Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

February 9, 2015 | By Sage |

Our Love-Themed Party

Happy Valentine’s Day week! Last week Naomi and I shared some homemade gifts for our valentines, and this week I thought I’d share a bit about a big love-themed party I threw a little while back. By which I mean: my wedding.

I wrote a 6,000 word post, and I then I realized that was insane. So I decided to break it into a few posts — this week I’ll share more generally about the wedding, and in the future I’ll be back to share all of the DIY projects I did for it.

Wedding seating sign -- Plaster & Disaster

Both the sign and basket are DIY projects, more details to come in a future post!

Let me just say up front that I am not one of those brides who DIY-ed everything and claims to have spent like $150 total on her wedding. We had very generous support from our parents to make this wedding possible, and while it was far more than we could have spent on our own we also managed to stay below the national average for weddings (in an expensive city, nonetheless). To keep within our budget while also getting what felt like a dream wedding, we made a list of our priorities and splurged on those things while trimming or eliminating everything else. In wedding planning, hundreds of experts and blogs will tell you about everything You Absolutely Must Have, and the only way to throw an affordable wedding seems to be to ignore this advice and just focus on the things that are most important to you as a couple.

For us, the right approach was to figure out where we wanted to DIY, and where we wanted to hire professionals. We held it at an external venue (instead of someone’s home), and had caterers, a professional photographer, day-of wedding coordinator (best.investment.ever), florist (who just provided some simple arrangements for each table and a few bouquets), hair and makeup, and a Justice of the Peace to marry us. But we chose to DIY most of the décor, music, and printed materials. We also wrote our wedding ceremony ourselves. After 22 months of planning, the day itself was more lovely than we could have imagined, and we were so happy with all the choices we’d made. Ultimately, it felt like we put a plan in place that was perfect for us so that when the day came we just sort of floated through without noticing any of the things we’d spent years agonizing over because we were so caught up in the joy of being with our closest loved ones and celebrating the love we’ve found in each other. Mushy, I know, but we’re talking about a wedding here.

So, here’s how it all went down!

First off, the single best decision we made was hiring a day-of coordinator. I was adamant about this from the start, despite being very budget conscious — everyone kept asking me if I had “an organized friend who could help,” and I kept reminding them that *I* am the organized friend. I’ve done professional event planning, I love logistics spreadsheets and timelines, and organizing this sort of thing is my idea of a good time. I wanted to do most of the planning myself, but there was no way I would be able to relax and fully enjoy myself unless I had someone I trusted to take everything over the day of the wedding. We hired Michelle at The Day Of, and it really was the best decision we could have made (even though we truly loved all our vendors) — she allowed us to fully enjoy the day and go with the flow, while knowing that everything was proceeding according to plan (and problems were being fixed without us even knowing about them).

On the day of our wedding, my bridesmaids and I got ready at my apartment and Sam met up with the groomsmen in the hotel room where his brother was staying. I decided to have my hair and makeup done professionally, a decision I agonized over but am so glad I did. I wanted to look like myself on my wedding day, but also feel confident and beautiful.

We hired a car service in advance to send a sedan for me and Sam and the end of the evening, but to get to the venue earlier in the day we relied on UberSUV. I don’t think our Uber driver knew what hit him when he showed up and realized he was transporting a wedding party, but he was great.

We had a 6pm wedding, and arrived at the venue at 4pm to do a First Look and take photos beforehand. Some couples really want the ceremony to be the first time they see each other and I totally get that, but Sam and I wanted to get that pressure out of the way in a private setting instead of with a hundred people staring at us. I was hyperventilating a little thinking about all those eyes on me as Sam and I had that moment of seeing each other, and felt so much better knowing that we would keep that separate. Plus it allowed us to do all the photography beforehand when we were feeling fresh, and begin socializing with our guests immediately after the ceremony.

Modern family wedding portrait -- Plaster & Disaster

Our modern family: 3 siblings, 5 stepsiblings, 4 parents, and 4 stepparents

We got married at the Arlington Town Hall in Arlington, MA, which is the active home for the Arlington city offices and local functions like Town Meeting, school concerts, etc. However, it’s also a gorgeous, historic building (101 years old in 2014) with an incredible reception hall and lovely outdoor gardens. The very reasonable rental fee includes use of all the indoor and outdoor space, and the funds are used to maintain and restore the building which we really liked.

We had our ceremony outside under a tree:

Sam’s incredibly talented siblings did the ceremony music, including prelude music, processional, recessional, and accompanying the hymns. They are amazing.

Our cocktail hour was on the brick patio near a fountain to the side of the ceremony area:

And then our reception was inside the Town Hall auditorium, which is a beautiful space:

My dress was from David’s Bridal, and I loved it. With the alterations, undergarments, and dress itself I spent about $800, which is a steal compared to what most places get away with charging. I liked that David’s has so many affordable options that I felt like I had a wide variety of options to pick from, rather than getting stuck with the cheapest dress at a more upscale boutique.

