About that Piano…

After a 190 mile drive in the back of my dad’s pickup, a piano arrived at our door last Saturday morning. Fortunately we had a good number of people (thanks again!) to help move the 500 lb. beast… downstairs… two flights of stairs… with a narrow landing. After some back and forth, and some math and science (it helps to measure) mixed in, we managed to get it down and set up. Even after not being played for 10 years, it’s not too out of tune. Anybody want to stop by and tickle the keys?

The Basement is Done!

It has actually been done for a little over a month now, but I’m a bit slow on getting things up here. We’ve finally got a working (finished) basement, with a lot more space that we don’t know what to do with. I guess we need more stuff. Good new is we now have another bedroom if anyone wants to come visit.

More Basement Work

A good deal has happened since the last basement update. After lugging all of that drywall down to the basement (thanks again Kieran!), we found someone to hang it, and then our friend Tim did a great job taping and mudding (thanks Tim!). Once the drywall was all finished, we had a couple painting parties – one with my parents and Kieran, and one with Jess’s parents to prime. We used about 30+ gallons between priming and painting, and are still finding little spots to touch up. We are currently on the tail end of round three. Our contractor has finished up the basement, an electrician has hooked everything up, and the plumber installed the toilet, shower and sink. There are just a few small pieces of trim to hang before the carpet gets laid next week. Then we can finally set up some furniture and enjoy our new living space. Below are WAY too many photos of the process… enjoy!

Basement Finishing

We’ve been talking about it since we bought our house last year, and it has finally begun. We’ve started the basement finishing project. Electrical and Plumbing has been run, and we spent several hours last Saturday afternoon hauling drywall down the stairs (with a little help from this tutorial from the late 90’s). The next step is getting the drywall hung, and then the finish work. Look for more updates as the project continues.

Extreme Office Makeover: Iowa Edition

Well, we liked it so much before, we decided to do it again. We performed another office (A.K.A. The Command Center) makeover with Elfa shelves. We started last Friday night by clearing out the room. It wasn’t that hard since we hadn’t really set the room up completely after our move-in. We taped (UGH!), and painted the room. This time around, we chose a bit darker color grey than last time (official name: Summit Grey). We had already worked with The Container store to design and build a desk/shelving plan, which the nice FedEx man delivered on Saturday morning. So after a little touch-up pain (hey, we’re not perfect!), we started installing the desk and shelves. It went a little faster this time since we’d done it before. But we still had our share of mess-ups (a few things were on backwards… oops!). So the past few days we’ve been unpacking the office boxes that have been sitting in the garage since our move, and getting things situated. You can see the before and after photos below, as well as the standard time lapse video. We’re really happy with the results… again!


Music: Kevin MacLeod

 

A New Home!

Living RoomWe’ve been in for just a little over a week now, and are loving our new house! We’d been looking for a house basically since we arrived in Iowa, but really got serious in late February and early March. We looked at quite a few, and finally found one we really liked, and decided it was “the one.” We closed on March 18th, and moved in the following weekend and have been unpacking boxes ever since (there are still more boxes to unpack… sigh). The house was built last summer, and we’re the first ones to live in it. It has a lot of nice finishes that really sold it for us. It is a ranch style house with 3 bedrooms and two baths. There is an unfinished basement that we plan to finish sometime in the next year with a 4th bedroom, and a 3rd bathroom along with a large family room and a good amount of storage. We’re currently working on getting things arranged and eventually painted. We are really excited to be settled again.

Check out new house photos in the gallery!
(also: )

October & November Catch Up Post

Loyal Blog Readers: Boy, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from you, what’s been going on with Scott and Jessica?

ScottandJessica.net: Funny you should ask, we’ve actually been pretty busy the last few months.

Loyal Blog Readers: Well, as far as we know, the last thing that happened was a few people visited you, and you did some fun things.

ScottandJessica.net: Let us bring you up to speed on the latest happenings.

Loyal Blog Readers: Good! We can’t wait!

ScottandJessica.net: Let’s start out with a trip back to Iowa in October. We took a trip back to attend Iowa’s homecoming game. We both played in the alumni band. Jess has done it a couple times, but it was Scott’s first time in alumni band. He hadn’t picked up his trumpet in 10-plus years. Fortunately it still worked, and played well enough to march through pre-game in an Iowa win over Michigan. We got a taste of some fall weather, and even a bit of snow in the morning before the game. Check out photos from the trip in the gallery.

Loyal Blog Readers: Wow! That sounds like it was a pretty fun trip! Go Hawks! Did you guys do anything fun for Halloween?

ScottandJessica.net: Funny you should ask, we went to a couple of Halloween parties, and had a good time dressed as Mario and Princess Peach (y’know, from Super Mario Brothers?!?). You can see some lovely pictures from Halloween in the gallery.

Loyal Blog Readers: Ha ha ha! What great costumes!!! Looks like you had a good Halloween. You guys usually post home improvements on the site, have you done anything to the house lately?

ScottandJessica.net: Actually, we did just finish up a small project. We’d been talking for quite some time about getting curtains for the master bedroom (the blinds didn’t quite block out the STRONG Arizona sun). We took a trip to Phoenix to visit grandma a couple weeks ago, and swung by IKEA on our way home, and believe it or not, bought some new curtains. Before hanging the curtains, we decided to go a bit further, and paint one of the walls in the room (for you TLC/DIY/Home&Garden/HGTV watchers, it’s known as an “Accent Wall”). And before looking at the photos, you can probably guess what color it is…

Loyal Blog Readers: Green!

ScottandJessica.net: What can we say? We like green. Anyway, check out the photos below, of our new and improved bedroom.

Loyal Blog Readers: The room looks nice… and that’s a lovely, “accent wall!” (like how we threw that into conversation?!?)

ScottandJessica.net: Why, thank you! So far, we’re enjoying it – less sun in the morning, is always a good thing.

Loyal Blog Readers: Thanks for the update, and try not to let it go so long without a post next time.

ScottandJessica.net: Sorry about that… we’ll try.

Extreme Office Makeover

Scott and I decided to makeover our office (aka the “command center”) this past week.  Let me tell you, it was quite the task.  In our command center lives three working computers (not inlcuding laptops) and thousands of computer parts, which put together probably could make about 12 other computers.  So yeah, the office was cramped and we kept bumping into each other’s chairs.  We (okay, mostly me) decided enough was enough and we mapped out a plan for our extreme office makeover.  First, we cleared out the room and painted it a light gray color (official color name: silver tradition).  Our room is pretty small (I think about 10×11) so we figured we better go vertical with shelving.  I had seen a shelving system that the Container Store sells called elfa. I first came across the elfa shelving system on the Unclutterer blog and was inspired.  So we went to the store in Scottsdale, AZ, and ordered all the pieces a few weeks ago and then picked them up this past weekend when we were back in the Phoenix area visiting my grandma.  We also stopped at IKEA in Tempe, AZ, for some storage boxes.  Anyway, after a lot of work, we have an awesome, new-and-improved command center. Check out our before and after pictures below.  Needless to say, I am a huge fan of the elfa system and the Container Store!

Office Makeover Time Lapse
Music: Kevin MacLeod

Random Pile of Photos

We’ve been collecting a few random photos fro a little while now. They don’t really have a specific place of their own to live on here. Several are from our anniversary last month. We kept the top tier of our wedding cake (it survived 2 moves!), and ate it on our anniversary. We’ve also got a few new house photos. We’ve been adding storage shelves/brackets/doors to provide some places to put our stuff.