86'n It

Taking Orders

Waitress, Head Chef & Sous Chef

Marc is meeting with someone today about regrading part of our backyard closest to the house. This will help us with all the water from the backyard being directed to our foundation, and make a nice little spot for a patio. Here is the overall plan: (click to see it bigger)

And here is a detail of the patio/firepit area:

I'm headed there Friday!
Now, I know that not everyone is a fan, but come on, how can you not love these?:

Tea Set

Play Kitchen

European Breakfast Foods

Children's Chairs (Kritter)

p.s. Trick I learned from Parents Magazine. If your kid is throwing a fit, take a photo of them and show it to them. It instantly stops them crying. It totally works. Franca laughs at her ugly cry every time.

After the great "does your chair rock?" debacle followed by the add-on rocking/swivel base revelation, I was really ready to have a successful rocking chair conversion!

First task was fixing the broken no-sag spring. This would have been easy if I was reupholstering the chair, but I'm not, so I had to sort of rig it up. (Because I can't thru the fabric to the top of the frame to screw in the new clip.) I also couldn't get my hands on a hook-link, but I was able to get a free edge clip from the really nice guy at Stephen's Interiors. (BTW, this place has some really great fabrics. I grabbed my clip and ran out so I wouldn't come home with bolts upon bolts of fabric!)

I ended up buying the rocking/swivel base off of this ebay seller out of Oregon, which is sort of ridiculous considering that it is made just over an hour from here in Hickory, NC.

I've been feeling super anxious and unproductive lately, so last night at 8:30pm, I decided that I was going to tackle this project. Luckily, we had a piece of leftover 3/4" plywood already in the basement from Marc's kitchen cabinet projects. Here's a step-by-step of what I did:



Footnote: The title is something that probably only Marc and my sister Missy will think is funny. The toy on the right in the above photo says loudly "Now You're Rockin'!" Followed by: "That was SO cool!" I like to think that the toy's comments are now directed at the new rockin' chair.

I've been in serious purge-mode lately. I think that is what having a house increasingly saturated with kid stuff will do to you.

My purging included getting rid of old gross pillows, the 10 extra sets of sheets, ratty old towels and my extensive fabric scrap collection (sniff, sniff). This freed up so much space in the guest bedroom dressers and the hallway armoire that we decided to sell the armoire. A friend of mine had expressed interest in it a year ago, so I felt good that it was going to a good home.

Fare the well Armoire!

Unfortunately for the purging, that same weekend Franca's daycare had a sale. We scored several things, including these three school chairs that Marc just had to have ($3 each!). So we decided to replace the armoire with them, move up the rug from the living room, and relocate my Grandmother's awesome handmade hooked-yard farm wall hanging. (Please ignore the spot on the wall from the old smoke detector.)


The chairs are pretty practical in this spot. I'm always looking for a place to sit and put my shoes on and I need surface to put things outside Franca's room, because I'm always cleaning and making a pile of her stuff while she is sleeping and I don't want to go in and disturb her. (Weird, but my cleaning method relies heavily on piles. I actually had to move a pile to take this photo!)

And while this is all so *terribly* exciting, it really was a terrific weekend here. We had a great, fun, and amazing friend visiting. She also just happens to be a super easy, enjoyable house guest. (Miss you already, Carrie!)

We had a crazy dancing night Friday and then decided it would be a good idea to run a 10k the next day when we were probably still sweating vodka and whiskey (Carrie- vodka. Me - whiskey). You know what? We rocked it. Done in 56 minutes and we talked the whole run.

Sunday ended up being pretty lazy, Marc mowed the lawn with the new lawnmower.  (It was like Christmas for him, I just know it!) We walked around town and played with someone who just has to be the most amazing/ cute/ ridiculous/ adorable daughter ever.

Need proof? Just give me your next 10 seconds:




Told you.
.
.
.
.

Seriously. Why does EVERY. SINGLE. THING. have to be so complicated?

We want gutters. We did what every other normal homeowner would do: we called a gutter guy. Well, first we asked around for recommendations. Said gutter guy came out, measured, and then called us back with a quote:
 $2.5k.
I fell off my chair.

So we called another gutter guy. Said second gutter guy came out, measured and then called us back with a quote:
$2.3k material only.
I fell back off my chair.

Turns out our local supplier has decided to jack up the prices for half-round gutters. I know, I know, we could go with the normal k-style gutters for a lot less, but honestly, the half rounds looks so so so much nicer on a house like ours. So I am well-aware that we brought some of this complication on ourselves. But over $2k for gutters *just* on our lower roofs?? Ridiculous.

We started looking around. We priced it online. Less than half the price including freight. Now I'm all about buy-local, but at over 2x's the price? Forget it. There is a difference between lending support and getting ripped off.

We really didn't want to DIY the gutters. Even if  This Old House says we could. (They do say it is moderate to hard.) Luckily, the second gutter guy is really nice and is willing to install them for us if we get all the materials.

Looks like it might work out, which of course in the land of 86'n It means a whole new round of "issues" are just around the corner.....

Wish us luck.