It's a Trap!

To clean or not to clean, that is the question. That seems to have been the question for the last two weeks now. The latter clearly being my preference, as evidenced by my office:

Everything is in the exact same place I put it the night the painters left and I set about putting things in their rightful place. Only not everything made it there. Sure, the big stuff is where it's supposed to be, but the small stuff is still calling my name. And I've been ignoring it.

I tell myself I'll do one thing a night during the week to get the job done. Monday night I thought I would put everything back in my kitchen cabinets. Tuesday night I was going to put everything back in my bathroom cabinets. Wednesday night the guest room was going to get organized. Thursday night I was going to scrape all of the carpet pad remnants off the floor. And Friday night I was going to organize the office. Clearly, the office job didn't happen, which means the other ones probably didn't happen either. Let me look around... Yeah, they definitely didn't happen.

During the week I find that by the time I come home from work, get ready for the gym, go to the gym, come back eat dinner, shower, and get ready for bed-- it's time for bed! Then when the weekend rolls around, the last thing I want to do is stay inside the house- what with all the food and alcohol to be consumed in my town! It's a vicious cycle really. And that cycle is where the problem lies. The longer I put things off in the beginning, the more likely I am to put it off indefinitely.

So this weekend I will desperately try to prove Admiral Akbar wrong. I'll be scraping, organizing, cleaning, touching up my way out of this trap.

Sweatin' the Small Stuff.

I thought this whole redecorating thing was supposed to be easy. OK, not easy- but easier than this!

When I first bought the house I had an idea of what I wanted to do: I knew I needed- needed- to paint the walls (does butter cream yellow strike you as my color?), paint my cabinets, replace the carpet and change out the lighting. But what I didn't have was the exact paint colors, the flooring, or any lights picked out. Those all just seemed like minor details. Right, minor.

For those of you who saw my house before the painters stormed in, you'd know how many samples I went through to find the right color. There were painted patches all over almost every wall in the house. Browns and blues downstairs, teals on the stairs, blues on the kitchen cabinets, browns on the guest bathroom cabinets, blues on the guest bathroom walls, yellows on the guest bedroom walls, and grays on the master bathroom walls and cabinets. I kept the lady at Home Depot busy with all my requests for samples (I talked to her so much about the house, I almost have the urge to invite her over to see the finished product when all is said and done). I sat with the colors on my walls for months, hemming and hawing over the best combo. Man, I hope I got it right because I can't take doing this again.

It's the same story for the flooring. I must have looked through at least 30 floor samples before finding something I liked. Carpet, tile, hardwood, laminate, engineered wood-- I looked at them all. But the problem with finding the right flooring material, was that I wanted it to compliment the colors of the walls and cabinets! If I couldn't decide on the walls, how was I supposed to decide on the floor? My head still hurts thinking about it.

After the main pieces of the walls, cabinets and floors came the finishing touches. The lighting in the house was just not doing it for me either. Dangling beads on shades on my dining room chandelier, simple recessed lighting in the kitchen, and trying-too-hard-to-be-modern-lighting in my bathrooms. None of these were my style. You'd think the smaller stuff would be easier to complete. Yet, picking out the lighting has proven to be the most difficult part of all of this. I've made the final call on the paint colors, the flooring, the decor... basically everything else but the lighting. And I think I might know why...

There are just too many choices. There are by far more lighting options than there are paint swatches in the world (it really seems like that). On top of that there are so many that I really, really, really like.

I stood at Lowe's recently looking at all these options for my bathroom. It was so stressful, like an interrogation: lights beating down on me, men in uniforms asking me if I wanted to pick one out of the line up, palms sweating, knowing that if I made the wrong decision my mistake would be staring me in the face every time I flipped the switch. But, a decision had to be made, so I pulled the trigger. I just hope I hit the target.

A Worldly Bathroom

I find it hard to type this as my little (OK, pudgy) fingers scream every time I pound the keys. I spent the better part of the day working on my downstairs bathroom. The little room off of the kitchen- Yes, there is a bathroom off of the kitchen (Rule #1, no #2!)- has been bare since the painters left. No lights, no mirror, no pretty towels. So I set about to the fixing that today, one tiny tack at a time.

I know I've professed my love of maps on here before, but I don't know if you believed me. If not, you'll see in the coming weeks just how much I meant it. Starting with today's update:

Yup. That's my (dirty) faucet with a nice assortment of worldly images behind it. Actually the whole bathroom wall is covered in the sort.

My mom and I got the idea to do this when were were visiting the East Coast and were treasure hunting with my professional-treasure-hunting-Auntie. We were in an antique store and found a stack of old National Geographic Maps. I got them on the cheap without knowing exactly what I wanted to do with them, other than they were going in my house somewhere.

My first thought was to put them above my counters as a type of back splash, but that didn't seem practical (fire anyone?), and I didn't think they were exciting enough to just display as art. That's where my genius mother (she gets it from me) came in and suggested using them as a wallpaper. From there we chose the bathroom as the location and thought the best way to do it was to casually hang them in up in no real pattern with silver tacks, like the old school ones used for bulletin boards.

The hanging process took a lot longer than I thought, and I probably should have put more thought into it, like I did with the pictures. But I didn't, and started hanging and carefully cutting around all the plumbing fixtures (and sometimes not so carefully). Four hours later, my little fingers felt like they do after putting together a large piece of furniture of IKEA that came with a million tiny little screws and dowels. Only it wasn't just the Swedish that made my fingers sore this time, it was the Russians, Greeks, Chinese, Tibetans, Kenyans, Vietnamese...

An Equation for Success

I just have to tell you all how proud I am of myself for accomplishing this here masterpiece!



This took some serious mathematical skills, which I'm not really sure I had considering Mister and I cheated our way through college math (don't tell my mom). But how hard could a little simple arithmetic be on a Saturday afternoon (after a morning of bottomless mimosas by the way)?

I knew I wanted to put various sized picture frames into this little recessed area in my living room, but wasn't quite sure how to accomplish it. I waited for The Problem Solvers (mom and dad) to come over for a weekend and put them to work mapping it out for me. Once we had the layout down I had to stock up on the frames from IKEA and then wait for the walls to be ready for this masterpiece.

But once I got started hammering in nails I realized it wasn't going to be as easy as- just hammering in nails. First I had to measure the recessed area and lay out a template on the ground to mimic it. Once I spaced out the frames as outlined by The Problem Solvers, I had to determine how much gaps I wanted around the edges. After that I started measuring and marking for the first set of frames which were the four corner ones. From there on out it was all about measuring the distances between each frame and the height and width of the remaining ones, adding, subtracting and dividing my way to perfection (thank god for iPhone calculators!).

Now all that is left is to fill the frames. If only our professor could have snapped a picture of Mister and I switching Scantrons mid-exam. Then I could be reminded of how I got to where I am. Who said cheaters never prosper?

Maybe Not the Brightest Idea

Or the lightest!

This ball of crap here is what used to be the carpet in my downstairs living room and office. For some reason I had the genius idea to get rid of it tonight (Yes, it's a Friday, which officially makes me a loser). It can't be that hard to roll it on up and out, right?

Wrong. I tried to wrap it up like a burrito (mmmm, burrito), but the burrito quickly turned into a wonky empanada (mmmm, empanada). Because I was by myself I had to shift the furniture from one side of the room to other while rolling the carpet and pad from side to side. Not the most efficient way, but I was willing to do whatever it took to get this junk out of my house.

The hidden condition of the carpet was another bomb the neighbors dropped on me after I moved. They said the previous homeowner had a large inside dog and she frequently complained about it using the entire downstairs as a giant Potty Pad. Cute! It didn't look too bad from the top, but every so often while sitting in my office the lovely smell would waft towards me... Double cute! To make it even better, when the painters came I told them I was replacing the carpet eventually and they took the liberty of using the carpet as a drop sheet. Fun!

Now my original plan to leave the carpet in until my flooring materials arrived (I ordered them online) went out the window when, but got word today that the materials won't be available to ship from Alabama until early September. Awesome! Add that to the dinge of the carpet i felt beneath my feet when I took my gym shoes off today, I knew I couldn't handle this stuff for another six weeks. So I got down and dirty, and I mean seriously dirty. If the carpet and pad fibers weren't bad enough, I think the seven years worth of dust and dirt sitting on top of the subfloor was. Clean!

The best part was trying to get that giant ball or crap through the door, off my porch, and into the back of my truck. Needless to say I got two workouts today. Thank god I know how to properly deadlift, and clean and jerk heavy shit because otherwise I'd still be out there rolling it to the city dump. Sweet!

So goes the story of the wildest Friday night I've ever had. Loser!

I Heart My Animal Head

Ever seen those bumper stickers professing the driver's love of man's best friend? The "I Love My Corgi" sticker. Only it doesn't say "Love" or "Corgi." It's usually a cartoonish heart followed by a picture of the head of a certain breed of dog. Every time I see one I can hear my dad's interpretation of it: I Heart My Dog Head.

Well, I Heart My Animal Head.

I don't know where my fascination of animal heads came from (I'm sure there's some deep, sick meaning behind it), but I do love them. Not real ones though. That's just gross. I like ones like this little antelope fellow here. I like them so much I bought two.

I had been looking for something like this for over a year now after going down to El Lay and seeing some giant steer heads painted pretty colors with the antlers dipped in gold or silver. I didn't have the $800+ to shell out on one so I set out looking for a more affordable version. I looked and looked and looked, and kept hunting around. Finally these dudes sauntered into my line of sight and I pulled the trigger and bought them. I wanted to display them as soon as I got home, but my walls weren't yet ready for their magnificence, so I set them aside waiting for my redecorating frenzy to begin. Then when the dust settled, like a proud marksman, I put those helpless suckers up for the world to see.

Whoa-oh, I'm Halfway There

Oh man that was crazy. Since the last time I posted not only was my backyard uprooted but so was the inside of my house. The painter/drywallers/framers were in and out in four days and in that time they did exactly what I wanted them to, and some of what I didn't want them to do. By the time they were done, my house was halfway to dream-housiness and I was ready for a frosty (fruity) beer (more to come on the Bev).

I'll get to sharing the progress inside the house in the coming days. I have to work up to the big reveal once the flooring is complete! Until then I'll be showing small pieces of it, leaving most to wonder what the heck I'm doing in this little place.

But first things first: my tree, or lack thereof. As big of a tree as I thought that sucker was, the tree-trimmers were done sawing, chopping, dropping, dragging and raking in about an hour. I let them in at 8AM and by the time I was heading out the door my backyard was getting a new dose of sunshine.

Sure, I miss the privacy and shade it provided, but being able to sleep without being awoken by rustling of the leaves was worth the $225 right there.

There is still a lot of work to do until I'm happy with the house both inside and out, but until then I'm living on a prayer that it will all be over sooner than later.