Old Town Home

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Posted by Wendy

Comments 12

In my ongoing mission to organize my life and effectively utilize every spare square inch of storage space in our home, I'm always on the lookout for a nook or cranny that can be transformed from space-user to space-saver without sacrificing the aesthetic. At first this task was an easy one, as very little efficient storage existed in our home, but as we've slowly overhauled each room of the house, we're beginning to reach a place where a little more storage, especially for clothing or accessories, is a bit harder to come by.

Most notably, our efforts to add a wall to wall closet on a previously unused and empty wall in our bedroom doubled or tripled the amount of storage we had for our clothes. I now have space for long hanging, short hanging, off season tubs in the storage above, and fully adjustable shelves for my shoes, t-shirts, and purses.

While this closet space is a dream come true in our bedroom, the space it starting to feel a bit pinched, even after I purge items for donations with the changing seasons. You see, I have an admission, I've become addicted to purses! For some women it's shoes or jewelry, but for me, I don't know what it is or how it happened, but over the last few years I somehow developed an affinity for bags. I've always liked handbags in some capacity, but never allowed myself to purchase them. I think it started when I found a few good deals at Marshall's or TJ Maxx. Those first fateful purchases broke the seal and allowed the true me to emerge. Now I can't seem to help myself, when I find a good closeout deal and can work up a decent justification for why I need a green faux ostrich purse...I can't help but snap it up!

This moderate addiction (I guess we'll call it that) brings me to my next problem. I don't have anywhere to adequately store the purses I own. I need access to these guys on any given day depending on my outfit, and I want them to be in a place where I'm able to easily see what I have. Therefore crammed into the top of my adjustable shelves just isn't a practical location.

Rather than solider on and deal with my growing collection frustration, I decided to do something about it. I picked up a few hooks!

Yep, hooks. Several packs of brushed silver single hooks from Target. These also happen to be the same hooks we used for our basement stairwell turned coat closet project last year, and have found they're an attractive yet affordable option.

I determined that the best way for me to store my purses in an easily accessible location without sacrificing any usable closet space was to affix them to the back of my main closet door. That would allow me to see the purses without needing to take up shelf space from my shoe and folded storage area.

With my mind made up, I had my most difficult aspect of this project ahead of me -- convincing Alex. I had to somehow help him understand that drilling holes and screwing several hooks to the back of the antique and salvaged doors we'd searched for over five long years and Alex spent upwards of 20 hours stripping, squaring, and hanging in their custom openings in front of our custom closets absolutely *needed* to have these hooks attached to them. This was my strategy:

It wasn't easy, but what can I say, I'm a good negotiator. After much discussion and a remaining resistance on his behalf, I may have stood in our bedroom revving the drill, making noise that sounded like I had started the project sans measuring. Alex may or may not have flown down the hallway to see what damage I was causing, and then at this point, may or may not have agreed to allow the project to move forward unimpeded. Let's let him pretend he had a choice.

I got to work, with my darling husband's assistance, with the intention of knocking this little space saving task out of the way in just a few minutes. This way it could be a quick and easy way to feel like I accomplished something that improved our storage situation.

The first step was to measure each purse to determine the rough height we'd need for each, which turned out to be approximately 14"-16".

Lulu was skeptical of my measurement results.

After figuring out what I'd need for each purse, I measured the back of my right closet door to determine where each hook should be located. I figured I'd start the first hook about 2" down from the top of the door, and then each successive hook would be located about an additional 14" down the door.

After I had a rough idea of the space needed for each purse, I marked a few upper spots on the door and made my trusty sidekick hold up some purses to make sure everything looked the way I wanted it to look.

Happy with the arrangement, I broke open my packs of Target hooks and began marking their final hole locations on the center line of the door.

With the holes marked, I drilled pilot holes in each location...

...and then secured the hooks to the door.

I hung up a purse or two on the hook to test the placement, and also closed the door at this point in order to triple check that the bags wouldn't interfere with their ability to close.

Once all of the hooks were in place, I proudly hung my array of colorful purses on the back of the door where I can easily peruse them each morning and grab the one that works best for my outfit.

