Come and Sit a Spell

Saturday was a long and exhausting day (well, at least for the fat pregnant lady), but it was well worth it. We've still got some issues to address like the doors on the TV cabinet, the lack of a light fixture, and the pictures need to be hung on the walls. But it was good enough for us Sunday night when we settled down on the ol' familiar couch and watched our first rented movie in years.

Yes, life is good.

P.S. For those of you wanting a baby up-date, there really is none. Only thing new is for some reason in the last two weeks I've doubled in size. At least now I can lay on the couch and demand things be done for me :)

It's Going to be a Very Busy Weekend

Two days ago I placed calls to my mom and Tim's mom. They have been offering to help "get things in order before the baby comes" since I was just a few months pregnant. And up until this point there really wasn't much for them to help with, but now I have a project...

The Great Living room Clean-up of 2006

Yesterdays mission was to find a carpet cleaner with an arm attachment
and buy cleaning supplies.

Today's mission is to find furniture coasters so the newly finished wood floor does not get marked up.

Tomorrows mission is to give everything (permanent and movable) that goes in this room a thorough scrubbing and get it situated.

Sundays mission is to veg out in front of the TV for the first time in two years.

This is almost as exciting as the day we got the first toilet installed!

Bradbury & Bradbury Cage Match...to the death

We are sooooooooooooooo fiscally irresponsible. I blame the house. If you remember my post on the history of this place you'll know we're not the first ones to be "charmed" into pouring money into the place. Remember poor Mrs. Cable? We laughed the first time we read the abstract, but it's becoming more of a scary reality for us. Last year at this time we saw our financial advisor and he pretty much told us that if we kept on this route we would never retire. "You do want to retire don't you?" was how I think he phrased it.

So we have major structural damage to our roof. It needs to be replaced (it's a long story that I don't feel right telling now). So what are we doing? Looking at un-godly expensive wallpaper samples.

We've always planned on doing Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper in our foyer. We'd love to do it through out the house, but from what I figure I will have to work approximately 175 hours just to afford the foyer, and that doesn't include the installation fee. No way are we going to mess with this stuff ourselves. So the plan was that we were just going to put a quick coat of paint on for a few years while we recovered from our financial irresponsibility.

The only problem is we need to know what color to paint the stairwell. We were never going to attempt to paper that. The 18 ft. Ceiling is just to scary, plus that would add another 50 hours of work to the total.

So a few weeks ago Tim ordered samples. Just one problem. He didn't ask me what sample I liked. So you can imagine how ticked I was when the Dresser Tradition 1 Elements showed up. I really don't care for that pattern. Granted I don't dispise it like the Neo-Grec paper, but I really didn't see myself loving it for the rest of my life (yes, we'll pull the old Victorian trick of taking the wallpaper with us if we sell the house, buyer beware!).
So I spent a week looking at it, and it just never grew on me. I could tolerate it, but if I'm putting in 175 hours of work I want to be pleased with my purchase.

So I got on the web site and found the Neo-classical Roomset. I had requested the Neo-classical catalog about three times from Bradbury and they never send it. We loved the patterns and colors. Granted we both love different colors/patterns, but we think we can work it out.
We ordered the Cream set. We had wanted to do something with a little more color, but we also wanted a blue tint in the papers. The surrounding rooms are green and red and we wanted something to break that color block up a little. So Dove was way to colorless, and Jasper and Pompeiian had to much green.

The only problem is they papers are sooooooooooo beautiful that we don't want to "wait a few years" to order them.

New roof vs. Really expensive wallpaper

Bets anyone?

Company Stand-by

Being married to a pilot can be interesting at times. Like when I want something and he's in the middle of doing something else he doesn't ask me to wait or hold on, it's "Stand by."


Yesterday we had the wallpaperer out and the living room is now ready for trim. Here's an interesting tid bit I didn't know. Wallpaper rolls are manufactured for people with 8 foot ceilings. That is what the companies base their calculations off of. Since our walls are 9 foot we could only get three cuts out of a roll, not four. Basically we were a roll short.

Luckily the wallpaper guy had this all figured out before he started the job and was very conservative with what we had. So disaster is averted once again. Yea!

Then I was talking to my mother-in-law over the phone and she asked if he staggered the pattern. I said no, there was no pattern to stagger. But then I went into the room and sure enough he had varied the height of the flowers so they didn't end up in rows across the wall.

Who knew wallpaper could be so complicated?


So now it's just down to putting the woodwork up (which Dale has finished and waiting) and moving the furniture in.

Company you are officially on stand-by.

Three Year Anniversary - Introduction

March 2, 2003 was the day after we put the offer in to buy this house. It was also the first time we did a walk through with a camera. So I consider this date the anniversary of our house even though we didn't officially take ownership until early April.

Every year around this date I do another walk through and try to photograph the same location that I did originally in 2003.




To celebrate our three year anniversary (the first one we've had blogging) the posts that follow will take you through each room of the house. I've included the anniversary photos and, since we are getting close to finishing, my punch list for what I would like finished in each room before we have that open house I've been talking about for the last three years.





Exterior Punch List:

• new roof
• install peak shingles
• touch up paint
• re-do north porch
• fill animal hole
• build stairs
• install trim work on porch bottoms
• landscaping
• finish siding
• screen doors

Three Year Anniversary - the Kitchen

March 2003












March 2004












March 2005












March 2006

Punch List:

• refinish windows
• refinish doors
• clean up door hardware
• seal doors
• hang curtains

Three Year Anniversary - the Pantry

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• refinish window
• install door hardware
• hang curtain

Three Year Anniversary - the Dining Room

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• install trim
• fill nail holes
• refinish windows
• find swinging door hardware
• clean-up door hardware
• prime and paint
• refinish floor
• install light fixture
• hang curtains
• install outlets

Three Year Anniversary - the Downstairs Bathroom

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• install trim
• fill nail holes
• refinish window
• refinish doors
• clean up door hardware
• purchase and install light fixture
• install wall tile
• install outlets

Three Year Anniversary - the Foyer

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• prime and paint stairwell
• install trim
• fill nail holes
• seal window/build storm
• clean up door hardware
• wall paper
• order door chimes
• refinish exterior door

Three Year Anniversary - the Living Room

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• install trim
• fill nail holes
• seal windows/make storm
• refinish exterior door
• clean-up door hardware
• wall paper
• install light fixture

Three Year Anniversary - the Library

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:
I don't have a punch list for this room. We are still battling over what is going to happen in here. I would love to just rough finish it off for now and use it as a play room (it's perfect, right off the living room and you could shut the pocket doors on the mess). Tim is dead set against "polluting" his room this way. Some how I think he might change his mind when our house is taken over by the onslaught of toys that the first-time grandparents and aunts and uncles provide.

Three Year Anniversary - the Master Bedroom

March 2003

March 2004

March 2005

March 2006

Punch List:

• fill nail holes
• refinish windows
• refinish doors
• clean-up door hardware
• touch up paint