After ripping out the nasty frat carpet and installing hardwoods, we were left with quite a gap between the floor and baseboard. I’m not sure if this is standard practice to install baseboards after laying carpet, but it doesn’t work too well when you don’t put carpet back down. The frat carpet and pad was a solid inch thick. Once we put down the underlayment and new flooring, that still left us with almost a quarter inch gap – just barely small enough to cover with trim!

On a rainy Saturday, we borrowed The Saw from our neighbor (again – we should really just buy our own miter saw). Ryan, the known Master of Measuring in the house, set to work getting all the increments of every nook and cranny that ran through the hallway and bedroom while I pulled out all the furniture and gave the floor a solid cleaning. (No, cleaning the floor is not a necessary step here, but I am my mother’s daughter and will use any excuse to clean something.)

I had actually picked up all this trim a couple months earlier at Home Depot. I opted for the plastic, pre-painted trim over the pre-primed pine option for its great price, and I also figured that plastic would stand up to a certain animal and shoe scuffs perhaps a bit better than soft pine (after the very bad fortune of our contractor duping us into installing pine treads on the stairs, I’m very wary of this soft wood). One contractor warned us that using a finishing nailer on this plastic trim would not go well, because the power tool usually splintered the plastic. Thankfully for us, we are scared of pneumatic nailers and chose to pre-drill and nail in the trim. Granted, the installing probably took twice as long, but the space we were working in was small enough that it wasn’t a big deal.

In one nook at the end of the hallway, there had been a random patch of other hardwood that we ripped out with the carpet. This nook had quarter round trim that we salvaged, so I just re-installed that. It probably would have been easier to just put in the new plastic trim, because I ended up having to sand, patch and paint this area, adding another hour to the job.

The biggest difficulty we had with this installation was due to the large gap from the carpet, because it left us with very little contact space between the trim and wall to get a nail through. Overall, though, these finishing touches on the second floor went really smoothly and quickly – probably one of the easiest projects we’ve done so far! With Ryan measuring and cutting, and me drilling, nailing and caulking, we knocked this out in a long afternoon. I was truly impressed with how big an effect this small addition had on the flooring! Check out these final before and afters of the hallway and closet:

So finally, we got to rip up the Phase I To-Do list! (I let Ryan do the honors, since he was usually the one fretting the most over it). Bye, bye, list!

Okay, not Punxsutawney, but this image accurately reflects my feelings toward Philadelphia winters right about now.

Phew! After a lovely and well-deserved six-week home improvement hiatus, Ryan and I were ready to jump back in. With the chaos of buying the house, then rushing to make it worthy for the family’s Thanksgiving, then rushing again to dress it up for our holiday party, we couldn’t get within ten feet of a paint brush without breaking into a cold sweat. Our gusto seemed to coincide with the seasons – with the onset of winter, our home improvement plan went into hibernation along with Punxsutawney Phil. And with a particularly brutal Philly winter that brought us high temps in the teens, I was having a major motivation letdown. Who wants to change into their paint jeans when there’s a cushy couch, a gas fireplace and a Snuggie calling your name from the living room? So the studio renovations flat-lined, and the bathroom only got new hand towels from Ikea. And we were okay with that… for a while.

Thankfully, with a few sneak peeks of spring – and a calm month at the hospital for Ryan – our energy was renewed! (Oh, goody.) As a quick review from way back in September when we first bought Haywood, here’s a brief rundown of the renovations we initially set out to do before we even moved in:

- paint, and lots of it
- replacing the “frat house” carpet on the stairs and second floor with hardwoods that matched the current first floor
- knocking out the wall that sealed up the original access to the third story, put in place when the one-bedroom apartment was created
- did I mention paint?
- installing a gate so The Animal can happily guard her territory without causing total neighborhood mayhem

Add to that the list of things we encountered once we started on the first list:

- wash windows
- finish moving out of previous apartment (harder than you might think)
- pantry shelving
- cleaning closet shelving
- remove studio wallpaper border
- hang blinds
- paint trim
- do something about that sad excuse for a built-in entertainment unit in the master bedroom

Believe it or not, all those items above are actually DONE. Yeah, as in, I don’t have to think about it ever again! The only remaining item is the former entertainment unit in the bedroom, and we’re leaving that to a pro (we’re guessing we’ll be able to afford that pro sometime this summer).

What the h was this supposed to be anyway?

The current "wardrobe." Hidden behind that curtain is a high-end plastic shelving system from Walmart.

Oh, wait, there was one more thing we kind forgot about before we could completely crumple up our to-do list. This little thing became Ryan’s favorite task to stress me out with during the month of January, mostly because we had no idea where to start with it and neither of us had any experience doing it before: installing baseboard trim. (Geez, why didn’t anyone tell us that renovating this house would be so bad on our knees?!)

