Story time.  (Interspersed with the latest photos of our house.)

Back when the Hubs and I met, we lived 750 miles apart in two different states.  9 years and 48 weeks ago, we got married and lived in a third state.

Just 4 months after getting married, he was offered a job that seemed to good to be true, 950 miles away in another direction.  He was to start in 3 weeks.

So in 3 weeks, we packed up everything we owned and moved into a hotel in a place we had never even visited before.  It was awesome.  We found the cutest little duplex to rent in the quietest little town in a state that we still adore.  Even though we moved away from that state over 8 years ago, it still feels like home to us.

We loved the adventure of packing up and moving, and we did it three more times, to two more states.  Then when the Hubs’ job looked like it was going to be long-term, we decided to buy a house.  We really wanted something we could totally make over and make our own.

We fell in love with our little Victorian and even though we didn’t think it would need much making-over, we promptly began remodeling the whole thing.

We never thought it would be our forever home, and frankly, we never wanted it to be.  Nothing against the house, we just weren’t ready for our adventures to end.  A couple years ago, we started getting restless again and wanted to try a new state, make more new friends, see more new places, but the right opportunity never came up.

Until now.

The Hubs was offered a new job last week.  It is 850 miles away, back in the state he is from, and very close to where we got married.  And he’s starting in 3 weeks.  Our realtor said we should be prepared for it to take quite a while for our little home to sell since it’s a very unique house.  It isn’t even officially on the market yet, but we just had our first showing a few hours ago, and it’s actually looking quite promising.  They seemed to love the house just like we do.  We’ll see in the coming days!

Either way, on the day after our 10th anniversary, 4 weeks from now, we will be moving into our new house.  Yes, we already have the new one picked out, and we’re working out the details.  It’s not little, and it’s not a Victorian, but the blog will remain, and we’ll soon be sharing an all new makeover with you.

It will be hard, and I will cry, but we can’t wait for the next adventure.  Thank you for being here with us and our Little Victorian, hope you’ll be coming along with us to the big craftsman as well!

The post DIY Victorian Renovation appeared first on Little Victorian.

We are still alive.  I’ll update you with what’s going on here and intersperse it with some updated photos of our bedroom.

The Hubs does have a job again.  It’s local, but it’s a temporary one, and that’s fine with us.  We are still expecting to put the house up for sale when he finds a new job.  (Thank you all for your thoughts and nice notes!)

We’ve been working on lots of things.  From big things like replacing parts of the roof, to little things like caulking baseboards, and patching and repainting walls.  We’re currently working on replacing the kitchen and mud room flooring, but that’s taking a while because we have to stop and fix a partially rotten sub-floor.  None of it has been pretty enough to share, nor would it be particularly helpful information for you.

We’ve also been traveling and taking breaks for fun things lately too.

The major motivation for renovating the house for the last (nearly) 5 years was that afterwards, we would have a house we loved living in.  So staying motivated to get the work done is much harder now, knowing we won’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  And frankly, not even knowing if the next owners will.  They may walk in like we did and make a list of all the things they’d like to change and promptly undo all of our work.

We’re getting things done though…slowly but surely.  I’ll be back later in the week with more projects!

The post We’re alive! And a bedroom update. appeared first on Little Victorian.

Looong absence, huh?  I’ve been working on a few small projects, but we’ve just had a really, really busy summer.

I finally finished patching and re-painting the bathroom ceiling.  For a couple years, it looked like this:

Shameful.

But you know, you get used to things like holes in the ceiling pretty quickly and just forget they’re there.  The hole was there because we had to fix some electrical work.  Then for a few months, it looked like this:

And in the mean time, I got SO tired of patching drywall.  That has been one of my least favorite parts of fixing this house up.  I was also testing colors on the wall there.  The darker color is what we ended up using on the ceiling (it’s the same as the powder room) and we painted the walls our favorite white.  Now it looks like this:

It feels good to have it finished! (If you missed it, see the practically free and dramatic vanity makeover here.)

We also hung the mirror back up vertically after I painted.  It’s a long story that I’ll tell you in the next chapter when we actually get this room done.

Here’s a reminder of the before, just because it’s so different:

Also, something big happened this week too: the Hubs’ company downsized and he lost his job.  The chances of finding new work in this area are pretty slim.  Which means, our work on the house might turn from fun things into finishing projects to getting it ready to sell.  Either way, it might continue to be quiet around here until we get settled again.

Unfortunately, this also means I will not be able to host the Undersized Urbanite contest this year.  The time and resources just aren’t there.  I’m really bummed about it, but it’s just not possible.

