Little piece of Asheville

Completely independent of each other, both my husband and I ended up loving the woods, hills and mountains. That being said, I do have to give him credit for introducing me to mountain biking which became an activity we both really enjoy and eventually led us to consider Asheville for our wedding (because of the epic mountain biking and beer possibilities...I'm not sure who I can blame for my beer enthusiasm). 

Thus we began visiting Asheville to plan the wedding. Slowly but surely we became completely enamored with the city, the mountains, the streams, the air, the food and the beer. After we got married, the trips didn't stop. We'd return every other month or so, stay for a couple days and miss the mountains when we left. This continued for about a year and a half until we got the harebrained idea to buy a house there. This idea inevitably made our trip frequency increase as we were looking for a house. I didn't complain too loudly. It took us nearly a year to finally find a winning house...well...I should say it took us nearly a year to finally find a winning house that we could get a contract on! We had a few failed attempts. 

Enter Wyatt Street - It was in shambles. It was nothing more than a rental for the last 5 years or so and none of the renters took care of it (or cleaned apparently). But we (mostly Steven) saw potential. After closing on it at the beginning of the month (it was actually way more complicated than that but I won't bore you...much) we, with the help of 4 friends, put in 5 long-long days of hard labor to fix her. The house is completely transformed. 

Before (these are from our realtor, she took these before the tenants had completely moved out). 

The yard was even worse by the time we closed 2 weeks later. 

The tenants smoked and were filthy...this rug was completely trashed.  

Custom rug discoloration.

Somehow this room smelled the worst.  

Nothing like a yellow-beige-brown room to welcome you in the morning.  

Nice idea, poor execution.  

I don't know how they bathed in this room. So dirty...

In the middle of us fixing it up:

 Carpet was ripped out first thing. The house already smelled better afterwards. 

 This room got a very good coat of Kilz Original primer on the walls and ceiling. 

 The problem with working on a house is stuff gets thrown everywhere. The table became a "catch all".

 Who knows why but the renters loved dark colors on the wall. While I don't hate this color, it made the room feel so small. 

 So much paint. Paint on paint on paint. 

 They removed the doors for the showers but left the tracks...Jeremy is removing the mounting tape in this picture. Also, this bathroom is no longer purple. 

Bye-bye built in shelving unit. Hello large room (and awesome blue paint).  

Our Realtor, Karen Vickers showed up just at the right time. We'd all been painting Kilz Original primer for the last few hours and we were all pretty loopy from the fumes. This was a much needed break.  

The dogs needed a break too. They were bored.  

And probably a little high too.  

Autumn was hittin the bottle hard. 

Speckled with Kilz. This is what happens when you paint ceilings will Kilz Original...it sprays everywhere and gets you covered (side note: in my high state I found it hilarious that the shortest person, me, was painting the ceiling while the tallest person, Nate, was painting walls). The fun part about Kilz Original is it's oil based...so it's not water soluble so you can't clean yourself of with water.  

So the only way to get Kilz off you (other than time and patience) is mineral spirits.  

I don't suggest this.  

This was probably a bad idea.  

But hey, it was getting it off.  

Good husband cleaning Kilz off my face.  

Jeremy and Nate did a great job laying the new floor in the living room and part of the master bedroom (everywhere there was a rug). 

This Sunday, we finished Wyatt's transformation. Well, mostly. We have plans to upgrade even more but all in due time. 

After:

 We had a yard guy come out and tackle the 3 foot tall grass. That was a sight. He must be the most stubborn man alive because he was at it for 5 hours! And still had a smile. We have him coming back every two weeks now. 

Master bedroom after. The floors and the walls make a huge difference. 

 

We cleaned every inch of this house. 

This was the room with the built in desk. It turns out they painted the trim and doors a beige color. We discovered this by getting sloppy with the primer on the walls and ceiling and hitting the crown molding. So now I'll be repainting the trim on our next trip. I at least got the door frames and the window repainted before running out of time. 

  

This was the bedroom that smelled the worst. Now there no trace of smoke smell at all. Kilz Original kicks some booty. 

 Dirty living room turned comfortable gathering room. 

 This room has the same pale green that the living room has. It's such a calming color. 

 Catch all table turned cute little Bistro. 

  

 Steven repaired all the steps in the front and braced the stairs with 4x4's at the base. 

