Dress Shopping 101

I have begun what is becoming the endless task of dress shopping. I quickly got a crash course in all things bridal attire and now know terms like rouching and pick ups and bodice. Who knew there were so many choices out there. Ok, so yes, we all knew there were tons of different styles and fabrics and details (and prices), but seeing them up close and personal is just down right daunting. There are so, so many out there, how are you to find the one?! You can’t exactly approach it like you would when finding the right guy. You can’t take it home with you, spend time with it, get a feel of it and then see if it annoys you after a little one on one time. No, instead it is like speed dating. You jump into it in front of strangers to see if it looks shiny and nice while trying to imagine taking it home to meet everyone You ask whatever questions you can think of to see if you guys will mesh, make a mental note and then move onto the next, and next, and next. And then sometimes it is like speed dating with an audience. Not only are you trying to decide if it is your style, your friends and family are there looking at you quizzically trying to decide if they like it while trying to get a hint of how you really feel about it so they don’t say the wrong thing. The bride can’t look too excited coming out for that first look because she is fearing that maybe she has horrible taste and thinks she looks like a princess when she actually looks like a lumpy marshmallow. The onlookers can’t make any snap judgments because what if the bride really likes those lace appliqués that they think look like grandma’s couch cover. The whole process is tricky and unsettling. In fact, its making me re-think the Jimmy Buffet theme of shorts and flip-flops.

Supervision

You may have noticed that our cat Maserati appears in most of our pictures.  He loves to be around us every minute we are home and follows us from room to room, making sure we are never too far away.  I try to get him to stay away from the dust and fumes, but this rarely works unless I lock him downstairs.  Instead, he prefers to sit or lay right outside of whichever room we are working in and supervise our every move.  I would think he would be scared or skiddish with all of the noise we make hammering or drilling or banging on whatever piece of metal is not cooperating at the time, but he rarely lifts his head at even the loudest noise.  We joke that he is our union supervisor as he keeps an eye on us, occasionally roams through the room to check things out and sometimes even meows to tell us what he thinks.

See what I mean…

 

 

I'm glad someone around here is making sure we are doing everything right!

I even have a hard time blogging without Maz wanting to put his two cents in.

 And as we all know, supervising is especially tiring.  Here Maserati is recovering after a long day of hard work.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have Paint on the Walls

It finally, finally happened- we painted the walls!  Yes, we painted the walls the actual color.  Last night we got the first coat on and tonight, we did the second coat.  As with most things, it takes us a while, but I must say we are awesome painters.  We have our method down pat and we ended up with some pretty great walls.  Pretty great yellow walls that is.  Yes, Lightweight Beige turned out to be a bit more yellow and a bit brighter than we expected.  However, once we get our cabinets in and the dark countertop, I think it will look very good. 

Getting the painting accomplished this week was not an easy feat.  With doing the ceiling and the trim in addition to the actual painting, we were up every single night until at least 1am.  Mike actually referred to it as “hell week” and made me promise we wouldn’t have another one (which I’m optimistically taking as- we won’t have another one this month). While we did get more done this week than during any other week in a long time, the late nights meant the mornings came too soon.  Both of us being late to work more times than not, something Mike’s boss minded more than mine.  Oops.   In my opinion, it was worth it.  I only wish Mike’s boss saw it that way too!

 

I can't seem to get a great picture of the new walls since we have a mountain of cabinet boxes in the middle of the room.  I'll try again after we move things around, so check back for better pictures later! 

More Kitchen Updates

I believe this is like the 16th update we have done about the kitchen, but seeing that it has been consuming our lives, it seems appropriate. See here and here and here for a reminder of the previous states of the kitchen renovation process. So, as I’m sitting here literally waiting for paint to dry, here is the latest…

Most recently we have been preparing to paint in preparation for the cabinets to be installed. Seems simple enough. That is it seems simple enough until you consider all of the steps to get there. Before the walls could be painted, we had to spackle, sand and prime the existing walls. Since we are changing the flooring, the door trim was going to end up too short, so new trim had to be cut, installed and painted. Mike figured since we are painting everything anyway, why not paint the ceiling too.  The door between the kitchen and garage was not aligned right, so that had to be adjusted before the trim was painting to prevent any knicks. Really? All this so we can change the walls from lime green to a different (normal) color?!

