Our "Hobby Home" (Part I: Upstairs)

Also known as That Time We Bought A Seventy-four Year-old House That Had Been a Rental for Forty Years. This has been our life for the past 3.5 weeks. We closed on the house on Aug. 21st and have been spending most of our free time since then working on various projects to turn our 864 sq. ft + basement + yard into our little oasis in the city. Most of those projects have taken longer than expected, and practically none of them have gone as planned. Such are the charms of a "pre-war" home.

I share these photos with some trepidation; there is still much work to be done before I will be satisfied to declare victory on any of the rooms, but we've gotten nearly all the boxes unpacked and things are at a state where we can go about our daily routines without too much inconvenience.

MASTER BEDROOM
The real victory here is that our king-sized bed made it up the narrow staircase and that it actually fits quite nicely in our bedroom. The side tables (Kevin's Craigslist find from a couple years ago) slid neatly into place on either side of the bed and the lamps from my living room provided some nice symmetry and warmth.

The closet is actually a decent size (although definitely smaller that your standard modern closet), so we're still working out how best to use the space. A closet make-over is on the list for future projects (right now, there are just dual level wood rods in place). We did hang a iron rack on the back of the door, which provides a nice place to tuck the iron out of view. A new dresser is also high on the list; despite the best efforts of our movers, Kevin's dresser was just too big to make it up the stairs (unlike the king bed, it didn't bend ;-/).

I love the view out our window here. Makes me happy to see trees and nicely updated homes across the street rather than a glass & steel high rise. It's also MUCH quieter here than at our old place where cars, planes, and other city noises were rattling the windows at all hours of the night.

A Room With A View

NEW REGISTERS THROUGHOUT!...said no real estate listing ever.
Most people don't even know what these things are called; I certainly didn't, until our home inspector mentioned that we should have our vents cleaned and I removed the old ones (which were painted over with multiple layers of paint!) and discovered that all of the vents were coated in (74?) years of dust, pet hair, and various other varieties of nastiness that I'd prefer never to have in my air supply again. It was quite the task to remove all of the old ones (10 total), and a project in and of it self to measure & mount the new ones. After some trial & error and several trips to home depot, I finally got the right sizes ( 6"x 12" vents on some and 6" x 14" on others; most weren't standard sizes) & functionality (each room has an intake  and outflow, each of which fits differently). We also had our ducts cleaned, which may have been the best $200 we've spent yet!

New Vent Registers. Get Excited. 

2ND BEDROOM (A.K.A - THE STORAGE PIT)

This room also gets great natural light (and the newly refinished floors are gleaming in this pic!), but at present this room is just an unorganized mass of things we don't have a place for, but hope to soon. Namely: a desk, some type of storage/low profile bookshelf, and possibly a bed or sofa (I'd like it to be the later, but my old sofa may not make it up the narrow staircase). That new dresser for Kevin (who is currently living out of the box in the middle of the room) and improved closet storage (so I can stop using the plastic storage bins I bought in college) should help with the clutter factor and allow us to turn this into a home office. 

THE BACKYARD (as viewed from our second floor bedroom)
Kevin has put in some major work back here, removing several truckloads of ivy, relocating the shed to the back corner of the yard, and overseeing a tree and stump removal last week while I was out of town (the tree was rotted out in the middle and the stump was leftover from the previous owners). Kevin is currently overseeing a major grass re-growing project and is monitoring the progress carefully. We've got big plans for this yard: Trees! A patio! A new fence! Landscaping! A new shed! Patio furniture...we'll get there (eventually). For now, we're making do with our little stoop and grill that Kevin's parents gave us as a housewarming gift. Barkley is enjoying all the sniffs.

Our backyard on Sep. 13, 2014 (hoping for a big makeover in the next year)

 THE BATHROOM
Nice natural light and recently updated, but certainly nothing fancy. We're focusing on adding functionality and upgrading some of the rental grade hardware. New bath mats purchased this weekend freshened up the look. There is a nicely sized storage closet with shelves, which Kevin recently removed the door to (it was bumping up against the other door and getting pretty annoying), so I'd like to get some nice storage bins to organize the stuff on the shelves and a bright colored curtain that we can close when we don't want to stare at all our bathroom stuff.

Shower curtain pulled back to show window

shower with curtain closed to show other bathroom details

our massive bathroom storage closet; now sans door. 

