all through the house

today was a beautifully gorgeous november day here in minneapolis. i biked home from work (in a tank top!) with my headphones on, just enjoying the unusually warm sunshine and colorful leaves still covering the ground. when i got home, i saw dad was taking advantage of the nice weather too...with his electric saw and building materials scattered about my steps and entry way.

today's projects took place all throughout the house. dad was over around 11am and worked until dinner time in the living room, bathroom and kitchen.

living room: dvd cabinet. the first project dad worked on today was adding the trim around my living room inset cabinet that i plan on using for dvd's. now we just need to add shelving and putty up the screws around the trim and i can finally get rid of my cd towers!

plus, now you all know my guilty pleasures of owning (and repetitively watching) all seasons of The OC and The Office :)

the bathroom: closet. see that board that my cabinet is sitting on? well that's my new raised floor of the cabinet. that way, if my bathroom ever floods, my closet supplies will be safe.

our plan is to create storage in the bottom half of the closet, with a single cabinet door. and then the top half of the closet will be open shelving.

the kitchen: fridge water dispenser. this project has been a long time coming, and we got about halfway today. see, the problem is that there's no water access along the wall my fridge is sitting against. so dad used the can light fixture (see photo above) as his access point. he drilled a hole through the beam nearest the fridge and another into my pantry closet, and then fished the tube through them both.

the tube connects to the fridge (you can see the clear tube sticking out near the red arrow), goes through the ceiling, into the pantry closet (more tube near the left arrow), and eventually will emerge along the floor near my stove, and snake through the back of the kitchen cabinets to connect up to the water valve under the sink. and voila, i will have water and ice fresh from my fridge!

stay on your side of the line

it might not have been cheap on our monthly association dues, but it had to be done...but wow does it look a million times better!

trying to find a parking spot on the street for the two days it took to get our parking lot resealed and repainted was awesome as always, but i'm hoping the outcome will make my life easier...with lines so bright, maybe my neighbor will actually park in his spot for once? only time will tell...

step to the edge

to be honest, i think this is the first ever post that i don't know the exact date of. i know it was sometime in september...or maybe august...who knows!

anyways, one day while i was out and about, dad came over and put the trim up on my step under the bar (which acts as a divider between my two levels). thank goodness! mom had been wanting him to do that for months. maybe even a year or more.

but now it's up. we didn't have many color options, so we decided on the metal finish -- which actually matches the stainless steel legs on my bar. and now the unfinished wood flooring is finally covered and protected from getting chipped.

the purple curtains

I finally replaced my bedroom curtains to something less than the BLAH color they were. (Thank Goodness!) I originally bought them one day long ago at Ikea...I was on my way out and happened across the "As Is" section and figured, why not!? They were super cheap and super opaque: exactly what I craved for my bedroom so I could sleep in as long as possible on Saturday mornings.

But the color was just so boring. Especially since I have yet to do anything with my room. Right now it just has a coat of primer on the walls, a cement floor, and that's it! Not what you would expect from a web designer girl who loves color.

Anyways, I'll get to that later. So I was at Ikea again and passed this purple curtain set. I have been very into purple lately (no idea why) but nonetheless, I grabbed them.

And here they are! I like them best with my snowflake lights on, it gives them a soft glow :)

the story of the mysterious puddle

it all started back in september: the puddle.

but where were the drops coming from? after investigating each unit one floor at a time, we made it up to the top floor. BINGO. water leaking under their sink. problem solved.

a few weeks went by with no more puddles (the top floor neighbors had agreed not to use their sink until a plumber came out to fix it). but then...it started again. and this time those tiny splashes of water had turned into constant drops, filling up the buckets underneath. we held an association meeting and decided serious action was needed. plumbers came out to investigate, as well as mold abatement specialists, and it turned out we not only had a leak, but mold as well. bummer.

in the meantime, a tiny hole was cut in my ceiling so the water could drain through and not continue pooling up and billowing out. by now it was a few days before the end of october. about a month and a half of water dripping into my dining room.

then one day i came home to this giant contraption, which i named: the monster.

apparently the leak had been fixed, which meant the mold abatement team could start their magic. they cut a hole in my ceiling, confined the space, and attached a special fan through the only exit so that the mold spores would be captured. ps: that fan was incredibly loud.

but unfortunately in the next few days i noticed water still dripping (and by dripping i mean there was more water pooled up in my dining room than ever before) from outside the monster. see the two buckets i set out? yep. another leak (or two) had sprung.

so the next day the mold abatement crew and the plumber were back. they doubled the size of the hole in my ceiling -- therefore doubling the size of the monster -- which was now taking up the majority of my dining room. you can see the section of plumbing that was repaired, the wood surrounding it was painted over with a special white paint.

fast forward almost another month when the mold was officially proclaimed obsolete, and i finally got to say goodbye to the monster...and hello to a completely useless dining room, taped off in plastic (note: this was not the first time this room has been plastic'ed off).

now it was the carpenter's turn. his task: repair the ceiling.

so far the carpenter's been at my house for six straight days, and i think the end is finally in site.

what's left? once the ceiling is ready, the carpenter will repaint the ceiling. then we'll hire a painter to re-texture the ceiling and then the carpenter will be back to repaint (both the ceiling and part of the teal wall). and then hopefully i'll have my dining room back.

unfortunately i've been told that won't be until quite a while after the turkey day holiday is over...

it's raining pots & pans

it was a long time coming, but we finally installed my hanging pots & pans rack...making my kitchen one step closer to completion!

as you know, i bought the rack from ikea at least a year ago (probably closer to two), and once the hanging cabinets were put it, it was time for the hanging rack. i also bought a pendant light -- that matches the lights above my bar -- to hang through the rack. dad hasn't figured out how to hook up the electrical part yet, so that will have to wait.

fridgy cabinets

finally the day arrived when dad and matthew came over to install my new cabinets. well, kinda new. if you remember back to when i moved in and found a wall of well-constructed, solid cabinets. we disassembled them and dad ended up using them to create new cabinets from parts of the originals.

this summer i painted them in my parent's garage, and there they've been until now.

now this side of my kitchen is almost complete, the nub is installed, and next up is the hanging pot rack and then hooking up the water in my fridge dispenser.