Paint ball

Paint.

No one ever told me that the hardest thing I'd ever encounter in married life would be choosing a paint color, together. Sickness or health, poverty or wealth...cake. Paint? A whole other ballgame as far as I'm concerned.

So our old siding was a creamy yellow-y color. First hitch in this whole one-flesh, one-color debacle was learning that Will had always "hated" what I considered to be the most attractive part of our somewhat dingy-looking exterior. Yellow-y creamy color=out.

So we tried a bunch of other yellows. And we hated them all. Paint hyperbole was everywhere:

Will: "I can't think of a single nice thing to say about either of those colors."

Colleen: "That reminds me of some putrid yellow vomit from 1970."

Yellow was going to break us. So, we said goodbye and moved on to green. Decided not to go green. Moved on and arrived at what had always secretly been my dream color...

(drum roll)

Blue!!!! (or, more specifically, Benjamin Moore HC [Historical Color]-136 Waterbury Green)

Dear Mom: Please don't be disappointed. I know you really wanted us to stick with yellow. So did we. But after taking a long, hard look at our priorities, we decided to keep the marriage and ditch the yellow. We're feeling blue, and we couldn't be happier about it. 

Our favorite thing about this color is that it reminds us of the cottage we stayed in on the beach in South Haven, MI (ok, so we stayed in the brown cabin behind the pretty blue cottage house, but that's a minor detail). It just makes us want to relax, slow down, and enjoy where we are. Which we'll get to after this whole house remodel thing.

In other remodeling news, Duke finally buried this thing (i.e. electrical line):

And now we have this nice, jump-out-of-the-top window-during-a-fire-worry-free-because-there-is-no-electrical-line-in-your-way wall:

Oh, and remember our roofless porch?

Now we have this:

We're pretty stoked with our new front porch roof (and the new front door and last replacement window on the left). It looks like this from underneath, and will eventually be covered with stained beaded board:

Ahh, progress. Thank the Lord.

Next up: Upstairs windows, lots of painting (and choosing a trim color, God help us!), more siding, and gutters.

Diamond in the roof

We finally began work on rebuilding the front of our house. With all the demolition we had to get through first, it kind of felt like we would never get here. But here we are.

I think I've mentioned this before, but we are fairly certain that our house was built in the 1930s and originally served the purpose of providing four individual apartments for men who worked the quarrys that used to be down the hillside. Throughout the demolition phase of the project our suspicions were confirmed after finding exterior doorways to the two rooms that didn't already have them.

The diamond frame above is also likely original to our home and was covered for who-knows-how-long behind the roof above our front porch. Unfortunately, we couldn't keep it because of building code (I guess that modern safety sensibilities require a window large enough to jump out of if there is a fire?). So, goodbye diamond window frame, hello triple windows.

This is the front of the house above the porch, getting ready to be framed in:

 

Wheaton friends Alex and Caroline were down for the weekend, and offered their help with the project. Again...who are these people who like to spend their weekends off laboring with us?

And this one goes to the Reds!

Before finishing the upstairs we were able to replace another window. Just one more to go after this one:

Will, Kevin and Alex worked hard:

Peppered with typical boy antics:

Work site safety 101: Do not have finger on trigger while pointing nail gun at friend.

Tim stopped by and offered some nuggets of wisdom:

But at the end of the day, we had ourselves a framed exterior wall upstairs:

Up close.

Far away.

Unlike last Saturday, spirits were high by the end of the day. The weather was great, friends were around, and Liverpool beat Arsenal. What more could you ask for?

I'm so exsided!

...and we're back.

Last week we both took some time off to get work done on the house before the madness of public education swings into full gear.

Siding. I can't believe it, but we've actually started putting it up. We are using James Hardie fiber cement siding. This stuff is pretty weird and awesome all at once.

Will nailing up the first piece.

Tim and Will making some progress on the west wall.

Pretty much done!

The color is just the unpainted color...it will eventually be yellow.

We almost finished siding on the east wall, but decided to call it quits with only two pieces left to go. Sometimes preserving your sanity trumps checking something off the to-do list.

Making some progress....

All finished. Well, except those two boards.

You probably noticed that the front of our house is looking just a tad bit out of sorts. The last major part of demolition that we have to do is the front, which is probably also the most difficult. Thankfully, we had some help from our good friend Seth Rowe. The whole time he was helping out I was wondering to myself what would compel a person who is on vacation to work on a toxic demolition project for fun. I quickly found out that Seth really just wanted to break things, i.e. our window.

Oops.

He's trying to act all innocent about it, but we all know that Seth Rowe is nothing but a violent window-breaking monster*. Thankfully our victimization was minimized by the fact that the window is being replaced anyways.

Onward and upward. The Rose bros. trudged on with insulation and OSB...

Josiah and Will took down the rest of the upper siding...

...and at the end of it all I forced everyone to smile so I could take a picture:

Don't look too closely at their actual expressions.

I have to admit. Morale was low by the end of the work day. Maybe one of the lowest yet. But we were able to accomplish quite a bit over the course of 6 days, mostly thanks to Will, Charlie and the help of Sunset Hillbillies and other good friends (God bless you Seth and Rob). We are no where near being finished, but I think we are starting to get a vision for what we have to look forward to living in and sharing with others.

