Quiet Week
Christmas is over. It was exhausting but really very nice. My family helped me clean up last night and left for home. This afternoon Alex’s dad came over with his girlfriend for lunch and to take Alex to spend a couple of days with them and his other grandparents. We won’t see him again until Friday. The house is very, very quiet. I’m enjoying it although I miss him already. At least I’ll get lots of knitting done.
Just after the dinner dishes were done last night the cold water knob of our kitchen faucet fell apart. We can’t fix it, but we can turn the water on and off with pliers. The faucet is very old and we knew its days were numbered, but I thought it would last at least until we renovated the kitchen. We have to get a new one this week because the pliers are a major pain in my ass, but we got a gift certificate for Home Depot from Jeremy’s mom for Christmas, so that takes care of that.
My gifts went over really well. My sister loved her socks (which I didn’t mention previously because sometimes she checks out my site), my mom loved her shawl and my dad wore his hat all day yesterday. I made a Jayne Cobb hat for my sister’s boyfriend, and right after presents were opened he insisted we watch the hat episode of Firefly while he wore his. It was cute and I’m so glad he liked it so much. I’ll have pictures later in the week.
The place is clean, Alex is gone, Jeremy’s at work. All I have to do now is decide what I’m going to knit.
Hope everyone had a great holiday!
Utter Relief
I LOVE IT
I can rest. The room is painted and usable and not at all in any way yellow. Jeremy stepped out to pick up some replacement outlets and a light switch, and that’s all that’s happening in there until it’s time for window and door trim, baseboards and molding. I love the colour. It’s really cozy. It’s perfect.
Now on to the million and one other things I need to get done by tomorrow. I’m hoping to be plopped on the couch with a rum-spiked eggnog by midnight.
Definitely Going with Something Different
Much more my style.
I appreciate everyone’s comments and while I was in love with the idea of bright bold colour, I have realized that I can’t live with it. I looked around my house and my things; I own nothing even remotely close to this colour, shocking though that may be. I’ve always loved it, but I think I feel towards golden yellow the way I feel about dogs: they’re beautiful and fun to be around, but I sure as hell don’t want one in my house.
Anyway, I was playing around over on the Behr site and came up with these that are much more my sort of thing. I’m not even going to pretend that you guys have any sort of say in my determining of the final colour, but I want to know what you think. Which one stirs your loins?
In bathroom news, Jeremy worked for hours late last night to pull up all the carpet and tack strips. What a nightmare. Underneath we found stick-on tile linoleum of the barfiest variety. They aren’t coming up easily. The floor around the toilet has a lot of water damage (no real surprise there) and it looks like it’s going to need to be replaced. I guess we’ll be renovating the bathroom sooner than we expected. Right now we’ve got cardboard boxes covering the entire floor to make it nicer for walking in the meantime.
Wake Me When it’s Over
My toilet overflowed today. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but the bathroom is carpeted. Yes! The genius who lived here previously thought it would be cozy, I guess. The bathroom has always been on our list of things to fix up, but now I have sewage soaking into the carpet right next to the toilet and I’m this close to poking out my own eyes. I’ve cleaned EVERYTHING but the carpet itself and the toilet is working again, but I cringe every time I go in there. When Jeremy comes home from work we will be pulling up the carpet and underpad and throwing them outside. Then we’ll disinfect the old lino that’s under there, if such a thing can be done.
Why, WHY would you put carpet in a bathroom? Especially when the toilet itself is older than Moses.
Excuse me, I have to get drunk RIGHT NOW.
Oy
the anti-mellow
Yeah. I’m not sure what to say. I think I hate it.
I wouldn’t exactly say I made a mistake, since I chose the colour from a multitude of paint chips and I was going for bright, intense colour. The colour came out exactly like the chip and I loved it as we were painting it, but now that we’ve moved a few things into the room I’m starting to really dislike it. It’s too intense. The name of the colour is Mellow Yellow (irony at its finest) and while I love the shade, it’s just way too intense. It’s the colour of the freaking SUN right before you go blind from staring at it. I am a little concerned for my ocular health.
