What goes up must come down

I realize that we have been painfully bad stewards of the South City Lion Forum, but we will try to get better. I've been successfully putting my clothes in the hamper for the last couple of months, so maybe this is the next project towards self-improvement. What has become completely apparent about working on the house, is that it is a labor of love, and quite frankly sometimes hate. I would not, by any stretch of the imagination, suggest undergoing an admittedly minor rehab while one of the partnership is going to grad school - just don't. You think you have time, but you don't, or if you do have time, you want nothing more than to lay on the bed and watch endless hours of How It's Made on Netflix, not remove wall paper, paint or do other activities.

That being said, I am now on summer break, so I can spend time doing those things. (How It's Made still tries to call my name though.) This weekend Greg was out of town and I continued the seemingly unending task of removing wallpaper. Currently we are working on the living and dining room because I would like to have a living room on my 30th birthday, which incidentally is the third anniversary of moving into the house.

Initially the plan was to remove the wallpaper on the walls and leave the fairly innocuous wallpaper on the ceiling and simply paint over it. Well, sadly the wallpaper has other ideas. The ceiling wallpaper (ceilingpaper?) has decide on its own to come off in pieces as a result of the residual steam from the removal process. However, I am proud to say that the walls of the dining room with the exception of a very small piece above the buffet are without wallpaper. (As mentioned, Greg was out of town and there was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to move that by myself.) Now we get to begin the process of patching the walls and finally paint!

My 30th birthday is in less than 3 months, and I've been quite reflective as of late. I was thinking about this reflection as I removed wallpaper, uncovering layers of colorful paint in addition to the wallpaper. I was thinking about how much has happened in our house over its lifetime, and how each of the families that have lived in it have left their mark-- mid century style facade and fireplace, wood paneling in the basement, tiles in the entryway. Now we are making our marks on the house. Some of those marks are made by undoing, and some can be easily changed or removed, but at the same time we are continuing the life of the house. And I remember why we fell in love with this house. As things get closer to how they will be, I am filled with increasing excitement and I can't wait to see the results.

And we're back!

After a long time, we are back! (Yes, yes, we realize it's more than a year since we posted anything.)

I just finished my fourth semester of my master's degree program, and Greg and I are gearing up for what we hope to be a highly productive summer.

Here is a little bit of what is in store:

• Finishing the office
• Remove the remaining wallpaper in the living and dining rooms
• Begin patching the walls in the living and dining rooms
• Hopefully paint the walls and ceilings in the living and dining rooms
• Continue to work outside and make improvements
• Other odds and ends around the house

Now, like event dates and sales, all of these things are subject to change, but we hope to keep you, our friends and family, up on all of our home improvement activities.

I'll post some pictures of the office up to this point over the weekend, as well as some smaller projects we have worked on since the last post, oh so long ago.

It's go time!

The events reported in this blog actually happend awhile ago, but we have been so busy the last couple of months that neither of us got around to updating the blog. So, without further ado, THE GREAT CARPET AND CEILING TEAR OUT 2010:

So far so good. Carpet pulls up revealing the underlying pad to be intact. Our friend Chris, who is expert in flooring, told us he thought the carpet was probably laid in about 1990, making it much newer than we originally though.

Once the carpet and pad were out, our friends helped us pull up the tack strips. Chris Gloriod in particular attacked them with great determination! Go Get 'Em Chirs!

Next we attacked the drop ceilings. Luckily they make special drill bits to remove the anchors from which the selling support grid was suspended. Even with the special bit it took a little time and a few trips up and down the ladder to get all the anchors out.

The good luck streak continued as the valances slid easily off the tops of the windows.

The floors are in need of a little work, but over all are in pretty good shape!

At the end of the day the crew celebrated a job well done.

Greg

Let there be light!

Little did my parents know when they gave us a Lowe's gift card for Christmas, that installation would be included.

First a little background:Our basement was terribly dark and dingy, but so cool! When we first looked at the house we thought the house was really cool and probably still would have put an offer on it, but then we went to the basement...and we found a 1960's rec room complete with built in cabinets, a perfect alcove for our television, and a wet bar with pass-through window! We've put most of the furniture that occupied our living and dining rooms at our apartment into the basement (now known as Underground Grandma's-I'll explain below) to create a cool rec room vibe, and right now we spend a considerable amount of time down here. Which was fine, except it was really, really dark down here! There were three small florescent lights down here, which Greg named the epilepsy lights because they were constantly blinking and one small fixture, which was worst of all, in Husker Corner.

