The Honey-Do List: Why We Make a Good Team

Welcome to day one of “The Honey-Do List” blog swap! In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve teamed up with Kelly @ View Along the Way, Michelle @ Décor and the Dog, and Carrie @ Hazardous Design for four fun days in which we’ll be celebrating DIY life with our husbands. We all know that without them, we wouldn’t get very far in our quests for home improvement. And for their humor, their encouragement, and their patience in the face of questions like “Which of these 817 shades of blue looks best on the south-facing wall of the dining room?”, we think they deserve a big fat round of applause. Or at least four days of blog posts in which we talk about them.

Today’s topic: teamwork. Why do we make a good team? What do we lack as wives that our husbands make up for, and vice versa? Read on for details that involve cavemen, complicated headboards, goat intestines, and helpless damsels in distress.

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Carrie of Hazardous Design: I was drawing a blank on this question so I asked Chris to tell me why he thinks we make a good DIY team and this is what he said: I think we’re a good team because Carrie takes orders so well. Actually, I have found that I am terrible at telling her what we need to do, so there are generally a lot of comments from her like “Use your words!” and “I am not a mind reader!” Apparently we have not reached the point in our communication where my grunting like a caveman at a particular time translates into Carrie picking up the tool and using it for its intended purposes. So I guess the reason we are a good team is that Carrie puts up with my poor communication and fills in the blanks when she needs to (sometimes with expletives).

Michelle of Décor and the Dog: Nate and I make a great team because I have amazingly awesome ideas and he does an amazingly awesome job of executing them.  I am horrible at visualizing and measuring.  Nate excels at both.  Nate gets distracted easily when starting a project.  I’m great at keeping us focused.  We both like a bargain.  We would both prefer to attempt to build a piece of furniture (our headboard for instance) than buy it.  We also have similar but different tastes.  Does that make sense?  Of course it doesn't.  Nate prefers new.  I prefer old.  We somehow have found a happy medium that we feel makes for a beautiful home.

Erin of…this blog: Having a house to fix up has actually given Rick a hobby that complements my hobbies, so he no longer feels left out when I am working on a project that doesn’t require his muscles. Basically, I have the vision. Rick does not. When I have a vision, Rick’s vision is one of a maniacal wife who will rarely let him just sit and watch TV at night. This causes him to make lots of skeptical “ew” faces as though I just suggested we wallpaper our kitchen with goat intestine. What Rick does have, however, is an inspiring amount of patience to see my vision through long after I’ve grown tired of the project, which is usually approximately 53 minutes after beginning. I, personally, am a fan of “finish as quickly as possible”; Rick is a fan of “finish as perfectly as possible.” Together, we motivate each other to be efficient but precise. Hooray for projects that don’t collapse after minimal wear and tear.

Kelly of View Along the Way: We're a great team because I do all the work and he oversees. Okay, that's a teeny stretch. I do all the planning and have the vision, and we work together equally to accomplish it. (That was not true either.) He helps me not make stupid decisions, then he does the majority of the work himself. (Getting closer.) I just ask for him to do things and he researches the how-to and then does everything himself while I look on helplessly. A helpless Kelly + a heroically talented Andy = a fantastic DIY team.

Truthfully? I think we respect each other's strengths (even though I'm not sure what mine are yet?), give each other "veto" rights on every decision, and constantly motivate each other to TRY projects and ideas we've never tried. Because in the worst case? We learned something and spent time together. Even if the result is a disaster. And that's okay with me.

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And that wraps up our Honey-Do List insights for today! If you do DIY work with a spouse and have lived to tell about it, are you a good team? What do you bring to the duo that your significant other doesn’t, and vice versa? If DIY isn’t your thing, what do you and your honey team up to do? Go ahead and share, all you readers with “honey-do” lists of your own! :)

Be sure to visit Kelly on Wednesday for the #1 things we’ve learned about working with husbands, Michelle on Thursday for what home improvement would be like without a handy husband, and Carrie on Friday for what would happen if our husbands were given free reign to decorate our homes!

English Class Inspiration: “Where I’m From” Prints

I’m about to go all English teacher on you and share a project inspired by none other than a writing idea I found online.

It’s called a “Where I’m From” poem, and it’s about, as you might guess, “where you’re from.”

Sort of.

As I’m sure you fondly remember from high school, we English teachers are all about the hidden meaning and the “between the lines” essence of a writer’s words. At least, that’s what I’m told we’re all about. Therefore, a “Where I’m From” poem is not actually about where you’re from; rather, it’s more about what you’re from. But, naturally, “What I’m From” sounds crappy and “Where I’m From” is just so rich with connotation and possibility that English teachers everywhere want to give it a big kiss because it’s so beautiful.

I’m gagging a little as I write this. (I’m only trying to live up to the English teacher stereotype, you know?)

The point, Erin. What kind of English teacher are you? D minus for “ability to focus on a topic.”

