Some "Before" Pictures

Hi. It's eight AM and in just a minute I'm off to the house. David is at rehearsal 'til 10:30, so I'm going over alone for now. I thought I would upload some of the old pictures I took when we first toured the house, so you could see what we had to cover. Unfortunately, we're not quite as creative as the old owners.

Most of the house is now covered in a Benjamin Moore color called Stone House - sort of sandy. Trim was painted Marble White, which sounds stark but was actually a lot warmer than the pure white they had. In our bedroom, Vid let me do a red accent wall. We chose Spanish Red, but it looked too country next to Stone House, so we darkened it.

The living room/dining room was a sea-foam green, and the kitchen a lemony yellow with cornflower blue trim.

I'll post some of our "in progress" stuff so you can see how things are coming along. Tomorrow the kitchen gets a second coat, we'll paint some more trim, and (hopefully) rip up some carpet. Fun times!

We're still exhausted.

Nothing To Do With the House

The thing about 3rd grade is, when one of them decides to do something, they all have to.

For example: Today, Maria decided she wanted to leave her glasses on her desk during PE. She told me, "Teacher, when the ball hits my face I'm afraid my glasses will break." That's fine. I'd be afraid too. She's not the most coordinated little thing. I realized back in November that she needed glasses, and she ended up having a 400/400 perscription. I think she's still adjusting. So I told her to run back to the classroom and drop them off.

What irks me, though, is that the four other kids that wear glasses decided suddenly that they needed to do the same thing. So at the last possible second before PE, I was down five kids. Which makes the PE teacher run late, and makes other teachers unhappy.

As we were standing in line, waiting for the kids to return, I looked at a little boy named Luis who was studying my reaction to the situation. (Luis watches me like a hawk. Incidentally, he can't see either. And his mother won't get him glasses because they can't afford it but aren't poor enough to get free ones.) I think he knew I was irritated. So I decided to joke a bit. "I don't know why everyone wants to do that. I'd want to see. When I was in 3rd grade I always wore my glasses."

Luis didn't respond to that. His contemplative look turned to one of concern. "Did you wear round glasses, teacher? Or square ones, like this?" (He motioned around his eyes.)

"Round ones," I responded.

"Oh good," he said, relieved. "Square ones are for nerds."

"What's a nerd?" Alicia suddenly piped up from behind.

"It's a mean name you call someone when you want to hurt their feelings. You shouldn't use it," I answered, glancing meaningfully at Luis. He looked properly remorseful.

"Oh," said Alicia, thinking a moment. "I thought it was a doctor."

And There Was Much Rejoicing

We have 8 days of school left. Woot.

No real news. I'm very, very tired, which means I might be very mean to my kids today. Poor kids.

We did a second coat on the LR/DR last night and are ready to work in the kitchen. It's another yellowy color. I'm afraid.

I'm also ready to move. Maybe Vid and I should set up a tent in the living room and actually sleep at the house until painting is done. I could plug in a hot plate and we could eat oatmeal and drink Nescafe for breakfast. Good eatin'.

Consider the Ant

I figured out that if I lower my photo resolution in my camera, I can load pics that fit by the text. Duh.

Monday's job, among other things, was the kitchen. I'll get to that in a minute. First, I need to backtrack a bit.


On Sunday night, D and I were feeling extremely discouraged. We'd been working all day and accomplished practically nothing. We hated both the yellow and the red we'd chosen for our walls. Most of our friends were out of town or had prior plans that meant they couldn't come help us. At dinnertime, we were sitting on the back stoop eating leftovers, looking at the already overgrown grass (We so need a lawnmower. I keep finding cheap-as-free ones on CraigsList, but we have no way to cart them to our house.), wondering how we'd ever get finished.

So, we prayed. I asked the Lord to send us some people to help. And He did.

A guy named Jamie, who's on the worship band with Vid, phoned first. He came over that night and helped us finish up painting the second bedroom. He also went to battle for us with the kitchen wallpaper above. D and I are pretty sure that border has been up for the 18 years the previous family lived here.

