The Hole for the Patio & the Blue Bedroom

I would like to preface this blog with one comment directed at my "brother in law": No, I did NOT paint the bedrooms for children. There will be more about my 'child' dread later but moving on...

So this was a busy weekend! Saturday morning we woke up a bit late and groggy. MB headed right over to his friends NA's house to help him move some things in exchange for NA's help with the patio. Me? I ate a slice of cold pizza and started out painting the spare bedroom the lovely blue you see here. "Russian Blue", our only none food titled paint. However, we are fairly convinced our cat Lulu is part Russian Blue so we chose it partly in honor of her. I had it done in pretty much no time but somehow managed to get a good smear of paint on my leg and my arm. A fact I neglected to fix before putting on a knee length dress and heading out in the world to do a million errands. No wonder I got odd looks.

My plan was this: I needed to stop by Wings Over Worcester to pick up a gift card they had generously donated to the blood donor center (where I work). I knew NA and MB would be hard at work digging out the patio so I thought I would get a gaggle of different types of wings to try and feed them to the boys for lunch. OK, no biggy. HOWEVER, first I needed to make at pit stop and Babies R US first and get a baby shower gift. There will be separate blog about this later but this took me longer than I expected. MB called me while I was out and told me he had decided to invite our friends over. Okk. Now I had invited NA's new wife Jen over and their adorable 2 year old but MB added to the mix with his 'girlfriend' AC and his fiance Ashley (note here that we are one of the few left of our friends who are not engaged or married. They are dropping like flies let me tell you). That was great except that I had not idea what we were going to serve them and I still needed to clean the house. Now I was in a rush.

I got back with my loot to find MB's brother had stopped by on his motorcycle to check out the progress. It was at least 2:30pm by the time I got back and MB and NA had sure been hard at work, they nearly had the thing done! Funny thing is, after I fed them lunch and MB and I settled on smoking some beef ribs for everyone, they asked my option on the shape of the patio.

Now we know how this always goes. I get asked, they say no, they do what they were going to do ANYWAYS, and I throw my hands up in the air. More or less. Now I believe the original plan had been to make the whole thing a rectangle. Then the back was formed into a semi circle and the flat part was to be square. Well I pointed this out as they had it mapped for a round patio and I was told that left no room for the mower. OK. I said it was too small and it looked kinda weird. Why can't you make it an OVAL instead? Well then I got another lecture on the mower not fitting and when I said it would be too crowded they said well you don't want it too spread out and proceeded to move the patio table onto the spot to prove this. I was unconvinced so I gave up and walked away.

I got back after running all over creation to gather sustenance and spirits for our little gathering, then managed to do what little ladies do best: multitasking. I cleaned while I cooked and cooked while I cleaned. By the time I was done, I still hadn't gotten a change to shower but I was presentable (minus the paint smears) and so was the house.

MB and NA continued to work pretty much up until we ate and low and behold they had the entire thing dug! They had done a great job and I was thoroughly impressed. The boys went elsewhere to clean up for dinner while Jen, Ashley and I stood and stared at the hole. "It's too small." "Yup it's definitely too small." God I love girls :) they saw it the same as I did. It would be too crowded, especially since there would be a big wall in the back and a fire pit built into it. You don't want to sit too close to a fire. Boys just don't get it sometimes. Ashley just smiled and said "you know what, that's fine, let him realize he was wrong and then you'll be right." Exactly. ;) The way I see it and we discussed this, was that the wall would be be built first. If, once that is done, it's deemed too small, it can be expanded. It is very nice and round but I think it would look better an oval but hey, it still looks great.

We moved the patio furniture back onto our dirt patio and had dinner there and then went to our present fire pit way up in the back yard by the woods and s'mores. It was a great time but I can't wait until the patio is done and usable and we can make our s'more right out the front door!