After the madness of preparing for family visiting over Thanksgiving, Ryan and I were feeling pretty burned out on any sort of house project that required changing into junky clothes. Instead, we focused on gussying up the place.

We don't have real stockings yet, so these lovelies from Target's dollar isle will suffice.

My favorite of Ryan's childhood ornaments.

And what I was looking forward to the most: a holiday party! I’ve been pining for the right space to throw a great party for a few years now, but our apartments have never been suitable. Now, with the floor plan in Haywood opened up and ample kitchen space, a party was on the calendar. First I turned to Martha (download her great party planning checklist here), then I turned to my hostess-with-the-mostest girlfriend, Jessie. We whipped up a great menu, I designed an invitation and blammo! Thirty-eight RSVPs later, we had ourselves a shindig… with space to spare!

The party starts when the Santa hats come out.

Cheesey posed pic in front of the fireplace? I'd love to!

Paul had plenty of room to whip up about 50 meatballs.

Full house!

Ryan wrapped up the night with some impromptu strumming.

This is the inspiration board for my third floor studio + music room project:

It’s bright, cheerful and full of energy. The colors are sunny, and I thought it would bring a great contrast to the more relaxed hues we have in the rest of the house (faint yellow, lemonade, putty, rosy earth). I was looking forward to hunting for the right Danish-inspired furniture to successfully complete the mid-century modern meets California surfer vibe I was going for.

Well, there’s a reason I was scared to be holding a roller of red paint. I should have listened to my gut! Fast forward a few hours: all five walls of the music room were Ladybug red and I was putting the finishing turquoise touches on the stairwell (at 3 a.m.)… I hated it. HATED it. It was gaudy. Loud. Tacky even. I didn’t even have to wait for it to dry and I knew there would be no second coats going on. The music room looked like a questionable club downtown and burned out my retinas. The stairwell looked like a sad attempt to recreate Miami. Ryan was on overnight at the hospital, and I texted him in my misery, “Ugh I am bummed. The red is not going to work. I actually do love it, but with the turquoise it looks like a Mexican restaurant. So bummed!!!!! And so tired. Damn it. Good thing I stopped at just one coat and didn’t crack open the yellow yet. Because guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow? Painting the yellow over the red. Yup. Grr.”

The turquoise paint in the stairwell peeking through between the dining room and living room. Too "hot."

The turquoise in the stairwell. What I did not take into account: the blue stairs. Major oversight.

The red in the studio. I didn't think to take a picture until after I had started priming over the walls.

Here’s the kicker: I loved the colors. On the paint chips, they were pretty. My inspiration board rocked. The paint was Martha Stewart, and it rolled on beautifully. The shades were just right. But not right for Haywood. Haywood is an 80+ year-old East Coast rowhouse. Not a cottage in Pacific Beach or a vintage bungalow in Key West. Damn, damn, damn! My biggest oversight was the blue stairs. After walking up and down these stairs every day, I forgot that they were blue. To me, they were just stairs. Sure, I took into consideration the light pine floors that I had installed, and the colors looked great with that. But not the stairs. It made the whole stairwell look like an ocean adventure. Ridiculous.

I was sleep-deprived and out $150 for the paint. But the very worst part of this was that Ryan’s family was arriving in just 48 hours to spend the week of Thanksgiving. That’s right, I started a major and risky paint project the weekend before family was coming into town. What the hell is wrong with you? you’re asking. The only answer is home-improvement induced brain damage. The next two days went like this:

This is actually me standing in my stair well.

Monday
9am: I put on my Wonder Woman outfit and started priming over the turquoise with the leftover Killz in the basement (thank goodness I bought in bulk when it was on Labor Day sale!).
11am – 3pm: Actually worked on something I get paid to do. Worry Ryan when he comes home from an overnight shift because I have bags the size and color of prunes under my eyes and painted caked in my hair. Tell him I’m totally fine and I can get this done.
3pm – 5pm: Started painting white over the turquoise.
6pm: Give Ryan the credit card to order pizza when he asks how he can help. Try not to cry to the beefy delivery man when he looks at me pitifully.
7pm: Set up Ryan painting the studio gold and twitch a little when I think of how I’ll react if I hate that color, too.
9pm: Upload the magazine I’m on deadline to finish. Tell Ryan I’m totally fine and I can get this done.
11pm: Drift off to sleep while looking at Martha Stewart paint online, deciding which shade I’ll buy tomorrow to go over the red.