Oh, yes. The point. The point is that I made some “Where I’m From” poems for us and then printed them so, in the event that we ever get around to putting holes in our walls, we can hang them up. I love them. I had to force Rick to sit down in an interview to get his poem’s details, but then I took care of the rest. Here are some snippets of mine:

Get it? Basically, you list a bunch of things that describe anything and everything you remember about growing up: your hobbies, your interests, your jokes, your family, your vacations, your friends, your secrets. Then, you end with a string of actions that pretty much sum it all up in a deliciously cryptic and not-literal-at-all way. Super easy, and super personalized. Nobody else on the earth will ever have this same exact thing hanging on their wall, unless, of course, you copy down what I wrote and hang it on your wall. But…why would you do that?

So: I’m from Barbies, band camp, and a seriously big imagination. (You can’t play fish science or pretend a coatrack is a drunken headmistress without it, you know.) And I can only imagine what my brother and I were dreaming up when one of my parents took this picture:

What are you from? What would you put in your poem if you were my student? Better yet, who wants to be my student? To audition for the part, please leave a comment in which you whine excessively about something that you did wrong but would like to blame on me, followed by a string of words used in ways I don’t understand, like “spit bars,” “ugg,” and “mad hype.”

P.S. I don’t actually find all of my students irritating. I find 90% of them to be quite lovely. You could, instead, audition to be one of the lovely ones, if, like I did, you received “Is a pleasure to have in class” on every single report card that you ever received. (I now know that this comment is actually code for “Thank you for not speaking in class.”)

***Linking this up to the Tater Tots & Jello Weekend Wrap-Up Party!***

Possibly the Cheapest Extra-Wide Curtains Ever

After months of trying to figure out what kind of curtains I wanted in our master bedroom, I finally made a bold and courageous decision:

White curtains.

Lame. Safe. Expected. Boring. Yada yada.

Guess what, though?

I sort of really like them.

I ended up with easy-on-the-eye white for the following reasons:

1. I’ve learned that I do not personally like to live in rooms with more than two graphic/patterned curtain panels. It’s too much for my personal taste and I’d prefer to bring in pattern in smaller doses, like a pillow or two or ten. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy looking at rooms with multiple bold and graphic curtains. But living in a room like that—no thanks. It’s sort of like how I’ve figured out that I love to look at rooms with a lot of fun color, but not live in rooms with a lot of fun color.

2. Because of #1, I knew I wanted something solid, and we’ve already got blue in the ceiling and on the chair, and gray on the walls and comforter. White it is.

The best part about these curtains is that they cost me a grand total of $35 for all four panels. They’re made out of 90” muslin, which was on sale for $5 a yard and I had an additional 30% off coupon. Thank you, Joann Fabrics. I also only had to hem the top and bottom of each panel because the sides were already finished. Thank you again, Joann Fabrics.

I’m not entirely sure what muslin is supposed to be used for, but when I googled it, I found the following idea:

One of the less well known uses of muslin is as a filter for fine wine or port to prevent sediment from getting into the decanter. Typically this is accomplished by pouring the wine through a funnel with muslin stretched over the smaller end.

Who knew? Here I’ve been choking down all that plankton and sludge in my homemade wine.

In addition to being a great sediment-buster, though, the fact that muslin comes in extra-wide widths (it actually went up to 120” but that seemed a bit excessive for my purposes) makes it especially good for DIYing curtains. I looked at other cotton fabrics that were around the same price per yard, but they were 45” wide, and would have made for pretty skimpy and super lame-o window treatments. The muslin is fairly thin, but there’s so much bunching and scrunching going on that you can’t even tell.

As a final touch, we replaced the original finals with finials from curtain rods that we took down because they wouldn’t extend wide enough.

Hooray!

Do you remember what this room used to look like? All I remember is something about birdhouses, a boob light, and a textured ceiling. Let’s take a look.

This next one isn’t the same angle, (if only you knew when you moved in what angles of the room you’d want to capture for before-after purposes) but it’s the same window. The wall to the right of the window in the birdhouse picture is the closet that we removed.

You can read about the madness of our master bedroom renovation here.

So…that’s all I’ve got for my cheapest extra-wide curtains ever (possibly). Who else has made some cheap curtains? Share links if you’d like to! And what besides home-décor-aisle-fabric have you made curtains out of? Have you ever strained your plankton with muslin? Better yet, have you ever made curtains out of plankton? Do tell. :)

***Linking this up to Serenity Now and the Tater Tots & Jello Weekend Wrap-Up Party!***

We get our furniture from Craigslist…and the curb.

Okay. Please raise your hand if, when you see a pile of garbage on the side of the road, you scrutinize it for one of the following:

A) furniture

B) a cat

C) a signed portrait of Ernest Hemingway

D) all of the above.