The next morning, another couple from church, Paul and Carol Sue, came to help. We thought they'd lend a hand at painting. Paul, however, came in his truck - which was loaded with everything from extra paint rollers to a power saw and a portable spotlight. Woot! He climbed up into the attic and cut a hole in our bathroom roof to install a fan. He also fixed a broken light fixture in our hall. Joel and Laura arrived at 10:00 AM and stuck around 'til 8:00.
With the six of us, we managed to finish painting all three bedrooms. We made some trips back to the paint store to adjust the red and yellow. It took four tries to get the right color yellow in the 3rd bedroom. I think the nice hippie guy at Benjamin Moore probably hates me now. We also got the LR/DR primed. Vid managed to remove all the rest of the nasty border in the kitchen, and I began disinfecting and cleaning the cabinets. I took the photo above after I had been cleaning that cabinet. I stopped in the middle for a photo op because I decided I needed someone else to see the scum factor. I don't know that the insides of the cabinets are worth painting. The previous owners painted over all the hinges with several layers of high gloss paint, so rather than waste time chipping away at that to salvage cabinets that aren't worth saving... I'll just paint them hanging there. I know it's wrong. But it might have to work that way. Sigh.
Also, we have ants. Carol Sue discovered several anthills yesterday. Thriving, large ant metropolises (metropoli?) in both our front and backyard. That would explain the several large ants I discovered in the kitchen. They were bold, those ants, clambering over the tops of the cabinets and dangling off the light fixtures like little mountain climbers. I've enjoyed covering them with little bits of painter's tape and squashing them.
I'm off to Home Depot, again, after school to buy a chemical to kill the ants. Joel suggested boiling water, but Carol Sue suggested something else. I love our friend Joel, but I trust Carol Sue's advice.

Does it feel drafty in here to you?

The photos I'm taking are too big to upload next to my posts. I don't currently have a photo editing program, so I can't do anything but post at the bottom. Inconvenience for you, annoyance for me. I want this to look a little prettier. Oh well.

Anyway, scroll down and check out what the electricians did when they updated the wiring on Friday. I walked in the door at three-thirty, just as they were leaving and about burst into tears.

The holes are about the size of a silver dollar. We bought stuff today to fill them.

Here's a list of what we've done so far:
D took the nasty old AC unit out of the window and cleaned it out as best he could. Take a look at the mess.
We removed what seemed like a million picture hangers and screws from walls and windows and filled them all in.
We painted ceilings in all the bedrooms.
We took some wallpaper down in the living room.
We taped all the bedrooms and primed the smallest of the three last night.

Today I hope we manage to prime the other two bedrooms, fill the holes in the LR, and start to get that ready.

My arms, shoulders, neck, and back ache. I have paint all over my hands.

Work Day One

Scroll down and take a look. That's it. Our new home. I took these so you could get a sense of the lot and the street we live on. One day I'll figure out how to line up the photos with the text. But this works for now.

The first "work day" didn't accomplish much. We wandered around the house, looking at the fixing that needed to be done, and allowed buyer's remorse to set in. It hit D first, me a little later. We didn't realize how much work the house needs. We have our hands full.

I bought paint colors on Tuesday, but we didn't get into the house until Thursday. That night we didn't do much, either. We removed things from the walls and spackled a few holes. I took some wallpaper down in the living room. (Yes, wallpaper. Who does wallpaper anymore? I mean, seriously.) But mostly we wrote down a list of things we needed. Then we went and spent more money purchasing said list.

And then we went home and prayed that we'd win the lottery.

Not really. We did pray. But not about that.

Welcome to Homeownership

We bought a house. D and I closed on Monday this week. The realtor's office was stuffy and hot, and by the end of all the signing, D was yawning and my signature was barely legible. We gave away lots of money, and then wrote a check for more. We gave that away too.


And then they handed us the keys. I felt a swelling, like maybe I'd cry. I grinned at Vid and he looked sort of dazedly at me and smiled back. Our mortgage broker, Sue, handed us a celebratory bottle of wine. Our realtor, Teresa, hugged us and wished us luck.



After the closing we realized we both had headaches, so we drove over to a nearby park and took a walk to clear our heads. The park was crowded and busy with soccer games going on, boys whizzing by on scooters... that sort of thing. But it was still peaceful. The sounds were muffled, sort of like it is after a large snowfall. Maybe all the large leafy trees helped absorb them. Or maybe it was the buzzing in my ears that arose as I contemplated what we had just done.