Sunday, October 6, 2013

a few scenes from fall

It has been raining lots around here.  In biblical proportions.  Summer was long, warm, gloriously sunny - simply fantastic.  But full stop - summer is now over.

Yet with that abrupt change comes the magic of fall.  I can do with a few less of the winter-like storms we've had already, but hey - this is the PacNorWest.  Below are some scenes from the fall thus far, which has been truly enjoyable.

Harvested hops from the garden.  AJ made her first fresh-hopped beer from them.  Its great.  The corn up above is from her garden too.

AJ in the forest for the first mushroom hunt of the year.  So far, 2013 has been tremendously good for chanterelles - our last haul yielded 4lbs!

Such beauties!

The awesome orange trees in front of our neighborhood bookstore.

Fall is a good time to move inside to do some projects out of the elements - here are two cases of Chilean carmenere that I made and bottled.

The season also brings with it AJ's superior cooking skillz.  This is one of her latest inventions - homemade pasta with leaves and flowers from the garden embedded.  Beautiful and soooo delicious - these are chives.

And my personal favorite about fall - the light in the afternoon.  Simply stunning.

aaaaaand, we're done

AJ and I finished the bathroom about five months ago.  But a major snafu with our shower curtain order lead to a ridiculous delay in actually being 100% done done.  And with our old crummy plastic curtain in there, it seemed an injustice to take pictures until it was truly finished.  So we just got the shower curtain, AJ modified it, and now its up.  And because the bathroom is done, that means we're finished with our house.  Perhaps its time to change the name of blog?

Below are some pics of the newly improved bathroom... We love it!

This was what we started with.  Yep - looks like the bathroom in some crummy college apartment.  The materials were as cheap as they get, the water pressure was nil, there was no natural light, and the ceiling fan - which automatically turned on when you flipped the light switch - sounded like a 747 taking off.  

And viola! Here's the new one!  We swapped the toilet and sink, brought in a 1922 refurbished Kohler clawfoot, put up some wainscoating, and extended the tiles from our kitchen to seamlessly flow into the bathroom.  Also added a skylight to bring some natural light into the space.

Sorry - gotta show the nastiness again.  One of the things we hated was there was barely any storage, and the storage that was there was exposed in wire shelving screwed to the wall.  

Taaadaaaaaaa! Adrienne had the stroke of genious to use a corner sink, saving us a bit more room - which matters when the only bathroom you have is 5'x8'. The vanity slides on barn door tracks to reveal shelves.

We got rid of the wire basket shelves everywhere and built recessed shelving between the wall studs.  The doors are also on barn door tracks, so you can hide the stuff you want to.

And we added a big skylight - 2'x4' - so lots of natural light instead of the cave-like conditions that were there before.