The next step in making our house secure is deterring would-be burglars from breaking in. One way of doing that is advertizing that our house is monitored by an external security company.  We were given a bunch of these decals from ADT:

We simply peeled and stuck them to the windows/doors around the house:

Ignore the dirty windows, ummkay?

We were also given a small sign to put at the corner of the house…

Next up? Putting blinds on the garage windows to reduce nosy-parkers (“busybodies” in American English) looking in and seeing what we might have to steal.

Personally I feel a lot better knowing we are taking precautionary and preventative measure to secure our home.  In addition to the security system (and warning signs that we have said system), we can also rely on our canine intervention unit:

What steps have you taken to secure your house?

27 June, 1928 – 17 January, 2011

My Gramps passed away last week and today I am in the UK attending his funeral.  Below is a copy of the tribute speech I am making at the funeral:

“To tell you the truth I had a hard time putting all Gramps’ good traits into writing. No matter how hard I try, I can never do justice to what a source of love and support he was, and such an inspiration for all of us. I know we are all grieving today for we all lost a great man.

He was a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather and great grandfather.  A friend to all of us. I’m sure each and every one of you here today has something to share on how he touched your life.  I would like to share with you some of the special memories I have of Gramps.

Gramps was a very easy going man.  He was happy with life, with himself and with his family. He was happy to fit in with whatever you wanted to do.  He never moaned. He was liked by everyone. His solid, consistent presence was a calming influence on those around him. Gramps never had a bad word to say about anyone. He would offer an unbiased listening ear whenever you needed it. He was a man of few words. But when he did offer his opinion or advice, you listened because it was important.

For those that didn’t really know Gramps, you might mistake him for being an average guy.  Friendly, likeable, easy going.  For those of us who knew him well, we know he was anything but ordinary.  He was extraordinary.

Gramps defined himself by loving his family. He literally was our rock. He was a stable source of love and support for my family when we were going through tumultuous times. Gramps loved my Nan more than anything.  He always put her first. In December, they celebrated their Diamond anniversary: 60 years of marriage. This is an exceptional accomplishment – not just 60 years of togetherness, but seeing the look of devotion and love in his eyes when he looked at her.  I took some photos of Nan and Gramps in the summer. They are sitting on a bench, holding each other’s hands and looking into each other’s eyes. The amount of love that was shared cannot really be explained.

Gramps was a role model. He showed me the important qualities to find in a mate.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I now see that I married a man that has all of the positive qualities that he had. I know my brother Sam thought of Gramps as his hero. That was why he chose Gramps to be the best man at his wedding.

I have many special memories of Gramps and have much consolation in the good feelings they give me.  Gramps had such a mischievous sense of humor. He always had some kind of jokey comment or phrase or rhyme to say about most situations.  I loved his playful nature. As we all know, Gramps was quite a hairy man.  I fondly remember this one time that Sam and I used his hairy chest as a dartboard for shooting those little plastic golf balls that had Velcro strips around.  We all had great fun that day.

Another time, I remember one Christmas we were sitting around the dining table after Christmas dinner, getting ready to play cards. We had some nibbles on the table, peanuts and crisps and so on.  And when my mum wasn’t looking, I’d throw a peanut at him. He’d throw one back at me and then get in trouble when my mum told him off for throwing food.  So, I kept throwing peanuts every now and then and he didn’t throw back.  Until he picked up the whole bowl and tipped it over my face.  I was wearing glasses then and the peanuts just filled up behind the lenses.  It was an important lesson.  Don’t mess with the master.

I have many memories of Gramps sitting in his chair by the fish tanks. He’d tell me all about all the fish he kept, their proper biological names and how he looked after them. He taught me how to play cards.  Many evenings when I was younger, myself, Nan and Gramps would pull a small table over by his chair and we’d play late into the night. Many times I have caught myself saying the same things as he taught me… “if you’re in a card school my dear, you don’t touch the cards until they’ve all been dealt”.

Gramps really loved his music.  We’d listen to it together, and he’d be sitting in his chair tapping his fingers on the stool. If he was listening to the radio and something came on he didn’t like – he’d screw up his face and make some comment about how they didn’t make music like they did in the old days.  It is no coincidence that my iPod is filled with many of the same songs we used to listen to, and I have all my music organized into neat, alphabetical folders, just like Gramps had all his music ordered.

Now he is no longer sitting in his chair.  There is an empty space.  It’s a very large void, not so much because his physical presence is now gone, but more because our relationship with him was something that filled us all with the sense that we were someone special to him – as he was special to us. And that space can never be filled by another person.

I was honored when Nan asked me to say a few good words about Gramps.  I have just scratched the surface of his great qualities and the memories I shared with Gramps.  But he and I shared a very special relationship based on silly jibes and insults.  In fact, he was the only person in the family that could insult me and I didn’t get upset by it. It was always done in a loving way. We’d poke each other in the arm or stick out our tongues.  It was our way of saying we loved each other.  So instead of a few good words, I’d like to end by saying this.

