Michael's parents and put up a tree there. Two years ago was our first Christmas together as a married couple, and even though we were living upstairs while work had just started downstairs, I still insisted we put up a tree. It's a tradition I wanted to start from the very beginning, no matter what the circumstances. So we went all the way out to the Ashland Berry Farm to pick out a tree and put it up on the third floor, where we were pretty cramped already. We didn't have a fireplace and mantle, but we did have his scary gas heater thing on the wall. So the stockings were hung on the wall with pushpins.

(I didn't realize that Tanga was in this picture until I uploaded it just now - he's that blob there on the bottom right)

This year, our Christmas decorating is a far cry from two years ago, what with the finished living room, and a piano to boot.

And, we have a mantle to decorate:

Yes, we have four stockings, two for Michael and me, two for the kitties. Keep the crazy cat lady comments to a minimum, please.

Meet my new best friend

I never, ever, ever, ever thought I could get so excited over a vacuum cleaner. We've only been the proud owners for a few days, but I'm pretty confident that this is the best purchase we've ever made.

It might be hard to tell, but it is TINY - it weighs around 11 pounds. But it's amazingly powerful. Here, I'll show you:

That's after running it over the rug in the living room; I'm not going to tell you the last time it was vacummed, because I can't remember. We apparently had enough hair in it to make another cat.

Before you judge us for spending such an obscene amount of money on an appliance we don't really need, let me explain. Cleaning the house, before the construction, was never really an issue. We didn't have a lot to keep clean, and honestly, any cleaning was pretty much pointless. Now that we're living in the house again AND work continues on the house (slowly, mind you), I'm always pulled between cleaning or working on the house (mainly painting these days). We just don't have time for both, unless we give up sleep, which ain't happening, because we will take advantage of sleep as much as possible until we have kids. Painting usually wins because I always tell myself I'll clean the next day or the day after that, and then I never do. Also, we both have full-time jobs, and lives.

I've mentioned the fatties several times; they're also extremely hairy, even though they're shorthairs. Both of them shed really bad. As do I. I'm amazed I'm not bald; the bathroom floor can't stay hair-free for more than a few hours. So between the amount of hair, cat and human, and dust, our floors get pretty gross. I have a canister vacuum from my little apartment days, which worked just fine, but lugging that thing around our house, up and down the stairs, is such a pain. We also have a shop-vac, but I hate using it. It's dirty in and of itself, and even more awkward than the canister vacuum. I got a Roomba for Christmas last year, and while it works great, it's not something you can just run whenever you feel like. It is LOUD. And I have to supervise it because it gets stuck on our thresholds, which are the size of speedbumps. So letting it run while we're away may or may not work. I also don't think to run it in the mornings when I'm rushing to get a million other things done. So, it came down to either buying a better vacuum cleaner or getting a maid service. The Dyson seemed to be cheaper in the long run.

What I did with my evening

Here's the story of our sofa: It was mine to begin with. I bought it from IKEA five years ago and it served me, and some guests, well. I moved it with me to Richmond since we needed a good sofa. One of Michael's roommates had left a couple couches at the house, but they were pretty gross. I have no idea where they came from, and they looked like they used to be white at one point. Also, I just don't trust couches owned by single guys. So those went straight to the dump, and my couch was now our couch.

Then the sofa met Tanga. His claws, specifically. We tried everything to keep him from using the sofa as his scratching post, but he always managed to find a way. So I gave up on that and resigned to buying a new slip cover for it when we fixed up the new living room. It probably helps to mention that the sofa is actually a frame plus slip covers, which is fantastic because if you want to change things up, you can buy a new slip cover for a $250 or so and voila! New sofa! Yay for IKEA!

Then the sofa met an insane amount of dust from last year's floor finishing and drywall sanding. Since the slipcovers are easily removable and washable, I washed them. Then I got impatient and put them in the dryer. With heat. BAD idea. They totally shrunk. Which wasn't THAT big of deal, since I'd planned all along to buy new covers anyway; I was just trying to hold out on that since we have more important things to spend money on.

