Installing Party Lights in Backyard

So Becca and I have been wanting to finish off our backyard deck with a little pizazz. Our first idea was to get a pergola, then it was deemed too much, and we wanted something simpler. We liked the idea of a canopy of lightbulbs, so we sprung for some party lights from www.partylights.com.

  

This was the box that the lights came in. We ordered three sections of 35' and created a triangle shape  that converged at the garage (scroll for photos). The website said the lights need support to hold the weight, so we strung stainless steel cables for each length.

 Once the cables were up and secure, all you need to do is use zipties to secure the lights to the cable support. It's fairly simple to get them on the line, I suggest getting ones that match the color of your lights.

 Here's a close up of a party light bulb socket and the ring that keeps it secure to the support wire.

Each string required some strong supporting hooks on either end.

Once all the lights are clipped on the the wire, we drug them across to confirm length and support strength.

Here all three sets of lights converge, and we had the electrician wire them together and connect them to a switch with a dimmer.

 

Here I am screwing in 7.5 watt lightbulbs into the lights. This is the fun part.

Mom and Ivy breaking in the lights on the first night.

We like how the tree looks in the glow.

 

Playing scrabble and listening to podcasts in the backyard.

Testing out the dimmer. It added some extra cost, but we love having control over the amount of light they emit.

Refinishing the Basement Stairs

When Chris told me he would get three weeks paternity leave when Ivy was born, I had a feeling this could spell trouble. While it was great having him home so long, I haven't seen him sit still for more than 10 minutes at a time during our 5+ years of marriage (except when he sleeps through the BBC Pride & Prejudice, which I believe every husband should be required to watch once a year).

Well, it turns out my suspicions were correct! The day after we brought home our newborn, our house rung out with the sounds of random orbital sanding and nail gunning. He had decided to attack our gross basement stairs, which run off the kitchen.

During our kitchen remodel, our nasty old water-damaged kitchen floor was replaced with new hardwoods. The new boards stop under the basement door, and from that point on the floor is covered with original, very roughed-up hardwoods that were painted white at some point.

Before: gross stairs and landing.

Public service announcement: White painted floors do not wear well, and look dirty all the time.

Ok, back to business here. So, from the kitchen door there are three steps down to a landing, where the stairs turn and continue down to the basement. Chris decided to tackle from the kitchen door to the landing, as this portion of the stairs is actually visible from the kitchen when we open the door. We'll probably get to the remaining stairs someday, but they're much less of a priority.

Based on our usual mindset that we like to reuse materials whenever it makes sense, the original plan was to refinish flooring by the kitchen door and on the landing, and replace the old stair treads with new ones. However, as Chris got the boards stripped and sanded, the boards at the top of the steps were pretty rough underneath.

The old, stripped boards just can't keep up with the pretty kitchen floor.

These beaten up, gaping boards looks especially bad next to the kitchen floorboards, which were installed and finished just two years ago. Fortunately, we had just enough board left over from the remodel to replace board in the area, which looked much better. He purchased a few new red oak treads at our local home improvement store and replaced the three stair treads, and stuck with our original plan to strip and sand down the original oak floorboards on the landing to prepare these boards to be restained and finished.

The newly installed floorboards blend into the kitchen flooring. 

Old stair treads are removed (giving a lovely view of the water heater) and Chris sized new treads prior to installing.

Chris is a big fan of Citristrip - a non toxic and minimally stinky way to remove gooey paint. He paints it on, lets it sit overnight and scrapes it off with a putty knife.

The project drug on a while because we needed access to the basement from time to time, so he could not just keep applying stain and polyurethane over and over. We had to take the occasional break between coats to do laundry and get groceries from our deep freeze, so this really was a great project to tackle while we were both home from work.

Plus, we figured while we had the area all torn up, we needed to do some work to the trim and walls in order to really get full payoff for the hard work. Chris capped the existing baseboards for a more finished look, and installed new shoe molding. We caulked and painted all the trim, and I painted the walls using leftover Sherwin Williams Dorian Gray from Ivy's nursery.

Once the work was all done, the area was quickly transformed.

   

The old trim got a major facelift with some sanding and caulking, and a new cap piece attached.

The landing flooring is a bit more rustic than the rest of our wood floors, but we decided we are good with that and chose not to replace all the floorboards. We'll look for a nice doormat to put inside the door anyway, which will cover all that you see from the kitchen. And while distressed looking, the boards are perfectly smooth underfoot - which is the most important part for us!

While some may find it strange to invest this much time in basement stairs, we are thrilled with the improvement! Even if no one sees it but us we feel it was a very worthwhile effort, improving an area that we use every day for very little cost.

Pouring a New Driveway

So we got a new driveway. Let me elaborate.

