Shopping Haul (Black Friday Edition)

Normally I don't bother with Black Friday, but this year I wasn't out of town and didn't have anything I had to do so I figured why not? Plus, there were things we actually needed and wanted. When we moved to Franklin from LA, we had already learned our lesson about cross-country moves and sold almost everything we owned. And now we're having to buy it all back: furniture, appliances, clothes for freezing temperatures, etc...

Having to sell most of what we own twice and move the rest has taught me a lot:

1. It is amazing how much stuff we own! And a little sad when you think about it.
2. There is no need for us to have so much stuff. We didn't even use half of it.
3. I am a clothes-hoader.
4. If you ever move cross-country, either sell everything that won't fit in your car or sell nothing and rent a uhaul. Either way, it's going to cost you at least $2500.

Okay, enough of that and on to the bragging!

The first huge deal I got was this sweet washer/dryer combo from Best Buy for $999. It was especially awesome because I didn't have to camp out in the sleet the night before to get them. Woke up around 6am, walked in, bought them in the appliances section, and went back to bed; the whole process took about 30 minutes. Yay!

Later in the day I went to Target and got this quilt for our master bedroom. I lurve the Dwell Studio stuff at Target! I know, I know gray and yellow are on their way out, but I have wanted this bedroom for about a year now so at the time it was trendy. Also got a coffeemaker and a crock-pot for $9 a pop! And, thank goodness, the clothes were on sale too. So I get Ben and I some clothes for these 30-degree nights we've seen lately.

And I finally got the white Christmas tree I've wanted for years (for $38, no less)! Unfortunately I had to go to Wal-Mart for it, since I couldn't find one anywhere else for less than $100. I would love to have a real tree in the house, but our animals are crazy and we don't know how my allergies would react and faux trees are soooo easy. Now I just have to decide what color ornaments I want...

Progress Update...in pictures!

A few picture of what's been happening the past couple of weeks...

The electrifying blue...ick!

A blue that works! Finally!

Hole in our closet after ripping out a small square of old vinyl flooring, concrete, and a huge piece of plywood.

Rebuilt the subfloor. Thanks for the power tool skills, theatre degree!

New hardwoods in the closet.

Ben trying his hand at sanding.

Study, after the sheetrock was hung. Ben and Don did the big pieces, I did the smaller ones.

Built-in cutting board I discovered, cut out. Not sure what to do with this yet.

I've been a bad blogger,

and I'm sorry. I'm noticing when ever there's a tiff or non-progress in the house, I get distressed, don't blog about, and then go shopping. Definitely not healthy.

What's happened in the past two weeks:
+ all the pre-move rooms are painted completely.
+ fixed the hole in the closet's subfloor and put down hardwood floors over it.
+ completely sheetrocked/mudded/sanded/primed the study
+ passed my income tax course with flying colors and expect the job offer to come any day now.
+ brother-in-law, Ray, came to visit for a week and we've all been having a pretty good time, except...

- Ben caught a stomach virus and was so ill we had to go to the ER at 1am
- then Ray got sick, too.
- with everyone sick we weren't able to go to anyone's Thanksgiving (would have been my first with the in-laws) and instead Ray and I had a Bobby Flay-esque fried chicken throw down. During which we promptly both lost.
- and then there's the floor situation...

The Floor Situation

As you can see, we attempted to sand our floors. Our intentions were to refinish them, since there are a few stains, cuts, gouges, and it's obvious the floor hasn't been worked on since it was installed. So we rent a big orbital sander (the safe kind for doofuses like us to work with) and a lot of sand paper and get to work. And after four passes in a room the floor still looks like the picture above. Granted, the picture is off a corner and you have to go in with a different sander for around walls, but there's finish left everywhere on the floors! After sanding for a couple of hours with 24-grit paper, which is basically rocks glued onto some paper. So we decided to return the sander before they charge us another day and have a pow-wow to decide what next we should do. (I've since come to the conclusion we should have just kept going, but c'est la vie.) Diane knows someone who knows someone who works on floors so she asks him what we should do. A) He doesn't say. Instead he B) offers to do it himself for $900. She gets him down to $200, seeing as we've already roughed the floor up pretty well. Awesome, right? Well...

He calls last Saturday saying he has time, could we let him in the house. Diane and Don go over to let him in, but go run some errands while he's working. Then he calls to say he can't do it. Every time he plugs in his sander, the fuse box flashes (?!) and his sander stops. He leaves. The next few days Diane and I talk to every electrician type we know to figure out what we can do. Everyone we talk to says they'd have to see it in person to say for sure, but it sounds like the floor guy is crazy. We think he may have taken off the plug to his sander and was just sticking wires in an outlet...good grief. We manage to get one of the electricians to meet us at the house with the floor guy that Tuesday, but the floor guy can't come. Because it's raining. Sigh.

So, now the floor guy is supposed to come Monday and Diane and I will be there to see what he does. And I'll have my dad, also an electrician, on the phone just in case. Here's hoping!