How simple is this project? What's better, if my addiction to purse purchasing continues I have a whole other door where I can attach a few hooks. Perfect!

Not only did I put this new storage solution into place, but I spent a few hours cleaning out my closets. I packed away my winter items, and swapped them with the off season clothes I store in plastic tubs above my closet. I also carefully went through old purses and wallets, and found a few gems in the process. Hmm, I guess this level of organization was overdue.

All in all, I made room for storing my larger handbags, freed up additional space in my shoe closet, and put together three large bags to donate to people who need these items more than I do.

I'm thrilled with how the closets turned out. With just a few hours of effort and less than $20 for the new hooks, I have an organized, clean, and functional space.

Do you have any little nooks or cubbies around your house that have allowed you to maximize your storage? Any creative solutions I can use to squeeze just a little more out of my space? Any other spring cleaning tips or tricks? I'd love to hear what you've got.

Categories

Projects

Cleaning Organizing

Comments 12

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

A Look Back at Our Favorite Posts - Part 1

Posted by Alex

Comments 5

Last week we celebrated our official two year anniversary of blogging. Boy, how the time flies! We commemorated the day with a post outlining a few blogging tips that we've picked up over the past 24 months. Tip number ten on our list of blogging do's and don'ts was a basic concept that many bloggers don't consider when they get to a point where they have a significant number of posts. Put simply, not everyone has read every single blog post you've ever written.

Given that we've picked up a few new periodic and daily readers in the past year that I'm confident haven't gone back through each and every post we've ever written, we feel like it might be fun to compile a few of our favorite and most popular posts from the last two years. Hopefully this collection will give you a glimpse at some of the things you may have missed since you started reading. Extra credit to everyone that looks through our list and think to themselves, "I remember when they wrote about that. Next!"

Renovation

Old Town Home wouldn't be the blog that it is without all of the projects that take up our lives. Whether we're doing the work ourselves, or getting a little help from some friends (or even pros), the projects, time, and effort we put into our home is our pride and joy. The following blog posts are our most popular and/or our personal favorites, and we hope you enjoy them too.

Projects

While you may not be able to say that all renovations are projects, not all projects are renovations. Over the years we've had a handful of smaller standalone projects that were fun to undertake, and whose results we're thrilled with. These smaller items can usually be knocked out in a few days with minimal effort.

Travel

When we're not working on the house, we'd really like to be out galavanting around the world on various explorations of lands near and far. It goes without saying, the world is a big place, and there sure is a lot to see and do. We're trying to do our best to see more than less, and we've really enjoyed sharing those adventures with you. It's our hope that sharing our experiences will help you to be inspired to go somewhere you've never been, or can help bring back some memories of places that you've previously enjoyed.

Events

We love a good event! Honestly, anything that's a departure from our normal day-to-day routine or gives us an excuse to celebrate makes us giddy with excitement. Whether we're talking about local parades, home tours, or attending something outside of the friendly confines of Old Town, Alexandria, a little fun via celebration sure is an enjoyable endeavor.

We realized this post was getting incredibly long, therefore we decided to split it into two parts. Stay tuned later this week for the second half, which will cover such topics as renovation fighting, recipes, and a few other odd ball posts thrown in.

Are there any posts on the list that took you by surprise? Any favorites in the bunch, or projects or topics you think we left off the list? We'd love to hear what you enjoy reading about, whether it be a new project idea, topics you can relate to, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

Continue Reading Full Post

Categories

Anniversaries

Comments 5

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Toolbox Tuesday: The Right Masonry Tools for the Repointing Job

Posted by Alex

Comments 0

Recently I wrote several posts detailing the process we've taken to repoint a portion of our 19th century masonry. From proper mortar selection to the whole learning process associated with making good looking mortar joints, it was a laborious task with a bit of a learning curve, but one made possible by ensuring I had the right tools for the job.

The point of this project was two fold. Primarily, I wanted to make sure the joints on this interior chimney section were in good shape before we cover them permanently, since we plan to eventually upgrade the fireplace it supports to make it functional. Secondarily, I wanted to take an opportunity to learn the skills I'd need for repointing, so I'd be able to put them to use when we perform the same process while exposing the brick in our guest bedroom.

