I’m Back!

Posted in backyard, house by

I can’t believe that it’s been so long since I posted something. I’ve been really busy at work and at home. All my time at home seems to be consumed with taking care of Kiran who is now 20 months old. I have also been very busy around the house and there’s been a lot of changes (more pictures to come soon). I also bought a new camera so the quality of the pictures (hopefully) will be much better.

For now here is a picture of what my backyard looks like today:


This was what it looked like earlier this year:

For more pictures of my backyard check out this Apartment Therapy post.

Front of the House.

Posted in exterior, house by

It’s been a long time since I blogged last. It’s not that I have been busy renovating or having a hectic time at work…it is just that the weather has been so nice that I have been enjoying the beautiful days. I also went away to Austin on our first family vacation since Kiran was born. This is a picture of my friend Maza, Kiran and me on top of some mountain in Austin. I remember the roads were windy and I was hoping I wouldn’t get car sick so I wasn’t paying much attention to the name of the place. It was definitely beautiful. Maza when you read this please leave a comment about the name of this place.


So when we got back from our vacation, and I got out of the cab, I was first relieved that the house was intact and second I felt welcomed by our house. This is when I realized that I haven’t posted many pictures of the front of the house.

This is a picture of the front of the house. You can see the tree that the Passyunk Square Civic Association planted a year and a half ago. I was so scared that it would die because they planted it in the Fall of 2007 and it got really cold very fast that year. Needless to say the tree survived.


This is a close up of the tree:

This picture shows my new planter. I have been trying to decide what sort of arrangement of plants I should have in the front of the house. I couldn’t really come up with any plan so I decided that what I needed to do was just decide on at least one planter and that the rest will follow. I got this planter from Ikea for around $49. I planted a boxwood in it because it is an evergreen and requires minimal attention.


This is a picture of the house numbers. I bought talavera tiles and glued them on a wrought iron frame. The frame is attached to the brick with sinkers and screws. I had originally planned on gluing the numbers to the brick but I didn’t want to ruin the brick. I bought these numbers before we even closed on the house. It took us over two years to install them.

This is a view of the front door with a dragon fly knocker. This knocker was given to us as a gift by our friend Michelle a long long time ago in Texas. I was saving it for the right place and now it has found its home.

Office Room

Posted in house, third floor by
Office Room

The “office room” is a very long and narrow room on the third floor. This floor has two rooms and these were the only rooms in the house that were decent, when we bought the house. Now I think these rooms are the worst. We haven’t done anything to these two rooms other than put some furniture in them. The second room on the third floor is the guest room. It is tiny.

In this picture you can see the fabulous chair I bought on ebay. It looks great and is very comfortable.

The cactus is 10 years old! We bought it as a tiny little plant when we first moved to Philly. I sort of injured him (yes it is a “he”) while moving him upstairs and I hope he lives. Kiran kept playing with him so he (the cactus) had to be moved.

Work, work, work.

Posted in house, living room by

I guess I unofficially took some time off from blogging. Well, things have just been a little crazy. I am super busy at work. On top of that I am supposed to be planning Kiran’s birthday and we are also installing the baseboard molding in the living room and dining room. Our house has so many corners that the baseboard molding has been taking forever. As far as Kiran’s party goes so far I bought some paper daisies (as decoration). I did buy some wine but we’ve finished a lot of it! So I really need to go back to the liquor store, figure out what food I am going to make, finish installing the baseboard molding, clean the house, buy something for Kiran to wear, and then cook everything by Saturday morning. This doesn’t include all the stuff I have to get done for work.

Paper daisies

I bought these paper daisies from here. The comforter cover is from Ikea and I bought is last week. I have been looking everywhere for an orange and white comforter cover and I was so excited to find this one and it was very cheap ($19.99 and includes two adorable pillow shams).

The picture below shows the living room wall without any baseboard molding. We had to remove the crumbling plaster walls in the living room and install dry wall with insulation.


This pictures below are of the dining room wall with baseboard molding. We were able to salvage the plaster walls in here. It took countless hours to repair the plaster but it is definitely worth it. I love these walls.

Without the top piece


With the top piece

We bought primed pine and the molding consists of three different pieces: the flat piece, a top piece and the quarter round on the bottom. Our friend lent us his nail gun so installing the baseboards took a lot less time than when we did Kiran’s room. We still have to install the molding in the master bedroom…maybe this will be another project (with the wallpaper) for the Fall. Hopefully, we will finish caulking the molding and painting the nail holes tonight. I need the house to be in order. The disarray is driving me nuts.

Living Room.

Posted in house, living room by

These are pictures of the living room now (take a look here to see what the living room looked like when we first bought the house):


The picture above is of the wall next to the vestibule. It is full of pictures and some paintings. I love sitting on the couch and looking at all the pictures.


