The Finishing Weekend: Closets

I'm starting with closets because...well I don't really have a reason. Perhaps because MB finished his closet first on Saturday? After some grumbling because he didn't want to go out to his home town for a cook out, I finally persuaded him and we got out the door. We stopped at Home Depot, big mistake. It was PACKED. Tax Free Weekend. We had forgotten. MB needed some random things and I visited my paint girl and got the "Russian Blue" (in homage to our cat Lulu how HAS to be at least part Russian Blue) for the spare bedroom. I had grandiose plans in my head that because I would be putting the last coat of paint in the office when we got back from the cookout, that I would also be able to get the first coat on the spare bedroom. This plan, never came to fruition.

We stopped at the cookout for a bit and debated on going to a second party we were suppose to make an appearance at but decided to opt out and go strait home. I finished that last coat of red in the office RECORD TIME. I honestly think I did the whole thing, cutting and rolling, in little over an hour. I'm getting better. Meanwhile, MB had taken Friday off and gotten the first coat of poly on his closet. He then sanded and put the second coat on and then hung the bar. So his closet, was done. Mine? Not far behind. Somehow, he guilted me into sanding my own closet because "the sander has the bag attached." Don't get me wrong, I'm not bad at sanding, I just hate it. Anyone who works with wood often enough learns to hate sanding. It gets in your eyes, up your nose, in your lungs and here you have this great project, your so ready to be done...and then, there's always a ton of sanding to do. I gripped but did it anyways, muttering darkly about how I'd have an asthma attack and then he'd be sorry but I finished and he put the first coat of poly on for me so I could finish the office.

By Sunday it was nearly finished. MB began putting his cloths in his closet right after breakfast while I did a quick sand on mine and set about putting the last coat of poly on (he rubbed it with mineral spirits for me). MB made the mistake of exclaiming that he didn't have a lot of clothes. To this I responded "oh goody so I can use your closet!" This is a dangerous subject for him. He said I was not to take over all the closets in the house as he mother had done at their house. I then explained that, unlike he who wears a uniform daily, WE had to come up with a different outfit every day and THEREFORE, need more clothes. He seemed to find this no excuse what so ever. Boys.

Anyway, I finished the poly, we went out to run some errands, came back and MB hung the poll. My closet was ready. It took me a little while to hang my clothes but I got there eventually (see photo). Yes of COURSE I color coordinate my clothes, doesn't everyone?! I still haven't moved everything in and there will be drawers in the middle part which MB has yet to make but still, my CLOTHES are in my CLOSET! Do you know how great that is?! I have been trotting down into the basement every time I need to get dressed/change. This has gone on for ..oh my goodness, FIVE months now! No more checking my clothes for spiders daily or running up and down the stairs a million times trying to put together my outfit. No, today, for the first time, I was able to get dressed in my room (hiding in the corner where no one could see me because we still don't have blinders on our windows but still). Plus now I have a beautiful closet to organize everything. I honestly, don't even know where to start!

Vacation: My Stepford Awakening

So I just returned from a very nice, and very un-restful vacation to visit my sister and my two adorable nephews in North Carolina. I had a great time as I have an awesome, fun family but I'm rather sunburned and I gatta tell you, I MISSED New England! I know this may sound nuts but one of the weirdest things that has now been cemented in my mind is the lack of originality in NC. My other sister lives in Colorado and it is much the same problem there.

What problem you ask? The SAMENESS! For those of you who have not been to either place let me explain; almost all houses are set in developments. And not like the kinds you see here in New England where a bunch of houses go up in a neighborhood that look similar. No, I'm talking they create little 'villages' with everything from schools to grocery stores and hair salons, all in one neighborhood. It's like Stepford and it's creepy. It doesn't seem to bother either of my sisters but it bothers me. Wheres the creativity?! Where's the freedom and sense of adventure when everyone you see, talk to, deal with, are all within a square mile of you?! And yards? Not really. Every house is practically a carbon copy of the next, everything is new and everything is the same. You can't even paint your house the way you want because it has to be within an agreed upon color! My sister doesn't live in a gated community but she might as well. There is a sense of isolation, being cut off from the rest of the state, let alone the world. Perhaps it's just me but I was feeling rather claustrophobic by the time I left.

