Wood Floor Reveal

After almost exactly one year of living with plywood floors we were able to install our new bamboo flooring last week! We think it looks AMAZING and it feels like a whole new house downstairs!
Originally, our plan was to go with this flooring from Lumber Liquidators, but after reading too many reviews about how easily it scratches and dents we opted to upgrade to what's called a strand bamboo. Something about the "stranding" process is supposed to make the bamboo extra durable, 150% harder than oak is what they claim. The guy at Lumber Liquidators said you could drop a hammer on it and it would be fine, now that's more what we're looking for!

Installing the first row was by far the most time consuming (and nerve wracking!) to make sure we got it a straight as possible.

There was a bit of a learning curve to using the floor nailer (the hardness of the bamboo did have a downside when it came to actually installing it!), but once we got the feel for it it worked pretty well. By the end of the first day our floor looked like this.

It surprised us how well the floor blended with the log walls. We were actually hoping for a bit more contrast, but we'll still get that when we add the kitchen cabinets.

So after 3 1/2 days of pretty constant work by Travis our downstairs now looks something more like this

and this

and this.

Slight improvement wouldn't you say? It's so exciting to be getting to some of the more aesthetically pleasing projects versus some of the more mandatory, but less beautifying things like plumbing and electrical!

The Unveiling

I decided to tear myself away from admiring our fireplace and mantel for a few minutes to share with you some pictures of our almost completed fireplace (grout work is still in progress). We are thrilled with the way it turned out!
It's hard to picture how it looked before compared to the grandeur of it now! It feels like it makes such a statement in the room and Travis did a superb job on the rock work in my humble opinion!

It was a big undertaking in time and money (at least for us), but we're pretty confident it was well worth the investment!

Brick By Brick

Or in our case, stone by stone, our fireplace is making progress. It's been a huge project and we still have a ways to go, but it's getting there. And so far we LOVE it!

The last time you saw are fireplace was shortly after we installed it. It looks kind of bare and lonely. =o(

But since then Travis built and plywood frame around it following code requirements (we were able to safely do this since our stove is what's considered zero clearance), as well as built and installed a sweet mantle milling the lumber himself with his Alaska mill (more on that to come, but since it's Travis' project I thought it'd let him write it).

After wrapping the frame with wire mesh like this:

We (i.e. Travis) applied a scratch coat and we were all ready to start putting up the rocks.

Yesterday afternoon we got the tile laid on the hearth and our firewood pad, too. The tile is the same as what we laid in our entry way this spring.
We got our tile in the spring and the rock was given to us at a later date by a friend who had some leftover from his own house, but we couldn't have coordinated the colors any better. They blend perfectly!
As you can see we still have a LOT of rock to put up, but it's getting there little by little. And in the mean time we just sit back and admire our handiwork. =o)

No More Streaking

After months of contented living with our upstairs bathroom, we decided we'd had enough of the streaks and grim. It seemed foolish at first to put time and money into it know that one day it would all get torn down and redesigned. But then reality struck. True, it will all come down eventually, but that will likely be several years down the road and it currently looks like this.

Pretty horrid, right? To be honest, I'm not sure how we lived with it for so long. I guess we just got accustomed to it, or maybe it looks worse in pictures (wishful thinking...).

Anyway, we decided it was time to say to long to the streaks. But still not wanting to spend much money on it we bought a $12 gallon of stain sealing primer and snagged a $5 gallon of mis-tint paint at Lowes (thanks to the brilliant suggestion of the gal working in the paint department!). I was pretty excited about the color at first (when it was in the can). It seemed very similar to what we put in our hallway. Once it was on the walls, however, I was sorely disappointed.

In the pictures it doesn't look so bad. In real life it looks very pinkish brownish. Think swine. Not exactly what I had in mind.

I did do a little trim work around the counter top and the mirror with a pint of off-white paint we picked up (also a mis-tint for super cheap!) to try and add some character. Sadly, the off-white was a flat paint so I didn't want to use it much were it would get a lot of moisture.

