A Dog Bed for Honey

Ever since she was a puppy, Honey has loved anything soft.  From the moment we brought her home, if there was any type of pillow or soft blanket around, it was hers to curl up with.   

Honey quickly decided that our pillows were much nicer than her mere blankets.

I think it might have something to do with her mixed heritage - that perhaps her joints aren't all that comfortable at times.  Considering she limped and messed up both her hind legs just running around the back yard when she was 6 months to a year old ... I'm going with that theory.  It gives me an excuse to pamper her with soft things!

For the most part, Honey is fine wandering the house, sleeping on the couch or our bed.  But she's grown into a fairly good-sized dog - 61 lbs when I took her to the vet this summer.  Sometimes we like to sleep at night without her lying on top of us or having to kick her to let us get some blankets (yes, she hogs the blankets).  We also like to sleep through the night, without her waking us up to go outside at 3:30 am.  And sometimes she just misbehaves and needs a time-out.

That's what her bed is for.  She is crate trained - and honestly doesn't mind being in there at all.  The only times she gets upset when I put her in her bed is when she thinks she's missing out on something, or if she's in trouble.  I had made a pillow for her bed a few years ago when I first got my sewing machine.  It was my very first project, and a little bit sad.  It looked fine at first, but then all the stuffing got stomped down and now it's hardly a pillow at all. 

So, I finally worked up the energy to make her another pillow.  (Please be nice - I'm totally self-trained on the sewing machine, and am very slowly learning!)

First off, I found two pieces of fabric in my stash - whenever I go to a craft store I check out their clearance fabric section to see what I can find.  Those two pieces of fabric probably cost me less than $5.  The only problem was that they were both super thin - and that worried me.  I didn't want Honey's nails to ruin the fabric just through normal use!

So, I got out some batting, and sewed a piece of batting to each piece of fabric, creating a quilted design on each side.  The batting became thoroughly attached to the fabric, and made the overall piece much sturdier.  I think the batting was about $10, but I've still got most of the package left.

Side One - with diamonds

Side Two - it's hard to see, but each square is quilted.

After that I sewed the two pieces together, leaving a space for the stuffing to go in.  Having learned from the last pillow that the stuffing will most likely get matted down and flatten the pillow out, I wanted to create a way to re-stuff the pillow at a later time.  Solution:  velcro!

I left a tab on each side of the open seam, and sewed the velcro pieces to the respective fabric pieces.  I then used some iron-on stitches to clean it up a bit.  It looks a bit rough, and I didn't take any pictures of it, but honestly, I was just winging it.  All the messiness is inside the pillow, so as long as it looks good from the outside, that's fine.  Right?

I didn't have any stuffing immediately on hand, but was so excited to have a (nearly) finished project that I called Honey over for a photo shoot!

You want me to do what again?

I'm only here because I love you.  In two seconds, I'm going to go see if there's a squirrel outside.

Rather than pay a bunch of money for bags of stuffing, John and I went to Fred's and bought 4 pillows for $10 and ripped them open.  We then stuffed the pillow (the Velcro works wonderfully) and surprised Honey with it!

She wasn't really interested.

Notice:  the lack of a dog in this picture.

Although, to be fair, we'd left her home alone most of the day, and this was only about 5 minutes after we got home.  She was too excited to see us to sit still for the camera or check out something new.  All she wanted to do was get some love and attention.  And maybe play.  And take a walk.  And cuddle.  All at once.

So, we moved the pillow into her bed - considering my lack of measurements (I just picked two pieces of cloth that were relatively the same size and cut them to match each other), I'm thrilled to say that the pillow fits her bed perfectly!

Perfection!

Once it was in her bed, Honey finally took interest and started checking the pillow out.  She seemed pleased.

Actually, we bribed her by putting a treat in her bed.  She was still too excited to be still.

Since then, I've noticed Honey going "missing" at random times, and found her curled up on her pillow in her bed.  She always gets up quickly when I walk in - so as not to let me think that she likes being in her bed, but over the past 4 days I've walked in on her a good 6-7 times. 

I think she likes it!

We Bought A House - Part Two

AKA - I had a headache when we toured this house and don't remember taking these pictures!


Picking up where we left off ....

John spent the winter months applying and interviewing at graduate schools.  In March, he got accepted, and we decided that we could no longer live in the rental.  As much as we loved it, and as much as we put into it, we couldn't change the neighborhood.  It was getting worse.  The drug dealers moving in two doors down may have had something to do with that.

So, I still did not think that we would be able to buy a house, and started looking at rentals in the area.  John, however, had a different idea.  He said, "Let's just check and make sure that we can't buy a house before we take that idea off the table."  So, we contacted two different banks in the area to see what they could do.

Within a week, we were told we were pre-qualified for a mortgage; a higher mortgage than we had even dreamed of expecting.  Of course, since we weren't expecting anything, that was even easier to get!

After recovering from our astonishment, we contacted a realtor and began looking at houses online.  By now it was the end of March, and we knew that with John starting grad school in August, we wanted to buy a house and be moved in before he started.  The clock was ticking!

I'm still not completely sure about our realtor.  Perhaps she was a really good realtor, but John and I were so on the ball, that we never gave her a chance.  We scoured the internet, and send her the links to the houses we wanted to see.  She would then try to set up times to go see the houses, and we'd go out and see them.

We went with her to look at houses three times, and visited about 20 different houses in the area.  Here were our *must have* criteria:

1. Must be in a nice neighborhood
2. Must be close to the grad school
3. Must be move-in ready (or close to move-in ready)
4. Must have a backyard for Honey
5. Must have at least 2 bathrooms

The last week of April, we went out to look at houses for the third time.  We had about 8 houses to visit that evening, so we were rushing through before we ran out of light.  One of the houses we saw early in the evening had some really bad mold problems, so I developed a rather nasty headache.  We decided right after viewing the next house, we'd stop and get something to drink so I could take some ibuprofen.

