Insights into Induction

We've been using our induction stove for about 10 days. I've already discovered things I like and dislike about it. Do keep in mind that all of my observations and thoughts are going from a 15+ year old electric stove to a brand new induction stove. 

Things I like:

1. The entire surface is flat. The controls on our new stove are touch controls so there are no knobs. I like being able to wipe across the entire surface to clean it. Although the knobs were removable on the old ones, you were still left with little metal rods, and it was an extra piece that needed to not only be wiped under but cleaned itself.

2. It's fast. The first time we used it to make ramen for our second dinner, it took 5 minutes from start to finish boiling cold tap water and cooking the noodles. I've noticed a significant increase in cooking speed because when I'm cooking, I can tell I need to think faster in order to keep up with the cooking. Generally speaking, I already think pretty quickly, so the fact that I felt a need to think faster meant the cooking speed was actually faster than I was used to. 

Things I'm Indifferent About:

1. One of the selling points about induction that's advertised mentions the surface not heating up because it's heating up your cookware. One of the first things I did after cooking was removing the pot and putting my hand to the surface to touch it to see how hot it was. Yes, I did it with caution, not like a 5 year old child would, and yes, it was still very very warm. It wasn't hot enough to the point where I'd be getting at least a second degree burn instantly, but it was hotter than I expected. On the flip side, it is not hot enough to "cook" any spilled food. Cleanup on the stove is relatively clean and in the week and a half I've used it, I've not once needed to really scrub any burnt on food...because it's not burnt on.

2. There is noise. I've read other users describe the sound from an induction cooktop as a buzzing or subtle ringing sound, especially if the stove is turned up to the higher power levels. There is indeed a buzzing sound coming from the stove. I don't necessarily like it, but it doesn't bother me. It helps that our vent hood is on when I cook and that sound is quite loud already so the sound of the induction cooktop gets muffled rather easily. 

Things I Don't Like:

1. Because the controls are touch, you cannot set anything on the front panel where they're located regardless of whether you are using the stove or not. One morning I was making a big batch of waffles as I do once every few weeks and I had set my baking trays on the stove like I normally do so I can place waffles on them as they cook to prepare for the freezer. After about five seconds of placing down the trays, the stove started beeping at me to alert me that the buttons were being "pressed." I removed the trays and locked the controls to see if this would stop the beeping while the stove was off. Nope. Still beeped. At that point I gave up and rearranged my trays so they were not touching the control panel in the front. I will probably get used to this later as we have this stove longer, but for now, this feature makes me think too much in ways I don't really want to. 

***

Overall, I'm very happy with our upgrade. I probably won't pore over the electric bill to see if it's actually more energy efficient, but it's probably hard to actually compare because there are so many other variables that change from month to month. It makes me happy that my cooking time can be shortened, even by the slightest minutes. For now, I'm gingerly lifting pots and pans to move them around the stove top as to not scratch the pristine glass surface. In 10 years, if we're still in this house, I'll probably be sliding everything all over that cooktop.

Or maybe one year. Who knows. 😏

Inducted to Induction

This was something we had talked about since we bought our house. The cooktop that came with the house was already 15 years old. It worked, but you could tell the burners which had the most use were not heating as effectively. We put it off for years because we made it work. It cooked food, and we ate. 

This year due to some changing circumstances, I was cooking more than usual. I was spending a lot more time in the kitchen and it felt like the right time to upgrade our cooktop. Lovely enough, prices had also shot up since Covid began in 2020. The induction cooktop we were looking at originally retailed for around $1,200. Now, it is selling for $2,000. Yup, almost double. As much as we wanted to upgrade, that was just too much money for a cooktop. 

So I went back to the drawing board and did some research. There was a separate brand rated well and we could save about $500 from our original. I put that on the back-burner to think about and life continued as usual. 

One morning, out of curiosity, I started browsing while the kids were still asleep, and I saw that the model I wanted to get was half off! I was so excited. I told my husband and he told me to buy it right then and there. So I did. Well, the excitement was short lived because within hours of placing the order, the store emailed me saying there was going to be a delay and the item would not be available for an extra month. 

