alicia – hello house

Dripworks, part one: The Order

Glory be, it’s gardening time! You know, we’ve been working on our gardens here at Hello House for 2.5 years now, and there’s still so much work to do. Which I think is great. How sad would it be if all our planting was done in the first year?

One of the reasons we aren’t done planting is we lost a few astilbe and two pieris japonica to drought last year. And by drought, I mean we didn’t water them enough.

Everything’s gonna be different this year, because this week I’m installing our new Dripworks irrigation system. Continue reading Dripworks, part one: The Order

Urns

My family rented the whole time I was growing up. Between that and living in Florida, our houses were pretty much always plain, with few or no interesting architectural features. Needless to say, these days I’m a sucker for nice accents in my house. (And not a single room is painted white!) Continue reading Urns

A New Front Storm Door

A while back, our next-door neighbor (who lived here all her life) told us about when the previous owner of our house got her new storm door. Apparently, she was very excited. We’re not sure why. Continue reading A New Front Storm Door

Storms of the Century

Who doesn’t hate vinyl storm windows? Seriously. They’re ugly and they don’t work well. Because we kick it old school, we ordered a custom-made set of traditional wooden storm windows from Adams Architectural. Continue reading Storms of the Century

Strippin’ in my free time

My baseboards project is taking a lot less time than I expected. Between that and totally missing the smell of singed paint, I decided to strip a doorframe or two while I’m on vacation. Here’s the bathroom doorframe: before, during, and after. Continue reading Strippin’ in my free time

A Restorative Vacation

After a couple of ridiculously tough months of work, I’m on vacation this week. And like the Good Book says, there’s no better remedy for creative burn-out than a week of manual labor.

So this week, I’m staining, shellacking, cutting, and installing the cap and shoe for our living-room and dining-room baseboards. Continue reading A Restorative Vacation

Holy geez, we’ve been gone a long time!

We toured the world, adopted three children from every village we passed through, got four doctorates each, started a vineyard, retired as millionaires, and completely mastered DDR. That’s why we haven’t updated in almost a year. Continue reading Holy geez, we’ve been gone a long time!