Monday, September 27, 2010

Weekend report

This past weekend was super-busy, but we did get a lot done. We started off with the post yard sale on Saturday morning, where we managed to turn a bunch of unwanted junk into approximately $450. The rest of the weekend was all about painting and unpacking. I keep thinking that I will wait to post pictures until one room, ANY room, is 100% done, but that just isn't how things are happening here. Instead it's a little bit here, a little bit there, a little more here. So I'm just going to say to heck with it and post evidence that we are in fact taking care of business.

First off, I have to say that this house is freakishly hard to take pictures in. It doesn't get a lot of natural light, but flash tends to wash out the paint colors and make them look funny. So instead I get mostly dark and fuzzy pictures, but oh well.

I guess you could count the front doorway as "done," as it has been painted and we have applied the wall sticker I ordered from Amazon:



The second-floor bath is also almost done as well, except for some basic organizing. Fred has painted, replaced the shower head, and assembled the storage tower that sits over the toilet. The walls are the same yellow as our kitchen, and the curtains on the window are actually shower curtains from our previous home:



I can't wait for the living room to be done, but that won't happen until the new couch arrives in November. Here's what we DO have done though:







We are also making progress in the dining room. The table is almost entirely cleared off, but that silly white cat is still there:



The built-in china cabinet in the dining room is almost together (and if you look through the door to the right, you can see Annabelle doing homework at the kitchen table--BONUS!):



Next on our agenda:

-Pick a color for my office.

-Paint our room the gorgeous light turquoise color we've picked out.

-Paint Fred's office Macadamia.

-See if Analytical Gray is the magic bullet for Annabelle's and Mike's room and, if so, get them done. (Speaking of which, I am too easily influenced by paint color NAMES. For example, there was a gray called "Dorian Gray" that I wanted desperately even though it was totally the wrong shade.)

Monday, September 20, 2010

AWOL

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately. We got distracted from our painting project but are now back in the game and working in the foyer and our bedroom.

Annabelle has been busy with school work. Fort Knox High School operated on a block schedule, where 8 classes were spread out over 2 days. Here she has 7 classes every single day, which shortens the class periods but seems to increase the amount of homework (or at least to decrease the amount of time given to get it done). She has a part in a play next month though, so she is excited about that and happy to be finding her Kansas people.

Mike's reports from FSU are encouraging. I don't think any of us expected it to be so emotionally exhausting to start college on the heels of a deployment and cross-country move, but he is settling in nicely. He is doing well in his classes and participating in the swim club. He also has callbacks for the circus tomorrow and Wednesday!

Fred is enjoying his new job, and we are enjoying seeing so much of Fred. He walks to work each morning and then comes home at lunch. We are getting spoiled by having supper when the sun is still up.

I'm working 2 mornings a week at the post library and getting credit toward my library science degree, which I should be finishing up (finally!) in the spring. I've spent time in the copyright permissions office and am now working in the archives, looking up copyright information on old German books. Fun!

Since I don't have any recent painting photos to upload, please enjoy this picture of Harvey, taking a nap on Annabelle's Algebra II book:

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

First day of school

Annabelle left a little while ago for the first day of her sophomore year:



She decided that her lucky socks clashed with her outfit, so she is carrying them in her purse instead. Here's hoping this is the beginning of a great 3 years!

Monday, September 06, 2010

Laborious

As my grandmother pointed out in the comments to my previous post, we have put the labor in "Labor Day" this weekend. I think poor Fred is looking forward to going to work tomorrow just so he can get a break. He has been painting like crazy!

Here is the kitchen, which is Sherwin Williams' Hinoki, as is the butler's pantry and our bathroom on the second floor:



On my monitor at least, this seems to be a pretty true representation of the color. It's a delicious buttery yellow, just like Karla suggested.

The living room and dining room are both Ecru, which looks too yellow here and is actually more on the green side:





The dining room table is still cluttered with all sorts of stuff that we're just not sure where it should go. Where should one keep the white cat, for example?



The weekend hasn't been all about painting though; it has also been about shopping. We went to Nebraska Furniture Mart on Saturday afternoon and ordered a 55-inch television, a sound system, and a Blu-Ray player. Later on, I ordered 2 of these things, which I think might be the ugliest furniture I have ever wanted:



Annabelle and I test drove one in person the other day and fell in love. It rocks! It reclines! It has cupholders! It is the furniture equivalent of sensible shoes, but since they will be hidden away in our man cave on the third floor, who really cares?

Then we ran into La-Z-Boy and picked out and purchased a new red sofa in under 15 minutes, which has to be some sort of record:



Today I made another score off of Craiglist. We have to put the cat food up on something to keep the dog out of it, and this is how we had it in the butler's pantry:



Thanks to Craigslist and a nice lady in the suburbs of Kansas City, now it looks like this:



Everything is clicking along quite nicely, but I'm afraid we have something of a purple problem going on in the foyer. Remember how we had chosen Sherwin Williams' Mature Grape? I'm afraid a better name for it might have been Smuckers. It looked for all the world like grape jelly, although it was better after the second coat. We made an emergency run back to Sherwin Williams and brought home samples of Cordovan and Marooned. Marooned is the one in the middle, and it's the one I like. Fred hates them all but if pressed prefers Cordovan, which is on the right.



Thoughts? I'm wondering if we should just give up on purple (which breaks my heart) and go with a gold or olive drab, maybe something from the dining room rug:



At least we didn't have trouble picking out flags for the front of the house!

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Something old, something really old, and something new

I've been doing a bit of shopping lately for stuff for the house. For example, I was dying to get an old-fashioned glider for the front porch. I started haunting Craiglist, and found this one:



My eventual plan is to strip it down and refinish it like some of the ones on this site.

I also have been searching for an antique armoire for the foyer, as there isn't a coat closet anywhere on the main floor of this house. I happened to mention that to the designer at Sherwin Williams when I was looking at paint, and she just happened to have one that she was selling. So this is now officially ours, but Fred has to go back on Friday with a strong friend or 2 in order to get it down her stairs:



And then today Annabelle and I bopped into the Polish pottery store in town, looking for hooks for a valance project I have in mind for the kitchen. No hooks, but they had just gotten in a shipment of Polish pottery jack-o-lanterns, and I was unable to resist. So now I have this handsome fellow on the mantel in the dining room:



In painting news, we have selected the colors for our kitchen/butler's pantry (and our bathroom on the second floor) as well as the living room and dining room. The kitchen and butler's pantry will both be painted in Hinoki, which is really kind of buttery yellow but for some reason looks pink on my computer screen:



The living room and dining room are going to be Ecru, which is a beigey color with a hint of green in it:



I'm thinking of using that color in the vestibule at the front door as well.

But then the foyer . . . what to do about the foyer? I'm all about the purple these days, so I brought home a couple sample paints to try out. The one I'm most excited about is called Mature Grape:



Fred has a 4-day weekend this week, and we are hoping to completely finish off the first floor.