playground deck

For a long time, we have strongly disliked the back entrance to our house.  Strongly disliked.  As you can see below, it made our house look like a box.  I know, I know.  It is a box.  BUT that does not mean it has to look like one.  Our solution - a new deck, some shrubbery, deck chairs, new door and possibly a tree.

Old back entrance

We accomplished most of our goals by midsummer.  Kevin started and finished the deck last fall.  He used a palate of cedar pieces that were slated to be playground equipment, hand dipped each piece in a sealant concoction, beveled each end to prevent catching your foot and created a lovely pattern for the decking.  But wait - before that, he gathered many, many rocks (not that difficult for a geologist) and created the pillars that the deck rests on.

This spring, we planted a few shrubs - surrounded by rock - and added two Adirondack chairs.  I feel so much better when I walk up the back sidewalk.  If Kevin were still teaching geology, he could bring his class here on a field trip.  Stone table, rock pillars, slate backsplash, the Pillow Rock across the street and don't even get me started about the rocks in the basement!

Check out the stone pillars

clear, not cloudy, windows!

So for years now (we are starting our 4th year in this house), Kevin and I have been living with a huge (4 foot by 6 foot) cloudy window. It was kind of like having dirty eye glasses on ALL OF THE TIME. Plus in our inexpensive house - which years of remodeling has negated - we inherited two other windows which do not open, are old, energy inefficient and no longer contain clear glass windows, but rather milky, cloudy windows. They made our house dingy in the day time - and at night, when sun was too dim to shine, still dingy.

It took us a long time to order the windows.

1. We have never, in our lives, gone window shopping.
2. We live in Ely.
3. Online shopping for windows is not the same as physical shopping for anything.
4. Do you know how many types of windows there are?!

Eventually, we ordered them from Home Depot and had them shipped to Ely. There was no way I was going to get these babies in the Subaru and drive them up from Duluth. No way. The Subaru as never let me down (except the time my old one was leaking gas directly under the engine and almost started on fire - oh! and the time I has to replace my tranny, twice - and the other time when it suddenly stopped moving in a forward direction on a snowy winter 53 mile commute to work) and the back end is roomy, but not quite roomy enough for 4 large windows.

Old living room - in fact, this picture is from 2006. Before we had the built-in bookshelves and back when our plants looked good. Those two plants you see hanging are about 1/4 of the size... not a good indicator of my plant upkeep regime. But I digress. You can see how cloudy the windows were - I often wondered how Dolemite and Shiva could see the birds outside.

So Kevin and Troy worked their butts off yesterday - and just in time too. We are going to get 2 inches of snowy crap today and we need windows and not holes in the wall. Oh look! The snow, sleet just started and of course, since it is a weekend before deer hunting, Kevin is out in the woods checking his deer cam for activity. Now he will be a wet and cold deer cam checker.

Kevin and I got the living room ready in the wee hours of the morning - which entailed moving EVERYTHING out of the living room and hanging sheets up to keep the dust off of the books and electronic equipment. Troy brought his scaffolding over shortly thereafter and the guys worked well into the afternoon with only a break to have lunch and hit the hardware store for supplies. Before I knew it... SHIZAM! the windows were in.

As you can see there is still one more window to replace in the living room. The front window. It is either open or shut for a season. I used to be able to open it by shimming it back and forth while lifting it up at the same time. But those days are long gone. Now only Kevin can get it open and closed - once in May and once in September. I will be able to do amazing things with these new windows - I can even support my OCD and open these babies up for easy cleaning access. I am in heaven!

bathroom delight

The bathroom in our house was a monstrosity - truly hideous. Small, not square - but had a square patterned floor, 1/2 wall of fake white plastic crap and the other 1/2 ivy wall board. And this wall board had a texture (see below). I am so glad that I can use the word "had" (see above). This chapter of our lives is now over and we can breathe fully and slowly, instead of panicking and stressing out when we enter the bathroom.


I know, I know, "If it was so bad, why didn't we take care of it before now?" Well, before we moved in, we gutted the rest of the house and we needed a bit of a break - yes, that was 3 years ago. And then we had to replace the roof and paint the house. And then we (really Kevin), created our log bed frame, the dresser/closet in the bedroom, moved the bedroom door and built recessed bookshelves. Plus we added a slate back splash in the kitchen and took a few vacations. In other words, it was not as high on the priority list as these other projects.

So when I was in Chicago with Emilie, Mikael and Leif, Kevin was here in Ely gutting the bathroom and putting it back together. I had - and still have - no desire to use a 5 gallon bucket in the basement for my toilet needs. No desire. In order to miss out on that opportunity for no indoor plumbing, I had to leave the state :) I cannot tell you exactly what happened here, but Kevin kept a record for me with pictures... see if you can tell which is the before and which is the after.


Kevin and I picked out everything together - but we did not change all that much in terms of fixtures. We used the same shower, toilet, medicine cabinet... I guess it is not that much. Since we changed the vanity, the lighting, the walls and floor. Hmmm. My favorite change is the faucet. Check it out in action!!

bookshelves & safety belts

It is house renovation time once again. Oh yes. As if roofing was not enough and a back splash does not count. We need to reclaim some of the living room and add some wall storage. When you live in a very small space, every bit of floor and wall is important. So for the past few weeks, we have been sorting and planning and rearranging the house to figure out what we really need to change about the wall between the living room and bedroom.