Sunday was incredibly lazy. I got almost no sleep the night before, was up very early and then finally poked MB around 10am to please, please , please make me homefries! I spent the whole day in a half awake daze as we lay around watching the food network and doing not much of anything. This is very difficult for us. Even when we are tired/hung over and it's raining, we STILL feel the need to do something. We researched anything to do, ended up driving out to Amherst for the hell of it, spent about 20 minutes walking around ( I had wanted to go to the Yankee Candle Village and make candles but I got shut down. humph.) then went to where we REALLY wanted to and trotted over to mecca: Whole Foods. It was a good day but we got absolutely nothing done. I think our Saturday was busy enough to make up for it though.

Seeing Red and Cutting Out the Oil

So I'm very excited because I think this post will OFFICIALLY, bring us up to date! No more jogging my fuzzy memory for details of things I can't seem to remember the time lines of. This entire thing has been a whirl wind to say the least. I'm sure I skipped a few important points along the way but at least I can post progress as it's happening now.

Although progress on the house has slowed from the original frantic buzzing it started with, it is now picking back up. MB has been talking to a plumber about switching our home heating over to natural gas (to the dismay of our neighbor who works for an oil company "don't do it man!") as our old oil tank needs to go and we want something more efficient. Especially since there are huge incentives for switching over AND, the master plan is with gas heating...comes a gas STOVE (insert ooohs and aaahhs here). Very exciting but SO far off it's depressing to think about it so I wont. He has ALSO been chatting (at a wedding this past weekend) with one of the guys that works with him part time about cutting a patio into the hill. We have this big huge yard and it's very un-usable. So, MB has is dream of cutting a patio into the hill. Great idea. Personally, I'm more concerned about trim on our windows and those silly little privacy things called doors but hey, I'm not here to dictate the schedule apparently.

Well this past weekend I was bound and determined to tackle painting the office so we can finally move all the damn office stuff that's sitting in our basement, to where it belongs. We had decided to paint this room red, much to the chagrin of MB's mom. This, being the major place we differ, other than the backroom but that's a battle for an entirely different day. you see, this office has one window, a former OUTSIDE window (or exterior if you want to be all official about it). Said window now leads into the very dark (although it shouldn't be with 20 effing windows) backroom. I see her point but upon announcing my plan to paint this room red MB's mom immediately countered with "Oh NO! you don't want to do that! No, it would be way to dark. No definitely don't do that." She repeated this several times but I was stubborn and stuck my tongue out at her theoretically speak and bought my red.

Now red was a battle. I LOVE me some cranberry red but MB is heavily against this. I was only able to get an agreement out of him by pointing out that his room at his parent's house is a brick red and met him half way at this brick red. So, we decided to go with "cinnamon stick". I pointed out to MB this past weekend that all of our rooms will end up food. I'm convinced I did this on a subconscious level as I happen to be OBSESSED with food. I love making it, eating it, thinking about it. It's the first thing I think of when I wake up and the most soothing thing I can think about when I go to bed (except for bubbles. I think bubbles are very soothing as well. Seriously, try it once). Therefore, we ended up with an herb in our bedroom "prairie sage", a dessert, one of my favorites as a matter of fact, in the living room with "banana cream" and now "cinnamon stick" in the office. I, personally, see no problem with this.

So I have convinced myself I'm getting pretty good with whole painting thing, not bad for a girl who mere months ago was scared of a paint roller in an very unnatural way. I may be getting cocky but I'm competitive and I need my 'thing' so painting, as much as I loathe it sometimes, I have taken on as my thing. Oh there's painting to be done? Oh that's OK, Lindsey can handle that! So Saturday I informed MB in no uncertain terms, that I WAS painting the office the next day so I didn't know what HE was doing, but that's what I was doing. This of course left him to finish the built-ins in my closet.