After our last post on this subject, detailing the bulk of the work as well as my much awaited success, I had finished up repointing with the first bag of mortar. It was looking good from a technique and finished result standpoint, but the color was too gray, and wasn't a match to our original mortar. Since this will ultimately be behind a wall it caused me no concern, but I wanted to figure out the right color to use when we expose and repoint the brick in the guest bedroom (sometime in the 2020-2045 year range given our tortoise-paced whole house renovation).

I ordered a final bag of mortar in DeGruchy's "100" style and it turned out to be a nearly perfect match! After a few more hours working on the chimney, the repointing was complete and really looked great. Here's a comparison in the color from the first bag to the second bag.

As I said earlier, this finished result with clean joints was only made possible after I had picked up the right tools for the job. When I started the process I had most, but not all of the tools I needed, and the "finished" joints were far from how I wanted them to look.

Using just the masonry jointer I was left with these sloppy and unprofessional joints. I ended up leaving these in place, since they'll do the job, but I knew I'd be unhappy with that look in my future repointing projects. Rather than just plowing ahead and doing the whole chimney in this manner, I opted to order a few tools that would help me with creating better looking masonry joints. These critically important tools are known as "tuck pointing trowels," and they drastically improved my repointing ability almost immediately.

Where most trowels bring wide blade metal tools to mind, tuck pointing trowels are a significantly different animal. They consist of a handle and very narrow metal "blade" of varying width. These widths serve to work the mortar into the masonry joints and pack it in rather smoothly.

For our purposes I checked the width of a sampling of mortar joints by using the tape measure. I noticed that most joints were no smaller than about 1/4", and most were no larger than about 5/8". Given these measurements, I decided we'd need at least two of these tuck pointing trowels. I ordered one 1/4" trowel, and one 1/2" trowel. These two sizes would allow me to work most efficiently over the whole chimney, choosing the trowel I'd need at any given time based on the width of the mortar joints.

Given the use of a tuck pointing trowel, clean mortar joints, pre-moistening the wall with water spray, and a whole lot of patience...

We ended up with an absolutely great looking chimney that is ready to serve our house for another 100 or more years.

As I said, this result wouldn't have been possible without using the right tools, and I'm very happy I decided to wait for the arrival of the tuck pointing trowel prior to moving forward with the project. Now I feel like I'm completely ready and capable to move forward with the any repointing and repair project I need to take on...not just those that will be concealed behind walls.

Have you ever repointed anything in your home? Did you have a similar experience with the tuck pointing trowels allowing you to improve the results of your project tremendously? I can't wait to share future repointing projects with my newly honed skills in the craft.

Did you enjoy reading this post? Want to learn more about our first-hand experiences with other tools, devices or items used throughout our renovation? If so, check out our complete list of product reviews in our Toolbox Tuesday section.

Note: We weren't compensated for this review. We simply want to share good products when we see them, and hope that learning from our mistakes can help save you time, money and frustration.

Categories

Projects

Essential Tools

Comments 0

Monday, April 29, 2013

Open Housing: A Turn of the 19th Century Lee Street Charmer

Posted by Alex

Comments 8

Over the winter we tend to go through a bit of withdrawal when it comes to our Open Housing addiction. During the colder months the market tends to soften some and far fewer homes show up on the weekly open house listings. However, when spring arrives, so too do the homes for sale in Old Town.

As has been the annual pattern, while the weather has warmed and cherry blossoms are blooming, the housing market in Old Town has really started popping again, and a few gems have been showing up on the list in recent weeks.

We recently toured a great house that Wendy and I have walked past time and again, but have never seen inside. Today, we're excited to share it with you, and of course play the "would you trade?" game.

Located along Lee Street just a few blocks from the Potomac River, this adorable wood frame clapboard sided house was built at the turn of the 18th to 19th century.

From the exterior this home is somewhat unassuming. I think it's because the paint color on the flat (and largely original) siding blends with the shutters, but when we stop to look at the home and imagine a few paint changes, we imagine how this very historic home could take on a whole new life with our chosen color palette.