For accessories, I wore $20 blue flats from Payless Shoes, a pearl necklace that belonged to my grandmother, earrings that my dad gave me in my stocking for Christmas, and a small clutch that I sewed myself (for emergency items like advil, bandaids, etc). Our wedding colors were coral and turquoise, so I wanted my accessories to reflect that.

I worked with an amazing florist on the flowers, and she was so understanding of our budget and us not wanting to do too much. She made an incredible bouquet for me.

Sam wore a suit and shirt he already owned, and a tie that matched the ties we got for the groomsmen from Express (which doubled as the groomsmen gifts).

I asked my bridesmaids to wear blue dresses of whatever shade and style they wanted, and then gave them statement coral necklaces that I found on Urban Peach Boutique as gifts. Instead of bouquets, each of them carried a few sunflowers wrapped in turquoise ribbon.

The reception was so much fun, if I don’t say so myself — an amazing meal (the caterers were awesome, I swear when we walked around it looked like people had licked their plates clean, please someone else I know get married in Boston and use Capers Catering so I can eat their food again), toasts that were simultaneously side-splitting and sweet from our brothers and dads, and then lots of dancing.

Ours are the most hilarious brothers ever

And the best dads. No, don’t even try — ours are the best.

We prepared our own dinner and dancing playlists from itunes rather than splurging on a DJ or band. We had to put time into thinking about how to get people dancing and the flow of songs, and we spent about $100 buying new music on itunes. But I think everyone had a great time dancing, and it was absolutely worth it to save the $1500 that it would have cost to hire a DJ. We asked Sam’s brother, The Best Man, to help us with a little bit of emceeing to make the transitions between toasts, but we tried to keep it all very simple so that he could enjoy the evening for the most part.

And then all too soon the last song was playing and we found ourselves saying our goodbyes. We ended up going out to a bar with many of our friends for an after-party, and it made me realize that life would be awesome if I could just wear my wedding dress every day. Free drinks forever, I imagine. There was another bride at the bar and I wanted to arm wrestle her (I’d been working out my arms a lot to get my perfect Michelle Obama Wedding Arms), but my “friends” wouldn’t let me.

The other bride, Abby. I think she’s laughing nervously while I make threats to fight her.

We fell asleep around 3am totally exhausted and with cheeks smarting from so much smiling. I think the photos capture it better than words really could.

February 6, 2015 | By Sage |

Renovation Dreamin’

As the Mamas and the Papas once famously sang:

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.
I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day.
I’d be safe and warm if I was in L.A.;
[Renovation] dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.

Frankly I’m wishing for a little brown and gray, right now we’ve got white, white, and more white. Many feet of white.

So what’s a gal to do but sit snuggled up on the couch and dream of warm weather and DIY projects to come (besides my full-time day job)? Now that Naomi has started to share the transformative renovation that she and Brad undertook in their house, I feel compelled to tell you about the renovation that Sam and I are dreaming of.

Realistically we’re probably a few years out from this work because we need to save up for it, but we did buy the house knowing that we wanted to do some significant work to the second floor. Specifically, we have to add a bathroom. One bathroom is fine for just the two of us, though it’s already tight whenever we host multiple people overnight or have plumbing issues (which has been far too often…more about that to come in a few weeks…). But if our family ever grows beyond two humans and two cats, we’re going to need another bathroom. Plus this is something that will add to resale value, though when the time comes to finalize a specific plan and budget we’ll be sure to get our real estate agent’s perspective about how much we might expect to recoup when we sell (we don’t have any plans to do sell anytime soon, but it’s always good to keep in mind since you just never know…but after the stress of buying this place, Sam and I are not eager to do that again in the near future).

The existing bathroom is on the first floor, so adding a new one to the second floor is really the only option since it doesn’t make sense to have another one on the first and one in the basement really wouldn’t add the functionality we want. But there just isn’t space on the existing second floor, which is currently occupied by two bedrooms and a storage closet:

The house is a cape, with the second story under a sloped roof — so the space is significantly tighter than the floor plan really shows. It wouldn’t be possible to carve off a portion of either of these rooms for a bathroom, since along the edges the ceilings are pretty low:

So what do we do? Dormer to the rescue!

What’s a dormer? I had no idea before our real estate agent mentioned the idea to me when we were touring the house last summer. But essentially a dormer is an addition to the roofline that adds usable floor space to the top level of home with a sloping roof. There are lots of different types and variations:

Dormer to add significant floor space -- Plaster & Disaster

From BHG

From Shell & Chinoiserie

From Southern Living

Once you know what they’re called (and start planning to add one to your home), you start realizing they’re on a lot of houses. And dormers are one of the most cost effective ways to add square footage to a home, since they use existing floor area that is rendered unusable by the slope of the roof but already has a foundation, etc, unlike a completely new addition to a home which requires much more new structural support.