Then came the idea that buying a new slip cover is pretty pointless with Tanga around. He will destroy the next one just like he did the first one. We decided to save up for a leather sofa, since the cats aren't that interested in destroying our leather chair. So we threw some blankets over the couch to tide us over until we could afford a new sofa.

Then I got tired of living in a house that looked like recent college grads lived in it (seriously, I'm almost 30 years old - I'm tired of the whole hand-me-down furniture look) and bought a drapey kind of slip cover. It actually looks pretty nice...until you sit down and move just slightly. The cover shifts, the cushions shift, and you have one pretty white-trash-looking sofa on your hands.

And by now, several items have popped up that we need more than a leather sofa, like redoing the second bathroom. I'm also THIS close to going out and just buying a Dyson already; I want to punch my current vacuum cleaner in the face. So, we've just been dealing with how awful the sofa looks, and really only caring about it if people come over; only then will we actually fix it. I did some research (i.e. typing "how to fix slipping couch cushions" into Google and hitting Enter) and found several options for keeping couch cushions from shifting. I went with the velcro option.

Which brings me to a couple of weeks ago when I spent part of an evening literally velcroing the sofa cushions to the frame...and crossing my fingers that it would work. I bought industrial strength velcro, too, just to be safe. I also had to tape up the cushions themselves with some packing tape, in lieu of fabric glue, because the fabric came loose. So now whenever you move, the couch makes a crinkly sound. Lovely.

So far, so good. The cushions seem to stay put, and I've gone almost two weeks without cursing at the couch.

And yet, despite this improvement, I can't get over how white trash our couch is and it's still sitting in the house, a prominent feature in our living room. Let's run through the list, shall we?

• Corners clawed to death by cat
• Original cover shrunk in dryer, rendered useless
• Cushions taped together so they don't fall apart; holding out until I buy some fabric glue.
• Cushions that won't stay in place plus drapey slip cover that won't stay in place, leading to the bottoms of the cushions being velcroed to the frame

Now I'm asking myself why we didn't just suck it up and buy that leather sofa. Ah, hindsight.

When lolcats and real life collide

Read this.

Then check this out.

I don't know about you, but it made me lol.

The first floor is almost done. Almost.

Still not a lot of work going on here. We FINALLY put color on the walls in the laundry room and half bath downstairs. The bathroom shouldn't take too long to finish; the minimal amount of trim in there makes life so much easier. We, or I, rather, decided to use yellow in the bathroom because a) it looks good with the black and white floor, and b) we had half a gallon left over after painting the bathroom upstairs. This is Restoration Hardware paint, people; that stuff ain't cheap, so we're getting our money's worth. I absolutely love the way the color turned out downstairs. The natural light, of which there is none upstairs, makes a huge difference. I ALMOST want to redo the upstairs bathroom, but that'll have to wait for when we have nothing better to do on the house, so that will happen, oh, pretty much never.


Choosing the color for the laundry room was a bit challenging, mostly because I wasn't able to rely on Restoration Hardware this time, for two reasons. One, it's such a small room, and it's really not worth buying that much paint for that much money for a laundry room. Two, Restoration Hardware didn't have any colors that would work in that room anyway. We had to go with a color that would work with the red in the kitchen, the yellow in the bathroom, and the cappuccino in the hallway. We narrowed it down to blue, so off to the Lowe's we went to choose from the million shades of blue.* I wanted a bright blue, something cheerful, even if it is a laundry room. You have to go through that room to get to the bathroom, so it should still look nice, right? We're surprisingly thrilled with the color; it looks so nice. But who comes up with the color names? We chose Boudoir Blue. It still makes me giggle. Because I'm 12.




*Again, I must reiterate why I adore Restoration Hardware paint so much: it saves you the hassle of choosing from so many options of a single color. You want a green? Here's three: dark, medium, light, and you know whatever color you choose will look fabulous. It's so worth the $30+ price tag per gallon to save my (and, consequently, Michael's) sanity. Seriously, picking out toilets was hassle enough.

Special delivery!

