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...

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!