I’ll be back as soon as we have either news or another finished project!

Click here to see the whole house tour

The post A small bathroom update appeared first on Little Victorian.

Following a series of unfortunate events, most of my week has been spent in the kitchen instead of the bedroom.

The fun started when the dishwasher stopped cleaning the dishes.  They wouldn’t just come out still dirty, they actually had more gunk on them than they did when they went in.  So it was being used as a very big drying rack after hand-washing.

Then the fun continued when I found the raw chicken I had on the top shelf of the fridge was leaking…all over the rest of our food.  So most of our food had to be thrown out, and not only did I have a lot more dishes to wash, I had to wash the fridge components as well.

But that wasn’t all.  Before I began to wash the dishes that were taking up the whole counter, I turned the garbage disposal on.  At which point, the pipes under the sink broke apart.  It sounded like a waterfall.  And the cabinet, rug and my legs were covered in dirty, broccoli-filled water.  It took 3 days to get the kitchen back to looking clean again.

But, it did lead to me finishing a small project that had been sitting there for 6 months waiting to be done.  After the Hubs fixed the pipes, of course.

The sink cabinet wasn’t lined with anything, it was just a piece of plywood with no veneer covering.

After I scrubbed it clean, and let it dry, I put down peel-and-stick vinyl floor tiles (similar here).

They are easy to cut with an X-acto blade.  And they only cost $1.20 a piece, so it was less than $8 for a prettier and way easier to clean cabinet floor.

Just start with one corner and stick it down (I started with the front, so that in case I didn’t cut a perfectly straight line, it would be in the back and not noticeable). Then line the next pieces up to the first one. Once you hit the back of the cabinet, you *might* need to trim some off. Just flip the tile over, and mark on the paper backing where to cut.

Make your cut with an X-acto blade or an utility blade (this is my favorite) and then pop it in place. (Affiliate links)

Peel-and-stick tiles are so easy.

And now the cupboard is much easier to keep clean!

The Hubs had the brilliant idea to just take the fridge parts outside and use the hose on them (which actually led to a burst hose in the basement–but he got that fixed too).  And I finally got the dishwasher fixed yesterday.  Everything is clean and sparkly…for now.

The plan for this afternoon is to get back to work on the bedroom.

The post My rotten day at least led to a finished project appeared first on Little Victorian.

We had an absolutely wonderful trip over our anniversary, thank you all for your nice comments and congratulations!

We were planning on getting back to work on the house on Sunday, but I came home from our vacation with a sprained ankle and a bad cough and cold.  So not much has been accomplished here lately.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and re-injured my foot.  Guys, the holding still is driving me crazy.  I’m getting so restless.  I was trying to sit and catch up on an online class, but because of the cold, I can’t concentrate.  So I kept standing up to work on the dollhouse, which of course, only worked for about 5 minutes before the foot started hurting again.

I hate not blogging, especially when I said I was going to.  So, I was going to share one of the projects that I’ve finished, but haven’t blogged about yet, but my pictures are terrible.  Just can’t win this week! 

These are all photos from our trip.  Obviously, we didn’t travel from Mexico to China to Paris, we were at Disney World.  It’s so much fun there.  And there are miniatures everywhere!

So many more miniatures than I got photos of.  Did you know Walt Disney had a miniatures hobby?

As soon as my foot heals up, I’ll be back to my own dollhouse, which I had made some good progress on before we left.  Please understand if posts here are sparse in the mean time!

The post I’m alive! But not exactly well… appeared first on Little Victorian.

Lately, many more projects are being started around here than are being finished.  It’s always something…  And it certainly does not have anything to do with me being overly ambitions.  Pfff.

A few things that are undone around the house?

And that’s just the bathroom.  The bathroom is currently a mess because the shelf we’re now using as a media center was holding all of our toiletries and towels.  Now the floor is holding them all.  I need to fix that this week.  But first, I need to paint the walls, install new baseboard and trim, then cut, stain and install the new wall shelves.

Oh, and finish patching, priming and painting the ceiling too.

On another note, in light of a few things I’ve learned about taking better pictures, the photos on our house tour page are making me twitch a little.  So I have a goal of taking all new photographs of the house and updating that page by the end of February.  See?  I’m not overly ambitions at all.

The post Undone appeared first on Little Victorian.

It’s the first day of spring!  I can never decide which is my favorite season; I get equally excited over the beginning of each of them.  (And I’m sure I tell you that at the beginning of each season too.)
In looking forward to this spring, however, I’ve had more of a focus than ever on simplifying.

