"Have you moved in yet?"

This is the question I get asked roughly a dozen times a day by well-intentioned co-workers and casual acquaintances. I know they are expecting me to say "Yes, and it's awesome!" and they kind of look at me suspiciously when I say "Not yet -- still getting it ready."

I think most people do not do their own painting and renovating. Because if they did, they would know it takes forever! I mean, I'm still working my usual job and my volunteer job, so all we have are evenings and weekends.

Still, we ARE making progress, I swear! The living and dining rooms are almost done. I honestly feel like all other rooms should go much faster, because they are smaller. Even the kitchen might be a speedier endeavor (I hope).

Here is my beloved cutting in the ceiling paint around our foyer light fixture. That foyer is a tricky space. I really like split levels, but the little landing at the doorway makes for some interesting challenges when you're painting. Poor Frey is leaning semi-precariously back from the ladder (one day, I will post the story of how we bought this ladder, which is a hilarious nightmare) to get the job done.

I am so, so tired of taping. Still, it's the responsible thing to do, especially when you're as sloppy a painter as I am. Here's the door to the deck, and all its many window spaces, in fully taped-out glory.

Tricia stopped by to help! It turns out, she is a cabinet-peeling sensei. She managed to peel several door and drawer fronts off in complete unbroken pieces. If only that were a marketable specialty skill... still, she shows the pride of a job well done.

Let's talk about that hammered silver paint. Finish-wise, it is both the bomb and the diggity. Working with it, though, is trying. It is beyond fumetacular. I had a serious headache after finishing the fireplace, door and windows, even with proper ventilation. Still, it's just so preeeeeeeetttty:

Oh, banister, I have been putting you off for too long. I'm not going to lie - I have been DREADING painting this thing. So many nooks and crannies. And that trim goes down to the lower level, so I have to clean the stairs to get it all painted. (That darn Andrea, our cleaning maven, is overseas for work. What about MY needs?)

As things stand now, the banister has gotten two coats of paint, and needs some touch-ups.

Have I mentioned how much the purple we chose changes tone depending on how the light hits it? This next picture is a great example. The area at the top of the photo looks like it has an almost magenta cast to it, while the bottom appears to have the cooler tone of blueberry yogurt. Same paint! I suppose it's fitting that our Halloween-inspired rooms have a certain Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde quality.

Those stairs will be black, too, but we are using a high-gloss paint in those areas, vs. the semi-gloss going on the trim.

Have I mentioned how much I love having our Haunted Mansiony vision come to fruition? Every time I walk into the house, I sigh with happiness. I am always thrilled to see the last thing we finished in a new light the next day as each step becomes part of the overall effect. I know our design style is not for everyone, but there's no debating that it's impactful. I adore our "modern Victorian" aesthetic, and I can't wait to live in it all the time.

Warning: I suspect I will continue to wax rhapsodic at an ever-increasing pace as we get more and more done on the house. As I type this, it occurs to me that's kind of like constantly complimenting myself on design choices.

Nice.

The Black-Out Continues

So, we're getting trim in the living and dining room taken care of, and I am thankful. I'm so tired of trim! I also got all the hallway doors painted - finally!

This is the view of the upstairs hallway now that I've banished all the white. Squeeeee!

I kind of love the purple and the aqua with the black.

AND, last night's exciting development - the first coat of hammered silver on the fireplace:

I'll confess, I should have done this after I taped ALL the doors and windows that need this silver treatment. But frankly, it's been a rough few months, and anything I can do to add some sparkle and fun is aok. The paint-on version of this paint (I had previously only used the spray variety) is just as fumey as the spray. And all this time I thought it was the propellants making it stinky.

As we see the finish line for the main living areas, our thoughts turn to the next daunting task: the kitchen.

Brian took a peek at the cabinet doors, and after a little fiddling, discovered that they come off pretty easily.

Take THAT, cabinet door! One down, 25 to go!

Loads of changes.

