Ah, the Invigorating Fragrance of Latex

You may recall that our bedroom walls were two colors: a sort of deep moss and, to my despair, mint green. It was supposed to be fern green, but the lummoxes (lummoxi?) at Lowe's apparently mis-mixed it. At the time, there was carpet to install, furniture to shuffle, and no budget for repainting. So all this time, I've been waking up in the morning and rolling out of bad to get a faceful of winter-fresh circa-1986 mint green. Yech.

As part of my new push to get the house tamed (I like to think of it as a surge, the end result of which will be shock and awe. In a good way. I hope.), I decided to take back the wall. So we got a new shade of paint (I don't even trust them to attempt "Soft Reflections" anymore. We're now going with "Martinique Morn" instead), put down drop cloths, put up painters' tape, and moved the furniture. The new color is MUCH better (a sort of deep fern), and we plan to get the second coat down tomorrow night. Huzzah!

A rough approximation of Spring Eve (L) and Martinique Morn (R)

I also put a second coat on the three pieces of baseboards and on the bathroom door. That means that by tomorrow evening, if all goes well, the baseboards will be ready to install. I'm still feeling a bit inhibited and reluctant, but at least I've got a little momentum going.

Oh, and I installed our first batch of cabinet knobs in the master bath. They're from Restoration Hardware. They're so very chi-chi that I had to buy them in installations--half this week, half the next. But darn it, they're just so suitable. They match our one original door knob, and they look so adorably fin de siècle. See?

Stylin' but costly new cabinet knobs for the master bath

And finally, we're trying to kill off the burmudagrass (which is threatening to choke our shrubs) by covering it with clear plastic and letting the sun braise it. With astonishingly good timing, the weather has actually been sunny all week for the first time since May, so there is some hope of success.

Continued Gussying

Master bedroom

We haven't done anything really big lately, just shuffled our possessions around from one room to the next. Oh, and we've hung most of our pictures, which marks a definite commitment toward a permanent arrangement. Matt's been attacking the chinaberry corpse with a chainsaw. It's a shame it's nearly summer--we now have tons of firewood for our little metal fire pit.

It's interesting how our furniture fits in some rooms and not in others. Although the master bed and study are nowhere near finished, you can tell that in the long run, they'll make sense. I mean, none of the furniture matches any other pieces of furniture, but in a slapdash kind of way those rooms looks like they will hang together. Or that's what I think anyway.

Study--the bigger part. The study is shaped like an "L"--this bit is the long downstroke.

I'm not so sure about the living room. We have so much more wall now than we've ever had. Even after we've put up pictures, there are still these vast deserts of emptiness. I do have some boxes of small framed photographs--I'm hoping clusters of those will help somewhat. And then at a later date I'll be putting in long curtains, which may help to tie the top and bottom of the rooms together a little better. A potted tree here and there might make a differnce. But at the moment the room remains a bit of a question mark. The furniture looks sort of lost and forlorn. So much so, that I never sit in there any more. Now I do all my living in the master bed--it feels so much cozier.

Giant empty expanses

Sad little huddle of furniture in the living room

I don't know--what do you think? Do I need a rug? An armoire? A whole bunch more framed pictures? Whatever it is, it can wait a bit--we have everything we need for our day-to-day living, and when we entertain--which is rarely--we can probably just use the dining room.

The dining room is in an intermediate state--it had previously been colonized as a sort of makeshift study, but now that is being dismantled and the whole thing is getting a new personality--half sitting area, half dedicated dining area (something we've never had before). I'm not sure how it's all going to work out, but as there is a squishy chair in the mix, I think it will all be okay.

We've also been working on procuring the necessaries to re-work the obstreperous master bath. We were planning to tear out the beat-up old tub and replace it with a bigger, newer tub (extra deep for our bubble-bathing pleasure!). But when we started tapping on the tubs in our price range at Lowe's, they were all dinky and plasticky sounding. And when we told the tub guy that we were planning to replace it ourselves, he started talking about soldering pipes and setting the tub in sand, and other intimidating things. So now we've rather lost confidence. We're not sure whether to replace the tub with... something or just coat it in epoxy.

So we're shelving that problem for a while, and are focusing instead on replacing the countertop and sink. Naturally, our vanity is an abnormal length, so we're going to have to special order the rotten thing. Finding a person at either L's or HD who has the authority to help us with this problem has been surprisingly difficult--either they're busy, absent, or too snitty to give intelligent help. Aggravating.