This picture is of the wall opposite, also next to the window. That is my rubber plant peeking out from the window. I planted one stalk from our bigger tree one year ago and it has already grown into a tall tree.

Because of all the work going on in the kitchen the house is not in picture-taking state. I will post more pictures of the living room when things get a little more organized. For now you can see that the mantle, is up. It is being used as a bookcase. The picture below is a close up of the mantel and books.

Planning Kiran’s Birthday.

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I know that Kiran is not going remember or care about his first birthday. But I want him to have a fabulous day and learn to enjoy the simple things in life. I feel that we, as a society, put a lot of emphasis on gifts, events, etc. for our kids’ birthdays. I want to make him feel extra special during his birthdays but without him needing things to make him feel special. When I was growing up in Holland our dutch friend’s would decorate their kid’s chairs with lots of fun things and allow the kids to sit at the head of the table. They kids were always excited by this (including me) and it made me feel very special. They did give gifts but it wasn’t like the extravagant gifts that kids here get.

I am not sure how I am going to decorate his little high chair. Instead of balloons I want to hang paper daisies, similar to what was done here:


This way I can re-use them for all our parties and they look much nicer than balloons. I will probably get green and orange paper daisies. Re-using after all is the best recycling.

Kitchen Dilemma!

Posted in house, kitchen by

My husband was removing the old grout from the kitchen and everything was going so well. I was excited for the old (dirty) grout to be removed so that we could re-grout the tiles and seal them. I was also excited to start cooking again. This picture shows the tiles while we were removing the old grout:


Well as things often tend to turn out with old houses things sort of took a turn for the worse. While he was removing the old grout a couple of the tiles broke! It appears that some of the old tiles weren’t even glued to the floor. There was no adhesive on the tiles at all. The good thing is we found the SKU number on the tiles which meant, at least theoretically, that we could find the tiles. Anyway, imagine my horror when my husband told told me that he had broken “a couple” of the tiles. How was I ever going to find tiles to match the old tiles? This is what the floor looks like now:


We tried to find the tiles by the same manufacturer but they had been discontinued by Home Depot. However, we found tiles by the same manufacturer, in the same color, with a slight variation in the perimeter design (ours was rugged and the new one was smooth).

Hopefully, some time this week we can remove the old adhesive, lay the new tiles and finish re-grouting the floor. I need my kitchen back!

This has resulted in all my other projects being put on hold. I haven’t worked on the backyard, I haven’t started spring cleaning, and I haven’t finished lining the kitchen shelves. On top of all this Kiran’s birthday party is in three weeks. Thankfully the invitations are done (and they’ve been mailed).

Dining Room.

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This is what the dining room looked like during our 10 year wedding anniversary dinner party (July 2008). It has since then morphed into something a little different.

This is the progression of the dining room:


View from the living room into the dining room

Yes…the carepets were red, there were a million layers of wallpaper, and the walls beneath the plaster were crumbling.


We had to demo one wall in the dining room and fix the plaster on the other two walls. This is a pic of the dining room after we removed the wall on one side (with the lathes). Also on the left of this picture we discovered wood paneling underneath the wallpaper and drywall.


This is what the dining room looked like after we installed the dry wall on the one wall.
This is a picture of my husband while we were putting our first layer of primer on the wall (we put on two layers of primer and two layers of paint).
As you can see in this picture we removed the blood red carpeting and restored the original wood flooring.

You can see the pine doors we installed in this picture. This is the door that leads into the basement.

My Room (before)

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My room (before)

This is what my room looked like when we bought the house. This is what the room looks like now. This room was an addition to the rest of the house. We thought it was a newer addition but when we started renovating we found wood beams that were really thick and very solid, unlike the newer wood used these days. The wooden beams were covered in faux wood panneling which was then covered in a couple layers of wallpaper. The floor had a really ugly shag carpet. To say this room was hideous is an understatement!

We bought the house on April 30, 2007 and didn’t start doing anything to this room until mid April 2008. I think we were avoiding tackling this room because we couldn’t decide what to do with it. My husband wanted to make the kitchen bigger and I wanted a room for myself. Anyway, the problem was solved because the connecting wall is a load bearing wall which would have made the removal of that wall very expensive…so I got my room! When I was nine months pregnant with Kiran, my husband and my father- in-law demolished the faux wood paneling, removed the carpet and pretty much everything else in the room. Then the original doorway was closed out and they put in the door that opens straight out into the backyard. We had to put drywall up and then my husband installed the wood flooring. Yes it is real wood and I am pretty amazed that he figured out how to lay the wood.

We bought this mantel at a thrift store in Philly. It was love at first sight. We bought it even though we didn’t have a fireplace! (You can see a little bit of the ugly carpet in this picture). This room was used as a storage room while we renovated the rest of the house.