It's been a bit since I've posted, and there have been a lot of developments, both in life and in the house.

After three years with Cartoon Network, I was laid off the Friday before Thanksgiving, exactly three weeks after we closed on the house. Sigh. I am still riding the roller coaster of reactions and emotions. Right now seems to be the angry and resentful portion of the ride. I'm hoping it passes quickly. On the upside, working at the house always makes me feel better.

Here's what's been happening:

Painting the ceiling is more or less complete. We still have a few cut-ins to do, but otherwise the textured nightmare is over for now. Here's an action shot of me attempting to get some coverage in the foyer:

The purple goes on...

...and on and on...

Somewhere along the line, we discover that the factory finish on the kitchen cabinets peels off quite easily.

Once this discovery was made and we decided to go ahead and peel them all, peeling became everyone's go-to activity when they needed a painting break.

Then, the black out began. Still working hard to obliterate any and all signs of white.

The fireplace is going to get a hammered silver/pewter finish, as will the windows. That will be one of the very last things we do in the living and dining rooms.




The view of the dining room from the living room, which shows our black wall. It will get a little Oogie Boogie magic before long.

There's been some significant progress in the trim and doors department as well, so look for pics in the next update!

This is not the gray you're looking for.

Drat.

We got more paint on the ceilings of the house last night. When we opened up the new can of paint we had just bought and began to pour it into our empty pans... it was not the right gray.

I checked the lid on the can. It's some color called "Silverstone" -- not our color. Ours is "Silver Screen" and that other color doesn't even appear on the chip card we gave the guy at Home Depot. I can only presume that he did a text search and wasn't careful about what color he picked from the list.

Blar. Since we already poured out some of the paint, I don't tink we can return it. It's not a terrible color, so we'll use it somewhere, just not in our living or dining rooms. Perhaps the running room or the downstairs hallway.

Lesson learned! Always check your paint lids!

At least this lesson only cost $20.

White-Be-Gone

Everyone's heard me say it a million times: I hate white.

I don't even know WHY. Just do! I think I associate it with boring. I need more stimulation than that. I didn't wear white to get married; I'm certainly not going to live in a white house.

The new thing we have learned: painting textured ceilings is HARD. Sometimes, the texturey crap peels off and wads itself around your roller. Yay!

Brian is a total trooper -- he took on the huge vaulted ceiling in the living room. What a prince! He got it halfway done last night, and did a great job despite the ceiling trying to fight back.

I worked on the much lower ceiling in the dining room.

Yay! Gray kicks white's ASS!

We gotta hustle to get the ceiling done so we can attack the purple walls this weekend while we have friends over to help!

Fairly low-key night last night

Brian dusted the vaulted ceilings (I'm so thankful I didn't have to) and patched the hall bath's many wall holes and dents.

I taped the rest of the floor covering down. It now feels like we are slowly trying to hermetically seal the house.

Next up: painting the ceiling in the main areas (living room, dining room, hall)!

Plumbing... less fun than electrical work.

Yesterday, we replaced the house's water regulator.

The short version: we got it done, but it sucked.

The long version:

I had big plans for Sunday. A nice long list of tasks to barrel through. Little did I know that the home improvement gods had other plans. Here's the step-by-step on how to have a bad, bad day.

1. Go to Home Depot (Trip1), buy many things, among them, the water regulator.

2. Get to the house. So far, things are aok.

3. Attempt to remove old regulator. Can't. Too tight. "Let's go to Home Depot and see if there's a solvent for pipe sealant."

4. Talk to Marshall at HD (Trip 2), who tells us no such solvent exists, and that we're just going to have to do with with wrenches. Buy a plumber's wrench.

5. Back at the house, I putter upstairs for a couple of minutes, during which Brian, unbeknownst to me, has strong-armed that regulator into submission and removed it. Yeah!

6. Begin installation of new regulator. Realize that it is very easy to lose track of which way to turn threaded parts when you have multiples of them in a vertical layout.

