You know it’s about to go down when my husband looks like this. Mark spends half of our renovation time just looking at the project. (He swears he’s thinking about what he needs to do, but I think most of the time he’s thinking about hot dogs.) We needed to finish replacing our old windows. We bought black windows for the front of the house because they are chic and fabulous. I went out for…

To quote the bad a$$ Lady Gaga…”I’m on the right track baby, I was born this way!” (I’m really talking about my husband) Do you recognize our Marky Mark? That’s 14-year-old Mark in his parents’ Toronto garage helping his dad renovate their house. Check out those safety glasses…such a stud. I guess he was meant to be a DIY home renovator from the start! We found this picture when we were in Toronto this past…

Or it’s what I imagine hosing off a pig would be like. We took our old and dirty work table from the basement… And hauled it out onto our teeny tiny back porch. (I know you’re jealous of our miniature Keystone Light grill) Mark sawed off the legs to make them even. Then we hosed it off. (I know water isn’t the best for wood, but it needed a MAJOR cleaning.) Once we put it…

No more card table chairs, baby, we’ve got ourselves a couch! Woot woot! I don’t think our backsides could take much more sitting on those crappy chairs…we’re not young’uns anymore, ya know?! 🙂 Our couch from West Elm is called the “Peggy” and it’s very mod and retro. (Please ignore the hideous pillows we threw on there…we’re getting new ones.) The couch is a bit larger than a love seat and fits the space perfectly….

Mark and I were in a very cool furniture store looking at a very cool table. Then, we saw the price tag and thought we could totally make that. We knew we had this old wooden work bench in the basement. It was left behind with the house. It took several tries but we finagled it and managed to fit it in the basement door hatch. A couple of Heev-Hos and we got it upstairs….

You know what’s better than renovating and blogging and most things in general? Being an aunt. I’m spending the week at the beach in Stone Harbor with my sister, Kelly, and her baby girl, Lily. [wpvideo Fq2DVB4n] Mama Kelly lets me help with the feedings and I get to play with her and rock her to sleep. Lily is the tiniest little thing and yet she makes the LOUDEST noises…sometimes we’re not sure what end…

Some days, it’s easy to forget how long we’ve had the house and how long we’ve been working on it. It seems like we just snapped our fingers and POOF! all of this happened. Remember when we first bought the place and there were walls everywhere and a staircase right in the middle??? That teeny tiny compartmentalized downstairs now looks like this. Drum roll for the comparison shot… And what about that super weird hallway…

This was Lilypad’s reaction when she saw her first hipster in Lawrenceville. She was not as impressed with our neighborhood or that we keep our bikes in the dining room, but it doesn’t matter because I love her so much and she is so cute! Mama Kelly, aka Supermodel Kelly, brought Lily out for her first girls night. It was the first time we actually had a decent group of people in the house. When…

You know Pittsburghers love a good fireworks show, and we had a small one at our house. 🙂 We ordered a three glass jar chandelier from West Elm, and it arrived in separate pieces so we had to put it together. It’s a very cool and industrial looking light…the three jars hang from mesh cords and you use Edison light bulbs inside. We put the chandelier together pretty quickly. The FUN part came when Mark…

I am not a farmer, but you’d think I’m raising sheep if you came over. Yep, we’ve got a “barn-like” quality to our living room. We ordered a new wool shag rug for our front room because we decided to use the current rug in our dining room. (I say “room” but who are we kidding in a rowhouse…it’s our dining “space.”) The rug has been all wrapped up and sitting in a West Elm…