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!

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