post-holidays

Clearly I'm bad at this whole blogging thing! Update: Juneau is not well-known for quality medical care and that goes double for veterinary services, we got a 2nd opinion on Sasha's knee and as far as the new vet can tell she just had a pulled muscle. We were obviously stoked that we wouldn't need to spend $4k on her knee but seriously mad that the 1st vet wanted to get her in the OR the next day to operate without confirming that the ACL was actually torn (d-bag). All is well and the girls have been enjoying the snowy wonderland that we live in.
I've been doing projects and not blogging about them so expect a number of new posts in the next week.

Hellooooo xmas morning living room disaster! M mounted the TV on the wall so the ugly gorilla rack is not far from being relegated back to garage storage! I'm thinking of snagging these cable brackets from the Container Store for our dvd player and brand new Roku to hang out on, probably not a glass shelf but instead a complimentary painted or stained wood shelf. Baby redwood got decked out in 10 of the least-heavy of M's lifetime of amazing ornaments; mine are still at my parent's house in CA. In the back left corner is a new lamp annnnnd the thing I've been working on staining for three months and only just finished (a whole post will be dedicated to that shortly). We took the slipcover off of the couch as we had a tequila tasting party on xmas eve and well, we're classy people. The girls are nomming on the pigs ears they unwrapped and just generally being adorbz. All of the snow we got around Thanksgiving had melted by xmas but it started snowing while we were at M's grandparent's house so yay! I hope you all had a lovely holiday too. 

Gchatting w/ Val

Val and I spend an inordinate amount of time at work Gchatting about DIY shit and stuff. Without her no-one would be around to "listen" to the stupid things I think about all day. Today's topic began with my idea to add trim to my shitty, boring, hollow-core, wooden interior doors to make them into fabulous, texturized, classy, white interior doors. She puts up with me when I try to give idiotic names to normal things, such as my new (as of yet un-revealed desky thingy which I am sanding and plan to stain blue):

 me:  hella!

i can't wait to get new hardware

first i have to make the doors less ugly

 Sent at 3:00 PM on Tuesday

 Valerie:  I wonder if I could talk Mikey into new handles? that were colored? and sort of looked like a flower?

I'm thinking probably not.

 me:  val, no.

 Valerie:  hahaha

shhhhhhhhh

let me amuse myself for a moment with how that conversation would go

 Sent at 3:04 PM on Tuesday

 me:  whatever

 Valerie:  so!

what's new with you?

 me:  working yo.

mathew thought he might come home for a couple days this week but that looks like a no-go so i shaved for no reason

 Valerie:  hahaha

oh man

that's a super bummer

you could come share your luscious legs with Magnum and I tonight

 me:  mayhaps. i have to love on joel after work for a minute and then i really wanna get some more sanding done on my giraffe-desk

 Valerie:  gifaffe desk?

excuse me?

 me:  it's tall

and slender

but blue

sooooooo blue-man-giraffe-desk

vegas-giraffe-desk

cirque-giraffe-desk

 Valerie:  I want a picture!

OH THAT REMINDS ME

 me:  i showed you a picture!

ur a brat

 Valerie:  that one you got from craigslist?

is it really a desk?

 me:  roll-top bitch

pull-out surface and errything

 Valerie:  niiiiiiiiiiiiiice





And then a day later a fantabulous free beat-the-eff-up hutch came up on CL and we had a dumb convo about that:

Valerie:  it's ok if you do

I was going to work up some time anyway

ok

called

left message

 me:  bueno

 Valerie:  HOPEFULLY it's not gone yet

 me:  * fingers crossed *

 Valerie:  oh man

 me:  is it killing you?

 Valerie:  YES

also, I have to re-convince him about the stuff in the bathroom

but

I think I can do that

YES SHE CALLED BACK

she still has it

 me:  AHHHHHHH

AHHHHHH

 Valerie:  AHHHH OH GOD

HUTCH!

 me:  OURS!