We have an announcement to make. Something very special officially came into our lives today. This is something we've wanted for a long time but never thought the day would finally come. Y'all, please join in welcoming the newest member of the Kolonay family and say hello to our new baby (grand):


This is our birthday present to each other, since our birthdays are just 10 days apart. We agreed to buy a piano after consuming a drink or two, and, well, we stayed true to our word. Michael's been wanting to learn how to play, I've been wanting to pick it back up, plus we want our kids exposed to music as early as possible.

We originally planned to buy an old used upright, something that would complement the house; lord knows we've got the room. The first store had what I had in mind, but we didn't want to buy without shopping around first. The second store had a much larger selection, but nothing really jumped out. Until we saw this beauty. She was built in 1921 but restrung about 20 years ago, so she has the look we want but with a lovely sound. Y'all, it was a freakin' steal. We just couldn't pass it up. Yes, we ended up spending much more than we budgeted for (please, with this house that's just how it goes), but it's so worth it. I'm sure my parents will be happy that those eight years of lessons didn't go down the drain after all.

And now for something completely different

I've strictly used this blog to document the progress of our home's renovation. But I must digress this time to write about something that happened over the weekend in our neighborhood, so it's close enough to the subject of the house. In fact, it was just next door.

One of our neighbors had this puppy - this adorable, black lab mix (we think). He occasionally got out of the yard because he was small enough to fit through gaps in the fence. So he was then confined to a pen in the yard, pretty much all the time, since we rarely saw anyone out there with him. Not the greatest life, but we figured since he wasn't being physically abused, we wouldn't say or do anything. And besides, it's none of our business. This isn't the kind of neighborhood where you get up in other people's business anyway.

Michael noticed on Saturday that the puppy didn't look so great, so he kept an eye on him throughout the day. Then later that afternoon when he went to rinse some paint brushes off outside, some kids were out there, so he went over to check on him. The puppy was on death's door, he said, when he came back in the house. We made some calls and ended up loading the puppy and the kids, whom we'd never met before, in our car and rushing to the emergency vet across town. The little guy didn't even make it to the vet's office.

I've lived a pretty sheltered life. I'm also extremely sensitive when it comes to animals and their well-being. I'd never witnessed the death of a person or animal before, and while I didn't actually see it, it happened right behind me in my own car. I heard him die, gasping those last few breaths. It was so terribly heartbreaking. You can imagine the blubbering mess I was reduced to on Saturday.

I wished we'd stepped in sooner. I wished I'd encouraged Michael to do something when he first noticed something was wrong instead of trying not to stick our noses where they don't belong. But that probably wouldn't have saved his life. I figured he was dehydrated and his kidneys shut down (he had been peeing blood, apparently), but who knows. He lived outside, all the time. It gets really hot here in Richmond. You do the math. Something was wrong, and had been wrong, and no one else did anything about it.

After the sadness, anger begins to take over. Anger at people who have absolutely no business owning a dog, let alone a puppy. I read about it, I see it on TV, tales of neglect, but it's never happened this close to home. If you can't handle the responsibility, the hassle, the ruined furniture/carpet/shoes/clothes/whatever, don't get a pet. And if something doesn't work out, there are so many places, especially in and around Richmond, where you can take your pet if you can't give it the care it needs. It's so simple - I just don't understand how people can be so oblivious. Or just plain ignorant.

When we got back home after this whole ordeal, after I was finally able to let it all out and compose myself, I went into our living room and sat down next to Tanga and just petted him, thankful that we still have him around for many years to come. We complain a lot about our little orange terror, and his cross-eyed partner in crime, but we still love them and would do just about anything for them. I just hate that all pets aren't so lucky. So any of you out there with pets, please go love them just a little extra. And if I ever find out someone I know has a pet and is responsible for letting it suffer just a fraction of what our neighbors' puppy suffered, I will hunt you down.

I've often thought that the title Urban Camping no longer applies to this here blog, what with the major renovations having already taken place and the fact that we have a working HVAC system now. And yet, this house continues to surprise me. Like at three o'clock this morning, when we had, according to the local weathermen, torrential downpours. Three inches in an hour kind of rain. Previously when Richmond had terrible rain like this, the ceiling fell through in one of the second floor rooms; that room is now our bedroom. Michael had been worried about it leaking in there, even after getting a new roof and all the repairs made, because of some other minor issues that haven't been fixed yet. But we'd survived several bouts of rain since then, and so far, no leaks.

