I’ll take what’s behind door #1…

I’m a lean mean blogging machine this week. It’s almost like a new house is being built.   As I mentioned earlier in the week we have been going crazy doing stuff.  I wanted to post one more time before home improvement hang over sets in and we don’t do anything interesting for another year.

In between everything else we have been doing and after several crazy events we decided to change out our back door.  At the time the builders at Agave basically gave us two choices: a solid door or one that was mostly glass.  Neither was really that interesting but they fit the aesthetic (unlike the horrid bathroom lights that we replaced day one) and were serviceable.  Now what we really wanted was a door from Neoporte but that would require a second mortgage and some kind of pagan sacrifice involving a moose. With a suggestion from a few neighbors we decided to look at Crestview Doors instead. Not only is Crestview Doors a local Austin Company with some really nice people they have some killer designs.  There is one problem though.  They don’t sell doors anymore they sell doorlite kits which you have to install yourself.  Not a problem.  I’m very handy… with a phone and called in for back up (Thanks Nelson!).

Anyway… we picked the Carlysle style of kit because it allowed for a lot of light and it added some architectural interest to the back.  This is how it turned out:

The new door

As you see from the bottom window there is another reason why we picked this design.   Hmmm... that looks a little too hard to see.  Maybe this close up will work better:

How much for the kitty in the window?

That’s better.  We needed a window so someone could look out the back at the critters during the day.  Now we are not totally done with the door.  It needs another coat of paint and maybe a few other touches like a different style of lock and a kickplate. If only I can hold off the home improvement hangover one more day...

Agaves of Goo and Steel

Not only have we been doing interior work (see previous post)we have had some exterior stuff done as well. It has been a long time since our yard got some TLC and we put in some effort to get things going again.  One of the big reasons for this was the death of many of our plants this winter.  The most disappointing one was the Desert Museum Tree which turned in to a giant twig sticking out of the ground. Our agaves in the front planter literary turned to goo.

Now if you don’t remember about a year ago we got the back yard done. You can see the post about it here.  To contrast it you can see what it looks like now.  The plants have grown in and we had the dead ones replaced.  If you also look at the stairs they now have limestone blocks to make waling up and down the stairs safer. 

 This is the stairs going down to the back yard with the missing tree.

 A closeup of the steel planters with new plants.

Stairs going up to where the Garbage cans were.

What garbage cans you ask?  Heh... Read on...

Sometime last year we got a Nastygram from the HOA that you can see our garbage cans from the street and that they have to be removed if not we would be fined.  Hell hath no fury as an HOA scorned. Since we don’t have a garage and there is no convenient place to put the garage we pulled it to the top of the stairs on the back yard.  It was an eye sore for a year.  We called our handy dandy builder Nelson (who still talks to us after all these years...) and put a new gate on the other side of the yard.  Once that was done Eclipse Landscaping poured a concrete pad for the cans put a plant in front of it.  This was the result:

Remember the white chalk outline of agaves that turned to goo in the front planter? Well Shawn from Eclipse came up with a solution.  These agaves will not turn to goo unless they are hit by a Martian Death Ray.  They are painted steel agaves in the back yard:

Now even with the steel agaves we think the yard needs some more work.  Hopefully there will be a blog post sometime next year referring to this post about all the wonderful additions we did to the back yard.  That is if this post did not cause some kind of paradox in the space time continuum be simply mention the future post.  I guess I better charge the Flux Capacitor to find out…

Arts and Crafts

It has been a hectic several weeks.  After taking about a year off from doing any major house stuff mainly due to burn out, we went crazy.  Just check out our reality show: Homeowners Gone Wild!  A lot of projects that were on the drawing board just came to fruition.

For a long time we have been looking for art for the walls.  It’s been a long and difficult task. We would find something and not like it and return then when we could.  A few areas of the house were causing us pain when trying to get something to fit.  One of our biggest problems was getting something for the living room’s 20-footish wall.  We could not find anything.  Then Deborah found Gallery Direct, which is a local Austin art house that has custom sizes including the 4.5ft by 5.5ft canvas art that now adorns the wall.  We also found some cool black and white plant photos that are above the stairs at an angle.  The real nice thing about Gallery Direct is not only their selection but the option of material you can select from.  We do recommend them.

 Speaking about art and paint… after a year and a half I finally had the time and the will to paint some of our cinder block walls.  Two rooms have part of the wall made from cinder block.  We decided to make them accent walls.  It took forever to figure the colors but we picked Adobe Sun and Colombian Coffee. Anything named after caffeine has gotta be good… except for Sun’s Java.  That is just plain evil. We used the kick ass Mythic Paint that we got from Zinger Hardware.  If you have not been to Zinger Hardware in Austin you have to check it out.  It’s a cool Retro hardware store with modern products.   Now if you never painted cinder block before let me warn you, it’s like painting a sponge.  I don’t mean a Sponge Bob Square Pants type; I mean a bottomless maw of a sponge.  It took several coats of primer and the main color for it to come out even but the final result was awesome.  As one of our neighbors once said “What a difference a colors makes”.

While I was painting away Deborah found a really cool lighting site called Seascape Lamps that made custom lamps and lamp shades.  We found one we liked and ordered it. When we got it something was off but we could not figure out what.  Then my mother-in-law stopped by (Insert Imperial March here) and mentioned that the shade was too bright and that we should tea stain it.  Using the power of the interwebs Deborah looked up how to tea stain and Valla! We now have a great looking lamp.

Those are just a sample of the major things we have gotten done in the interior.  We have been doing lots of little things as well.  The DIY channel and the like have spawned mini projects all over the place.   We have touched up paint, dressed up computer/electrical  wires, clean windows and terminated speaker cabling just to name a few.

Well that’s all for now. Oh wait… we have been doing lots of yard/landscaping as well… but that is a blog post for another time.