What happens when Hilary wants to start a "quick and easy paint project!"

Our bathroom is ugly. The wainscoting is uneven and has screw holes, there are gaps between the floor trim, and there are even parts of the wall where the trim fell off and there is nothing but old paint and drywall. And that is only the start of how bad our bathroom is. We won't even talk about how everything is cramped on one wall, how the bathtub is too small, how the surround is discolored and how the marble doesn't match anything.

Without dropping five grand, we decided to spruce up the bathroom. Well, I decided to spruce up the bathroom, Nick went along with it. We figured a little spackle, paint and elbow grease could go a long way. The bathroom begged to differ.

First, the wainscoting that was crooked and uneven and cut incorrectly came off. The original plan was to take it off and just paint the wall. We then discovered that below the wainscoting was nothing but crumbling plaster. So now the wainscoting, however badly cut, will stay up. Bathroom: 1, Bundt: 0

Second, we decided that paint was still an option. So we removed the big mirror (half of the screws were stripped, FYI) so that if we were to ever get a new mirror we wouldn't have to repaint again or match samples. We wanted to do it RIGHT.

And this is what we found. A hole where the medicine cabin used to be... so much for an "quick, easy, weekend project-" eh? Bathroom: 2, Bundt: 0

SOOOOOO... now Nick has to patch the wall with drywall. AND THEN we can paint.

That's what we get for looking for a cheap and easy project. I guess it is still cheap, but who knows what else we might find. I am afraid to look.

Winifred Manor: 2 years later!

We sure did slow down on showing pictures on the progress of our home! The guest room was finished in December 2009, yet we never posted any pictures of the final product.

Here is a picture update of our house after celebrating our second year!

The guest room (also known as Hilary's Craft Room) is completely finished now and looks great- well, it looks great when we take the time to clean out the junk that always seems to accumulate. We are going to add a ton of shelves to hold all of my crafting supplies!

We also rearranged the living room and got some new furniture, and added an electric fireplace to the dining room. Our bedroom has a nice little reading nook and my office is so much more useable! Our home feels even cozier now! It definitely is a home!

Happy Houseaversary!

It is our second year Houseaversary today! We inadvertently celebrated it with a new faucet in our bathroom... sadly it wasn't because we wanted a new faucet but instead because our sink in the bathroom decided that it wanted to leak everywhere for no particular reason. Next weekend we are going to repair the rest of the bathroom, put on a fresh coat of paint and finally make it look nice! And it only took us two years!

We will post pictures soon! I can't wait for the project to be finished!

Helping our street

Saturday morning, Hilary and I gathered with many of our neighbors to show support for a proposed project to revitalize the street corner of Ohio and Winifred. This hellish turn is plagued with blind spots, crazy intersection angles, and speeding drivers. It's an accident waiting to happen.

We waited for city officials to drive by in a bus, so we held signs that said "Please fix our street" and "Road of terror." Unfortunately, someone either thought we were demonstrating AGAINST something, or that we were a legitimate safety concern, because after twenty minutes of waiting with our signs, a police officer pulled up, got out of his vehicle, and starting talking to us.

Although polite and understanding, the officer explained that someone had called the non-emergency number on us and he came by to see what was the commotion. He stated he was concerned that the gawker effect (someone look at something out-of-the-ordinary) would cause an accident.

Eventually, he left, leaving us all with a sense of civic disobedience. We did not disband, and eventually the big moment arrived. The city officials (twenty or so minutes late) slowly drove by our intersection and continued down Ohio. A very anti-climatic finish to a Saturday morning.