Not Quite Back to the Grind

Happy 2014! After a two week break from house work, we are really struggling getting back into it! We have friends coming the first weekend of February, which definitely gives us motivation, but we are slow to get started on another project. 

Our biggest projects are finishing the trim and quarter round on all floors and finding banister and hand rails for both the second and third floors.

The third floor is a little precarious!

I have done a lot of research on Pinterest of banisters so we know what we want (a very modern, sleek medal) but we are having trouble finding it. Both Home Depot and Lowe's looked like they had a few options we might like so we decided to start there.

Before heading to Home Depot, we stopped at the Pennsy Flea Market, which we have seen advertised around our neighborhood every week. 

Fancy Advertising

In one word, the flea market was scary. We found where stolen items from our neighborhood are sold on the weekends! I avoided eye contact while Andrew sifted through the weirdest piles of junk I have witnessed in awhile.

Our big adventure out of the house was off to a rough start so it was time to head to Home Depot to check out banisters! So disappointing! There was only two options and they were both super lame, so we lost hope in checking that off the list this week. We bought caulking and wood filler for the trim and headed home to snoop around some of our neighborhood projects we have been reading about on Naked Philly!

Being demolished this week!

The weekend Andrew first looked at our house, he was accidentally shown the house across the street. It was much cheaper than our house but it needed a ridiculous amount of work so we didn't even take it into consideration. Last week, a "Notice of Demolition," sign was posted on the front window. We are super pumped to watch the whole demolition process, especially since the house is sandwiched between two other houses.

Can't wait to see what moves in!

We are just so happy that more improvements are coming to our little 18th street! One block behind us on Carpenter Street are a few very scary crack houses. They have had notices on them for awhile but this weekend we finally saw some movement!

 

The houses are now up for demolition and two brand new houses are planned to go in their place! Again, such fantastic news for our little neighborhood :) After exploring a bit, we headed home and finally got started on the quarter round! I even learned how to caulk!

Little caulker

It is amazing how tedious caulking is but it is a must for our uneven walls. We have a lot of weird spaces that needed to be filled in, along with nails that needed to be finished.

Not finished and looking rough

We finally got a lot accomplished and we are back on the roll! Now it is all about finding the balance and knowing that we don't need to be up ALL night doing caulking and it's totally fine to take a wine break!

Taking some time for us

We are at the very beginning of picking out our new kitchen and I am so excited for what is going to be a long and intense process. My sister and I met our parents at Ikea this morning, as they are at the very beginning of their own kitchen renovations. I have always been drawn to the gray cabinets in the middle (obviously) but after talking through kitchen choices with my parents today, I am changing my tune. I feel like gray is very "in" right now and I don't want to make that decision and hate it in 10 years. I am now leaning towards the white cabinet to the right instead.

So many cabinets to choose from!

This weekend was the first of many trips to Ikea, so I am really looking forward to finalizing our plans! Our little house is really going to transform with a beautiful new kitchen :)