Saarinen Dining Table

Many of you are aware that we bought a new dining table as a result of redoing our floors. We went with the Eero Saarinen dining table with marble top. This table required white glove delivery which is a $400 service, don't freak out we got free delivery. When the delivery guys showed up I greeted them and they didn't have their white gloves on yet, no biggie they were in the truck right? Wrong they installed the whole thing in about two minutes and i didn't see any white gloves. The table is amazing in the room and fits just right. It seems small but that is because the finish is so well done that it reflects everything perfectly making the table disappear in the space. The first picture shows this really well, "where did the table go"! We do not have dining chairs yet but we do know what we want, they just need to go on sale again. Enjoy, we do!





*yes these are the new floors, better pics to come as soon as we can see it again!! *
** stay tuned for kitchen updates soon, tiles are in and the cabinets will be installed soon**

New Floors... Check!

The story is this... we ordered a table for our dining room about 10 weeks ago. We bought new flooring about a month and a half ago. We demolished the old floors to make room for the new floors. We thought we had plenty of time until the CALL! The company that was delivering our table was about two weeks earlier then we anticipated. We were able to stall them a little but they finally told us they had to deliver the table. This put our floor installation into high gear. I all ready had the floor torn up and the sub floor replaced so I just had to put down the new stuff. Sounds easy right? Well it wasn't too bad if you don't count the problems with starting the floor, the kinks when you get to vents, the fact that we have a round dining room, and a small coat closet. Other than those few things the floor went in pretty smooth and there are only a few places i wish i had a little more time to rework things.

Here is the finished floor in the raw. Not too bad huh. The room felt so different that at first i wasn't sure i liked it, but it is starting to grow on me and i think it looks great.

"Operation Baby's Room"

We bought new hardwood flooring for the living room a few weeks ago. This saturday I decided was time to begin tearing up the old floor. Many people who have visited our home have questioned the need to do this, as the floors didn't look that bad despite the color and some large black stains. Well little did they know that while the floors on top were ok it was what was under them that scared us. Take a look:
Doesn't look so bad huh! I think these will stay.

Hmmmm, doesn't look like these are going to stay, as a matter of fact i know the subflooring here is completely coming out. This is the trouble area in the room. Since we moved in our dining room has had "soft" spots that scared visitors and Randi. Something about falling through... blah blah blah. So i wouldn't fall through i had a piece of plywood i would sit on.




This room is unique as half of it is technically out side the foundation of the house. I am standing on the load bearing wall of the basement here, tricky footing.

And finally the surprise... tah dah!!! Here is where the baby will stay. We think this is a perfect location, and we get to keep the guest bedroom for guest... come one come all! This room is located next to the kitchen so we can just throw scarps down to the baby. also because it is fully contained their is no way of escape. finally the dirt floor we think will help us save money on diapers... poop all you want its dirt! * For those that don't know me i am kidding... Randi is actually moving down here.

And here is the dining room without a subfloor. I think the value of the house just tripled, we are getting good at this renovation thing. Stay tuned more to come in the following weeks.

"Built In" Phase 2

The shelf looks nice with just one coat of primer. Randi worked really hard last night and made good progress. It blends with the wall real nice and you almost don't realize it is there. We will be doing a semi-gloss white as the paint color so it will "pop' a little with the light. The walls will eventually be painted a light grey almost white so there will be a little contrast between the shelf and wall.

"Built In"

Well a simple saturday project has finally come to an end. We were only suppose to clean up and repaint the old built in book shelf making the project short and only to take on saturday. Turns out it didn't want to cooperate and we ended up tearing it out and had a huge hole in the wall for about two months now. slowly we did a little here and there and finally being tired of the mess finished building a new book shelf. we are excited and ready to get all of our books off the floor. Randi is in the process of painting it.





The idea is that the book shelf be a continuation of the wall. We borrowed a planer and created a 1 1/2" boarder with 3/4" shelves that are all flush. It is really clean due to the shleves being placed into a dato. Let's see if Randi can make it nice with a little paint.

Green Thumb

We have finished yet another project on the long list of things to do. Our garden is planted and ready to produce some nice vegetables. Lets hope sun can reach into the depths of our backyard. We planted strawberries, celery, zucchini, onion, peppers, beans, and tomatoes. We ran out of room in our planters so no carrots or potatoes. Maybe we can get those next year. We will test our green thumbs in the persuit of not having to buy vegetables. Lets hope it works.

GRASS, and not the kind you smoke, well i guess you could

So we planted some grass seed about a month ago. The interesting thing is we live under five of the biggest trees you have ever seen. We are not talking redwoods but these things are huge. While we love our trees they do cause a slight problem. Our house lives in shade for half of the year and nothing really grows in the shade. We bought some shady grass seed hoping that it would grow and it did. It is not as thick as we would like but i think that will just take some time. Randi also mowed it last night which was her first time ever mowing, and it looks really good. So I present to you our grass.