work hard but play harder...

Here are a few pictures from our summer here in the PNW and some found treasures @ Blue Palatine

my birthday

princess party

reused ribbons from Barney's

waffle dog maker circa 1950

amazing

and the fireworks begin

i lost one of the great loves of my life after a long, loving 13 years, i will miss him forever and got a little tattoo that reads 4763 the number of days we spent together. RIP Phish

white party

happy 30th to Mark

industrial shipping crate dresser, found @ a sale not the house but very rad. it has stamps from NY,CA, WA, OH, IL on it

and the ceilings gone

fig tree through the window

the corner of a burnt letter post marked 1920

bee's

trash trash trash

this one's for jen, here's the sauna, in the gardening shed in the back yard...again the first time i looked in here 2 cats came running out

shot of the back of the house, this end is about to get ripped off and rebuilt due to the addition being the old deck boxed in literally, really really poorly, thanks old owners

store room, again being ripped off and rebuilt

building materials we plan to recycle

wasp's nest

best score!! they will be a great part of our vintage christmas decor

and meet onions, sporting blue painters tape

indy hates her baby guts

this was how she slept yesterday sooooo sweet

 

second addition...project seek and destroy

We are defiantly learning as we go about home renovation an restoration. Even though it feels scary to tear apart your new house, we are getting to the bottom of all of our problems and unfortunately finding new ones, lucky us. So here are some new pics of literally the destruction and demolition phase. We must thank all the helpers that we have had!! Especially Rhiannon, Amanda(whom both sacrificed days of there vacation for us!) Dustin, Brian and Casey.It's messy, it's dirty, it's dusty, it's got dead surprises and it's all ours!!!

kitchen-so far we have removed the pergo, vinyl tiles, 3 different kinds of linoleum, paper and what i think was a mixture of mud and glue, all of this was on top of the wood floor. also note the lovely tile counter top is gone!!

all plaster and lath walls, its amazing how much garbage plaster creates!

downstairs dry wall removal

the downstairs bedroom, bye bye black mold!

watch the garbage pile grow with us! its very small here

one of our first steps, re-wire the replace, new panel looks so much better than this mess

standing in the kitchen looking into the living room. miss Amanda and I were on project red removal , looks better already!!

here's a hidden treasure! a giant pipe, it actually heads straight up that column to the left??? what is it for, hoping we can remove it because I want to move the sink to open up the kitchen.

basement dry wall removal

standing in the living room looking into the kitchen

front door, we are hoping to put a closet in here and extend the entry to the end of the porch

removal of the third entrance into our bedroom from the kitchen, right next to the stove?? really you need options of how to leave your bedroom, right? this will now be a more useful wall in the kitchen and there will be one wall in our room that doesn't have a window or a door

mark amidst nob and tube, I'm salvaging the porcelain pieces and using them for drawer pulls, they say 1 jiffy on them, love it

getting bigger

weeds growing into the walls? and why would you cover up a huge window...really i hate daylight in the basement, or maybe it was to cover the drug operation

i didn't pull this out of the ocean, it was in a cupboard in the basement, looks really safe doesn't it??

this is just a sample of the poop, Mark says we could have filled a large trash barrel with rat poop, yup that's right RAT POOP! So we are working with a rodent control company, so far they have blocked entries, removed birds from our exterior walls and bee's! yay

trash pile taller than a grown man!

this is one of the 2 dead birds found which I am very scared of, thanks to my Grandpa and Uncle Mike chasing me with birds as a child. funny joke guys, funny joke!

and dead surprise #3, this little guy fell on top of Dustin along with hundreds of turds on his birthday!!! what a trooper! well that's all for today! sorry about leaving y'all on a nasty dead rat note but this is our new life!

Domestic art now becomes the art of home renovation...otherwise known as the scariest, dirtiest, most exciting, thing we have ever endeavored thus far

we just bought our very first house, which isn't easy here in Seattle. The amount of space you can get for your money is frighting to a couple of young mid-westerners such as us! So we looked and we looked and we weren't really seeing anything that we thought could be our first place then we saw this "gem". It was a short sale and we made our first offer on February 24th and didn't get the house until July 8th(Rhiannon's birthday and she was here to boot!) After almost loosing the property 3 times due to the negligence and broken system of communication @ the bank, turning a shady Realtor into the MLS, contacting the owners, jumping constant hoops and obstacles, we finally got the keys. Now it's our mess and what a hot mess it is, which leads me here today. I'm going to try my best to take you along with us on our adventure into home ownership of a 1914 farm house that needs serious repair and love. Nearly every surface needs to be dealt with, not only is it filthy but very very poor decisions were made in the "updating" of this house. So we are going to try to get it back to some of it's roots with a twist of our style and as many green, efficient, earth friendly products that we can afford. Here are the first set of photo's... more to come soon.

here she is...Blue Palatine

living and dining, note the floors and lovely choice of red

1970 wood stove with pink tile hearth???

guest room

bath up stairs

bath tub

master

master- looking out one of it's 3 doorways, is this a cedar lined hallway or closet, if you hung your cloths here would you have to do the worm to get into your bedroom???

kitchen- with outdoor tiles(that have intentional cracks and crevices)for a food surface...what a great idea!!! 

kitchen-looking twords back deck, sans dishwasher

the only appliances that came along with the place

garbage pile in back yard

a really weird shot of Mark's awesome studio, its HUGE!!!

the deck, which has a view of the Sound that we will be able to see...when the tree's a barren!

sorry these got a bit out of order, this is in between the deck and the kitchen, just found out this extension and the deck aren't up to code and need a new foundation, so it slopes. However this space is soon to be our master closet and more of a part of the kitchen. Though I do think that everybody needs a breakfast nook too small for a table and a bar-counter in the same room???

dirty hand-rail-less stairs to a walk out basement with 10'ceilings!!

2nd bathroom, oh so clean!

and lovely super square tile work!!

downstairs bedroom aka the old grow room, thanks for the black mold!

hand made vent for their plants

basement great room, this will be my studio and our hang out spot...some fine day far from now, when we get to hang out again!

another shot, all the yellow will soon be gone as it is moldy drywall with NO insulation

This is what Rhiannon and I found when we came back from the store, he can really keep him self entertained, note the cute sun hat and beer in hand! Today is his 30th birthday!! Happy birthday sweets!!

the yard was overgrown with weeds, we made Rhiannon help us on her vacation, some of the weeds were so strong it took both of us to get them out!!

side yard, in the far distance that is a sauna!! that's right a dirty, rocky, homemade sauna, the first time I discovered it 2 cats came running out! just a place to relax and rest your naked butt! Soon to be my gardening shed. So there it is, more to follow! wish us luck