On This Episode of This Old House...

Shadow is very proud of the renovations she supervised this weekend and can't wait to share them with you.  She loves having such a handy dad who knows how to fix just about anything (and takes direction well).

"Would you look at this paneling humans?  Who would do this to an otherwise beautiful hallway?"

"Blech, this has to go.  HUMAN!  REMOVE THE PANELING!"

"Lift with both paws human servant. We don't want you damaging those hands.  We need petting and feeding you know.  I will demonstrate the proper lifting technique for you." 

(muffled)  Is this good?

"Yes, just like that human.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap.  All this supervising is exhausting."

The finished product!  Its amazing how much brighter and larger the hallway appears now.  Once the weather warms up and we can open some windows to ventilate, we're going to paint the hallway and replace the moulding.  I'd also like to paint the bedroom.  We held off when we first moved in because we were thinking we'd bump out a wall and expand the bedroom, but now that we're living in the space, we've decided against it.

Now on to project #2!  This has been ongoing for quite a while.  The house came with this wood stove installed into the fireplace.  The previous owners assured us that it worked quite well and kicked out a great deal of heat.  I'm sure it did, but neither of us could stand the sight of it.  It also stuck out into the living room and took up a great deal of space.  We knew we wanted it gone, but the question was - how do we get rid of it?  It easily weighed 400-500 pounds.  

We stewed on the issue for several months and wondered what the fireplace behind the stove looked like.  DBF pulled off the heat shield to reveal some pretty yellow brick.  Encouraged, we worked on other projects until one of DBF's friends said he'd come up and haul it away for us.  He arrived with three friends in tow and a case of beer.  Fortunately, he'd brought reinforcements and a van!  Unfortunately, they'd all had one too many beers before arriving at our house (don't worry, one of the reinforcement's wives came along as their driver).  After much pondering, cursing, lifting, shoving, and pushing, the men managed to get the stove out of our living room, through the dining room and right in front of our sliding glass doors.  (I imagine this process would have gone slightly smoother had they been drinking cokes instead of beers)  One of the men hopped in the van, drove it up our yard and backed it up to the sliders.  DBF was leaning out the slider at this point (as was another guy on the other side) and after a very tense moment when the driver forgot which pedal was the brake and came THIS CLOSE to squishing my hunny against the house (AUGH!), the van was in position. Another episode of cursing and grunting followed, and then the stove was finally out of the house!

After ripping off the paneling above the fireplace, we finally saw what we had to work with.  The black swirls are the remains of the adhesive used to put up the old paneling.  Unfortunately, the wall was in pretty bad shape, too bad to just paint over so we decided to put up new paneling to cover it.

The fireplace also needed quite a bit of scrubbing.  Yuck.

TA DA!  DBF put up this lovely paneling, framed out the corners and even built a mantel!  I love this man so very much.  :)  The plan is to hang a picture or large mirror above the fireplace.  We just have to find the perfect one.  The windows face this wall, so I think having a mirror here would be pretty.

He rounded out the edges of the mantel so it looks smooth and polished.

I picked up this fireplace screen at Target for under $30.  I love the pattern.  And see how the paneling blends in with the tan color we painted the living room walls?  That was a happy accident.  This paneling was our favorite (and the cheapest) that the store had, and luckily, everything coordinated nicely.

We were toying around with some options and first had some flameless candles inside the fireplace.  That didn't look quite right, so -

- we moved the candles to the mantel instead and put in an electric heater inside the fireplace.  Neither of us is crazy about the idea of having an actual fire in our house, so this is a great substitute.  It functions as a space heater too and is really warm.  When it got dark this evening, having this going made the living room so cozy.  I just love our house!

Another happy thing I love about our house is that we're really close to a Thomas/Entenmann's outlet.  We got all this - three loaves of country white bread, three bagels and three pastries for just $12!

I also made a trip to Staples to convert some Staples Rewards money into cash via Easy Rebates.  Here's what I bought:

• 2 Staples 8.5" x 11" Copy Paper (500 sheet ream) $3.79 each (these were supposed to be $5.49 each according to the circular, cashier verified these are the right ones for the rebate so we'll see what happens), will get back ? as Easy Rebate (Limit 2) = should be FREE
• 2 Staedler Maxum Ballpoint Pens (extra bold, assorted colors) $5.99 each, will get back $5.99 each via Easy Rebate (Limit 2) = FREE
• 2 Kleenex double packs $2.99 each, will get back $2.99 each via Easy Rebate (Limit 2) = FREE
• Reusable Bag $1.49
• Used $10 reward and $17.03 of an $18 reward (very surprised to see this covered the tax - thought for sure it would beep and I'd have to get another bag), total was zero

 These deals are only valid today (Sunday) and Monday.