Yes!

Surely you know the story of our engagement if you have been directed to this site by me or Eddie...but if not...I hope this picture says it all.

99 gallons of mud on the wall...99 gallons of mud...

Though I’m well known for my ability to create cuteness and crafts (as well as my humbleness), I have decided that some DIY house projects are just not for us. For those that don’t know DIY is the acronym for Do it Yourself. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that Eddie and I should do things for ourselves…you know make huge efforts to create an environment in which every single thing in McNest hasn’t been mass produced in an Asian country or have been completed by experts and professionals that charge us so much money that we have to have our lives mortaged to the bank for an eternity. Case in point - we painted our own room. Here's an after of the Green Room taken last nite (I learned how to use the timer on the camera to get us both in the shot). We definitely want our company to feel that personal touch through out the house. I just don’t want that personal touch to be like painted over duct tape holding the sheetrock up.

I know that a number of people in the world (me included) find it incredibly satisfying to create things for themselves. I agree that it’s absolutely ridiculous to spend money on say…a professional curtain hanger when I feel completely confident to like hang them up on my own. I am pretty sure that if I have any issues hanging blinds or something I can look up a tutorial on YouTube to help me. With Cheryl’s help, Eddie hung the drywall (good job babe!) and decided to start taping, mudding, and sanding. None of these tasks are in my skill set and since my skill set abilities are questionable anyways, I stuck to taking pictures of the progress (I did it for you…dear friends…for you).

So here we are…living on the edge…and daring to do it ourselves! There totally are benefits to it … working to reach the shared goal of creating a place that feels like home… having the same focus…getting outside our comfort zones…being proud of what we can do together…saving a dollar. One little problem though… we’re sometimes not very good at knowing our own limits. And though we don’t want to hire out when we can hire in… I think the time has come to DISE – or Do it Someone Else. While we remain tough and committed to other projects, we have decided to have Someone Else do our drywall and sheetrock stuff. Tonight we meet Someone Else…and hopefully I won’t have to sell a kidney to pay him for his drywall services.

For serious renovators like us…this definitely wasn’t an easy decision. There are two goals that all renovators (and yes I speak for renovators across America) strive for: to do good work and to do that work quickly. I’m thinking we didn’t really come all that close on this project. When you look at the things we want for McNest… namely walls that will stand… and walls that are smooth and ready to be painted and beautiful…(and maybe a swimming pool one day…oh and granite countertops) it’s in everyone’s best interest. Though I do have serious doubts about the whole drywall thing in general. Who knew that the walls of our homes are only slightly more substantial than a hunk of chalk! I feel like I’m going to be tiptoeing around the house as it is in order not to fall into said walls and knock our bedroom down or something.

Honestly…it’s powdered rock people. You can cut it with a box cutter (which I have in a lovely flowery print along with matching hammer, screwdriver, tape measure and other tool thing in a lovely set purchased at Belk – thanks mom!) At any rate, we’ll still steady work on the other tasks in this whole renovating process… there are many other sundry jobs that we will try out 24 different methods for doing and make multiple trips to Lowe’s for each one of these projects, all the while still enjoying that magical feeling of our wallets emptying. We’ll let you know how the meeting with Someone Else goes.

Update

Have you missed us? Sorry that we’ve been MIA for a little while, but real life called and Eddie had to get back to the singing and I had to get back to… uh…well me and Amanda went back to shopping :) But since we were at Target and we looked at small appliances (which I’m really feeling the need to register for this soft service ice cream maker for the kitchen) it was technically related to McNest – so I’ve still been steady at it.

But yeah back to why you are here. You want a housing update right? So I’ll get to it. I’ve said before that the whole home improvement thing is really a lot of decision making. There are many things I can make…cupcakes…cute flair buttons...scrapbook pages…cute photoshopped pictures of Eddie as a pirate….but when it comes to making one decision after another… I’m not so good at that. I have learned through the course of our improvements, that if you don’t like to make decisions you should really just learn to love the house you have as it is. I want nothing more than to love McNest unconditionally, but with the whole naked walls and bare floors thing going on it ain’t gonna happen. :)

I’ve been anxious to start on something new, so Monday nite – Eddie and I went to Lowe’s to pick out (and decide) on paint colors for the remaining rooms downstairs (kitchen, dining room, bathroom). Shopping together has definitely taught me a few things. I’ve learned that Eddie likes to be inspired and has an idea in his head about what he is looking for and what styles and colors that he wants. I pretty much come to the big paint terminal at Lowe’s and have my magazines marked with exact replicas of rooms I would like to recreate. Our styles are a little different that’s for sure. But it’s all about a balance. Eddie’s been a real pro at picking out paint colors thus far since I manage to get overwhelmed easily while staring at 84 different shades of yellow.

We picked out paint and last nite started painting the one room that didn’t require sheetrocking, sanding, puttying, taping and other jobs that I don’t even know anything about. You know some people buy houses and find money in the walls or high dollar antiques …not us. So far we’ve found black holes and vortexes of doom that suck all of the money out of our bank accounts. You’re only gonna get some before pictures on this one since I am waiting until it all dries for an after. So here we are before. I thought I was good at painting until I started. I mean the bedroom walls turned out pretty good.

However this time, I pretty much had the paint going on everything I didn’t want it to go on. For example, my face…the floor…and oh yeah how could I forget the ceiling! I’ll just go to another wall…oops now I’ve got it on the chair rail… I better go get a paper towel to clean that off…oh now I’ve tracked it into the kitchen…better wipe that up before Eddie sees…oh crap I just leaned against the wall… need to run to the bathroom and get that off my arm…oops stepped into the paint… you get the picture people.

