Resaling!

So, if you know us, you know I don't like to pay much for things.  Which is a bummer, because we also like things that are nice! What is a girl to do?

She's going to scour the internet and her surroundings for the best quality she can find, and only occasionally shell out for fancy stuff.  Also, she's going to marry up.  Kidding! Alex was doing ok but not a fancy man when we met and got situated.  I assure you, can show some photos of his clothing choices.

Anyways, this place does not have great storage for entertaining, linens, multiple seasons of clothing to suit winters of -40 and summers of 90+ humidity, so we've been getting creative. After a lunch with some of the best ladies in town, I wandered on further out to a mythical resale shop espoused by Kim and Scott of Yellow Brick Home, Jubilee.  No, I didn't take Alex. Then, he would have to tell me no in person (worse for him) and would also have the ability to tell me no (worse for me). And would have taken up a whole seat in the car!

I was on the hunt for a hutch for the dining room, to help in storing serving pieces and glassware.  Our wall shelves are great, but I'm not sold on storing our wedding flutes, antique wine glasses, and just generally anything we need to drink from on a shelf that is suspended in air and has not passed its trial period yet.  I found a number, and emailed my aunt at her work address to show the photos.  RE: IMPORTANT!  She must be ready to commit me.

Anyways, I narrowed it down to things that would fit on a specific wall, and that were tall or very tall.  One of my only tried and true tips: the taller the better, for storage in small spaces.  After a lot of back and forth with my aunt for advice and Alex for final say, I came away with way more than the hutch.  Whoops!

The other things were all of good use: a wooden stepstool that I am currently refinishing to dedicate for use in our closet/for Ny to get up on the bed, two rocking arm chairs that we have been trying to figure out the future of (so comfy!!), and a sleeper sofa that was a bust space wise but worked out for our friend Andy.  However, 3 out of 4, or 4 out of 5, is not a bad success rate.  The chairs have been living in the back two feet of our garage space since March, but we'll figure it out eventually.

When it came home, I was excited like a small child with a new toy, and we immediately dismantled our older oak hutch to move elsewhere.  I cleaned out the drawers and all of the interior surfaces with a quick furniture polish - it was in such good shape, no refinishing was required.

We moved it to the intended wall, where it fit almost perfectly, because I had finally wised up and took measurements during shopping! I lined the drawers and loaded it up with our wine glasses, table linens, and dish towels immediately. The lower cabinet doors became a home for our canned foods from last summer - so much room!

We did choose to do a couple of things to tune the hutch up.  First, the upper cabinet was missing the glass shelves within the side cabinets.  I made a cardboard template to get the exact measurements for the unique trapezoidal shape, and Ny and I took it to our favorite, Kim's Clarendon Hardware.

John had the glass cut within the day, and at ~$12 for the glass and cuts, this added four additional shelves of space for wine glasses, etc.  We also picked up two bulbs of the correct size at Kim's as they had a special base, and found out that the lights in the upper cabinet were actually on a dimmer - so fancy!







I wanted to love the hutch in its original state, so much - but the hardware finally got to me and I took to the internet.  We did like the golden tone of the original with the red undertones in its wood, so opted for a deep bronze to replace the drawer pulls and cabinet handles.

As the drawer pulls were spaced 3", it was easiest to just choose a style in that size.  Ultimately, we ended up back at Amazon for these Lombard Franklin Brass pulls, which were listed as ten for $17, and added onto our next order.  We loved the first package in person, so went ahead and ordered a second set of ten and yet another for an upcoming project.

A Nest for our Nest

When we bought this condo, we made a deal that we would not remove anything that was in good working order.  This was determined when our kitchen faucet started leaking, and Jenn wanted a new one, but knew it shouldn't happen if it could be fixed.  Alex kindly pointed out that it could be fixed.

So, our existing thermostat received exposure from the sunniest area in our home, and would occasionally read 80 degrees in, you know, December, which meant we would have no heat in any other rooms of the house.  Below is the best photo I could find of the previous setup.  If I had holed up in our hallway of a kitchen, that was no big deal because it was probably 70+ in there anyways, but if we were anywhere else it was not so great and Nyobi and I just huddled under the blankets.  Come to think of it, why did I push to change this arrangement?

