New Living Room Rug

Even The Monkey thinks its pretty awesome! I find her laying on it a lot. HA!

We went from two hastily seamed together Ikea rugs (yay for $19.99 each at the time...) to a larger 8x10 rug. The old rugs were mostly under the furniture but for this rug only the front legs of the furniture are on the rug. I've discovered that the play area was the rug and The Monkey just needed a larger space plus our old rugs were, well, old. And a pain to vacuum every day.

This rug is from Joss And Main. which is one of my new favorite decor sites to peruse occasionally. There's a ton of stuff to look at, so its better if you know what you want (an end table, a painting, etc...) to find what you like, otherwise you will be sucked in and 30 minutes later you're wondering where the time went. Shipping was super quick.

The next thing on my to-do list is to get rid of the changing table in The Monkey's room, replace that with a bookcase so I can move all of her books into her room and get the white bookshelf that we use for toy/book storage down into the basement for toy storage there. I'd like to replace the book shelf in the living room with some sort of antique or rustic table - effectively getting rid of the toys in the living room except the kitchen in the corner and a new toy storage bin rack. I think I'm over the toys but we just don't have the space and the basement is still unfinished (ok, it just doesn't have a finished ceiling or drywall up).

I rotate The Monkey's toys - she has 4 toy storage bins with a variety of toys in each. I rotate them every 2-3 weeks depending on her boredom level. Any new toys HAVE TO FIT, otherwise, well, they just sit on the floor and kids accumulate a lot of stuff. So toys need to be rotated otherwise I would be swimming in toys. No, thank you.

So, phew, new rug is in. I don't have to worry about this anymore. YAY!!!!

Happy Wednesday!!!

Living Room Rug. I Need A New One

Our living room rug is junk.

Ok, it's really two $19.99 rugs from Ikea put together. One corner has started rolling up, which means that I trip, The Monkey trips, the dog lays on it which makes it worse. Oh yeah, and it gathers dog fur like mad. I really hate it. Or them. 

At this point I just can't justify spending $2000 on this rug from Crate & Barrel:

So instead I may have to settle for this rug from Pier 1:

Meh, I don't know... I've been debating rugs for so long. I'm drawn to grays and blues but warm tones and browns work better. 

Plus we'll also be walking on it with dirty feet and grinding Goldfish crackers into it.

I need it to hold up for at least 10 years. 

Joys of Being a Homeowner - Ice Dams

Being a homeowner in Minnesota in the winter can sometimes be a pain in the ass. Especially when the previous owners of our house treated it like a rental. They did nothing. Absolutely nothing besides probably hiring painters to do the whole house in a light baby shit brown color. Go figure.

By the way - the previous owners had Ph.D.s' and one is now a professor at Harvard. So no, no street smarts (before you get your panties in a bunch, I'm not saying that all professors do not have street smarts, just the people that owned our house).

Let's talk about ice dams. Let's talk about what we're going to do about ice dams. And mainly, let's talk about what caused these ice dams so that you, my readers, can learn from our experience.

Yesterday, I wished that I lived in a condo. And had lots of wine. And beer.

Last night after getting home from baking pies with my fabulous friends (Kathy: you are awesome for hosting and don't worry, baking is trial and error sometimes but you will make delicious pies! Buck: you are going to make fabulous bread and pies, don't worry about being a hippy, I've got a composter!), I found this:

 This is a very wet plaster cove ceiling. VERY WET.NOT GOOD. LIKE I NEED TO TAKE A SHOT OF VODKA RIGHT NOW NOT GOOD.

 You can see that it's near the front door. I just about had a heart attack. I panicked, then put my glasses on and went outside. Bimmer Man grabbed the roof rake (more about that later).

 

The arrows show where to look for the ice dams. You can see the large chunks of ice in the gutters and partially on the roof. This is NOT GOOD. 

 Here's another shot of the ice dams with no arrows. Now, one of the reasons why we have ice dams HERE in this spot is because there is NO INSULATION in the attic space above the living room. So that area is much warmer than the outside, which means that the heat in that area is melting the snow on the roof (but not all the way, so it re-freezes, causing ice dams). 

Another reason why we have ice dams besides NO INSULATION: I could not get the gutters cleaned out before the first snow. There's leaves, dirt and junk in the gutters causing the water to back up. This spring I will be getting some sort of gutter guards so I don't have to worry about cleaning them as much.

There are no ice dams on this part of the house. Why? Because there's adequate insulation to keep the attic at the same temperature as the outside, so no ice dams. No temperature changes, no worries. What also helps is a roof rake, and getting the snow off the roof so that there's not an influx of melting snow to re-freeze at night. And Roof Melt, which I pretty much saw the ice dams and bolted out to the garage to run to Jerry's Hardware store for yesterday. So here's our plan:

1. Buy insulation for the attic above the living room
2. Continue to rake the roof
3. Continue to improve my throwing arm with Roof Melt pucks
4. Repair the plastic in the living room, once the ice dams have gone away and we know that they are not coming back.
5. If they do come back, then we're going to hire people to come and melt them away.

But we do have one happy dog in the family who LOVES all the snow! I'll leave you with a happy picture instead of awful ice dams.