Under Contract!!!

"After nearly three months of browsing Realtor.com every night, spending Sunday afternoons criss-crossing the DC metro-area visiting open houses, and a lot of emotional ups and downs, we are under contract on a cute little brick 1940's duplex semi-detached/twin home with a yard. Total fixer-upper, but great neighborhood and low-stress commute for us both. Let the adventure begin!"

This was my Facebook post from Tuesday night after we returned from an evening walk in our potential new neighborhood and decided to accept the sellers counter-offer after a drawn-out negotiation period that had started Saturday night. It had been a pretty intense week leading up to this decision. Eight days earlier, Kevin sent me a mid-morning text: "[the house we had our eye on] back on the market for [a lower price]. Buy buy buy!!!". My heart immediately started racing. We originally went to an open house at this place on June 8th, but thought the price was a little high and just weren't quite ready to commit. It went under contract at the beginning of July, at which point we both spent the next week saying "we should have gotten that one".

Now we were getting a second chance to make a move on it. I quickly e-mailed one of the real estate agents we had met at an open house a couple months earlier, followed up with a phone call, and scheduled a showing for later in the evening. 

In the meantime, Kevin talked to the seller's agent and found out that the earlier buyer had backed out after getting the home inspection report back: "it needs a new roof, new water heater, and there is evidence of flooding in the basement" were the highlights. Hmmf. 

Were we in for such a big challenge? Would it be better to just pay a little more and find and place that is already "done". We both agreed the neighborhood and location were ideal, and all the other places we had seen in our price rang were in less convenient or more run-down neighborhoods. This offered a nice neighborhood, with the potential for making it the house we wanted - if we could negotiate the price down enough to comfortably make the necessary repairs and remodel the kitchen. (just like Property Brothers!)

In the end, the sellers made a counter-offer that was within the range we had determined would be acceptable, and we decided to go for it. I'm sure we're in for more than a few surprises along the way, but for now, we're pretty excited about all the possibilities: Cookouts every weekend! Our dream kitchen! We'll add built-ins! A fire pit in the back yard! We'll DIY everything! I'll learn to do all the repairs myself and becoming a handyman on my days off (says Kevin). 

For now, we'll have to content ourselves with exploratory walks in our new neighborhood, Aurora Highlands, which we are absolutely in love with. And I may just become obsessed with Young House Love (thanks, Mailena). Meanwhile, Kevin has committed himself to learning how to build a French drain "I'm going to need to buy a jackhammer", was a key quote from tonight).

And for those of you that have asked...a few pictures ( it doesn't look like much at the moment, but it has potential!!):

If all goes well we close Aug. 21st! Eeeek!

There she is! (all 864 sq ft of her)

Back yard for Barkley (and cookouts, firepits, gardening, and doggie splash pools)

Basement (I'm looking foward to finally getting to tear down some wallls like they do on HGTV

The lack-luster kitchen we're hoping to replace with our mini-dream kitchen 

Living area - love the wood floors and sconces. Actually not too much to complain about here. 

Love the stairs and all the 1940's details.

Wedding Recap

The past eight months I have spent most of my computer-facing free time researching, planning, and coordinating the various aspects of our wedding that took place on March 7th in Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

In some ways, it seems silly that it would be necessary to spend so much time and energy planning for what ended up being a week-long event with 30 of our closest friends and family. But it was a labor of love, and the end result really was everything I had hoped for. My #1 rule for wedding planning was that there would be no rules; we would not feel obliged by tradition/expectations for what we should do, and instead focus on what felt important and authentic to our personalities. I also wanted to make sure we had no regrets; that looking back on our wedding thirty years from now, we would feel like we had checked all the boxes on what would make it truly feel like our wedding day.

What follows is not so much a recap of the entire planning process, but more of a summary of the elements of our wedding that I am most proud of, and the memories that we will cherish the most for years to come. I wanted a place to organize all these things not only for myself, but also for our friends and family who weren't able to attend the wedding, and for all those brides out there who are looking for ideas/planning resources like I was last year.

