Utility Room "Complete"

While there are still quite a few things planned for this room, It finally looks the way I want it to and is pretty darn close to done!  Curtains are hung, florescent lights replaced with track, tools, laundry, and dog stuff are organized, and there are even decorative touches.  Hurrah for one room to be looking so good!

Bath Progress

The biggest bathroom in the house is in the hallway and looked like this when we bought the house:

green and yellow tile wall tile, tan floor tile, green bathtub, bisque toilet, lacy curtain, awful and old medicine cabinet and vanity.  It's a true gem!  However, I'm not particularly "into" bathrooms so spending lots of money replacing the tile and all the fixtures is not in the cards for now.  So, we're in the process of doing some surface updates.  First, that medicine cabinet HAD to go...

 Oops!  Apparently I made a big hole in the wall that led directly to the attic.

 So I covered it up with plywood and got some help hanging a frame on which we hung a nice big mirror:

Final step, a new light fixture to replace what I think may have been the original 1950's fixture...

 Look at it on, it works!

Ye, its still kind of a dated fixture style, but it was cheap and covered the existing hole so I didn't have to patch any drywall. There is a joke about cheap and easy here, but its escaping me at the moment...

Light Switch!

When you walk into my house, one of the first things you see is the staircase, and at the top of the staircase, this:

 Let's zoom in a bit closer, shall we? Yeah, its LOVELY.

 So, I made a little switcheroo...

MUCH better, no?

Crazy Dog Lady Room

When I found this amazing book on super duper discount I knew I had to buy it and frame the pictures to hang in some room some day (this was before the house hunting even began).  I had grand visions of golden ornate frames with photos of dogs lounging in them on a bright pink wall in a powder room with incredibly gaudy gold accents.  I imagined going all out in a small room and creating a space that would make me laugh and smile and would make visitors question my sanity.  After all, I'm not sure I want to be friends with people who can't handle a crazy dog powder room.

When we looked at our house, one of the things I fell in love with about it was this room:

 It may not look like much in those pictures, but to me, it was endless possibility.  It was an entire HUGE room dedicated solely to laundry, projects, and storage.  I could have a folding table!  No more dragging the ironing board out every morning!  We could line a wall with cabinets for winter coats or pantry items!  When  looking at smallish, oldish houses, a room of this sort is a gold mine.  So, upon moving in I decided to make it one of the first to tackle.  After all, if this was the project room, doesn't it make sense to get it in shape before tackling other projects?  So, I combined my vision for a crazy dog lady room with my vision for a super functional laundry/project/storage room and today I can finally see it all coming together!  It still has a long way to go for sure, but here is what it looks like this evening:

It is still in total chaos, but the walls are painted and my first two glamour dog shots are hung.  I have one of two giant wardrobe cabinets in place and my puppy cookie jar is looking down at me.  To "finish" this room I'll still need to put in the other wardrobe, install kitchen cabinets for food storage, fix that awful wall behind the washer dryer and hang a curtain to hide the appliances.  Long term we'll install a stackable washer dryer and a utility sink along with replacing the yucky sticky tiles with real ceramic ones and scraping off the yucky popcorn ceiling.  Still lots of projects to go, but at least one room in the house is starting to reflect my personality... even if that is crazy dog lady!

PS.  There was one casualty from this makeover... a crazy yellow dog:

Its been over 3 years since I posted to this blog, but I decided its time to start up again because there is another exciting journey to document.  First, a catch up on the last 3 years.  I spent 2 years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and completed my MBA.  In December of my first year, Anshuman came to join me in the U.S. (after LOTS of legal paperwork to get his visa) and we were legally married on Christmas Day 2009.  We had a big "white dress" wedding on July 4, 2010.  In March 2011, Anshuman headed to Vermont to follow his dream of a career in the food world by enrolling at the New England Culinary Institute.  I finished school and moved to New Jersey to work for a big corporation.  Anshuman came home in October 2011 for a 6 month internship in New Jersey and we began house hunting in Pennsylvania after deciding that New Jersey is not for us.   We settled on our new home the same weekend that Anshuman had to head back to school in Vermont.  So, now I will use this blog to document progress improving our lovely little home since I'm doing it alone for the next few months (Anshuman will be home again in October).  Here are some pictures of the house during home inspection... we have LOTS of plans to make BIG changes!

A Day at the Beach

Hyderabad meets Wilmington

One of my friends from Hyderabad's permanent residence is in Wilmington, DE, only about an hour awy from my parents home. She was kind enough to invite myself and my mother to a ladies lunch where we got to meet a variety of her U.S. friends.After lunch she showed us where the Indian grocery store is so I could get all the ingredients I need to create an Indian feast! Spices and daals galore!