OUR HOME // exterior before + after

I was hoping to write this post much sooner, but hey, house projects always take longer than anticipated, right?  Honestly, our garage still doesn't have any siding on it after 6 months, and you can still see the scaffolding up on the left (still finishing some trim paint), so we're definitely not done, but it'll happen.  Someday.  But!  For all intents and purposes, we're basically done with the hard stuff.
When we were looking around for a house, we were looking for a project, mostly because we wanted a cheap house.  Like, really cheap.  And in Tacoma's housing market, that's not too hard, especially if you're ready to put in a little elbow grease to get the most out of your cheap house.  We had looked at the house behind the one we ended up buying, but the interior was awful.  It needed to be completely re-done.  The exterior was fine, but the interior was pretty bad.  We decided to pass on that one and as we walked home, we saw the house we ended up buying.  It looked like a dump.  The exterior was in sorry shape.  We didn't even bother looking at it because we figured with an exterior like that, there was no way the interior was decent.  Well, we were wrong, and the interior had been completely remodeled.   Unfortunately someone had done a terrible job of keeping up the exterior shingle siding and  had done the worst paint job I've ever seen on a house. they barely even masked off the windows and doors and sprayed a thick coat of paint right over paint that was already peeling.




So in January, we ripped it all off.  After looking into some construction companies around town and getting some estimates, we ended up just doing it ourselves.  My Dad and Uncle came down from Alaska, along with my brother, who was heading back to college after being home for Christmas break, and then my cousin and other brother drove up from Portland to help as well.  My Dad and his brother worked with my Grampa for years doing construction on houses, so it was almost a reunion tour of my Grampa's old construction business, Auke Bay Builders!  It actually felt really cool to be able to work alongside my family like that.  Anyway, Dan & I did all the demo before they showed up, so when they arrived we got right to the siding... after hauling 600 lbs of old shingles to the dump.



 

It took about two weeks total.  There were a couple snafu's to fix after taking off the old siding.  The front porch had some weird off-kilter-ness to it, so my Dad squared it up.  But many hands made light(ish) work, and I was so thankful to have the expertise of my Dad and Uncle available.  Replacing the old shingle siding with new shingle siding would've been too expensive, so we went with HardiePlank Lap siding, which is nice because it's not actually wood, it's fiber cement material.  This makes it fire-resistant, among other things, which is nice.  Plus, you only have to score with a knife and then snap in order to cut pieces, rather than sawing each one, which saved a ton of time.  I love the look of shingles, and it fits the style of our house, so we decided to do cedar shingles in the gables, which I think looks super sharp.





We decided to paint it a dark charcoal.  After seeing some darker colored houses around town, I thought it looked both modern and classic.  I figure there are so many houses painted "safe" colors like beige, I wanted to do something more unique and bold.  We tested a couple shades of charcoal and ended up with a near-black shade, but after painting the whole house, I'm in love with it.  I feel like we've got the snazziest house on the block!

Since the interior of our house isn't in need of immediate renovation, our next project (well, other than finishing the siding on the garage to match the house...) will probably be fencing in our side yard in front of the detached garage to give us more enclosed, private yard space.  I got these patio tiles at Ikea the other day from the As-Is section (35 tiles for only $1 each!!), so I'm excited to start installing them soon!  I'd like to make some more raised beds to expand our veggie garden, too.





I'm so proud of the work we've done in less than a year.  I always get sad seeing all the run down craftsman homes around town that obviously used to be so beautiful.  When we were looking for a house, I wanted to be able to revive one of those homes back to it's former glory, so it's been really fun actually getting to do that.  Our house had sat vacant for years before we moved in with no one taking care of it.  Thankfully the interior hadn't fallen into disrepair, so we've been able to focus all our energies on fixing up the exterior.

my summer entertaining fab wishlist!

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9

One of the big things that I'm super excited about for this summer is outdoor entertaining!  While we had a pretty big yard at our old place, it wasn't very entertaining friendly.  We've already had a couple parties at the new house and it's so great!  I'm hoping for many summer parties in the backyard.  We're still a long way from having our yard the way I want it to be, so window shopping is always a fun way to find inspiration.  Fab is a great place to find such inspiration because they're always rotating in new curated items that are unique.  For our backyard, I'd love to have a permanent seating area for outdoors.
Right now we just drag our kitchen table chairs outside, which is a drag, and then if people want to sit at the table indoors, they're kind of out of luck.  We've got a little fire pit, so having seating set up around that would be ideal.  I don't know if I'm the only one hung up on the idea of a rug outdoors, but I think that idea is so fun.  Instead of having a fancy brick patio, just put an indoor/outdoor rug down and voila!  Instant fanciness.  Also, non-breakable tumblers for outdoor beverage consumption?  Brilliant. Bonus that they are wood!  I've never seen such a thing!  Dan's big into beer, and is brewing a lot of homebrews this summer, so it'd be fun to throw some beer tasting parties, and a little beer flight set up would be perfect.  I'm pretty excited about summer, especially because us Pacific Northwesterners try to soak it up as much as possible before the clouds roll on in again and stick around for months.

