New Hardwood Floor Complete!

Due to our negligent puppy parenting and 20 year old carpet, I finally reached a point in which I could no longer handle the flooring in our music and dining room. So, at the end of the summer, Aleks and I decided to take it all out and replace with hardwood.

Of course I forgot to take any before pictures, I was so excited to get started on the project, but here's one from when I painted the dining room, in which you can kind of see the carpet.

We bought the product through Lowe's and then hired them for the install as well. Due to 2 batches of bad wood, the floors were finally finished 8 weeks later.

Which means we had our grand piano in our front entry way for 2 months. And our dining room table in our basement. And our china hutch in pieces in our kitchen. And the upright piano in our living room (which actually found a permanent home there because our kids played the piano waaaaay more often, practicing and just having fun). I ate breakfast and dinner standing at our kitchen island for 2 months because we only have 3 stools.

But, it's finally finished and was worth all the hassle. It's easier to clean for one thing, but just looks so much prettier.

We had some friends help us move the grand piano into the hallway at the start of all this and then placed it on a moving blanket. I was all set to call them up again for help moving it back, but Aleks and I found we could move the whole thing with one person pulling the moving blanket while the other pushed the piano. That moving blanket trick is amazing! 

Old flooring is at the bottom of this picture and the new flooring is at the top. It's not a perfect match, but it's pretty darn close!

New curtains make everything feel cozy.

I love how the grand piano is now a feature of this room. Next big project, rebuild this 78 year old instrument. It's in remarkable shape for it's age, but needs a little tender loving care.

The carpet in the rest of the house is equally old and disgusting, but we'll have to wait to replace it all. Even if we had the funds now, I need a break from all the displaced furniture!

Kitchen updates

Finally! Our kitchen remodel is finished! (ok, that's not fully true. I need to repaint the cabinets, but I'm going to wait a few weeks for that and I wanted to share pictures with you now!)

The entire process took longer than we expected. The tile job ended up taking a week, after which they said it would be done in 2 days. However, it all looks beautiful, so I've already forgotten how annoying it was to have workers in our house for over a week.

Here is the before:

Aleks and I HATED this sink.

Here it is mid-construction. They ended up re-drywalling some of the areas in order to have a smooth surface for the backsplash. I was not expecting to see studs, but it always has to get worse before it gets better, right?

Drum roll please....

Apparently there were supposed to be some seams in the granite piece that includes the sink cutout. Thankfully, the granite guy asked them to cut it without seams, which looks really good, but made the piece extremely heavy. Watching 3 guys walk it into our kitchen was almost as nerve wracking as watching piano movers move a grand piano.

And our new sink and faucet. I'm seriously in love.

Aleks questioned me all along the way. He wasn't sure 2 different granite colors would work. He wasn't sure the faucet should be silver, maybe it should be black to match the sink. He thought the dark blue paint wouldn't look good. Thankfully he knows after 12 years of marriage that he can voice his opinions and then just go along with what I think.

I told the granite people as they were installing that having this updated kitchen makes me want to be a better person.

It's true.

Now, who's coming over for dinner?

Home improvements

As I've mentioned before, I spent a good part of the summer painting our house. The biggest job by far was our living space. My inspiration for the new decor came when my parents bought us a rug for Christmas. I've always like clean, modern lines, and the rug helped set the tone for what I wanted to do. I painted the room the same color that I've been painting the rest of the house: it's a light gray with blue undertones. Another impetus for change was our inheritance of a colleagues' record collection. We needed new shelves to store and display them all, so we bought a few pieces from IKEA that work very nicely. 

Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures, I rarely do. I'm always too excited to jump in and get to work. I looked through my photo library and found some old pictures that were taken in the room. We have slightly moved the furniture around from time to time, but the feel of it generally stayed the same.

(Oh man. Look how cute and little they were!)

And here is our new living space!

While it looks like the small couch cuts off the space, it actually creates a cozy, warm feeling to the area.

I'm still looking to add decorations and pieces to the mantel and bookshelf. For now, I'm enjoying the cleanness of it all.

And you can see a bit of our new kitchen in the back. I'll be painting the walls and cabinets soon and once that is finished I'll post pictures. (I did take "before" photos of that one.)

Aleks' big home improvement contribution was the construction of a new playset for our backyard. The old one was already here when we moved in and was starting to get old, wobbly, and unsafe. At one of our first trips to the new Costco in town, we saw this playset on display and thought it was pretty cool. And then Nana offered to give it to Ruby for her birthday! The girls play on it all the time, as well as the neighbor kids. It took about a week to build, with Aleks working for 2-3 hours at a time. I must say, his swagger significantly increased when it was completed.

Here's the old set.


And the beautiful new one. The whole thing smelled wonderful the first week it was in our garage; all that cedar!