When you enter this three bedroom, two and a half bath and roughly 1,750 square foot home, you are welcomed by a very nice hallway with the home's original newel post and stairs.

This home was built as a simple home, probably for a sailor or captain who worked on the Potomac, so the newel post is simple and understated, not nearly the type of newel post that would have ended up in the home had it been built 50 years later.

The wide hall also shows off beautiful oak flooring that, though not original to the house, still retains a good amount of character. The hall also offers a great view towards the back of the house.

The front living room of the home just to the left of the stairway is a simple, well designed room room with a modest mantel and understated moldings. I believe the mantle of the fireplace is original, and multiple builtins on either side of the chimney add a fair amount of storage to the room.

There also several windows around the room that allow plenty of the light and surely provide a nice cross breeze during the spring.

The layout of this home is actually very typical of an early 19th century home consisting of an entry hall and stairs, front living room, and a second room with a fireplace toward the back. The current owners are using this back room as a dining room, which is very common in these layouts.

The dining room leads to an addition, likely added in several phases over the years, which houses the newly remodeled kitchen...

...and cozy family room.

The kitchen has a layout conducive to entertaining. Given the age of the home, the kitchen leans a bit to the modern side of the design spectrum, and the swirled and colorful granite counters showcase a very uncommon choice we've not seen elsewhere in Old Town.

The small family room with fireplace leads to a beautiful back patio area. I can easily envision many nights spent relaxing with a glad of wine and small fire.

The second floor has the turn in the landing at the top of the stairs that I absolutely love in homes of this age, and the front bedroom is a very nice size and has a fireplace much like the front room on the first floor.

The room also has a small bathroom just off the room that is situated behind the window above the front door. It's by no means a large bath, but makes good use of the space.

One of the things I love about this front bedroom is the view of the street. This home is in one of the most picturesque and historic blocks of Old Town and looks out on some of our favorite homes in town.

The homes across the street range from mid to late 18th century, all the way to late 19th century Victorians. This is easily one of the best features of this home.

Towards the back of the second floor, the uncharacteristically long hallway provides evidence that the rear rooms were added over time. In person, you can see roughly where each addition starts and stops based on the undulations in the hallway floor and baseboards.

Off of the hallway sits the bright and cozy second bedroom...

...as well as a recently renovated and nicely appointed bathroom.

There's also a third bedroom at the rear of the home, currently configured as a charming children's bedroom.

Though the house does have a partial basement with room for storage, it would make a tight workshop area, and it probably isn't really feasible to finish the space without significant work due to the low ceilings, mechanicals, and various obstructions.

There is one hidden space near the front of the basement that had both Wendy and me saying "Ooh, ooh, ooh, look!" A much needed wine cellar.

Overall, this home is an excellent example of an 1800's house that has been nicely maintained and updated. Though some of the changes are not period accurate, most are well done and make for a very comfortable home. And we'd be leaving out a significant detail if we didn't mention the true allure of this home -- the fact it's located in prime Lee Street Halloween celebrating area. Living on Lee Street during Halloween is a true dream of Wendy's, that's for sure.

And now for our game...

Would You Trade?

Alex: This is really hard, but I'm going to go with "Yes." The home is the absolute ideal age of a home I really want to live in, and while the home is "done," there is still a lot of room for projects to bring the home in line with our personal taste and style. I would love to spend time to bring the home into much more of a period appropriate style in the way of moldings, hardware, and fixtures. However, the back yard is smaller than ours, and there's no parking, both negatives in my "will you trade?" book. The other issue is the lack of a good basement work area, perhaps we'd need to dig it down a few feet so I could work somewhat comfortably. So if you're selling this house and you'd like to trade for our house, give us a call and we'll see what we can work out.

Wendy: This is a tough call for me too, and I'm totally on the fence. I absolutely love our street and our neighbors, but as Alex pointed out, this home is located in a more desirable location, especially come Halloween. I think the home has great curb appeal, a charming outdoor space, and I love the openness between the kitchen and family rooms. I also love that there are three true bedrooms (unlike our two bedrooms and an office configurations), and the fact that this home has a first floor powder room is a true plus. I'd also be remiss of course if I didn't mention the Christmas staircase.