*This post is in partnership with fab.com. Thanks for supporting those companies which help keep Delightfully Tacky alive and kicking!

industrial chevron coffee table diy

I've been a big fan of Ariele Alasko's work for some time now.  I love everything she creates, and have long wanted one of her pieces in my home.  I figured, since I can't afford one of her creations (shipping alone has to be crazy expensive!), I'd try my hand at emulating the look of her pieces.  I have plans for a couple more pieces similar to this one (I'm dreaming of making a pretty headboard for our bed), so this was kind of a test run.  I decided to go for a simple chevron design for my first try.  We've had the same Ikea coffee table since 2011, and I wanted something more interesting for our new living room.  
Materials 1x2 (I think I bought 6 8ft 1x2s, but depending on the size of your table you may need more or less)
plywood
stain (I used Varathane ebony + sunbleached)
wood glue
8 floor flanges
4 T's
4 6 in nipples
4 8 in nipples
16 10x 1" wood screws
saw
miter box
power drill
I wanted a similar height and size to our old Ikea coffee table, so I made mine 24 in x 36 in.  I had Home Depot cut my plywood to that size (a nice option, if you don't have a saw).  The plywood is what you'll attach all your small 1x2s to.  For a simple chevron design, you'll just need to cut your pieces at 45 degrees, and then place the angled edge against the center line of the table to measure how long your full length pieces will be.  Once you start getting to the ends of the table, you'll start cutting them shorter to fit into the corners.  Just measure as you go and learn to love your miter box.  If you have a power miter saw, that would be ideal.  I did not, so I cut each one by hand. 


Once all your pieces are cut, you can stain them.  I laid every piece out on the table how I wanted them and then stained pieces according to how I wanted it to look.  I used a black and grey stain, but you can do whatever you like.  Stain them before you glue them down, so you don't have to deal with accidentally staining the strip adjacent.
When your stain is dry, glue your pieces down with wood glue.  I did each one individually, picking it out of it's spot, applying glue to the plywood and the bottom of the strip, and then sticking it down.  Once all of them were glued down I put some heavy books on top to help squish it together.

The legs are the easiest part.  Measure 3in from each edge on each corner and make a mark.  This is where the first screw will go on all our flanges.  Place the flange so you can see that mark through the screw hole and then mark where the other 3 screw holes are, so you can drill the holes where your screws will go (I'm not entirely sure this is necessary, but I didn't want any wood to split when I screwed the flanges on).  Repeat till you've got all your screw holes marked, and then drill them with a bit slightly smaller than your screws, you still want there to be enough wood for your screws to grab.  
Switch to a phillips head bit and screw down all your flanges!  Now all you have to do is assemble the legs.  If you want a shelf beneath the table, like mine, you'll need some T's to hold up the shelf.  If not, just get a pipe the length you want your table's height to be (minus a couple inches to account for the wood and flanges).  I got a 6 in nipple to go below the shelf and an 8 in nipple for above the shelf.  
You can make the shelf a couple ways.  You can measure the distance between the table legs (mine were 15 in apart) and make a sheet of plywood that width by the length of the top of the table minus 2 inches.  Your shelf will sit between the two pipes, resting on the T.  Or, you can do what I did and make your shelf wider than the distance between the legs, and cut notches out.  The former is easier, the latter gives you more shelf space, but is harder to make.  My bottom shelf is 21" x 33"



I was planning on making a nice edge to clean it up a bit with some 1x4, but it took me 3 months to finish to this point, so I'm calling it good for now.  I have the wood to finish the edges so it might happen eventually!  For now, I like how it looks and am happy to finally have it done!

new york sour

Spring this year has been awesome.  Last year at this time I was so over the dreary, wet weather and constantly dreaming about moving somewhere less yucky.  This year?  70 degrees in April?  Yes please and thank you.  The sunny weather has made me excited about concocting fun beverages, because what's better than basking in the sun with an ice cold cocktail?  Dan made me one of these the other day and I loved how pretty the wine looked floating on top so I decided to share the recipe.  A New York Sour is a pretty standard cocktail, so this isn't anything too crazy or special, just a nice, solid cocktail that looks super fancy.  The best part is that it's a rather simple and easy cocktail to make, so you won't have to be at the bar doing a bunch of crazy mixologist stuff while your friends enjoy their cocktails.


New York Sour

2 oz bourbon
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
1/2 oz red wine

In a cocktail shaker 3/4 full of ice, add bourbon, lemon juice and simple syrup.  Shake until frosty. You can either strain into a chilled cocktail glass or a collins or rocks glass with ice.  Over a spoon, pour the wine onto the top of the drink.  This will keep the wine floating on top of the drink and give it that cool gradation, pretty fancy!  You'll probably want to mix the wine in before you drink it, just to mix the flavors, but it's fun to serve it with the wine floating on top.  You can garnish with a cherry and/or lemon/orange slice if you like!  I thought the wine float was fancy enough so I went sans-garnish.  And since I always get asked where the spiral paper straws are from, you can find them on Amazon in tons of different colors.

photos of me by Dan