Finally finished painting ... the first room ...

I only has a little bit of trim work to do today. I'm so happy to be done painting in the bedroom. Tomorrow morning we're going to finally move our clothes into the room, and hopefully that will be the first big step at unpacking the rest of our stuff.
I did go to Lowe's today and buy some new knobs for the built-ins. They look sooo nice now.
I've decided to make piece with the dark brown sheers that were already in the room. They technically match the bed, so they don't look out of place. Ok, so maybe I wouldn't have picked them, but I think that for now, they'll do. I've got bigger projects on my list.

Unfortunately, there is one drawer that just won't go back in. I've tried every drawer in the slot, and none really fit. The one I decided probably originally went with it goes in, but is almost impossible to pull back out. So something is going to have to be done about that ...

Another day of painting and unpacking

Today, I wanted to see if I could rearrange the kitchen alcove to make it a little more user-friendly. I had a heck of a time getting the pantry cabinet unscrewed; I eventually gave up and waited for Chris to do it when he came home for lunch. lol Then, as I was pushing the cabinet to the opposite wall, I broke this wrought iron plant hanger in half that was screwed into the window trim. Not that big of a deal, but it was just an indication of things to come.
As I tried to turn the fridge--moving it only about a foot--I somehow bent the copper tube that brings the water up to freezer and the water dispenser. Water started squirting out behind the fridge, pretty much soaking the floor. Luckily, I knew enough to find the shut off valve on the pipe down in the basement, so I stopped it from getting worse. But now I have another project to add to my dad's "Please help me Papa" list when my parents come out to visit next week. lol

Below is the back of the fridge, the copper pipe, all the paper towels I put back there to soak up the mess, and of course, a lot of dust. Yuck!

I painted the trim around the windows and the built-ins today. It looks sooooo clean and nice compared to how it looked before. I can't wait to get the drawers in it and maybe put some new knobs on them. :-) Then the room will finally be done.
Here is a small sampling of the drawers I painted yesterday. You can't see it in this picture, but I even painted the inside of the drawers so they would be nice and clean for us. One or two more days of drying out before we can actually use them though ... I guess we'll just have to make do with digging through piles of clothes on the floor for a couple more days.

Here is the alcove that I'm planning on turning into my closet. I might have to rip out the cabinets. Not sure yet, though.
This is the closet outside the bedroom door. Could definitely use a new paint job to keep Chris's clothes clean.
Chris is just happy to come home, play some World of Warcraft and watch The Simpsons.

Little Cat Lost

After two loads with the big Remax truck, hours of loading and unloading, last minute packing, and finally bringing Oreo over to his new home, we were pretty happy that the worst was over.

Boy were we wrong. Meowface escaped from the backyard after only a couple minutes of being unsupervised. We walked all over the neighborhood and asked our new neighbors to keep and eye out for him. I was freaking out. The idea of him wandering around and not knowing where or what his home is, it was awful. Dave and Lisa took off about an hour later after helping us so much all day, and Chris and I had to take the moving truck back. When we got home, we walked around again looking for him. By the time we were done, it had been about four hours since we last saw him.

Completely exhausted, we knew we had to put the search on hold for the night. We headed inside and Chris had an idea. He put Oreo's bed and his water bowl and his food bowl with just a couple pieces of food in it outside on the back steps. The hope was that he'd smell it and figure out that this was his house.

Well, after about ten minutes, Chris walks outside to check the bowl, just out of curiosity. The food was gone! He ran back into the living room to put his shoes on, saying he thinks it was probably just a racoon or something, but that he wanted to check anyway. A minute later, I heard him calling my name. I ran out to the driveway, where Chris was kneeling next to his car.

"It's him! He's under the car!" he said. Oreo was completely freaked out and didn't really know what was going on. It took a minute or two before we could coax him out. But apparently no matter how nervous or confused he gets, Oreo will always take time to eat. lol

The weird part is that we have no idea where he could have been hiding that whole time. He had to have been very close in order to have watched Chris put the food bowl out. But we searched everywhere in the yard and never saw him or heard a peep from him. Needless to say, he will not be left outside unsupervised ever again. lol

Day Three/Four: Time to unpack!

