Moon Garden
“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches trust.” — Gertrude Jekyll, British Horticulturist. The architect in me loves the understated and monochromatic, which is why it comes to no surprise that I am obsessed with creating a moon garden. Moon gardens … Read more
Home (Bitter) Sweet Home Improvement
This past fall, we were very excited that we’ve actually been able to hire someone else to work on our house! We hired a contractor to: dig down to the foundation and waterproof the stone foundation wall repair and patch the stone foundation wall from interior side of basement patch brick wall at back of … Read more
Prospect Lefferts Garden in the New York Times
Here’s a great article about our neighborhood in the New York Times from October. We were chuffed to see our house featured on the spread. The photo was taken during our block party in September. Johnny’s friend, Robert, is sitting on the stoop.
A Reason to Celebrate
We officially have gotten rid of all the old cloth wiring from the top and parlor level. A little victory dance for Johnny and me. This past weekend, we installed new wiring and a temporary paper globe to light the parlor level, which looks a little surreal and struck me as looking like a low … Read more
DIY Removing Painted Wallpaper Over Plaster Wall
This is my on-going project for the house >> It’s removing painted wallpaper from the paster wall on our Parlor Level. It’s something easy to do (ok, not easy, but tedious) that I can do by myself without Johnny’s help. Get ready and psyched for a long, difficult and tedious task and some toned arms … Read more
Refinishing Wood Floors
I almost didn’t want to post this, but enough time has passed that I’ve recalibrated my thoughts on our refinished floors on the Garden Level. It was a near DIY disaster. It was probably the most frustrating and stressful project Johnny and I had taken on to date. What was supposed to take 3 days, … Read more
The Last of the Demolition….(At Least for Awhile)
I feel like we’ve reached a milestone on our project. It’s been a long two years, but we have finally finished ALL the demolition for the top two floors! I am happy to say we are on our way to a dust free house. I’ve mentioned it before in this blog and I’ll mention it … Read more
Ah, the smell of chainsaw oil and fresh chopped wood is in the air
We have a huge Japanese pagoda tree in our backyard. It’s a great shade tree and in the summer, it blossoms pale yellow pea shaped flowers. However, the annoying thing about this tree are the seedpods. They litter the yard and can stain the pavement. Our surrounding neighbors hate our tree. Hate hate hate it … Read more
How to patch a small hole in drywall
I learned a really neat little trick from Johnny!..how to patch a small hole in drywall. Now, if you find this topic as boring as watching paint dry, read no further, but my DIY geek-ness thinks it’s something worth sharing. There are many different ways to patch damaged sheetrock, but here’s a simple way, if … Read more
TAKE IT ALL OFF, BABY!
While most couples were probably out enjoying a romantic dinner on Valentines or exchanging Maison du Chocolat boxes of bon bons, Johnny and I gifted each other his and her heat guns and spent that night and next 2 more nights, stripping the paint off our garden level bathroom door. It was weirdly gratifying- okay, … Read more
