Do we have plans for 2023? Maybe...

We're back back back again. For whatever reason, this winter has felt eternal. And so for a break from the constant back and forth of an oddly-warm and soggy-wet winter, we bring you this blog post as a little momentary distraction. This one will be short and sweet, both for you and for us, as we're still getting back into the groove of consistent updates on this here internet.

We accomplished quite a bit last year- particularly at the tail end of the year. And because of that, our home is starting to feel more ~complete~ than ever. With that said, there are still a few things on our list to knock out this year. Since everyone loves a good list, here's out "2023 home project list" (sorry, I couldn't think of a catchier name).

Guest Bathroom Renovation

To refer to last year one more time (sorry!), we completed a lot of projects on our second floor, which has pretty much become an entire guest floor at this point. We created a custom, built-in daybed in the office for an extra guest to sleep in, we spruced up the guest bedroom ~vibe~ with a wrap-around board and batten wall feature and new paint colors, and we refreshed the bedding itself with some assistance from Garnet Hill. Despite all of that, there's still one glaring absence from the touch of our magic wand: the guest bathroom. Okay, we actually did give it a coat of fresh white last year as well. But beyond that, it's still got the same "meh" stock vanity and very questionable tile choices. We talked a little bit about our plans for it in a 2022 blog, and they remain unchanged, so I'll include that mood board imagery below. The only difference is that this year, we plan to actually do the project! Fingers crossed.

(Our plan: finally use the hex tile we didn't use in our primary bath, a new vanity, new paint color for the wainscoting, and add some fun wallpaper)

Do ~Something~ With Our Primary Bedroom

This is really a two-parter. Firstly, we love this bedroom. It spans the entire footprint of the third floor (including the primary bath), has extremely high ceilings thanks to the pitched roof, and still feels cozy despite being a large space. What makes it difficult: it's not your standard, four-walls and a door bedroom. We don't have a door at all up here, as it's really just a large loft, with only some iron railing separating us from plunging over to certain death. On top of that, we have a built-in wardrobe closet, the aforementioned pitched roof, and a reclaimed sliding door that is the entrance to the bathroom. There's a lot going on, so it makes it hard to think about simply slapping on a little picture frame moulding and calling it a day. Where would it end? Where would it start? Would it match the colors and style in the hallway? These are the questions that plague my mind because I'm now unable to think about anything other than perfecting every space in our room. We have some ideas, but it will definitely require a lot more thought and planning than we've currently done.

(Our Primary bedroom before our wardrobe closet was built).

Nevertheless, there is something else we can do up here, and it might be seem a bit counterintuitive: we want to remove the faux beams from our ceiling. Look, we're clearly big beam guys. We exposed them in our kitchen, installed these faux beams in the bedroom ceiling, and exposed beams in our primary bathroom remodel. The problems: 1. The faux beams were difficult to cut to the correct angle of our pitched roof. This made caulking/spackling the ends (to make it look like they're actually into the ceiling drywall) near impossible, and we haven't been able to remediate it. And 2. Since we exposed the real beams in our primary bath, now they don't match what's in the bedroom right next to it. In a nutshell, we outed our fake beams unintentionally, and that isn't very nice. We don't plan on ripping out a roof again- it's way too labor intensive and we still have nightmares about the amount of dust from our kitchen project. However, we intend to reclaim some actual wooden beams from the same time period (that match the age, color, texture and spacing) as our bathroom beams, and install those. It'll take a bit of searching, but we've seen some like it at Philadelphia Salvage, so wish us luck.

(Our Primary Bathroom, with its original exposed beams in the ceiling)

Finally Painting The Exterior of Our House

This will be a big one for us, and probably one of the most transformative things we could ever do here. Curb appeal is real, y'all. And currently, as cute as our home is on the inside, she doesn't have it on the outside. For that reason (and also privacy, of course), we've never shown the outside of our home- here or on the Instagram grid. For one, our home was stucco'd over at some point in this last century. In our eyes, this is a mortal sin- and Public Enemy No. 2 (No. 1 of course being carpet). Our home is built out of Wissahickon Schist, which was pulled straight out of the river down the hill. This stone is a quintessential feature to homes across Manayunk and the rest of Northwest Philadelphia, and if you're from the area, you can easily recognize its grey and brown hues that gleam with a little bit of a glittery sparkle under the right light. It's quite pretty, and we're fortunate enough to have a bit of it exposed in our kitchen. Unfortunately, exposing it on our facade is not in the cards. It would be a huge project financially and would require the skills of a local mason, so we simply cannot justify it. However, we can justify repairing a little bit of the stucco and giving it a fresh coat of paint in a historic color. We feel like we owe that much to her. Maybe then we'll finally show off the outside of our home.

Pictured: a string of Manayunk rowhomes on Dupont with exposed Wissahickon Schist facades (Source: Redfin)

And for now... that's all we can think of. But surely, the list of things to do and fix will grow and shrink and change with the seasons, and we'll do our best to keep you all updated with the goings-on of yunky house.