It's getting hot in here

So time for a new thermostat! Ok, so really, there was no problem with the old thermostat, cept, well, it looked like this. And while we do love a good blast from the past, we like saving energy more

Now, you might know that in our house we have radiant heat from a water boiler system. It's super cool for a couple reasons, one being that since there is no forced air, it doesn't get as dry in the winter and it doesn't spread allergens throughout the house. The second cool thing is that we have zoned heat. That's right, the kitchen, familyroom/master bedroom, and upstairs are all in thier own zone. Now, the downstairs already have cool programmable thermostats, but for some reason the upstairs was stuck in the 1970s. Not really a problem, but not ideal since James has to remember to turn it down every day before going to work. So, yesterday, Matt and James decided to take matters into their own hands. 

First the removed the thermostat bits 

And then disconnected what was left and removed that (notice the blast-from-the-past wallpaper. Apparently the previous owners have a thing for leaving wallpaper behind)

Next they hooked up the new plate:

And put on the cover

Took less than 15 minutes, which I think is pretty impressive, don't you?

Little improvements

Well its been a busy week for both of us at work, which cut back a little on us working on the house, but we did manage to do a couple things each to keep some of our projects moving.

Matt began repair work on the header over the stairs which had to be sacrificed during move in to get a box spring up the stairs. Matt had cut some interesting pieces of wood to fill the gaps because we misplaced a couple of the pieces

The before

and another before angle

 Matt showing off his carpentry skills

That's right, he cut that triangle from a 2x4! Pretty slick considering we have no experience in carpentry except for the arch

 Adding back in the piece that we did have and you get pretty close to what it used to look like

 Well, except from this angle. Obviously we still have some plaster work to do before we call it done.

Then, he also started working getting the kitchen ready to tile. A while back I put up mud and spackle to seal up all the holes in our new dry wall. Matt, being the smart man that he is, bought a new, vaccum attached, sander. It worked pretty well and kept a lot of the dust out of the kitchen. While he was doing this, I sanded the butcher block down (you can see the edge there in the first shot)

Here Matt is giving the vacuum attachment the tried and true "paper towel" test. It passed.

And it worked pretty well on the walls too.

And last but not least a finished shot of the butcher block after sanding with two different grits and conditioning overnight. Came out pretty sexy if you ask me.

Back at it

Well, here we are, just a couple days after the wedding and we're chomping at the bit to get back to work on the house. Last night we even put together our new bench (courtesy of a yet unknown guest at the wedding since it arrived without a card. We'll have to do some sleuthing there.)

See the unruly before

And the vastly improved better:

It went together pretty quick. Even Leroy got in on the action:

Today Matt and I took a day off and after a lovely breakfast with my parents, went looking at antiques. We've got a few purchases in mind, including an armoire for the bedroom. Didn't have any luck but we did see some cool things and talk to some interesting people.

Then, we took a trip to target and although we only went for hair gel and photo corners, we came back with a couple new lights!

You can see Matt there all tuckered out from our lovely day (ok, maybe the wedding two days ago also played a role in the zonk out...). Its a vast improvement from our old lamps.

AND, to top off all the fun, our kitchen looks like a flower explosion! I totally love it, but I think Matt's going to want our counters back at some point.

Leroy missed us and the house did too

So some of you might know, but Matt and I got married this weekend!

 

More pics to follow at some point (and thanks to Mark for this one!). We had an awesome time and couldn't have asked for more. (Notice the arch in the background. Turned out pretty great, right?)

Of course while we were doing this, we were not at the house.Which meant poor Leroy was home alone for most of the weekend. He's a pretty social little guy and he gets upset when we leave him alone too long. And to show his displeasure, he occasionally leaves us "presents" outside the litter box, which we lovingly clean up because times when he does things like this

make up for his little indiscretions.

However, this time, I think he's gone too far. The house is now following his lead. We left it alone for two days and came back to this:

That's right, the door voided its core all over our front porch.

Ok, so what really happened is that the bottom plastic cap/strip which protects the core got some water in it, which turned to ice, which split the plastic, which caused the door not to shut right. So, Matt pulled the strip off a few weeks ago not realizing that with the melting snow, the core of the door would get wet pretty far up and well, this would happen. Although, I still prefer the "our house missed us so much it pooped itself" theory...

Painting in the basement

Well the arch is built, but the pressure treatment on the wood leaves slightly less than desirable green streaks throughout the wood. So Matt and I decided we would paint it, but with the below freezing temps, the garage was out of the question. Luckily, we have a basement that stays a lovely 60-65 all day. So once the wood had dried out a bit, we took it downstairs and got to work.

In the past two days we've completed the top and one of the sides, just have one more side to go tomorrow and we should be good to go. It takes 48 hours to dry, so finishing up tomorrow should be perfectly good to move it Friday!

The arch is complete!

Matt and I have been busily at work preping for the wedding and that, of course, includes the arch. I'm happy to say, we have completed the build. Heres what the final product looks like:

And here's Matt strength testing it:

It's strong.

Now all that's left is to paint it (since Matt spent a lot of time today sanding it). We went to Menards and picked out a color and in the process realized that the wood we have is still pretty wet. Paint and wet wood don't mix so we brought all the pieces inside and cranked up the heat in an effort to dry it out some.

Not sure if it will dry out entirely before we start painting it tomorrow night, but hey, can't hurt, right