First things first, bring out the freshly purchased flowers and decide where to plant them:

Such a beautiful day for hanging out in the garden:

A new spring mix in the old chick&hens planter:

Our boxwoods sadly did not make it thru the winter, so we replaced both of them. Crazy eyed Maddy helps out with the demo work:

All the new flowers and boxwoods. The white pot holds a cut off we got in January and has been blooming in a vase of water ever since.

In the garden, we weeded and set out our solar path lights and bunnies. I also pulled out some persistent ivy choking the liriope. The hostas are perennials and are starting to peek thru the flowers from the onion grass:

Here’s perspective on how tall those flowers are. I had to push back the flowers along the path just to walk. It’s like a carpet of flowers:

A week later, and these gorgeous irises bloomed. Photos do not do them justice. This is the first year they looked so big and healthy.

As you can see here, the onion grass flowers have withered a bit to give full glory to the irises and hostas. Sunsets on Madison are lovely:

We had one of these tvs for the last 10 years and before that I had actually inherited it from my grandmother… So you could say its a family heirloom!

The kitten helps give you a sense of scale for our old box set. Luckily we never watch much TV, just the occasional movie, so we didn’t have to squint at it that often… But recently the picture has been staticky so it was time to finally upgrade:

Since we didn’t want to go too crazy, we only upgraded to a 60″, which doesn’t look too bad on this wall.

We did the usual wall mount. (Buy them on line… So much cheaper than the big box stores).

And you may remember from way back in 2009 we had planned ahead for this. We ran conduit inside the walls before insulating them to hide all the wires and cords away. One 2.5″ conduit to the TV:

And another conduit over to our computer, for streaming movies and music off of the computer. Though there is a lot less need for this one today with all the Smart TV stuff, but who knew in 2009…

They both run to a new AV cabinet that we built underneath one of the window sills.

We also ran power, cable, network, and a ton of speaker wire into the cabinet. We wired for surround sound in the TV area, the office area, and on the deck. They all then feed into a switcher so we can chose which zones should be on.

Some adjustable shelves and all the equipment hooked up and we have a working AV cabinet! At some point we will be building doors to match the paneling, so all of this will be completely covered up.

All of the wires that have been dangling out of the walls & ceiling got speakers to cover them up… finally.

But for the final step we had to figure out to control all this stuff, with most of it concealed behind doors. Well Harmony makes a cool little puck that you control through your network and it has an IR blaster to control all the equipment. Then you can simply control everything through your phone

Or your tablet

So here is the full setup all ready to enjoy.

The TV itself is a Samsung which we picked partially for all its Smart TV features and built in camera. And not to delve into the long debate… but we picked a plasma over LED. It also has voice commands, motion control, 3D glasses, App Store, etc.

You really don’t need cable since you can do so much on-line with these TVs. The first thing we did was to hook it up to the internet and only later connected the cable.

If you can hardwire your network rather than using wireless…do it. It makes streaming instantaneous. When we rewired the house in 2009 and had the walls open, we ran Cat5e all over the place all going back to our main router on the 1st floor so our TV plugs right into the network. We did end up adding another little switch in our AV cabinet since so many of the devices want Internet.

So with the built-in camera it makes it easy to Skype when someone cannot make the family movie marathon… though I don’t know what Kelly’s mom is doing to her sister in this picture?

So if you will excuse us we have some movies to watch!

One spring-like reason besides all of our lovely neighbors hanging outside and gorgeous flowers… our neighborhood has a Bikescore of 99!!

Our garden tulips in bloom:

Visit here for more info on  our neighborhood: http://www.visitphilly.com/philadelphia-neighborhoods/graduate-hospital/

More importantly, visit here for more info on the G-HO bar crawl this weekend: http://www.uwishunu.com/2013/04/reminder-crawl-into-spring-at-graduate-hospitals-sprung-bar-crawl-at-a-number-of-south-street-and-lombard-street-bars-saturday-april-27/

These other little purple flowers are tucked in among the ivy, creeper and onion grass:

The onion grass has been up for a while in this mild weather and is looking lush. Some lilies and tulips are starting to sprout too:

See our neighbors daffodils and tulips blooming just up the block?