We have decided on recessed bookshelves, a pocket door to our bedroom and a free standing desk.

Kevin got to work! He loves demolition. We now have 4 studs and empty space where the wall used to be. I feel like I am a guest star on a TV show - there is plenty of room for a camera crew. The living room/bedroom space is HUGE. You can see where the door used to be - to the left of Dolemite. So when you were sitting in the living room, you were staring at the foot of our bed. Not cool. The door is moving to where D is sitting on the chair. A much better location AND we can have a door! A pocket door - the room is too small to have a bed and a door in it. So this is a great compromise. I ordered a door from Menards last weekend. It will be lovely.

In the middle of this, Gina has convinced me that we should have a garage sale. I usually purge every spring and fall so this is a good a time as any to unload the shelves. I reminded Kevin that we have lived in this house for almost 2 years and we will not be using the extra pots & pans, picture frames, TVs, and such stored in the basement. We have invested too much time and energy on the house to sell it anytime soon - so if we are not using it, we have decided to lose it! This means I need to spend some quality time in the basement and in the spare bedroom/office where all of the living room's things have landed.

The joy!

modern kitchen

So we have been using a kitchen sink without a back splash since we moved in - close to 2 years ago. Other projects have been more important and our system of placing cutting boards behind the sink has been doing a swell job of protecting the wall and preventing too much water and junk from falling between the counter top and the wall and getting into the lower cabinets. Real swell.

It took a long time to plan the back splash. First, I wanted a broken plate mosaic complete with a representation of a sunshine right above the sink - to bring me joy as I scrub dishes. Once I realized how much time that would be to plan and to install, I changed my idea to many, many small squares of shiny tile. Like in Gabby's kitchen in Desperate Housewives. Do you know how expensive those tiles are? I am still paying off school debt! Then I moved on to copper. Wouldn't presses copper look wonderful in an orange kitchen? Actually no.

Here was the final decision... what do you think?

Thank god for Ryan - the next door neighbor. I thought I had read enough articles and gotten enough information about tiling (because this was originally a Tara project, not a Kevin project), but somehow I neglected to learn about using real slate and not lovely flush tiles. Ryan straightened me out. I needed to seal the tiles before grouting them. I can only imagine what life would have been like trying to get grout off of unsealed tiles. It was not a fun time when the tiles were sealed. And actually, I did not seal the tiles, Kevin did. We were each other's support team for this project. There are many, many things to be done in a short time frame. So we tagged teamed it.

Day 1: I laid out all of the tiles (they are not the same thickness, so I arranged them from thick on the bottom to thin on the top), Kevin took the old fiber board off the wall and put up Durock.

Day 2-7: We took turns applying adhesive and laying tiles, I made sure there were plenty of tiles moved from the dining room table to the kitchen counter, Kevin sealed the tile with an itty bitty paint brush.

Day 8-14: Kevin took care of grouting and I cleaned up the tiles behind him. And then he scrubbed the heck out of the tiles and sealed them with 2 coats of the lovely sealer and he caulked the top, bottom and corners. Now that I think of it, this was really a Kevin project once again. I was just the support team.

I am going to touch up the orange paint in the kitchen, there are quite a few nicks and I have to paint some trim - actually, quite a bit of trim. All of this I will do on my own. Painting will be a Tara project. But that is not as impressive as most of the Kevin projects. I need to remember once again, marriage is not competition, it is cooperation.

rusted tin roof

When we bought our house, this is what the outside looked like. pretty dismal. This big (only because there is nothing around it) pimple in the middle of the yard. No windows to the back yard, ugly color, roof that is a bit wavy, no eaves, a useless awning for the back door... you can see all of that for yourselves.

We needed to make some changes. Before we moved in, and long before our wedding, we added windows - both bedrooms had small windows high on the wall. When we took out the old paneling in the bedrooms, we discovered that a previous owner had framed in windows where we wanted to install them. What were the people who eliminated them thinking about?! The rooms are small enough to begin with - they need that light to make them livable. So now they are livable!

















After the wedding, we had to kick it into gear and replace our roof. Oh yes. Kevin spent many 90 degree days up on the roof, sweating and swearing. All of the swearing paid off!

I am the support team. And I like it that way. Kevin needs someone to pick up the old shingles, rake the nails out of the grass, bring him cold beer... he is the doer and I am the picker upper. This is why our marriage works!

Kevin has to have a project to work on at all times. I have no problem finding projects for him to work on :) So right after the roof was done and the house and garage were painted, he got to work on the slate patio around the stone table. He had gone out with my dad and brother to "the river" to collect slate for the patio and for a back splash in the kitchen earlier in the summer and it was sitting by the garage taunting him. Kevin will gladly find any reason to get dirty. And like I said, I am the support team - which means I said things like "Great positioning of that piece of slate!" and "I think that piece works well there." My other jobs entailed helping clean up the extra pieces of slate and once again, serving cold beer.


I should clarify something here. Before the wedding, before all of these home improvements took place, Kevin and I were both working at the college. We had Monday's off - and worked 4 ten hour shifts. Kevin taught a Geology course and I worked in IT. Then after summer session - a few weeks after our wedding, I continued to work 4 ten hours shifts (with a 100+ mile round trip commute) and Kevin roofed. I feel I need to say this in case you think I am a slacker and my only function was to eat bonbons and serve beer.

Because, in the middle of all of these projects, Kevin found the time to peel logs and create a beautiful log bed frame for us. I married a project-a-holic.