Walnut Garland

Walnuts.  Walnuts and I go way back.  Well at least back to the beginning of when we first started renovating our home a year and a half ago. 

We found walnuts e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.

In the drop ceiling in the basement.  Underneath the tub, in the ceiling, between walls...

And inside of the big walnut tree that we had cut down. 

Every time we turned a corner, we found more walnuts.  So now, walnuts always make me think of our home. And that's not such a bad thing....because our home is very special to me.

Finding sentiment is not a difficult task for me.  I like things that remind me of feelings I had or memories I shared with important people.  And now, walnuts will always remind me of renovating our home and the people we did it with.  So about halfway through our Phase 1 renovation, I began to collect some of these walnuts - wanting to capture the memories and bring them into the future with us.

At the time, I wasn't completely sure what my plan was for using them or displaying them. I thought about making a wreath but I didn't want to have to glue them all, assuming, someday it would start falling apart. So I decided to make a garland which would allow me to avoid gluing the walnuts and would be easily undone someday if I ever wanted to do something else with the walnuts. 

So I took some twine and got a big needle and started stringin'.

Almost all the walnuts had enough openings to string the twine through -undoubtedly put there by the critter that had stashed them throughout our home.  The large needle made it easier to get the twine strung through the holes. 

I knotted the ends then used 3M clear hooks on the underside of the fireplace mantel to hang the garland.  Seems fitting to hang it at our home's heart and center.

 I'm just loving how the walnut garland fits seamlessly into our fall decor. 

Side thought: Do you think we should paint our brick?  Whitewash it? Michael is vehemently apposed. It reminds him of Purdue. I'm open to either idea.  I like brick, I'm just not convinced that this is the prettiest brick.  

 

Our love-hate relationship with walnuts has shifted soundly over to the love side... Or at least fondness.  We still hate walnut trees - at least ones that are growing in our yard. But we took care of that months ago!.. No more walnut trees in our yard and no more more walnuts in our walls.  Only on our mantel or in our desserts...on second thought, maybe just on the mantel! :-) 

 
Don't miss a beat.  

{Follow this blog on Bloglovin'}

  

-or-

{Follow this blog via Email}

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Breakdowns and Timbers

It has been quite the two weeks.  I apologize for not getting a blog post to you all sooner. 

I had a little bit of a breakdown last week.... 

Let me tell you the reason for my lapse in house pride.

The beginning of last week the electritians came over to start working.  My brother-in-law also came over to look at our bathroom and to give us his expert opionion on tile.  Little did we know they, along with our Uncle Steve who is doing the majority of the work on our house, were all conspiring against us.  Between the electrian, my brother in law, and Steve, they all decided that we were going to need to take down ALL the drywall in the rest of the house.  That meant the exterior walls and ceilings were all going to have to come down and the insallation along with it.  What?! I thought we were done with demolition, just last week we had been talking about picking out paint colors! We were supposed to be moving forward, not backward! That was my issue with it.  I was expecting to see things start coming together, not getting pulled apart.

What calmed me was our reasoning behind why we decided to do it.

We decided to go ahead and tear the rest of the drywall down because:

-We are doing A LOT of electrical work so opening things up would make things a lot easier/faster for the electrian.

-We found various wires chewed through by critters, so opening things up would help us have some peace of mind about the safety of the electricity in our house.

-The insulation that we could see looked like the same little critters were tunneling through the insulation and we were just worried that there were tons of nasties that we might be breathing in.  Gross!

-We had a lot of repair work to do with the drywall because of all the walls we had already taken down.  And the current walls were textured plaster.  So having to match the new drywall with the old stuff would have been very challenging.  And our drywaller told us it would probably be cheaper in the long run for us to hang all new.  Plus it would look sooo much nicer and be sooo much nicer to have all new drywall vs plaster.

I just kept going over and over those reasons in my head as I was getting blown-in-insulation all over me last week.  It WILL be worth it, it WILL be worth it.

And then, I learned something about myself.  When I feel like everything in the house is chaotic, I sweep. 

"Oh, I have to decide where I want all the electrical outlets?"  I sweep. 

"You need to know where and what kind of lights I want in each room?"  I sweep. 

"There is water dripping from the ceiling after the terential downpour?" I sweep.

"We had a bunch of shingles blow off the roof?"  I sweep. 

And that might have been another reason I was feeling so stressed last week.  That blown-in-insulation was everywhere!! And I didn't have time to sweep it up until the end of the week and it was just stressing me out!

But then I swept. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..................... Much better.   I've never been such a clean freak in my life but it just helps me feel like I have some control. 

Switching gears now, this happened too in the last couple weeks:



We had 3 of our trees cut down last week.  That was exciting! It was slightly unforturnate, however, because these trees were all a pretty good size and gave our house some nice shade.  However, that was their only redeeming feautre.  They are walnut trees.  

 

You may recall the waterfall of walnuts I encountered while tearing out the basement ceiling (see above).  Or the tons of walnuts found underneith the bathtub.  Or even the walnuts stashed in our fireplace.  Yeah... these trees are the culpret, or at lease accessories to the crime.  That must have been one ambitious little critter, he stashed them everywhere he could.  In the picture below, you can see he was storing them in the hallow center of this walnut tree. Bob, the Tree Guy, said that when the tree "timbered" there was a rush of walnuts from the bottom of the tree.

