Thursday, June 24, 2010

Adventures in Marathons

Um, no I did not actually run a marathon. If you have not heard my "marathon story" about how I happened to get suckered into participating in a marathon. Then remind me sometime. It was one of the worst days of my life - so pretty funny for you! No, this is about a different sort of marathon.

Last week was a marathon of house projects for Todd and I! We had quite a few things on our list and [Todd] decided that we should just try to get them all done before we had family and friends over Saturday night. I'm really only kidding - Todd is not quite a slave driver - but we did do a lot of work on the house last week.

I mostly painted. and painted. and painted. So much so, that my left left wrist is slightly crippled from holding my trim cup in a weird way. I painted the hallway! I'll reveal the color below - I know you're all waiting with bated breath. I also painted the master bedroom, the shutters that the lazy former owners of our house swore they had painted but clearly hadn't!, some trim around the outside of the house that should have been done by the former owners, and the front door. As I'm writing this and thinking about everything I painted, I swear it was more stuff! It feels like I've painted every surface of our home. I never want to see another paint brush again!

Todd did man stuff. Switching out light plates, working on the lawn, weeding every single weed out of our flower beds up and mulching the whole thing, and fixing the back gate.

Together, we also made a headboard for our bed - which I am really proud of!

Here are some finished pictures of all our hard work:

The hallway it is a pale yellow actually called orange glow. If you look it up on the computer, it looks peach - so don't bother.One of the blogs I read said to never use the flash for pictures (if you can help it). Here is the hallway flooded with natural light.



I had to use the flash on this one. You can see the color difference.
This hallway is home to my programs from Broadway and West End show I've seen.


The bedroom color is painted a grey-blue. Behr's "River Rocks". 
It only took me 5 testers to pick the right color.
I am always amazed at how much color changes from room to room and depending on the light.


Here is our awesome, amazing headboard!!





Todd's handy work on the weeding and my shutter paint job:


In addition to weeding and painting the shutters, we also trimmed the hedges.



Finally, here is a picture of our front door freshly painted green (it used to be white)


So I'm taking a week off! This weekend we will go to Texas to visit Todd's family in Waco and celebrate his grandmother's 80th birthday! After that we will continue out trip and go down to Galveston for a couple of days. I'm looking forward to the trip!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Adventures in painting

I think the hardest part about painting is deciding on the color. I can be an indecisive person at times. Most of those times involve decided where to eat, or deciding paint colors. Someone please just take me somewhere with queso and tell me what colors to paint my rooms.

Actually I am very happy with the way the living room turned out, and that was a very impulsive paint buy. The sage green seems to be working out well. Maybe I should just be more impulsive with my paint. I took my time picking out our next color, and I'm pretty happy with it...now. I wasn't too happy with it about halfway through the project and wanted to quit. The color I selected was "bagel" when I did the test patch it seemed to be very warm with a hint of yellow. By the time I got finished painted the whole thing, it seemed more yellow with a hint of yellow. But it has grown on me and now I really like it.

The color "bagel" on the paint stick:




My one true "before" shot:




Getting started, before I had second thoughts




After Todd and Eric talking me down from the ledge and I finished:






Looking into the kitchen from the dining room:





The window and pots that will one day house my herb garden 
(when I get to that)




The next paint project is our hallway, which leads to the bedrooms. Both the dining room and the hallway can be seen from the living room. So, in one corner you see the yellow of the dining room from the sage green living room and in the opposite corner you can see the hallway from the living room. We are stumped as to what color to paint the hallway.  I'll post some pictures so you have a visual. What color would you paint it?


Morty and Zatara are also puzzled about what color to paint the hallway:



What color would you choose?

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Adventures in house guests!

My friend Eric came in town and stayed with us. I am always so glad to see him.  His visit also gave us extra motivation to clear out our "I'll get to that" room. This is the room full of stuff we haven't gotten around to unpacking yet! The few (ok, many) things we hadn't figured out where to put in the house. I think this is because we don't need them. I mean we've lived without them for nearly two months! So many of those things went to the thrift store.

Once We had the guest room cleaned out, we put the bed together. The room seemed to be a little lacking, so Todd and I hit the garage sales. We were looking for a small dresser/chest and a bedside table. We didn't find a dresser but came back with a really cute side table. It was pretty beat up, so we painted it a pretty green.

Here is how the side table and room turned out:





We still want to paint this room and add to it. But it is a nice start. 

When Eric came in town, we cooked steaks on the back porch and mostly stayed in the air conditioning! It seemed to be the hottest days so far! Eric and I also went to several garages sales and explored downtown Yukon. For me, the highlight of his visit was trying the self-serve frozen yogurt shop, Orange Leaf. It was delicious! I'm sure I am the last person on earth to try this new fad, but definitely want to go back.

Eric and I at the yogurt shop:



So we are now open for visitors! Come one, come all!