Great. At least we weren't replacing a broken appliance, just upgrading. Well, we got two more of these delay notifications and they were telling us it wouldn't be available for pickup until May 19th. That was two months from the date I'd purchased! 😑 Oh well, we were at the mercy of the store. 

As we waited, the excitement died down because life just continued as usual and didn't include a new cooktop yet, and eventually, I kind of forgot it was coming. On April 20th, I got the email. It caught me by surprise, because like I said, I'd kind of forgotten we'd ordered a new cooktop. We went and picked it up a few days later and had it installed this past weekend.

Installing it was supposed to be easy. Undo the wires on the old unit. Lift out. Drop in new unit. Connect wires. Done. It was supposed to be a 20-30 minute job. Ha..ha...jokes on us. It ended up taking 2 hours. After unboxing, we dropped it in and realized that the top was wiggly in one area. Not good. We inspected and looked around and my husband told me one screw wasn't going in tight. Turns out, it wasn't making contact with the bracket to hold the top in place for that spot. So out it came and we did some creative adjustments to make it work. 

Then, we dropped the cooktop back in to the cutout only to realize it was slightly uneven on the sides. This was not good as I did not want my cooktop doing a seesaw motion on the counter. So...once again, I jerry-rigged a fix. Don't worry, nothing was damaged, cut, or broken in doing so. And it sits on the counter absolutely wonderfully now. 

I really like the completely flat design.

After we got everything hooked up, we had to re-insert our drawers. We have four drawers that sit below our cooktop, two skinny ones and two large ones. The large ones went in with no problem, but the skinny one on the right wouldn't push all the way back. Once again, we had a moment of panic because the wire cover on this new cooktop was thicker than the old one so we weren't sure if the drawer would actually fit back properly in the space. Luckily, we moved the wires around underneath and the drawer pushed in normally again.

Perfect skinny drawer for spices.

So that was a lovely afternoon spent installing our new cooktop, a task that took four times as long as it probably should have in a perfect world. If it's one thing we've learned in our seven years of renovating, it's that everything takes longer than you think it will, you always realize you need something as soon as the store closes, and nothing is ever as straightforward as the instruction manual makes it sound.

Next time, my actual thoughts on induction cooking.

Home

“So, can you see yourself being quarantined here?” That's the joke for what realtors ask you when looking at houses now.

We haven’t officially owned our house for five years, but at the time we bought it, the answer would have been a firm “No.” I had actually completely forgotten the depths of how much I disliked the aesthetics of our house until I came across some photos while cleaning my phone. 

Cue rabbit trail. 

As another child is forever entering our lives, I need to massively figure out a way to clean our my phone. My phone is always running out of storage and reminds me almost daily.  I’d always go to my storage usage and check it, and I’d be so confused as to why the memory in my Messages took up more space than the memory in my Photos. I would delete text threads that weren’t important and clear as many photos and videos off of chat threads I could without killing my love of sentimentality. 

Well, today I found the culprit; all along, it has been my text message thread with my husband. Somehow amidst all the cleaning, I never thought to look at the attachments and photos in our chat. It was over 900 photos and dated all the way back to photos of engagement rings we had looked at before getting engaged! Talk about outdated...

So now, in my free time, I will hopefully be clearing out enough space so I can successfully take photos of our newest addition without being told my phone has insufficient storage space to take another photo. 

End rabbit trail. 

While cleaning out these outdated photos from the last six years, I came across some renovation photos of our house, what our kitchen used to look like, the color of tile that used to be in our master bathroom, etc. And to be completely honest, I had really forgotten most of it. We haven’t done any major interior changes in the last two years because any task is much harder to complete when you have a tiny human running around at will who may or may not listen to your instructions. But there’s not really much left to do on the inside. 

During this time of being an extreme introvert, which I really don’t mind, I’d have to say I have not minded being home all day. I don’t get tired of looking at the walls.  The paint colors don’t bother me. And I have no problems with our countertops or shower tile or bathtubs. Sure, it’s not the top of the line luxury, but I’m ok with that, because it feels like home. Even with the blocks scattered all over the floor, the books pulled off the shelves, and random stuffed animals lying around the couch. 

Yup, that’s home. 

”Tradition”

We have some strange “traditions” in our family it seems. In December of 2017, before our daughter was born, we discovered a leak in the bathroom we renovated two years prior. Luckily, we could go through the wall from behind to take a look at the pipes instead of having to tear down the tile from the front. We could only conclude that the pipe to the shower head was not screwed on tightly or had somehow come loose. That was the end of that leak and after a few days of repatching the drywall and retexturing, life resumed.

“Turns white when dry” isn’t just for
elementary gluesticks!

This DIY fix was easily completed by my husband as we did not have to monitor a toddler on the move and keep her from touching the construction materials or getting paint on her clothes.

Two days before she was born, which also happened to be Easter Sunday, we found a leak in our water heater. We did not DIY the water heater. Paying for installation was well worth the cost because a.) it had to be done fast. Like within two days fast. And b.) our water heater sits in a closet in our garage about 3 feet up from the ground. Hoisting a 50 gallon water heater up into the closet and properly connecting the gas line, AND with drainage up to code under a time constraint was just too much to process mentally when a new baby was coming.

In the last two years, things around the house have been quiet when it came to construction. We replaced some windows here and there but no unplanned home maintenance to undertake.



We call it “tradition” because lo and behold, the same bathroom leaked again recently, and what do you know...we have another little one coming soon. But this time we did not DIY it. We called a plumber and he came out three hours later, and another three hours after that, the leak was gone, and our valve was straightened. That was not part of the leak but it was a nice positive benefit.

That evening my husband had replaced the drywall and the next day he started to mud.

Thankfully, besides the cost of the plumber, no extra repair costs were incurred because over the last five years, we’ve done enough construction to accrue a good selection of wood scraps, drywall pieces, plumbing supplies, tools, and paint to cover a good number of household maintenance around here. Great hint for keeping drywall mud from drying out: put plastic wrap directly on top of the mud, touching the top layer, before putting the lid back on. 

After this repair gets wrapped up and put behind us, we’ll have to start thinking about putting together a bedroom for our second child. Oh, and did I mention all this leak-fixing was in his future room? Yea, poor kid. The stories we will tell him later...

Here’s to hoping “tradition” doesn’t hold up too true and our water heater doesn’t die again in a few months. But it is under warranty this time!

Or we need to be done having babies. 😝

Highly Inconvenienced

I was about 14 at the time. Something within me flipped a switch where my generic wood-frame bed and gender-neutral decor suddenly wasn't good enough. I was looking into this canopy bed I really wanted. Obviously the decorators and designers did a great job in the pictures: beautifully painted bedrooms with coordinating bed sets atop a white canopy bed. Every girl's dream right? Yup, and I was sold. I think this was my own personal way of rebellion in the teenage years. (Nowadays it's quite common for parents to let their kids redesign their rooms once they hit a certain age, usually the early teens or middle school years in preparation for an older/more mature look. I grew up with practical parents who didn't replace or fix anything unless it was broken and not serving its intended purpose. I have since inherited portions of that mindset...perhaps to my husband's dismay at times.)

I looked at it for weeks and wrote down everything I wanted and even priced it out for my dad with tax. I picked out the canopy bed, the nightstand, a lamp, a dish chair, a new bed set, and a decorative pillow. It was everything I needed to turn my mundane bedroom into the perfect teenage feminine sanctuary.

Well, turns out my beloved canopy bed would not fit in my bedroom because the canopy would have run into the ceiling fan. So I had to say goodbye to the canopy. This actually cut down the budget by about $100, so I figured it was a win win still for both my dad and me. He would save some money, and I'd still get most of what I originally wanted. When we went to the store to go pick out the furniture, I was slightly disappointed at what I saw. I remember seeing the same white iron bed frame sitting in the store with a plain mattress laid on top with no beautiful bedding to adorn it. It looked so boring, almost the way my existing bed looked. Inside, I was wondering, do I really need a new bed and all this new stuff? Yes, I did (so I thought.) So my dad ordered the bed and nightstand for me from one store, and we drove around to a few other places and picked up the rest of the items on my list to redecorate my room.

On the day my new bed was delivered, my dad got a call that a signature was required for the package, otherwise they wouldn't leave it and the delivery date would have to be rescheduled. He left work and drove home in the middle of the day to sign for the delivery, and then drove the 30 minutes back to his office to finish the rest of his work day. I was at school and had no idea what happened until he told me later that evening. At the time, I knew what happened was an inconvenience to my dad, but in the years since, I've really come to understand truly how significant the inconvenience was.

