Gutters with Updates

Well shoot.  Has it been almost a month already since the last blog post?  We promise we are dedicated to our readers.  Believe us!  Life happens, we tell ya.

Just wanted to send you a couple of updates on our house, and life I suppose.

Last weekend Shane went to a movie with our bud, Thomas.  Thomas is a pretty handy-dandy lad, and in returning from the movie he offered his services in putting up our GUTTERS.  Wha?!  I'll let that excitement sink in... still sinking?  Yeah, us too!  At 24 we could have cared less about gutters... wisin' up.

We only put gutters on the back of our house.  The front is much too tall for the Whiting household, but we think we will try to bribe Thomas with some great gift options. The back itself cost us around $150.00.  We still have yet to create the down spout, so another $50.00 easy.  We aren't complaining of the cost as our new deck will thank us.  Actually, the cost is peanuts compared to if we hired a company to do it for us.  We like peanuts.

Because we are pretty new at this gutter thing, we opted for white vinyl.  The thought of not having to glue/fill anything sounded pretty glamorous.  BUT if you want to do it the right way, stick with aluminum.  It was a learning opportunity.  Chances are we are putting aluminum on the front.  No one will know the difference, well, except all of you who are reading this.  Shhh.

Rustoleum Restore 4X Deck Cover

Just another manic Monday... aw we ah... I wish it were Sunday, no, Saturday.  I will go with Saturday on this one.  Did you have an action packed weekend?  Or was it filled with relaxation?  We managed to do a little bit of both.  After all, the second season of Orange is the New Black was just released on Netflix.  Say what?!  Such an awesome show.  I am really appreciating how they are touching on the inmates stories a bit more then they did on the first season.  I never thought I would say this, but I am feeling kinda bad for that psycho, Tiffany... and Queen Vee?  She scares me...

In between the hour long episodes, we got some things crossed off our ever growing shit list.  It was a unanimous decision to get gutters on our house... I know, we are those people who don't have gutters.  We have some more price checking to do, but figured out that our back gutters won't cost us more than $200.00 Benjamins.  More to come on that.

In the meantime, we started picking away at our deck... literally.  We have actually had to pick away the wood that has somehow managed to grow over the screws on our deck.  About 1 out of every 5 screws are stripped.  It has been a NIGHTMARE.  The goal was to get at least one deck board up.  We did two.  50% more than our original goal!  Sa-weet!  There is always a silver-lining.  After flipping the two boards we noticed they were green treated.  After a good power wash, the wood was practically new again.

We went to check out deck stain at Home Depot.  We currently have this pretty awful red stain that looks more like a muddy red paint--

Bleh.  We are fans of the "wet wood" look, and were searching for a stain that made our deck resemble just that.  In our search we came across this Rustoleum product- Restore.  Apparently, the goal in mind with this product is to give your deck the look and feel of composite decking.  There are three types of products; Restore 10X, Restore 4X, and Restore Stain.  

Bright Lights Part Deuce

So, I am feeling kind of bad about the last bright light post.  I gave up people!  You should only blog when you feel like really getting into it. If not, you will end up like me giving maybe 60%... maybe.  Sawwy.

But it's coo.  I drank some coffee.  Watch out for the explosion of excitement coming your way.

I love lamp.

I seriously do.  I can't won't tell you how much time I have spent searching specialty shops, department stores, antique emporiums, and Pinterest for unique lamps, floor lamps in particular.

Welcome to my vault:



So. Cool.  I think lamps have been an unfrequented form of art... I am very excited to see that this is no longer the case.  Lamps are no longer being treated as an accessory, but more of a main focal point.

Insert wanting to create a sculpture piece for my art exhibit.  It was kind of a fluke that I fell into this idea.  One day I just started drawing houses.  Once I filled my page, I still wanted to make more.  After a bit I ended up with three fairly good sized Bristol papers filled with ladders, rows of homes, castles, and broken down buildings.  I really wanted to figure out a way to display this without taking away the fact that it was a mobius image.

A Long Time Coming

So Jenna can't take all the credit for the work on the blog to date (j/k), I'm adding a post about one of my DIY projects I recently completed.  My writing won't be nearly as good as Jenna's, but more to the point and factual. :)  The title of the post I used, "A Long Time Coming" is applicable because it's taken me so long to write one blog post on "our" blog and this is something I've wanted for my car since I got it.

My project I'm going to post about is a recent product we came across while one of our frequent trips to the home improvement store.  We were picking up a few items at Home Depot for the various projects we currently have ongoing at our house right now.  We were in the paint section and we walked by a display for a new product by Rustoleum called Flexidip.  The first thing that caught my eye was the picture of the wheel on the front of the can.  I picked up a can and started reading the description on what the product was.  It basically is a plastic like coating in the form a spray paint.  They say that this is a temporary paint product that you can spray like spray paint, then after a few months you can peel it off like a sheet of plastic wrap.  I was intrigued by the idea and the fact that this could be temporary so that if it didn't turn out or I got sick of it, I could remove it.

The colors available at the store were black, red, and white.  The finish is more of a mat finish which is the current trend now in automotive customization.  My car is factory Subaru San Remo Red and I have always wanted to get white wheels for it but didn't want to drop around $2k for new wheels and tires.  This seemed like it'd be worth a shot for little commitment in both money and look of the car.  I still wasn't sold so I wanted to do some online research before I committed to the $30 or so and the time it'd take to do it.  We left the store with the items we originally intended to buy and went back home.  

Once we got home I was able to watch a few youtube videos of the product and found similar products already out on the market.  There were some forum discussions about a similar product that has been on the market for longer with good reviews.  They also mentioned that this Rustoleum product would be very similar.  I decided to take the plunge and give it a shot so I went back to the store to pick up a few cans of white Flexidip.  I bought 5 cans for about $6 per can.  The product website estimates about 1 can per wheel so I got 5 to be sure I had enough.

Prior view of stock wheels

Supplies - 

Flexidip Paint

Painters Tape

Index Cards

Plastic bags

Tire Shine