I love you big head, twit face. You’ll be dearly missed”.

Last summer, I scored these two free Queen Anne chairs off Craigslist. They had seen better days, but screamed “potential!” and “makeover!” at me.  Yes, I hear the voices of furniture in my head.

They have sat in our office ever since, patiently waiting for their ugly-duckling-to-swan makeover.  During that time, the dogs have claimed these chairs as their own.  They spend a significant amount of time sitting on these chairs whenever Rick or I are working in the office.  And that’s a lot.

It’s a dogs life, isn’t it? Both of our chihuahuas and our wiener dog use Beegee the basset hound as their own personal pillow.  Check out Beegee’s buzz cut on her belly – a left over from the emergency surgery she had on Thanksgiving last year.

We love our dogs and have no issues with them getting up on the furniture.  However, as you can see above, the fabric is looking decidedly more dingy than when we originally got the chair – a side effect of the clay soil and puppy paws on the material. So, we’ve come to the decision that we need to reupholster the chair in a wipe-able, non-porous fabric, such as vinyl or faux-leather. That way, when the dogs dirty up the chair, we won’t have to worry about them getting the pristine material dirty.  One swipe of a damp cloth and the clay stains will be no more.

There are a number of cool choices for faux-leather out there.  We’ve found that some of the local fabric shops have limited selections in store, so I turned to the Internet for some inspiration.  How about these faux-leather animal prints? (from left to right: ostrich, snake, alligator, gecko).

Or these interesting textural choices?

Or maybe just something a little different?

As lovely as some of these choices are, most are out of my price range. Online fabric yardage guestimators suggest that I might need up to 7 yards of fabric per chair. At up to 30 bucks a yard, that can get expensive really quickly.  I’m going to be keeping my eye out for a budget-based yet unique  fabric to use on these chairs.  Color is not really a deciding factor – just as long as it has some wow factor (I am trying to be less conservative in our decor choices!). No matter what we end up choosing, for us, faux is definitely the way to go.

All fabric swatches from here.

Here’s a pic of our upstairs guest bathroom when we moved in.  Jealous much?  Yeah, I know you’re coveting the fake blue marble vanity with shell shaped sinks…

and let’s take a closer look at the loo.  Check out that matching blue *padded* toilet seat.  Nice.

We recently noticed that this little gem had sprung a leak. There was a crack on the bottom of the tank, which was causing a slow leak of water (the blue color comes from the cleaning block we have in the tank). So, it was high time we replaced this sucker.

Once the tank was removed, it was evident that this thing hadn’t been replaced since it was installed when the house was built back in 1993.  Check out the grime behind the tank. It’s more dirty than Christina Aguilera in her bondage leather chaps days.

Rick had quite a time removing the bowl as it was caulked to the tile floor (current DIY thinking says you shouldn’t caulk around the toilet bowl because if you have a leak in the future, the moisture could be trapped under the base of the toilet and your plywood subflooring could very well rot out.  Better to see the leak and deal with it, rather than the alternative). So, to remove the toilet bowl, Rick had to break it into pieces with a hammer…

Another problem that was causing the bowl to stick was the rusted screws that hold the toilet to the flange.  I guess the rust is courtesy of the leak that has been going on for many years.

A bit of elbow grease and the loo was gone. You can really see how much the water has been leaking under the toilet bowl.

I mentioned previously about the lovely dark sludge that we found in the toilet tank (which led us to test our well water).  You can also see that we live in a clay soil area, as evidenced by the clay particles found in our tank.

We bought a water-efficient complete toilet kit from our local DIY store.  In addition to a new tank and bowl, it comes complete with new flange, bolt, bolt caps and wax seal – everything you need to install a new loo. The steps for installing a toilet are really very simple – check out this short tutorial from Home Depot (note: they do caulk around the bowl base.  hmmm).

So nice to have a spanking new toilet tank that’s free of sludge and clay…

Here’s our brand new loo.  Ain’t she a beauty?

And just in case you haven’t seen enough photos of toilets, here is a gratuitous before and after shot.

A quick fix that makes a world of difference to the guest bathroom.  I can’t say how happy I am to get rid of that horrible padded blue toilet seat.  I am sure our house guests will be thankful for the updated facilities.  Next up is changing the blue faux-marble sea-shell monstrosity of a vanity. What decor faux-pas did you inherit with your house?

