Baby Got 'Black'!

We have a new piece of furniture to reveal to you all that we have become quite attached to. Do you remember the corner hutch find off of Craigslist awhile back? Well, after a night with a roller and a small can of black paint we now are the proud owners of a brand new hutch! Or at least we think it looks the part.

We removed all the outdated, wooden knobs as well as all the hinges off the doors and the inset window panes to paint everything from top to bottom.

How many cabinets can one paint, honestly!

But just like the end result of our newly painted kitchen cabinets, we have a newly painted corner hutch to love just as much! (Oops! Looks like you're getting a sneak peak of what I like to call our "Robin's Egg Blue" paint choice for our dining room to the right of it.

And after a number of treks to multiple hardware stores to find the correct hinge in a brushed nickel, we came to the conclusion that the hinges were too old to find replacements (and the brass wasn't doing it for us). So our solution: use the very same paint we bought for the hutch on the hardware itself. We like to think it now draws less attention to the hard-to-find (and replace) hinges and showcase the beautiful new door knobs.

The true showcase of this piece I think, is the stylish new coat of black, satin paint and it's brand new bling, er, brushed nickle knobs that I fell in love with at Home Depot coming in at a whopping $2.95 each! Somebody, Ring. That. Bell!

And for the moment you've been waiting for (I'm sure) ...

 

So starting with a $90 dollar steal off Craigslist, a night in with a roller and an inexpensive quart size can of paint with new hardware, it came out looking like a million bucks!

Bug OFF!

Last Friday The Blooming House area was hit with quite a storm, but fortunately Tommy and I had been trigger happy in Target registering for our wedding in-the-making. No, the post title does not have anything to do with our 'thrilling experience', as Tommy would put it, of "Oooo, do you like this serving platter?" And "Oh, we could totally use this fill in the blank!"

We entered Target before the storm hit, we heard the sirens during, but continued to point and scan and exited Target with not a drop of rain and of course a shiny new 'Club Wed' registry. It was a successful evening, right?

Wrong.

Well sorta, until we woke up the next morning to find the neighbors literally playing on 25-ish percent of our large tree out front.... but here's the kicker- we found it placed in our next door neighbor's yard.

So let me backup. When we drove home from Target that night we drove up the alley in the back which saved us from viewing our tree chunk flat lining our neighbor's light post and causing a large gaping hole from impact in the front of their house. "Saved us" as in saved us about a few hours before reality struck us, again.

Since this of course wasn't on our list of homeowner's experience, we did what we know best. Call homeowners that have it checked off. Tommy's casual phone conversation with his Dad went a little something like this:

T: Hey Dad, we had a tree branch come down last night from the storm, so could you swing over and bring the chainsaw with you?
(pause)
T: No, I think it should take like 30 minutes?

30 minutes later and after a few of the neighborhood's children jumping off the playground of a tree, Tommy's parents show up. The following reply went a little something like this:

M: Thomas, you said 30 minutes! This will take at least 4 hours!?!?!

We didn't have 4 hours to take a whack at it that day. But it did end up taking us two days to cut it down into reasonable size pieces and more importantly to get it out of our neighbor's yard  (out of the street too) and onto our sidewalk to avoid any grass killing.

 "30 minutes", ladies n' gentlemen...

She was a mighty big one and we're lucky no one or no car was hurt, but now our concern is the unbalance-ness of branch distribution. We're worried it may cause our bedroom to become a tree house some day, plus the tree has becoming quite the woodpecker hotel up there so we think it's life is coming to a halt limb by limb. But the boys uncovered a new threat...

Carpenter Ants...and their really gross, slimy young.

While Tommy and I have been busy making us a home inside, so have they, outside. As the men cut through the logs the ants kept spilling out... I'll spare you the photo shots of it. And just typing about it makes me cringe. 

Those guys weren't messing around and from the looks of the damage they have made while visiting The Blooming House front yard tree we'll be fixin' to take down this gorgeous, huge, very old and very shady tree sometime soon.

In the meantime, we have finally bagged up our last bushel of tree remnants this weekend and hoping bone fire builders will continue to stop by for free wood that's parked on our front sidewalk. Seriously, if you know The Blooming House, come and get it!

So there you have it. 

Storm tree removal experience -  (check!)

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Oh and P.S. --

I wanted to share what I like to call the 'Fruits of Our Labor"...

Some have asked us after our big reveal on our new sod installation if we had planted some new trees back there, but it truly was us just pulling down so much overgrowth in the yard to unveil two very nice fruit trees: one cherry and one plum. The cherry tree has fruited (I can't even begin to think how else I could word this and this shows how totally inexperienced I am with growing food in the backyard) quite nicely and has passed its harvesting time. The plum tree however has some time still since all the fruit is very small and green. But before the cherries dropped off for the season, I wanted to share how beautiful they were!

Even if we do lose the tree up front, I suppose you can say we gained two trees in the back since the new sod has given us a chance to enjoy them now.

Hi Ho Cherry-O!