Bears love blueberries

Our Bear loves loves loves to eat blueberries off the bush 

rooooooof!

 Biggest weight lifted off our shoulders after last week! When we bought our home last year we knew it needed a new roof, it was part of the negotiation process. It didn't have to be done last year but it really needed to get done before this upcoming winter but we've had very few instances of consecutive days of not-rain, so we were stressing. Hard!
Finally the weather report  said we'd have 5 days of high clouds! Commence the scramble to gather M's buddies and the rest of the supplies! Estimates for our roof were coming in at $7-12k and that's simply unacceptable, so my handsome M took a week off work and called in some favors/wonderful friends and got to work ripping the old shingles off and laying tar paper.

My job was to clean all of the debris that didn't make it into the flat-bed

 Handsome men putting the tar paper down. M replaced the chimney and the bathroom vent. 

Nearly completed backside 

The previous roof lacked a vent for proper moisture management

By borrowing a flatbed truck from work for debris, using friends as labor, and calling in the pros (still friends of ACE) to lay shingles/install the roof vent we ended up coming out under the lowest estimate! It did start sprinkling the evening after the tar paper was completed and then start pouring right when I finished cleaning up but we live in a rain forest so whaddaya gonna do?! It feels soooo good to know that this huge, expensive project is done and it only took 5 days! 

We used Malarky brand Alaskan shingles in Antique Brown.

a bear sitting on a bug

clearly Bug was in Bear's spot and that would not stand man.

Bedroom: done!

Woooo! Our master bedroom is painted! It started off as quality-but-dated tongue and groove (from the 80s don't get all worked up) paneling and turned into something light and airy. Alaska is a dark and dreary place sometimes, a winter of the wood was quite enough of that. Don't let anyone tell you that prepping to paint a paneled wall is easy though! Between the boards were spaces anywhere from 1/8" to 3/4" wide and, well, knotty pine is, knotty! Observe:

Before. The messy chair corner by the fireplace.

Before. Note the boring, ugly low n' long dresser mentioned in Green Dresser

During. Handsome M caulking between the boards

Before. Huge knots in the wall that took like two tablespoons of filler to fill. 

After! There's ol' green dresser stage left. 

We love it! It's so much lighter throughout the day and it doesn't feel like a cave at night. We found a new bed and nightstand so the other half of the bedroom reveal will occur at a later date. We ended up going through a tub of Minwax wood filler, a case.5 of _______ caulk, 1.5 gallons of Killz Fresh Start Low VOC primer (the wood was thirsty) and 3/4 of a gallon of Benjamin Moore- Natural Cream (get your mind out of the gutter). I realized early on that I hate painters tape so I got after it with my edging tool and a wet rag. This was actually completed back in April after working on it for almost two months. I had read reports of painted wood paneling "bleeding" through the primer and paint, this has not happened to us, probably because I used Killz Fresh Start. Other views of the bedroom to come later!

Green Dresser

 I bought this dresser the summer I moved into my first apartment out of college housing. It was a standard rainy saturday and I was garage sale-ing with my then-boyfriend who had a giant truck. Having just returned from three quarters at Southern Oregon University and having still not gained my strength back from my severely broken left arm I was stoked to have someone to help me furnish my small bedroom. The back of this poor dresser was sticking halfway out from under the car-port and was a little wet but I paid the guy like $10 for it and watched my then-boyfriend load and unload it into my apartment where it sat for two years. That boyfriend moved out of the picture and this dresser moved through two apartments with myself and my current boyfriend before moving with us into our wooden home and being relegated to the guest room. Until now.
This tallboy just got a shot of Behr- Chlorophyl inspired by Yellow Brick Home's entry wall, I didn't get a paint chip, sample or even think about it for more than the time between when I got the wild hair to paint it (at work, where all of my best diy ideas are hatched) and the time I got to Home Depot- I just painted. It felt goooood. We had been renting our spare room to a friend and he had finished moving his crap out a couple of days prior when the thought occurred to me that I prefer the tallboy to our low-n-long free, boring dresser. I was able to take over the spare bedroom for some warm, not-garage painting!

Before

During

After

M was skeptical when I told him what I was doing but even he said he loves it! I primed with Killz Fresh Start Low VOC that I had on hand, slapped on a couple of coats over two days of the green paint which I got a small can of, overall a cheap diy, I'll eventually replace the hardware.  This also serves as a little teaser if you look behind the dresser in that last picture ;)

new/used stress-effing-less

Lookit him! He's so handsome and Jeep Spice (interior color) colored and comfy, from what I can see it looks like he's the Orion model! He's the single most expensive thing in our house at a whopping $900 but holy crap my working man looks so happy sitting there all leaned back with his feets up!