So now we have moved our DVD and electronics to the newly-named “DVD nook”

we had to move the DVD case we had originally (but temporarily) hung in this location.  Check out this old photo from before we had painted the walls and removed the brown trim…

The question was – where do we move it to?  We spend 95% of the time watching TV in the living room (the smaller TV has been moved to the game room – more on that later).  Plus, seeing as we play DVD’s through the PS3 (rather than a dedicated DVD player) and the PS3 lives in the DVD nook with the other electronics, we needed to keep the DVD storage somewhere close.  Somewhere in the living room.  Makes sense – it’s not neuroscience, you say. Yes, but there was no obvious place to hang this rather large DVD case (what can I say, we have a lot of DVD’s).  One of the great things about open plan living rooms is all the space.  One of the drawbacks about open plan living rooms … is all the space.  As in, very few walls to hang stuff.

You can see the floorplan of our first floor below.  The stairs divides the two open-plan living rooms.  The living room on the right is where we spend our time watching TV. The sofa goes along the entryway wall, the adjacent wall has windows, the fireplace is at an angle leading to the doorway to the dining room.  Hmmm.

Then it came to me.  Let’s use some of the unused storage space … under the stairs.  Lemme explain…

We have this nice staircase in the middle of our entry way (that separates the two living rooms downstairs).  At the top, one staircase goes to the master suite (to the right), the other stairs lead to the other bedrooms/games/laundry. We therefore have a very long walk-in closet under the stairs and I figured we could maximize some of this space for the DVD cases.  Yep, we have two (although we only originally hung one of them).

After a little measuring and some drywall removal, we are able to recess the media cabinets into the wall…

We didn’t lose too much space in the walk-in closet behind.  The DVD cabinets are only slightly wider than the width of the wall, so we still have plenty of storage space.

Here’s a pic of both storage cabinets, one either side of the stairs (please ignore the half completed stair railing and stain job we started before Christmas)

So far, these media cabinets are in the perfect location.  Near enough to be near the TV when we want to watch a movie, but stashed away enough and not taking up any floor or cabinet space.  All in all, we’re starting to get this place looking the way we want it.  I think the biggest makeover will come when we remove the last of the old wood floor an install darker hardwoods to match the stairs.  Lush.  Can’t wait.

At the top of our stairs, we have this big expanse of wall that crying out for something to be put there.

Any large piece of art work would be uber-expensive to fit this space.  So we came up with a cheaper, alternative. A DIY mirror.

We got a large 3ft x  7ft mirror for free off Craigslist – it was one of those builders-basic frameless mirrors that go above the vanity. All it took was a little mirror adhesive and some painted trim around the edges, and voila! A custom, large scale mirror that costs about 20 bucks.

It does wonders for reflecting the light around the foyer during the daytime, not to mention the pretty chandelier crystals at night.  Gotta love inexpensive solutions to design problems.  What inexpensive ways for art work have you utilized in your home?

Pssst. Did you notice those DVD storage cabinets to the side of the stairs? I’ll be posting about those on Friday.  Stay tuned….

Back in the summer, you may recall that Rick took it upon himself to dismantle the railing and sand the stairs.  You don’t remember?  Ok, here’s a (dusty) pic…

The plan was to remove the orangey pine color we inherited with the house with a richer, darker color.  He even tried a few stains out so I could see (I was in the UK at the time):

Fast forward a few months, it was finally time to try and get something done with our rail-less, spindle-less and stainless stairs. First thing we had to do was fill in the small holes left by the wooden spindles once they were removed:

All we had to do was cut small pieces of 3/4″ dowel rod and put them into the hole with a little wood glue.  We let the glue cure for about 48 hours, then sanded the steps to a smooth finish (sorry, no pics of this part of the process.  I did take some but someone who shall renamed nameless *coughRickcough* accidentally deleted them off my computer).  Anyhoo.

Then the staining begun.  You can see from the decor we did this right before Christmas

In this photo, you can see the filled-in spindle holes on each tread…

It won’t matter that they are a little darker than the rest of the stair tread.  The new wrought-iron spindles will be drilled in close proximity to these holes and each one will be capped off with ones of these thingymebobs…

Whaddya think? I’m loving the new darker stair treads.  They still need a light sanding and a second coat of stain, followed by some polyurethane so make them nice and glossy.  We haven’t 100% decided what to do with the stair risers yet – whether to keep them white, stain them the same walnut color, or even apply a subtle tile to them. What are your favorite treatments for stair risers? Do you have any inspiration pics you can share?

Did you know that approximately 14-15 million people rely on a private household well for their drinking water each year, and more than 90,000 new wells are drilled throughout the US each year? (source).  Our house water supply comes from private well water. Whilst that means we have no maintenance costs (yippee for no monthly water bill!), it also means that we need to periodically check the water for contaminants to ensure our health and safety. After all, we don’t want to be drinking this…

Ewww. Testing the well water is simple to do.  We got one of these water test kits from our local Lowes:

It contains enough strips to test for 11 different contaminants  (bacteria, lead, pesticide, chlorine, copper, iron, hardness, alkalinity, pH, nitrates, and nitrites).  You simply swirl the little test strip in a small glass of water for the length of time outlined on the instructions (each test requires a slightly different time).  You then compare your color swatches to the guide provided for you…

All of our water tests showed up as being within the normal range, which is reassuring to know we’re not being slowly poisoned by our drinking water.  The only thing we might need to keep an eye on .. well, actually keep our noses on … is sometimes we get a foul smell when we turn on our faucets.