The biggest drawback for me is the home's lack of parking, and due to the age of the home, the ceilings are much lower than those in our home. The master bathroom is also roughly 1/3 the size ours will be when complete. I'm waffling here, but after careful consideration and a couple nights to sleep on it, yes, I think I would trade.

If you'd like to see additional details, they are available on the home's official listing page.

Interested in reading about other interesting homes for sale? Want to offer your take on "would you trade"? Check out the Open Housing section of Old Town Home.

Photo Credits: McEnearney Associates Inc., Realtors and listing agent, Carol Cleary, where MRIS is noted in watermark.

Categories

Open Housing

Comments 8

Thursday, April 25, 2013

10 Blogging Tips for Our 2nd Blogiversary

Posted by Alex

Comments 23

Wow! Can you believe it? Two years! Yes, that's right, this week marks our two year anniversary of when we started Old Town Home. To be quite honest, it's a little bit shocking that it's gone by so quickly. I still remember the night Wendy and I were sitting out in our backyard and getting our first blog post live, nervous with anticipation for the millions of people that would surely descend upon our site the moment our blog post was officially online. I'm a little foggy on the details, but I think something like that happened...I think.

When we decided to start our blog back in 2011, we weren't really sure what to expect. We knew we had some decent projects we could cover, as well as a few tips and how tos we could share, but we didn't have much of a grasp on what blogging entailed beyond writing our first few posts. We didn't exactly realize the time commitment each post would require, how it would impact our home project schedule, or the work required outside of just writing blog posts. To put it mildly, the last two years of consistent blogging have been quite the learning and growing experience, and now we know just how difficult -- but also fulfilling -- the realm of blogging can be.

You may have heard us say this before, but when we decide to do something, we decide to go all out. It seems we don't have a half speed setting, or a way to moderate the effort we put into our projects, as is evident from many of our home endeavors. When it came to our blog, we approached it in very much the same manner. I mean, just look at our kitchen project as an example; a budget rug and a quick coat of paint somehow turned into new counters, appliances, and decor for two rooms of our house!

From day one Wendy and I committed ourselves to daily blog posts, Monday through Friday, no matter if we were slammed at work, on vacation, or in a project slump of sorts. Some weeks it has been easier to write posts because our projects or real life allowed or inspired them, sometimes it has been harder to come up with something interesting and worthwhile (though we hope we did), but through our first several hundred posts spanning two years, we learned quite a bit about our own blog authoring process and what we hope has made Old Town Home a worthwhile and enjoyable read, whether we're talking about a specific project, and event in Old Town, or some randomness that surrounds our DIY lives.

From the last two years of blogging (and 585 individual blog posts, including today's), there are a handful of very critical yet simple things we've learned along the way that work well for us and have enriched our overall experience and enjoyment of blogging. And while we don't want to be a blog that spends a lot of time talking about blogging, our entire blogging experience has been a bit of a DIY adventure of its own, so we feel like sharing a few of our blogging tips and tricks is appropriate for our official two year blogiversary (I hate that word, by the way). For the bloggers or aspiring bloggers out there, we hope you'll find the information useful. And for the non blog authors who are reading, we hope it gives you a little insight into our creative process that helps us to formulate the items we post each day.

1. Keep your fingernails trimmed and clean.

As DIYers we work a lot with our hands. This includes everything from working on the house to whipping up a quick recipe, and we take a lot of photos of the processes. The plethora of photos that include our hands holding molding, tools, placing photos, mixing ingredients, or just about any other up close shot tends to include...you guessed it...our fingernails.

There's nothing worse than un-trimmed nails with house dirt under them to distract from the beauty of a nicely executed DIY project. I think I realized this aspect of blogging very early on when I was taking a photo that included my hand, which had a big black speck under my nail. I thought to myself, "UGH, I'm a monster, nobody will want to read blog posts from dirtyfingernails.com. I must resolve this and never make this mistake again." I hope our blog posts have been better due to my nail bed hygiene. For your benefit I will keep my nails trimmed, cuticles pushed back, and perhaps I should start getting manis just to be sure I don't leave you feeling disgusted.

