In The Name of Sitting!

If you've been to our house I'm sure you've noticed our lack of comfortable/available chairs. Don't worry, no need to hide it. We've only bought maybe three pieces of furniture since we've been married and chairs were not one of them. So we have a few dilapitated wooden chairs, a couple of metal frame/torn vinyl seated chairs, a drum stool and a swivel office chair.
So we've been on the hunt. Kept our eyes open. And only last saturday did we finally see a set of four that were retro enough to match out red and white formica table. But we saw them! They were $75 for the set which felt steep, but we hadn't found anything else.
Our car was full of people so we said we'd come back. They were only open Thursday-Saturday and it was Saturday afternoon. We weren't worried about them being snagged.
So i went back today. A music producer from Boston had come up yesterday with a U-Haul and cleaned them out! Chairs, gone! My shoulders sagged. The owner offered to let me take a look in "The Back Room". Un-priced, dinged up, not re-painted yet Back Room. It was great. And I found the above four chairs. They're so comfortable! And sturdy, and interesting! They were $10 each! They just need to painted some really cool and bold color. ANY IDEAS?
The other chair had been spotted over a month ago at a thrift store but had a sold sign on it. It was marked $45, and then it was still there last week without the sign. I popped in today and it was still there! I offered her $35 and she said "I can do $33.75." The entire store was 25% off today.
It was my day for chairs I guess.
so the next time you come over I will offer you a chair. A good one.

The Swing Home

So as some of you know we've been trying to decide on a housing situation since I got pregnant. We have an open finished attic that we've shared with London, Spencer is sleeping in the office, the office is in the dining room and our table is between the kitchen and the living room.

It's a squeeze, and we're very ready for a bedroom that doesn't involve sneeking over the sqeaky floors past the crib every night.

Becuase of the height of the ceiling and some things involving brick, it's kind of complicated to add on upstairs, but we've had a plan that would enable three bedrooms to fit. We'd talked to three contractors and they were either too expencive, were too scared of the city by laws, or just didn't get back to us.

Then, a couple weeks ago, we talked to a local guy that has been working in Keene for years, he had some good ideas, and said he'd run a quote.

We were getting really nervous. It sounds like the job is going to be more complicated than we thought. It's probably going to be too much. Are we sure we want to spend that much and still live on a busy road? So we looked at a couple houses in the area, but none of the yards were as nice as ours.

We decided to be really specific. We said prayers asking that it be really clear whether it would be best to stay here or move on somewhere. We said a particular price ceiling and said "This much or more and it's not worth it."

We've always talked about moving someday since we moved. Maybe getting a place that's new for both of us, no history, clean slate. So we haven't really spent a lot of time making this house feel like home.

Then yesterday we got the email and the quote was $3,000 less than our cap, and we could do the demo ourselves (meaning Tyson could) which would bring it down almost another $3,000.

So it's settled. We're home.

First thing Ty did was make a swing for the kid's.