real life is not hgtv

Recently I've been watching a lot of HGTV. My mom is an interior designer and she's always telling me about shows I should watch so I finally gave in.

The other reason I'm watching HGTV? The thought that it would give me some solace as the basement remodel stretches into its sixth month.

Yes. Six months. For a basement.

Part of it is that our house is old and all of the electrical and the plumbing needed to be replaced. Then there was a sewer issue. And a dryer vent issue. And another plumbing issue. And some financial stuff issues.

HGTV doesn't show these issues. In a half hour a room is transformed -- in an hour, a whole house. Little snippets. And I get why they don't show the discussions about where we should budget and the minatue of a sewer line replacement -- it's no fun to watch. Before and afters with light-hearted banter, now that's fun.

Yes, the obvious: real life is not HGTV. But now into month six, I realize that while yes -- it would be nice to have our space done -- some things just aren't instant, and that's just part of the richness of life. We just see small moments of life on TV, or even social media, but the back story is always more complicated... like a 6-month-plus renovation.

But I will have to say, we did some major work on our basement this weekend and even moved some furniture in. The 6 months will be capping soon.

a toilet in my yard (basement remodeling update)

When the husband and I bought our little house in Seattle, one of the thing we were excited about was the small, unfinished basement.

Someday, we told ourselves, we would turn into something great.

That someday has come. We've owned our home for four years and we've tackled many of the other projects it needed (painting, landscaping, among other things.) This winter we had a series of unfortunate events that led us to decide that the plumbing really needed some attention. (The plumbing and electrical in the house had never been updated.) While we were in the midst of updating the plumbing, we decided to tackle the electrical too; the walls are ripped up, might as well do it all! So now we're on a full adventure to finishing our basement.

The full adventure has meant some unforeseen costs (hello sewer line broken in three places) and some major disruption (oh hey, toilet in the backyard) but we're finally at the point where I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. After buying insulation and ducting, the husband and I are going to actually get to pick out fun stuff-- like paint colors and flooring and lighting.

the basement before. so scary.

some framing in!

we're roughing it ;)

 sheetrock getting put up!

I have a few ideas of what I want our basement to look like. I need to get the buy-in from the husband about some things (he has very strong opinions about rugs), but otherwise I'm thinking slate blue with white and grays and some rustic touches.

1. I love the mix of blue and white cabinets. We're not springing for marble countertops though...

2. I love this rug from West Elm. (Husband, what do you think?)

3. Pendant night from Ikea

4. Inspiration from A Beautiful Mess for creating a beautiful laundry room

5. I want to do some sort of paneled wall, like is shown here.

you can see more of my ideas on my Zillow Digs board.

xo, erika

gallery wall

One thing I've been wanting to do for a long time is make a gallery wall around my TV. I never loved how our TV just sat, the focus point in our living room, so I thought that by surrounding it with art would help it blend in.

There isn't a right way or wrong way to make a gallery wall-- I've always been told to collect the things you love. If you love them all, there will likely be a connection with them-- whether it's color or style.

I like what I've so far-- but like the rest of my house -- I feel like it will never be done -- it will always need further tweaking.

Last note -- yes, the empty frame. My husband picked up on this right away and told me I was super hip for doing this. I didn't want to tell him that the "empty frame" isn't a new idea -- in fact, it might not even be "cool" anymore.

Art:

1) to do justly, love mercy & walk humbly print (one of my favorite verses) -- french press mornings

2) I painted this. (a cocktail + a little bit of inhibition = not bad abstract art!)

3) vintage find

4) isn't life lovely? print from cute new printable shop End Quote Studio -- check it out!

5) adorable little creature illustrations from IKEA. (They're $3 for a set of 5!)

also -- curtain panels are also IKEA, flowers are from The Felt Flower Shop and the blanket & the chair are thrift store finds.

life lessons from a toilet

I know. I just used the word toilet in the headline of a post.

I've mentioned before that I struggle sometimes with our little house.

We were very very blessed to buy it when we did because homes in Seattle are (too) expensive and they're getting even more so.

And because it's an expensive city, you don't get a lot of house for what you pay and the house you usually has some issues.

Issues like teeny-tiny bathrooms with toilets that do weird things.

Of course when you own your home, you get to make the fixes to the toilets that do weird things. 

So the husband and I got to play plumber. Neither of us have ever done major plumbing-- although the husband did take apart all the pipes in our basement last spring-- but no toilet plumbing to speak of. Yet the toilet desperately needed to be fixed.

The husband banged around on it, adjusted the flapper thing, googled some information (thank God for the internet in times like this) and behold, declared it fixed.

We flushed it seven or eight times, and it was fixed. But I didn't think it was fixed enough.

Was I being difficult? Perhaps. But I didn't trust the toilet. We'd been down this path before and I knew that it was tricking me into thinking that it was going to work but in a month it would be back to its old tricks.

I told the husband that we needed to fix it, fix it. We needed to replace that thing in the toilet-- the flush valve. He said that it was fine, it worked and he had never replaced a flush valve. (well neither had I.)

However, I told him that we needed to try it. Then I watched a ton of toilet plumbing videos on YouTube and told him we were going to replace it.

It wouldn't be honest if I said it was easy-- it was a bit frustrating and due to the size of our bathroom, the husband could barely find room to fit both himself and a wrench beside the toilet. But we fixed it.

After dancing up and down in the pocket-sized bathroom and flushing the toilet a million times in celebration (look! it works!) I was struck by something profound.

Sometimes things seem alright the way they are-- like the toilet-- it seems like it works. Maybe you've made a little fix, you've tried a little something new, but I believe that we were not called to just make these halfway attempts in our lives. We are called to replace big things in our lives, to step out and try big things if we want real, lasting results. We are called to replace the flush valve, not just tinker with the flapper and call it a day.

Just some things I've been thinking about.

Now, excuse me, I'm about to go wonder at the flush of my toilet again.

Do you ever learn life lessons in weird places? 

xo, erika

p.s. recapping the month or sharing goals or the next? join beth & for the list link-up. It will be on the blog tomorrow and you can grab a button from my sidebar.