2. A good blogging process is an evolution, not a set recipe.

In recent weeks we've been able to dial back our overkill on the blog a little bit, and that comes as our personal lessons around creating blogs posts has really started to evolve. Initially we were under the self imposed impression we needed to "post every day, no matter what." Lately we've been able to establish a slightly more moderate approach of "post when we are able to, as long as we have a blog post that we feel is worth reading." I know some of you have noticed a weekday or two when we haven't posted on that given day, and this is a direct result of our revised approach to blogging.

If we look back on some of our older posts, we can see a subtle yet distinct difference in the way we approached stories or recaps. I also feel we've been able to establish a better way of truly conveying how and why we do things certain ways, rather than just a step by step process of completing something. It's our hope this level of detail is able to add some richness and value to what we write about, and hopefully some of it has taught you a tip or method that can help in your projects at some point.

3. Negativity is constructive criticism, no matter how nasty it may be.

This is hard. Actually, it's really hard to remember, and we've not even had a tremendous amount of negativity on our blog, but it has happened. The main thing to remember is that any level of negativity can be seen as some level of constructive criticism, and if you can look past the negative (and possibly nasty snark), you can possibly take some good information away from the poster's response.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we are simply hanging on everyone's critiques of our work to look for validation of a project's end result, but we will take what everyone says as a way to look at our solution and its execution, perhaps modifying our plans to better incorporate other's ideas that we hadn't thought of. The last thing I want to be is one of those people that thinks my poop doesn't stink and walks around saying "haters gonna hate." Sure, there may be the occasional negativity that we should just ignore, but putting blinders on to all criticism only serves to make us narcissistic a-holes (and we don't want that). After all, If we're unable to accept and learn from some criticism we really shouldn't be blogging and putting everything out in the open for people to judge.

4. Don't ignore the difficulties.

There's nothing more frustrating than following an online guide that tries to show you how something is all sunshine and rainbows but it ignores the complexities, difficulties, or failures the author experienced along the way. Perhaps in some perfectionist society there exists superior types of people that simply do not error, but we surely do not walk among this elusive crowd.

If I'm unable to do something the first time around, or my results are less than stellar, I'm going to jump at the opportunity to poke some fun at myself about my inability to execute, but I'll also surely share some tips or tricks that helped me to finally succeed (assuming I actually reached success and whatever I was working on wasn't a complete and utter failure). The point I've realized is that no one is an expert at everything, and more than likely, most people are barely novice at most things. A foolish assumption or implication that everything is simple and anyone can do it on the first try just pisses me off, and I'd rather not inflict that type of story telling on you.

5. Try to make sure your photos don't always suck.

Ah, blog photography, mixing true amateur photographers with the expectation of magazine quality imagery. The end result of the attempts typically end up somewhere in the vicinity of "hey, I got this amazing new camera and lens but I'm not 100% sure what all of these buttons do..."

"...but look at this amazing bokeh! Yeah, I did that."

We've put a fair amount of time and effort into improving our blog photography, but not every shot can be a great one, and sometimes you need terrible ones to tell the whole story. The main thing to remember is to make every attempt possible to improve your photography where you can, knowing full well there is a ton to learn, good photography can sometimes mean expensive equipment, and sometimes the photographs are actually the hardest part of any given project. I think more fighting occurs in our relationship due to Wendy's shot obscuring arm placement when she's making a recipe and I'm trying to take photos than just about any other realm.

The best part about trying to get better at photography is that you can take tons of cute pet photos in an attempt to hone your skills. Like this one.

6. Write about what interests you.

If there's one thing we've learned as bloggers above all else, it's this one simple lesson. Appeal to and engage your readers based on your own personal interests. In other words, don't try to write a blog post just because you think your readers will like it, or it will get you a lot of traffic or comments, or lots of Pins, retweets, and likes, or that it will "really resonate with your readers."

Do write blog posts that you value and would like to share! These include tips, tricks, guides, reveals, before & afters, and anything else that floats your blogging boat.

We feel this single piece of advice is often lost as blogs try to appeal too generically to their audience as if each and evey post must apply to their readership as a whole. Or blogs that avoid topics fearing the posts might alienate people by being too complex, too expensive to implement, or too out there.

