The Office

As all three of my readers know, Matt works from home, so setting up his office was one of the first things we did upon moving in. As far as rooms in our house went, this one wasn't too bad. There wasn't any wallpaper (one of two rooms out of 10 to achieve this status) and the trim was actually white (score) so he figured he could live with the stenciled sunflower border for awhile. Which he did.

Finally in January when the New Year's Eve hangover wore off and the memories of the horror that was the bathroom renovation had faded, we decided to take on the office.

It actually wasn't too bad in retrospect. The main goals were removing the sunflowers from sight, painting the walls a slightly different yellow and removing the previous owner's paint spatters from the hardwood floors.









To remove the traces of former paint jobs gone wrong, we purchased Goof Off. I gotta tell you, this stuff is GOOD. It is also strangely addictive. Over the past five months I've spent no fewer than two days using this stuff on every inch of or floors. It works and it is cheap and you might even get a bit of a contact high from it. I'm just sayin...

Here is the room during said painting/removing weekend:


And here are the after photos...

We were going for a modern, hippy vibe that I think we accomplished.

For more pictures, check out the slideshow:

We're going to renovate the bathroom this weekend...

...and the next weekend, and the next weekend, and the next. Why? Because it is hideous. How did it take that long? Um, everything was yellow. And ugly. And trapped in some tacky baroque decade that I'm not familiar with. Here's how the project shook out.

We took down the wallpaper, used an epoxy paint to change the yellow tile to white, painted the walls blue the trim white and changed out vanity, faucet and light fixture. While it took forever, we are thrilled with how it turned out!





















Just to remind you how hideous the room was, here are the before pictures again.

A Photo Essay Entitled "Before"

Here's a slideshow of the whole thing if you're interested:



Thanks for checking out our new pad. Come back to see how long it takes us to bring the house into the 21st century.

Go Wawh-wik!









Note: All photos taken by our amazing friend and photographer, Elizabeth Squillacote. When she gets her kick-ass photography website up and running, we'll add a link. Oh and she used a fish-eye lens for all of these pictures, so every thing looks bigger than in real life. Including us.

What do you get when you cross an overflowing POD with 5 amazing friends?

You get an almost pain-free move. We are so grateful to all of you for your energy and willingness to help. Here's a picture of the team post-move.

Walk-through & close - DONE!

We did the walk through before our close this morning. While we still LOVE the house (good thing), there is a lot more work to do than we remembered. Um, when did the downstairs bathroom get so damn' ugly? Can't wait to get in there and start tearing down the wallpaper and ugly light fixtures...

The close was uneventful and anti-climatic since we're renting back until 10/12. FUN!

Holy S@#$!

I just found out that we're moving earlier than anticipated! This being the first good (house-related) news in awhile, I'm flabbergasted. I gotta go call the POD people! :-) Have a great weekend!

One whole year!

Today is our one-year anniversary. I cannot believe how quickly the time went or how much has happened. We both have new jobs, live in a new state, are almost homeowners, Matt has a new car and we live in my parents' basement. Life is good. Here are some pictures from the best day in the life of Team T-J.

A special thanks to the ladies of honor who keep me as sane as possible. You girls rock!