The good news, the Yell's have made a lot of progress at 3132 Blue Oak. The bad news, we've neglected this blog for far too long. This is my first post on this blog that Tara set up. I was first asked to introduced myself when we received our wood floors shipped and all 4,000 lbs. were left on our street(The delivery man wasn't one for wowing the customer). My neighbors bared with me as I moved all 110 cartons of heavy wood into the home. As you can see from the picture in this post this added to the mess that is our humble abode. That was back in October. Since then Tara has walked 60 miles to help cure breast cancer (I'm super proud of her), I've continued running to train for a marathon and life has moved on. It has been wonderful working with Tara to make this feel like our home after it was vacant for 3 years, foreclosed on and treated like a frat house by the people who lived here before us. We've enjoyed (I can say that looking back on it at least) painting things big (entire rooms) and small (all 100+ balusters on the stair rails). I keep telling myself that if we take care of the small things now (fingers crossed) the larger things will take care of itself. Tara & I are wanting to make this place feel as cozy as our parents houses did growing up. Feel free to share your thoughts / wisdom on this hopeful thought.
So what drama has there been you may be asking yourself. As misfortune would have it, most of the drama has taken place when I was in Manhattan for a week in December. Tara called me one night to say the water pressure was dropping. The next day she called me to say that we had no water! (did the city run out, I thought?) It turns out our pressure release valve (we're still working to find this) went kerplunk and caused the water pressure in our house to go from a respectable 60 p.s.i. to a superhuman 110 p.s.i. It turns out our appliances (mainly the water heater) was not a fan of the water coming in at nearly twice it's normal strength. A valve broke on the water heater which caused it to flood and was diverted to the outside of our house. This meant that we were heating water as it flooded into the street and leaving us a nice gas bill. Once the neighbors called the city they turned off the water without informing Tara (the left a note on the front door but we don't we enter the house in the back and don't always see the front of the house). Tara was able to shortly get our water turned back on with the use of only one of two water heaters and we're still in the process of fixing the pressure release valve (first step is to find it by digging in the front yard without paying a plumber to dig around and find it)then have the everything fixed by the warranty company. So we have water again which is of course nice.
Where we stand today after the wonderful holiday season is that the handrail is being painted black (a little unorthodox but it's looking awesome). The picture shown has one rail painted black and the rest have primer on them. We have been taking trips to the city dump & Goodwill to rid ourselves of all things that weigh us down, I love the ability to clean house even though we have 4,000lbs of wood in our entry. We are also having Andreas and Louis (our maid, Ines' husband and son respectively) work their magic to have some things painted.
Tara has been on her hands and knees painting all the base boards and white trim in the house (we've calculated that there's around 500' of the darned molding)but alas, it is looking new again. This house was a mess when we moved in and slowly but surely we're trying to make it our own and place so that we're happy and proud enough to invite all our friends over for a homemade vegan meal. The next rooms on our list is painting the Study (I'm pretty emotional about this one) and finishing the trim in the Formal Dining Room (Tara hates trim the way a 4 year old boy hates brushing their teeth by now). Within the month the big moment will be happening of laying the wood floors that we bought in October. Between the wood floors being laid, all the walls painted, and other things coming together such as the stairs being painted, the chandeliers hung, and furniture starting to show up plus painting the kitchen cabinets this address is starting to feel like a true home instead of an address that end up at everyday.
Our goal is to have all our blog readers who care to, enjoy a meal on us in our home as we laugh often about the lessons learned from putting this place together.
Thank you for your patience and we will be posting a lot more. Mainly because it's starting to get more exciting with things happening in stride. If anyone has any questions about what were doing with certain rooms or recommendations from past lessons learned, feel free to share.
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