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busy busy bees
M and I recently got rather a lot of crack, and as a result, we thought it would be a great idea to just wave our magic wands and disassemble three rooms and put them back together in a different order. Only, just as the crack wore off (around the time I started pulling books out of three large bookcases and M started taking his gigantic bookcase* apart, we realized that! We don't have a magic wand! And that all this work, it sucks!
Yesterday, our goal was to be productive, but we ended up going in a completely unanticipated direction. Our sunroom has been a junk repository since we moved in, and I am ashamed to say that I still hadn't seriously cleaned it. (The carpet had been cleaned, and most of the obvious cobwebs taken down, but that's it.) The other rooms in the house got super-cleaned when we moved in, but we ran out of time, and then I just lost interest. We weren't using it, after all! There are nine large windows in the room, plus a door and a storm door. When we had my family over for the big move-in dinner, we did the three windows in the front and were shocked and amazed at how wonderful they looked.. and at how much longer it took to do than we thought it would. That was the other reason we haven't gotten into the sunroom. Yesterday, M went out to bleach the window sills on the back porch (behind the sunroom) and that prompted us to actually start cleaning the windows. (FYI: if you have nasty green concrete, a bleach solution and a scrub brush will take it right off.) We worked for three or four hours straight on five windows, and they look incredible. Unfortunately, the other four are going to be inconvenient to work on (will require a ladder or a scrub brush on a pole) so we still have some left, but it looks so good!
I had two goals today--I wanted to sweep the kitchen floor and clean the bathroom. I did some other stuff, too, but I hadn't made it to either of the big things when M called to say he was coming home early, and by the way, I have a serious tire alignment problem that had ruined two of our tires, and they must be fixed before we drive it again. Whee! So he made an immediate appointment with a tire place in town, and I picked him up and we did a few errands while we waited for the car. While we were out, we bought a shop-vac (it came with an extra little one! it's so cute!) and a DVD player, as ours has been screwy for the last year or two, but is now so bad that it won't play anything without skipping. There's nothing like spending the weekend worrying about financial ruin only to go out and spend a bunch of money on cars and toys and tools! (Note: the part about financial ruin is my melodrama coming through; please disregard. We were just talking about financing some large projects, not the current state of our finances.)
Anyway, after we got back, we decided to get in on the big project of turning the sunroom into the family room. Our original plan was to buy a plasma TV and install it above the fireplace. That would look really, really cool. Unfortunately, there were a lot of problems with that plan.. namely, that part about buying a plasma TV, and also.. we don't watch much television and we're not really plasma-above-fireplace people. Also, our mantle is a bit high and we like to at least pretend to be ergonomically correct. There really is no other place for the TV in the living room. Our current plan has it in the dining room (along with our bed, currently, if you'll remember the bedroom renovations) as part of an extension of the living room. It's okay, but admittedly weird, and not the ultimate goal. So, we decided on Thursday that perhaps we should just take the TV to the sunroom and buy another couch for in front of the fireplace and call it a formal living room. And.. today we started moving furniture. That is.. a big job, and I am a big wimp. But we're done! There are some final touches on putting things back in place, but the furniture has been moved and most of the stuff (all of the hard stuff) is back in place. M and I are worn the heck out, and my back is muttering angrily to me. But, we're done, and it looks.. well, it still mainly looks weird, but at least we're done.
But I never got around to sweeping the kitchen, or cleaning the stupid bathroom.
*This isn't your average Ikea bookcase. Okay, it actually IS your average Ikea bookcase, I just wanted to say that. A lot of the Ikea stuff is sold in modules so that you can configure your cool particle-board furniture anyway you want, and so M (before we met) "designed" this one. It really is pretty, but it has been a source of humor around here because he is inappropriately fond of the thing, and actually said in all seriousness, at one point, that one house we looked at wasn't an option because there was no place to put the bookcase. I'm just saying.. let it go, man, there are other bookcases in the sea. Because, I like it and all, but it has a few small problems that would not make me cry too much if we had to move on. 1.) It is mostly black. Where it is not black, it is glass. You would not believe how much dust it collects. 2.) It was moved across the Atlantic and to three other locations once it arrived here. It was disassembled at least three other times. It is showing some serious wear. 3.) It is GIGANTIC, and dominates any room. 4.) It doesn't match anything else we have, or will be likely to obtain, for our living room, and I really don't generally care for black furniture.
Yesterday, our goal was to be productive, but we ended up going in a completely unanticipated direction. Our sunroom has been a junk repository since we moved in, and I am ashamed to say that I still hadn't seriously cleaned it. (The carpet had been cleaned, and most of the obvious cobwebs taken down, but that's it.) The other rooms in the house got super-cleaned when we moved in, but we ran out of time, and then I just lost interest. We weren't using it, after all! There are nine large windows in the room, plus a door and a storm door. When we had my family over for the big move-in dinner, we did the three windows in the front and were shocked and amazed at how wonderful they looked.. and at how much longer it took to do than we thought it would. That was the other reason we haven't gotten into the sunroom. Yesterday, M went out to bleach the window sills on the back porch (behind the sunroom) and that prompted us to actually start cleaning the windows. (FYI: if you have nasty green concrete, a bleach solution and a scrub brush will take it right off.) We worked for three or four hours straight on five windows, and they look incredible. Unfortunately, the other four are going to be inconvenient to work on (will require a ladder or a scrub brush on a pole) so we still have some left, but it looks so good!
I had two goals today--I wanted to sweep the kitchen floor and clean the bathroom. I did some other stuff, too, but I hadn't made it to either of the big things when M called to say he was coming home early, and by the way, I have a serious tire alignment problem that had ruined two of our tires, and they must be fixed before we drive it again. Whee! So he made an immediate appointment with a tire place in town, and I picked him up and we did a few errands while we waited for the car. While we were out, we bought a shop-vac (it came with an extra little one! it's so cute!) and a DVD player, as ours has been screwy for the last year or two, but is now so bad that it won't play anything without skipping. There's nothing like spending the weekend worrying about financial ruin only to go out and spend a bunch of money on cars and toys and tools! (Note: the part about financial ruin is my melodrama coming through; please disregard. We were just talking about financing some large projects, not the current state of our finances.)
Anyway, after we got back, we decided to get in on the big project of turning the sunroom into the family room. Our original plan was to buy a plasma TV and install it above the fireplace. That would look really, really cool. Unfortunately, there were a lot of problems with that plan.. namely, that part about buying a plasma TV, and also.. we don't watch much television and we're not really plasma-above-fireplace people. Also, our mantle is a bit high and we like to at least pretend to be ergonomically correct. There really is no other place for the TV in the living room. Our current plan has it in the dining room (along with our bed, currently, if you'll remember the bedroom renovations) as part of an extension of the living room. It's okay, but admittedly weird, and not the ultimate goal. So, we decided on Thursday that perhaps we should just take the TV to the sunroom and buy another couch for in front of the fireplace and call it a formal living room. And.. today we started moving furniture. That is.. a big job, and I am a big wimp. But we're done! There are some final touches on putting things back in place, but the furniture has been moved and most of the stuff (all of the hard stuff) is back in place. M and I are worn the heck out, and my back is muttering angrily to me. But, we're done, and it looks.. well, it still mainly looks weird, but at least we're done.
But I never got around to sweeping the kitchen, or cleaning the stupid bathroom.
*This isn't your average Ikea bookcase. Okay, it actually IS your average Ikea bookcase, I just wanted to say that. A lot of the Ikea stuff is sold in modules so that you can configure your cool particle-board furniture anyway you want, and so M (before we met) "designed" this one. It really is pretty, but it has been a source of humor around here because he is inappropriately fond of the thing, and actually said in all seriousness, at one point, that one house we looked at wasn't an option because there was no place to put the bookcase. I'm just saying.. let it go, man, there are other bookcases in the sea. Because, I like it and all, but it has a few small problems that would not make me cry too much if we had to move on. 1.) It is mostly black. Where it is not black, it is glass. You would not believe how much dust it collects. 2.) It was moved across the Atlantic and to three other locations once it arrived here. It was disassembled at least three other times. It is showing some serious wear. 3.) It is GIGANTIC, and dominates any room. 4.) It doesn't match anything else we have, or will be likely to obtain, for our living room, and I really don't generally care for black furniture.
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You guys are much more productive than I even dream about.
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The closest Ikea is sevenish hours away, but yeah, closer than Sweden. However, he brought all his stuff, basically. He spent four or five thousand dollars or something on shipping it all, but I do think it was a help in making him feel like he's at home here, so it was worth it. At least it's worth it since it was money spent when his finances were not under my control, I might feel differently about it now. ;)
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