Now that Aleks has tenure, I've decided to make this house feel like a home. I think we're on our way!

When it rains, it pours

As I wrote in my last post, we had an AMAZING time in California. Regardless of how wonderful a time one has on a vacation, a person is always excited to go home and sleep in their own bed. There was no exception for Aleks and I as we drive home from the new Eisenhower Airport on Saturday evening, with visions of our king size bed dancing before our eyes.

We arrived home without incident, found our home and dog well taken care of by a student of mine, and climbed the stairs to get ready for bed. As we ascended the stairs, the heat hit us like a boiling hot, wet sock.

Our air conditioning was broken.

The unit that services our upstairs is an older unit and has given us problems for the last three years. To make a long, boring story short, our home warranty is replacing our condenser which will hopefully fix the problem for good.

The bad news? We're without AC until Tuesday at the earliest. That's over a week of 90+ degree temps in our bedrooms.

Thankfully, we have a place to sleep (that's not our house) that is cool. So, we pack an over night bag each night and head to my mother in law's house to sleep in the blissful, cool air.

Meanwhile, Aleks is gone for a week to an artists' colony and I've decided to move ahead with my painting project. I was going to paint the upstairs hallway next, which would complete the entire top floor, but since it's hotter than hell up there, I'm doing the family room instead. Which is actually not great timing, considering that the top floor is off limits, and now the main floor is a disaster, so the areas suitable for playing have been reduced by 2/3. Thankfully, the girls have adapted rather well.

This morning it took me 4 hours to prime the entire room. I'm hoping tomorrow the color will go more quickly.

I keep telling myself the chaos now will be worth it when it's all done. It really is going to look good.

So, that's what we've been dealing with since coming home. I just keep the memory of the cool, crisp San Francisco air close at hand.

Stay cool, my friends.

The start of summer: I'd give it a B+

It's been ages since I've sat down to write and life has been full during my online absence.

Once classes at the university were over, I immediately started painting. Judging from the paint cans in our basement (left by the previous owners) it's been 7 years since any room has been painted. Now that Aleks has tenure, it's time to take some ownership of this house and I'm hoping to paint the entire interior within this year. Summer is a good time to get a lot of it done.

I painted our bedroom in the fall and in the last month have completed the remaining upstairs bedrooms. We decided to move Ruby into the craft room and so for a week our house was in total chaos. My timing is really something. I finished putting together the two rooms the day I left for Washington.

The old craft room/color.

New color/Ruby's room.

Ruby's old room (with the old color) about 3 years ago before the big girl bed.

New color/craft room/office.

At the end of May I headed to the tri-cities in Washington to sing with the Mid Columbia Symphony. I got to sing my first Beethoven 9 and Bruckner Psalm 150. My friend Nick Wallin conducts the orchestra and does an amazing job getting a high quality performance with just a week of rehearsals. It was a thrilling experience to sit on stage in front of the orchestra and hear such a masterpiece in this way. Not only was it a rewarding musical experience, but I also met some extraordinarily warm and lovely people.

It also didn't hurt that there are some beautiful wineries and wine in the area.

The week I got back the girls attended princess camp, which was basically an introduction to ballet and tap classes, while learning to be princess-y. Or whatever. Obviously, because they are a typical 4 and 6 year old, they loved it.

Personally, I couldn't get enough of their leotards and buns.

The week ended in a coronation, so just FYI, Maia and Ruby are real princesses now.

And when everyone played freeze dance, they wasted no time finding each other to waltz together. It makes me so happy to know they will always have a dance partner.

Our transition into summer hasn't been seamless. The girls were absolute terrors the first two weeks: not listening, sassy, and disobedient. It wasn't fun. Thankfully, the past week has been much better. They've remembered how to play together and be respectful and find a rhythm in our less structured days. We've been able to spend some time at the pool and have made lots of trips to the library. Maia is devouring the Junie B. Jones books.

If you listen to the national news, I'm sure you've caught wind of the mess Kansas is in right now. I read this article, which I feel is easy to read and sums things up nicely. My emotional welfare is not usually affected by politics, but I've found myself feeling quite sad this past week.

On Thursday my grandfather was flown out on an honor flight to DC to be honored for his service in WWII. My aunt Annie was able to go with him and posted this on her instagram account:

I admit that I come from a long line of educators and may be biased, but my heart just breaks over the respect and treatment our teachers and schools receive here in Kansas. Not to mention the poor and lower middle class. Something has to change. I'm confident it won't be this way forever, but it sure doesn't make the humid midwest summer any easier to stomach.

A silver lining is that the girls and I are headed to Arizona next week to see my family and soak up some sun in the pool. Be warned: I'm sure my social media will be flooded with pictures of my girlies with their cousins. It's gonna be cute!

Here's hoping your summer is off to a great start!