Rob and Maddy cheered me on as I cleared out some wind blown debris and refilled the bird feeder.

Great day for some fresh air and sun!

I built the current stand during my early college years. I took a circular saw to an entertainment center that was put out in the trash, deconstructed it, reconstructed it and painted it black.
We definitely got our money’s worth out of this stand… I even expanded it from the cabinet section under the right side to include the legs for our current 55gal tank.

For the new stand, two 24″ wide x 30″ tall x 12″ deep cabinets worked nicely. They perfectly fit the 55 gallon tank and provide plenty of storage.

We then bought 2 packs of 6″ Ikea legs to go with our free cabinets. We screwed the two cabinets together, attached the legs, and drilled holes in the back and between the cabinets for all the wires and hoses.

Finally, we flipped the cabinets over, leveled the legs, and moved the tank… not an easy task. In the end this was a quick and thrifty project.

We will certainly miss the neighborhood, views, and especially our roof terrace on the 25 floor! The office is moving up the street closer to the river.

Of course you have to look at the bright sides, we are even closer to our house and we get to salvage all the cabinetry from our old office!

So with a little assistance from another coworker who also was in need of some cabinets we disassembled the copy print room & kitchens in no time.

Then came the hard part of moving all of these out …on a Friday night.

And of course it started to rain but two truck loads later we had all the cabinets home and loaded our coworker up with his cabinets.

So remember when we cleaned out the dining room? Well it’s not cleared out anymore…

After some reorganizing it is not so bad until we get to the projects. The majority of the cabinets, counters, and sink will be going into a new laundry room, and in the mean time the cat likes to climb on them.

We are also fully moved into our new office now and still have some great city views… From my desk I get the river, train station and even the Art Museum in the distance.

One of the only snows that stuck this year… You can tell it was a mild winter because the onion grass is already up:

So to get in the mood for spring, we checked out the Philadelphia Flower Show last night:

Lots of fresh colors and ideas for spring:

Something worked because this morning we woke up to weather in the 60′s – Maddy loves the open windows!

The art: currently this cool old artifact given to us by the previous owner of our office building. The art deco tower was sold recently (and is being converted to apartments), but it was originally built for Sun Oil in the late 1920′s with a multi-story valet parking garage tucked into the back of the building. This was one of the early signs from the garage.

Simonizing was a waxing process named after a product invented in 1910 called simoniz. As in “Motorists Wise, Simoniz”. Imagine dropping your car off in a Philly parking garage and paying $1 for 24 hrs of parking (it’s now $22 in our office garage just for 2 hours of parking)!

The antiques: We brought in two medicine bottles that my dad found when he was a kid in Delaware. These are both from Philadelphia companies and I think it’s cool to bring historic items with like this back to Philly after so many years. Plants: aloe.

Not powder room related, but Maddy recently discovered the stained glass window. Here she is giving it two paws up. Notice she doesn’t put her paws ON the glass. Good kitty.

We ripped down plywood to be the nailing rails, squared them to each other, and clamped them to a table to keep the door square while we build it.

For the face of the door, we used the scrap and left over tongue and groove boards from the new paneling we installed in our second floor bathroom.

We had to piece it together in a few areas but had just enough. To make the build go faster we squared the boards at the top of the door and then cut off the bottom once all the boards were attached.

The cat came out to help for a little bit as we finished up the door and installed the trolley brackets on top.

And up it went! You can see all the paneling nicely matches up.

Here is the shop inside view.

So the door is now rolling! And will keep the dust in and the cat out.

Remember that wall we framed in the basement last year?

We put strips of scrap plywood across the stud framing so that we can now installing wood paneling.

We are using original tong & groove wood paneling that we salvaged when remodeling our 2nd floor bathroom. It’s a perfect project to use some of it and it will go with the original bead board at the basement stair on the other side of the new door.