Until last night. I woke up to the rain hitting the air conditioning unit and after not going right back to sleep, I got up to use the bathroom. When I walked back into the bedroom, Michael was also up and standing by the window. I thought he'd gotten up to see what was going on outside. Instead, he's standing there with his hands cupped, asking me to get him a bucket. Oh, the sense of dread that filled me then. It wasn't a bad leak, just a slow drip, and Michael noticed that the leak got much worse any time the wind blew. I was more worried that I may not get back to sleep because of the drip, drip, drip than about the bigger issue here: there's water coming into our house. But this isn't something that we're terribly worried about; we haven't had a big rain like that in a while, and the house has stood up to normal rain just fine. There's siding we need to have replaced on the dormer upstairs, which is how the rain was getting in, and it's one of the many things left on the to-do list. We'll just be taking care of this item sooner than we thought.

Speaking of our new bedroom, I never posted pictures of the finished product. So here's a look at what the second floor of the house looks like, keeping in mind that we're about halfway done with this floor.

At the top of the stairs is the old bathroom that's been gutted. We have a piece of sheet rock blocking it to keep the cats out.


Kirin found a way in a few times (i.e., she squeezed her fat self through a slightly larger opening). Michael didn't believe me when I told him the gap needed to be smaller. So she'd get in there and crawl around under the floor, with all the exposed insulation around, which might account for the sneezing problem she's developed recently.

Here's the floor that Michael fell through:


Moving along, here's the hallway; the bathroom is to your left, the stairs going up and going down to your right.


Next is what used to be the upstairs kitchen. This is our work room for now, as you can tell, and will one day be another bedroom.


Now we come to the bathroom; this used to be a hallway that was just wasted space in the house.



And here's our bedroom.


(sorry for the ironing board; I didn't feel like moving it for the shot)



And here's the view from the bathroom, looking back toward the hallway and stairs:


Oh yes, those are more green stairs. I just can't escape them.

Grumble, grumble

My parents came up to visit this past weekend, so on Saturday, the three of us went out to see some of Richmond's historical sites while Michael stayed home to work on the house. Honestly, I thought he'd take a nap instead.

So we come back to the house, and Michael greets us at the door. The first thing he says is, "You know how you always wanted that skylight in the kitchen?" Turns out Michael was working upstairs in the old bathroom, which sits on top of the kitchen and does not have a floor anymore, and put his foot through the ceiling. I swear, I thought the days of holes in the ceilings were behind us.

On the up side, this happened while my dad was here. My dad knows how to fix anything, so he helped Michael patch the hole fairly quickly. All that's left is to sand and repaint the patched section, and hope it's not too noticeable.

Oh, and Michael's OK. He's a little bruised, and there's a slight chance we may not be able to have kids, but he's fine. Which should've been the first thing I asked him, instead of asking how bad the ceiling looked while trying not to freak out. He's so lucky to have such a caring wife.

Good riddance, window bars

...because nothing says "Welcome to the ghetto" quite like bars over a window.

We're getting back to work on the house; Michael's still gutting the old bathroom upstairs, so I'm prepping the laundry room and half bath on the first floor for painting, since painting those two rooms is a relatively small project that I can do myself while Michael tackles bigger projects. As part of the prepping, I finally took off the bars over the window in the old laundry room/new half bath. For some reason, this is the only window in the entire house that had bars over it, and it bugged the crap out of me. And for anyone wondering if that was really such a good idea to take the bars down, since bars are usually installed on windows for a good reason, yes, yes it was a good idea to take them down. Because they are ugly, and there are more aesthetically pleasing ways to safeguard our home.

Why does nature love our house so much?