We purchased new fancy light fixtures a few weeks ago and when my parents were in town last weekend bringing my stuff from their basement, my dad installed and taught me how to install light fixtures.

The difference is unbelievably drastic. It's a real room down here now. Not just a dingy basement!

Before-with all the lights on I should point out:

(All the before pictures were taken by our wonderful Realtor Christopher Thiemet. Thanks, Christopher!)

Now (not quite ready for "After," but we're getting there):

So...Underground Grandma's is a reference to The Simpson's Episode Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky. When the documentary film maker asks Ralph Wiggum what he'll be doing in 7 years he says:

And for some reason Greg and I the decided that's what our basement/bar/rec room/lounge was going to be called. Go figure.

-Elena

Elena's New Toy

So as I sit here multi-tasking (laundry, rabbit-bonding, Iowa-game-watching) I thought, this is a great time to blog! Of course, my friends and family, don't get to used to this regularity of posts; we make no promises.

We actually made more progress this last weekend than I think we've made the entire 3 1/2 months we've lived in the house. We put a lot of stuff away, and our basement is actually starting to look like a room instead of a dumping ground. (Except for the pile of boxes and recyclables that it is to cold to bring ourselves to carry out to the alley!)

In addition to Husker Corner, I replaced the stage-coach fabric on the back of the bar with a sixties inspired blue and green polka dot pattern. In the process I broke one of the glass shelves,

so we have to replace not 1 glass shelf, but 2. The lone shelf has a few glasses on it, but I didn't want to load it up because soon (this weekend?) we are going to replace the light fixtures in the basement. Currently there are dim (to say the least) florescent bulbs. Sunday we went to Lowe's with our Christmas gift cards burning a hole in our collective pocket and purchase 4 new halogen track-light fixtures to replace them.

At the same time as we were buying the lights, we also purchased our wall-paper steamer. To quote a texting tween OMG!

This thing is fantastic! I had scraped away for several days at a section of wallpaper when we first moved in, but it was very slow going, and I was a little concerned about what we'd gotten ourselves into. When I did get pieces to come off, there was a lot of pieces left behind. With the steamer though, in less than an hour I cleared an area larger than what took me several days! It's pretty incredible, and to top it off, it sounds like Darth Vader.

It does take a while to warm up, and as the old adage goes, a watched steamer never boils. Once it gets going though, man, we're in business.

I told Greg, I don't want to make any grand pronouncements, but the wallpaper removal, may not be as bad as I thought. Now we just need a second steamer, so we can have his-and-hers models.

-Elena

The Lagomorph Lounge

I love having rabbits, and not just because people look at me like I have four heads when they find out that my husband and I have four rabbits instead of dogs and cats. They are each very unique and lovable in their own way. I wouldn't trade them the world!

Since we've moved into the new house, the rabbits have their own room. At the back of the house was a small sewing room for Mrs. M., but since we don't sew, it seemed like a good room for the buns. They have everything a rabbit could possibly want: a mini-fridge to keep lettuce, room for tubs full of hay, a gate to keep

out coyotes, a rug for people to sit on when they hang out, and a long,

carpeted hallway on the other side of

the gate that is great to run and jump

on!

For the first several months, the

large rabbits had been sharing a

dog crate, which was half of the space they had at the apartment. (We called it the "rabbitat.") Finally, once the semester was over, I fashioned them a fancy new cage out of those cheap metal squares you use to make really bad bookshelves when you're in college. It turns our they make exceptional rabbit cages! It even has a loft where they can sit and admire their lovely new digs!

The little rabbits also live in the Lagomorph Lounge. They live in more of a high rise condo than the larger rabbits do, which is fine with them because even though they are supposed to be bond mates, they aren't so sure about each other a lot of the time. This way they don't have to look at one another!

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting our rabbits in person (in rabbit?) I thought I would do a quick primer on our furry children.

Thor is our mini-lop, although at almost 8

pounds, he's hardly mini! He has a bad attitude, but loves to have Greg or Elena rub behind his ears. He isn't a fan of people named Kevin though. Just doesn't trust them.

Valkyrie is Thor's bond mate. They've been together for close to

three years now. Vali is the opposite of Thor. Where he is aggresive she is sweet as can be, although she is also very timid when it comes to meeting new people. She can hold her own against Thor though when it comes to making sure she gets her share of treats!

Last September, following the confiscation of literally hundreds of animals

from a hoarder in southern Missouri, we were going to foster Odin,

but quickly fell completely in love with this tiny three pound rabbit and

decided that he had to live with us! Since then he's been nothing but sweet, but some of the damage of his previous life still shows. He is missing several toes and he is sometimes reclusive. He loves giving kisses and sitting on shoulders where he watches the world go by. Since we've moved into the house, he's started binkying (a bunny happy dance) and seems to be adjusting well.