So we cut them down.  Many of you probably don't know the unfortunate truth about walnut trees.  I never did! But they are really terrible trees to have in your yard.  They are extremely messy with twigs and walnuts which is enough to drive you crazy.  But then we also found out that walnut trees are actually toxic to most other plants.  So that meant we would have a very difficult time landcaping around those trees.  So they had to go.  And go they did. 

Other things that happened in the last two weeks:

-We chose our front door

-We chose and ordered our bathroom fixtures

-The plummers started working

-Our 2nd dumpster was delivered (that's never a good sign)

-We chose the stain for our hardwood floors

-The electritians started installing can lights and outlets




Next week will be a pretty busy week so I hope to get something posted for you by the end of the week! We'll see!

And also, a quick shout out to our Nephew Max who turned the big 0-1 this week!

Demolition: If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it!

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it......but I'm pretty sure I just broke it" is what was going through my head when I was doing this:

Yep! I have been a busy girl, ripping and tearing.  Michael was gone all last week on business so it was left to me to get started.  We had to start right away (which I wanted to do anyway) because we are having the heating and air conditioning people out to install our new unit and duct work on Monday (crazy!).  In order for them to do what they need to do, we had to open up walls and rip down the ceiling in the basement.  So that's what I did!

Before Michael left though, we had our first workday out at the house where we shared our first meal together.  A little picnic in the living room. You can say it.  "Awwwwwwwww"

And see that carpet? Well, I ripped that up.  It's gone!

And finding the hardwood underneath was enough to make my week! The plan is to get them refinished so we cannot wait to do that down the road after we patch all the areas where walls have come down.

Anyway, once Michael left for Alabama, it was on! My first target? The nastiest carpet you have ever seen... or smelled.  Ew! The basement carpet had been worn down to the pad and had a lot of lingering animal smells in it. So it had to go.  See the dark area in the picture below? Yeah... that's thread bare carpet.  When I tore that I up, it was like sawdust underneath.  Crazy. 

Here's the before demo picture of the basement:

 And here's the after demo picture:

I did that! I'm so proud! :-) And I had sooooooo much fun! There is something just so satisfying about tearing a room down to the studs.  Speaking of studs... Funny story:

So after I had piled all of the nasty carpet outside, I asked my dad to come over and help me drag it into the garage where it would wait to be thrown into the dumpster that had yet to be delivered to our house.  So he comes barreling over the field and through the creek.  He gets out of his truck, looks at the pile of nasty, stinky carpet and says "You could burn this."  I just look blankly at him and thought to myself, "I don't want to smell this stuff the way it is, and I definitely don't want to know what is smells like when it is burning!"  As I was thinking this he had already gotten into he truck and he pulls out a blow torch (yes, my dad keeps a blow torch in his truck... doesn't yours?), then he starts dragging a piece of the carpet toward the old burn pile on our property.

And this:

 Turned into this:

I just laughed! What else could I do? Avoid standing down wind... that's also what I did. 

So back to business, after tearing out the carpet, I had to scrape the whole floor too to get the pad up.  What a workout!  Then I tore down the ceiling tiles and after that I moved to tearing off the paneling.  I was always just a little afraid of what I was going to find around every corner.  But really I only found a very small amount of mold in one corner, 1 cockroach, and some walnuts.  Walnuts? Yes walnuts, I guess there had been a little critter storing them up in the drop ceiling of the basement and they all came crashing down on me as I pulled some ceiling tiles down.  Like a walnut waterfall!... Except not beautiful at all. And very very dirty.

So demoing the basement was a big deal and when Michael FINALLY came home I was so glad to see him, I made him clean up all the scrap wood that I had knocked down.  :-) What a welcome home party huh? He was a good sport about it but he was anxious to get his own hand in the drywall.

We moved upstairs and this is what we accomplished this week.  Boom:

Looking through the kitchen into dining room

Opposite side of kitchen

Looking into living room from front door 

From living room toward kitchen and dining room

It's already starting to feel more open! There are more walls to be torn down so stay tuned! We also met with a bunch of people to get quotes on windows, siding, hardwood refinishing, geothermal units, kitchen cabinets.  So also stay tuned for more details on those items as well. 

In summery, here is are few things I have learned this week

1. Demolition is fun

2. Demolition is a good workout

3. My new favorite tool is called the "Wonder Bar"

4. I have a favorite tool

5. Carpet burns 

6. I appreciate having my husband around (I kinda already knew that though... it was just a good reminder)

7. The rule that, in renovating, things are ALWAYS more expensive than you think they are going to be, is only true half of the time.  But when it's true, it is too true. :-(

8. Wear a mask. It makes your face crazy hot but it's better than getting the black lung. 

9. Demolishing part of your house is no way to show off your new haircut! 

10. There's no good way to keep plaster from falling down your shirt

Happy Weekend! Michael and I are off to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary!