Our best laid plans

We tried to get things done this weekend. We really did. Unfortunately, I enter the new week with nary a picture to show for it.

Adam has been working. A lot. Some on the weekends, even. So I have to say that the hours diverted to financially viable endeavors and the sleep needed to keep up with such diversions, has certainly put a dent in our progress. Add to that my Florida work trip and illness, it's been hard to get anything done.

Once I got over the cold, I spent Friday night in bed with debilitating stomach cramps. But Saturday morning I felt pretty good, so I tackled some of the boxes that were still lingering in the dining room. I got 2 walls of the room cleared and unpacked (the poor dining room table has rings of boxes surrounding it on all sides...well, now on 2 sides). I even set up my fountain on the broad windowsill and set up accessories (!!). And then after lunch, the stomach cramps hit again. But by Sunday I felt better... good enough, in fact, to spend all afternoon helping the kiddo finish her unpacking and cleaning. And wowsers-- does she ever have a room!
I'm waiting to post before and after pics until she has all her posters-- including the van Gogh Sunflowers that she requested for her birthday-- on her wall, and cushions for the window seat. I'd have gnawed off my right arm with my own teeth to have a window seat in my room when I was that age. Still might, come to it...At any rate, she can actually get to and use her papasan chair now, enjoy the one houseplant we have which is perched in her window, and best of all, she has ample space in the middle of her room for her yoga. I'm really excited to finish up this room...

We did make valiant attempts to get the kitchen counter trim into its final stage, as well. We needed a ten foot piece of red oak trim, and at least a 6 foot piece. They've been out of the longer lengths every time we've been lately, so we rushed out Sunday morning and tried to get 2 matching less-warped lengths. We were willing to buy 8 foot pieces, too, instead of 6 as long as we could get a good match.

And then we got home. And realized that we'd left the store with a 6 foot and an 8 foot piece. But it was just as well; our cabinets are redder than the pieces we picked, so we'll just have to start all over again one evening. Sigh. We can't say we didn't try.

It's really hard, you know, when life gets in the way. Besides the usual work and family, I'm joining the gym today to get back to yoga classes and this Saturday I'm hoping to make it to Little Rock where my best friend has just purchased a 1920s Spanish mission style 2-story stucco house. It's so cute and she has the absolute, hands-down best taste of anyone I've ever known. She takes things no one could ever possibly think would look good and makes then fashionable and cozy-- the best part is that no matter how polished she makes it look, I still want to wrap up in a blanket on the couch. I haven't seen it yet, and I'm so excited to see what she's done with the place...

So for now, the long and short is that I suppose I have to be satisfied with the little things-- happy with every little box that gets emptied. And I am-- seriously; that one half of our dining room looks awesome.

Good fences make good dogs

Yeah, look. I know it's ghetto.

The dog won't stay out of the flower bed. He just keeps digging and digging and kicking dirt all over the patio, and tearing up the root system of the four o'clocks. I originally put up the wire thing you can kind of see in the back...as pups go, he's pretty responsive to boundaries, however real. But that cool, wet dirt got the better of him and he ended up in the bed once again yesterday.

I thought maybe a more substantial looking blockade would help, so I used the ends we cut off of our fencing boards. unfortunately, the little plants that are struggling to come up, are doing so right at the brick border, and I didn't want to hammer the wood into them and crush the little guys.


So I spread them apart, and now they look like jack-o-lantern teeth, and I managed to hammer my hand, which now hurts ALOT. And then I spread cayenne pepper water all over the bed and fence. We'll see how he does. The places where he's not digging are coming up like gangbusters


Meanwhile, the living room is kinda coming together. At least it looks like a place to sit and most of the boxes are out of the way. It makes me want to sit in it, and I guess that's all that matters.




Pay no attention to the shadeless lamp. It was a moving casualty.

We also finally got the insurance claim's itemized settlement statement and it's VERY detailed. We'll hire some of it out and do some of it ourselves. I'm just glad we can finally get moving on some of this crap.

Patience is not my strong suit

Lots to report from the weekend, but I can't upload all the pictures until the morning...Still, I couldn't wait to report the one thing I CAN show you.