Our house we love, our driveway we hate. This piece of junk has been a bumpy, broken hot mess since the day we moved in 5 years ago. It was probably original to the house, thin and narrow, complete with ribbon of gravel and weeds up the middle.

Here's the thing - driveways (i.e. concrete) are not cheap. And our driveway is 100 feet long - and that's longer than home plate to first base. So we had to save up for this one - and thankfully, we are lucky enough to have a generous neighbor to split the cost since the driveway is shared (yay).

We reached out to two contractors who've done work in neighborhood. This really is the only way we go about finding contractors for house work. Friends or neighbors who've had good experience with someone - anything else is just too risky in our opinion when finding help. Ultimately, one was about twice as much as the other, we opted for the cheaper, and he assured us he'd build the driveway to last us for decades (rebar, good concrete, gravel, pinning, etc).

So here goes the progress - from original driveway, to clearing it out and repouring.

Old driveway with grass ribbon.

View from front of yard looking towards garage.

The weeds were such a pain in the butt to manage.

Old driveway removed, day one complete.

Full view of driveway with no concrete.

Here comes the big truck.

Will it fit? Just barely.

Here's the view from inside the kitchen - scary.

Fence temporarily removed, concrete still drying. They splattered on the garage :(

View from the front, end of day two.

View from street, no cars for almost a week.

Voila - new driveway 2 days later - Wrigley breaking it in.

Driveway terminates into our house since it's so close already.

So after a few months of enjoying the driveway - we can say that best part of a new driveway is that you don't notice it. We like how the house feels complete from the outside. The "sore thumb" factor was really taking away from the overall house, and now we just don't even think about it.

What do you think? Let us know if you have any questions about the project!

- Chris and Becca

Post Card Art

 For several years now, C has collected old post cards from flea markets and antique stores. Many of them are historic Kansas City tourism cards, created of historic buildings, parks and boulevards in the early 1900's.

One of his favorites has always been the Power & Light building. It's one of downtown's most beautiful buildings, in our opinion, and the post card is beautiful and full of color. Plus, on the right end of it you can see the edge of the President Hotel, which is where we stayed after our wedding - see the red PRE toward the bottom right corner?

And this particular card, like many of our favorites we have collected, was actually mailed. I love the child's handwriting to his or her mother, and the fact that the sender had so much to say that it's written over every corner of the card. And notice there's no address - apparently there was only one Mrs. John W. Smith who lived in Bethany Missouri when this was sent!

 
So C decided to try something out. He scanned the post card at high resolution, and then doctored it up in Photoshop and had it printed at Costco. We weren't sure how it would turn out, but the print only cost $8, so we decided to give it a try and see what we ended up with. The result was a beautiful 20"x30" poster - one with great color and fun sentimental meaning to us. I did a quick Hobby Lobby trip for the frame ($50) and custom mat ($16), and voila! We had a great piece of art for our walls, for a total of $74 - not bad at all!

We hung the poster in our stairwell, where there is a great focal point and a wall that needed some dressing up. It brightens up the dark corner very well, and gives us this great little piece of beautiful Kansas City history to admire every day.  

Bed & Breakfast House Tour

Notice the gargoyles

First, apologies for the slow blog roll this year. After the whirlwind kitchen/bath remodel last year, our updates to the house will be limited for a little while.

June 29th crept up quickly this year. The significance is our 4th year anniversary.

I suggested a B & B to Becca and she quickly obliged to the idea. My theory is that the fun part of a B & B is the newness of it all. So, I clicked around on some of the main sites and found the 1812 Overture in Westside/Downtown KC.

We go to Westside a lot for lunch and usually walk around the neighborhood afterwards. It's probably one of the best spots in KC for creative types. The restaurants are charming and have all the natural/organic concepts you would expect. The houses are majestic Victorians — their craftsmanship is at a level we might never see again in new homes.

Finally we had a chance to look inside one of these gems.

1812 Overture.

I would describe the current homeowners as bohemians. They seem most interested in offering a creative space, and less worried about 90º angles and order. This "perfectly imperfect" concept goes against my natural tendencies, but its good for me to absorb.

Naturally, the home charmed our pants off. The 12' ceilings and oversized doors, the hand painted flower wallpaper, the winding crooked 3rd story stairs, the absurd over-decoration, the gazebo and hot tub, the gourmet omelet breakfast — they achieved the "we're on vacation" feeling we wanted. All for $119. Not bad for a cheapskate like myself.

Entryway lobby

Backyard grotto

Flan

View of hot tub

Yummy Breakfast

Yes, this is all hand painted

Breakfast spread

View from the hot tub

Our room for the night was the 3rd floor loft. The room's shape inspired us to consider finishing our attic.

I'd recommend the place if you like old homes and you're craving a hot tub. We chose this over a Hilton downtown and have no regrets.