Day Two Pics: The Bedroom Progress

Yesterday was the big moving day, and I was worried all morning that our king size bed wouldn't make it up the stairs to the bedroom. There's a sharp turn at the top of the stairs which seemed to pose an obvious problem. Luckily, there is also a small half bathroom at the top of the stairs. We ended up backing the mattress into the bathroom so we could do a one-point turn to get it to the hallway on the other side of the wall.

Aside from having a bed, the other thing I'm really happy about with the master bedroom is the carpet. It really helps to brighten the room and make it feel like a nice, clean space.

Just take a look at these pictures. Here's the bedroom before we got carpet:

And here it is after we had the carpet installed:
Crazy, right? I still have a lot of work to do with painting the trim and doing some touch-ups where the painter's tape didn't live up to my expectations. But so far this is definitely my favorite room in the new house.
Here's the room after we moved the bed in and reassembled it. I still have to finish patching that hole in the wall where I/the toggle bolts ripped a chunk of the wall out.
Chris and Dave installed a small air conditioner in the window, since we've noticed that the upstairs often needs to be cooled when the rest of the house is at a good temperature.

Day One: Painting the Master Bedroom

Well, even after heading over to the house by 8 AM this morning, it took me til about 3 to get to a decent stopping point with the painting in the master bedroom. My arms and legs are sore, and I have another full day of painting ahead of me, but man oh man am I happy. :-)

Here's an updated picture of the front of the house. The bushes under the windows have gotten a little unruly, so we definitely need to get in there and trim those back.



So here's the first "before" picture of the master bedroom. The brown paint is just too dark for a room with sloped wall/ceiling. The first step for bringing in a little light was to primer pretty much the whole room.
A little treat left behind by the previous owners: screws with toggle bolts behind the drywall. I thought maybe the screw just went into the stud, so I unscrewed it and gave a little tug when I thought it was stuck.

Big mistake. The toggle came out and left a gaping hole in the wall. Sigh. I decided not to make the same mistake twice, so I left the other screw in. Hopefully we can get some clippers to snip the head of the bolt and left the toggle just fall behind the wall.

I didn't notice before just how bad of shape the trim in some parts of the house is. Luckily, I have all the tools and paint I need to get this fixed tomorrow. :-)
Oreo kept me company today while I painted. This was near the beginning, with only a little primer painted on.
Oreo may have picked his favorite spot in the house already.
End of Day One: So here's an idea of what I'm going for. Pay no attention to the bright blue painter's tape, though. We decided that the sloped part should be white like the ceiling just to keep it nice and light in the room. Plus, the paint is not as gray as I thought it would be, and I'm afraid too much of this blue will look like a little boy's room. haha

Painting here I come

I can't believe it's 7:45 AM and I'm already dressed and ready--no, eager--to head out the door. I'm debating on whether or not to take Oreo over to the new house with me to keep me company while I paint today, and to let him do some exploring. I want to bring over a small load of stuff, though, and that might be difficult with the MeowFace running around. Oh well, we'll see.

The carpet guy measured and got all the numbers in the system, so now I just have to call Lowe's and find out costs and schedule the actual installation. Yay! Interior decorating is so much fun!

Pictures tonight, probably. :-)

We bought a house ... and forgot our anniversary

With all the excitement and craziness surrounding the house, Chris and I both completely forgot that yesterday was our 2-year anniversary. haha Oops. I remembered, oddly, when he was signing all the paperwork for the house, so he said, "Well, I guess this is a good anniversary present." lol Not a very romantic day, but certainly an exciting one. We are meeting up with our newly engaged friends Jim and Rhonda for dinner tomorrow night, so I guess we'll just pretend that's our anniversary and celebrate then. lol

I had to meet with the guy from Lowe's to get the rooms measured for carpet. I got back and found Chris freaking out a little. I believe it's called "buyer's remorse." lol He seems to be worried about all the things he's going to have to do now. So I didn't get to dig in and get started on my painting and patching and stuff, sadly. But I plan on pretty much hopping out of bed and heading over there in the morning. I can't wait to make a little progress on the massive amounts of painting I have to do.

