A big step!!! CURTAINS!!!!

To me curtains are huge! It looks like a home when there are curtains. I think we might still be in a grey area getting closer to 'home' since you can find hammers, nails, drills, molly bolts, wrenches, etc in many rooms of the house...but needless to say we are getting closer!! No longer can you find a ladder, or 3, INSIDE the house. They have all found their home in the garage! (Getting them out of the house was a huge step!) So often when people come over (That's right, now we feel comfortable having people over sometimes...woo hoo!! No parties YET but it is nice to have visitors and not be humiliated by ladders and construction mess!) they ask if we are tired of construction. I don't know how to explain it but to put it simply....no. It is so much fun and rewarding. I am my parents! They were ALWAYS working on the house. As soon as it seemed that everything was done and lovely, they would be ripping something else out, stripping off paint, sanding, sawing, sewing, stuffing, and mounting all over again. (Now that their house is done they are over at my house and Aimee's helping out! Thank goodness!! BUT they are gluttons for punishment!) I love where we are at now. We still have some major projects, but some rooms are ready to be decorated! For me that means sewing!! The past two weeks my job has been sewing curtains and pillows for the den. (With help on the curtains from mom!)

Sewing...Sewing...Sewing...


Mom is going to kill me for putting a picture of her on here :) She was amazing!!! She really did the hard part! IRONING! (Seriously! If it is ironed wrong it will look crazy!)


After sewing the 15ft curtains they had to be reversed to put the right sides out. Easier said than done! Thanks mommy!!!


I don't have a pic of it on my camera...but I painted that on the curtains. They were ivory silk. Then I painted the damask print going down the center of them. That is 60 yards of material painted!


Ty put the rod up and I put up the curtains.



The finished product (Well almost. I need to get ivory tassels and pull them up a bit. I will post a pic of that as soon as I do it.) Also there is our chandelier. I don't think it made it on the blog. Ty taking down the horrible gold fan was posted, but the chandelier never was. Well there it is!!!


PILLOWS! I sewed the pillows on my own. I had a 3 minute edging tutorial with mom as she left after working on curtains for 10 hours. Left to my own devices...I think I did pretty good. (The white pillows I painted when I painted the curtains. There is a close up of one of them.) I made all of the pillows except the 3 with large circles on them. Those came with the couch. Mocha had to hop in one picture of course. She always comes around when a camera is out. She is a natural model! :)




Our coffee table is an antique trunk that mom and dad had. I cleaned it and stained it to match the wood floors and Voila! Coffee Table! (We are going to get a glass top for it later this summer.)

Close up as requested.

If you want it done right do it yourself. Right?
Well Tyler and I have watched enough DIY "Renovation Realities" and HGTV "Holmes on Homes" to know that isn't the case. We have no desire to give major reconstruction a go at the expense of our enjoyment of this house...or each other. (I swear they should have a marriage counselor meet with the couples after Renovation Realities.)
However when it comes to what we like, decor, art and crafts we will happily give it a go. Below is a close up of the clock wall as requested. (Those are not decals. I painted the words on.) I think there were some other close ups requested...but I can not remember of what. Email me and I will get the pictures up! tara.yell@gmail.com if you want a better picture of something or a how to of how I made it/did it.

updates

Ok...I know I don't have to confess this to you....you already know, but Hi my name is Tara, and I am TERRIBLE at blogging!! Well the good news is all of the time I have NOT been blogging I have been working on the house. I will let my words be few and SHOW you all of the changes. I will start where we left off. I believe that was landscaping and fence. We did both the fence and landscaping in April. Our neighbors own a construction and landscaping company. We used their company for landscaping. (Fun fact: They landscaped for George and Laura Bush's new home in Dallas.) Also note the newly painted door, and while we are looking at the front door, I sewed curtains for the 2 windows by the door, and removed the blinds.
Landscaping Before:

The day before Landscaping started. I purchased the pots and Ty pulled up the bricks that were buried around the garden. Sionara leaning tree!!!!!



Landscaping After:


Fence Before:




Fence After:

We moved the fence up 10 or so feet. Now you can see it from the street.

Door Before:


Door Midway...Almost there! (But it was like this for a few days...including not having a knob. We had the large hole tapped for about 5 days!):



Door After:

A busy Spring Break!

This Spring Break I worked on things that were on my 'to do' list for the house. I loved that I had all week to work on the house!

I hung the first items in the house. I hung 4 clocks and painted different cities under the clocks.



The main project was the formal dining. Unfortunately the guys that laid the wood floors got wood glue on the walls. It was frustrating at first because that room was the only room we weren't going to paint. (It was already red.) It ended up working out so well though. I got a red that Tyler and I like much more. I had to sand down the glue and repaint. Mom took a day off of work, came over and helped me paint. (THANK YOU MOM!!!) Now the walls look wonderful!



After the paint I was finally able to unpack the bar and china cabinet.




I also made wreaths for that room out of old sheet music. Mom found the idea on a design blog.



Tyler and I started buying furniture!!! YAY! We bought a big piece for our formal living. I started unpacking more boxes so we have some stuff in there for now. It will probably change, but it is nice to see it with stuff inside!