This was my room frozen in time for a year when I moved overseas.
I made it as clean and organized as I could for not having the
time to seriously clean and clear out what I didn't need.

I spy the bed, the nightstand, the purple lamp, my purple dish
chair, and the decorative pillow, all parts of my "room redecorating" phase.

I really loved that bed and everything else I picked out during that teenage-life crisis. Since then, the chair has been well-loved. The bed well-used, and the lamp is still in great working condition. The bed set has since been replaced as it has understandably not withstood the test of 10 years of use and washings. I moved the lamp and dish chair with me to the apartment when I got married, and it has since followed us to our house.

My beloved bed has remained in my old room at my dad's house for the last three years. I always joked with my husband that I wanted to move it over for our future kids to sleep in. He said only if we had a girl. After we found out we were having a girl, he finally said, "Well, I guess we can move your bed over." A couple months ago, we went over to my dad's house, disassembled my old bed and nightstand, loaded it up in his little hatchback, drove it back to our house, and reassembled it here. (Seriously, we could do some major advertising for the Honda Fit. His little car is shorter than mine bumper to bumper and has hauled more large items than could ever fit in mine.)

We purchased a new box spring, mattress, and bedding set for it, and it's waiting for our little girl in about 3-4 years. In the mean time, we may spend a few (or more) nights on it ourselves since it is in the bedroom right down the hall instead of around the corner of our house from the nursery.

The friends are all hanging out together. We wanted to put it in the nursery
as a secondary bed for us to pass out on during late nights, but it wouldn't
fit. So for now, it's down the hall in the other room.

This simple piece of furniture is only in the first stages of being passed down one generation, but it already has such a huge story. We are very blessed to have the luxury of hanging onto our childhood possessions and belongings because we did not need to move overseas or travel great lengths in search of a better future. (You see all the friends on the bed? Each one has a store of where he/she came from and some small significance. There's another pod of friends on another bed...our children will have no shortage of stuffies to play with.) I don't know how my children will feel about passing down the things they will grow up with in the coming years, but I do hope to share the story of this bed as well as many more stories with them about the things they have, the people who've brought them, and how much value they truly have.

And yes, I'm prepared to be highly inconvenienced over the years by my future children. But you know what? It has some of the greatest returns.

Paper Blinds

16 years ago when my family moved into our new house (which is still my dad's current house,) we had the builders install window blinds for us. However, before the blinds arrived, we asked them to cover up the windows so we'd have some privacy without people looking in as they walked past. They put up these paper blinds on all the windows until the blinds were delivered and installed.

After the real blinds were put up, we saved every single paper blind and shoved them all in a cabinet in the laundry room. My mother's mentality was, "You never know when they'll come in handy again." Yes, mother.

They sat in the laundry room cabinet for years, and years, and years, and years, and years. And it's a slight miracle nobody threw them out. I don't think anyone ever even opened the cabinet actually.

Fast forward about 14 years when my husband and I bought our house. It had its fair share of problems. The blinds were actually very minor in comparison to the other issues we encountered. They were mismatched between the rooms - 2 inch faux wood here, vinyl mini blinds there - as well as some that had been damaged and chewed up. The ones in working condition were yellowed with age and dated-looking.

The blinds in our bedroom were the ones which had been damaged and chewed up. Rather than leave them in their current half-functioning state, we took the blinds down altogether, retrieved the 14 year old paper blinds tucked away so neatly in storage from my dad's house, and taped them to our windows. (Yes, I remembered they were still there.)

As you can see in the background,
our paper blinds being put to use once again.

Blinds were one of the projects that constantly got shoved on the back burner because there was always something else needing work. I occasionally looked to see if anything was on sale, but the prices only seemed to be increasing. Also, with the paper blinds up, it was very easy not to notice them as a problem and just to see them as the real blinds in our house. Aesthetically, it was not the best, but when you've seen something day after day, it becomes your normal, and you accept it.

Recently, I stumbled across some blinds on sale and curiosity actually led me to go online and search the website for our sizes. I found some that would work for a few of our rooms and went ahead and bought them. We were able to get them installed in our bedroom and swap out the paper blinds.