Anyone? Or is it just me? Either way, I found one of the following on the side of the road over the weekend. It wasn’t a portrait of Ernest Hemingway. I don’t even like Ernest Hemingway. (Bad English teacher.) No, it was actually this little dresser, cast off just up the road for the garbage collectors. It isn’t solid wood, but can definitely be spray painted for an updated finish that will stick. Worst case scenario involves me Rick hauling it back out to the curb if I decide I don’t want it.

In furniture acquisitions that we actually paid for, we bought this chunky-top dining room table for cheap on Craigslist over the weekend. It extends to 8’ with the addition of leaves. I’m toying with the idea of getting different, chunkier legs and using the base for something else. We’ll see. (I hope nobody reading this despises the word “chunk” in all its various forms, because I just used it a lot. Chunky chunkier chunk. There I go again.)

We also bought this non-chunky buffet. I’m not sure where this is going to live yet, but it was too good a deal to pass up. For now, it’s in our so-far-untouched front hallway.

The seller kindly threw in this seen-better-days chair free with purchase. We didn’t even know it existed until we went to check out the other pieces.

So that’s how we do furniture around here. If you could find anything on the side of the road, what would it be? (Rick would like a baby grand piano, if anyone finds one.) And speaking of husbands, have you trained your husband to look at piles of garbage on the side of the road like I have? ;)

Pssst…in the interest of not bombarding everyone on my friends list with blog updates, I made a blog Facebook page for my personal FB friends who wanted to follow along. If you’d like to follow along that way, too, go here.

His & Hers on Facebook

Quick note: I set up a Facebook page for the blog, mainly for relatives who were asking for an easy way to keep up with it, but if you like the blogs-on-Facebook thing (no pun intended…) and want to join Great-Aunt Bertha, or are just looking for an easy way to keep up, too, then I invite you to follow along as well! There are two easy places to connect; the picture below shows you where:

Or….click here!

Or don’t click anywhere and just look at this pretty picture of my kitten. That’s okay, too.

Awwwwww.

P.S. THANK YOU for your comments about our silly little vlog. We had a lot of fun making it but I was a little nervous about how it would go over. Is that weird? Rick has already agreed to make more, though, so when the mood strikes, you’ll get His & Hers Live: Episode 2. (So fancy of us.) Maybe next time I will acquire fewer cat bites. I’ll be sharing our not-so-mysterious giant needle project sometime next week!

P.P.S. I don’t really have a Great-Aunt Bertha.

Awkward Alert: We made a vlog.

Question: what happens when you are in the middle of a project, your husband makes a string of comments and follows them up by saying “Hey, I sound like a commercial,” and you happen to own a camcorder and have been dying to make a vlog for your blog for, like, the past 5 minutes? The answer is, naturally, you make a vlog that hints evasively and overly dramatically at the project (which warrants neither drama nor secrecy, in reality) while somehow managing to not laugh ridiculously throughout the entire thing, even when your cat bites you. MTV, here we come.

It’s less than a minute long so it won’t cut into your blog surfing, I promise. If it does, you can just yell “VLOGGY VLOG VLOG” at the screen in an irritated tone, as long as nobody is around to wonder why you are doing that. Also, you are welcome to laugh at us. We laughed at us quite a bit as we edited our one minute of wonder.

So: any guesses about this elusive project that we were working on when we were inspired to write a dramatically corny script and record ourselves? Who thinks we could make it on MTV? Who thinks we’d be laughed off MTV? I realize we’d probably have a better shot if we learned to tan frequently and/or get pregnant at the age of 15 and/or infiltrate the home of Lil’ Wayne and then record the video. Maybe next time. This was just Episode 1, after all. ;)

A Victory for Pillow-Loving Wives Everywhere

Rick has this thing about pillows. He thinks we have too many. To me, though, our couch and chairs would be totally boring without them, which is why I’ve made a million of them (like these and this one), and I have no problem flinging them to the side if they are in my way. Rick, however, has continued to lovingly maintain that they are absolutely unnecessary, that they are a nuisance, that they make him get migraines, etc. etc.

UNTIL.

Until an epic turning point the other evening when he glanced at the new-ish chair in our bedroom…

…and uttered the following earth-shattering statement:

“I hate to say this, but that chair looks naked without a pillow.”

Wait. Let me try that again, this time emphasizing the sheer magnitude of his confession:

“I hate to say this, but that chair looks naked without a pillow.”

WIN.

Let’s cover that poor girl up, shall we? Yes, she is a girl. Her name is Eve. (Ha?)

Okay, maybe not like that. Maybe like this, instead:

Where do you stand on the Great Pillow Debate?  Do you love them, or fear death by cushioning? Is there anything in your house that your significant other proclaims to loathe? Spill. :)

(The chair, by the way, is the Ravenna Chair in Atlantic Blue, purchased from World Market after stashing it in my bookmarks like a year ago and waiting for it to go on sale ever since then.)