YOURS

 Valerie:  yesssssssssss

 me:  BUT OURS

 Valerie:  (ours)

 me:  I WILL LOVE IT LIKE MY OWN

god-hutch

 Valerie:  dude fer realsies

that's how I feel like about your desk-shelf

We have totally convinced her boyfriend (a friend of my boyfriend) that we're not crazy and our obsession with DIY is just something childless women of our age do. #winning 

honestly

^ is what my living room looks like 97% of the time. From top left to right I'll explain what's going on.
To the left of the fireplace I have two green, square, oldish traveling chests that I loved when I bought them but am going to get rid of soon because I just purchased a piece of furniture for that space. Ancient Apple desktop from my office that we used as a dvd player for awhile. Fireplace, doesn't really produce much warmth, mostly just for looks (lame) and I found a gorgeous old fireback to put in front of it since it's see-through to our bedroom (awkward). To the right of the fireplace is a bookshelf that my boss gave me and I painted blue then lined with white and red polka-dot wrapping paper! I'll do a quick post on that later, it's cute as shit and covered in stuff.
Next layer from left: Gorilla rack that M insisted we use for a TV stand until we wall mount the TV...6 months later it's still an eyesore. Bar stools that belong in the garage but we use for extra seating when people are over. Coffee table that I want to paint the same blue as the bookshelf. Tiny, cute oval nightstand that is acting as an end table with lanky table lamp (both gsale finds).  The couch came with the house, it's microfiber but after Molly rolled in bear poop and then sat on the couch we decided a washable slipcover was necessary. The slipcover is ugly but we let our dogs on the furniture so until we become better pet parents it stays.
Next layer from left: My little telephone table with Baby Redwood and my ancient HP laptop from college. Above Baby Redwood is his cousin Azalea who I saved from certain death and recently put in that hanging planter which was gray until I spray painted it. Dog bed, normally it's in the bedroom but sometimes we bring it out when we have people over/ the only time the dogs don't get free range of the couch. See that giant rug all of this is on? Yeah $1 at a garage sale, it was someone's garage rug, reeked of smoke, and was FILTHY! I spent an entire weekend in the garage with a rented carpet cleaner, then hung it on the Jeep and hosed it off to get it smell-free and it really doesn't smell! Molly and Sasha lounging. Five pairs of Xtra Tuffs, two pairs of Danskos, and some dog toys. I want to build a table to put over that shoe rack/ act as a landing strip so that I stop leaving my stuff on the dining table (M's gripe) but I'm not sure what exactly that's gonna look like, for now it's whatever. I have too many shoes. Oh and in the leftish foreground is one of my fave gsale finds! That wood chair with the ugly green paisley cushions is so comfy and on our rare sunny days it's in the sun all morning. I plan to sand and probably just seal the wood and sew or have a friend sew new red cushion covers.
I told you guys I had no design sense! We're doing what we can. We all really love the living room even though it is smaller than the master bedroom and it can only get better from here.
Whaddaya think? Any plans I listed that I ought to re-think? Anything I'm missing that you're curious about? Any ideas?

hi, my name is Lizzie and I'm addicted to garage sales

HI LIZZIE!

Juneau is a strange place to live for countless reasons. It's a small town that thinks it's a big town that thinks it's a small drinking town with a legislature/tourism/fishing problem. This is not a post where I will try to explain this crazy place to people who haven't spent much time here. One thing to remember about Juneau is that we are landlocked so things only come in by barge or plane and we have to pay way more for crappy furniture and other heavy items at the like, four retail home furnishing stores in town, weak-sauce. So what does a new homeowner with a budget do to fill her home with necessities and other attractive junk? GARAGE SALE ALL THE TIME OHMYGAH! I'm a morning person anyway so when spring arrives I have no problem waking up after a night of late-winter/early-spring drinking to grab coffee and creep on people's shit in the hopes of coming across.... *shhhhh* the good stuff  *shhh*. Yeah, we're crazy just like everyone else. In the early part of the season I build PDFs of all the newspaper and Craigslist ads in order of starting time and location and then I send them to my crew via email to be viewed on iPhones but the designated co-captain. Come August we care waaaaaay less and we end up hitting the sales at 10ish in the hopes of coming across good remnants that have been looked over. This time of year we hope for a good estate sale followed by a handful  of  half-hearted stops at the sales geographically  between us and a second cup of coffee.
Frost adorned the ground when I awoke on Saturday for what was probably the last g-sale of the season which was actually a community garage sale in our local convention center. It. Was. Madness. There really wasn't a lot of the *shhhhh* good stuff  *shhh* but we none of us walked away with empty arms (we're crazy). I was most pleased with my little ceramic elephant which I plan to paint ______ and put on my newly ombre-d hallway table (to be revealed soon).