7. Get regulator more-or-less in place. See constant dripping at one of the joins, even with the water off.

8. Back at HD (Trip 3) to pick up sealant.

9. Back at the house, undo threaded connections, add sealant, re-connect. Still leaking.

10. Home Depot again (Trip 4)! Plumber's epoxy, which I used in many costumes along the years, is my next choice.

11. Get back to house, undo connections, add plumbers epoxy, re-connect. We see no leaks!

12. Putter around for 30 minutes to make sure epoxy is totally set before we turn the water back on.

13. The moment of truth: turn on water, run upstairs to hall bath, turn on faucet. Sputter, sputter.... nothing. NOTHING? WTH? OMG did we over-epoxy and block our whole plumbing system????? Panic on my part, and I think Brian has a strong desire to give up.

14. Calm myself enough to call Dad. He has never touched a regulator, and seems a little surprised we would even try. Hmmmm. He suggests putting the old regulator back and seeing if it works, then going back to Home Depot and asking someone for help.

15. Put old regulator back, turn on water... NOTHING. Being plumbing rookies, we are beginning to think we tripped some mystical water switch somewhere.

16. Take pictures of the crime scene, and disconnect regulator to bring along. This will help when talking to the helpful Home Depot employee.

17. Off to HD. Brian finds Marshall. We begin to relay the events of the day, what happened, what didn't happen, and when Marshall asks what the main water shutoff looks like, whip out the camera to show him. I seriously cannot stress the picture thing enough. It was a HUGE help, and ended up being fairly important in sussing out what the problem was: we weren't turning the water completely on. The knob would turn about 1/4 turn and hard stop, so we assumed it was a simple on/off situation. When Marshall saw the pictures, he told us that if it has a spigot knob, it has to turn multiple times, and to keep working it. (There are also lever knobs, which only turn a partial turn, but that is not what we have.)

18. Back to the house. Re-assemble. Test water to see if the main valve knob being under-turned is indeed the problem before we seal everything. There is gushing. Oh dear lord there is gushing. Somewhere in there, I cause a whole new tragedy by trying to open the locked (unknown to me) garage door to dump out a full leak bucket, which causes the garage door opener to break. Oh, jesus. The home improvement gods are testing us.

19. Get water turned off, get regulator back in place and fully sealed.

20. After waiting a little while (out of fear more than anything else), turn on the water and test.

21. Rejoice at working water regulator and no leaking!

22. Run the first load of laundry in the new house. YEAH! The system works the whole time!

And there it is in 22 easy steps!

While the laundry ran, I did manage to get some additional tasks done. I finished up the last bit of painting in the laundry room, and I started taping down protective plastic sheeting over the hardwoods in the living and dining rooms. So, more than one thing got done. It's just that one thing took us about 10 hours. Blar.

The good news is that after a lot of stress and tempers flaring, Brian and I still love each other. This whole house thing is definitely a strain on a relationship, but I think we'll be ok. And one day, we'll laugh about our rookie plumbing mishaps. One day.

Satisfying electrical project!

We picked up our washer and dryer today. That in and of itself was an adventure. Everything went smoothly; it's just a mammoth chore lugging large appliances down stairs at the pickup location, then upstairs at home. Still, with Brian doing all the really heavy lifting, we got it done.

Then, we got them home. We were hooking up the dryer when we realized... the outlet and the plug did not match! Ugh. I had a semi-panic. I was totally fretful that the dryer we had just bought was going to be useless.

I consulted my two fabulous DIY books. Home Improvement 1-2-3 was a gift from our realtor after we closed on the house and it is fantastic. The Reader's Digest New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual was a gift from my delightful work husband, and is also fantastic. Between these two hefty tomes, we've got a LOT of info at our fingertips.