It went up fast with some construction adhesive and shooting nails into the plywood strips.
We also routed a new baseboard and will install the end trim once we build the sliding door.

The shop side of the wall will be covered with peg board.

I will be glad when this project is done and we reorganize the basement! It is tight working quarters down there since we don’t really have anywhere to temporary put everything now that our first floor is almost done.

July:
We installed our beautiful new stained glass window in our renovated and restored living room with the help of McElf  and our families!  We stared at the window for a few days, then busted our booties to get ready for our Final Inspection by the city of Philadelphia.  And we passed!

August:
We started the month with a revamped website at a new address, www.madisonsquarehome.com. Then we wrapped up some outstanding tasks in the powder room, living room and back porch gate, and started designing our dining room project.

September:
We went on a much needed and long vacation with Rob’s parents to Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Russia. It was an amazing trip. We didn’t get much done on the house that month, except some deck flower-gazing.

October:
We enjoyed the unseasonally warm weather on our deck grilling, visited the new coffee shop and pocket park in our neighborhood, volunteered for the neighborhood run, handed out some Halloween candy and then got back into some housework with a lot of exterior painting, and Halloween mantel decorating, since we got a new mirror!  We also did some exterior gutter work and tree trimming in preparation for Sandy.

November:
We hosted Thanksgiving at our house!   There was lots to do in order to get everything ready, including installing the kitchen downdraft vent, hanging curtains and a radiator cover, moving the dining room table to the first floor, painting, installing a light fixture, cleaning and painting the basement (trust me, it was essential), and installing a basement window!

December:
December brought more mild weather, so we wrapped up our back step project with poly, repaired the deck door, and had a few spare minutes to decorate our front door.  Back inside in the basement, we started installing the dust collection system, built a new wall to enlcose the future basement shop area.  Oh, and we got a kitten: Maddy!

So that concludes our 2012 Year in Review… we’re 3+ years in and still going.  (May that be an inspiration, or a warning.)

Now it’s time to get to work on our 2013 goals: The Basement Shop & the Dining Room!

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Part I: http://madisonsquarehome.com/2013/01/07/2012-half-a-year-in-review/

January:
We were really on a roll last January: we continued our 2011 work in the upstairs hall, the new closets in the hall and orange bedroom, and the guest bedroom.  Along with installing a bunch of doors and painting until our hands were numb, we installed the cork flooring, the runtal radiator and milled up some trim for the picture rail in the guest bedroom. We hung our first piece of art… and my favorite - we painted the hall ceiling gold!

February:
We wrapped up a few loose ends on the bedroom & closet projects, and started designing the stained glass window!

March:
We finished the guest bedroom, and had our first guest: Megan from McElf Glass Studio!  We did a weekend charette and really hammered out a lot of the details and design for our stained glass window(s).

April:
Rob single-handedly prepped the living room for trim while I studied alone on the third floor for my final Architectural Exam. In between reloading the nail gun and flipping thru flash cards, we worked with McElf on the final details of the window and watched the flowers bloom in the garden. Then we ate some belated birthday cake.

May:
My early-May birthday threw some kinks in the works (only because we were gallivanting in Mexico) but when we returned we had to keep celebrating: I passed my final ARE exam! Officially an architect. We didn’t celebrate all month long, though. We also managed to fix a terrible leak in our bedroom, biked to work, stalked our window progress in Buffalo, stripped the living room mantel, dodged the mulberries and installed all the living room trim!  Then we went outside and organized a block clean up, planted our garden and the deck, and hung the new bird feeder. WHEW.

June:
We refinished and installed the living room doors and hardware, installed more living room trim (including a mind bending curved oak three piece baseboard), and did something unbelievable: took the cardboard off the living room floor to reveal our hardwood floors for the first time in 3 years!  Rob & my dad demo’d and installed our new sliding back gate in a 6.5-day 100-degree/flooding charette, while I stayed in and poly/stained all the oak trim and painted the living room/ half bath. Then we bought a new couch!

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Stay tuned for part II, July – December.

If you’re interested in summaries, here is our 2011 Year in Review post.