Life in Technicolor

our youngest handymanLast night we put some color on the walls and ceiling! We had several helpers, many repeat offenders from last Wednesday night, and also Valerie, who has some new painting techniques:

Brian also has some unique ceiling-painting skillsJoe and Krista each did a lot of trim work

We've also begun prepping to install hardwood floors this weekend. We had already ripped out the carpet in the main bedrooms, and last night April removed a lot of tack strips. I know I've tortured some of you with only hints at the wall color, but once a room is completed I'll post the pictures. The color name for the living room is Ceremonial Gold with Jersey Cream ceilings. The colors are pretty bold, but I'm glad we're not going for the shades-of-white walls that I would have chosen without help. So far, so good! Thanks, Staci for all the help with colors and for stopping me from getting something too yellow - now that I see this color, I know I would have been WAY overwhelmed with some of the colors I was looking at!

Thanks again to all of our helpers last night. Also, thank you Michael and Dale for taking care of your boys while your wifes helped! Happy Birthday, Dale!

Painting Primer

First - wow! ALL of the primer in the living / dining areas was done last night! I had hoped for it, but didn't think it could happen. I spent most of yesterday expecting a lonely night, since most people coming to help paint are coming Wednesday and Joe was driving to Huntsville to pick up a refrigerator. It turned out completely different, and I have many thanks to give.

In order of appearance: Thanks to Ross, Staci, Sam & Jude for biking over and bringing cool refreshments and paint color advice! I neglected my camera last night, and I wish I had taken a picture of the boys playing on the play set (whatever you call a swingset with no swings)... they were very cute. Thanks to Aaron for driving Joe (and your truck) out to Huntsville to get us a fridge. I would have been worried if Joe had to make that drive (and meet that colorful character) alone. Thanks to April who made her second (but not final) painting contribution and took over ComGroup plans for this week. Thanks to Staci for coming back and helping (both physically and mentally) finish all the priming in the main area.

The past week and a half has really caught up to me - Joe says he hasn't seen me this tired in a long time. Maybe at some point in college when I had to pull all nighters. So we left work a little early and I slept for the extra hour. We'll also try to end early and get more sleep tonight.

I promised pictures, and here they are: (sorry, I forgot to take pictures of everyone who helped last night)

Saturday - the difference between one coat of Kilz on red walls and two coats
Sunday - Joe sanding mud on the dining room walls (the source of an insane amount of dust coating everything in the house)
last night - the dining room (opposite side of the room) primeda nook in the living area before we startedthe same nook after last night
seriously, there is so much of this dust

Come ye Painters

Well, the house is finally (mostly) ready to paint! Saturday I had a good talk with the texture guy, and he came Monday and got a decent amount of the work done. We stopped by during lunchtime Monday (to pick up the wood floor sample we left there) and Joe had to have another talk with him because he was texturing over an area he hadn't sanded (so our wall was looking extremely wavy). It seems hard to communicate "We want you to do your job right, not speed through it, but we also want it done."

Sunday Joe sanded a bunch of mud on the walls (and did a GREAT job) while I cleaned and then primed another bedroom. It took a long time (we're talking hours) to clean off all the walls and trim, remove nails and staples, and fill nail holes. So it was only the last hour we were there that I started actually painting, but it went pretty fast and I only have to finish some along the top and cut in along the edges. Pictures are coming (as soon as I download them)!

We mostly took last night (Monday) off - we each had other things we'd committed to doing. It was slightly restful, at least for our muscles!

It seems like we've figured out a lot of wall colors, but it turns out we've got a lot of walls. Maybe I'll share some colors soon... but it's time to go prime walls for me!

Give me a call if you're in town and would like to help any night the next three evenings!

Let the Painting Begin...

I've officially spent more time at Home Depot in the last week than in the previous 3 years. Last Christmas someone gave Joe a HD gift card and we were like "what do we do with this?" Now we know.

Last night we found out that the wall texture guy didn't come AT ALL on Friday. I've got a lot of really good ideas for a funny-but-true video of a day in the life of a contractor, but I think I better wait on it, or the sarcasm would be way too much for the general population. Friday night Joe and I got almost all of the drywall up and I took the trim off the top of the kitchen cabinets (so the ceiling can be made level). Joe also picked up doorknobs we got on Craigslist. They look great, and there were actually nine of them, so now we don't have to buy any more interior doorknobs! (Wow, my life sounds really dull reading that sentence. I probably could have done without the exclamation point, but when something house related goes right, I get pretty excited.)

Today, for the second time, the wall guy shows up the day after we say we're definitely finding someone else - and he does so without returning a single phone call (of which there had been plenty). But at least he got some good work done - more than the other two days he's come combined. I also gave him a good talk and let him know we really needed this done. We decided that the front part of the house will be done Monday night. So maybe it'll be done by Wednesday. (Am I learning how contractors work?)

Joe finished drywall today!!! We're both so glad to be done with it! April came over and we got two nice coats of Kilz on the walls in the red room - I'll try to take pictures tomorrow. It was wonderful to have someone to chat with while working, and the work went so much faster. Thanks April! I plan to paint the "guest" bedroom tomorrow morning.

A note on room names: I guess we'll have to rename the rooms, because we (okay, just me) gave them names on our first impressions. The "office" might end up holding the guest bed while we're not sure who will end up in "grandma's room" (the add-on built originally for someone's grandma). Maybe when it's more our own (after we've moved in) we can give them new names.

Take the Pull Poll!

What do you think about the trend for kitchen cabinet pulls being horizontal? Here are some examples:


Also, all the kitchens on Ikea's site have them (so you know it must be hip).

Take the poll on the right hand side and/or leave a comment. Seriously, we have to put something on the cabinet doors, and I'd like your input!