It’s been very quite around here lately, especially since we haven’t been home. We spent a week on the Outer Banks like we do every summer, but this year’s trip was cut a day short because Michael had to go to a conference in San Diego. A conference whose expenses were paid for by his work, which meant a free hotel room right by the water to take advantage of. So the only thing we had to pay for was my plane ticket (super cheap, by the way) and my meals. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay the whole week like Michael, but the two and a half days I spent there were fantastic.

So during the 12 or so hours we spent at our house between the trips, you’d think not too much would happen with regard to the house, especially now that most of the major issues have been resolved. Like big holes that have been sealed off but at one time allowed creatures of various sizes to get in. Silly me! I went up to the third floor looking for something and saw that yet another bird managed to find its way inside, probably through a gap between an air conditioning unit and the window sill. I have no idea how long the little guy was stuck inside; not long enough for the cats to pick up on it, fortunately. Michael got him back out, though, but we had to take out the window unit to prevent this from happening again. No big deal, since we don’t spend any time up there anymore, but I thought once the giant hole in the ceiling on the second floor was gone, birds getting into the house would be a thing of the past. Now if we can just get rid of the ants finding their way into the kitchen so that we can stop putting cat food in bowls that are placed in bigger bowls of water that may occasionally spill (and by "occasionally" I mean always), I'd be a happy urban camper.

We're back, plus some before and after time

We have finally moved back to Church Hill, and it is marvelous. While we miss the delicious (and free) home-cooked meals nearly every night, the 10-minute commute is awfully nice. I’ve gotten an extra hour back every day, half of which I use to sleep. The fatties are back as well and have adjusted, I think. Kirin has always adapted to new environments quite easily, but Tanga always needs a little more time. He spent most of Sunday evening after we moved back walking around and hissing at everything, including us, but he’s back to his usual over-affectionate self again. I have to share the story of corralling the cats for the move. Getting them into their crates is always a challenge because they totally know what’s up and will hide. Tanga’s easy, since he’s more comfortable with being picked up, but Kirin is stubborn, plus she’ll pick the worst place to hide. At the in-laws, her hiding place of choice was inside of a box spring. We can usually get her out without much work, but Sunday, we had to strip the bed, lift off the mattress, and literally dump Kirin out of the box spring. You’d think we’d learn to close off all access to rooms where they can hide before attempting to get them in their crates, but we always think it’ll be much easier than it actually is. But, we’re all back home now, and for the first time in two years, Michael and I have a decent place to call home.

We still have lots left to finish on the house, but it’s clean (for the most part) and comfortable. Next on the list is redoing our old bathroom on the second floor. After that, we will probably paint the hallway upstairs. The door to the bathroom may get moved, so why bother with the hallway if it’s just going to get messed up? Then we’ll have the second bedroom (currently housing our tools and materials for any work we do inside the house) and the third floor (currently a spare bedroom and storage area) to tackle. We also have the outside of the house – we’d like to redo the deck, plus the yard is in need of some landscaping. Our backyard is mostly concrete with a giant sycamore in the middle of it. If anyone has ten grand they’re willing to part with so that we can cut down that tree, that’d be great. We also want to replace the fence with one that gives more privacy.

And now, it is time for something I’ve been wanting to post since before the renovations started: before and after shots. The before shots are about a year old, and it’s hard to believe that the house ever looked like this, even though we lived here and saw it every day.

To start, here's what you'd see when you first walk in the door:

There was a wall there to the right (the living room is one the other side), and those awful green stairs AND the green floor. Now, when we come home, this is what we see:

The space has been opened up, the floors refinished, and the stairs repainted black.

Next, here's what the living room used to look like:

That used to be the furnace there on the right, with the duct work coming out and going along the wall. This room also had a drop ceiling. Now, the living room looks like this (Tanga, once again, makes an appearance):

Onto the dining room; here's the before...


...and here's the after:

Quick detour: that odd looking structure on the right? Is a homemade scratching post. Michael made it out of the scraps of wood we had around (for Kirin) and the couch cushion covers (for Tanga) that shrunk because I was too impatient and put them in the dryer. (Not that big of a deal, since we'd planned to buy a new cover anyway. Yay for IKEA!)