So the poor bathroom is in hiatus. Which it's probably grown accustomed to, by now.

Update on the hideous Buick (or whatever it is) in our yard: Matt waited till the car was gone and piled little rock cairns in a row where the Buick used to park (leaving, I might add, huge permanent ruts). For a day or two, it looked like the message had been received. But then he just moved further up our yard (nearer to the intersection with Ave F), where he is no doubt wearing a brand new set of ruts. I ask you--who does this sort of thing? Would you take up permanent residence in someone else's yard without so much as a by your leave? If he stays there much longer, he's going to have squatter's rights to the outer 6 feet of our property, the brazen hussy. The Battle of the Buick continues...

We Have Domestication

They installed our carpet today, apparently (and in my experience with repair guys, uniquely) without mishaps or contretemps. We've already moved our bedroom furniture in; we're both a bit amazed by the fact that we have extra space. We're so used to cramming ourselves into teeny little spaces that we're sort of bewildered by all the extra room. Bewildered in a nice way, I hasten to add.

I think it looks quite nice, too--cozy and clean and comfy. In a bohemian, post-collegiate sort of way, anyway.

Master bedroom

The study is in a less advanced state of organization. We have to assemble the desk Matt will be using, and we can't find the little nubby things that hold up the shelves in the bookcases, so everything in the study is still very provisional, and we haven't brought in most of the boxes yet.

Study

In one of Fortune's funny little reversals, the rooms we were just starting to domesticate--the living room, kitchen, and dining room--are now totally wrecked, while the master bed and study are the homey ones.

As you can tell from the pix, we have yet to replace any of the baseboards. That's one of our next big projects, along with finishing off the bamboo floor edges and refurbishing the master bath. And one of these days we'll have to do substantial paint touch-ups. Though I'm hoping that if I leave a tooth beneath my pillow or clack my heels together three times, my fairy godmother will just take care of it for me.

On another note, we learned something interesting about the chinaberry in our backyard. We thought that all along it had been holding up the crooked old treehouse. In fact, as Matt discovered when he pulled down the treehouse today, it was the other way around. Shortly after he finished his demolition job, he heard this funny cracking noise and half of the tree came falling down. Fortunately, no people or things were harmed--other than the chinaberry, anyway.

Chinaberry, we hardly knew yeh.

So now we have two large mostly dead trees to pull down: the chinaberry and an ash. Sure is great being married to a guy who's handy with a chainsaw! And we're now in the market for the largest, fastest-growing shade trees we can find.

Moved In

First, a quick update on the bamboo.

Matt installed the bamboo in the living (except for a little strip at the edges), so both rooms are more or less done. We'll need to put in quarter round shoe molding at some later date, but more pressing needs have overtaken us, and piddly little details like finishing off the flooring have been deprioritized.

The floors, I think, look terrific. They definitively assign the house a remodeled--as opposed to renovated--aesthetic, but given that the bulk of our furniture is semi-disposable Danish modern from Ikea, that was probably inevitable. And simpler. I toyed with trying to make the decor more antiquey and traditional, but that would have been difficult, expensive, and maybe not really in character anyway.


We spent Wednesday night, Thurs, and today moving everything from the old place.

We. Have. Too. Much. Stuff.

I'm not moving again until we can afford to pay someone else to do the moving for us. And Matt's really done the lion's share of the heavy moving--after a while I wimp out and do the sissy tasks, like putting down shelf paper and unpacking the DVDs.

The really grim thing is that since the tile and carpet aren't down yet, we're going to be shuffling our belongings from room to room while the installers come in to do their thing over the next few weeks. We're starting to finalize the living room and kitchen, but pretty soon we'll be using them as temporary storage for the towers of boxes and furniture currently stacked in the master bed and study. The thought of all of that extended moving makes me cringe.


We've been sleeping on the sofabed in the living room, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If you squint, it almost looks a like a residence, rather than a war zone. The paint, which caused us so much trouble, is finally starting to look as I had intended--cozy, warm, fresh, stylish (I hope). The furniture and the bamboo really make it all make sense. That, and removing the blue painter's tape.

That's in the public rooms of the house--the master bed and study are big question marks--I still can't tell how they'll turn out.

In the meantime, I'm getting my daily supplement of homeliness from the living room, where we have a bed of sorts, a clock, and an internet connection.