Remember this?


Now it looks like this!


Eeeeee! It's so exciting! And it's even better from this angle:


The backsplash is up! More details and pics to come...

Fresh!

A little procrastination on Saturday morning led to a trip to my favorite local nursery. We've decided that we don't have the time right now for a full garden, or even a good spot for it at the moment...so we picked up a few tomato plants, basil, oregano, chives, parsley, lettuce and spinach seeds, and a strawberry plant just for kicks (I've got designs on a strawberry patch someday and reusing an old chain link gate for raspberries). We'll grow our mini-garden here:


This gets great direct Southern light, and hopefully the parsley will perk up a bit with the rain and sun. As for the tomatoes, it's always a crapshoot with them. My grandmother's family raised tomatoes and worked in the canning factory; they grew them on a rocky hillside, so they could vine out as as is their wont. The rocks are a natural trellis and keep the fruit from rotting on the ground, eliminating staking. We've been seeing those commercials for the Topsy Turvy hanging tomato plant growing system things...then Adam found instruction online and, with the kiddo's help, made a couple of his own:


Basically, they cut the bottom off of a 2 litre bottle and poked holes in it so we can hang them with twine from the eaves. Then they used a hair dryer to heat up the bottle near the neck. Once it was soft, they sort of turned the spout end inside out-- or more like, they caved it in, then planted the plant sticking out of the spout. I'll take better pictures of this when we get them hung. We'll see how they work. If they produce some fruit and eliminate staking, I'm all for it.

Our warm weather plants are finally making an appearance:


Canna lilies are poking through and the lantanas and four-o'clocks are starting to grow. I'm still harboring hopes of planting a Japanese red maple in the back yard...And let's not forget it's Earth Day! There's rumors that the Agri college is giving away 3 foot pin oak starters on campus today, and I'm hoping the rain will hold off long enough for me to get one!

Oh! And we have new neighbors:


Look closely. You can see a bird's eye up in there. We have a family of Blue Jays-- they have been mercifully not trying to kill us while we work under this cherry laurel, but I'm mostly trying to stay out of their way.

Meanwhile, back in the ranch...Besides new baseboards and backsplashes, there's empty boxes all the way to the ceiling!


Well. Aided by a table.


And finally, a pot rack. The kitchen is ALMOST unpacked.


We cling to the little things, ya know?

And now I see

I finally see our furniture. It's taken a while, and there's many more boxes to go, but they are slowly disappearing from on top of and around the furniture...

Dining room was:


Dining room is now:


Some of those tables from the before pic have made their ways to the sides of the room, perhaps not to permanent locations, but the fact that there are sides of the room toward which they may go is major improvement:



I owe most of this progress to Adam-- he's been working hard. And while this post isn't an exciting one, it's largely for Heather, who couldn't make it to the house this weekend, and when that happens, she often demands pictures of what has changed. I'm preempting that.

Personalized

Nothing says, "making a house a home" like toddlers diving into the bathtub.

I found the Lux ad in the Target dollar section, but the other picture has been in my possession for as long as I can remember, and it's hung in every bathroom I've had since moving out. Adam put these up last week; they are the very first items to hang on the walls. The mantle picture doesn't count as it's only leaning in place.

Creeping and crawling and rainy day blues

Speaking of...I think that perhaps one of these may be what crawled into this. The smell seems to have fortunately faded somewhat while we were gone.

Unfortunately, the clutter did not. I so hoped it would magically crawl back into the hole from whence it came while we weren't looking. But it was still there upon return and seems to have only expanded. It sort of feels like all progress has ground to a halt and the shit-shit-everywhere has finally got to both of us.

Noses will, from here on out, be pressed firmly to grindstone. In theory, of course. I still reserve the right to sit on my ass once in a while and play online jigsaw puzzles (real ones would be more therapeutic, but the damn cats like to play Hide the Puzzle Piece with me...that or Eat the Puzzle Piece and throw it up in a location that I will invariably step in on my way to the bathroom in the morning).