 There's wild blackberries all over the property! 

You have no idea how happy that makes me. 

Now that it's mowed, the back yard is a great place to play fetch with the dogs. 

The "upper" yard has a secluded feel to it. Plus it gets the shade from all the tall trees around it. We'll be putting a firepit up here in a few months. 

There you have it. There's our little piece of Asheville. It's less than a mile from the French Broad Brewery and the Biltmore. It's between 3 and 4 miles from downtown (depending on which part you go to). It sits on over a half an acre. It's quaint, it's comfortable, it's ours and it's available for vacation rentals! http://www.vrbo.com/481411 - 3br 2ba pet friendly!

Hopefully our bank account can stop hemorrhaging money now. 

Liz DiNatale

Rhea the little bear

I've mentioned my dogs on here before and how Rhea was an adorable pile of fur when she was a puppy. That adorable pile of fur grew up to be a bigger, also adorable, pile of fur! The poor girl gets so hot so easily. I swear she spends the whole summer panting. It doesn't help that we live in North Carolina and the humidity reaches 110% on occasions. 

For several years we refused to trim Rhea's hair. She's just so friggin cute with her long fluffy locks. But finally, last year, we caved and I buzzed her...and I butchered it. Oh lord it was terrible. It's not all my fault, I swear. The shears I used were cheap and wouldn't cut! Luckily, her hair grew quickly and evened out. This year, I knew better and I bought some higher dollar shears and wow what a difference. Instead of taking me 6 total hours to trim her it took  me about 2. I used these Wahl Clippers, totally worth it. 

That's all well and good but the real reason I'm writing this post is to show you the hilarious photos of Rhea. 

Rhea pre-buzz

Do you think she knew what was about to happen to her? Look at that gorgeous fluffiness. 

Mid buzz:

 Yep she ate her breakfast while I buzzed her butt. 

Should have left her with her chest poof then she would have looked like a tricolored lion!

And finally, after:

Yes I left her glorious tail for now at least. Steven wants me to trim it a bit so it's not quite so...hilarious. I'm resisting but eventually he'll find the buzzers and do it himself. We think she looks like a little bear. It's friggin adorable. 

I do miss her awesomely fluffiness, but she's much more comfortable now. 

-Liz

Pauly the swan is a dick

Two weekends ago on Sunday it was a gorgeous day that warranted a longer than  usual walk. We strolled from our house for about three hours wandering through greenways, checking out swans and eventually visiting Zack and Chrissy. I took this as an opportunity to take the dog's yearly photo and it's a good thing I did because if I hadn't had my camera with me, I would have missed Pauly...the pissed off swan. 

But that's getting ahead of myself. First and foremost, the pups in all their splendor at age 7:

 With Masi turning 7 on Feb. 14th, the pups are all the same age again. Everyone is fit and happy and mostly healthy. Hopefully this next year brings fewer seizures and hopefully no emergency vet trips. 

After getting provisions at Trader Joe's, we cut through the parking lot to a greenway around an itty bitty lake that is guarded by Pauly, the swan.

At first I was take aback, I'd never seen a swan in person and by God they're huge! There were Canadian Geese around him that he dwarfed. 

   

Eventually we moved on from the staring contest to continue on our long walk. Little did we know, we had perturbed Pauly enough to "chase" us. It was pretty hilarious. 

Here he is trying to look aggressive. Mind you, we have three dogs with us that would have loved a swan snack. 

"I am not beautiful, I am fierce! Fear me! Rawr...I mean...QUACK!..or is it squawk..."

He eventually stopped chasing us - until our return trip - at which point he resumed his "aggressive floating". 

For being so big and majestic, swans sure are dicks. 

Liz 

Divide and Conquer

The Hubs and I have this method of attacking chores and to-do lists...we call it Divide and Conquer. When you've got a big ass house to clean or maintain and not a lot of time to do it, it works wonders. Typically it's house chores but more often than not, it's projects too. This time, we had two appliances to install and not a lot of time to do it.

It all started, as things with us often do, with a trip to Lowes. We wanted a new range hood as ours had broken about a year ago, it was finally time. There's not a ton of choices for range hoods anymore since over the range microwaves have taken their place in many homes but we were able to find a good deal on this guy. 

I went ahead and gave this obstacle to Steven. 

