Still Working Over Here

These last few months have been busy to say the least. A wedding to plan. A house to reinvent. City and regional payoffs to compete in. Career decisions to be made. Birthdays and holidays to celebrate. Life has been a whirlwind, and we've been swept up in it and swept away from the steady progress of the beginning of this blog.

Here's a snapshot of the accomplishments we've made so far on the bathroom reno and our little garden. With only two months left until W-Day, we are feeling the pressure to wrap up the rest of the house! Stay tuned.


The Bathroom.
When we last left off, we were in the process of updating the electric and changing around the plumbing. With those two pieces done, dad and I concrete-boarded the floor, fitted a curb to hold the future door, and set up the initial slope to keep water from pooling (and prevent the type of rot we had to demo originally). To dad's happy surprise, J was a pro at laying the concrete - this will forever-after be his calling on all home projects, I'm afraid :) and the boys fitted in the shower spouts and began dry-walling the non-shower walls. It's beginning to look a lot like a bathroom again!

[The start of a floor.]

[Sloping and plumbing.]

[What a natural.] 

[The other side of the bathroom, patiently awaiting fixtures.]

The Garden.
I'll admit that I was a bit over-enthused when planting the garden. Our little plants turned into massive, monster-plants almost overnight! Particularly the tomatoes - they overwhelmed their little pepper box-mates as well as the tiny cages that contained them. We were forced to do some reshuffling in order to get everyone the sun and space they needed, so... we dug them up and replanted. And reaped some spoils for our efforts!

[Tom-ies out of control.] 

[Moved a few of the peppers into the herb bed. Look at how big the basil is getting!]

[Additional space for the other ousted peppers.] 

[The spiciest jalapenos you ever did eat.]

[Rebar replaced the too-small cages and I used my grandma's trick of panty-hose to add support.]

[Happily-contained tomatoes.] 

[Success! Our first veggies of the season.]

Hoping for Green Thumbs

Last weekend we finally got some plants in the ground between all of these April showers. Lots of rain, lots of mud, and not a lot of sun so far. I hope they aren't drowning in their new beds already. We need them to survive long enough to show off in August!

 [Grower's Outlet is amazing. I went back to the check-out twice because I kept finding new plants.]

 [Our little (h)erb box. So looking forward to no longer wasting grocery store bushels.]

[These bad boys were the only plants that came with actual markers.]

[For the rest, I had to take a photo of each plant next to its pot so that I could remember which is which. Upcoming project - plant markers across the board.] 

[The beginnings of a banana pepper. I predict that this little guy will be solely responsible for homemade pizza explorations.] 

So far, our garden consists of: 3 Tomato varieties - Better Boy, Celebrity & Whopper (hehe); 5 Pepper types - Bell, Jalapeno, Banana, Poblano & California Wonder; and lots of Herbs - Mint, Rosemary, Chives, Parsley, Basil, Sage, Oregano, & Cilantro.

There's still some room in the herb bed, so we'd like to add cucumbers or peas or some other type of veg soon - might be best to make a list or something to keep myself on track at the outlet. And I overlooked Thyme - a very important part of Gordon Ramsey's Steak-101 - so that needs to get in there asap. But, it's a start. Glad to finally have J's hard work being put to good use.

Sheetrock Peeps

The biggest current project we have going on is a bathroom re-do. Edith has two guest rooms and a jack-&-jill between them. I wish I had the true before pictures - I think my mama does somewhere - but the current state is, well, a state. I never knew such a tiny space could have so many different pieces to tear apart and then put back together! It's a process... Dad's teaching us. He has a lot of patience, haha.

First, we ripped out the bathroom - dad has a gnarly knee scar to prove the toilet demolition occurred. Then we took down the wall between one of the bedroom closets and the bathroom so that we could extend the future shower. We pulled out the floor boards, which were almost rotted through, replaced them, and then rebuilt the closet/shower wall. We've begun sheetrock-ing the walls and dad and Jonny have become very well acquainted with the crawlspace while rerouting the plumbing. The plumbing is still a work in progress and the electric is the next step. Thank goodness for the boys teaming up on everything under the house so that I can stay above ground :)

[The new closet.]

 [Preparing the shower walls for concrete board.]

 [Pre-crawlspace]

We didn't do a good job of documenting Easter this year but Jonny and I joined my parents and family friends at my Aunt&Uncle's house with my cousins. We always have the best food at holiday get togethers - mmm, potato casserole. And my sweet mom put together Easter baskets for J and me. I wish Walgreens carried coconut nests year-round.

Beige Boxes

Renovating a place together is exciting and creative and it's really rewarding to see weekends of work turning into something. On the other hand, when you have so many spaces to reno at one time, it can also feel like you aren't accomplishing anything completely. HGTV has ruined my renovation-timeline expectations... but hopefully these pictures will remind us of our progress instead of how much we still have left to do before August!

A few weekends back, we each tackled a personal project. I wanted to begin eliminating beige from our lives and J wanted to tackle the back garden to prep it for planting before we run out of Spring.

Here is a view into our current dining room. You can see the pretty grey edging taking place over the browny-yellow. I will show a true before and after once it's complete but that's a few weeks down the line, at least.

[I always forget how many steps there are to painting... until I begin a new project.]

J built some amazing garden boxes. He watched a video online and made two from scratch - they're impressive! It will be great to be able to have our own herbs and produce right off the back porch this summer. We're considering adding another two later, depending on how these first ones get on. Hopefully, we will be able to pick up some plants later this week. What to choose, what to choose....

[The current state of one of our guest rooms...] 

Beginning With Edith

J and I met in August 2012. It was a chance meeting while I was fulfilling a summer internship abroad and he was visiting an annual memorial for a fellow Marine in northern England. Neither of us expected it to turn into anything, yet, here we are, March 2015, and I can't imagine a life without him. Over the past 2 1/2+ years we've coped with over 4,500 miles between us, three different country codes, and the entanglements of international visa processes. But finally, J and I have all of the appropriate approvals from the same country, where we can begin laying the foundation for a shared life. And it all begins with Edith.

Edith is not a person. She's a place -- a piece of the first address that has ever had both of our names attached to it. A foreclosure my parents purchased during the 2008 housing crash that J and I are lucky enough to be semi-gifted with as we adjust to one life of two. Her 1970's bones need a face lift, so, while we stay here, we will be taking on the renovations so that my parents can rent her out once we get our feet under us and rent/purchase a place of our own.

But for now, she is ours. And we want our work to reflect that.

That is the purpose of this blog. To document how our life transitions from calculating between five different time zones to figuring out what it means to be under one little roof. It's an adventure, and we want to be able to share it with those we love who may still be all those miles away.

[ Our little yellow home sweet home. ]