Mom and dad got us a shelf that fits in to 'the hole' next to the fire place for my birthday. We love it! As mom always says 'paint does wonders.' So the color might change once the couch comes in and the curtains go up. Just like the one above the stuff inside might change. Also in the picture is a chair that Ty and I bought for the den. It is a big chair!



Andreas and Luis came and hung the chandelier in the back staircase. This chandelier we got from Aunt Debbie and Uncle Larry. There are pictures of it in previous posts, but now it is up!! This was a great idea from Tyler. I love the chandelier above the staircase.



Finally, the stools came in. They will go in the den as well.



It was such a productive Spring Break. I am currently working on our formal dining table and a curtain for the upstairs 'yellow' bathroom. More posts soon to come!!

Let there be floors!!

The carpet down stairs is gone!!! The blog post is about 2 weeks late, but the floors were installed 2 weeks ago. It was a huge mess, dust everywhere and furniture stuffed in every nook that was tile, but we have floors. Thanks to Ines the dust is gone! (The pictures are pre-Ines so the reason they look foggy is because it is so dusty.) Now on to furniture, wood on the stairs and wood upstairs.

Everything was in the kitchen and our bathroom. Unfortunately we didn't pack to spend the night in Joan's room upstairs so we had to work our way through our bathroom to get to the closet and our toothbrushes!





They put the boxes for the wood upstairs on the floors after they laid them to weigh it down .

Best Tool Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For everyone reading this who needs a quick pick me up please follow these directions. Step 1. Find some ceramic tile in your house or someone elses house (if you do this be very sneaky)that you abhor. Step 2. Mosey on down to the tool rental department at Home Depot and Pick up a Demolition Hammer (this step is key to feeling good about yourself). Step 3. Return to the tile (if this isn't at your house, do not tell them I told you to do this!!!) and whisper something to the tile ( I chose, "Fredo, you're nothing to me now. You're not a brother, you're not a friend. I don't want to know you or what you do. I don't want to see you at the hotels, I don't want you near my house. When you see our mother, I want to know a day in advance, so I won't be there. You understand?" Feel free to throw in any Godfather quote of your choice) let the ceramic know that it did something wrong to you personally and will be eternally sorry. Step 4. Throw on some clothes that a homeless person wouldn't dare be seen wearing. Step 5. Pull the trigger on this bad boy and let the demolition begin!!!!



So, to appreciate the power and glory of this tool it may help you to know that on Wednesday after work I spent 1.5 hours taking up half a tile with a hammer and a crowbar. To say it was demoralizing and emasculating fit the bill all to well. At that moment, the ceramic tile held the upper hand in the relationship and it let me know it. How you ask? Oh, it had its ways.

But the victory that it sensed was short-lived dear friends. Tyler, the protagonist of this lovely tale came out on top.



Seriously, this thing cost like $50 bucks a day to rent and it makes you feel awesome about your life. If psychologists knew about the power of this tool to change the way people feel about themselves, they'd know that their best days are behind them. Tara got down on this bad boy as well... ata girl. Wow, I love this woman!


Hello Friends,

Funny story (well to me) during my three hours of taking all this nasty ceramic up, I started yelling at the ceramic about how I was fully victorious and it was pathetically losing. Tara called me out in front of her parents that night about screaming at the tile. That's the equivalent to someone talking about you flexing in the mirror after the shower...just me...well of course. Anyway, I manned up to me verbal tirades while using this machine because I felt it was owed a proper tribute after our paths magically crossed.

Please, if anyone knows of a tool that has similar psychological benefits, I would love to know about it.

Good bye, dear friend (2/20/2010 8am - 2/20/2010 1pm). You lived an awesome albeit short time in our house.

BIG, Busy Weekend!!!

This weekend was SO productive!
We are getting closer and closer to getting the wood floors installed. There are a few things that have been our goal to get done first since we moved in. Our first project was getting the downstairs painted. That is completed except for the guest bathroom downstairs, which is going to be a total renovation.
Our next goals were to get the wood floors installed and the chandeliers put up. When the previous owners moved out they were kind enough to take their lights with them to leave us a clean slate...and very dark rooms! We have purchased and/or painted all of the necessary chandeliers and are now ready to let there be light! Tyler and I have both painted chandeliers and this weekend I completed our last chandelier. I also added ribbon to the shades.





This week Andreas and Luis (our wonderful painters) are coming to install 3 chandeliers. The first will be in the entry where we do not have light at all. (We are SOOOO excited!) The next will be in the den. We got a 5 foot chandelier to go in that room to replace the tragic gold fan. Finally, they are removing a canned light in the back staircase and putting in a chandelier that we got from Aunt Debbie and Uncle Larry. In order to get the chandeliers installed we needed to rent 15 foot scaffolding. We went down to our local Home Depot and they do not carry the safety pins for the scaffolding. (Seriously! No safety pins!) So they would not rent it to us (and we didn't want it with out them). So we went to another Home Depot to get the scaffolding. After loading it carefully in Daddy's truck, a slow drive back and unloading it into the house we have scaffolding! Sunday we put it up for Luis and Andreas to use Monday.








This week we are also getting the crown molding in our room installed!!! (YAY Andreas and Luis!) We are also scheduling the wood floors and hope to be rid of this carpet by the end of March! (A great birthday present...no carpet!!)

So many changes and we are loving it! This house turns more into our home everyday!