The Tile

We spent the majority of the summer looking for tile. We went to the Tile Shop, Home Depot, Lowes, Builders Carpet (they sell tile), Tile Express, the entire tile compound out in Farmington. It took FOREVER, but we were tiling 600 sq. ft. so we may as well make it worth our while.


I wanted a large (12 x 24) tile laid in a brick pattern. I thought I would go with a neutral, but the more tans and browns we brought in to the house the more I hated it. So we went with a slate look in ceramic and I think it's pretty beautiful...now to find a paint color.


Ignore the mess, bask in the beauty of the tile!

Kitchen Remodel

So we've decided to dive into the kitchen project head first. It was time for us to finish the last big project in the house. The first step was finishing the ceiling/walls and fixing all of the water damage. You may remember from an earlier post that we moved the stairs a couple of years back, so we have a pretty big space to work with. In my mind I knew exactly what I wanted to do in this room, but when it came time to select things, I had a really hard time.

Step 1: . Fixing the fireplace. Our old fireplace was surprisingly installed incorrectly. All the vent holes were tiled over, and it was a gas fireplace that they used to burn wood. We never actually used it, the whole thing looked really scary, so we decided to just replace the thing in it's entirety.

This was totally a Bob project. He called the fireplace people, picked out the type we were getting and I basically rubber stamped the whole thing. We've got a gas burning fireplace, with radiant heater. Even though we won't use the heating function very much, it's gas heat with a battery starter and if our power goes out, it'll give us an alternate source.

So we did this back in early June and felt like we had made a huge step towards the kitchen. And not surprisingly, the fireplace has just been sitting there, unused. And for a while, a long while, our kitchen project went on hold.

Step 2: Coming up with an actual design so we could start filling in the pieces.  So we headed over to Fingerle Lumber and worked with Tom Lane to come up with a design. Below is the top down view of our space. Starting from the top of the picture:

• Door on far left is the pantry, 
• Next door is for the mud room
• Next door is for the basement
• And the french doors are for the study

You can't see the fire place in this picture. But on the bottom right, where there are the built in china cabinets, in the middle, that's where the fireplace is. So we plan on a seating area in front of the fireplace... but that's super far away.

Step 3: The kitchen tile. Oh how I hate picking out tile.

Walking!

The Baby Grand Piano Room

We got this really great piano for Ani from a co-worker. It's made out of wood a little out of tune, just like a real piano. Bob says it's as close as we're going to get to the baby grand....I say it's a small step.

It's baby alright!

Finished! 2012 Photobook.

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A Weekend in Canada

It feels like we haven't sat still for the past couple of weeks, we were in Chicago, then Toronto. I took this video of Anika while I was trying to rally the troops for a bath, this one, didn't want to go to the bathroom! She's crawling all over the place and hates to be immobile. Sigh. I wonder what walking will be like.

A Little Bit of Spring

One of my favorite things about the Pitt is the number of flowering trees we have this time of year. We've got over 12 and they are just exploding right now. The apple trees are beautiful, and I try not to think of the fact that they'll start shedding their apples come fall and I'll spend most of my days trying to get the dogs to stop eating them!

The red buds are probably my favorite and I love that we have one right off of the master deck:

And I couldn't resist getting Ani outside to pick at the grass!

Grown Up furniture

The last post showed how the built in bookshelves were finished, and I neglected to show a finished picture of this room with our, GASP, grown up furniture.I've been pretty lazy about hanging up our pictures. There are a couple I would like to re-frame, and honestly with the kitchen remodel, the dust in inevitable in this room as well. So the decorations are a bit scarce, but overall I love the minimalist clean look of these pieces.

Because the next step is the kitchen, we've emptied most of the things from the kitchen into our bookshelves, which now are officially full. In our unpacking we found Bob's childhood pewter collection (oh joy!) that is now on full display. The bottom two shelves are for kid toys and books and not pictured here, I've finally found a use for the yoga mat, it makes for a very inexpensive play mat for Ani.

What's so great is that the new floors, the built in bookshelves and those couple new pieces of furniture really make our old couch look completely fresh and new. When I was uploading the photo's the one below looked like it would show the couch, but I was wrong. You do however get to see the cool rug that we purchased at Target. As a random side note, does anybody out there exist that can go into Target and not come out spending a minimum of $100?

