4.29.09 - As Seen from the Car Window

Taken on 4.27.09.

1.20 - Inauguration Day

Taken on our front lawn on 1/20/09. We watched the Inauguration at School.

3.30 - Windy Road on Driveway (actual day's edition)

I posted a photo from two years ago because I forgot that I had taken pictures on 3.30.08 :-)

My husband used sidewalk chalk to drive this fun and windy road on the driveway this afternoon:
It was too windy to ride a bike, actually:
Bonus picture, hopscotch, we call it amarelinha [little yellow] in Brazil -- don't ask me why, it's just the game's name:

3.18 - It's Gonna Rain Tomorrow

So the roof needs fixin'!

3.17 - Ready for Spring

3.12 - Sunset through Water Drops

Water drops on window courtesy of Kelvin and his spray bottle.

3.7 - New Bed (Made) + Chair + Rug + Lamp

3.6 - New Bed!

From here, obviously.

3.5 - Fallen

2.28 - Closet in Bathroom

Well, I guess you can tell I really like this color because of the shower curtain. :-)

It was tough not to have a bathroom, neither a usable closet, for a few days. (we had to remove carpet from inside the closet too, and paint the baseboard)

2.27 - Carpet Accidents: Scary Reminder and Spill

A few months ago Linton accidentally turned on our travel iron and left it on the carpet. Thankfully I found out right after he did it. I was quite shaken by the scary possibility of a fire!Dad accidentally spilled a good amount of paint on the carpet -- good thing we had two gallons!

2.22 - Snow Day Highlights

2.18 - From My Home Office Window

I was working all day long today, as I'll be for the next twenty days, at least, and this is the view that I have from my chair at the computer. I'm so glad it's right by the window! The pretty view makes it so much easier to work.

2.17 - The Boys' Bedroom - After

Enough "before" photos already.

(taken on 2/13)

2.12 - Come Be My Guest!

The curtains are the only window treatments I kept from the previous owners. This used to be our bed and our former quilt (we have a "brighter" one now ;). And we'll be sleeping on mattresses on the floor until be buy our new bed.

Before (this room was bare, we only put mattresses on the floor for eventual guests):
Later (in the "previous" days) I'll post more renovation photos.

2.10 - Guest Bedroom Renovation In Progress

Edited to add missing photos and a P.S.

Note: These photos were taken over the course of several days, from 2/4 to 12.

General View/Floors

Before:During: Even though the pink goes well with the purple carpet, we knew that the really old carpet had beautiful hardwood floors underneath just waiting to be uncovered and cleaned up.

Detail of slightly damaged floor in the corner of the room (it'll need some work in the future, but we don't know how to deal with it):
After:

I've already posted a similar picture, but I just couldn't publish this post without the "after" picture :)

Painting the Closet

Before:This color would go well with the boy's bedroom, but not this one. Besides, you probably can't see it, even if you click on it, but the closet is full of scuff marks and in need of painting.

During:
I don't think that pink and blue were going that well together... :)

After:This was actually supposed to be the color of this bedroom, but we decided against it because the boy's bedroom is blue and ours will be aqua green, so we needed a warmer color for the guest bedroom. There was no pink paint left for the closet, though, and we decided to use the "greenish" paint we had since it matches the curtains perfectly as you can see in the above picture of the finished room.

Edited to add
P.S. I forgot to say that the closet couldn't be painted pink because the pink paint (which I bought for 5 bucks at the "reject" pile at Hom3 Depot) was not the brand that we usually buy and it was really a bad, thin paint. A whole gallon was almost not enough to cover the walls of this tiny bedroom while we usually have a lot paint left after painting bigger rooms with our preferred paint. So... we had to use the grayish green (also 5 bucks, but the "better" brand -- we cannot afford the fancier "chain paint store" paints yet).

2.8 - "House," My Son's Artwork

Materials: masking "painter" tape, paper, cut and scribbled. Photo taken prior to the dismantling of the exhibit.

Note: the name you can see if you click is the artist's favorite contestant on this show, his latest obsession.

2.5 - Palimpsest of Paint Colors I

One of the things that an older house (ours is 43 years old) has to offer -- apart from the potential existence of toxic/hazardous materials such as lead and asbestos -- is a glimpse into its past, the way it used to look like (a poorly kept "fixer-upper" like ours more so than others ;).

Ever since we started painting last September I've been having fun finding out the original colors of some of the rooms and since that's what I photographed tonight, I'll share some of those "color palimpsests" with you (this is the first in a series, I guess).

I thought that the guest room we're painting tonight had only been an ugly purple and later (badly) painted beige, but no. It seems that the original color was blue, then there was pink, which was covered in purple (baby girl transitioning to teenager?), and, finally, beige. See if you can spot the layers here (click to enlarge):Here you can see more of them. The pink is kind of hidden above the big purple patch under the baseboard heat and there seems to be another, lighter, blue over the pink, the darker blue can be seen behind the pipe in the bottom left of the photo:
And here are the blue and pink trying to hide:

2.3 - Piles of Leaves

The weather was so nice that the boys spent the best part of the day playing outside in the yard. Riding their bikes, pulling their trucks (look at the second photo) around the house, playing with whatever sand is left on the sand table. I didn't take any pictures of that, but, by the end of the day I decided to work on the remaining piles of leaves so that the grass underneath wouldn't be completely dead when Spring came. And I did take pictures of that... my apologies if they're so lame. (Taken on 2/3 , but posted on 2/5)

2.1 - The Scarlet Carpet or "Joseph's Carpet"

All right, Tracy asked about the carpet in the Jane Austen books post and I have to comply, obviously...

Tracy, and whoever else is curious, this hideous carpet is all over the "first" or ground floor of our multi-level house (basement, ground floor/garage, kitchen/living/dining room floor, 3rd level with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms). So it's in the hallway, in the back kitchen stairs, the family room, and the 4th bedroom that's currently our home office. My MIL called it "Joseph's carpet" because it's striped and colorful (like Joseph's coat in the Bible). She also named a "tower light" that we have in the hallway, "Babel Tower" (it's featured in the first photo below).

So here you can see it from various angles (photos taken when we did the home inspection back on August 28, 07):Doesn't the carpet "complement" real well the ugly pink wall and wall paper? YUCKY YUCK!!

These are the stairs leading to the kitchen, by the back door. I HATE that border in the dining room! Someone's peeking in! (note the horrible torn carpet in the bottom of the photo)
This is how the fourth bedroom was before we moved in (I'll have before and after photos of the office in the other blog sometime):
The family room, its wood paneled walls and carpet (furniture from previous owners):
Now... this carpet does complement well the wood paneling. However, the paneling makes the room too dark and we also would like to remove it if possible...

The worst part about this carpet? The floor is all concrete in this level, BUT it has synthetic tiles underneath the carpet and we suspect they're asbestos-laced tiles (as well as the tiles in the upstairs bathrooms). NASTY stuff, extremely hazardous to remove! So we don't even know what to do since we cannot just remove the carpet and put other flooring, we have to deal with the stuff underneath. My dream was to put light colored laminate flooring, but I guess we'll have to put another carpet on top of this one and ceramic tiles by the front (and back?) door. It'll be cheaper, less time consuming and more practical. :( If I knew we were going to keep the house we'd go ahead and try to get the laminate, but we don't know. Is it going to be weird to have carpets in the 1st and second levels and hardwood floors in the bedrooms? (Tracy, all upstairs bedrooms have those great floors underneath).