The House on the Hill

Do you ever have those moments where you have such a brilliant idea but you don’t take into account certain things that need to happen in order for it to work? If you’ve been reading here a while, you already know that’s my life story but if you’re new then let me catch you up: Hello, my name is Jess and I don’t always think things all the way through. Luckily, this time it all worked out without too much difficulty.

Let me back up – do you remember when I revealed the craft room and showed off this view?

First, I want you to know that this wall isn’t finished but I’m trying to figure out what exactly I want to go here and if I want it all to be functional or if I want to throw in some random crap like art or photos. I don’t know. Anyway, the white board looked a little dinky and unfinished (and apparently a bit crooked now that I’m looking at this picture) so we decided to frame it out; hence my totally clever post title.

Kyle cut and mitered the corners of some 1×4 lumber and then glued the corners together. We only have one right angle clamp so he did it one corner at a time – glue, clamp, let dry, repeat. I don’t know where I was while he was doing all of this…probably painting or spackling something. That is my life these days. When all four corners were done drying, I put a coat of stain to darken it up. I’m pretty sure I skipped the wood conditioner this time because we were running low and I didn’t mind if there were more color variations in the wood.

So far so good right? Except this was the part where we went to hang the frame on the already hung dry erase board and had a big “duh” moment because it wasn’t seamless. From the front it looked fine, but from the sides you could see the edges of the board because the frame was sitting on top of it. We hadn’t actually hung the frame so it was an easy enough fix, just needed to break out our handy dandy router.

First, we took the board off the wall and then laid it on the frame so we could mark out where we needed to route. We were basically shaving away the wood where the board needed to go so that it was inset and the whole thing could hang flush against the wall – hope that makes sense. Once our marks were made, we ended up having to cut down the white board by about an inch or so because the width of the board and frame were pretty much the same and we needed the board to be slightly smaller – Kyle handled this with the circular saw. I took the first pass with the router and I think it went pretty well for my first time but I didn’t remove enough of the frame in some spots so Kyle went back and finished it up. Expect to be covered in sawdust after using a router.

After that, we just glued the board into the frame, clamped everything to make sure it would hold together, and let it sit overnight to cure

TA-DA! No more dinky dry erase board and I have a fancy schmancy new place to make lists. We nailed it into the studs using our nail gun and then Kyle went back and hammered in some finishing nails for a little added security.

Yay, a finished project!

In other House on the Hill news, my lazy butt is finally almost done with the guest bathroom (how many times have I said that now?). If my legs work enough to use a step ladder tonight after my run, I’ll be able to caulk the newly installed trim and then I’ll just need to do a couple of coats of paint (I’ve already spackled and sanded the nail holes). Also on deck to show you is a painted wall that is neither gray nor navy (WHO AM I?) and I owe you an update on all of our outdoor stuff because there have been a few changes to our plans.

Progress is still slow going around the house so I thought I’d share a little about what we did over the weekend. I hate not posting for several weeks at a time so I’m trying to get into the habit of posting more even if it’s not always about DIY or house stuff. Hope you guys don’t mind but if you do you can always let me know in the comments!

Friday and Saturday weren’t anything special although we did go out to Groucho’s for dinner on Friday night which was delicious as always. Kyle wasn’t around on Saturday – I tried to get some yard work done but it was pretty miserable outside so I ended up cleaning the house and working on some of the trim in the half bathroom that was kind of messed up.

On Sunday, we went to the BMW Charity Pro-Am at a local golf course. We were there pretty much all day and even though it was hot out, it was so much fun! Kyle’s company had a Sky Box on the 18th hole so we mostly sat around there and socialized with everyone.

I’m not much of a golf person but there were still some celebrities in the tournament so it was fun to see them come through. I don’t know if any of you watch NCIS: New Orleans but it’s one of my favorite shows so I was really excited that Lucas Black was still in the tournament. I was even able to grab a picture with him and snag an autograph.

As a fellow ‘Bama fan, of course I had to have him write “Roll Tide” on my badge.

We were exhausted when we got home last night so we mostly just lounged around and let the dogs go crazy. I’m hoping we can forge ahead with some yard work tonight to prep for Phase One of our fence but we’ll see. It’s already really hot in our area but if we want to be able to get the fence installed and stained before Summer, we have to get a move on or else it’ll have to wait until Fall.

We also got the trim for the guest bathroom so I’m hoping to have that (FINALLY) finished up soon so that I can share along with a couple of other small projects/updates.

Life has been crazy lately and I thought I would just pop in. I owe you guys a bathroom reveal but we ran out of trim and haven’t ordered more yet – in fact, I’m going to do that right now while I’m thinking about it.

Anyway, we haven’t had much time for getting things done and our outdoor work has stalled because Mother Nature decided to throw an extended tantrum. As much fun as pulling up ivy in the rain sounds, we chose to stay inside instead. Last weekend was the first weekend in a month that we weren’t hosting people so we took advantage of that by doing minimal work and just relaxing. I did manage to clean the closet and paint one wall but other than that, not much went on.