So much so that two of the most used words in this house over the last couple months may have been “simplify” and “purge” (just ask The Hubs…poor Hubs).  Now, we always liked to think that we kept things pretty simple and uncluttered around here.  But I’m starting to see otherwise lately.

This is the stuff we gathered up to get rid of in just one week.  And it’s just the beginning.  We already have almost that much being stored for the church yard sale, and I’m hoping to add at least this much over again.

It’s funny how de-cluttering the house makes you see how cluttered other areas of your life can be.  Obviously, our minds also get easily cluttered, but why?  Have you ever thought about de-cluttering your digital life?  Your social life?  Your calendar?

If you’re interested, these articles are a good place to start: 12 Ways to Unclutter Your Life and 52 reasons to simplify.

And then you should really check out these blogs: Becoming Minimalist & Small Notebook.  If you’re anything like me, after 5 minutes of reading, you’ll want to run away from the computer and get rid of as much as you can.

So the theme of spring 2013 in our house is Simplify.  And my hope is to be sharing a few DIY projects this season that will help you to do the same, if you are so inclined.

The post Spring simplifying appeared first on Little Victorian.

Just a tip. 

Even if it’s made of beautiful Italian glass like, say, this one:

And even if they have always wanted one.  We klutz’ never grow out of our klutziness, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves and others that we do.  Just don’t buy them one, because they will most likely end up with a problem like this:

That is the wonderful desk that I stole from The Hubs. 

I decided to stop being stingy with the ink for my beautiful pen and use it in my planner this morning.  Then I spilled it.  And spilled it again as I was frantically trying to clean up the mess (with toilet paper, because it was the closest thing I could grab).

Thankfully, the desk top can be flipped over.  But the other side already had a few dings and stains.  Certainly nothing like this, though. 

After more scrubbing, and magic eraser-ing, it looks like this:

And yes, this is the first The Hubs hearing about it.  Love you, honey!!  Thanks for taking the black desk so I could have the white one!

I’m just going to leave that pen in the pencil holder for looks and stick to ball-points, or better yet, pencils.  I’m out of ink anyway. 

Anyone have any magical tricks to get spilled ink off of laminate IKEA furniture?

The post Never buy a klutz a fountain pen appeared first on Little Victorian.

So we took a couple days off this week. 

It’s hard to believe.  Thinking back about how the blog was a year ago, well, it’s nice to see that I’ve learned some things.  I see so much more clearly now how much I don’t know, about writing, blogging, web design (I mean seriously—how long is it going to take me to figure out why the “Pages” bullet points in my sidebar aren’t pink like the “Topics” ones below them?!), and so many other things. 

There is one big lesson I learned this anniversary week.  Whenever you read about improving your blog, one of the biggest commands is “Consistency!”  It makes sense.  I enjoy looking forward to all those faithful people who post on their blogs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:00 am.  It really is a good thing, and I admire them.  But for the last year, I’ve been trying to force myself to do that and then feeling guilty when I don’t, which is most of the time.  So that has led to many uninspired posts.  Which is the opposite of what I want for and from the blog.  So, this coming year, I will try to be consistent, but I won’t try too hard.  (If you are one that likes to read at the same time, my email subscribers get them delivered between 7 and 9 am—you can sign up here.)

Many of you probably know I was finally moved to start the blog I had been wanting because of last years dollhouse challenge.  I had been reading Little Green Notebook daily for over a year.  I knew nothing about subscribing or readers or anything, I just bookmarked Jenny’s page and clicked on it every morning while I had my coffee.  I always learned so much from Jenny’s posts and she made blogging look easy.  I wanted to start one.  I did projects constantly and we were updating our house, so there would be projects for a long time to come, right?  Well, I thought I did projects constantly, until I started the blog.  Then I quickly realized Jenny has made a full time job of doing projects and teaching about design. 

But I have really loved having the blog for the last year.  I love the blogging friends I’ve made.  I love the challenges and learning that comes with it.  I love that it keeps me motivated to work on this house of ours (usually).  And I love being able to share what I’m learning with all of you. 
Here is a link back to my first post.  Can you believe the all those tiny, unedited pictures and the mad use of flash?  Oye. 

In a belated celebration of the one year anniversary (partly), I have a announcement coming next week.  Wednesday, to be exact.  And the real reason we took a few days off…well this puppy that’s in the works is taking a lot of preparation.  So stay tuned.  It’s kind of big for me. 

Thanks to all of you readers who help make this so much fun.  I am really looking forward to another year with you!

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