Tomorrow we close!

I'm am very happy and excited to announce that tomorrow is closing day on the house! We do the final walk-through around 3:30, then head to the attorney's office to sign all sorts of fun papers and hand over the closing costs. Shortly after that, we're having someone come in to measure a couple of the rooms for carpet.

And then the real fun begins.

I'm planning on heading to Lowe's tomorrow morning to pick up some putty to fill nail holes and my first few gallons of paint. I've been planning for this for so long. It's hard to believe the big day has finally arrived.

Millions of before and after pictures to follow, I assure you.

Let the packing commence

Only one week until we close on the house. I started some preliminary packing yesterday to prepare for the big event. So exciting!

We're planning on actually moving a week from this Saturday. We have the big truck reserved from ReMax (they let all of their clients use it for free!). Hopefully I can get the master bedroom painted and carpeted in the two and a half days between closing and moving.

Kate and Isaac's Wedding

This weekend we headed back toward Ithaca, NY for a wedding. Chris's friends from Cornell, Kate and Isaac got married in this beautiful little chapel in the woods. The reception was at the Fountainbleu Inn on Seneca Lake. Very picturesque setting, perfect for a wedding.



Here's the groom (sitting) and the groomsmen and ushers.

Chris is looking good in his tux ... even if he is just an usher. (Running joke at the wedding. The wedding planner asked Chris and Pat if they were "just ushers" in a disparaging tone, so the rest of the wedding party made jokes about it all night).

Bucket of flowers hanging from the pew.

Inside the Inn.



Chris and I staying cool and having fun at the reception.
I actually caught the bouquet! Yay!

Kate and Isaac were grooving on the dance floor.
Okay, in these videos you'll see the happy couple having fun and dancing to one of their favorite songs. In the other, various other wedding guests dancing, including Chris and the famous Deitl. Unfortunately, I was not able to capture the height of Deitl's performance that night, only a very small taste of what this guy is capable of.

dGuides

I've been writing away for my internship with Destination Ad Agency. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I really think it's improving the technical aspects of my writing. The New York City site, which I'm writing for, won't be launched for another couple months; however, here's the link to one of the other dGuide sites. All the cities are presented in the same fashion, so you can get an idea of what I'm working on.

http://dguides.com/philadelphia/index.shtml

My car is purring like a kitten

Chris and I headed back to his dad's house this past weekend to celebrate Lisa and Lynn's birthdays. While there, Chris and Dave installed a new motor in my car door so that my driver's side window now goes up and down. Pretty much the greatest thing ever! It hasn't worked in a very long time, and I've had to avoid tolls and drive-thru fast food places all the while. So it looks like there will be some thruways and greasy food in my near future. :-) Yay!

Old shirt teddy bear

After reading an article on this guy who started making teddy bears to pay for the renovations he was doing on his house, I started thinking about the art of making something like that. I wondered how hard it could be, and if it was possible to make one without a pattern. Then I started thinking about material, and what traditional teddy bears were made of. It seemed simple enough, but I figured it was going to be deceptively so. But, since Chris was away this Sunday, I decided to give it a shot. Using some white thread and an old shirt I pulled out of the back of my closet, here's what I came up with. I haven't stitched up the middle yet because I'm still deciding how much cotton to put in the little guy.

The eyes are from an old bracelet I took apart a while ago to use some of it's other pieces.

So it's not the greatest teddy bear of all time, but I think he's pretty cute. And certainly not bad for a first try. At very least, I think he's going to make a nice welcome home present for Chris. :-)

Meow Face? More like Cute Face

Oreo has been my constant companion since Chris has been away on his work trip. I guess Meow Face knows he's the man of the house now. Here he is keeping me company while I write and doing what he does best.
He's like a little kitty tortilla.