At bat: electricity, prepping the front for siding, siding the back wall, and framing in the upstairs.

*Seth Rowe--you and your wife are actually pretty awesome. You can break our (old) windows anytime if it means getting you back to Bloomington.

Good-Fast-Cheap

If you want it done good and fast...it won't be cheap.

If you want it done fast and cheap...it won't be good.

If you want it done cheap and good...it won't be fast.

(Can you guess which way we're going?)

demo-licious

Yes, we have done some work during this hot month of July. It feels a bit underwhelming after doing big, flashy jobs like framing and roofing...but I sell ourselves short sometimes. We are still trucking along and making progress.

We now have a door...and a knob (I'm embarrassed to say how excited I was to pick out the knob).

And we replaced 4 of the 6 original windows in our house. No more drafty winters!

And we (and by we, I mean not me, but Will, Tim, Guff, B-Carl and Carrie) tore down our front porch roof.

The front of our house is the last of the demolition we have to do. THANK GOD. It's probably also going to be the hardest. Hopefully by the end of August I will have a new front facade to share.

Oh. And we're going on vacation. That's right. VACATION. Beaches and reclining chairs and cable TV and microbreweries and sweet rail to trails. We're taking a much-needed break from our house remodel and celebrating the completion of my Masters in Social Work. It's been 3 years of full-time work and part-time school, with a lot of life peppered along the way. Folks have been asking what I'm going to do now that I'm done...my best guess at this point is watching So You Think You Can Dance on wednesday nights with the gals.

See you when I return...

this isn't food hyperbole, it's "the refreshing beverage i've been waiting for my entire life"

Sorry y'all. No construction pics. It's been a busy month on Sunset Hill. Things are still moving forward, just with the kind of slowness that sets in when temps start reaching 90+. We have a work day this Saturday though, so please stop by if you'd like to lend a hand!

In other fun, have I mentioned yet that we've been enjoying two new beverages on a regular basis? We started our cow share a few months ago and are really enjoying it. The milk is great, and the cream is even better. We've been making yogurt out of it too (see earlier post on how to make crockpot yogurt).

I've also been making kombucha, which is thrillingly disgusting and exciting all at once. See?

Since it's too expensive to buy at the store, homemade kombucha was the logical alternative (ps--my mom is soooo cool that she was making this stuff at home back in the 90s way before it was all the rage). If anyone out there would like to start making it too, just let me know and I will give you a mushroom to start!  Be warned: you will have to touch the thing in the picture.

Here's how to make it (with things I bet you already have), in case you're considering:

DIY Kombucha
What you need:
1.  A glass jar big enough to hold at least 1 gallon of liquid. (*CANNOT have any other materials on it! I started with a glass jar with a spigot and it funked out my kombucha).
2. A stainless steel pot for brewing tea.
3. A stainless steel ladle.
4. A kitchen rag.
5. 1 cup white sugar. You can't use any hippie sugar, sorry.
6. Some caffeinated tea. (*Doesn't have to be unflavored. I use 3 Lipton's family-size tea bags).
7. 1 gallon of water. (Some purists say it has to filtered. I just get mine from my unfiltered tap.)
8. A mushroom from me!!!
9. 1-2 cups reserved kombucha (I can give you this too).

What to do:

• Brew 1 gallon of tea in your stainless steel pot according to directions. Add 1 cup of sugar while it's still hot so that it dissolves.
• Let it cool to room temperature.
• Place the mushroom in your glass container w/ 1-2 cups reserved kombucha. Add room temperature tea.
• Cover with a kitchen rag and rubber band. 
• Leave it alone for 7-10 days. Pour or ladle kombucha into glass jars and let cool in fridge. Strain if you're grossed out by the seaweed-looking stuff.
• Drink and enjoy!

I just let my mushroom sit in the glass container w/ 1-2 cups of kombucha while I brew my next batch of tea. After two batches of kombucha (or sometimes one--the mushroom seems to grow quicker in the hot summer months), I usually get rid of the old mushroom since a new one will grow. Pass along your old mushroom to a new kombucha-making friend!

birfday workday

In celebration of Will's 29th birthday, Will requested for all of his friends to do the most logical thing one would think to do on a birthday: work. We did do some real celebrating later (more on that below), but all in all I'd say the birthday workday was hands-down the most productive workday Sunset Hill has had yet.

Starting off the day with donuts and some hard work.

ZOMG we have windows.

boyztown.

back that thang up.

Rare photo.

Upset.

Workday budz.

Addition windows I

Addition windows II.

Addition windows III.

Worksite love birdz.

East wall and roof.

West side before.

West side after.

Interior window view.

With everyone's help we were able to finish the roof, install the addition windows, and insulate and cover the entire east wall of the house. DANG. To celebrate, we ended the work day with a Sunset Hill bar tour which included stops at the AmVet, Steve's Place, and Uncle E's. I'll refrain from trying to describe our experiences at any of these places because words just won't do them justice.

THANK YOU Sunset hillbillies (Carrie, Tim, Josh, B-Carl, Josiah, Guff), Cdubs (Rob, Chris, David), Nate, Joel, Jackie, Ashley, and last but not least, Tom.

Next up: replacement windows, siding, and the back door!