Thanks, Zima. No, really.

Zima knocked over a container of sugar this past week, right next to the stove. Of course the sugar went damn near everywhere, including between the stove and cabinets. *sigh* So we had to pull the stove out in order to get to the spilled sugar. And found out that we have spilled a lot more than sugar over the two years we've had it. There was a lot of gunk that ran down the sides of the stove. The episode turned into a big deep cleaning exercise. So thanks, Zima. No, really. We mean it. Turns out we really needed to pull that stove out and give everything a once-over. Maybe more often than once every two years.

Time to celebrate.

It’s our “house-iversary”. One year ago today we spent the afternoon signing a metric crapload of documents and the house we chose was ours. Well, sort of ours, you know. We still have to finish paying for it. After the closing, we changed into work clothes, and spent the evening ripping up all of the nasty old carpets and padding. Underneath was very good quality hardwood flooring and about a million staples. Turns out, pulling up the carpet is the easy part. Removing each staple one by one… that part sucks. [Sanding and refinishing the floors no doubt sucks as well, but we paid someone else to do that.]

We’ve had house projects going on ever since that day. Some hellishly big. Some very minor. And there is a long list of projects we have yet to begin. I don’t think you ever stop wanting to improve things, at least not when you live in a vintage 1965 home. It is sometimes frustrating, often a pain (literally), and usually expensive. But there is something very satisfying about the process, especially on projects that you do yourself.

This weekend we’re taking a break from home improvement. Tonight, we’ll have our friends over to enjoy this home with us. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our first year.

Here is what the kitchen and breakfast area looked like about a year ago:



Here is what it looks like these days (we got rid of the old eat-in area to make one much larger kitchen out of the whole space). The big window is still there, you just can't see it because I was standing too close to the 'fridge when I took the picture.