Tuesday
7:30am: Head to Home Depot to pick up new paint and more primer. Swing by Ikea to grab some extra towels, vases, etc for the music room and upstairs bathroom since I totally forgot about all that.
noon: Paint first coat of primer over red. Open windows to circulate air and hopefully dry primer faster. Tell myself I’m totally fine and I can get this done.
1pm: Notice the open windows has cooled the room too much and caused the primer to run. Freak the $*&$! out and turn on the space heater while rolling over the running primer in hopes of smoothing it out before it dries with that texture.
3pm: Start cleaning the still under-construction bathroom upstairs, which Ryan’s brother will be using. Tell myself I may or may not get all this done but that I’m marrying into this family and they have to love me no matter what.
4pm: Paint another coat of primer on the red.
4:30pm: Ryan calls to say he’s had a wonderful day and he’s on his way home early. I tell him to shut the hell up.
6pm: Finish painting the new yellow in the music room. Thank the precious Lord that I like the color. Stare blankly at Ryan when he asks me when I was going to clean the rest of the house for his family. Say something nonsensical under my breath while he busts out the vacuum to clean the second floor.
7pm: Manically dust, sweep and mop the first floor. Put away laundry on the dining room table. Push a bunch of crap into the cleaning closet. Light coffee-scented candles. Stage the music room with a plant and some vases to make it look slightly welcoming.
8:15pm: Ryan leaves to pick up his parents at the airport. I take the fastest shower on record, throw on a cute sweater, slap some makeup and body spray on and greet them at the door with a big smile, hoping they don’t notice the red streak in my ponytail.

Why, yes, I always look this put together, dear.

8:30pm: Give them a tour of the house and mention they shouldn’t lean on the walls until tomorrow.
9:30pm: We all walk to the bar nearby for burgers. I feel sloshed after one beer and try hard not to look like I want to die.

And that is the story of painting the music room red. Oh, before you comment on my craziness, here’s a sneak peak of the awesome gold in the studio (I don’t want to reveal the whole thing until I get some finishing touches done):

One of the biggest projects Ryan and I wanted to have all done before family came for Thanksgiving was the stairs. We did manage to get them done, and they look great! So worth the time and frustration.

Rewind two weeks… Mr Contractor had nailed in all the little pieces of trim, so the woodwork was ready. I spent a couple days patching all those mysterious drywall punch-outs and the dents that the previous stairs had left behind. Next up was taping, which was a huge undertaking…

If you are getting ready to take on this type of project, here are a few tips:
- Approach the project with patience. Know that you’re not going to tape things off really quick and get to painting. Taping will actually take you more time than painting.

- Buy plenty of painter’s tape. This project took me one and a half rolls.

- Use a razor knife or scissors to cut clean edges. All the elements in a stair case meet at right angles, so you’ll save yourself time trying to cover every bit of exposed wood or wall by cutting the tape to match.

- Find a system. There are 13 stairs with four sides each. You’ll be cutting 26 same-size pieces to run along the sides, 13 same-size pieces to run along where the tread meets the next riser, etc, etc. It will go faster if you cut and tape all the similar pieces at one time instead of doing one complete stair at a time.

I took a break for a day after finishing all that taping before painting. The painting wasn’t really so bad. I started with a solid coat of primer, then managed to get it all in one good coat, with only a couple of touch-ups. A word to the wise if you own a dog and you’re painting something perfectly smooth like risers: keep tweezers at the ready. I guess this also applies to if you own a cat, or if your husband is especially hairy, etc. I swept, vacuumed and mopped the stairs before painting, and I still managed to find a dog hair (or two or three) on each riser! After a few cuss words, I finally just brought out the tweezers and plucked as I painted so that nothing would dry in place.

Also especially handy for lots of angles and smooth surfaces is an angle-tipped paintbrush like this:

With some patience and time, you can end up with beeyutiful stairs like this!

What do you think? So worth the month-long wait, right? Here’s a reminder of the nasty “before” in case you’ve forgotten:

After copious amounts of spackling and sanding, trim painting, drywall dust containment and touch-up painting… we have a living room. Let me just emphasize what an event this is: we have not had a living room since we bought the house on Aug 27. At night, we’ve been hanging out in the kitchen. My awesome gas fireplace has been sitting, lonely, behind a shop vac and dropcloths. My comfiest-in-the-world couches have been moping under blankets to protect them from paint and dust. But now – finally! – we have a living room.

Granted, it’s a little spare right now. Only a mirror has made it on the wall, and that’s because there was already a hole there. I have fabulous plans for this room, though, and I’m excited to put them into action. Here’s the inspiration board I’ve put together for the space:

What do you think about the yellow for an accent color? I’ve already ordered the yellow chevron material for our curtains… a little nervous on whether that will look fun and modern or atrocious. Thankfully, it’s free returns.