The breaking point for me was mid-January, when the thermostat read 73 but the house had to have been 65. So I cranked it up to 74.  When the sun went down, I turned it back to a normal temperature and went about my life.  We experienced some awesomely hot evenings of - 74 (!!!) for the next week or so, which really means I woke up burning up (never happens) and Alex just suffered in his sleep.  It was programmable, and could have been addressed in that way, but we were not going to be able to do anything about the sun, other than moving it to another wall, which would have been even worse because the opposite side of the wall is the office which is already all kinds of hard to use with the fuse box.  Enough, we said.

We ordered a Nest.

It is so shiny and beautiful and perfect and has an app and we can manage the temp from anywhere with it.  That alone is worthwhile, as evidenced by the week I was recently holed up in bed sick.

 It also "learns" our habits and will figure out that, no, people who sleep with a dog and a cat and a good blanket do not need it to be 74 in the night, so even the cold person wakes up sweating.  And, even if the learning did not happen, it would be helpful because there is an option that we can turn on and it ignores a turn of "Sun Beats Down" (yes, a nerdy board game reference).

I also researched online, and learned that utility companies can offer a rebate on a new thermostat, which helped to soften the blow.  Our electric company provides a substantial rebate of $100, and our gas company does as well, only $20, but we are going to heat no matter what, so they have us.  Given that I found the Nest on Amazon for $247, that's almost half of the cost, for what we really wanted.

For anyone considering a new thermostat, we also looked into the Ecobee smart thermostat, but our wiring was not appropriate.  We needed a different power supply set up than our current HVAC wiring allowed, and it would have required another fix which seems really silly.  No additional fixes for our fix, please.  You can learn about this on both the  Ecobee and Nest websites.

I probably could have learned some cheats to work out the thermostat properly, but it just wasn't worth it to us as we plan to live here long-term, and a huge part of why we DIY is to improve our life and home without breaking the bank when we can, so we can budget out for larger needs that we find appropriate.  There's also no one who would put up with these working conditions, I mean cats and food stuff everywhere at any given time, but, hey, we have to make do with what we can.

Dining Room Wall Shelving

When we decided to straighten out the dining room, we found a number of options available.  Brackets like these are very popular around the internet, but I don't like the shiny, angular metal for some reason and resisted it.

I fell pretty hard for some aged metal brackets from Anthropologie and Rejuvenation (left), then realized we would need a small fortune to support the length of shelves we were looking to add.  By the time we really researched these, some birch boards were already living in our home and we've chosen to let them hang out rent-free until they can find a job.  We also purchased some metal L-brackets at one point that I planned to paint and then backed away from because it's not possible to buy spray paint in the City of Chicago, (thanks Obama! err, graffiti artists) so would have to trek out to a suburb, the Rustoleum paint we could find was not my real choice of color, oh and I realized I just didn't want to do it.

In the midst of the searches, something clicked and I remembered a project I had seen on a blog we were happy to find this year.  The genius DIY folks at Yellow Brick Home built super sturdy shelves for tool storage, basically 500% heavier than what we would be putting on dining room shelving (and also very similar to our bed frame) so we adapted their plans to our needs.  You should really look at their project for proper instructions, I am nowhere near as exact in this process as I should be.

They used 2x4s to create a frame to fit inside workroom, anchored the frame into the wall studs on three sides, covered both sides of the shelves in plywood and added a face to the front surface, and finished them.  We had only one corner to work with, but significantly smaller scale items, so used 2x2s for framing, anchored into the long wall's studs and used the perpendicular wall for a bit of added support, and framed with some birch that was hanging out unemployed.  We planned it! No, sometimes it just seems like it though.

So everyone knows, we do lots of our work at night when we are supposed to be enjoying our 20s young adulthood.  The entire wall was 8 feet, so we decided to build shelves that were 7 feet long and roughly 8 inches deep.  The first shelf's frame portion was actually cut and built the same night the desk was anti-frankensteined and Alex put it up while I made food a thing.  If you spy, with your little eye, a different looking thermostat, you get a prize! And so did we.  The joy of properly managing our heat.  More on that later.

The following night, Alex was a total genius and used the first existing frame as a ledge to cut down the remaining studs.  #smallhomeproblems We used the remainder of the length and some scraps to cut off additional supports, slightly less than 5 inches each.  Our drill/driver has two rechargeable batteries, but due to the heavy ineffective use by his wingman, we had to call it to charge them and leave the project for a third evening.