We realize that we can't appeal to everyone all of the time, but it's also important to understand that we don't have a homogenous audience of readers, so it's good to have some things that appeal to some people, and others to other people, as long as what we're writing about is originally something that interests us.

Your writing is clearly an extension of yourself and your feelings, and attempting to force something specifically because it "makes good blog content" will ultimately be transparent to your readers and will cause your blog to suffer.

7. Your daily readers are a reflection on you, so try to be genuine.

This took us the longest to realize over all other items, but it's very much the reality of writing in a personal tone and manner. The more you write, the more you will attract people who are simply engaged by your writing because it resonates with them. When you pour your personality into your blog posts, the people that will gravitate toward and return to your blog are the people who you'd probably get along with in "real life." The best part about this aspect of blogging is that we feel like we're having a nice conversation among friends, rather than just yelling into the wide open Internet for anyone that might listen.

8. It doesn't hurt to realize you're lame.

Hey, I'm the first to admit that I can be a bit of a nerd, and I want to make sure you know that I'm 100% and fully aware of that. Actually, I want you to know that I embrace it! This is not a blog about extreme sports, wing suit skydiving, and pushing the limits on everything you do. This is a blog that includes tips on how to properly antique screws, how to restore a 125 year old rim lock, where to go to sip wine in California, or how I have a problem with letting the basement get way too messy.

As cool as it to read about the amazing people in the world that will do things that I couldn't even imagine myself doing, that's not us. I mean, I dressed as a Stormtooper for Halloween one year, that's about as crazy as I get!

We are who we are, and we are often lame and a little bit (or a lot) nerdy. Since that's who we are in real life, that's who we try to be on the blog. No smoke and mirrors, no bait and switch, and we hope you like us more for it.

9. You can actually meet people who aren't creepy on the Internet!

Wendy and I started dating in 1995 when we were juniors in high school, the World Wide Web was only a few years old, and only a few geeks (myself included) were actively using this newfangled method of communication and sharing. That being said, Wendy and I never really experienced that whole "online dating" thing all the kids are doing these days. As a result, we never really met people online. Weird, I know. But this all changed two years ago when we started blogging.

Through our blogging experience and interactions we've had the opportunity to meet many different people, some of whom are now our very good friends. This includes people we know in the flesh, as well as people who may live hundreds or thousands of miles away and we only know in a more "virtual" capacity. If we had never started blogging we wouldn't have met these people and we would be worse off for it. It's strange to think that many of our interactions with various people over the past two years, and the friendships that have formed from them, simply wouldn't exist if we hadn't felt the need and desire to begin sharing our renovation and lives for all the world to see (and when I say world, I mean the random people who've stumbled upon our blog).

10. Not everyone has read every single blog post you've ever written.

Wait, what? Did I just type that? Haven't all of you all read every single sentence we've put to screen? No? Of course you haven't! As a blogger, it's your responsibility to assume that the people reading today's post are actually reading their very first post on your blog. As a result, you need to do a few things to ensure people don't simply feel lost while reading a rambling and barely coherent description of, say, historic masonry repointing.

Instead, frequently refer back to previous and supporting posts with links, give clues to past projects that have involved similar items, make references that give context to the work you're doing, and don't include tons of random inside jokes that only a handful of people will actually care about and get. Blogging is an open invitation that offers a glimpse into your life, and nobody wants to take a glimpse only to see a high school like clique of people giggling about some random item.

There you have it, 10 blogging "tips" that we've learned along the way on our two year blogging journey. We still have a ton to learn, but thus far we've had quite a bit of fun on the items we've picked up along the way. Whether this is the first blog post you've read on our site (see item #10 above), or you've been around almost since day one, we hope you've enjoyed our journey and descriptions and will continue to join us as our journey continues.

Are you a blogger? Do any of these tips sound good to you? And do you have any that you'd like to share here as well? You know we'd love to hear.

If you're not a blogger, what do you think? How are we doing? And is there something you'd really like us to improve upon?

Regardless of which reader group you fall into, we're happy you're here and we're glad to have shared the last two years with you.

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