Let there be light!

Here's a quick post about all the electrical updates we made.  We knew before we bought the house that we'd have to update the electrical system.  The previous owners were running on a 60 amp fuse box and that clearly wasn't enough to support even two wallpaper steamers plugged into one room let alone a house full of computers, tv, dish washer, etc.  So we decided to update the entire electrical system right after we bought the place.  The electrician we hired was optimistic about the job, quoting us 2-3 weeks to do the whole project, saying they would lay the new wiring next to the old so we would have power throughout the job until they switched things over at the end.  Well, since we were working every day and they were gone by the time we got home, we didn't get to touch base with them as often as we would have liked.  And they went through and systematically shut off the electricity to every room they worked on so eventually we had to power in the house and couldn't get any work done.  Luckily we still had our apartment for the rest of the month until we officially moved but we lost a lot of working time and our house usually looked like this:

Every day we would come home to find outlets in various stages of work.

The work ended up taking about double the amount of time originally quoted, but in the end, it made it so worth it to not worry about blowing a fuse and once our new light fixtures were hung we were that much more relieved.  We achieved a LOT of work in a little bit of time.  In fact, the electrician was still finishing the job as we were moving our things in on the big move day from our apartment.  But going from this:

To this:

makes all the difference!

dining room renovation

As we are working on the house, we like to take some time every now and then to stop and appreciate what we've done so far.  Here's a super long post about how far our dining room has come since we bought the house.  It was the first room we finished (mostly) and it was certainly a room that gave us a great deal of learning experience.  We had never done any kind of home renovation before and we soon learned that it takes a lot longer and a lot more effort than we thought!  It's interesting now to look back and see the evolution of our process.

Lets start with a photo of what the dining room looked like when we first walked in. Lots and lots of wallpaper and a broken light that liked to hang down at waist level.

And now comes the fun process...  We started with some DIF (that fun gel stuff that supposedly strips wallpaper).  Didn't work so well for us but not for lack of trying!

This is how far I got after 3 hours of scraping:

And now lets take a quick look at our hip wallpaper stripping style.  This is how we spent many weeks in every room throughout the house:

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the wallpaper evolution, but we soon switched to a steamer which made a lot of difference.  We were able to get multiple layers of wallpaper stripped much more quickly.  However it was still a very messy process.  Then, we had a colleague of Jared's come to help with her husband who is a painter and he brought these fun razor blades with long handles that stripped wallpaper in NO TIME.  He finished an entire room in the amount of time it took me to do that dreadful first patch.  So, with those new razor blades put to work, this is what our dining room soon looked like:

Not great, but better than that wallpaper! And when the wallpaper came down we found this lovely patch on our wall which we assume must have formerly been the front door.  We don't quite know why someone would move it but that part of the wall is a new addition.

Throughout all this work we were also having the entire house re-wired for electricity and new light fixtures put in.  It was a super day when we came home from work to find this up!

To try and fix that silly wall section, we tried covering it with lots of joint compound.  It certainly made it more paintable but was a tedious process.

Next, we got to start the fun process of picking out paint samples and taping up the room to start painting.  We realized that some water stains were coming through the joint compound so got some Kilz primer to take care of the situation.

Since the house obviously hadn't been updated in a while, the old caulking was cracked and falling out.  We got rid of that so we could re-caulk the seams between the walls and the trim.  Jared has become a caulking champion!

Once that was done and everything was taped up we were ready to start painting!  Jared and I primed with the Kilz and then my sister and her fiance came over to lend us a hand.

The room was finally starting to look so good!  We painted the trim an eggshell color and that really brought things together.

The last thing that I needed to do before moving furniture in was to wash and re-varnish the floors.  What a difference that made!

After that we moved the furniture in (include the bar we bought after our wedding that we love!) and the hutch from IKEA that we bought when we were still apartment living.

And that, folks, is how we redid our dining room!  From gloomy wallpaper to bright, sunny paint we learned a lot along the way and LOVE the results.  We still have to hang art and find the best decorations, but we are so happy with it.