We decided Odin needed a friend, so about a year ago we adopted Frigga. She is the youngest rabbit and loves to play. She throws her toys into her water bowl or out of the side of her cage. She loves to cuddle and be loved! She was a fabulous addition; now she and Odin just need to be friends!

We adopted everyone but Thor through the Missouri House Rabbit Society, and have been so thankful with the information we've learned from them. People frequently think that rabbits are just large gerbils, but they take a lot of attention and love. They can live to be 12 years old. (Thor and Vali are both around five.) In order to live that long they need proper care and regular vet visits. (Which isn't cheap, they get charged a premium because they are "exotic.")

Our rabbits have adjusted to their new homes and hopefully will be unaware of everything else that's going on around them-like removing wallpaper. Tomorrow (hopefully) I'll write about my new toy: the wallpaper steamer!

Go Big Red! Husker Corner!

I have been reading a lot of Martha Stewart lately, and one of the thing she suggests is that whenever you move into a new house, the first thing you should do is make sure that everyone who walks into you basement knows how much you love the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

So this afternoon Elena and I began to set up, drum roll please, Husker Corner!

One of the first things we did was to take my Memorial Stadium wall mural that use to hang in my bedroom at my parents house, and hang it on the wall of the furnace room.

Next we began to arrange my modest collection of Husker memorabilia on the opposite wall.

I tried to figure out how to get this post to play the fight song, but I was not web savvy enough. (1/20/09- Elena is, see below:)

Never the less Husker Corner is well underway and should be looking great next year when Big Red makes a run at the Big XII title.

More from hskrzfan34 at Myxer

-Greg

I get my life back (for five weeks!)

So the first semester of grad school is over. For the next several weeks (school starts again on January 19th) we are going to get lots done around the house. Today the plan is to construct a new enclosure for Thor and Valkyrie- I'll upload pics when its done- and to work on the office. If Greg ever gets up that is.

We're going to start attacking the living/dining rooms once we get back from Christmas in Iowa. Carpet, drop ceilings, wallpaper, your days are numbered.

We got new, fancy laptops for Christmas so we'll upload lots of pictures because I know that's really what everyone wants to see.

Bear with us

Elena has been very busy with school, so there hasn't been much to report on lately, but with semester break coming up we hope to have lots of exciting new things to post about. Please bear with us.

Eight chairs (and a table) in search of a dining room

Progress on the renovation has been a bit slow the last month with Elena in school two nights a week and various other distractions. We did however find a nice dining room set which should look good in the eventual dining room. We were killing some time at The Future Antiques when we came across a very nice Danish Modern style table and chairs.

We both like the mid century modern style and plan to use it as a jumping off point for the overall design of the living room and dining room. We also have some more eclectic pieces we plan to use. The goal is to give the rooms a clean modern look overall, without furnishing them solely in mid century pieces to the point where it looks like a set from Mad Men.

It felt a bit impulsive to make such a large purchase on the spot. But the set was in such good shape we didn't want to risk missing it, as it's unlikely we would be able to find another one like it. Not only did it have all eight original chairs (not all are pictured) as well as all the leaves, but a couple of days after we got it home the store called and told us the woman they had bought it from had found the pads for the top of the table and had dropped them off. We went over and picked them up the next weekend, under the condition that I was not allowed to buy anything else. So now we have some furniture, now we just need to make a room to put it in.

The Neighborhood

The neighborhood we bought our house in is very much a neighborhood of transition. There are definitely problems in our neighborhood, but there are lots of good things too. Ultimately it was because of those good things that we purchased where we did. The housing stock is very unique and there is a large variety of single family houses of different sizes, two-family and other houses. We've met fabulous people who care about the neighborhood as we do. There are business owners in their area who are investing to make this an inticing place to be.

It was largely because of our involvement in two political campaigns beginning in 2008, one national and one local we got to know our neighborhood and our ward better than we knew it in the first three years we lived in our apartment. (St. Louis is broken into almost 80 neighborhoods- most with subneighborhoods and 28 Wards each with an alderman.) As we looked at houses frequently one of us would say, I've knocked on this door, was it for Obama or Shane or both? Because of that we started to feel a real connection, not just with our apartment, but our neighborhood. I think I speak for both of us when I say we don't just want to come home and run into our house and not know anyone around us.