I learned that most appliances work on a 240 or 120/240 volt outlet. Regular outlets are usually 120, so these have more power, which means you have to be careful! The diagrams in the books made it all seem like a pretty simple switch out of three wires. No problem! I can totally do that. So, off to the hardware store. We found the right outlet plug, got it home, unscrewed the other one from the wall and discovered... FOUR wires. What am I supposed to do with THAT? I guessed that the fourth wire, a non-insulated copper affair, would have to be the ground, but I was not confident, so I did what I always do in such situations. I called my dad.

My dad has DIYed EVERYTHING. Even so, he is extremely modest. When I told him I had an electrical problem, he was all "ooooh, I don't know how much used I'll be..." then went on to describe to me in detail what each of the wires does, how a circuit works, and that my plan for that extra wire was probably ok. So, we capped it, and proceeded to re-wire the rest to the new outlet plug.

We plugged in the dryer. Brian flipped the breaker back on. We pushed the button to start the dryer... and...

HOLY CRAP IT WORKED.

And it didn't shock us!

I have never done anything electrical before. In fact, it's always scared me. But I figured I needed to get used to doing things I'm not comfortable with, because a house has needs. And this first go was successful. Huzzah.

Behold, our new outlet:

Here's to hoping it doesn't do anything screwy when we run our first load!

After a short break...

... tonight we'll resume work on the house!

Wednesday night, we were too exhausted to do anything. I was in bed by 9pm. Last night, we had an event at the aquarium, so tonight, I better finish that laundry room! We've got a washer and dryer arriving tomorrow.

I'm planning to paint the washer and dryer black initially, then they'll get a fun pop art treatmentdown the road when I have some time. Wheeeee!

The laundry room is glowing.

We are getting a new (to us) washer and dryer on Saturday, and we're going to bring it straight to the house. Thus, I had to hustle and get the laundry room painted, because I don't want any white rooms in the house, and it would be a pain once we moved in.

So, off to Home Depot to pick paint. I already had an idea in my head for what I wanted, but I perused the paint chips just to be sure. Yep, still like the same color -- a really saturated aqua tone from the Behr Disney line called "Ariel's Song." There is some irony at play here since I am not a fan of the Little Mermaid (don't get me started), but I do love Ursula and am hoping to incorporate a little of her evil into the laundry decor later on.

So, I got the room taped off, and started painting. After a little while, I hear Brian's voice: "That sure is a blue room."

And then Andrea: "Holy crap it's glowing!"

I laughed, but just kept painting. A little while later, I went out to the living room to get a sip of soda. As I was walking back to the laundry room, I saw what Andrea and Brian were talking about -- the color from the laundry room was casting a blue sheen all over the hallway. That's one yummy saturdated color! The picture below only kind of captures the glow coming from the suds lounge:

Il y a beaucoup de purple doors.

Monday, 11/9 -- More purple paint on more doors.


How many purple doors can you spot in this picture?

The door to my sewing room is purple, as is the closet door directly across from it. Originally, I wanted all doors leading off of the main living area to be black, but as the door to my sewing room will stay open a lot and the room it opens into is going to be Lilo & Stitch Hawaiian themed, the black seemed too harsh. After a little panic on my part, Brian suggested using the same purple as is in the main area. He's a smartypants. Crisis averted.

I did, however, run out of purple door enamel and will need to buy more tonight. I need to start a running tally of how much all this decor is costing.

Brian in the meantime took the awful job of continuing to pull up tack board downstairs. Pulling the nails up from the slab is causing divots in the concrete, so we're going to have some patching to do for sure. Brian is awesome.

My beloved also assures me he can take down the ugly flourescent light in the kitchen and its wooden surrounding fixture box without destroying the ceiling. I am a little terrified.

House Log

Alrighty, here's what's been going on recently:

Friday, 11/6 -- Pulled up more carpet tack board. Continue to NOT enjoy doing so.