We were lucky enough to finally find a deal on a dishwasher. We were even luckier that it's a Samsung model and therefore matches our range! This may seem silly but for some even sillier reason, when you sell a house, it makes a difference to people if your appliance brands match...silly people. 

I may have been delusional but I thought the dishwasher was a task made for me. So I took this one. 

The kitchen started off clean. Here's Steven removing the old busted range hood.

And here's our old dishwasher before it came out of the cabinets. Why did we feel the need to replace it since it was technically working? Well, every time you opened the door, it'd try to fall out of the hole and we'd get at least 2 glasses per wash that had food grime on them. Yum. It was time for it to go. Unfortunately  it was full of dishes so this is when the kitchen became a war zone. Shit everywhere. 

Upon removing the old range hood Steven discovered the previous owners left us a bit of the past on the walls. We were nice enough to leave it there for the next owners as well. 

Wiggling this thing out of the cabinet was a study in patience. 

I'd get it a little farther only to see  that it was ripping the linoleum. So I'd have to push it back in and try again. Again and again. 

Finally it gave to. At which point I discovered old mouse crap and a huge hole that finally explains random slug sightings. I did my best to patch things up with duct tape. 

Lots of cursing and struggling ensued. The new range hood landed on Steven's head a couples times and I got bloody knuckles from the pipes under the sink. But eventually, both new appliances were in their places. 

It's pretty sweet to have a light above the range again. Not to mention a venting hood that actually works. 

And now our entire kitchen is stainless steel. WOO! On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most difficult, I'd say replacing these two appliances is about a 5. I only give it that high of a difficulty rating because you have to deal with the wiring. Regardless I'm adding this to my list of things I'll never pay someone to do for me. 

High-five to the Awesomely Domesticated Team!

Liz 

P.S. You know you're domesticated when new appliances get you excited. 

Even the fur-kids get a cake!

Yes, that's right, I celebrate my pup's birthdays every bit that I celebrate my friends and family. Minus the candles only, because...well...fur and fire don't mix well. 

A few days ago, on January 21st, my sweet, crazy, seizure-prone, perfect, Border Collies turned 7. 7! I remember the day we bought them so well. Oh, you want to hear the story? Don't mind if I do...

My then boyfriend and I had only been dating for a few months when we went to check out an add I'd seen in the News and Observer for a couple tricolor border collies. This pup was for Steven because I always wanted a mastiff: big, dumb, lovable, huggable. However, Steven wanted a trail dog like our friend's dog, Bodhi (also a border collie). We drove all the way to Hillsborough from Raleigh to the Greene farm. The house was a typical farm house, quaint. We got out of the truck and was immediately welcomed by the owner, Mrs. Greene. She let loose her pups, a female tri color rough coated border collie that was super, super sweet, a HUGE male black and white smooth coated dog who was also super, super sweet. We learned that the sire is used for herding their goats and the dam mostly stays in the house as a pet. They were both so well behaved. And then came the puppies. Gunnar went immediately to Steven and Rhea came right over to me. And then it happened...I picked her up and she just laid her head on my arm. That was it, game over, she won my heart immediately. 

Gunnar:

 Rhea:

Look at that face. I mean...look at that face! How can you not love every ounce of fuzz on her head. We negotiated a price for the last two, trying to get a deal. Since I hadn't planned on bringing a dog home that day, I called my roommate and left her a message hoping to god she wouldn't mind. With two adorable crazy puppies climbing all over the cab, we drove directly to PetSmart to buy all the supplies. 

Then a few days ago, they turned 7. 

I couldn't make them just any birthday cake of course. So they got a meat cake! It's essentially meat loaf cupcakes made with oatmeal and carrots. Recipe.

They were mesmerized. I don't think they realized yet that the awesome smelling thing baking in the kitchen had actually been for them. 

(Side note: it's not Masi's birthday yet but how could I deprive her of birthday cake?!)

I didn't get any pictures of then eating it but I can tell you that they were devoured with glee. I've never seen Gunnar so happy after a treat. However for some reason as soon as I grabbed the camera he got all pouty so his birthday photo isn't the best. 

Never the less... Happy 7th Birthday Rhea and Gunnar!! Here's to many more years. 

Border Collies are not for everyone. But they're sure as hell for me. 

Liz