Currently the geographic subneighborhood of Dutchtown (our neighborhood) is without a neighborhood association, but our neighbors are working on that. Tonight Greg and I went to a meeting at to discuss forming a neighborhood association. I think people really get the power of doing this. There were some nay-sayers who attended the last meeting who didn't attend this one, but we will let them be the lazy dog and the lazy cat while we're the little red hen. We'll even let them share our bread when we're ready to eat.

Slowly a house becomes a home

As of today we have been in the house for a month. We spent much of today trying to clear some of the clutter that had taken over much of the house. (Which I had been eloquently describing as the apartment threw up all over the house. A bit graphic I know, but I bet you can picture it, right.)
Today, we ate two meals at our new dining room table. (Which Greg is supposed to blog about.) At breakfast it was in the middle of the living room and by dinner it had made it to the dining room. We also started working on straightening the basement.
Slowly things are making sense and starting to look like we actually live here, not like we're just squating. We've unpacked the CD collection and are slowly unpacking all of the barware. (Priorities, right.) Once we clear out the living and dining rooms the plan is to pa

int the basement so we have some room that is "done" and that we can hide in when the wallpaper starts to attack. Then we begin the big task of tackling the dining/living/hallway-room. It's a lot to do, but it's going to be so worth it.
-Elena

The Many Sides of Wallpaper

Today's entry is going to be a largely pictoral. In our house there are not one, not two, but SEVEN different wallpapers! (This is counting the three different color schemes of the same pattern.) Now we knew they were here when we put an offer on the house, and while I have cursed the presence of the wallpaper everyday since we've moved in, I hope that one day it will just be a big joke we tell people about when they come look at our beautiful house.

The entryway and stairs including the 20 feet up over the stairs. I guess I'm going up a ladder...

Living and dining rooms- really rather boring.

kitchen-extra ug-o!

Upstairs bathroom-the pink bathroom. Pink tile cool, metallic silver and black wallpaper-not so much. Especially since it's also on the ceiling of the bathroom.

Downstairs bathroom- really more silver metallic than it looks here, and actually the one I like the best. (Plus it's the smallest amount of paper- although it is on the ceiling!)

Guestroom-color combo 1of 3- Tan and Green.

Master bedroom- color combo 2 of 3- Blue and Green.

Office- color combo 3 of 3- Orange and Green (although it some places orange has faded to yellow.) This is the one Greg says makes him neurotic.

So yeah, that's a lot of wallpaper. I don't really know why it was necessary to put it on almost every wall of the house. (And the vast majority of those walls remaining have wood paneling on them.) I'm trying to look beyond the rediculousness of it all, because it really is a great house. It just needs a little love from the Sabrownins. (And a few of our closest friends...?)

-Elena

We really have the internet back!

Whoot, whoot! After far too long, we really are able to blog again! I've been storing up ideas in my head, so here is a forecast of what is to come:

• I hate wallpaper: Seriously, who thought it was a good idea.


• Wallpaper, be gone! Everyone has an opinion on how to remove it, and we have enough walls to try them all! (Also-three rooms have the same wallpaper pattern in different colors, pictures to come.)


• The Rabbit Room, or the Lagomorph Lounge- the new home of the foursome.


• The toilet-sink: you'll see.


• The rockin' pantry: awe-some!

There were surely many more ideas that have been swimming around in my head, but that's enough to keep everyone interested for a while.

As we were moving out of the apartment we of course spiraled into the phase of throwing random stuff into boxes and garbage bags to try to get out of the apartment. We were in limbo for about two weeks while we moved everything from point A to point H. It's been a huge relief to be done with that part of the process.

As exciting as it is to be starting this phase, leaving the apartment was really hard. We'd lived there for 4 years, which is half of our relationship and really the entire "adult" stage of our relationship. It's like leaving fake adulthood to go to real adulthood. Greg almost had to drive the four blocks home after we handed over the keys to our landlord since the tears were streaming down my face. It really was a great apartment. Our landlords are actually going to be renting it to the woman who rented it before us. Crazy. She recently moved back to the area and asked if they had any apartments open because she'd loved her apartment, and they were able to tell her that her old apartment was actually going to be open.

So now, what you have surely all been waiting for:


-Elena

Still no interwebs

We're still waiting for everything to get squared away with our cable company. Sunday? (fingers crossed.)

We've moved, but we won't have the internet at the new home until Saturday. Be on the lookout for updates then.

It's the final countdown! doodle-do-do, doodle-do-do-do, doodle-do-do, doodle-do-do-do.