Whilst sanding her down

Primed! She's so cute!

There's just something you have to love about pachyderms! Is it their trunks? Or do you prefer their long, gorgeous lashes? 

Do you have an un-natural obsession with garage sales? 

Pickled Fiddleheads

Pickled fiddleheads are basically the most amazing pickled thing that has ever existed and I wrote all about how to make them at my dear friend Hannah's blog Kitchen Dance Party.

YUM! 

ACL

Sasha had been favoring her right leg on -and-off for a couple of weeks after she took a tumble while playing fetch but since it wasn't consistent we didn't think it was a vet-worthy issue. Then, after a really good run/play sess she wouldn't walk on it at all- straight to the vet, tear in her ACL. Crap. Pretty swollen, not ruptured, $4k super invasive surgery or 6 weeks of bed rest to see if it heals itself. She's tough and really healthy, and though we feel like we're gambling with her health we want to give her a chance to heal on her own so bed rest it is! To-date it has been one week. It's fortunate that pibbles are already so lazy because she only occasionally needs to be slowed down as she wanders from the bedroom to the living room. She does need to be lifted down into the yard and back up which is difficult because M isn't always around and she weighs 65 lbs but we're managing and she is such a good sport. We lowered our bed so she doesn't need to jump to get into it and our couch is already pretty low. The vet gave us a Rx of Rimadyl which scared me because there's been a class-action lawsuit against Pfizer for side-effects of the drug but we're keeping a close eye on her as I feel that's all we can really do since it's purpose is to treat swelling and act as a pain-killer. We have always given them fish-oil (omega 3 fatty acid) but now they get 1,500 mg of glucosamine w/ cheese after dinner. 

She is also getting the crap spoiled out of her with new toys and lovins. 

It's hard to keep a good dog down, she doesn't know why she has to stay home all the time while Molly gets to go play. 

If Molly doesn't get tons of exercise she'll try to play with Sasha 

How do you handle having an injured dog and a non-injured dog?

telephone table- before and after

I've been itching to refinish something and when this little table friend showed up at our local SalArm for $10 I couldn't resist. One of the things I adore about this table is that the glass inserts are the same hilariously yellow coke-bottle glass that exists in my parent's front doors at home. 

Oh boy it needed some love. (In the back of my Rav)

And what better time to tackle this project than our new fave thing to do on Sundays- D(runk)IY!?! Val and I were supervised by our wonderful and sober manfriends who tackled the belt-sanding so as to not injure our bloody-mary-inebriated little selves. With the belt-sanding of the tops taken care of we spent out time doing the detail sanding. I used Minwax- Sedona Red and love it! I think I'm going to do a few more coats of polyurethane but for now Baby Redwood lives on it and it looks great! 

At home in the living room with the Eivor Curtains. 

Ikea Eivor Curtains

Yucky lace curtains the previous owner left. No privacy and not our style. 

We put a bird on it!

My wonderful Momma texted me one Saturday morning to say that they were going to Ikea and did I want anything. She picked up two packages of the new Eivor curtains for me. They are swanky! I used some iron-on hemming stuff to hem them and did the same for the giant window in the living room. 

2 minus!

The mud-pit could only exist for so long and it's days have finally come to an end! No more muddy paws! 

One of the happiest txt message photos I've ever received from M is this pile of freshly-delivered 2 minus rock

My girls are very helpful, we shoveled and moved around a half-ton of rock. 

Posing on their pile of rock

Progress

It's already been really nice to have the rock in there, we have less clean-up to do in the entry area. The rock isn't the nicest feeling for their little puppy feet but we're going to leave it until spring when we can get some D1 and then topsoil + grass or ground-cover on it. M is really smart and we dug a ditch from the back of the yard, around the hillside to the front on the yard for a drainage ditch to be lined with garden fabric, filled with 2 minus and stapled into a garden fabric and rock burrito.

FENCE!