It’s supposed to rain again this weekend so if we can’t work outside, I’m hoping we can try to wrap up a few projects inside. OH! We did finally buy a toilet paper holder and a towel ring for the half bath; it’s almost like real adults live here now!

Do any of you have anything exciting going on? Or are you working on any projects? Maybe your progress will give me motivation to get something done! I’m stuck in this rut where I don’t want to work on anything because I’d really rather just rip out the kitchen but if I do that we’ll end up having to live without a kitchen for two years until we can put it back together. I know it’ll all happen in time but I’m feeling particularly impatient these days.

So, I already mentioned in this post that I don’t expect much work to be done inside the house this year. I wanted to explain why we have to do certain things outside before we turn out attention back to the inside. You see, it all started with our kitchen reno plans. I’m sure you’ve heard of one project snowballing into another but this is like one of those epic cartoon snowballs that picks up houses and cars and everything else in its path. The biggest issue is this: Yeah it’s all bad, but I’m talking specifically about this. This set of doors out to the deck needs to move. The flow of our kitchen does not work right now and it makes me a little ragey. The peninsula ends right where the fridge lives which means whenever the fridge doors are open, nobody can pass which is a huge issue for someone as impatient as me. Yes, I could go back around through the study and end up in the other part of the kitchen but I shouldn’t have to do that! What we want to do is basically swing the peninsula around so that it’s along the back wall but those doors are in the way. No big deal, just move the doors down the wall to the dining room. But if we want to move the doors, we have to extend the deck… If we move the doors down to the dining room now, there would be no deck to catch your fall. If we want to move the doors, we have to extend the deck. Not only that, but our deck is in ROUGH shape. I’m talking day after your 21st birthday type of rough. The posts are undersized and sitting on top of concrete pavers and a piece of rotten wood, the joists are undersized, the wood itself is in awful shape, and the whole thing just needs to be torn down. So now, not only are we expanding the deck but we’re tearing it down completely and having it rebuilt much larger (this is one project that we feel is a bit out of our abilities so we will be hiring it out). But if we want to extend the deck, we have to have the floating deck in place. Originally, we were going to put in a paver patio in this area behind the garage. Since then, we’ve decided that we’d rather deck this whole area and maybe eventually put in a pergola. We could probably do this after the new deck is in place but it’s going to look more intentional if the lower deck is already in place. But if we want the floating deck in place, we have to build a new fence. Right now the (very cheap, very temporary) fence ends right at the corner of the house so it’s actually in the way of both future decks. On top of that, the size of the floating deck is going to depend on where exactly we decide to fence the yard. So, before we do the floating deck we have to at least put in one side of the new fence. Jury is still out on whether we’ll just go ahead and do the entire fence but right now it looks like we’ll be doing it three phases. The first phase is the only one we actually need to move forward on the other projects. After that we’ll just have to see how the timing and budget shake out. So anyway, Phase One of the fence is a definite must before we can do the floating deck. But if we want to build the fence, we have to finish the new walkway. Isn’t this fun? To be totally honest, we probably don’t need to do the walkway before the fence but it’ll definitely make building the fence in this area slightly easier. It’s mostly just a project completion thing though. We bought these pavers two years ago (when we first decided we wanted a patio) and they’ve just been sitting against the house. The weather has been nice so we decided to finally get them in the ground. I want to finish this before moving on to anything else because we have way too many unfinished projects and I don’t want another one hanging around. SO. Yeah. That’s pretty much it. As far as timeline goes, we should finish the walkway soon but there will be a few months before we can start on the fence. In that time, I’m hoping that we can finish up the closet and the few other small projects that we already started inside.

No, this isn’t a post about the sink in our kitchen. What it is a post about, is all of the random stuff that I’d like to share that I don’t really want to do individual posts for. Sure, I could probably stretch each topic into a post of its own but I’d rather just dump it all into one because nobody wants to read 500 words about a garden box. So grab your twinkies and Moscato and let’s get to it.

Things happening around the house on the hill:

We (Kyle) built a planter box. It hasn’t been filled yet. Patience, grasshopper.

We (mostly me) pulled up all of the improperly laid brick pavers that ran from the front of the house to the back. New paver walkway to come soon.

I made funfetti pancakes but used the wrong sprinkles so they were mostly purple pancakes with white sprinkles. Julia Child, I am not.

We pulled up the scraggly bushes between our yard and our neighbor. Major work still needs to be done.

Our animals are adorable.Duh.

And finally, we started planning out our permanent fence. Hoping to start this project this summer.

Speaking of the fence, we probably aren’t going to have a ton of projects going on inside the house this year. You already know we’re doing a small makeover on the guest bathroom and we’re also working on our closet but other than that I don’t anticipate much progress. We’re focusing on a few big outdoor projects right now because the weather is nice and there are things that need to be done outside before we can do certain things inside.

I know that probably doesn’t make much sense right now but I promise to explain soon!