Saturday, 11/7 -- More of the same, PLUS our awesome cleaning crew of one, Andrea, began her attack on the skin of grime that sits all over everything in the house. Here's Andrea, hard at work in the kitchen and very good natured despite the horrors she discovered atop the cabinets:


We managed to get all tack board off the stairs and out of all upstairs rooms and closets. I hate carpet more than ever.

Sunday, 11/8 -- REAL PROGRESS THAT WE CAN SEE! Brian went to visit his mom after her back surgery, so Andrea and I were back at the house. She cleaned the "princess" bathroom (mine, and yes, it will be pink!) until it freaking sparkled. She also hit some windows, floors, the other hall bath, and the laundry room. I cleaned, sanded, and painted the front door. The exterior is black, and the interior is... PURPLE! It is awesome. This is the first actual color we're getting into the house, and it felt so good. It's like I can now see it becoming our big art piece.

Our 1st week of home ownership

Well, after a very long and arduous slog through the purchase process, we have finally closed on our home.

Now we are in the early stages of renovation. The kitchen will get a very serious makeover, and the rest of the place will mostly get paint, and some flooring.

Here's how things have played out so far:

Friday, 10/30 -- Closing! We had friends and pizza at the house to celebrate!

Saturday, 10/31 -- A little too booked with Halloween events to visit the new abode.

Sunday, 11/1 -- Pulled up carpet from 2 upstairs rooms.

Monday, 11/2 -- Carpet removed from two more rooms. (Carpet pulling is faster than I expected.)

Tuesday, 11/3 -- Rest!

Wednesday, 11/4 -- Last 2 rooms cleared of carpet (I hate carpet! None in my house, thank you!), plus carpet removed from stairs.

Thursday, 11/5 -- Pulled up carpet staples from stairs, guest bedroom, and sewing room. Removed carpet tack from guest bedroom. THIS WAS BACKBREAKING WORK! This is also where the time suck is on carpet removal, as it turns out. Those staples on the stairs really kicked my ass, and Brian was totally worn out from yanking up those strips of carpet tack. BUT progress is being made, and that feels good.

Every moment we spend working on the house, I feel more like it's our home.

I can't wait until the moment when we can just live in it and not have a mile-long list of work that needs to be done, but we'll get there, slowly but surely!

Sewing Draws a (Feline) Crowd!

I finally have weekends again now that my big project at work has launched! Huzzah! Time to catch up on chores and sewing!

I will admit, though, as many sewing projects as I have scheduled this year, I sometimes have a difficult time actually getting started. It's so easy to sit on the couch and pet the cats and watch tv. However, I DID manage to get in gear a bit over the weekend, and I had lots of help!

Zissou has always loved the sewing table. I don't know if she just likes the sound or vibration of the sewing machines or what, but the second I turn on the lamp above my sewing area, she jumps right up. Turns out, Mr. Burns can't be left out of ANYTHING. He has to be part of every activity, and sewing is no exception. He bites at thread (a little irritating), he paws the flywheel while it whirs, he sits and watches with that odd little expression. And then there's Ozzel. He sometimes is into the sewing thing, but not consistently. However, now that there are two other cats hanging out, he fears that he will miss something or that I will use up all my love and have none left for him. So now, he's regular as the sunrise. :)

The really great thing is that it's great motivation to get work done. I mean, who wouldn't want to hang with three fabulous cats?

Mr. Burns - Out and About!

Well, our new little pal is doing fantastic. He is cleaning up pretty darn well. We still have some work to do - he's still got stains from whatever gloop he got into when he was out in the world alone, but he looks a lot better already.

He has now had time to run around the house will all but one of the resident cats, and I'm thrilled to say, things are going well. We've had a stack of three baby gates between him and the rest of the crew for the last week and a half so everyone can smell each other and interact if they so choose. That's really helped get everyone familiar and has allowed them to interact in a very safe way. Ozzel seems to really like him (they have played chase and pattycake), Zissou is ok with him being around as long as he's not too assertively friendly, and Jiji seems aok. Now we just need to get Veers on board! That could take some time... we'll see what happens!