What does this tell me? Why it tells me I belong firmly planted in New England, yes sir. The lack of separate houses I saw was disturbing to say the lest. Here you have houses in every shape, form and function. Yards and property all look different. You have to put in a little more effort to get where your going, and meet new people, and see what you want to, and DO what you need to but God it's worth it. Now our house is a ranch. There are a million ranches in this country, but it's still DIFFERENT! the plot is different, the set up is different and now the inside is very different. A ranch is a box which use to scare me but it I've learned that it's a creative blessing, a blank canvas that we get to up our unique spin on. It may not look like anything special from the outside, but every day is looks more beautiful and spacious from the inside. Inner beauty is what counts right?!

As you can see I've had an awakening of sorts. Yes vacation meant my weekend was, for the first time in a very long time, NOT spend doing a single thing to the house BUT I gave me a new appreciation for it and I couldn't be more grateful. My sisters have beautiful homes in their own rights but those places are not for me. I want history and creativity, not new and un-inventive.

There has been a development on the house however that has nothing to do with me. MB took a nice little trip up to Maine to fish with his brother and his buddy last weekend but before leaving, took 2 days off and worked on the closets. The built-ins are looking amazing and his closet is almost finished with one clear coat on it already. I'll try to remember to take a picture and post it soon! Also, he had a landscaping buddy come price out the patio he's been dreaming about and give him a price from excavation. I'm excited to see what it's going to look like when he's done!

All and all I'm am SO damn happy to be home! :) I think my next vacation will be spent here, there aren't many other places I'd rather be.

Hulk SMASH!!! The demo days

WE have a saying in our house (one of many). Our "baby" cat Finella who somehow thinks she is either a dog or a person, is the biggest brute and often goes crash around into things prompting us to use the term "Finny SMASH!" Well, during the month of April I think the term changed to "Lindsey SMASH!", "MB SMASH!".

The original plans to simply re-do the entire master bedroom, changed to, "well if this room, why not the other spare bedroom?" And "if that room? Why not all THREE bedrooms?!" One of the gloriously horrifying discoveries we, and apparently "dude" (what we like to use to refer to the previous 2 yr owner who seemed to have lost all steam about 2 days in would be my guess?) made was that the ORIGINAL owners...never primed the drywall before sticking up layers upon layers of wallpaper. Now, having grown up in a wall paperless log home I didn't quite grasp the gravity of the situation until MB's mother found out and I watch a look of veritable horror cross her face. As MB later explained, there would be no real way to remove the old, peeling wallpaper without destroying the wall. Great. Lovely. Such wonder, smart people those previous owners were.

When we originally looked at the house, 'dude' had apparently made an attempt to remove the wallpaper in the master bedroom and failed miserably. He had gouged the walls. This, plus MB's overwhelming desire to re-do thing the correct way and re-insulate, lead to the original plan of "master bedroom over hall". It was to my great delight, as I began the panicking decent in realization that there was near nothing I was going to be able to do about the walls in the other bedrooms, that I was informed that all of the bedrooms would be demoed and re done.

I got to the house one day (We lived in our apartment for a month after we bought the house before moving in. Something that saved us and our sanity I do believe), to find I could see strait through from my living room, into our master bedroom. You see, not only are all three bedrooms teeny tiny, but the closets? Hah! They are just comical. Another amazing MB foresight in this project, was to take the closet space in the living room (coat closet is my guess?), wall it off in there and GAIN another closet in the bedroom! This coming from the fact that MB knows there was no way I was sharing a tiny closet with him. I couldn't believe the change! It was kind of fun walking strait through one room into the other.

The weekend of Easter found MB breaking down and handing a flat bar over to me. I had instinctively KNOWN demolition would be fun as hell. I smashed, I ripped and crashed into things and kicked them! It was AWESOMEEE!!!! We spend Easter morning demoing the back bedroom and got so into it, I never had a chance to shower. We showed up to Easter dinner with me picking rubble out of my hair.

Demo was a joy. I mean, you get to destroy things! Even a 2 year old understands the sheer delight of demo. So much changes so quickly and you feel like your really making progress. However....once demo is over, you realize your house is no longer really "houseish", it's more 'construction zoneish". The progress for here is slow and by this point...we moved in. The idea that things would be done before we moved in had Long since been plowed over. Now, we lived inside our construction zone. Greatttt.