New York Yankees Opening Day. Twice.

Monday, April 31, 2008 was opening day for the New York Yankees.

Sort of.

We were given some great tickets at the last minute, so Joe and I gathered up some friends and drove into the Bronx Monday morning.

We bundled up.  We brought rain gear.  We packed lunches and drinks.  We had our cameras at the ready.  We scored free parking on a side street.  We sat in the drizzle for two hours.

And then we got rained out.  :P

At least we got to see the new stadium.

The good news was that the game was rescheduled for the following night, and we were all free.

So Tuesday, April 1, we tried again.  This time we hopped on the train instead of driving, and got there in plenty of time to wander around outside.

The weather was much better on Tuesday and the game was great.  The best part?  The Yankees won!!!

I got to try out my new telephoto lens for the first time, so here are some of the pictures I took.

Allow me to officially introduce you....

It occurred to me recently that I have not officially introduced you to our house!

Forgive my manners.

You?

Our House.

Our House?

You.

There.  Now that we are all friends, I will acquaint you better. 

The picture above is what the house looked like the day we bought it.  Notice the ugly taupe paint color accented by even uglier light teal trim.  :P  If you look really hard, you can just see that the exterior walls enclosed by screen  are not taupe, but dark green.  We don't know why.

We also don't know why, when all of the trim on the house is teal, the trim on the front door is white. 

Here is our side yard.  All along the side of the house was a myriad of untamed plant life.  Further into the back yard you can just make out the large apple tree with the "v" shaped trunks, and some other unidentified tree.

Joe and I weren't crazy about the screened-in porch.  One day, Joe went to New Hampshire with work for a day-long hike.  When he left, we had a screened-in porch.

When he came home, we didn't. 

Me + a few hours in the sun + a five pound sledge = no more screens.

Somewhere around a year later we ripped out those ugly bushes.  We also ditched all of the plants along the side of the house.  

Oh yeah.  We also cut down the trees in the back yard.  We would have liked to keep the apple tree, but the main trunk and one half of the "v" growing out of it were rotted.  Se we cut it down.  That was an exciting day.  Joe's step-brother Neil came over with a big saw, a bigger truck, and tree-cutting experience.  A few hours, heart attacks, and near-misses later, Joe and Neil felled the tree; only narrowly managing to avoid doing so through the ceiling of our brand new bathroom while I was brushing my teeth inside of it.

Neil hasn't cut a tree down since.

The other little tree also got axed.  The stumps are still there.  Thus far they proved useful for supporting pumpkins while we shot apples at them with our neighbors homemade potato gun.

Good times.

We will have a ton of landscaping to do, but we aren't even going to start thinking about the outside until we finish the upstairs bathroom.

Which reminds me, I need to start taking pictures in there, too, before we get too much further along...

A look at the loo.

Unfortunately, when we doing a lot of the work on the bathroom, my camera had a dead battery and a charger that was nowhere to be found.

I think there are some before pictures floating around on cameras other than mine, and I will try to track them down.

For now, I offer after pictures.

This is my favorite part of the bathroom.  It was our first tile job, so it's not great.  But I love the tiles.  I chose a 6" square tile for the center.  We took the same tiles and cut them in quarters to make the outer border.  The decorative border is made of stones that look like river stones.  That curved thing you see on the left is our shower.

This is our pedestal sink.  I love it, but the bottom is slightly crooked and we keep forgetting to fix it.

Our kitchen had an ironing board cabinet that was original to the house.  I really didn't want to close it off, but we were unable to incorporate it into the design of the kitchen.  My solution was to simply close it off from the kitchen and open it up from the bathroom.  I built a cabinet to fit in the space, and it now serves as the only permanent storage.  When I get around to it, I am going to make a door (that doubles as an art piece) to conceal the opening.

These are the rosettes I wanted in the trim.  Usually people match the size of the rosette to the width of the trim, but I like them oversized.  And since I am the head (only) decorator on this project, I do as I please.  Like always.

Here is the window that I trimmed out all by myself while Joe was at work.  I felt like a finish carpenter.  I loved it and I was really proud of myself.

You should also know that this wall used to be blank...no window.  When we were laying out the bathroom, we decided that the existing window was in a bad spot.  So we closed that one off and added a new window to this wall.  There's nothing quite like buying a house and then cutting a hole in the side of it with no experience in such undertakings.  My dad was a big help with that one.

Oh, hey...I may have been wrong.  There IS something like buying a house and cutting a hole in the side of it...

How about cutting a few holes in the roof?!  

The original ceiling of the then-pantry-now-bathroom was level with the one in the kitchen.  Since this room sticks off of the back of the house like its own little entity, it has its own roof.  We thought that was an awful waste of space to have that little unused area between the bathroom ceiling and the roof.  We decided that we would remove the ceiling and the framing supporting it, and just leave the ceiling vaulted.  To add extra light (and since I love them) we added two skylights.

Yes, there is still painter's tape on the trim.  No, we are not done painting the trim.  Yes, we know there is paint on the glass.  We're working on it.

Cutting those two holes in the ceiling was probably the most nerve-wracking project we undertook.  We were on our own for that one.  Granted, we had closed off windows in the bathroom and kitchen, reframed one window opening to accept a smaller winder, and added one window from scratch.  

But it's different when the hole is in the roof.  

ANY project is different when you are doing it precariously perched on a surface which is not only elevated, but angled.

We didn't want to reshingle that little section of roof, so each cut had to be PERFECT to preserve the shingles we were trying to keep.  We also had to make sure not to break any of the shingles as we slowly and carefully bent them back to slide the flashing underneath.  Broken shingles or improperly installed flashing would create leaks, and everyone knows, leaks are bad.

Both skylights went in with hitches no larger than tools repeatedly falling off the roof.  We were certain our caulking and siliconing and flashing installation were a success.  And to help us prove this, mother nature threw a storm at us.  It rained cats and dogs.  Joe and I stood in the bathroom staring at the skylights with a flashlight.

I'm pretty sure we weren't breathing.

The final verdict?

The bathroom with no electricity, no plumbing, no walls and no ceiling also had no leaks.

Yee ha.

Our new fridge!

We finally got a fridge.  One that fits in the space.  One that has nary a broken door shelf.  One, most importantly, that does not leak water from the freezer which then freezes in the fridge.

We went to the Sears scratch and dent place in Newington.  This particular brand new fridge has two dents.  One on the side, and one on the back.  For these "ghastly" dents that are completely hidden by our cabinets, we saved $1000 off the sticker price.

Boo ya scratch and dent.

Otter likes it.

We LOVE it.

How Otter decided the kitchen should be decorated.

That cabinet you see in the upper right is the cabinet where we keep Otter's dog food and supplies.  We also happen to keep extra plastic bags in there.  

This morning before work Joe took all of the bags, shoved them into one larger bag, and put them by the door so we could bring them to Stop & Shop and recycle them.

Otter was apparently convinced that the plastic bags didn't just smell like his food, but contained copious amounts of it.

What you see above is what I woke up to today.