I put together a little model in Google Sketchup to help demonstrate. Here’s a representation of how our second floor looks now, minus some of the interior walls, staircase, etc.

You can see that the usable interior space is much smaller than the actual floor area available, since there are interior walls blocking off significant space under the edges of the sloped roof. And intuitively that also makes sense — our second floor is the same size as our first floor, and yet the amount of space we see and can use is much much smaller because the rest is lost under the lowest parts of the roof and blocked off behind the interior walls.

But a dormer, even a relatively small one, could create a totally new room that protrudes from the existing roof line. Here it is modeled in Google Sketchup:

Technically we could dormer out the whole length of one side of the roof to add a huge amount of space, like has been done on this house:

From SoPo Cottage

Or we could even dormer out the length of both sides, although that would be a little tricky because of the sun room addition that impinges on the roof line a bit on one side of the house (as seen above). But that’s a very expensive proposition, most likely in the $50-100K range since it involves replacing pretty much the whole roof and redoing all of the interior walls, floors, ceilings, electrical, and I’m sure lots of other things I don’t even know about. We don’t expect to have $100K in loose change lying around anytime soon.

More realistically, I’m thinking that we could add an 8-10′ long dormer that would accommodate a bathroom, adding it to the existing craft room and turning it into a lovely master suite (for the purposes of this vision, you also have to imagine a new paint job…no one needs a watermelon explosion master suite). We’d need some new electrical work because the wiring on the second floor is older and that would be a good time to upgrade, plus probably some heating/duct work because our radiators up there don’t seem to work and our current central AC system is on the first floor only (not that we need central AC, but it wouldn’t make as appealing a master suite if it was only one of two rooms in the whole house without it).

Here’s a mockup of the possible new floor plan:

And a photoshopped approximation on our house:

You might wonder why the dormer is in the middle of the roofline, rather than squarely on one side off of the master bedroom. Well, it seems we have some major layout constraints. It will be much less expensive to have the new bathroom above the existing bathroom or kitchen, which are both on the back side of the house. So that’s constraint #1. Constraint #2 is that the sunroom roof peaks on the right side of the back roof, which happens to be the half of the roof that belongs to the sunroom. Why not make the guest room into the master suite instead? Constraint #3 is that the guest room is very small (not big enough for a queen size bed) because of the storage closet protruding into it, and we could tear down the walls to the storage closet but there would still be a giant pillar through the middle of the room because that’s where our furnace chimney vents up from the basement. So…not a lot of good options. By placing it in the center, maybe we’d be able to get it left of the dormer but still with a door from the current craft room.

Anyway, that’s all a lot of stressful detail, let’s look at some soothing inspiration images, shall we?

Whatever we do, painting the walls a light color features heavily in the plan. I love how much the light walls open up this space, despite the sloped roof:

Dreaming of a bright master suite -- Plaster & Disaster

From Bob Vila

Though we might want to retain a little bit of color — I can’t be expected to give up my turquoise/blue obsession entirely, can I?

From Home Bunch

Or maybe I will concentrate my turquoise lust in the bathroom:

Turquoise bathroom -- Plaster & Disaster

From Four Generations One Roof

From Home Bunch

If the dormered bathroom has lots of windows, how about this soaking tub? (Shower is separate so you aren’t standing fully exposed in front of those windows…one of our neighbors is a pastor, that might be too much for him and his family.)

Soaking tub in front of big windows -- Plaster & Disaster

From Designing on the Side

In some ways it would be great to find a way to add more windows to the bedroom as well, like with skylights.

Attic room with skylights -- Plaster & Disaster

From House to Home

But on the other hand, for practical purposes we actually love a dark bedroom (C.f. “A Sophisticated Cave“). So we’d want to be careful not to install a skylight that would end up spilling sunshine directly on our faces while we try to sleep. (We don’t have children, so sleeping is an activity we get to do a lot of and greatly enjoy).

Here’s a cozier look:

Dark and soothing attic suite -- Plaster & Disaster

From Decor Pad

And of course, we’ll want to turn the second bedroom up there into a walk in closet:

Use an entire room for walk in closet -- Plaster & Disaster

From Woodworking Network

But…even for dreaming that’s crazy. Besides, I spend all my money on home improvement and crafting, I don’t own enough clothing to fill a closet of that size.

I’m actually thinking we’ll get a contractor out for a ballpark estimate sometime in the coming months just to give us an opinion on what might be feasible and the general ballpark that we should be saving toward. Thank goodness Naomi and Brad have an awesome contractor to recommend. You know I’ll keep you posted as our dream inches closer to reality!