As is becoming the norm for us, things were not as cut and dry as it should have been (pun intended). Our motto became “measure eight times, cut four” as we installed the new trim. We finally got everything right, assembled the door trim and raised it up in glory to nail in.  We ended up doing this at about 10:30pm on a Sunday night and surely anyone who happened to be outside passing by the house probably thought we were insane as the loud hammering echoed from the bare kitchen to the dark night. In an attempt to make up for lost time, Mike stayed up even later (3am) to fill and sand the nail holes and I woke up early (5:30am) to sand and prime. Both seemed like good ideas Sunday evening, but less so halfway through the work day on Monday when we felt like the only good idea was a nap.

And then there was the ceiling. The ceiling in the kitchen is angled and goes from a standard 8 feet up to approximately 10 feet high. At first glance, this is great as it opens up the kitchen and makes it feel larger than it is. I really like it, BUT I always had that feeling it would be a pain to paint (so I crossed my fingers we wouldn’t actually do it, no luck on that one). However, being the liberal, progressive woman I am, I pretty much figured Mike would do it and it would be a pain for him while the only pain I would endure would be his (valid) complaints about the crick in his neck from looking up. However, being the liberal, progressive man Mike is, he let me take care most of the rolling while he edged. Goody. One thing about me though is that I have a disdain for ladders due to my lack of grace and will go to great measures to avoid using anything higher than the first step of a step stool. Reaching the peak of the ceiling was either going to require me constantly jumping most definitely to result in a polka dot pattern, growing taller or getting over my fear. I chose the former and we now have a splotchy ceiling. Kidding. I chose to graduate to the second step of the step stool and even to the third rung of the ladder, albeit very briefly. There were no major panic attacks and I only had one emergency dismount after losing my balance, a resounding success in my opinion. Oh, and the ceiling turned out successful too.

According to the schedule (yes that schedule) we should be painting by then end of the week!


And here is a preview of the cabinets actually in the kitchen.  They are the upper cabinets and they are upside down, but you get the idea!  Progress is progress and we are on our way!

Scheduling

I have decided that Mike and I are in need of a calendar to schedule our ever growing to-do list. While we are never really at a loss over what to do, it has seemed a bit haphazard. And due mostly to my preference for relaxation in the evenings instead of work, we are getting a bit behind with no real end date in sight. I thought that having an ultimate finishing date would help keep us on task. So, I came up with a not so pretty but functional calendar. I love it. Mike hates it.  While he appreciates my renewed energy (I think), my constant “Ok, here is what we are going to do next” is literally driving him nuts.

It always seems that one is almost always much more ambitious during the planning phase and less so in the execution phase.  (Unfortunately, the same is true for my workout schedule!) My calendar is bursting at the seams and overfilling onto multiple pages. The weeks have a great number of tasks that seem perfectly doable at first, but prove to be too much to accomplish with the existing (and not nearly enough) hours in a day. And while it seems like every morning I am moving one or two tasks that we didn’t finish the previous night to later in the week, I continue to be optimistic about what we can do in one night. Everyday I adjust my calendar and admire my planning skills.

Below is a sneak peek at the calendar for the rest of this week.  If I posted anymore, Mike might not come home after work.  With the rest of the weeks looking similar, I see many late nights and exhausting weekends in our future. Hopefully it will be worth it in the end.  Hopefully.  The promise of a relaxing break over the summer is just too good to give up on now!

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY
7 L- Prime KI Trim M- Finish Boards Shop paint and  supplies Paint ceiling	8 L- AM Dr. Appt L- Happy Hour M- Caulk KI Trim Remove KI door	9 Paint 1st coat KI Trim Sand/clean trim Paint 2nd coat KI Trim	10 Buy wall paint, primer Paint 1st  coat KI Move OF bed to MBR Discuss Sinks	11 M- Finish sink platform Paint 2nd coat KI Remove OF and BA doors Order sink

 

8 Months and Counting

Today marks the day that we are exactly 8 months away from the wedding!!! I hope the next 8 months don’t go by too quickly as we have so much left to do.  We have most of the basics down and the rest should fall into place over the next few months.  Hopefully.

Wood Board 1, Mike 0

Well the inevitable injury has happened.  I consider us fairly lucky since we have gone about 5 months without harming or maiming ourselves.  There has been a few cuts, a few bumps and bruises and quite a few electrical shocks, but nothing major…until this past weekend.  Mike was cutting wood for the cabinet bases and one of the boards flew off the saw in some sort of quest for revenge.  He got quite the knock to his head which resulted in a pretty big gash, a good size bump and a pounding headache.  Luckily, Mike’s sister has a nursing background and was able to stand the blood and fix him right up.  Poor guy!

(No pictures of this.  I didn’t really want to see a close up of it and Mike refused to be photographed since he was pretty upset he wasn’t able to do his hair well enough given his wound.)