Until, of course we had our insulation done a few weeks ago and now it looks like this:

But we did it one time, we can do it again!  Bring on the paint!!

weekend recap

We had a pretty busy fall weekend this weekend.  Jared was signed up to do the Warrior Dash in Connecticut with his mom, sister, and brother-in-law.  They were running a 4:00 heat which was pretty different since he usually does earlier ones but it meant that we didn't have to leave first thing in the morning.  The day ended up being beautiful and everyone did a really great job (and got very muddy).

Then, on Sunday, we headed down to Quincy for brunch with my family for my dad's birthday. We ate LOTS of good food and he really liked the fresh apple pie I made.  We went apple picking last weekend and had an excess of apples so what better birthday present!  The only downside is that it made the house smell delicious and then I had to give it away.

yummmm

After brunch we headed to our "home away from home" - Home Depot for some more paint samples for the living room and some mums to spruce up our rapidly deteriorating front steps.  I swear, as soon as we get one thing finished on this house another 3 things crop up...

don't mind the bricks, who needs them anyway?

I am enjoying fall so far.  It's been a nice transition this year with cool mornings and warmer days.  The leaves are starting to turn bright colors which always makes for scenic drives.  I am curious to see how much raking we will have to do this year.  I can't believe we are not that far away from the 1 year mark of owning our home.  Most everything is still packed away and we have all the furniture covered in plastic from the insulation so it still looks like a ghost town.  Slowly but surely...

sunset

This is what I saw outside my kitchen tonight.  So pretty.

Pizza bites

With Jared on the slow carb diet we are always trying to find ways to cook meals that don't involve dairy, pasta, grains, fruit, almost anything white... and include more vegetables, legumes, and meats.  So when I came across this recipe on Pinterest for pizza bites made out of cauliflower I was intrigued.  We had tried cauliflower "mashed potatoes" before with mediocre success (they were pretty lumpy and tasteless) so I was a little skeptical about this recipe but decided to give it a try.  There are definitely things I would change, but overall, the result wasn't too bad!

I started my process with a head of cauliflower.

The recipe said to use a food processor to grate the cauliflower to "rice-like" consistency.  However, I could find every part of my food processor except the one that connected them all.  So I had to break out the hand grater.  It was definitely a messy process and I'll probably be finding cauliflower particles around my kitchen for a while, but it worked.

After that, I sauteed the cauliflower for a few minutes.

While the cauliflower was cooking, I blended some egg white, cottage cheese (strangely allowed on the diet in small quantities) and some spices.

It sure smelled good when it was done mixing!

I even added a little Frank's Red Hot sauce to "kick it up a notch".

Then I mixed everything together in a bowl.

Now, the recipe called for the mixture to be put straight into muffin tins, however the buzz on the internet was that this method is extremely hard to clean afterward as it bakes right onto the tins.  One website suggested just placing spoonfuls of the mixture onto parchment paper and baking it that way, but it seemed a little runny and I was afraid it wouldn't hold together during baking.  So lined the tins with cupcake liners and tried it that way.

Finally, I put a piece of turkey pepperoni on each one and let it bake.

The finished product smelled delicious and seemed to be pretty brown on top.

I let them cool for a bit and they came out of the paper pretty well.  They were still a little soft inside so I think if I had just used the parchment paper they would have come out a little more crust-like.   However, they tasted pretty good!  I dipped them in some marinara sauce and couldn't even tell they were made of cauliflower!

Overall I liked this recipe though I would change some things to make them a little more crunchy.  It was a messy enough process that I probably won't make these all the time, but it's a good recipe to mix things up every now and then.

If you want to try the recipe, I found it here.  Happy cooking!

A crop in miniature

As I mentioned in my last post, I had quite the mini-crop this year.  As a first time gardener, when I started my seeds indoors I failed to re-pot them as they got bigger.  As a result they ended up root bound (I assume this was the problem).  Interestingly enough, they continued to grow, just on a much smaller scale!  I had fully formed vegetable plants that were in miniature form!  So strange!  They tasted delicious but were bite sized.  Here are some examples:

 Mini cucumbers

Mini string beans

 

 And my mini cherry tomatoes!

 

 I harvested these guys the other day.  They were delicious but the size of a nickel!

Hopefully next season I'll get this figured out so we have full sized versions of these delicious veggies!