I was an impatient girl while we waited for our handy-man friend to have time to build our fence so when the time finally came I was ecstatic! In all honesty we took the excavator to the yard June11, 2011 and the fence was finally built the first week of August so that really sucked! Naturally I would have loved to have a nice wood fence all around the property but with Juneau being so wet and the trees not being on my side of the property line we had to do chain-link in the interest of longevity, I will paint the chain link a darker green next summer to blend a little better. 

prepping the mud-pit for fencing

de-branching some of the trees

some fence

the front is wood with two big barn doors for ease of backing a skiff into the yard

a lab in a mud-puddle

yep. 

Molly and I were playing with the chuck-it in the street when she decided to saunter over to the mud puddle that is our side yard. She proceeded to look at it, look at me, look at M, look at the puddle, walk in the mud to the middle, look at us, look at the puddle and then lay right down in the puddle! LABS! She was so overheated that she even started drinking some of the water while I went inside to get my phone. We let her roll around like the little piggy she is and then hosed her down. Bad, dirty, filthy, naughty dog. 

just a little yard work

It might not be evident yet but we love our dogs and spoil them freaking rotten. Our Wooden Home would not be complete without fenced enclosure for said fur-babies so off to Tyler Rental we went to rent an excavator, they didn't have the one we wanted so we got the next size up for free! M and a super awesome friend of his spent a weekend going to town on the sloped, vegetated hillside to make it an easier place to put a fence and to create a more level yard for boat-parking a puppy-playing.  

Sasha watched the whole time to make sure he did it right. 

At the end of the weekend we had found a bunch of big rocks which were placed in our rock wall and we had a very muddy side-yard! 

a man and his garage

He was so happy to have somewhere to put his tools! 

where we came from

Some fun pictures of the apartment we lived in before the purchase of our home. I took these after we had moved all of our stuff out and cleaned:

That was about all of it. Looking from the top of the stairs that's the kitchen and hallway leading into the bedroom. 

The bathroom was tiny and had a sloped ceiling that made me feel so bad for every inch of M's 6'1" body because it sloped right over the toilet. 

The hella narrow stairs to the landing which housed a little chest freezer. 

I loved the little place because it was a 7 minute walk from my office so I was able to walk home for lunch to play with the girls. M hated it because it was tiny (500ish sq ft) and quirky (read: old) but he was a trooper for the whole 9ish months we lived there. I miss the days when I only drove to hockey, the lake and big trips to Costco. M is so much more relaxed now that we not only have serious closet space but a garage to boot! We were not good at living in a small space, we could have tried harder but we knew it was just a stepping stone so it was hard to really be at home there. It was super warm because we were basically in the attic and all the heat rose from the two lower residences. It was super cheap $750/mo. Our landlady was super cool and loved Sasha (our biggest rental hurdle due to her breed) though we never did tell her we got another dog since we moved out shortly thereafter. It was nice to be able to walk home from the bars. It was a safe-zone in case of the zombie apocalypse, you can't really tell but there is a trap door at the top of the stairs which we could have easily weighed down. 

I have fond memories of our last apartment and in the end I was able to pass it along to a really cool girl who still lives there and is the perfect fit for it. 

WOOD!

Seriously, the whole darn thing in covered in wood boards (like paneling but I've been instructed that it's a number of steps up from regular paneling though I don't fully understand how) that makes our house very warm looking but also kind of dark at times. Par example:

This is the living room

This is the master bedroom

Now I don't inherently hate the outdated thing we've got going on in here, the wood is of good quality and I will admit to liking the cabin feel. I must confess that I didn't realize until after moving in that on top of having zero design sense I have no clue how to design around/with all that wood! What would (tehe wood) you do?

two reasons buying a house was necessary

Molly is my blonde spirit animal and Sasha is M's tough but squishy spirit animal. The rental market in Juneau is difficult and even with those two cute mugs we (and everyone else with dogs) struggled to find a suitable abode that was both big enough for our crap and that accepted larger dogs. Rental gripes aside, the time was right to buy and the girls were happy to have some space to stretch their legs.

wherein I met my first house....

It was a whirlwind courting session, some of the characters were crayzay but it all worked out in the end and in May of 2011 I found myself in possession of a wooden home. Yes it looks like a log cabin, no it is not actually a log cabin but in fact an illusion created by the siding. It was the first house I seriously looked at in my home search and I really think it's as perfect as a first house could be. Thank you to Craigslist, my wonderful realtor Sue Nix and Alaska USA Mortgage. We've got some work to do.