We hope to tackle the kitchen trim this weekend. It doesn't look like the backsplash will have arrived by then, but maybe we can get to the countertop trim, as well. I also want to have the bedroom relatively box free by that time and Adam is working on the dining room, which became a repository for all things displaced. Jumping from the doorway to the bed is not an ideal situation, really. Nor is skating across the dining room floor on a stray pillowcase; fun when intentional, hair-raising when accidental.

Part of our lack of progress is a bit due to weather; we've had a lot of rain. I mean a lot. Torrential freaking downpours. But a break in the madness yesterday and today means we will finally get my grandmother's outdoor dining set moved over. Pictures to come. We are also "borrowing" her recycling can since our POs didn't leave theirs and I haven't called for a new one yet.

In case you're worrying that we've been sneaking to my grandmother's home late in the night, all catsuits and flashlights, don't. She has moved into an apartment, so things like lawn furniture and hedge trimmers aren't too necessary.

In the meantime, I ordered our towel bar for the bathroom, so as to feel useful. I'm not sure it really worked.

Onward and upward, I guess. In this economy, I don't think we have a choice!

Countdown

99 boxes of shit to unpack,
99 boxes of shit,
Unpack one,
Think you're done...

There's still 99 boxes of shit of unpack.

I don't know how that happens, but it never ever ends. It's like they sprout a replacement every time I get one emptied. I think they're some freakshow mythological figure that just grows a new head each time you cut it off...Anyway...Pretty!

So I guess it's been a while. Not for lack of progress in general...Mostly for lack of time. Lack of visible progress. Lack of wakefulness. Spring break. Weather that actually promotes being outside at the grill over inside at the computer (weird, right?). And Easter.

Adam has been diligently priming and painting the kitchen trim, among other little projects like cleaning out the garage and ordering drawer glides that don't work. I kid!

Uh, actually, I don't. We so wanted drawers that pull all the way out-- the fancy, smooth gliding, ball bearing, full extension drawer slides. So we found a good price online, ordered them along with the special attachments for face framing, and promptly discovered that they were unusable.

So we went to Lowe's and stocked up on run of the mill, undermount, single track glides. The upside? $16 as opposed to $75. It really dulls the blow of the whole episode. So this:


Has led to this:


Followed shortly thereafter by this:


And this:


Ok, so pretty much none of these items will stay in their current locations. But it does mean that they are off the floor, out of the boxes, and free of the black garbage bags they were reduced to when we ran out of boxes.

Unfortunately, the rest of the house looks like this:


That weekend was particularly productive. We fixed our two year old couch. Two boards in the support frame had completely split and the whole couch sank in the middle. What!?! So we've been eating a lot of fast food since this whole project started...and maybe I kinda let the membership at the gym lapse...a year or so ago...Let's not talk about it anymore. The couch is fixed.

Moving on.

On the same day that we did our furniture repair, drawer slides and cabinet filling, we also FINALLY mounted the bathroom wall cabinet:


And I am pleased. Yes, this room is also still a mess, and no none of these colors photographs well together, and yes the window is still covered in paper towels (even though you can't see it.; full disclosure and all that). Add it to the long list of shit we have to deal with, which includes unpacking so that I can find my jewelry pouch and two favorite black t-shirts that have all gone awol since the move, as well as this big ass hole in the hallway ceiling:


There was an old attic fan here-- you pulled a cord in the pantry, and that cord you see there pulled a piece of plywood back from a grate in the ceiling. Unfortunately, that attic fan is no longer functional, and we'd like to put a new one in, but that's not in the cards right now. So this will become an attic access point. Which will sure as hell beat the teeny tiny space in the pantry.

So, um, that's the main stuff...My dog has finally come to live with us, more than ten years since I left home. He was kind of the family dog, but was always definitely mine. A bit of a "one-owner" kind of situation. My mom was allergic to him and he was quite a barker in his day, so he really didn't get a lot of attention. Now, he and the kiddo have become fast friends and he's quietly taken to sleeping on my pretty monkey grass, smushing it totally flat. Next step will be bringing over his boon companion, the cat who thinks she is a dog. More about her when she makes the move.