And there’s Eddie…just painting away perfectly all of his walls… how annoying right?! He could at least do something unperfect so that I would feel better about myself. Eventually he did…and it was all good.

I really think I’m going to like the color once it all dries. It will darken up some and be a lovely contrast to its neighboring rooms (which one day hopefully will be finished … Lord willing before I move in).


So I’ll leave you with one more photo and another life’s lesson to take with you. Documenting our journey with this house not only serves to chronicle McNest’s evolution into a home…but it documents our own journey as husband and wife to be. Oh…and I’ve found that the best way to deal with the mounting anxiety over decision making and unfinished ginormous projects is to fantasize about wedding registries and all of the fun things (I mean really…soft serve ice cream in your own house) that are to come.

Lazy Boy (& Girl)

This weekend we took a little trip into the serious furniture shopping world. Since what we have now consists of a yard sale coffee table and 4 camping chairs, we both agreed that we could use a few more items to spruce up McNest. Being nearlyweds is a funny thing. I’ve found that there are many, many super generous people who want to give us stuff that they no longer want. Believe me we definitely appreciate the generosity! If it’s free it’s for me is a motto we like to use these days. However, I don’t want all of our furniture to be classified as Early American Bargain Basement.

Furniture shopping is a lot of things…but I think I’ve found that it is mostly exciting, entertaining and expensive. You really have to have a goal – our goal was to find pieces that really expressed who we are. So basically we were looking for furniture that screamed “we are nap people.”



A quick trip to a local furniture dealer got us started and then across the street we found our first rude awakening. Apparently we walked right into the Biltmore House Furniture Company. Dark woods, deep leathers, and daunting prices surrounded us. Needless to say – it was a little bit more upscale than what we were going for. The first chair (chair in the singular – as in one chair) we came to costs a little over $1,000 (on sale no less!). There was nothing special about it. It didn’t do any sort of tricks or like come with 3 more that looked just like it. For the first time in my life my materialistic desires were outweighed by my desire to save money.

It’s harder than you might think. We looked at a little bit of everything, but ended up focusing on couches and recliners. Snuggling up in a camping chair just isn’t going to cut it forever. Comfort and relaxation hold a dear place in Eddie’s life (and in mine) so we spent many hours sitting down and relaxing just like we were at home. You really must try it all out before you buy it. We definitely didn’t want to buy the most beautiful couch and recliner set on the showroom floor only to get them back to McNest and on the first recline find that they are not nearly as comfortable as they are pretty.

We tested them for comfort. I developed an ideal squishiness (shout out to Meredith!) to firmness ratio that I was working with during each test. You don’t want hard as a rock, but you don’t want to sink so far down that you need additional help to get up from it either. Eddie tested the lean your head back and zone out capabilities. I tested the napability factor of the couches (since that is where I tend to do my most productive sleeping). I guess if you really get down to it – we’re looking for a couch and recliner that have all of the features of a comfortable bed. I mean we could try to be all different and cool and new age trendy and put beds into the living room for our company to come chill out on, but I’m thinking that’s totally not socially acceptable :)

At any rate, we found many things we liked that came with prices that we didn’t like. I loved the oversized chairs – especially the round ones that swivel – fun times! Not practical in the least – but sometimes I like to throw caution to the wind. Mostly – we do agree on what we want – now we’re just on the hunt for who has it at “our price.”

If all else fails, we can just take a bunch of floor pillows and arrange them into a couch- shape. We’re non-traditional like that yo.

My Good Thing

So lately I’ve been having a love affair with Martha Stewart Living and Cottage Living magazines. Basically I just flip through the pages and create the perfect rooms in my head, and I dream of buying things that I’ll probably never buy – like a lovely buffet table that cost more than my four years of attending college. Good Thing that is NOT Martha!

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m very visual. Pretty much when Eddie asks me what I like – I google “pretty laundry room” or “super fabulous furniture” and send him a photo. I realize this may make it harder in the long run trying to match everything in the picture instead of just giving a general idea of what I like, but it’s how I work. It’s just so hard for me to visualize what our home is actually going to look like when it’s all done getting its not so extreme home makeover.

However, there was a glimpse into McNest’s future that was made last week.

The bedroom used to look like this. I’m gonna just be honest and say – not my favorite. As you can see from the photo, we had no floors...one white wall...one green wall...one wallpaper border (see previous entries for my feelings about that)...and lots of unprettiness! I just knew it would never look like the cozy bedroom hideaway pictured on page 58 in Southern Home Living magazine.

But now…after some paint, some trim work, and some hard working Hansons putting down a floor, here’s what we have. Hello pretty! Progress that I can see – I love it. This is the part of home renovating that I love…yet hate. I now realize how great things really are going to be, but I also have become more aware of how long it’s going to take to finish everything. I want to hire Ty Pennington and his team to come in and just get it all done overnight.

Now though that the room is practically ready for me to move into (I kid I kid) I totally have shopping on the brain. I know you’re thinking when do I not have shopping on the brain, but I’m talking about shopping for home décor people! Bring on the Rooms to Go, Ashley Furniture, World Market, and Pier 1! I’m not interested in heading to JCrew, Banana Republic and American Eagle (though if they were on the way I could just run in real quick and pick up a top or something). I want to take a day off and wander around furniture stores looking for a bed, dresser and nite stands. I want to purchase a pretty rug. I want to find closet organizers. I want pretty accessories!

I want to spend too much money and single handedly revive our flailing economy on my own!

You can thank me later.