About Us

About Handy Man

I’m Rob (aka Handy Man). By day, I’m a mild-mannered computer geek. But when I get home at night, I strip off the slacks and shoes and don the jeans and sneaks.

My weekends are my most productive times as a handy man. As a homeowner, there are no lack of things to do. Laurie (aka Crafty Woman), maintains a “hunny do” list for me that never seems to get any shorter… no matter how many tasks I complete.

In addition to home maintenance, I’m known to build an occasional stick of furniture. Most recently, I built a nice cabinet for our new TV. From time to time, I’ve also been recruited to help Laurie decorate the room we’ve remodeled. (yes… that even includes sewing…)

About Crafty Woman

I work part-time at a school, but I’m mostly an at-home mom to our Handy Boy, who is 9. I love reading, photography, scrapbooking and home decorating.

I’m “the Boss” when it comes to choosing paint colors, but sometimes it goes wrong and we have to re-paint! Before we renovate a room, I talk with Handy Man about what I want it to look like, and we make decisions about which materials to use. We shop mainly at Lowe’s and Home Depot for renovation materials, and at lots of other thrifty places (like discount stores, consignment and antique shops) for decorating.

I also love to take photos and scrapbook. While this won’t be a blog about scrapbooking, I’ll share some of my ideas for organizing photos and scrapbook supplies.

This was posted on our 13th Anniversary, September 20th, 2010:

Today is our 13th Wedding Anniversary. Lucky number 13!

Aren’t we cute? I was 25 and Rob had just turned 26.

Some fun facts about us:

Number of apartments we’ve lived in: 2

Number of homes we’ve lived in: 4 (one was a rental, three were homes we bought.)

Number of times we’ve moved our crap from apartment to house to rental to house: We don’t even want to think about it!

Number of years we have been renovating homes: Over 13, yikes!

Number of bathrooms we have renovated over the years: 5

Number of kitchens we’ve renovated: 3

Number of bedrooms we’ve renovated: 11

Number of wounds we have sustained from renovating projects: Too many to count. Cuts, bruises, many splinters, a few mild (!!) electric shocks. Thankfully, all were treatable without a trip to the ER.

Number of ceiling fans we have installed: Eleventy-billion. (We like ceiling fans.)

Number of sewer back-ups we have had: One. And let us never speak of it again.

Most difficult renovation project:

Handy Man: The kitchen in our second home. (Crafty Woman: I will post pictures of this sometime!)

Crafty Woman: The upstairs bathroom in our current home. (Pictures to come for this as well.) Everything needed to be torn out, carried down a stairway, and heaved into a dumpster. In the winter. Then we had to heave all new fixtures INTO the house, and up the stairs. Think about carrying a toilet and a bathtub up a flight of stairs! During the project when everything was ripped out, we had to go DOWNstairs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I hated that! Runner up: Renovating the one and only bathroom we had in our first house.

Easiest renovation project: Uhhhh…we’ll get back to you on that one.

Handy Man’s favorite room reno: The kitchen in our second home, because it was so difficult. (He said something about it being “rewarding.”)

Crafty Woman’s favorite room reno: The above-mentioned upstairs bathroom in this home. More relief than rewarding, for me, I think!

Happy Anniversary to my Handy Man!