I laid out my tarp and began cutting the paint in the ceiling. It doesn't look beautiful because the ceiling and walls aren't seamless but, ehh, whatever. About half way across, and I have NO idea how this happened I got RED paint, on the ceiling. I panicked. I bolted from the room and grabbed a wet paper towel. MB sauntered in to find out what the f-bombs were about as I smugged the paint into the ceiling making it look worse. It now looked like I was trying to wipe up the evidence of a bloody incident on top of the ceiling. Arterial blood splatter perhaps? MB watched this with only mild curiosity. "You'll just have to paint over it, no big deal. your just making it worse." I gaped. I was appalled. I don't DO painting over! It should have been right the first time! I was just beginning to feel rather smug with myself about my totally bad ass paint skills and sure enough, I mess it up. I'm still pissed about this but I plowed on and finished cutting, dawdled a bit, helped MB rip some boards (i.e. stand at the end and act like an extension of the table, whoo-dee) and then finished rolling. It DID come out pretty cool. It's darker than I think either of us expected but I love it. It does make the room darker, I understood where MB's mom was coming from with that but I really like it. It's the only color that breaks up our pallet at all but it still 'goes' with other colors. I love it. It will look even more amazing once the antique white crown molding and baseboard go up too.

Now, just one more flipping coat to go and then we can finally move stuff in!

The Mad Dash!

There we were. 4 days in counting until the big day. D Day. The Housewarming Party. Now let me explain a bit here. We had originally set this date back when we closed on the house because the only plan was to re do the master bedroom. Oh we would DEFINITELY be ready by then! The house would surly be presentable. (snigger) You see, we have big families, MB especially and his family is very prevalent in our lives and EVERYONE wanted to see the house. Not to mention we have a large group of friends we often entertain with and we were convinced their social lives were ruined because of us.

Well instead of entertaining a stream of people every single weekend while we were trying to work on the house, we deiced to stave them off by having a big reveal party! Now, 4 days before the party MB had JUST finished the floors. Something, that until it was done, I hadn't realized was causing me such an ucler. But now, I was faced with the fact that we still needed, what was it? 14 coats of paint overall? Yeah, not gunna happen.

I decided to prioritize. I literally sat down at work one day and made a list of all of the projects. #1. heat registers (the metal thing that covers the pipe of heat that runs across the exterior walls for those of you lucky brats that do not have this), they were out. There was no way they would be sanded, primed and painted twice before the party. #2. spare bedrooms? Nope those definitely weren't going to be done. luckily, although I can't remember the time line for this as it's all a bit blurry, MB had finished priming the spare bedrooms but there was no way, wall, ceilings or closets would be painted for the party. OK so this left the living room as the "big to do" (heh. Drive By Truckers Album. tehe.)

Now by this time i had been desperately calling all the people who "LOVE to paint" short of the Home Depot "Paint Girl" (but don't think I hadn't considered it). I was faced with painting all of the trim around the windows and doors, painting the ceiling white (again), cutting and PRIMING the walls and then doing two coats of paint...in a mere few days. Now I work full time. That doesn't leave me with an awful lot of time to do these things. I had spent my whole previous week up until almost 11 every night painting. looked like this would be a repeat. Plus we had nice new beautiful floor to protect upon pain of death. So poor Mary (see girls weekend 2 days earlier!), who is self admitted not a good painter, showed her cute little face to help paint ceilings on Wednesday. Matt took painting trim, I took babysitting Mary and cutting the primer into the walls. Mary worked very hard but i ended up finishing. I finished priming the walls on Thursday and then Friday, I left work early. I HAD to. I was out by noon and had to, of course pick up MORE paint.

Now i was always told paint is the cheap thing. 'Oh it's a cheap way to change a room around/spruce it up.' HAH! Tell that to me nearly $400 deep in paint with still 2 more rooms worth to buy. Well any who, we had very smartly gotten what we needed for the party on Thursday night so I could get stuff done for the party Friday. I had a room to paint, a few dishes to make (we thankfully made it a pot luck because I knew there was no way I could make food for 60ish people given the circumstances) and a whole house to clean. Somehow, I got it in my head that, why of COURSE i could finish the second coat on all the trim and cut and paint the entire living room and hallway that night and have plenty of time left. I start at around 2:15 painting trim. Somehow, MB had to work this night. Of course. He would be home at 9pm. No biggy, i had plenty of time.

