Baby Proofing Update: New Railings!

As you know, Little Andrew quickly broke through our half-baked solutions to keep him off the stairs.

My strategy then became to teach him to stop, flip over to his tummy, and go up or down the stairs that way. He is very adept at this method, which is a relief. Now that he's walking, I hope he doesn't get too gutsy and think he can go walk down the stairs frontwards, but so far so good.

Even though he is now a master of the stairs, we were still left with the project replacing the stair railings that had been removed by the previous owners. I absolutely approved of their choice of getting rid of the clunky 1980's railings, but I knew we needed to do something eventually, if not for the baby, then for me, and for resale.

I did not feel safe having nothing to grab onto, I lived in fear of sleepily pitching over the 3 foot drop in our bedroom in the middle of the night, and I didn't like how on the main staircase, if Andrew got off track, he could fall off either side.

I got 4 estimates and soon found out that this would NOT be a cheap fix. However, I didn't want it to be something we'd take care of right before moving, not ever enjoying it for ourselves. Too often, we save projects until we move and think, "Why didn't we do this sooner?"

I chose the least expensive estimate, which was less than half of the others, and I'm quite pleased. It wasn't exactly like comparing apples to apples, because the scope of the job changed with the estimates, but I still think I got the best deal possible. The spaces are pretty small, and we don't have a foyer, so I chose much smaller, understated newel posts than I did in our last house. I stuck with square balusters-- my favorite.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I feel safer, and in these days of not getting much accomplished, I'm glad to have checked something off the list!

Here is the new railing in our BEDROOM:

Here is the new railing in our LIVING ROOM:

The Line of Stupidity: A Tale of Chores Yet Undone

I'd like to show you something that I haven't shown many people.

It's one of our dirty little secrets:

I know my photos are crappy, as usual, but I'm hoping you can see where the lovely, fresh gray paint on the left joins up with the yellow faux plasterwork paint on the right. Do you? Good.

That's the LINE OF STUPIDITY.

Perhaps you have something similar in your house.

You see, when we had our major kitchen renovation done in Jan/Feb, we had the main level, which isn't a very large space, painted a lovely shade of gray, Moonshine by Benjamin Moore. Our kitchen renovators were pros, and they did a wonderful job. When they were putting on the finishing touches, we told them to stop painting right there, at the LINE OF STUPIDITY, because we wanted to finish the job ourselves to save money.

Now if you have ever renovated a kitchen, you know that you are basically hemorrhaging the big bucks at that point in the game. Would a few hundred dollars more have made much of a difference? I don't know. We didn't even ASK what it would have cost for them to keep painting. But I do know they could have hammered it out in about an hour or two, if that.

In the time since the kitchen was completed, my pregnant belly yielded forth a precious baby, who is on the verge of crawling now, our daughter finished up 9th grade and is well into 10th, yet the yellow remains.

It's not even a lot of yellow. Our upstairs hall is tiny, and is 3/4 white molding and doorways which we do not intend to paint.

 Now before we blame this whole debacle on the the innocent baby in our house, and his never-ending needs, I must confess that it's not as if we could not have seen this coming. Remember when we had french doors installed at the old house, told the handyman we would paint them ourselves, only to call him back ONE YEAR LATER to do the job? Yeah. Me too.

So please, help a girl out. Or at least her husband out, and tell me of any unfinished projects you have staring you in the face.

Garage "Mudroom" Part 1

I have never had a garage in my life until this past year.

Bird doo, snow, and icy windshields, were all just a part of life. When we were looking for a new (30+ years old) house a little over a year ago, I wasn't too concerned about having a garage, but boy am I enjoying it!

I love the privacy, I love the extra storage space, and pushing the button is fun, too.

A nice aspect of our garage is that there are 3 large storage closets in front of where we park our cars. They have sliding doors and deep wooden shelves. We use one for garden supplies, one for sports equipment, and one for party supplies such as vases, platters, ice buckets and tubs. There is a ton of storage!

An area of the garage I want to improve is the right side that leads directly into our kitchen eating area. I told myself I would not buy another home with a kitchen all on its own in the front of the house, and certainly not one where you walked directly into the eating area, but here we are.

And even though there are only three of us here now, we still seem to pile a lot of stuff on the floor right inside the kitchen door. This house also does not have a coat closet, which is kind of strange, but that's because they removed the closet a long time ago to add a desk area in the kitchen during a  remodel.

We have a few hooks right inside the kitchen door for coats, and we TRY to use the garage for the rest. Shoes are a crap shoot.

I was going through my blog and found a post from 2009 where I presented some of my small-space solutions for houses without mudrooms. Looking back at that post now is poignant, and I saw a cute pic of Jack that I'd forgotten about.


Here's how that wall in our garage looks now. I love my old church pew from my house growing up:

It functions pretty well for us, but I got a wild hair a few weeks ago. If I did not have a house with a mudroom, why not outfit this area like a pseudo-mudroom, with built-ins and everything?

I think it will add value to the house and look oh so pretty. Here's some inspiration from Pinterest. Those big windows could pose a problem, but we'll see.

http://www.pinterest.com/aninchofgray/mudroom/


The work crew is getting here in 5 minutes, so I'll report back later. I'm so excited!