So, Yvonne and I were sitting around last night after tearing the carpet out of yet another room and moving some more furniture out of our room and we got to thinking about how long we had been on this project and realized that Friday is our 5 week anniversary.
This blog is going to be pictureless and short, but more will come later. We are on the verge of putting our new carpet in this weekend so life remains busy.
This week we dug into the biggest project we've undertaken on our house, new paint and carpet. I was okay with new carpet, but the whole painting thing had me on edge. It didn't help that Yvonne wanted color in the house. See, I've lived my whole life with white houses. Color was for carpet, rugs, curtains, etc., not for walls. I was nervous, to say the least. But Yvonne has pretty good color sense so she finally talked me into it and that really helped that I felt I could trust her judgement.
Of course, we had to add to the project. We were tired of some of the lighting that was left over from the 80's it seemed. (We've found some of our lights still for sale at Lowes and Home Depot. Scary!!) I also wanted to add a ceiling fan to the front room because it has just been stuffy this year.
So after a couple of months of research and procrastination we dug into the project last Friday. Progress has been good. After one week we have painted three rooms and installed half of the new lighting. Woohoo!
We started with Brynley's room and the kitchen's over-the-sink light fixture. Friday night we started emptying her room. Saturday morning I replaced the light fixture and we headed to town to get the rest of the parts we needed and the first cans of paint, ceiling white and light yellow. The rest of the afternoon was spent taping and prepping and painting the ceiling and base boards. Monday, Yvonne followed up with the walls and that night we moved Brynley back in.
What difference light makes! The darker one is actually more accurate.
Tuesday, we moved Braden out and Yvonne painted the baseboards and followed up with the ceiling that night after I got back from Elders Quorum visits. Wednesday, Yvonne painted the walls and we moved Braden back in. It's kind of hard to see his color, but it looks really good.
Thursday night we started the lighting in the front room. I don't have a picture of it yet, but we really like the change. Our home teacher, Scott, helped us put in four cans and wire them in, which required a couple of visits to the attic to complete. Not to mention we had to put all the insulation back that fell out while we were cutting the holes for the cans. We had plastic all over the front room.
We knocked out the old 3-gang switch box and put in a new 4-gang box, added new rocker style switches and a new and improved dimmer switch for the recessed lights. Another great improvement. Since it took so long to do that we will finish the lights in the kitchen this week, hopefully, as well as the attic vent/fan that we are adding to move the air better up there.
We then moved on to the bathroom on Friday and Saturday. We had to cover up a few things and repair a few spots on Friday so we could paint on Saturday, but we still managed to get the ceiling and baseboards done on Friday. Saturday morning our friend Will came and took our mirror off the wall so we could paint everything. He is bringing us a new mirror Tuesday that will cover the entire width of the counter. I can hardly wait as it is about 60"x40". Saturday's painting went pretty well outside of a few jovial mishaps between us. Yvonne couldn't keep her roller on the wall while painting around the shower head and I couldn't keep my hands off the wall, not mention that little oops of trying to improve a corner and painting on the wrong wall (aka, ceiling) with our pin roller. Ooops!
Needless to say, there were a few touchups we had to take care on ceilings later that day. As a side note, always buy 2" tape when painting. The smaller stuff isn't worth it!
I'm afraid the color doesn't show well here, but it turned out nice and we like it.
So, tomorrow we begin work on our bedroom. Ugh. The worst room in my opinion. Not the hardest, but the worst. I detest moving our room around as we have all the heavy furniture. But, we'll deal with. We hope to go looking at carpet as well, but we'll see what the holiday does to that goal.
Now to get used to having color all over. I think it is really going to hit me when our room is finished as it will be the first room I have to spend any amount of time in so far. I'm just in and out of the kids' rooms and the bathroom, but not the bedroom. Oh, well. There's no stopping this freight train now!
There you are casually browsing a website, relaxing and checking out the content when your computer starts blaring this horrendous noise out of its speakers for apparently no reason and you swear your speakers must be turned up full blast.
You know what I'm talking about: embedded music players! Uggh! I can't stand them!
The concept should be banned from the internet. Don't force people to listen to your "favorite" music, you know it isn't. You just make a best effort based on what they have available. Not to mention the player slows down website browsing and has you making a mad scramble for your speaker volume controls before something shatters, like your ear drums or your windows and that's because you can't click the Pause/Stop button because the stupid thing is still loading so it won't respond to your mad click, click, clicking on the mouse button.
If people want background music while surfing, they've got iTunes/Winamp/Media Player/etc. to do the job for them and they get to listen to the music THEY like.
Don't use embedded music players on your website! Be kind to humanity (and your friends and family who frequent your website the most).
Once again I'm home for "vacation" while Yvonne is off playing with the Young Women. This time it was for Girls Camp. She sure seems to be having all the fun! ;)
So while Yvonne is up playing in the mountains, what is Mr. Mom doing this time? Oh, let's try reorganizing a couple of rooms. Oh yeah, lots of fun. Nothing like grunting a couple of dressers, desks and cedar chests around by yourself.
See, I got a decent bonus recently and got to build a new computer with it. It's been about three years since I built the last one and I was due. I needed more drive space, a few more horses, plus it's just fun to do every so often. :) (Yes, I'm a geek.)
With that, Yvonne decided we should get a new desk and then we got to talking and decided it should be in our room rather than in Brynley's room. So, I got to break everything down and get it cleaned up. (Talk about some dust! Whew!! (Cough, splutter, cough...))
Tuesday night I built the computer after my case arrived and that took all evening, especially with the kids "helping". It took from Wednesday evening through Thursday to move everything around and get the basics in place and kind of functional again (not to mention laundry day, yes, I did the laundry (see rolling of eyes)). Friday morning was organize everything I could, finish cleaning house some and head for Batman - The Dark Knight!!
I love customer appreciation events. One of our vendors rented out a theater for two viewings of Batman - The Dark Knight. Very awesome. I had a great time. (Big thanks to Stacy for watching the kids again until Yvonne got home from camp!)
By the time I got back from that Yvonne had made it home and gotten all cleaned up. Ah, what a sight for sore eyes. It is so good to have her back. I love that woman!
And so another "vacation" passes....