Bye bye paper!

It's actually quite nice to be able to sit at my desk and write this blog while having a slight view of our backyard outside. Before, the light was able to filter in through the paper, but it was still opaque enough not to see through. Now, I can steal glimpses at yellowing grass.

I can just imagine my mother's voice saying to me, "See, you found a use for the paper blinds! Aren't you glad we kept them all these years?" Yes, mother. 

I am glad we kept them, and I am glad we got a good two and a half years of use out of them. What I wouldn't remind her of is that home improvement stores actually sell those paper blinds...and they're not super cheap either! 

If we had the money and budget to buy blinds two and a half years ago, I wouldn't be here telling this story of how we reused old folded paper. So I guess the story credit would have to go to our frugalness.

Real blinds are still better. 

The Last will be First and the First will be Last

The ones hired in the morning agreed to work for one denarius. The ones hired in the afternoon who worked fewer hours were still paid one denarius. There's nothing unfair about this because each individual agreed to what was arranged. Although still just as important, my title is inferring something just a bit different to Jesus's parable in Matthew.

We bought our house with three full bathrooms ranging in size from small to medium to large. The only one considered updated at the time was the small bathroom. Seven months after closing, we embarked on our first full-on DIY bathroom renovation and worked on the medium bathroom. It took us about three weeks working late nights and weekends along with our day jobs. After completing this project, this bathroom now became the nicest one in the house.

Obviously, we were still using our master bathroom. The original toilet seven years older than us and a super skinny shower door were nothing compared to the convenience of having an attached en suite.

Three and a half months ago, we made the decision to do our last and largest renovation project on the inside of our house - not completely DIY. We said goodbye to our 80's bathroom which is now remembered solely by these pictures alone:

Vanity Before

Take 2: Goodbye nasty cabinets that previous
homeowners did not take care of keeping clean

Shower: Goodbye 18 inch shower door that's
almost too skinny for a 24-inch-waisted person
to walk through straight-on

Bathtub: A very inefficiently small oval tub in a large space

And then came the fun but physically stressful part: Demolition. Last we left off, everything was boxed up and placed at the curb outside in a limited exhibition. Here's what the inside looked like.

Look at that him go with that 20 pound tool. That was no joke. 

Even just blogging about this and seeing the in-progress pictures is already making me tired again. We were thankful to have been able to move to a spare bedroom in our house and use the other bathrooms to completely clear the space so it didn't really feel like we were living through a renovation. We also had the luxury of a door to the back patio from our bedroom which the contractors used, so they stayed out of the main living area of the rest of our house so I could teach and live somewhat normally. However, I won't downplay the amount of cleaning we had to do in our bedroom and bathroom after the contractors finally finished walking in and out of our room and bathroom. There was a lot of vacuuming and a lot of mopping.

In the end, our bathroom, which ended up last to be renovated and took the most patience (in waiting for contractors to come and finish their parts) and money, is now the nicest space to bathe in our house.

New vanity with double the storage as before and a much more refreshing color scheme.

New tub - takes up just as much space as the last one, but double the bathing space
with a much more spa-like appearance and style.

We borrowed about half of the space which used to be that giant cabinet
and enlarged the shower. Frameless glass makes the shower open to the
rest of the bathroom and gives it a clean, sleek design. The door is
the proper width and built to today's code.

We haven't finished the shelves to the left of the shower yet (as you can see from the empty space in the last picture), but we're not in a rush. And having tapped out of the project halfway through due to other priorities....I'm definitely giving my husband a break on that one.

We also don't have mirrors yet because we haven't found ones that are the right size which we like. If you have any ideas, please let us know where to shop! We've scrounged Homegoods, Ross, At Home, and Kirklands.

I've also mentioned to Jonathan several times that I will not be attempting anymore large-scale DIY renovation projects around the house after this one. Not sure if it's the pregnancy stealing my energy and motivation away, or if my first-house-energy is truly drained. Either way, we will definitely be taking it easy for a LONG time in terms of house projects. However, we will not be taking it easy in terms of life for the next 18 years.....

