It's been awhile.

Well. Hello there! It's been awhile. I've fallen a bit behind on blogging. Um, like a whole year. We've, uh, been a bit busy:


It's true that pregnancy takes some of your brain cells and diverts them away from their normal activities. The scientists can't prove it yet, but I would guess that's because they are mostly men. This blog became a casualty. It was hard enough to get anything beyond regular functioning done, let alone write about it on the blog.

But, I'm going to try to make a comeback. We have some exciting things ahead of us with our new project house. We've been here almost a year now, and while we've mostly focused on raising baby, we've also started to get together our plans for the house renovation. We're working with an architect, and the house is gonna awesome. It's a big project, will be a lot of work, and will take a long time. But we are super excited about it, and we've got a lot to talk about.

In Search of New Blog Name
So! In honor of the blog comeback, I think it's time for a new blog name. But, I haven't thought of it yet. Got any ideas?

The new blog name should:

• Focus on house remodeling and design (with a few cute baby pictures thrown in here and there.)
• Be positive, because I want to focus on why we're doing this, not the inevitable grumbles and struggles along the way. For example, thisoldshitter.com doesn't fit the bill. "Old shitter" is the first nickname we gave to the house, and while it's accurate, it's a little obscene and definitely not positive.
• Be short and catchy, so that I can tell people, "hey, check out thisurl.com," and so they will actually remember it.
• Shouldn't focus on a specific design style, because we haven't defined our design style yet. The closest we've found to naming the style we're going after is scandanavian modern, or farmhouse modern, but we won't know until we get there, so we don't want to put ourselves in the wrong category. We'll use lots of natural materials, and the design will will be simple and clean, but also warm, friendly and super functional.
  
• Could include minneapolis or mpls, as that indicates the urban location of our home.
  
• Could reference the fact that it's an old house becoming new again, or an old house transformed. Our house was built in 1923, but when we're done, it will be almost all new. The form is very simple, almost a farmhouse, with hardly any redeeming things to save in the renovation. We loved the fact that it was a blank slate that we could work within - ensuring that we have a roof over our head while we transform the entire space. We're not adding on, we're just working within the existing square footage and foot print.
  
• Shouldn't be too personal - i.e. I don't want to include our last names or address.
• Might include that we are doing a lot of work ourselves. We'll hire people to do parts of the project so that we finish before 20 years from now, but we'll be taking on a large part of it ourselves.
  
• Might include that we'll be budget and value conscious, but not cheap. Long lasting, beautiful, natural materials are not the cheapest choice, and we definitely have pretty big budget limitations to work within. Champagne taste, beer budget. We'll need to be creative and resourceful.

Wow, that turned into a long list of requirements for a short little blog name. Can you think of anything that fits the bill?

More before pictures + how we removed heavy smoke smells from the walls

Well, we did it. We successfully moved into the new place, which we are now referring to as the "sweet dump." I am tired. It's been non stop moving, packing, organizing. We close on the old place tomorrow.

We got lucky and both renters moved out April 1, so we had about 2 weeks to clean and paint, which has made a HUGE HUGE difference. The pictures below were taken after both tenants had moved out and the place was empty, as we just started painting. The big thing which cannot be expressed by these photos is the incredible SMELL of the first level. The former tenants smoked heavily. Here's how we got rid of the smoke smell.

Smoke removal for walls and rooms with heavy smokers
-Wash all rooms where heavy smoking occurred repeatedly with TSP
-Wash all rooms repeatedly with a product from Odor Matic, a local Twin Cities company, which did wonders and actually leached the nicotine out of the walls.
-Repeat. Some rooms got washed 8-9 times. Wash until the wall stop oozing nasty nicotine. Yuck!
-Primed the walls, ceilings, and all all woodwork with a product called BIN. This is a product similar to Killz but works better for woodwork and for smoke.
-Repeat
-Painted 2 coats with regular paint (we have had good luck with Behr paint.)

So, um, that was a lot of work. My job was to write the checks, as I was lucky that the guys on Chad's landscaping crew were willing to do this dirty work. I loved the feeling of sitting at work while all the nasty crap got done on the house. I think we've already done more on this house than has been done in the last 50 years.






We already have a good before and after shot just from the tenants moving out:

Before:




After: