Renovation | Stephanie's Written Word

Dec 20

Sunday (Snowy) Salon 12.20.09

By Stephanie life, renovation, sunday salon 20 Comments »

We’ve had a very festive weekend here in the North East. Thanks to mother nature, my kids were able to play outside in 6 plus inches of the fluffy white stuff after church this morning. Yesterday, I was in the kitchen all day cooking up a storm. First up were Christmas cookies with the girls. The island in my kitchen turns out to be the perfect place for us to gather and cook together. The kids had fun using the cookie press and decorating mint-chocolate tree cookies.

Before the snow came, we were visited by the big man in the red suit on the back of our local fire department’s truck. Here’s a shot of Maya (along with our neighbor Sheila) getting some candy from Santa.

Along with cookies, I also tried out Chicken Spaghetti (since Kathy recommended it in her review of Ree Drummond’s new cookbook). Got the recipe off of Pioneer Woman’s website (how is it that I’ve never heard of this woman until now)? It was excellent!! I also made her scrumptious apple pie and pie crust which were also pretty good.

Speaking of the kitchen, except for some details that are still unfinished (kitchen back splash, hood above the oven, crown molding on top of the cabinets, stonework on fireplace) the kitchen is fully functional! Here’s a glimpse of the space.

We are off to my girlfriend’s annual holiday party this afternoon, so I probably won’t get much reading done today.

Make sure to stop by this blog over the next few days as I will have the final and biggest Everything Austen giveaway!

Nov 25

Bunch of randomness & big balloons!

By Stephanie giveaway, life, renovation 15 Comments »

Bullet points, because they are fun!!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and since I will not be cooking this year we are going to get the kiddos up bright and early to go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC! My husband and I have been once before and it’s a crazy, busy and super fun time. I’ll be sure to take pictures of the huge balloons and post a couple over the next few days. Afterwards we will head back home and then up to my neighbor Sheila’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
The following day I’ll be heading back into the city to spend a night out with my girlfriend Chau. She got a great deal on a hotel room and the two of us, along with her sister and really fun mother-in-law (seriously, this woman was once a Pl*yboy bunny) will be hanging out for the evening. Joe and the kids will be staying at my Dad’s house while the final coating on my wood floors is drying.
Speaking of wood floors, here’s a shot of our kitchen with the almost finished wood floors below. Next Thursday all the appliances and the cabinets will be delivered. I am beyond excited to be on the tail end of this renovation and can’t wait to bake some Christmas cookies with the kids!

Lastly, thanks to all of you who entered the Willoughby’s Return giveaway. Congrats goes to Marlyn at Stuff and Nonsensewho won!! E-mail me Marlyn at wordblog(at)optonline(dot)net and I’ll get it out to you!

Nov 15

Sunday Salon 11.15.09

By Stephanie book challenges, everything austen, mini-challenge, renovation, sunday salon 13 Comments »

Happy Sunday everyone!

First let me say congrats to Melissa over at Vintage Joy who is the winner of my three book Harper Collins giveaway! E-mail me Melissa at wordblog(at)optonline(dot)net with your snail mail address and I’ll get those books in the mail!

Did you know that there is another Everything Austen mini-challenge going on right now? Make sure to stop by Bibliofreak, who is hosting a Everything Austen mini-challenge and giveaway where you can win this cool Jane Austen action figure! She will send mini-Jane anywhere in the world, so stop by to find out how you can win.

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It’s been another busy week at the house – the renovation is moving right along and we should be starting to install kitchen cabinets in three weeks! This is what the space looks like today:

Our general contractor was busy insulating and putting up sheetrock this week. Over the next couple days they will continue spackling and finish up some loose ends. Next weekend my husband and I are going to start painting (I spent a half hour at Home Depot yesterday picking out the perfect colors). Then (a few days before Thanksgiving) they will be sanding down the wood floors and refinishing them. After letting them dry for a week, our appliances and cabinets will arrive. Now that we are only a few short weeks from having an actual working kitchen I am finally allowing myself to become excited!

With all the renovation stuff going on, I haven’t even had a chance to pick up a book all week (I also have barely visited any other blogs – sorry about that)! I hope to be able to catch up with my blog list and start Shanghai Girls very soon.

Please make sure to stop by again as it will be a busy week here at Stephanie’s Written Word. I will be posting my review of Thanksgiving at the Inn, will host another Everything Austen giveaway and am going to tell you all about a new reading challenge that I am super excited about!

Nov 07

Sunday Salon 11.08.09

By Stephanie meet the author, new books, renovation, sunday salon 18 Comments »

Happy (almost) Sunday! I’m posting my Sunday Salon a little early since I probably won’t have much computer time tomorrow.

I hope you all had a great week. It’s been busy (and quite messy around here) as the building of my addition is chugging along. The headers are in the ceiling and the space has opened up quite a bit. To get a perspective, take a peek at the size of my kitchen, living room & dining room from my front door in this picture:

Below is a picture I took on Friday from the same location. As you can see, the interior wall and back wall have been removed and it is now one big room. You see where that bright light is sitting? That’s pretty much where the back wall used to be:

The plumber has finished and the electrician is almost done so we should be ready for the inspection on Tuesday. Once we are done with that, the room will be insulated and sheet rocked! You can also see all the wood stacked up in the middle of the living room – that’s for the wood floor that will extend through the entire room.

When I wasn’t busy tiptoeing around the workers in my house, I was eagerly anticipating a wonderful package from Random House and TLC Book Tours that I just couldn’t wait to share with all of you. I received an e-mail from the wonderful Lisa over at TLC Book Tours to see if I would be interested in reviewing Shanghai Girls: A Novel by Lisa See here on my blog in January. When I wrote back to tell Lisa that my book club had just picked Shanghai Girls to read next, she contacted the publisher and ten brand spankin’ new copies were sent to my house! I’m now handing them out to the women in my book club and we are all really looking forward to reading this book. It is the second See book that we’ve read as a group (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was the first one) and this time we are all crossing our fingers that the author will be calling in to our meeting! I’ll be sure to let you all know how our book club meeting turns out when it’s my turn to review Shanghai Girls.

I also finished up Now & Then by Jacqueline Sheehan (another TLC Book Tour read) and cannot wait to gush about this book to all of you later this month. I really loved the story and characters and would highly recommend it if you are looking for a great story about time travel, Irish history and a bit of romance.

Well, we are headed out to dinner with some friends tonight, so I’m signing off. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Nov 01

Sunday Salon 11.01.09

By Stephanie life, renovation, sunday salon 18 Comments »

First things first – the winners of my Murder at Longbourn giveaway are Stacy and Melissa! E-mail me at wordblog(at)optonline(dot)net with you addresses and I’ll get the books out to you!

I hope all of you enjoyed your Halloween yesterday! My kids had a great time trick-or-treating, even if it was lightly drizzling out. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this cool pumpkin I found at my neighbor’s house. Isn’t it hysterical?

I recently read this great blog post over at The Literary Omnivore about why she doesn’t like e-readers. It’s worth your time to read, as she has some great points about the current e-readers on the market and why she isn’t buying into all the hype.

I’m currently on the fence about e-readers. There are some wonderful things about e-readers like the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s new e-reader Nook. First, they are extremely portable. For people who travel extensively for work I think that an e-reader is super convenient and comfortable to carry. I also love the fact that you can purchase most brand new hardcovers for under $10, which is way less than what an actual hardcover will set you back. Plus the fact that on the Nook you can lend your e-books to friends is way cool. Lastly I just love the technological sleekness of e-readers (but I am a sucker for new techie stuff).

But here is the catch. I currently have an embarrassing large amount of unread books on my shelves. If I got an e-reader, what would happen to all those books? It’s not like I can transfer them to an e-reader to take with me. I’m thinking that the e-reader would sit on my shelf far too much as I try to make a dent into my TBR pile. Also, I think I would feel pressure to purchase books just so I can use my e-reader, which would be really hard to do on my current “no buying books” budget.

This is not to say that if I got an e-reader for a gift (or from the manufacturer for review on my blog – I’m talking to you Barnes & Noble) that I would turn it down. I’m just not sure I’m ready to shell out over $200 of my own money just to have one.

As far as reading, I finished Thanksgiving at the Inn (which I found lacking – you’ll find out more when I review it later this month). I also started Now & Thenby Jacqueline Sheehan and made a huge dent into it on Thursday. I have to say that I am really enjoying the story that Sheehan has so intricately weaved and can’t wait to get more reading time in. Unfortunately that was pretty much the last time I picked it up, as our weekend has been super busy. Between two Halloween parades (one at pre-school and one at elementary school) on Friday and the removal of my kitchen by my hubby on Saturday (yep, I am now officially kitchen-less) it’s been a busy couple days!

For your viewing pleasure, here is what our addition looked like when the contractor headed out for the day on Friday.

The roof is now done (we replaced the entire roof on the house) and the windows and skylights are in. The siding will be finished on Monday and then they will be breaking through the walls into our house. Yikes!!

Have a great Sunday!

Oct 22

New addition photos (week3)

By Stephanie renovation 7 Comments »

The weather has been really nice the last few days, which means a lot of work has been done to the addition (to see before pictures just click here).

The basement was finally finished and framing began on Monday. Here the floor has been put in on top of the full basement.

Walls then started going up. Here is a picture of Joe climbing up through what is going to be a new sliding glass door.

You can now get a feeling how it’s all coming together.

The large opening will be a slider and the window to the left is where the sink will be. My new stove will be centered in-between the two side windows. Here is a view for another angle (with my daughter checking out the rubble pile).

Next up is a new roof (for the whole house) then windows and siding!

Oct 17

Sunday Salon 10.18.09

By Stephanie cancer, life, renovation, sunday salon 12 Comments »

As you can see, I’ve been messing with my blog template again (I just can’t seem to find THE perfect one). Anyway, I kind of like this one and the orange makes me happy. I’ll think I’ll keep it for a little while.

Even though it is technically still Saturday (for a few more hours at least) I’m going to have an extremely busy Sunday tomorrow and thought I would go ahead and post my Sunday Salon post now.

Tomorrow is a special day for a number of reasons. First, it is birthday number three for my youngest daughter! Usually we host a big pumpkin painting party to celebrate, but with all the construction going on in the house we decided to just have a low-key celebration with cake and presents after dinner.

Secondly, my family and some friends will be walking in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event in the morning. As a team we’ve raised over $3,500 and even though the weather forecast doesn’t look promising, I’m looking forward to the event none-the-less. I’ll be posting some pictures of the walk on Monday.

As far as the renovation, our basement walls have been built! On Thursday we had a couple big machines moving dirt around our property in the cold and wet snow. I was more than happy to stay inside the house and take pictures. On Monday framing of the addition will begin.

I’m exactly at the half-way point of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. If you’ve already read The Gargoyle, you know that it is not the type of book that is a quick read. It’s rather intense and strange and intriguing all at once, reminding me of another strange book I read two years ago. I think that this book is hard to categorize and have a feeling that it will be one of those books that’s even harder to review.

When I wasn’t reading The Gargoyle, I was knitting. I finally finished the sweater I made for my oldest daughter and she is looking forward to wearing it to school next week. I also got the bug to knit something super fast and found this pattern for a kids bunny slope hat which I made for my friend’s son for his birthday. Maya was nice enough to model it for me. Isn’t it too cute! I think the pom-pom on top pushes it over the edge of cuteness! I can’t wait to make a few more (maybe in some pretty girlish colors) since it can be knit up in no time.

Hope you all have a fabulous Sunday! Stay warm and dry!

Oct 06

The dirty work has begun

By Stephanie renovation 19 Comments »

Yesterday was the big day – renovation for our addition has officially started!

Just to give you a bit of perspective, this is what the back of our house looked like a few weeks ago.

My husband spent a weekend taking down the deck himself. The addition is going where the deck used to be. Yesterday the general contractor came and used a backhoe to dig out the new full basement foundation (I took this picture from inside the house, through the sliding glass door).

By the end of the day, this is what it looked like (again, picture taken from my patio door):

Luckily the backhoe guy was pretty skilled and that long white pipe (that leads to our septic tank) is still in one piece! Next up is pouring concrete and cinderblocking of the basement walls.

I’ll be taking pictures as progress is made and will post them here once in a while. The renovation will take approximately 8 to 12 weeks and my husband will be installing the new kitchen cabinets himself once it is ready!

Sep 12

At the library/home renovation (& a few winners)

By Stephanie giveaway, life, new books, renovation 31 Comments »

What does a book lover do when on a tight book buying budget? Hit the local library sale of course! My girlfriend and I headed out of the house early this morning to wait on-line with the other book nuts to grab books at 50 cents a piece. As you can see in the picture below, I made out like a bandit! I think I scored big with like new paperback copies of The Likeness: A Novel by Tana French and The 19th Wife: A Novel by David Ebershoff. My girlfriend got even more books which I am sure she will get through pretty quickly on her commute into the city each day.

In other news, my husband and I just this morning highered a general contractor to put an addition on our house! This has been in the works for almost two years and we hope to break ground next month (baring any issues with permits from our town). I will be taking pictures as we go along and will post about the addition under the catagory ”renovation” as it progresses. The new addition will be a kitchen, with the old kitchen and dining room being remodeled into one large dining room that will be open to the living room. It will be adding some much needed square footage to our home and make it perfect for entertaining. It’s all exciting and extremely nerve-wracking at the same time so keep your fingers crossed that it goes smoothly!

Lastly, the lucky winners of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters are: