Zero Apple Trees

I think I need to write again.

It’s been a few weeks since I last checked in.

About a hundred and twenty weeks to be exact.

I’ve got a lot going on, and a lot has changed in that hundred and twenty weeks. But then I remembered why I started writing this blog in the first place. Writing kind of helped me out during the stress of building a new house. And despite everything that is different now, I am still fiddling around with household things like installing lights and painting things.

In that time since I last wrote and you last read (me), there was a pandemic. That was pretty stressful for us all, I bet. Also I made the decision to move into a new house. I bought a small box of a house, about 1,300 square feet in Akron, Ohio. It was built in 1959. It has three bedrooms, a family room, dining room, kitchen, basement, and one and one half bathrooms.

When I moved out I didn’t get to take my cat. So I adopted a new cat. The cat I adopted, his name was originally Mowgli, but his last owner named him Rex. I liked “Mowgli” better so I call him “Mowgli”. He was super affectionate at PetSmart, in his glass cage. I thought he liked me special and we had a bond. He would go up to the glass and meow and smile at me. Turns out he likes everyone that way. He’s super needy. Sometimes I’m super needy too, and he lets me hold him like a stuffed animal and we take naps. Mowgli loves wet cat food and wakes me up every morning at 4am to get wet cat food. We keep each other company.

I’ve lived in my new (to me) house for fifty-four of those one hundred and twenty weeks since I last wrote. This house has no apple trees. It has a big tree in the front yard, and really bad grass. The grass is so bad I only mowed it like four times last summer. I don’t have a lawn mower. I was allowed to borrow the electric one from the old house a few times. I planted two mums a friend got for me, and I bought a really nice basket of flowers for the front porch. It all looked nice.

Inside the kitchen and bathroom need to be remodeled. I got some estimates but I need to wait til I’m not broke to fix those up. The bathroom shower leaks but I think that’s because of the wall tiles. They were falling off. I fixed those with duct tape. I cut a big hole in the kitchen ceiling but the plumber and I couldn’t figure out where the leak was coming from.

I took the cabinet doors off the kitchen cabinets. I like the open shelf look and like seeing all my “stuff”. Keeps me company in the kitchen. Seeing my Tostitos and cans of soup. The cabinets are all painted green. I’ll probably get new cabinets. In the meantime I did get a refrigerator, range, and microwave. I’ve made several meals in the range over the last fifty-four weeks. I’d love to have a dishwasher but there is no hookup or space for one. I’ve washed a lot of dishes over the last fifty-four weeks.

When I first moved in, like night one, I went to turn on the hot water and figured out that the hot water tank didn’t work anymore. Some nice plumbers installed a new one that day. I like hot water. Mowgli doesn’t care either way, about water temperature.

There was mold in the attic, but I got that remediated for about two thousand dollars.

I got a washer and dryer, and built a little platform out of pressure treated boards to put them on. It was my first construction project at the house. Turned out pretty good. It makes the washer and dryer a bit tall, so if you’re a short friend, you’ll have trouble doing laundry. Mowgli doesn’t do laundry so he doesn’t see an issue here. I also demolished the original basement sink which weighed about 500 lbs. I broke it up with a sledgehammer. I’ve been throwing it out piece by piece for the last twenty-seven weeks. It was solid concrete. You see a one in every house built in the 1950’s.

I painted the dining room. All the trim in the house is not the greatest wood. It’s much fresher to paint this wood a solid paint color. I chose a new (to me) Sherwin Williams color collection called Urban Outlook. “Greek Villa” is an excellent off-white paint color. I painted the dining room trim Greek Villa; the chair rail and baseboard, and around the windows. The walls I painted Believable Buff which is one of my favorites from the old house. I’ll paint the rest of the rooms in time, including all of the trim. The floors could use refinishing too.

Hmmm….what else did we update…I had some new outlets installed. All the old outlets were the two prong types. So to be able plug in a TV or other three-prong things, I needed three-prong outlets. A few GFI outlets were installed in the family room and bedrooms. I also updated the porch lights to something new. They look nice.

One day the garage door fell off and tried to kill me. Mowgli was inside so he was okay. Anyway, I had to get that fixed too. The garage smells old, so I don’t go in there much.

Okay, this felt nice writing today. I had a tough day, and this helped. Thanks for reading. I’ll talk to ya soon.

This is Mowgli. He’s my cat and I’m his person. He’s a tuxedo cat, which is the best kind of cat (in my opinion).

Resort Tan

Today we ran out to Sherwin-Williams to pick up some paint.  After a relaxing vacation day in upstate New York, I wanted to get back and get a day in of work before having to go back to “real” work on Monday.  On the painting”to do” list are the Family room and the boys bedrooms.  We ended up getting paint for one bedroom, the Kitchen & Family Room (same color) and the Craft room.  Additionally we got a bonus room of paint because we changed our minds on the Family Room color.

As you may or may not remember, we’re using our handy dandy Sherwin-Williams / HGTV Global Spice color scheme for the inside of our house.

Here’s our color palette for the house.

Previously we painted the Hallways, and the boys bath in colors from this palette.  Today we picked up a few more colors.  We bought Sherwin-Williams Emerald paint, which is zero VOC and Greenguard certified for indoor air quality, which is important for our family in this tight house.  It’s easy to apply and can we cleaned up with a damp cloth when dry which is critical with young kids running around trashing the place.  It’s not cheap at $60 a gallon.

We picked up SW6124 Cardboard for the Kitchen and Family Room, which will compliment the SW7693 Stonebriar and SW7531 Canvas Tan in the front Hall, front wall and Kitchen ceiling.  Turns out though that after we got two gallons of “Cardboard” home we didn’t really care for it with the walnut Kitchen cabinets, so we assigned that color to one of the boys bedrooms or my studio and went back to the paint store.  The next choice, which turned out to be the right choice, was SW7550 Resort Tan.  I painted the Kitchen wall that color today, or at least the first coat is done.

SW 7550 Resort Tan on Kitchen accent wall

Resort Tan with the other Global Spice colors in the hall and kitchen.

I’ll throw another coat on and quickly get the Kitchen back up and running.  The same color will carry through the Dining Room and Family Room.  We really like it.  It’s a little darker, earthier and richer…and obviously better than bare white walls.

While we didn’t start painting elsewhere we did get some SW6615 Peppery for one of the boys’ bedrooms.  The nest like Craft Room will be brightened up with SW6375 Honeycomb.

While at the store we picked up some wallpaper books too.  We’re not really wallpaper type of people but for the half bath we’re thinking “what the heck”.  Still using our color scheme, we narrowed it down to two patterns; actually I think we’ve selected.  See attached picture to see where we’re at with that.  One is a simple light tan with a bold floral pattern in red.  The other is a subtle gold tone on tone pattern with tree branches and birds.  One challenge is the blue green sink.  Those colors aren’t in our scheme, but both wallpapers appear to isolate and compliment the color of the sink.  I’m thinking I’ll have someone install the wallpaper. Christine wants to do it herself to save a couple of dollars but I fell like a complicated little half bath is the last place to learn how to wallpaper.  I just assume pay someone and have it magically be done when I get home from work.  Save my work time for other projects I’m capable of.  We’ll see…..

It’s between these two wallpapers for our half bath. The one on the right has birds which is really cute / cool. The one on the left is an awesome match for our color scheme, though the red isn’t totally “Peppery”.

Cool antique looking compass rose wall decoration. I need to figure out how to hang this in the basement landing. It’s about 30″ in diameter