Check out this updated faucet in the half bathroom: The old fixture wasn’t offensive, but it did leak. And with a single knob I worried that Clara might accidentally crank the hot water up when she washed her hands. We visited our local Habitat ReStore hoping to score something inexpensive. Sherry nearly squealed with delight … Read more

Since it’s Thursday afternoon and we’re prone to wandering off into random topics (like some old posts we’ve shared), I thought I’d toss another one onto the blog. Below are a few things you probably didn’t know about John and me. Is it proof of our oversharing tendencies? Yes. Evidence that we’re a little weird? … Read more

The universe works in funny ways. A few weeks ago we were publicly lamenting the death of our lawn mower on Facebook and Twitter (though we later brought it back to life with some basic DIY maintenance). After our social posts, helpful readers chimed in with suggestions — and our friends at Lowe’s noticed, too. … Read more

Note: This is a retroactive post I pieced together in December 2011 so I could create monthly recaps for the whole year—our first year in our new house. I’m a little type A. Here’s what we tackled in June, presented yearbook-style. Most Improved: Finally painting our kitchen paneling Most Annoying: Priming the paneling, which took … Read more

Last week was shaping up to be a pretty good one. Sherry celebrated turning 30 and we declared the kitchen mostly finished. Spring was in full bloom and even brought a dramatic thunderstorm one night. It rained harder and faster than anything we’d seen since moving into this house. Then, around midnight, something unexpected happened. … Read more

If you have marble or granite countertops—or any surface you want to protect—preventing oil rings from bottles is essential when cooking. Rather than constantly worrying and wiping, we use a simple, effective system to stop oil from ever reaching the counters: It’s nothing fancy: a small white square dish placed under our bottles catches any … Read more

When Barbara sent us her before-and-after photos, we couldn’t wait to share the transformation. Here’s her note: My parents bought a house built in the 1970s and handed the remodeling project to my husband and me. The whole house felt stuck in that decade until a few months ago. Dark finishes and brown carpet were … Read more

Yesterday we painted the exterior of the new French doors (and spent a little extra time caulking and repainting some peeling siding — I get a little obsessive once I start). After tackling that big project, I wanted to share something smaller and completely free: a quick fall refresh of our kitchen mantel using only … Read more

We wanted to expand on our reply to a question Alyssa asked on Wednesday about the framed map shown below: The piece in the white frame is one of the cards from the City Walks: New York boxed set. City Walks produces compact boxes that each contain 50 walking adventures for a given city. Every … Read more

Tweakity-tweak-tweak. That was the sound of a small course correction in our kitchen last night. We recently did a bracket refresh: after taping off positions, mocking them up in Photoshop, and then—gulp—drilling through tile to install them, we were confident about the spacing. We chose it because: Those were the locations of the wall studs … Read more