Bathroom: 1983

I channeled my inner artist this weekend and created a conceptual art installation entitled Bathroom:1983

Materials: slate. porcelain. ceramic. brass. glass. wood. metal. paper. plaster. concrete. sand.

In this installation, approximately 1000 pounds of material are strategically placed alongside the curb to display an original 1983 bathroom. The materials are placed along the curb in disarray to illustrate a transition to the year 2017. The toilet tank itself has the year 1983 etched on the inside for proof of age. In 1983, the materials for this bathroom would have been top of the line, luxury pieces. In current times, this fashion belongs out on the curb to be hauled away.

This limited engagement piece will be on display until 7 am on Tuesday, July 25th. You don't want to miss it!






In all seriousness, we collectively demolished and hauled to the curb over 4x our combined body weight in mass. Definitely one of our largest projects to undertake.

Stay tuned for future updates and the next art piece ;)

Flat File

A few weeks ago, or maybe just one, I can't remember, I converted some built-in-bookshelves to be a flat file for my music. Before, it was just regular bookshelves with the books vertically placed next to each other. I grew up doing this, however, it is quite bad for your books. Over time, unless you have a very good bookend, (which I do not,) the books will slowly begin to slip downward. The unfortunate part about this is that the process is quite slow, so over time, the books don't fall, but they'll actually take on a warped shape to accommodate for the slipping.

Before: regular bookshelves, music books stored upright. Hello, guitar!

Having been pressured immensely by a fellow music teacher and friend, I finally decided to take some action to get a flat file. However, purchasing a flat file that has aesthetic value and can function as a piece of furniture is not cheap. They run at least a couple hundred dollars to start. I had no intentions of spending that much money simply to store the music, so we decided to go a different route. (Having moved the piano in with seating for parents, the room itself also has very little space to add an additional piece of furniture so I wanted to try and use the existing space as best as possible to not cramp the space.)

We did some research and looked at the shelf clips on our built-in. Now our house is over 30 years old. These shelf clips that were used are not your normal little pins that you push into holes and pull out. These shelf pins were one of a kind, specialized clips with their own tracks.

This here is a Knape & Vogt 256 shelf clip. If not purchased carefully, they can
run you up to $1 a piece. We purchased carefully and did not spend that much per unit. 

Our much cheaper solution was to add shelves to the existing built-in unit so that the bookshelves would stay on the left side and my flat file for music would be added on the right side. If you reference the first image above, you'll see that the three shelves for books on the left have ample wiggle room between each to shift closer and add in a fourth shelf. That's precisely what we did. We moved one of the shelves from the right side to the left to create a fourth shelf for books. Then, we created four more shelves ourselves out of wood to add skinnier shelves on the right for my books to lie flat.

Work in progress: fourth shelf added to the left for books. Stacks of music
lying on their side waiting to be sorted into in-progress shelving units on the right.

The total cost for my flat file conversion ended up being about $25. Of the total materials needed - shelf clips, wood shelves, wood stain, and a clear coat - we only actually had to buy one quart of wood stain and a pack of shelf clips. In the garage, we already had leftover wood pieces from previous projects for the shelving and a can of clear coat also from a previous project.

The finished shelf with bookshelves on the left and a flat file on the right.

Much to the chagrin of my music teacher friend, I did not purchase a flat file, which my bank account much appreciates. Now, for the first time in 15+ years, my music books can lie flat and rest comfortably on their shelves with no fear of a warped cover. I am constantly reminded that my music library will grow and I will need more space, and that statement is most likely true. In that event, I will slowly remove the books from the left and slowly infiltrate that side as needed using the same process we did. Perhaps this whole built-in unit will be a flat file for my music some day. But we are not there yet. :)

Screen Time

It is officially the 1st of November, and having been a quite warm Halloween evening last night, I am ready for lower temperatures and no longer hearing my AC unit kick on. Now the screen time I'm referencing is not looking at a computer/Ipad/phone. We do have a little bit of that, but I'm talking about something else: our window screens!

This weekend, we decided to do another little DIY project. We actually attempted this project a little under two months ago and failed miserably because the Home Depot we went to was completely understocked and depleted of window screening materials. It was a big flop, although we did repair one of our existing screens by reusing what we already had.