Yeah, about those hardwoods...

Bad news.

We got a flooring guy out this morning to take a look, and he said that the most we could get out of the floors would be 5-10 years. They're antique longleaf pine subfloors, and because they're a softer wood, and old, and in pretty bad shape, he's worried that the top part of the grooves would begin to crack off if he sanded them, as is in fact already happening in the dining room.

So Matt & I conferred and considered and researched, and we've decided to go Pergo instead. Cheap carpet was also an option, but for the public areas we really, really, really want the warmth of something that looks like wood. And the nicer grade of Pergo is actually topped with real wood, so hopefully it will be a convincing facsimile.

So we're going to install it ourselves in the living room and dining room. (The adventure never ends--it just takes a different path. Did Confucius say that? Indiana Jones? Albus Dumbledore?)

The rest of the house, sadly, will get cheap carpet. If we stay there 5 or so years, we'll upgrade to something a little nicer, but for now we're going with uber-functional Berber. (This is the ugly side of Pergo--the shady compromises required to fund the stuff. Ah, well. Appearances must be maintained.)

Meanwhile, the painting continues!

The Ks came out today. Nice friends! I worked their tails off and they brought lunch, too (tasty antipasti sort of thing with meats and cheese and crackers and spreads and tomatoes and olives and salad mix).

Clever Keith installed our new GSDI-whatsits--the plugs that keep you from getting electrocuted in the kitchen or bath--as well as our schmancy new computerized thermostat. He also figured out which outlets/lights were wired to which breakers, with predictably unpredicatable results.

Keith, Being Electrical

We recycled the reject yellow paint from the dining room in the master bedroom closets, which I think was wonderfully frugal of us. And who doesn't want a bright yellow closet? Or two? Kate would like you to believe that she painted the entire built-in and closets with nothing but the weency little brush pictured below.

"I painted this whole thing with just this itty bitty brush!"

Meanwhile, progress was made in the master bath, which used to look like that (below left), but now looks like this (below right).

Our New Master Bath: Decadently Chic or Just Psychosis-inducing?

When Matt first saw it, he started muttering "REDRUM! REDRUM!" and wiggling his index finger at me. I think it will ultimately be tres elegante, but he thinks it looks like I slaughtered a cow in there. Which is silly. A cow wouldn't fit in that bathroom. A miniature horse, maybe, but not a cow.

I don't think I've posted any guest room pix, somehow, though I've been steadily working away at it. Here's the room itself--you may not be able to tell, but it's painted "Churchill Hotel Ecru" with a "Dune Breeze" ceiling.

Guest bedtroom with lovely (if currently obscured) view of great big cottonwood

The bath has "Shadow" walls to match the little desaturated aqua flowers on the valance Ladonna & I are going to make for the bedroom window (above).

Guest bath

And finally, Cathy came out (again--thanks Cathy!) Friday and helped me trim the living room and dining room. (Just a faintly lemony shade of white in lieu of the original dingy white, but what a difference it made. SO much more stylish and coordinated.)

Anyway, she vehemently hated my attempt to control the burnt orange walls with cherry red trim, which made me lose faith in the whole concept, too. So we're going with good old "Golden Beam," which is what's in the rest of the house. If the study wants to be burnt orange, I don't have the energy left to resist it. Will paint door to match tomorrow, though am concerned about paint's ability to stick to a metal surface.

Feral Burnt Orange Study

More Painting

Here's our latest progress report. What's not on there is that Matt finished caulking the gaps in the laths of our kitchen ceiling last night. I think it was rather tedious, fiddly work and kind of made him antsy because when he was done he celebrated by ripping the carpet out of the master bed.


Here he is, rolling up the carpet. We still haven't gotten down to the hardwoods--under the carpet is a layer of plywood.

Matt rolling back carpet

He also investigated that weird kitchen subfloor.

Weird kitchen subfloor

Because it is higher than the adjacent floor, we assumed that it was lying on top of some (probably damaged) original wood floor. In fact, no. It's lying on top of nothing at all. Not sure why it's popped up like that. But in a way, that simplifies things. We'll trim it, replace any pieces that are screwed up, and tile or linoleum over it. No fuss about trying to pull the darn thing up without damaging the cabinets, no need to hire a handyman. Much simpler.

Short post today. Have to get back out there and paint! (some more. again. for the 6th day in a row. how can it take this long to paint one tiny little house?!?)