I woke up Saturday morning and found Ryan had dressed up our stairs with every towel and spare rug he could find. Ridiculous. We had gone to bed on Friday fretting about the scratches Ryka had already managed to gouge into our brand. new. stairs. (Seriously?! Can we at least wait a few weeks before we ruin something new and expensive?!) Thankfully, Mr Contractor assured us that since we could not see the light, unstained wood through the scratches, she had only done superficial damage. We could fix it with some more poly.

To prevent a total waste of our investment, we agreed carpet treads were in order. It wasn’t our first choice decor-wise, but having a dog who loves to bound up and down the stairs made it a requirement. Putting some carpet on the stairs also gave me, someone who has a tendency to fall both up and down sets of stairs, a little more comfort.

Turns out stylish carpet treads are not so easy to find. My first Google search turned up a plethora of the oval braided variety:

Ryan put the kibosh on the braided type because his grandmother had them in her home, and “we’re too young for that.” Next in line was the overwhelming selection of traditional Persian style. Literally hundreds of this kind exist, each one only slightly more or less elderly than the one before:

all images from rugdepot.com

We decided the traditional Persian style was also a little too mature for us. I can appreciate a good Persian or Scandinavian design as much as anyone, but my art style is decidedly modern, so everything we put on the walls would definitely not mesh.

Then I stumbled upon some pretty nifty natural, woven rugs:

image from naturalarearugs.com

But when I realized I couldn’t pop the all-natural kind in the washing machine or steam clean them, the neat freak in me had a panic attack. Finally, after days of searching (Really – I actually couldn’t sleep one night because I was debating over which carpet treads I wanted our stairs to sport. Lame, I know.), I found Sears’ awesome selection. They actually have some contemporary, not-for-your-grandma styles. Also, most of the sets they sold were not a million dollars. I highly recommend this site to anyone searching for something stylish:

Ryan and I settled upon a cool, frame-in-frame style:

Then I noticed that these rugs were all sold in sets of 13. Mr Contractor told us that steps are always installed in 13′s (hence all the pop culture references to this number). Good thing I decided to double-check our stairs before entering my credit card number. And surprise, surprise, wouldn’t you know we have 14 steps? Of course we do. I called the manufacturer to see if I could pay for one extra tread, and to my shock they told me no. It was either 13 or 26. This made no business sense or customer service sense to me, so I hung up in a huff. I had put so much energy into finding just the right design, and now I couldn’t have them! Ryan suggested we buy 13 and just choose a step to skip, but I couldn’t see that possibly looking good. I was distressed and annoyed. In the end, I reverted back to these striped lovelies, which I came upon the very first night I started looking:

I called Rug Depot, and they happily agreed to sell me one extra tread. Mike, the customer service agent was super friendly and helpful. I definitely recommend Rug Depot to all you other folks out there who are carpet tread hunting!

I’m looking forward to our treads coming in. I think it will add some spunk to the staircase and help tie in the blue and red art I’m going to hang, as well as the deep orange I’m going to attempt for the hallway. Until then, we have no spare towels.

All you DIY hole-patchers, dent-fillers and drywallers (God help you), lend me your ears real quick. When my dad was out, he scooped up this gigantron tub of joint compound.

This is generally good for pretty much all the stuff you need to do to your walls. It’s easy enough to wet-sponge smooth, sand and work with. However, I went through this tub pretty quickly with all the patching work we’ve been doing.

At the recommendation of both my dad and our contractor, I decided to pick up the dry mix type joint compound at my next trip to the hardware store. The dry mix, like most bulk items, is more economical and keeps indefinitely. Cut to me standing in the drywall area of our local hardware place, listening to the seemingly very knowledgeable employee informing me that this certain type of dry mix dried really fast. I said, “Well that sounds great… that means I can sand and paint a whole lot faster!” And Mr Hardware Store said, “You sure can! This is what you want!” So I bought two bags and went on my merry way.

Tonight, I am really regretting buying this stuff. Yes, it dries fast. Really fast. Too fast. So fast that you can only mix exactly what you’ll need in your trough because it will turn into stone in 20 minutes. That’s because it’s setting-type, which means it’s a whole lot harder. Yup, that also translates to a whole lot harder to sand and finish. That’s because this type of joint compound is intended for the professional drywaller who knows exactly what he’s doing and can put a nice, smooth coat on the first time. Forget the wet sponge method – it took me a solid 15 minutes to sponge down a single nail hole patch in the wall. I bought a regular, hand-held drywall sander instead, and my arm. is. so. tired. It’s like ever-so-slowly scraping away at granite. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but my arm is seriously pooped. So a word to the wise – when Mr Hardware Store gives you a jolly chuckle and tells you how much faster your weekend will go! say no thanks and stick to the regular stuff in the green or blue lid. It will take a couple hours more to dry, but you get to keep full usage of your arms the next day.