Not having planned a wedding before, I really didn't know where to start (yes, I know, there are tons of magazines/websites out there, but they are just all so ridiculous and tell you that you need to make twenty list and follow a strict calendar, etc. etc. - basically a bunch of "rules" that I was determined not to follow). So, at the recommendation of one of my friends, I checked out the very awesome and totally my style, A Practical Wedding blog, which let me to the book with the same name, which proved to be a nice introduction on how to approach the whole process. Highly recommended.

After much web searching/contemplating and a few on-site visits to local venues, we thought we had found just the place - 128 South, a nicely done event space in the historical downtown of Wilmington, NC overlooking in the Cape Fear River. However, after tallying up the "bare bones" guest list with "only" our aunts/uncles/cousins/good friends, we realized the guest list was quickly approaching 100+, and the idea of planning an event for that many people (and having all of them looking at us) was just a bit too overwhelming. So, we went back to the idea of a destination wedding. Kevin suggested Vegas, but I quickly veto'ed that idea (I wanted something a little less, - ahem- tacky). In the end, we decided on Isla Mujeres, Mexico due to it (1) being located reasonably close to a "commodity destination" (Cancun), which meant that flight options for our guest would be reasonably priced and easy to come by (most major airports have direct flights into Cancun, and the prices are comparable to what it would have cost for guest to fly to a destination within the U.S. ), and (2) being a quaint fishing village with authentic charm that would be easy for our guest to navigate and less "touristy" than Cancun.

Selecting the actual venue on Isla Mujeres was not as strait forward as I would have hoped - there are lots of great venue options on the island, each with its own pro/cons. We decided that we wanted to have our wedding at the same place our guest were staying to make logistics less complicated (and hopefully take advantage of some volume discounts). Kevin and my Dad both wanted an all-inclusive hotel to allow for easy visiting/socializing without the hassle of pulling out your wallet every time you want a drink. That narrowed down our choices quite a bit since there are really only two all-inclusive hotels on Isla Mujeres: Privilege Aluxes (our venue of choice), and Isla Mujeres Palace (which is quite a bit more spendy and also located on the southern tip of the island away from the town).

I could go on and on about all the decisions that we made leading up to the big day, but what I really set out to do here is to share a few of my favorite details from our wedding day, along with a couple videos that our guest captured that day. Enjoy!

Video of our wedding ceremony: M&K's Wedding 
A little dancing later in the evening: Dance with my Dad


The Dress - HB6622 by Saja

HB6622 by Saja - Photo by Susan Pacek Photography

Our Invitations - "Mexican Wedding Flags (Papel Picado)" by Señor & Señora 

"Mexican Wedding Flags (Papel Picado)" by Señor & Señora 

[our full names are marked out for public internet-posting ;-)]

The Program - designed by Madeline on Zazzle, and you can buy one here

Vintage Mexican-inspired program timeline. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

[our full names are marked out for public internet-posting ;-)]

Place Cards - tags stamped by Madeline and attached to maracas bought on the island. 

Maraca placecards for vintage mexican-inspired wedding. Photocredit: Susan Pacek Photography

Menus - designed by Madeline on Zazzle, and you can buy a copy here

Vintage Mexican Wedding Menu. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Centerpiece & Table Numbers - designed by Madeline on Zazzle, and you can buy a copy here 

Vintage Mexican Wedding - Tablecard & Centerpiece. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Bouquets  - our wedding coordinators  Elba Machado & Alejandra Izaguirre did a great job coordinating this element of the wedding with very little instruction from me. 

Bridesmaids Bouquet - Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Bridal Bouquet - Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Hair & Make-up - by the seriously fabulous Anne-Marie Cote from Make Me Beautiful -  Mi  Secreto Salon. She did a great job and was super easy to work with - just sent her a picture of my dress before and hand we chatted a little bit about what I wanted and she did the rest with very little instruction from me. Made getting ready for the wedding so easy and relaxing! 

Showing off my gorgeous hair and gazing off over Privilege Aluxes grounds. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography 

A rare occassion: me with full make-up on. Love the view of the eyelashes here. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Anne-Marie works her magic as I enjoy a mimosa with the girls and look out over the Caribbean Sea.
Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Our Mariachi Band - sadly, I don't even know their name(s). It was a bit of a splurge, but totally worth it - all our guest had such a fun time, and so did we!

Posing with our mariachi band! Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography

Papel Picado / Mexican Wedding Flags 

Papel Picado/Mexican Wedding Flags. Photo Credit: Susan Pacek Photography