Projects

Plastic-free food: first attempt.

January 23, 2012

So my new sustainability challenge is to try buy food without plastic packaging. Not the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, but it’s producing some nice benefits. (I like projects that force me to be deliberate about my choices. When I’m paying attention, I notice things I never saw before. It’s not about perfection.) What [...]

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2012. The year of vitality.

January 1, 2012

Do you make new year’s resolutions? Instead of resolutions, I like to choose a theme for the year. My theme for 2011 was nest. (And I did most of the nesting that I had hoped to, though I didn’t plant a garden.) Right now, I feel like most of my struggles have to do with [...]

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The never-ending kitchen project, part 4.

April 15, 2011

I left off our kitchen story in 2008, and now it’s 2009. We’d been happily living with our unfinished kitchen for a year. We were both in really busy times at work, and we just didn’t have the energy for big weekend projects. The real sticking point was decisions that needed to be made. The [...]

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The never-ending kitchen project, part 3.

April 13, 2011

Fast forward almost a year, and the kitchen is functional again. We have cabinets, countertops, a sink, and all our appliances and some of the lighting installed. We can cook at home all we want! We even have a washer and dryer so there’s no more weekly trip to the laundromat. The walls are raw [...]

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The never-ending kitchen project, part 2.

April 11, 2011

I love demolition. Really, I’m great with a sledgehammer. It’s so gratifying to see grimy old things smashed into pieces and a blank slate emerging. And in our kitchen we had a lot of demo to do. We built a temporary wall between the kitchen and dining room (to keep at least some of the [...]

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The never-ending kitchen project, part 1.

April 6, 2011

It’s become a running joke around here. “What do you want to do this weekend?”  ”Oh, probably work on the kitchen.” This house belongs to my uncle, and he had rented it out to various people for about 15 years, and it showed. We love the location near the beach, but the first time I [...]

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Bedroom makeover, part 3.

March 14, 2011

I’ve been distracted by other things recently (like my brother’s visit) but the bedroom makeover is still plugging along. Remember my original punch list? Well, here’s where things stand now: Buy a rug for the floor (to cover up the awful laminate)  DONE! Get a new sheepskin rug for one side of bed  DONE! Cover [...]

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Bedroom makeover, part 2.

February 12, 2011

We’ve been working away on the bedroom makeover, and we’re getting closer! The biggest project was the closet overhaul, which is now finished! We took advantage of the annual Elfa Closet sale at the Container Store and outfitted our closet with a new shelf and rod and some drawers for Joel’s clothes. Elfa closets are [...]

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Bedroom makeover, part 1

January 31, 2011

The clock is ticking down, 12 weeks until D-Day, and I’m suddenly getting serious about the long list of projects that I wanted to get done before the baby arrived. But I’m also feeling completely overwhelmed and I don’t know where to focus. So, I picked one of the easiest rooms. Our bedroom. It’s tiny: [...]

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Exterior projects, part 2.

January 10, 2011

Last month I posted about the new redwood slat screen we built onto our front porch. Since then, we’ve been busy with more exterior changes. Cue before photo: You can’t really tell from this photo, but our garage door was a hideous mess. Rotten, peeling masonite was being held up by some termite-eaten wood. You [...]

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