A quick Googley indicates that hydrogen sulphide might be the culprit. Hydrogen sulphide is a dissolved gas that gives water a characteristic “rotten egg” taste and odor. In addition to the smell, it can corrode piping and turns water black. We’ve mainly noticed the eggy smell and haven’t had any black water come out of the taps.  However, we have seen that the inside of one of the toilet tanks upstairs (the only remaining toilet that is original with the house when we bought it) had a black slime quality.  Not the water itself, but the build up of limescale on the tank walls – probably developed over many, many years.

So, what’s the treatment? Hydrogen sulphide occurs naturally in well water, or it can be caused by the presence of sulphate-reducing bacteria in a well or water system. Since bacteria are the most common cause, treatment to control them should be tried first. Shock chlorination is the standard treatment for control of sulphate reducing and iron bacteria in a well.  We know that the previous owner chlorinated the well right before we moved in, so it shouldn’t be necessary for us to do it again anytime soon.  But it is definitely something we need to keep an eye a nose on.

Now we have a new (and better proportioned) TV above our fireplace in the living room, we had to figure out a way to move the electronics – and all their associated cables and wires – across the room. That meant rerouting the wires behind the drywall – up the TV wall, across the ceiling and down to the soon-to-be DVD nook.

One big advantage of not having flooring down yet is it is still relatively easy to pry up the subfloor for wiring projects such as this.  The room directly above the living room is the master bedroom.  A little clear out of the (minimal) furniture we have in the bedroom and adjacent changing area and the floors came up…

The corner of wall (with the drywall cut out) is the chimney flue from the fireplace below.  So the electrical, co-ax and HDMI cables popped out there from below, then were run along the floor joists.

Taking up the flooring gave us the chance to take up a few of the remaining carpet tack strips (and sweep under the bed – gross!)

In short, our bedroom was a complete disaster zone for about 24 hours…

But the upheaval was only temporary and totally worth it.  The DVD/DVR and other electronics are all now sitting nicely over in the new DVD nook.  The wires will still look a little unsightly until we get a better media cabinet than the old glass table we’re currently using…

I am liking this cabinet from Ikea.  It has glass doors so that the remote controls for the DVD/DVR will work.  Those small drawers will also come in handy for stashing PS3 controllers and other small electronics.  But of course the main thing is that the cabinet will hide all those ugly wires.

Ikea actually sells this as a linen cabinet, but the proportions are perfect for media storage.  At 20 inches deep, it is deep enough to hold the DVD/DVR (with a little extra room for wires at the back).  It’s about 50 inches tall  – higher than most TV or media cabinets.  The extra height works perfectly for us as we want to be able to use the remote control across the room without the sofas getting in the line of sight. A little photoshop magic shows how the cabinet might look in the space.

Picture the cabinet with some cool art above it, maybe a lamp or a plant or two.  And best of all, no wires in sight.  I’m really liking how we’re going to be able to have the TV on one wall and the electronics on a different wall 15 feet away with no ugly electrical wires in view.  So I guess we’re not going to need this wireless media extender after all.  What ways do you use to hide or reroute wires in your house?

At the end of last year, I lamented about the size of our television in relation to the fireplace.  Don’t even get me started on all those electronics and wires showing…

The fireplace is a whopping 85 inches across, and the 32″ television we bought several years ago was just not right for the space.  Plus,  the fireplace wall is on an angle to the rest of the room, so there really is no place near for the electronics equipment to be stashed. So we’ve been living with this less-than-ideal TV setup  for a few months now.  Sexy.

As part of Rick’s birthday present, we decided to break down and buy a larger TV.  A 55 inch one no less. We had to get a new bracket to support the larger TV – a few screws later and it was easily installed.

Rick also removed a little bit of the drywall behind the TV to set the plugs into the wall.  And voila!

Much better.  The TV is a better proportion to the fireplace.  Not to mention that extra viewing space in HD   I havent completely figured out how to correctly dress the mantle … hence the measly looking small blue vases from Ikea (which I love).  I think we might eventually install light sconces either side of the television, but nothing is set in stone.

Next, we had to figure out a plan for moving all those pesky DVD/DVR cables away from the fireplace to the nook by the dining room…

The wires will be routed through the walls, so we won’t have any of those ugly cables showing again.  Stay tuned for the those details, coming Wednesday.