And now we move into the kitchen. Here's the before...

and here's the after:

Here's another before and after shot:

Here are a few more pictures of what the first floor looks like now:

Among the many things we need, one of them is a larger TV; the new living room makes the one we have look so, so tiny. Here's the dining room, though Michael's started calling it the interrogation room because all we have in there, besides the scratching post, is the one table and two chairs across from each other:

And finally, here's a shot of my favorite view in the house. This is taken from the couch, looking back through the dining room and into the kitchen. I love it because you can see all three wall colors.

I'll post before and after shots of the second floor, which is mostly done, later on. We don't have the Internet up and running at our house yet (I'm currently taking advantage of my sister-in-law's wireless connection); I hope it won't be too long before I can update again (I know all five of you readers hope that, too).

Almost home

We've set a date to move back in - by the end of the month. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that the obnoxious neighbors across the street, who never seem to have anything better to do than blast their car stereos at any given time, are moving out at the end of the month.

We've gotten a lot of painting done. The living room and hallway are done. We've got drapes ready to hang up, and the room is ready for furniture (this is where we call in assistance from Michael's brother-in-law to help move furniture and then we buy him dinner and/or beer). The kitchen is getting close to being done. We decided on red for the kitchen (I love the combination of black, white, and red). It was pretty intimidating at first, and of course red paint seems to make a bigger mess than the more subdued colors we've been using. But it's looking so good; it's a very warm color, perfect for a kitchen. It needs just one more coat and then the trim needs painting. We've also started painting the dining room; the ceiling is done, and we've got one coat of a very light grayish-blue (Light Silver Sage from, you guessed it, Restoration Hardware, who also, conveniently, make the lovely shade of red for our kitchen). The first set of stairs are done but still need touching up along the walls and risers.

Upstairs, we're moving into the bedroom; we have all of our basic furniture, plus we finally bought a mattress for our grown-up bed. I've been cleaning out the closet and drawers from the third floor and moving everything into the new bedroom. In doing so, I've also been throwing away/donating many, many items. Living with my in-laws, where I couldn't take everything with me, made me realize how I really don't need so many clothes/shoes/purses. So far, I've collected five garbage bags of clothes and three or four large shopping bags full of purses and a few pairs of shoes to take to Goodwill. The amount of extra closet and drawer space is a nice bonus.

And the bathroom upstairs is almost done, too. It just needs some touching up on the walls and then all the fixtures installed...whenever we get around to buying them.

I'll post pictures soon; everything is looking great, and I can't wait to share.

The green stairs are (almost) gone!

I may have mentioned my disdain for the green stairs. I started painting the first set of stairs yesterday; I got half of them done in about two and a half hours. And while it's tedious and quite time consuming, it's also relaxing, in a weird way. I'm actually looking forward to finishing them. It also helps that the results are satisfying - the glossy black stairs look so much better than the green.

And a comparison of the green and the black:

Yeah, I'd say it's an improvement.

More painting...

We've got paint on more walls: the living room and hallway downstairs and the bathroom upstairs. As always, the paint colors don't translate so well through the camera. The living room and hallway are supposed to be cappuccino:

The bathroom walls are butter, though it's hard to tell in this picture:

The other picture I took of the bathroom has what appears to be orange-ish colored walls, so this is the best I could do.

We've also put a fresh coat of paint on the rails and banister on the stairs going up to the second floor. It looks so much better; I can't wait to get the stairs painted.

We've also got the tile down on the hearth in the bedroom. No grout yet, but here's a sneak peek:

And a close up of the tile, since it looks blue in the above picture (it's gray, actually):

In other news, we recently bought night stands (finally).

Apparently, there's this little furniture place in Farmville. Yeah, we'll be going back.

We (or my very generous family, rather) bought a bed and a dresser for us right after we got married, but we didn't have room for it (I know - a house as big as ours and no room to put spare pieces of furniture sounds a little ridiculous, but there was a bit of demolition and construction going on). So the new bed and dresser, purchased in North Carolina, have been at my parents' house for about a year and a half. My folks are driving up to Richmond on Friday, with furniture (yay!), for a visit. So that's one step closer to being able to move back in.