Monday, October 20, 2008

I am a dork


Hi, my name is Susan & I am a dork. I fully admit it. And I am OK with it. Saturday night we went to see Jackopierce play at the Soiled Dove Underground.

Reason 1 I am a dork: I was that girl at the concert. You know the one. The one who knows all the words & is singing along, dancing around and being silly.

While there was no free beer this time, like last year. (This year we had assigned seats so we could not be center front like last year.) But that was OK. I still had a really amazing seat.

Reason 2 I am a dork: Ben bought me a combination very belated, very early birthday present while we are there. He bought us 2 tickets to concert they are doing in Austin, TX in May. Since I had a pretty crappy birthday this year, you know with my husband being in the hospital & everyone forgetting it, he felt that he needed to make up for it. So we will be celebrating my birthday in Austin, TX next year! Yes, I am that dorky groupie who is going to a different state to see them play.


Reason 3 I am a dork: They closed with one of my favorite songs. It is this Irish blessing & I have not heard them sing it for a decade. The last time I heard it was on their farewell tour where they sang "With or Without You" by U2 & then faded into it. It is the same Irish blessing that helped lead up to the cure for Ben's headache. I of course started to cry. But that's not why I am a dork, I am a dork because we hung around after the concert so that I could get my CD autographed & I thanked them for singing it & why it had so much meaning to me. I am sure they were both thinking, who is this dorky girl?

So that is why I am a dork. But I had an amazing night & I guess that is all that matters, right?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Help!

In exactly 10 days we are supposed to go to a Halloween party... but I do not have a costume to wear. And I can't for the life of me come up with anything. Zip, zilch, nada in the idea area.

The theme of the party is heroes & villains. Ben, of course, will be wearing his costume from last year. I know you are shocked. Even his Halloween costume is Broncos....

But my costume doesn't really fit the theme. I don't know how well it will fit & well, it is kind of generic...

I have been trying for weeks to come up with an idea. Any idea. We even went to the costume store last weekend to get some ideas. And still, I left with nothing. Sure there were super hero costumes for girls like wonder woman or bat girl. And there were witch costumes. But I have this problem, I don't like store bought costumes. My costume from last year is the first store bought costume I have EVER owned. Seriously.

I have always had homemade costumes. Some were more traditional like a witch or a cabbage patch kid, but I was a sack of potatoes one year, and a box of frosted flakes another. So I have this notion that I should make my costume this year. But I haven't a clue what to make.... and it is gnawing away at me.

Any ideas on a hero or villain costume that I can pull together in 10 days???

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Before Pictures


I finally got the pictures downloaded off our camera and started putting them on flickr. (There were over 400 pics on it. Yikes!)

This is what the front of our big flip looks like. Structurally the house was in good shape. It just needs some love to make it look pretty again.

Here is the photo gallery of more before pictures. What do you think?

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Something Old, Something New

A few weeks ago a dear friend of mine got married. For her bachlorette party we were asked to bring a gift that fit under one of the categories: something old, something new, something borrowed or something blue.



I had bought this vintage dish towel a few months ago that reminded me of her. When I bought the dishtowel, I was thinking of turning it into something else. So when I found out the theme of the bachlorette party, I knew this would be a great gift.

I wanted to take the towel & turn it into an apron. I looked for some retro prints to use in conjunction with it to stay with the vintage idea, but I could not find any with the right colorway. So I went with a cool indian floral pattern.



And this is how it turned out. Something old, turned into something new.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Stairs

One of the very first things we had to do on our Victorian flip was have a structural engineer come out to help us with the stairs issue.

At some point, previous owners decided to "finish" the attic of the house. And obviously, you would then need stairs to get into the newly finished attic. So they built a staircase in the dining room. Which rendered the room essentially useless because of how much space was left.

So we were challenged with how to improve the space on the main level, but still have a staircase to access the upstairs master retreat. After playing with several different placements, we realized that a traditional staircase would not be feasible. We either lost the dining room or one of the bedrooms. Our only option was a spiral staircase.

I was not happy with the idea of a spiral staircase. My fear was that it would turn buyers off. Who would want to move their belongs up a spiral staircase? But the structural engineer was able to figure out how to get a 5' wide one in without losing hardly any space in the bedroom. And, came up with the idea of putting a staircase on the exterior of the house so that you can easily move your bed & furniture upstairs. Perfect!

Aerial view of what the spiral staircase will be like. The dashed lines to the left are the original staircase.



Profile view of the staircase


The plans made me feel very professional now. Not only do we have blueprints from a structural engineer but we had to have the plans signed off by the city as well. Cool, huh?

Thursday, October 2, 2008

New Flips

I know you are all shocked (all 2 of you that read this), two new posts in two days. I really am trying to get back into the swing of it.

We have 2 flip projects going on right now. One is a "quick" four week project one in the same neighborhood as our last one. All it needs is paint & updating in the kitchen & bathrooms & some minor repairs.

The other one is our BIG project. Right before we found it, Ben commented that he would like to work on a Victorian home. And that he would like to try a project that needs some light structural work. Well, the next week, he found this smoking deal on a Victorian house that had a badly placed staircase. Perfect!

Here are pictures of what the house looked like before we bought it. Warning, some of the pictures might turn your stomach. We bought it from the "we buy ugly houses" people. So they got the lovely job of cleaning all the crap out. We are in the process of completely gutting. We took it all the way down to the studs & are making it clean & beautiful again.


This is the living room


This is the dining room with the badly placed staircase so room is essentially not usable (even when clean)



Obviously, the kitchen. Yum, Spam!



And the stomach turning bedroom. Don't you just want to snuggle down on that bed for a nice long nap?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Did you know?

OK, I know it has been a long time since I posted. What can I say, I am a slacker. Here's a baby step in getting back into the habit of posting.

I got this video a few days ago at work. I found it very interesting to watch. I have no idea how much of it is true, but it all seemed reasonable to me.