Sweet Alex was kind enough to pick work on this back up while I stayed out and about with my dear friend Abbie for birthday lunch and drinks and general Andersonville-ing until 630 (after sponsoring a mini-spa day, to boot!).  I came home and crashed hard, and when I came out, this all had happened.  Well, the shelves had ;) Easily one of the most useful birthday endeavors I have ever seen.  There will be better photos in the future, but we were so excited this was just snapped off on my phone.  Jane was excited we had gotten a lot of our silly human things off of her table, so I did not crop the lower mess out.

We tried a new wood finish for these shelves, and I am so excited about it.  It's Varathane 3x wood stain in Worn Navy.  I prepped the plywood surfaces by sanding down the edges and better flat surface, then gave two coats of Minwax wood conditioner and one coat of the blue stain.  All six panels were done in a night, and we let them dry for a day or two before he assembled all the pieces.  The edging planks were not primed, but they were also a better quality wood and took the stain more evenly than the plywood would have.

I grabbed the 2x2s while I stopped into Ace for some refinishing products (yet another adventure, to be sure) and spent about $30 on them.  The plywood we used was technically underlayment, birch, and one 4'x8' sheet (cut into sixths lengthwise) was about $40.  The long screws and wood conditioner were onhand already, and a new staining brush and the stain ran under $15 together.  So, the whole set of shelves for about $85 seems like a reasonable cost for storage we don't have to move to clean under and nearly doubling our surface space, from 8.75 sq ft to 16.

Dining and office updates

During the planning phase of the kitchen refresh, we tested out a number of colors.  I usually do some narrowing of the field, then Alex looks things over and we discuss and I harass family members for help etc. These six samples were the result of two rounds of sample acquisition and I am so glad we took the time to live with them a bit before taking the plunges.

Alex was kind enough to stop at HD for the paint and it's been kind of hanging out around our place since September, to be honest.  We chose the middle of the top row for the kitchen, and the far left of the lower row for the dining room and potentially other areas.  I put up swatches of the two around the rooms we thought might coordinate, and we decided that the dining room and office could both be yellow to help them feel larger and keep us energized.

We decided to add some wall shelving and to downsize furniture wise in both of these rooms, and plotted out a course of attack.  We had a lovely baker's rack in the dining room that held plants, teas, and serving dishes, but it took up over 16 inches of floor space depth wise, and was 3 feet long.  Our dining table is non-negotiable in this room, and hutch holds our wine glasses, adult beverages, and heavy jars of canned foods, so we decided the rack was the best option to leave.  Craigslist turned up no buyer, so it was picked up by the kind folks at the Brown Elephant, a resale shop we love (ok, Jenn loves, Alex cringes when he is drug into) that benefits a great medical group.

The office contained a desk our movers called "Big Bertha" and took all four seriously strong men to move it.  I loved it for storage capacity, but finally had to admit there was just not room for it in our 11X12 office that serves as Nyobi's entrance and contains the exterior door as well as access to the furnace in our utility space and our fuse box is in the middle of a wall. I would spend hours organizing the workspace, only to find it buried a day or two later and we just couldn't justify the space occupied (44 inches wide, 24 deep) for how little it was being used.  We had some wall-mountable cabinets stacked on top of the desk and decided to pull the trigger and hang them with the exit of the desk.

I list these kind of related projects together because this is really what Alex has to work with.  I insisted we do all of these basically at the same time, my brain insisted we paint the walls before hanging these new shelving options, but we had to dispose of the desk before that could happen.  We spent several hours disassembling drawer mounts for potential reuse, and smaller subsections from the large frame.  We had also ordered a really cool little circular saw for small cutting jobs, and it made short work of cutting some of the non-cutting surfaces, and made friends with our beautiful shop vac.  After these pieces were removed, we stacked up the pieces on our deck, hillbilly style, and got to work prepping for paint.

To the left is the first wall in our dining room - without anything else going on it is BRIGHT and sunny in daylight.  The baker's rack had been living in the corner next to the window for reference.  The two photos to the right are of the office (at night), obviously the curtains will be changed out and we have some additional plans for the middle of the room that don't involve the remnants of a desk Alex describes as having been "constructed through use of occult forces." 







A lot more has been happening, but this is the kind of non-exciting, unglamorous preparation that goes into our decisions and we wanted to put it out there that our place is often in disarray while we work on things.  Painting is not high on Alex's list of fun activities, but it is such a game-changer on space and we are on a mission to get the lame flipper gray out of here and on with our lives.