As I keep reminding myself, the objective of this operation was not to produce a stunning, designer bathroom, just a clean, streak-free one. Mission accomplished!

Color Me Pomegranate

A few days ago I mentioned that we got the mudding and painting finished in our kitchen. Yay! Travis did a fantastic job on the taping and texturing in my humble opinion, especially for his first attempt. (Don't worry, Hon, there will be many more walls to practice on!) The actual sheet rock we put up way back in July.

As with any DIY project where we are unsure about what we're doing, we began by googling some how-to videos until we felt confident enough to tackle the mudding. I diligently watched the videos, but somehow I managed to be busy during the actually mudding and

texturing...hmm, how did that happen??? Compared to most houses we don't have a great deal of sheet rock to do in the house and so we opted not to invest in a sprayer for the texturing. Instead we used a paint roller to apply the mud. It gave it a nice fine texture, similar to an orange peel texture but even finer. Next time I think we will try a different roller to see if we get it just a touch heavier.

As for color, we went with the same shade of red that we used in the rest of the kitchen, Ralph Lauren Pomegranate. We love the color. It is a little dark right now having it on all the walls in such a small space, but eventually a lot of it will be covered up with nice light colored cabinets so it should balance out perfectly. For now it's a great feeling to be able to cross one more thing off the to do list!

You can click here if you want a refresher on how the color looks in the rest of the kitchen.

Down the Hall

Remember pictures of our hallway going upstairs? It had been our agenda to repaint it for quite sometime, though you maybe wondering how we could bear to paint over that beautiful mural and the amazing yellow, white and orange sponge paint job (yes, that remark may have been dripping with sarcasm)! We did repair the holes in the sheet rock prior to painting just in case you were wondering, but more on that to come later.
Just to make sure you get the full effect of the stunning mural that greeted us every time we trekked up our stairs, here it is in all it's glory. Can you image why we were eager to see it go?

And here is a nice view of the sponge paint job we got to view from our living room everyday.
Need I repeat that we were eager to see it go? We toyed around with the idea of going with some shade of green, but since our kitchen is a dark red we opted to keep it neutral. We didn't want it to look like Christmas down there all year round, nor did we want anything too dark since the hallway doesn't have much for lighting. We decided to go with the same color we used to paint the ceilings in the West bedroom - Ralph Lauren Cottonwood.
It keeps things light and neutral while giving us the option to add pops of color down the road as we get more of a direction for where we want it to go with the decor. But for now I am in love with having a SINGLE color on the wall. What a novel concept! lolDon't you just love the change a can of paint and a few hours work can make?

p.s. The ribbon on the beam is not permanent. It was just my meager attempt and some Christmas decoration a few weeks ago.

p.p.s. PTL the building inspection went awesome yesterday! The inspector was super friendly and easy to work with and didn't have any issues with our work-in-progress so far!

Inspector Gadget

Today is the day we've been slightly dreading and definitely procrastinating on. The city building inspector is going to be paying us a visit this afternoon to see how things are coming along on "the projects." It's a good thing. It's a little nerve wracking too, though. We know we have a lot that still needs to be fixed, but we are hoping he will be understanding and easy to work with! I guess we will soon find out...

P.S. We got our freshly sheet rocked kitchen wall painted last night. Pictures to come soon!

Sew Nice

When we went to Boise last Saturday, one of our goals was to purchase some stuff to help us get a little more organized due to our lack of closets. I (Carissa) was especially looking forward to getting my fabric more orderly. I enjoy sewing and suddenly realized I had quite a collection of fabric going-some left over from various projects and some snagged for dirt cheap at yard sales. I had devised a method in my head to tidy it up and was eager to see if it would actually work. It did! And I'm so excited to share it!

To get the full picture of just how well it worked, this is what I started with; an overflowing cardboard box accompanied by a falling-apart cardboard set of drawers. Not pretty.

