Pre-Parental Frenetic Burst of Activity

So Mom & Dad were coming into town to check out our progress on the house. Seemed wise to actually have some progress to show them.

So for the past months, we've really moved into high gear around the place. The initial goal was to have achieved a state of doneishness wherein all essentials would have been completed, and only fluffy stuff--like replacing ugly light fixtures or installing a ceiling fan on our porch--would be left to accomplish at our leisure.

To be specific, this was my initial goal. Matt, who is able to learn from history and thereby avoid repeating his mistakes, was well aware that I was cosmically, wildly, ludicrously delusional to think we had the time or money to accomplished everything by late August.

Consequently, instead of installing all of the needed baseboards (in the master bed, study, and hall), we contented ourselves with the baseboards in the dining room. Instead of installing the rest of the flagstones for our patio and weeding, mulching, and edging all of our beds, we were pretty darn proud of ourselves for having (mostly) completed the front-side bed, a long, L-shaped number that encloses what I like to think of as the Croquet Lawn. Instead of refinishing both the tubs, I half-finished the guest tub, leaving it in a state of sticky incompletion. (That darn epoxy still hasn't dried in some places.)

Still, we worked our little tails off to get this much done, and what we did really does make a difference, especially in the dining room. (Making baseboards out of planks, by the way, is not for the wimpy, especially when both the walls and floor waver wildly all over the place. 10 x 1s don't exactly accommodate themselves to the vagaries of turn-of-the-century construction.)

Nekkid walls. Note the handful of turquoise spacers, leftover from our bambooing days.

Ooooo! Lovely new baseboards! They currently look one stage better than this pic: all the gaps have been filled in with wood putty, and they've received a new coat of paint.

Mom & Dad were very sweetly complimentary about everything, in spite of its half-finished state. They kept saying that they were amazed by how much we had achieved, which was very gratifying. Apparently, The Family at large (whom they have been visiting recently), were also surprised and impressed by the quantity of work I've been doing, particularly work involving power tools. I'm not sure that their amazement entirely redounds to my credit, actually. I admit, yes, I am kind of bone lazy, and yes, I'd twenty times rather ply a book or a computer mouse than a shovel, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable, particularly when properly motivated (as when a gun is pointed at my head or I am confronted with hideous mint-green paint day after day). Harumph. They should have seen me with that nail gun...

In any event, a good time was had by all, lunch came up beautifully, to be frank, if immodest (grilled chicken and polenta with blackberry-nectarine salsa, tomato gratin, and Spanish potatoes. Tasty!) and we had a very nice time showing everything off and visiting.

Now we need to schedule some more visits quickly before we run out of steam.