I guess as frustrating as that has been, it has given us the break we badly needed. It's also allowed us some time to work on the little things that can wait until we move in, but would be nice to have done prior: painting the trim, building the closets, and painting the inside of the cabinets. Oh, and I got to shop Black Friday for the first time ever. Got a red LG front-loader washer and dryer for half-off, and I didn't even have to camp out in the freezing rain all night, either!

Ummm...

Is it okay to have five different colors in your kitchen? Seems like the answer would be no, but we'll see.

Kitschen.

Got the first coat of paint on the kitchen today and I'm having mixed feelings. Originally we had planned a light shade of gray for the entire kitchen and a darker shade to replace the yellow inside the cabinets until we find cabinet doors (or decide we like the open look). Now I'm pondering not doing the darker gray, or do we only do part of the inside darker gray? Do we do something different under the chair rail? The kitchen is a bit of a toughie, since I love the original cabinets that make up most of the room, and loathe the cheap additions that are along one wall. We know we will replace the cruddy ones someday, but with what? And we had decided to do a backsplash at some point just not soon, until today Diane comes to me with an offer I cannot refuse. She'll buy us a backsplash just so she doesn't have to paint that annoying strip of wall...okay!

Now what kind of backsplash? What color? How much do we get, since one side of the kitchen's fate hasn't been decided? I looooove subway tile and think it would go with the vibe of the house, just...what color? Diane thinks white, but I think that would be too much white. No: White, Gray, Red (unless we magically found something that worked and wouldn't tank our resale value), Yellow, Orange, Green, Brown, Pink, Purple. So that leaves: Blue (I would love aqua, but that's just my crazy taste talking) and Black. Sigh.

Thankfully I have Ben helping us out tomorrow, so maybe we'll have a living room color picked out and we'll look at some tile. Whatever we end up with, I'll love as long as it doesn't look like this:

Whoa, Mama!

Ooh...Cute House!

Oh good, there is such a thing as an Arts & Crafts Cottage. And it looks great!

Busy weekend, just not with the house...

The past few days have been extremely busy, but I like said, unfortunately that didn't mean I was busy working on the house. Friday and Saturday was the closing weekend of Wait Until Dark, the play I've been devoted a lot of time to since being cast in the lead in September. It was a wonderful show and I'm a little sad to see it go. Especially since I won't be in another show for a while, at least not until Christmas is over and done with. Friday brought with it parents-in-law and real parents. Saturday was spending the day with my parents and my youngest sister, then the last performance, then a cast party (with my best friends and husband being dragged along for the ride), showing off the house a couple of times, and finally hanging out with everyone at another friend's comic book shop until 3am. Oy! I was exhausted but so very happy after Saturday. Then Sunday came. My car died, my family left, and my stint of begging for rides began. And I didn't even get to help with strike and say good-bye to the cast and crew properly. Then Monday was another bestie and her new boyfriend visiting and homework.

House-wise: Not much happened while life took over for a few days. My mother-in-law has been working a lot by herself, which makes me feel guilty and caused a mini-breakdown. I honestly was feeling like things were going so fast (imagine that!) that they were getting beyond my control. The living room color was all wrong and I put my foot down about it and the paint finish of all the rooms. Diane and Ben had decided flat paint would hide most of the walls imperfections, and that's true, but it also reeks of apartment living. Ick. Unfortunately for Ben, I pulled my diva card and demanded satin finish, imperfections be damned! Come on people! It's a 50+ year house, it's going to have wonky walls and I'm okay with that.

Phew, okay that being over... the kitchen/dining room and master closet is now completely primed and sanded, the master has its first coat of paint, the dining room has the color cut on the edges, and the hallway is flat-out finished!

Now if we could just pick out a blue for the living room. How many light teals can there really be?!

Historic Paint Palette

Speaking of paint, while the husband and I were at Sherwin Williams getting our samples I came across something pretty nifty. The Sherwin Williams Historical Collection is a five different paint palettes based on eras in American design. Of course our house being a mid-50s ranch I was drawn to the "Suburban Modern" colors. There's also Colonial/Classical, Victorian (1880s), Arts & Crafts(1900s), The Jazz Age (1920s), and Streamlined Years (1930s).

Historically accurate paint colors with all the modern conveniences? Ah, I'm in love!

Can we paint now?

I feel like a bored child stuck in the backseat of a cramped, hot car driving through the desert. No interesting work to be done, just more mudding and sanding, priming and sanding, discovering more boards....and sanding.

After my small paneling victory last night (the whole time not wearing any protection like a proper doofus), I spent most of the night coughing and sneezing. So I've learned my lesson about dust masks and respirators!

::holding right hand up::

"I solemnly swear from now on to not egg on my allergies and wear all kinds of protection when working with particulates."

Okay, so recap of what work was done today: baseboards and primed and sanded and ready for paint, almost walls are prepped (unless mother-in-law finds more spots, which is very likely), paneling is off and out of the house, wonky sink in the extra bathroom is fixed and is no longer leaking sewer gas into the house(!), and most of the paint has been picked out.

PS- I will now preach the virtues of getting paint samples to try on your walls. The only color I was positively in love with turned out to be a great color...just not in a house.

This is progress?