And THIS is what it looks like now! I am thrilled with the change. I can actually see what I have now and I think (hope) it will be fairly easy to maintain. The tub on the left contains my big bulky fabric (like the 12ish yards of wool I scored at a yard sale for only $5 this summer!), blankets that have been donated to my fabric pile for repurposing, batting, and my small bit of yarn in the little green box. The tub on the right is what I'm most proud of though.

I bought a box of 2.5 gallon zippy bags and sorted my fabrics by color, so for the most part each bag holds a different color fabric. So instead of rifting through a big tub of fabric, I simply have to pull out the baggy of the color I'm looking for while the rest of my tub of fabric remains undisturbed. This part I didn't plan, but I was delighted to discover that the bags fit perfectly in my 20 gallon tub so I was able to line them up on end making it even easier to sort through them.I have high hopes for my new system, but I will give you an update after a while and let you know how it's working out.

Organization, Here We Come

We cannot wait to go to the big city tomorrow and do some shopping! That may sound strange coming from us, but this isn't just any shopping this is shopping to help us get our home more organized, to pick up some supplies for upcoming house projects, and of course to soak up any fresh new ideas for the house that might hit us as we peruse the stores. I'm excited about it all but for myself, I think I am most excited about the organizing part.

We have spent the last few days going through nearly all of our stuff, sorting out tons of things that we don't use, don't need or don't have room for into an ever growing garage sale pile in our attic (we plan to have one this spring or summer, once the snow melts...) and finding permanent residences for the things we do want to keep.

One of the most frustrating things about our house right now is it has ZERO closets. Not one. Which makes it challenging to keep things tidy and organized, particularly for someone like myself who does NOT come by it naturally. But in addition to getting rid of a bunch of stuff, we are planning to spring for some of those super handy Rubbermaid tubs when we go down to Boise,

which just happen to be on sale at HD through the end of the month! Maybe it's strange to be so excited about a plastic container, but I am stoked! When it comes to organizing I need all the help I can get and I've got some big plans for those containers!

New Beams

We ordered the lumber for our beams this fall, not really sure when we would get around to replacing the ones around our fireplace, but knowing it needed to happen sometime in the near-ish future. What we had was doing the job, but was a bit makeshift as you

can see.Then one afternoon we got a fit of inspiration and decided to tackle it. So with a bit of muscle, some pounding and a lot of supporting we transformed our stairway from ugly makeshift beams to beautiful, permanent ones.All that's left to do is a bit of staining so they match the wood in the rest of the house.

Time to Get Kozy

Before winter hit, we were able to install our new fireplace. It's a Kozy Z42 that we were able to purchase locally here in McCall and install ourselves. It functioned just fine as is, but aesthetically we had a ways to go on the project.

The new fireplace requires zero clearance, so Travis has been working on building a frame around it to hide the stove pipe and one day (hopefully one day very soon) it will be covered with ledgestone and tile.
It looks better already, don't you think?

But before the stone and tile come the backerboard...

Our hope is that by the end of the month we will have the tile and stone installed. Here is a sneak peak at the ledgestone we are going to use. It was given to us by some friends who had leftovers from their house. We just have to see if we can purchase some corner pieces and we'll be set.

Good-bye Leaky Roof

Once again it's time to do some catch up with the blogging. I am going to try and keep things more up to date on here this year (we'll see how that goes...). One of the biggest projects we tackled this fall right after Travis was laid off work for the season was re-roofing our house.

For future reference, November in McCall is not the best time of the year to be working on a tin roof. Despite the cold, snow and rain, however, we (i.e. Travis) were able to get the north side of the roof finished with the generous help of some friends before the snow really set in for the season. The south side will have to wait till spring for it's makeover, but it doesn't have any leaks in it so it's not such a big deal. It will be exciting once the snow melts this spring to actually be able to see and enjoy our new pretty green roof!