It's an admittedly awful place to stick him but we've been too busy to re-arrange the room to accomodate him or really arrange the furniture in the living room in any attractive configuration whatsoever. Maybe one day, the current setup allows for maximum puppy zoomies and tugging wars plus I think we just need a new, smaller couch.

Ever since we moved in M has been hoping for a recliner but we all know that traditional recliners are clunky and ugly so we couldn't settle for any old recliner. I promised him for xmas that we'd find him a recliner and go halvesies on it. I actually found this guy on CL one week and emailed the seller right away to no response, alas, they had it posted for $500 so of course someone must have snapped it up. Not so! They must have seen the crazy responses from folks in town and chosen to take him to our local consignment shop where the fates aligned about a week after first laying eyes on him. It was just me in the shop when I saw him so I had the clerk put a "sold" sign on him and call M right away, only then did I realize that the shop had upped the price to $900! We both went in the next day, M was so happy with the chair that we just couldn't say no even with the nearly doubled price tag, we took him home. Fortunately I sell my old clothes at this same shop so I had nearly $100 in credit and a 15% off coupon so we did alright considering new stressless recliners go for $2,500. He's in great shape, one tiny rip in the ottoman. We keep our Mexican blanket and the upside-down ottoman on him when not in use, to keep the girls and their scratchy nails off. So rad!

quilled

Damn blonde dog got into a porcupine. Poor little thing. We're thankful for aunties Mags and Val for helping remove the pokey things. This was my first experience with a dog getting whacked by a porcupine and it was Molly's too. It's a good thing she's kind of timid around new friends because the quills didn't end up being lodged too far in there, indicative of a warning brush rather than a full-on swipe. Maybe she learned her lesson the first time? We hope so!

piano bench

My boss and his wife moved out of their house to do a complete gut and remodel right when we bought our house so we scored some rad stuff for freesies! Like this piano bench.

 

Before

Before

                                        

After 

After

This little friend obviously needed a lot of work. I sanded the top smooth, used wood filler to fill the inside of the top and other nicks. I had stain leftover from cirque giraffe desk and paint leftover from the blue bookshelf in the living room so this project took a few hours of active time and two days of drying time but was otherwise completely free!  I was using all of my paint brushes so I ended up staining it with a foam brush that I guess had been used with glitter at some point so it may have a little bit of barely-noticible glitter in the stain/varnish-oops!

blue roll-top desky, cabinet thing

We have a rad fireplace in our living room as seen in this post but it left this weird-sized space to the left. I had measured the space one day and two days later this baby showed up on craigslist and she's just the right width and height! 

 Before

She was in super good shape and the guy held onto her for me until I could get Val's boyfriend to meet me out there with his truck since my man works out of town a lot. I paid $100 and stuck her in the garage. Even though she was in good shape you may have noticed that she started off as oak and we already have more wood than we know what to do with, so I opted to stain her, over the course of four months (I know, I got lots of shit for that from my man). I used Minwax Ocean Blue stain and the water-based polycrylic finish. Val and I talked about her here, dubbing her "cirque de giraffe desk".This took a lot of sanding and since she was only my second staining job  after the red telephone table there are some spots that I could have gotten better, like in the roll top, but she looks great in the space! 

During 

After

This was a huge project that was perfect for our long Alaskan winter. She fits the space super well, stores our limited collection of DVDs and my art supplies. She adds some nice gentle contrast to all the wood and evens out the blue bookcase on the other side of the fireplace. 

closet re-do

Quick and dirty closet reno. Both bedrooms have double closets so that's rad but I never really learned how to organize/maintain my closet so it quickly looked like this:

Before

No worries though! I/ME/ALL BY MYSELF purchased 3 6' pine boards, sanded, painted and hung them. Okay so I actually hung them twice, we all know what happens when you don't check to make sure the brackets are screwed into the stud- durrrrr. Everything came crashing down, the pups and I were out of the house so nobody was hurt. 

After

There's a top shelf about 1 foot from the ceiling which I put shoe boxes with mementos and random holiday stuff on, it's out of the way and awesome. I'm 5'10" so the super high rod is perfect for me, gives my dresses room and I have two standard canvas shoe shelves hung from the rod. My pants and skirts are stacked on that second shelf. Seven canvas drawer/boxes hold clutches and belts, tank tops, scarves, tights and leggings, hats, and excess derby shit. My boots live on the ground with my derby bag.
I had the BM Super White paint, I re-used the original rod, spent about $30 on new brackets, the wood was $20ish, the canvas drawer/boxes were $5 each so $35. A place for everything. Pretty good!