The other awesome thing in this front walkway is we installed slate tiles. This was incredibly painful for us because we spent over 10 hours washing grout. Bob swears that it still doesn't look as clean as he wants it to, I think it's gorgeous!

 

One of our fun activities at the Pitt is for Bob to pick up a dog, or now baby and hold them with their heads peaking around the corner. Usually this activity is done to scare, I mean surprise, me.  This photo also gives a great view of the flooring.

Bookshelf Complete

I had my doubts, but I should learn by now that I don't need to question my father. The bookshelves are finished and beautiful! Now to find things to fill them...

2012 Wrap Up

This 2012 wrap up is a bit late, but honestly, that's how all of 2012 has felt, a little bit late. But what a year it's been for us. The beginning of the year started out with Bob saying, "You're almost 20 weeks pregnant, you have to tell people." and me responding by, "I've got plenty of time."  Plenty of time to continue to be in denial.  Although 2012 sped by, here's some of our highlights:

Fun at the botanical Garden

• I almost finished the Star Trek Quiet Book. I've yet to bind it, but it'll happen I swear.
• We traded in Rosie the Cavalac for a Prius V 5
• With the unseasonably warm winter, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time to spend with my camera and branching out of aperture priority into manual mode.
• We finished the study, bathroom off of the study and completed the laundry

Calm before the storm.

  

• It basically rained babies this year



Baby D

• Added a new niece to the family from my brothers side
• Added a new nephew to the family from Bob's side
• Announcement of a new niece from Bob's side
• Added a new 'nephew' from the Spisich side, whose first birthday we had the pleasure of hosting
• Chicago gang all having babies
• Oh yeah, we had a baby

•    We installed an electric fence. You're thinking, did you just put in a physical fence a couple of years ago? Well yes, except our circus dog, Sheeba, can clear a 5 foot fence as if it was an inch tall. The last straw came when Ani was 7 days old, Sheeba jumped the fence, and I had to chase her down with the new baby. Sheeba was 3 houses down barking at our neighbor on her back porch. 4 days later, the fence went up.

 

•  The Color Run - happiest 5K on the planet 
• Lots of visitors at the Pitt, some have compared us to a bed and breakfast
• Another year of good friends getting married

So yeah, the year has been a blur. So much has happened, and we've had so little sleep, that I don't think it's all sunk in yet. So here's some of our
goals for 2013:

• We're starting the kitchen!!
• The master bathroom?? (Slipper tub!)
• Landscaping?
• Tri Goddess Tri
• Sleep, sleep and more sleep. If that means I'm going to have to start giving Ani whiskey before bed, so be it :-)

Baby Brigade

•  A finished living room with possible new furniture additions

• Going back to healthy choices - this one's for me, I mean Bob still has 0% body fat, and I feel like I'm 95% body fat. It's not babies that make you make unhealthy decisions, it's the lack of sleep. "Getting More Lean in 2013"
• Yoga for me. I hate to even type it because I hate yoga so much, but it's so bloody good for my back. So there, now I've typed it so it must be so.

So here's to another year of renovations at the Pitt, but more importantly a year of family and love.

Eating Zingerman's Challah at the Pitt

Baby Grand Piano Room? Check.

Even with a babe on board, we've been really busy continuing renovations at the Pitt. I really didn't think that we would do much this year, but apparently the babe lit a fire under our butts. We moved out of the bedrooms and into the living room/baby grand piano room. The plan was simple, replace drywall tape, replace ceiling, mud everything over again, install new floors, cut a whole in the wall, install built in bookcase - all before the end of 2012. Success? Not quite, but close, oh so close.

This is our before:

 

Here's our during:

Which color do you think we picked?

Super Dad!

 The afterish:

OK, so I'm really showcasing a great kid picture here, but look the floor is done! In fact, all the floors are done. It seemed that the whole room was done. But in my head I saw a beautiful built in book case on the end of our living room. There was a book case there when we first moved in, but it was so ghetto. So my dad is building us a floor to ceiling wall to wall shelf. Here it is in process:

As soon as it's done, we'll show case it.