Treat yo self!

Baby, it's COLD outside! Grab an afghan and warm up.

1. Small granny square afghan

2. Vintage chevron afghan

3. Vintage zigzag afghan

4. Southwestern style afghan

Starting the first floor living room

 We decided it was time to bite the bullet and scrape the painted over wall paper in the living room and start working on the first floor apartment every day, setting small goals for each week. Because our apartment is so small (about 800 sqft), it's not possible for us to clear a room and get it done in one shot. So we made the goal this week of scraping and repainting the wall behind the couch.

 Mike was in charge of the scraping and patching. He did a really great job!

We tried a steamer, but Mike wasn't happy with it, so back to home depot it went!

The basement apartment

 This is the kitchen of our basement apartment. I love the vintage stove, but unfortunately, decades in the basement has rusted it out. What I love even more? The tin ceiling! I would love to recover the tiles from down here and put them in one of the kitchens in the upper apartments.

 This is the bathroom. Look at that tiny sink! And the wall behind the toilet has been ripped down.

 Another view of the bathroom from the kitchen showing the vintage clawfoot tub. We would love to refinish this and bring it upstairs too.

 This is the view from the bathroom, through the missing wall.

 This photo looks from the kitchen forward to the front entry way.

This photo is looking from the front entry way back into the kitchen. The bathroom door is the one all the way on the right.

It looks REALLY rough now, but I can see beyond this to a great little garden level apartment perfect for a grad student. Dream big, right?

Take a look at our scary basement

 This is our basement, guys. Scary, right? Mike decided we needed to add some reinforcement beams, so we decided to take some photos while we were down there.

Through that doorway is a one bedroom apartment that hasn't been lived in or updated in decades. Our ultimate dream is to gut that apartment and build a new one bedroom that we can rent out, but it will be a while until that happens. It's an expensive dream!

Currently

Loving: Pinning home improvement stuff to Pinterest on my iPad. We are obsessed with getting the house into a condition a bit more appealing to renters.

Listening: Lana Del Rey. I'm late on this wagon, I know.

Reading: Blogs and emails. Still not enough free time to get to any real books.

Watching: I've been catching up on Hulu and Netflix: Portlandia, Grey's Anatomy, Gossip Girl, New Girl, Parks & Rec, The Office, Parenthood, Nashville. We still need to catch up with Dexter.

Thinking about: Money. Specifically, how much we will need to spend to fix things around the house.

 Stressing about: Money. See above. Repairing a house is expensive, y'all! Also, the fact that I haven't been making blog posts. It's the middle to end of January guys. I feel so un inspired. 

Looking forward to: I bought tickets for Mike & I to go see Animal Collective in Boston the week after his birthday, so I'm really looking forward to visiting one of my favorite towns again!
Making me happy: Planning for repairs and watching them actually start to be completed. Related: dreaming about the next place. We're hoping to fix up our current place, rent it out, and buy a second rental property. (See also: "Stressing About.")

Instafriday

 This is Bert. He was my cat when I lived in Brooklyn, but has lived with my brother & sister in law for about 7 years now.

 About 4 skeins into my narrow step afghan. Emmett approves.

 Emmett left me a gift.

Dexter is happy to be back in his bowl at work after a two week Christmas break!