I finished the trim and got my paint. Now up until this point I had never been the one to put color on the walls. Everything else had been the same color (white) and MB had given me only a quick lesson in cutting in color by hand without tape. I took a big gulp and C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y slid the angled brush into the crevice between the upper wall and ceiling in the hallway. I think my heart stopped. this was by far the most terrifying thing I had done yet. you get paint on that ceiling and your screwed. There's no going back. I jumped that hurdles and stood back and was assaulted by a whole new litany of fears. It was YELLOW. I mean YELLOW! Insert panic attack here. Now, in the scheme of things, this was nothing to panic over. But I did. It was just so striking to actually see color on the walls. And yellow is a very tricky color. Suddenly i was panicking that we had picked the wrong yellow. There was nothing I could do so I plowed on at my painstakingly slow rate.

As I did so I began to silently fume. At some point, I had stopped to attempt and prep my potato salad. I had boiled and strained potatoes and hard boiled eggs. I had attempted to cut up some vegetables. I may have fed myself but then again I may not have. the panic was starting to seep in even before i realized it almost in equilibrium with the fading light. The darker it got, the later it got and the less I seemed to have gotten done. This turned to annoyance and later anger that stupid MB and his stupid work were leaving me to do this all by myself. We hadn't moved anything in. I had so much cleaning to do. I still had a million things to cook. I do NOT like to be unprepared darnit! I'm a professional! I have things done when people get there, I have it together! Yet here I was faced with the realization that maybe I would have nothing together. There were also a million stupid little obstacles I hadn't prepared for. Like I forgot I would have to cut the paint in around all of the windows and doors and outlets. That took forever. It got to be almost 9pm and by this point, I was murderous. I began 'fantasizing' that MB would walk and the first thing he would say was that he hated the color, it was too yellow. This, in my fantasizing nightmare, was then followed by a complete storming rant from me and a karate chop to the face. By the time 9 o'clock came and went, in my mind, this is EXACTLY what was going to happen. MB was going to hate it and when he told me such, he would get a earful from me. This never happens. I'm a very peaceful person, very anti combative but I'll admit, the pressure was getting to me.

I started rolling the paint on the walls, feeling almost like it was starting over and it was now 9:45pm. MB was NOT answering his phone. His friend AC (and I can't believe I called him, I NEVER do that!) was not answering so I called the only person I could; AC's fiancee and my buddy Ashley. She too was painting (I will back her up here, she offered to come help me paint during the week but the poor girl was already doing the same thing and working so hard to help her brother that I turned her down) and she had no idea where the boys were. AC (her boyfriend or as I like to say, MB's boyfriend (he's married to his job, I'm just the mistress)) hadn't called her either so I gave up.

When MB sauntered in a little after 10 I was poised and ready, waiting for the line so I could take my paint roller and run it right up his body. I was nearly done rolling at this time. I had one wall left (rolling takes FAR less time than cutting). "This looks awesome huh?!" were the words uttered out of MB's mouth. I deflated, although, I will be honest here, there was a part of me that was a bit disappointed I didn't get to let him have it. I nodded, put down the roller and walked away saying I had had enough and he could finish which he did. I walked into the kitchen and deflated again. There was so much to do, the kitchen was a mess, I had about 1/3 of a potato salad done, a dessert with multiple parts still left, a house to clean and oh yeah, we STILL hadn't moved our stuff out of the back room where we were suppose to be housing all the food for the party the next day!

Now this, this is where a lesser person would have burst into to tears. But ohhh no, not this girl! I sucked it up, finished cutting the vegetables I needed, tossed everything for the potato salad in a bowl and stuffed it in the fridge, took a quick shower and went to bed. I know myself well enough to know that I was of no more use to anyone that night. I would be up at the crack of dawn. I would have it done. It would be awesome. I didn't really get a chance to stand back and appreciate my hard work (although since then I promise you I have, many a times, gloating most of it) in the living room. I actually LOVE the color! We got it just right. It looks amazing in every light but if you had asked me that night, I would have told you to got take your yellow and stick it where the sun don't shine! :D