We are able to start moving-in in less than six hours. I need to get Greg up here in a second because we can pick up our U-haul moving van a 7. There will be trips to Starbucks and Jack-in-the-Box on the way. We will try to post towards the end of the weekend once we live more there than here. My plan is to try to take lots of pictures. We have to make up for the first 8 years of our relationship, where there are very few pictures of us.
Oh, on a side note-the lion has a name. We decided to name him Ted Kennedy, after the late, great, liberal Lion himself.

It's a done deal. We have a key to prove it.

So after several months of looking at houses in person and on the computer, 2 inspections, applying for a mortgage and much waiting, we own a house. It's really sort of crazy, and I don't believe it, especially since we don't get to move in until next Friday. The old owners (since we now own it, and they are our tenents) have 42 years worth of stuff they have to clear out of the house before we can move in. It's a lot of stuff. (Seriously.) And this being said given that we have ungodly piles of boxes in our apartment, and we've only been here 4 years.
So what do the Sabrownins do after they sign over their lives to a house? Go to Disneyworld you ask. No. Eat an affordable lunch out? No. We bought a car. We've been cruising around St. Louis in my 1993 Nissan Sentra for the last several months because the Mazda 626 died an unfortunate death in May (darn you Layfeyette exit ramp), right before we started looking for a house. We've actually been doing really well at driving one car, but since I've gone back to school it's made things a wee bit more complicated. (School loan is loan #3 in the last month, might I add. I asked Greg today if he wanted to start a business so we could collect all four-house, car, school and small business. He said no; that's probably wise.) So we went directly from our realtor's office to the Mazda dealership. Unfortunately, much like the house, we have to wait before we get a our car. Lou Fusz (or Fuzz as my mom calls him) did not have a Celestial Blue Mazda 3-5 door with cloth interior on the lot. It will be in Monday or Tuesday.
However, we did enjoy a fantastic lunch at LuLu Chinese food on Olive St. on the way home, and it was by far one of the least expensive things we've purchased all day. And we got it when we ordered it.
So the lesson of the day is patience is rewarded in 3-7 days.
-Elena

crunch time

It's getting down to crunch time. One week till close and two weeks till we can move (the sellers asked to stay in the house a week after close to make their move smoother, so they are going to rent it from us from that week). The only snag has been the late notification that a window needed to be fixed for our appraisal to go through. It has been fixed but we have to make sure they get out there before Friday to confirm so we can get the loan. Not a big deal, but not really something we wanted to deal with.
Elena and I have been pouring over our collection of design mags trying to figure out what we want to do with the new house (yeah I subscribe to Dwell and Metropolitan Home, you wanna fight about it?). I am really looking forward to that part, even if pulling up carpet and pulling down wallpaper and drop ceilings is not going to be a whole lot of fun.
The apartment is probably about 1/3 boxed up now, so we have been concentrating on the drudgery of packing when we are not messing around writing blogs. I wish we had more pictures of this apartment when it was still put together, it really has been a great place to live.


Greg

Let the packing begin!

Over the last several weeks I have been rescuing boxes from work that were otherwise destined for the trash compactor. It's starting to look like we're building a fort in the dining room. (Which would not be the first time this year I've built a box fort.) Pretty cool, right.

That's what you get for going out of town in my office.

Greg and I are not exactly known for being minimalists, but we're looking forward to using this opportunity to clear out some of the junk that has been moving from dorm rooms to our parents' houses to apartments to other apartments. The tough part is decided where to begin. As of today we have 32 days until we close and 39 days (September 18th, which is incidentally my 27th birthday) until we can start moving things. So I want to do things methodically. I hope that happens. (I still remember helping Greg move out of his sophomore year dorm room scramblingto get everything out as they are literally locking the building doors.) In the meantime I am making lists of what we can pack now that we won't miss and can pack now (books, decorations, craft supplies) and what we can't live without and will wait until the last minute to pack (kitchen supplies, the rabbits.)


Speaking of our four four-legged children, I am so excited that they are going to have their own room soon! Thor and Valkyrie have lived in our kitchen since we moved here and during shedding seasons that's a little unappetizing to say the least. It will also be nice not to have trails of timothy hay through the apartment from carrying it to the little kids in the dining room.

Odin and Frigga, the little kids

That is pretty much where we are now. Getting ready to do the paking and fanticizing about the possibilities. I've been pouring over all our our favorite catalogs (CB2, Crate and Barrell, Ikea) and magazines. We've even made some visits to Lowes and HomeDepot to look at paint. But I'd better not get ahead of myself, the apartment won't pack itself.