The project we meant to attempt was creating two completely brand new screens for two windows which did not have screens when we bought the house. No idea how that happens, but with this house, we learned not to ask the "why" questions. In order to make new screens, we needed some materials and tools:

Window Screen, sold in rolls


Window Screen Frame


Window Screen Corner Frames


Window Screen Clips


Window Screen Pull Tabs


Window Spline


Spline Roller


Hacksaw


Utility Knife


Measuring tape and scissors. Of course we all know what measuring tape and scissors look like, so I don't think I need to identify that for anyone :) Safety glasses might be good to have, although nothing went violently flying for this project, but I don't want to say you don't need them because there is some cutting involved.

Needless to say, what we thought was an easy, beginner level DIY that we thought could be accomplished in an evening....took a little longer than we thought. The first screen we made ended up taking over 2 hours to finish. The second one, we finished in about 1 hour. I guess we should have known, however easy something is to do, the first time is always going to take longer. And a key note I should always remember: messing up is easier than doing it correctly.

If you want to learn how to make a window screen, you can check out this link here that has a nice video. A few things this video does not include instructions on : springs and pull tabs.

From the outside. You can see the wavy mesh material of our screen!
And if you can't...well, it blends in pretty well because it's the right size to fit :) 

Our newly screened window that can now be
opened to allow our living room to breathe a little :)

I'm excited for this fall and winter because it means I can now open two of the largest windows in our house to allow for some outdoor air to penetrate into our once extremely musty (now only slightly musty) house. We missed out big time last year, but now we have no excuse :)

Total Cost: $25
Total Time Spent: 3 hours
Total Experience Gained: Priceless

HGTV In Real Life: Kitchen Facelift

We thought the kitchen was going to be one of the first projects we would tackle and renovate as homeowners, and we got halfway done....but we ended up waiting over a year. It started out as an aesthetic problem, and we were able to compromise on the aesthetics of the kitchen to put it off and save money. However, when the dishwasher wasn't secured any longer to the underside of our crumbling wood-bits-smashed-together-and-covered-in-plastic counters, it was no longer an issue of aesthetics. Every time we wanted to put dishes in the dishwasher, it would tip forward and make my heart skip a beat.

One of my favorite parts of renovating has been that I can truly make it my own. I'm not overly particular about aesthetics to begin with, but when it comes to the biggest purchase and investment (probably) of my life, coupled with the fact that we bought an older house knowing it needed some renovating, I'm going to be picky. And having seen the results of our kitchen facelift, I am confident that no house we saw with renovated kitchens had one that came close to being my dream kitchen.

Before:



After round 1 of facelift:





During phase 2 of the facelift:





And finally, I present, my dream kitchen:





So...I wish I could say nothing was ever on our counters, but that would be a lie. So this is what our counters actually look like:

We're pretty clean...at least in the kitchen :)

I was in awe for a while after we finished our kitchen. Having lived with the outdated materials for so long, I got used to it. And then, I watched the contractors install pretty much every detail, so it wasn't a big reveal for me. To be honest at first, I wasn't sure if I liked it. Jonathan and I took FOREVER to pick our backsplash (like....almost a year if not more. Yes, we had been looking at backsplash for a LONG time) because I couldn't decide whether it was worth it to splurge on a fancy shmancy design or just to keep it simple and low-budget. In the end, we went simple and low-budget, and I'm more than pleased with how it turned out. I learned that visualizing an end product with just one representative piece is really difficult. Super props to interior designers who can figure this all out in their head instantly.

If you're curious on the materials we used, I've made a list below of every item we bought for the kitchen. I didn't include any of the appliances. All the current prices listed on the links are higher than what we paid for them.

Kitchen Sink - Kraus

Kitchen Faucet - Kohler

Backsplash Tile

Quartz Countertops

Cabinet Hardware

Range Hood Vent

Cabinet Paint: SW Pro Classic Satin Pure White 7005

Wall Paint: SW Marshmallow 7001

Jonathan and I don't splurge on fancy meals or new clothes on ourselves very often if ever, but we do spend the time and money to have a nice house, not only for ourselves, but to share it with others. One thing I've enjoyed most about having our home is being able to open it up to others and have them come over for dinner, host friends who are in town for the weekend, and to share our lives with others. We hope you can enjoy our house as much as we do :)