Painting myself into eternity.

WHEN WILL THE PAINTING EVER END?

Probably never.

"But you just finished painting every room in the Ardsley house!" you say.

"Yes my friend, but we have TWO houses. And surprise, surprise, it's time for Belmonte to get a fresh coat." I say sadly.

Yup. We are back in the saddle... or should I say back on the ladder?... painting the Belmonte house. I begrudgingly came to this conclusion after a few facts were laid out to me. 1.) You can see the outline of picture frames after we took our paintings to Ardsley... also you can see all the imprefections that we covered up with those pictures. 2.) I have numerous feedback forms from people who walked through our house who say the colors are too crazy, it needs alot of work, and the curtains are ugly. and 3.) We have an open house in 2 weeks.

So you can guess what happened. Yup. I did my typical Kristen declaration about what "we" are going to do. It went something like this....

Me talking to Dave on the phone: "That's it! I've had it. We are painting the entire house buy-me-beige, I am taking all the curtains down, I am rolling up the all the rugs and we are doing some serious yard work and we are going to sell this house damnit. These people are idiots! Don't they know you can paint the walls whatever color they freakin want once they buy it? Does no one have the ability to see potential? We are just going to have to hand it to them on a freakin silver platter."
Dave's response: "Ok."

So I am yet again painting walls after work, and trying to scrub the splatters off my skin and out of my hair in the mornings before I have to go back to work at my day job. You are going to have to bury me with a paint brush in one hand.

Yes - someone is up for manual labor! WooHoo!

As a follow up to one of my previous blogs... We are getting reinforcements!

Thank You Jesus! Dave's parents are coming next weekend for a few days and they VOLUNTEERED to work on the yard. I can not even tell the sense of relief that I felt when Nancy said "I am prepared to rake the dead grass." YES!!
I have raked that dead grass twice... we have attacked the bushes with shears... and I have nearly thrown my back out trying to weed the garden beds... and we haven't even tackled the back yard yet. This yard is a project that's bigger than both of us. I don't really know how in the world we can keep it up. Maybe it's because it's constantly growing - so you are always redoing what you just did. It's the never ending project. UUgghh!!
So needless to say I am really excited about the in-laws visit. Hopefully we can rip out some of the beds and sod them over. And besides that - this will be the first visit where we are all actually staying in the same house together. Isn't that amazing? We can finally host people! I'm sorry it's taken 4 years to be able to do that!

The magic touch.

IT'S ELECTRIC! Doo do doo do do doo do do do...

(Yes that's right. This blog has got an electric slide reference.)

I have some sort of superhuman power - I have the ability blow out lightbulbs. I swear all I am doing is flipping the switch, but it happens to me ALL THE TIME. What's the deal? Frequently I go to turn on a lamp or an overhead light, but instead I hear the pop sizzle, a bright flash, and then utter darkness. Then usually Dave follows up with, "Did you do it AGAIN?" Thanks honey.
This happened to me yet again this morning in the den (or man room). I went to flip on the overhead lights so Arnold could see his breakfast and POP Sizzle - another one blew out. Did I mention there's already one out in that room that I blew about 3 weeks ago? So now we are down to 1 out of 3 lights that are actually working in that room. Did I mention the fact that I was holding the cat at the time of the incident? Yeah that was fun. Nothing like claws in your shoulder to wake you up in the morning.
So in short - it may not be as cool as superhuman strength or the ability to fly - but I've got a superhuman power too. Now how can we harness it?? HHhhmmmnn.....

Anyone up for a little manual labor?

I am trying to tame the beast that we call the "yard" but it's proving to put up a pretty good fight. Sunday I spent most of the day ripping up the weeds that had taken over the front flower bed. It almost looks like a small version of dollar weed... it's got the same root system.
I finally got one corner to look like this...


Amazing how they hang on so tightly to the dirt... yet the flowers I buy at Home Depot, if I so much as breathe on them wrong - they curl up and die faster than you can say "waste of money." Apparently I was taking most of my frustration out on the poor rake I was using. It took a beating as well as my back - it STILL hurts and today is Wednesday. Yikes. I have this fear that I will someday really throw my spine out of whack, end up a paraplegic, and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. That fear comes from my fireman friend Ben who saw this happen. (Thanks alot Ben!) A guy was in a very minor car accident, but it was forceful enough that he had whiplash and didn't know it. One day he turned his head wrong and BAM - paralyzed for life. I think what really scares me most about that scenario is that I would be dependant upon Dave to do my hair and make up. Now THAT'S a scary thought. I might end up looking like Baby Jane.

Seven month itch...

It's been 7 months since we bought Ardsley... and we are running out of major renovations to do. (I never thought I'd say that!) I don't know whether it's the lack of funds we have right now... or the fact that we are now living there and are settled into the routine of daily life. But we really have nothing major to tackle anymore. There are lots of little things... but it's hard to motivate yourself when none of them are essential.
For example - we still need to figure out how to get rid of the residue left behind from those shower doors... I've tried just about everything that comes in a bottle. My last resort is a razor blade and elbow grease - to hell with the finish on the tub.
And we've still got REALLY BIG projects to do - like ripping up and re installing a new deck, new windows, getting rid of the sliding glass doors - but most of those projects either require a lot of cash or a professional know-how. I am not about to personally tackle the door or window situation. I watched a friend try to install a new front door... let's just say my ears were burning from all the cussing. Sailors would have been ashamed. That is one project that I will gladly pay someone to do.
Anyway - I got on this rant because Dave got me thinking about it last night. I guess we got so used to doing big projects - it feels wierd to not have anything to do. I can liken it to not being able to sit still. I have to be moving and doing something all the time.
So I guess this will change the nature of our blog!! There was a time where we were so busy all I could do was list the projects we were doing. Well... I guess you can expect some really detailed blogs about little projects we've got going on!!

Reuse...Recycle...

The old bookshelf we used to have in the dining room has got some new life breathed into it! Last week I painted it brown and peach to match our new bedroom. The peach I had left over from the bathroom - the brown I picked up with one of our handy dandy home depot gift cards (Thanks Kara!) I did the first coat of paint and it turned out pretty yucky looking. I then promptly turned it over to Dave and said "I can't look at this thing anymore." and he made it look fabulous. (How does he do it?) He claims to not like painting - but the man does good work.

That bookself has been around... I built it with my dad when I was a teen. It was in my bedroom at my parents house... then it came with me to my first apartment and I gave it a shabby chic white wash. Then it moved to Belmonte where it was in the dining room. And now it's in our bedroom - holding all our novels. Looks pretty good for being an old bird!!

Hallway - DONE

Yes my friends, it was 6 months in the making - and what a wonderful hallway it's turned out to be. We are finally done with those walls. It was so hard to justify doing anything to that room because you spend very little time there. You're either walking through it one way or the other. But now we stop and say "Hmm.. what a great little hallway!" I ended up giving the trim a fresh coat of white and getting rid of all those finger prints. The walls ended up being a yellow - Tea Cookie by Behr. I wanted something bright and cheery since it's got no windows and doesn't get much light. I never got around to painting the doors - but they really need to be done now that they are up against all those fresh walls - they look awful.

Another humoungus milestone happenned this weekend. We had our first really big group this past Sunday for the Superbowl. 28 people showed up - and I was a nervous wreck that someone would ruin our new house - but everything was fine. No one broke anything. The floors held up and came out ok. There was 1 big scuff mark but Dave was able to get rid of it. I have a hunch it was a certain 8 year old boy who was scooting around in those sneakers with the rollerskates in them. But other than that and a few doritos that made their way onto the floor - everything went off without a hitch!