We went into that house, and I just blindly took pictures.  It was a good thing, too.  Without those pictures I would never have remembered the house that we were about to buy; my head hurt too badly!

We toured 2-3 more houses that night, and then John and I returned home to our rental, and stayed up far to late that night talking through everything.  We uploaded all the house pictures onto the computer, and used the pictures as a reference for each house as we discussed them.  Between all our house-hunting trips, we ended up having four houses we liked.

Option 1:  Large 2 bedroom, 2 bath in fancy neighborhood.  We loved the layout and location (right across the street from the country club!), and the view from the back looked like it belonged in the mountains.  Downsides?  Just a bit too expensive, no real backyard, and no place for Honey.

Option 2:  Super cute 3 bedroom, 2 bath house.  I adored the layout, it had both stairs and a fireplace, and a very large fenced back yard with a patio and hot tub.  Downsides?  Would need totally new carpeting and paint, and the lack of gutters on the extremely slanted roof  was causing serious problems in the back.

Option 3:  Very well kept-up older 3 bedroom2 bath house.  This was one of the only houses we saw that people were actually currently living in, and it was in perfect shape.  Move in ready - gorgeously large kitchen, and a good-sized fenced back yard.  Downsides?  A bit too far from school and work, and a worrisome neighborhood a block or so away.

Option 4:  The newest house we looked at with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.  Located close to a school, this house had a uniquely open layout, and was the absolute perfect distance from work and school.  It also had the fenced back yard for Honey.  Downsides?  No flooring in the house, appliances from about 30 years ago (even though the house was only 10 years old), and the entire house needed to be painted.

Guess which one we picked?

OPTION #4!!

The main impression we got:  there were no floors throughout the house.  All the carpet had been ripped up, and it was just bare cement.

Looking into the Living Room from the Front Door.

One nice thing:  a gas fireplace.  Not on our Must-Have list, but certainly an unexpected bonus!

Yay for fireplaces that you don't have to buy or chop wood for!

The kitchen was really nasty - I think the fridge was from the 1960s (and looked like it hadn't been cleaned since then, either).  But it was a good layout, and good counterspace.

Not pictured:  Nasty old fridge.

It was a three bedroom, two bath.

Bedroom #2 - no carpet and strangely spaced shelving.

And here's a quick peek into the master bedroom, looking through to the master bath and closet.

Again, no carpet.  But the room was larger than the other two bedrooms combined.

We emailed our realtor that night, and told her we wanted to put an offer on the house.  She was surprised, to say the least.  Although whether that was because of the house we chose, or because or how quickly we came to a decision, I don't know.

She agreed to draw up the paperwork, and the following day we submitted an offer.


Next Up:  The Real Work Begins!

We Bought A House - Part One

AKA - this is the house we left

So, about a year ago, John and I started talking about possibly looking to buy a house.  And by talking, I mean "Wouldn't it be nice if we could buy a house?" said in wistful tones every couple of weeks.  Neither one of us thought we would be even close to being able to actually buy a house.

At the time we were renting a house from John's parents - a very old, small 2 bedroom one bath.  The house was built between 1900-1910, and had not been well cared for before John's parents bought the place.  After they bought it (in 2005) they replaced the flooring, replaced the kitchen, re-plumbed the house, and replaced the roof.  John and I moved in two weeks after we got married in 2008, and while we were there, we replaced the bathroom, painted all the rooms, paved the backyard patio, replaced the kitchen floor, cleaned the fireplace, tore out a retaining wall, and replaced the carpeting.

We put a lot of work and a lot of love into that little house.

Ready for some pictures?

Our little home.  When we moved in, there was a brick retaining wall along the front of the house.  John happily rented a jack-hammer for a day, and tore it out.  Apparently that's where all the roaches were living - he said there were so many of them that it was like being in an Indiana Jones movie.  I wouldn't know.  I refused to go outside and look.

Probably one of the biggest changes we made to the house was painting the kitchen.  Here's why:

BEFORE:

Sorry I don't have a picture of the not in the process of painting everything.  Check out the Coral Orange! 

and ... AFTER!

Rather nice, I think.

Although the green curtains (not pictured) and green tablecloth on the other side really tie it all together.  And yes, that is bags of dog food on the kitchen chairs.  Why do you ask?

One of the bedrooms had some water damage on the ceiling from before the roof was replaced.  No one really wanted to deal with it (did I mention this house had 10 foot ceilings?), so I found an alternative to completely replacing the ceiling.  

John and I spent a day putting that ceiling up.  Despite not having any square corners on the room and uneven surfaces, this project was surprisingly easy.  The tile designs go with the age of the house, and the high ceilings hide any imperfections of our install.  Win!

Next up ... the bathroom.  I can't find any before pictures of it ... but let's just say it was fairly grim.  Due to some water leakage, we had to tear the room up down to the dirt underneath the house and re-build it.  Here is the finished product - all clean and ready to start moving our stuff back into it!

When John and his dad were installing the linoleum, John did the classic "I didn't realize there was glue there" and got stuck in the glue on the floor.  Those were old shoes anyway.

And here's the Dining Room.  This was actually the first room that we "renovated" when we moved in.  

I loved this room.  It felt homey and comfortable and classic.  I especially like the molding across the top of the room, and the fact that you couldn't really tell that the walls weren't white until you saw the molding, which was.

That's about it for our first house.  I can't seem to find any of the other pictures that are any good (and I know I took some). 

Next up:  Part Two ... looking at houses!