P.S. While looking for pictures as examples, I came across a kitchen that almost gives me a migraine looking at it - what were they thinking?!?

deal of the day

My mom was going to pick up a kitchen faucet for us at Ikea in the Dallas area today. The one in the house leaks and doesn't have a sprayer, so we were thinking about replacing it with one where the sprayer is part of the normal nozzle. My mom got up there only to find that the one she was going to pick up was completely out of stock! It was also on sale for $69, which is really good for that type of faucet. An employee there offered to give her their only other pull-out faucet - this one - for the same price (making it $90 off)! Honestly, it doesn't look like a $159 faucet to me, but I think it'll be nice.We might get some bamboo blinds from craigslist in Dallas, and that will make two great deals today! Now if only we could get an awesome refrigerator for almost nothing... ;)

slow night

Tonight seemed slow-going. Joe dropped me off at the new house and went to pick up more drywall screws and our latest craigslist saver. We got 9 new-looking gold interior (3 or 4 of which lock) doorknobs for $35! That's a great deal, and we're missing several doorknobs (plus the ones we do have don't match).

I had to take down the clasps that held the blinds (the handyman told me to). Thanks to some unruly screws, it took some time and then didn't really look like I'd done anything when I had finished. I hate those types of things! I'm the type that when doing the dishes (don't laugh, Joe - sometimes I do them!), I do all the big pots and pans first to feel like I'm making headway and have momentum to finish the silverware. So starting with the clasps probably wasn't the best idea, but it needed to be done. Before Joe got back I also cut some of the drywall.

We decided we need to buy another extension cord tomorrow (we're borrowing the only one we have) because the rest of the night was frustrating since we both needed power tools but only one of us could have one. (Yes, English enthusiasts, the conjunction count for that sentence is three. That's what you get when I write late at night after a long day. Who am I kidding? That's what you get when I write online anytime: my blog, my grammar and spelling rules.) So I didn't get very much done except get more frustrated than I should have. But we did make some progress and tomorrow's a new day! Sorry, no pictures. I guess I could have taken one of the windows sans clasps - how impressed you'd be!

Bonus story: When I was little I like to gather bugs in cups, primarily June bugs and Roly Pollies. I even sneaked in some roly pollies (I don't know how to spell it, pronounced "Roll-ee Poll-ees") to my bedroom closet and gave them stuff to eat and drink. Surprisingly (at the time), they died or disappeared despite my continued efforts to leave them water-covered grass. Not long after that, someone came to visit us (an adult, I sadly do not remember who). They slept in our bed and my sister and I slept on opposite sides on the floor - me right in front of the closet. Right after they turned off the light, I heard the guest say "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the dead bugs bite!" Before that moment, I didn't know dead bugs could bite, but I did know of several dozen who might want to bite me if given the chance. And they were only a few feet away. It took a long, long time before I could fall asleep. I don't think that will be a problem tonight. Sleep well.

PS In case you've never heard the expression, it's "don't let the bed bugs bite."

prepping rooms for wall texture

The titles for this blog are pretty lame... if I get energy, I'll work on that.

Special thanks to our ComGroup who came over and helped out at our new house tonight! We shared our official first meal in the house with Brian, April, Joel, Valerie, Dale, Cruz, Jen and Krista! After some tours of the house and eating, we got to work. We still have a little more drywall to hang in the office, but now we're close to done with that stage.

The handyman came at the end of today and actually got started - a big relief! With the work we got done tonight, he'll be able to make even more progress tomorrow.

One thing that's surprised me... Several people offered to help on the house, and I totally believed them and was (what's the right word here? honored? pleased? feeling loved and supported?) by the offers. Something I didn't expect was that the feeling (whatever word you use) is multiplied by 1000 when people are actually there helping. I spent many months of this last year hearing from the Cavins how they felt love from the body of Christ as people served and helped them with things they couldn't do on their own. I thought I understood their gratitude, but I think experiencing a small portion of what they experienced has opened my eyes a little wider. There seems to be a difference between knowing and believing something is true and experiencing it. And that somehow surprised me!

I've got pictures from the work tonight as well as some "then and now" pictures. Enjoy!

Jen and Krista then showed off their expertise with screwdrivers, hammers, and tape

Brian used his super-height to hang some drywall

April cleaned up the backyard area (I can't believe she cleaned up the dog poop - wow!!!)guest closet thenguest closet now

master closet when we put an offer on the house (at a diagonal)
master closet now (square with the walls)

It's Official!

As I said on my other blog, signing wasn't as exciting as I had hoped, but we did close on the house today! We're officially homeowners!

First Steps in House Completion

My parents and Uncle Carl came in town last weekend to help get us started with work on the house. Joe was on a long-planned camping trip with some other men, but came and joined us for half the day Sunday. The owners had made the closet in the master bedroom at an angle, but it wasn't finished (only had drywall up). Since we had to finish it anyway, we decided to change it to a straight closet. We also worked to complete two other bedroom closets. There were several other small projects we started, such as patching holes in the walls, removing trim from doorways, and removing remains of old flooring and carpet. I also had a secret project as a surprise for Joe.

My dad and Uncle Carl avoided the camera, but here are some pictures of the rest of us at work:

my mom patching a hole

Joe measuring drywall
me removing trim (and being startled from behind)

We got so much done! I have some super-handy people in the family! Joe and I both learned how to put up drywall and used some power tools for the first time in a while (or ever). Unfortunately, all the sawdust and drywall-dust in the air after a weekend of camping made Joe pretty sick. We'll need to protect him from that more in the future!

I'll try to post some then & now (I can't say before and after since it's still not done) pictures soon.