there are people sleeping upstairs

When our tiny tribe first took a tour of our soon-to-be home/project one year ago, this is how our future master bedroom appeared. Everything but the carpet, ceiling accoutrements, and window panes were painted pea puke green. The ceiling was paved with tiles glued to lath. In the center of the ceiling was an unattractive, improperly installed ceiling fan. I'll spare the description of the non-functioning secondary furnace in the closet. Suffice it to say it no longer resides at this address and has most likely been torn limb from limb to create robots that will one day become sentient and return to our finally renovated home to exact their revenge. But i digress. Let me walk you briefly through the year-long process of transforming the affectionately named "green room" into a place that we can finally designate "mommy & daddy's room".

The first thing we had to do in this future sanctuary was to remove those unfortunate tiles. This proved a rather easy task as they were barely hanging on for dear life as it was. Eventually, we also got around to knocking down that ceiling fan that was merely bolted to a ceiling joist. I don't know if i've mentioned it before, but let me just get this out of the way now before we proceed any further: our home is FULL of things that were done less than properly. Ceiling fan installation should really be the least of our concerns. Remember that furnace in the bedroom closet that i mentioned earlier? Yeah, i know! Carbon monoxide, right? Oh well.

Once the ceiling was stripped to the bones, we were ready to learn how to hang drywall. Fortunately, we had a lift supplied by brother ben and the able hands of ben himself, brother jeremy, mister mike, and the affable ryan helvie (pictured above heavily critiquing our craftsmanship while MJ wonders to herself why i'm just turding around with my camera instead of making myself useful. jk, y'all). By the by, have i mentioned how incredible and generous our friends and family are? That's right; i just did.

Just look at that drywall glisten. Once we muddled our way through this room, we only got better at hanging that stuff throughout the remainder of the house. While the "green room" was the first room in which we hung drywall, it was the second that we finished with mud, tape and sandpaper. MJ and i discovered that we might just have a real knack for finishing drywall. Here's a shot of the finished ceiling, paint and all, with a new fan. We customized a discounted hunter fan by giving a paint job to the blades and fitting the lights with frosted white globes.

Also notice that the pea puke green is slowly dissolving beneath layers of paint primer. I believe the carpet has been ripped up and tossed out the windows by this point as well. Something is definitely taking shape. I haven't even mentioned all of backstage work. There are hours and hours of electric rewiring, insulation removal, and ductwork installation behind those walls and ceiling. 

Finally, we sanded down those floors to the grain. We stained them with minwax espresso and coated them with four rounds of polyurethane. The walls got a touch of grey as a final treatment and all of the trim painted white as snow.

Now, for the moment you've been holding your breath for...

Go ahead, breathe...

It's just one room in a whole house that needs a whole lot of love...

However, it is a HUGE victory for us...

So here it is...

TA-EFFING-DA!

If one looks rather closely, one will notice that the window sashes alone retain the pea puke green. We've been saving those for our final decision about keeping or replacing all of the original windows throughout the house. Also, the undepicted doors are presently being stripped and sanded to be refinished similar to the floors. However, i think you get the idea.

Here's a shot of the window across from our bed where our old library desk now has a functional place of residence in our home. The poor thing has been relegated to a closet for far too long. It's time for her to shine like the shiny diamond she was always meant to be.

Here we are.

One year later. 

We're finally upstairs.

It feels pretty great.

illustrations for life

 Our efforts in restoring our home continue to excite us and frustrate us simultaneously. I've been hoping to post some before/afters of the upstairs when we've reached the point of finally being able to use it as living space. It's definitely getting there, but difficulties with giant floor-sanding machines have left us in a holding pattern once more.

Drawing inspiration from newspapers continues to push me to seek the weird among the bizarre. No doubt, one day we will all find a home.

pet sounds

Tis the season for applying bunny ears to your canine pals. 

Enjoy this magic moment.

groove crews

We at the rockey home are just coming down from our weeklong recuperation from our weeklong vacation from working on ye olde homestead. It's been difficult to get back into the groove, but if we're going to prove our love we're going to have to get up on our feet and step to the beat. Boy, that's what it will be. 

In other news, the sun is shining and the mammoth icicles hanging from our home are melting and falling and making terrifying yet glorious noises. They fall with an unsuspecting rhythm that would make lovers of street dancing hoodlums. It feels enough like spring that miranda is cleaning house whilst i draw and scan images for a secret forthcoming collaboration. The introspective couple that you see illustrated here have nothing to do with any of that. Dig it, you wild and free bohemians.

timeline fotos

the purple room

We started setting goals for completing the bedrooms upstairs. They may have been a bit difficult to meet on time, but they've kept us hammering away. We started with the purple room. The drywall went up on the ceiling like hot-buttered soul which led us to believe that finishing it would be easy breezy one two threezy. I will mos def declare that after layers of patient mudding and hours of sanding, the ceiling looks spectacular. Miranda definitely took the award for most valuable player on this one. 

After the ceiling was primed and painted, we made some repairs on some cracks and bulges in the original plaster walls. We hung a customized hunter fan. We ripped up the purple carpet to expose the hardwood floors. We primed and painted the walls. The room isn't one hundred percent complete yet, but it's getting remarkably close. The transformation has inspired us greatly. Voila!

We've already started moving on to work on the green room which should look something like this in a couple more weeks. Hopefully before spring we'll be actually using the upstairs for living space.

Slowly, our broken house is becoming a home.

i am bleeding, hear me rawr

Collaboration is the name of the game. For thirteen years now, i've given home-recorded and assembled gifts to family and friends during the holiday season. Some of these collections of song were assembled over a period of time. Some were written and recorded within the two months leading up to christmas eve. Some have been collaborations with family and friends. One particular project was a collaboration with my four-year-old daughter. This year, i asked the people of the internets to flood my inbox with song requests. I then asked folks to vote on the songs that they would most like for me to record. 

After the voting ended, my wife and kids and i migrated north to settle into a century-old house in need of a whole lot of love. Eventually, the list of songs elected by the people of the internets began reminding me of the project that i'd promised to deliver. Late nights and early mornings became prime time for recording these modern day standards until lo and behold i gave birth to a short stack of compact discs. I'm thankful for all those who took the time to participate in this project. It was challenging, inspiring, and a whole lot of fun to make after spending so much time hammering away at this old house. Enjoy this aural monstrosity RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

Welcome to the new year, beautiful broken people!