The colour is a little bit more orangey in person and since the window in the room is so tiny there is no way I can get a decent photo with natural light unless I set up a tripod, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Granted, the room is not complete. We still need trim and molding and coverings for both the window and breaker panel, but I’m having a hard time imagining I’ll like it more with all of that stuff on. We won’t be able to actually install that stuff until spring, anyway. I don’t think I can live with this colour for that long.
I want a much paler version of the same colour, or something different entirely. Unfortunately our furniture looks terrible in there…I thought the birch would offer more of a contrast than it actually does. The futon frame is an unfinished pine, and I was thinking of a dark black/brown stain and some varnish, which would be easy enough. The desk and our drawer units are veneers and I don’t want to paint those.
It turns out that the floor slopes incredibly, which is something you don’t notice until you put a rolling office chair in there. Sit on the chair and you go whooshing backwards. Good times.
Oh, I think I really, really hate it.
Socks, Raglans and Bert
Someone loves Bert
We removed the wallpaper in the office, which thankfully came off really easily. Above you can see what we found painted on the wall underneath. Lovely. I still have more taping and sanding to do before we can prime, so we get to enjoy Ursula’s love for Bert a little while longer (we know her name was Ursula because it was written on one of the other walls in pen).
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From Ant Room to Office
Remember this nightmare? Well, I’d mentioned previously that we were working on taking care of it…tearing the wall down and spraying with Raid and diatomaceous earth. The mould problem took precedent and by the time we cleaned it all out and bleached the shit out of the walls and floor and painted the cement with waterproof sealant, September had gone by. Being Thanksgiving weekend, Jeremy had an extra day off, so we bought our materials and got to work.
Warm and toasty!
It’s surprisingly easy to insulate when your studs are the right distance apart. Before we put the pink stuff in, we used spray foam to fill in the holes in the outer wall from the rotted wood and ant damage. All that will be replaced when we get new siding in the spring, but we needed something to last until then. The bright new studs are there to brace a couple of studs that had been decimated by the ants. Afterward we installed a moisture barrier and sealed it with acoustical sealant, which means no drafts.
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Getting Things Under Control
The dumpster is gone, the mould is gone, the mess from the ant room (office) is gone, and we’re almost ready to do the fun stuff. When the dumpster arrived it looked way too big and I thought perhaps we could have gone with the smaller size. As it turned out, we had to arrange everything tetris-style to get it all in without any overhang.
The basement is ready for a wash with diluted bleach and scrub brushes. After that we’ll be filling in chinks and cracks with hydraulic concrete filler and the final step in there before we insulate is giving it a couple of coats of this.
The ant wall in the office has been ripped back to its skeleton and dusted with diatomaceous earth, a powder that dessicates insects by cutting into their exoskeletons and drying them out. It’s great stuff; it doesn’t lose its effectiveness over time and continues to do its nasty damage for as long as it’s present. All we have to do in there is insulate and drywall, and then, FINALLY, we can begin decorating. I will have an office!
Today we’ve got to hit the mall for an outfit for Alex to wear to this lovely lady’s engagement party on Sunday. If I can find something relatively affordable in my size I may get something new as well. The dress I’ve got is a bit warm for the weather and since the party is outdoors I’m probably going to sweat to death.
We don’t have anything else planned for tonight, so I’m going to take advantage of the fact that my house is clean and my laundry is caught up to knit. I’m almost to the armpits of the white cardigan and I hope to get as much done as I can.
Did I Just Rent a Dumpster?
I didn’t finish the back of my cardigan after all, but I did knit for about 4 hours the other day and made some progress. It’s now taunting me from its bag. So close.
As far as mould goes, yesterday we got a lot done. The mould is in the basement, and the basement spans the two back rooms of our house. The rooms are an extension to the main house and this is the only part of the house with a basement beneath.
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Carpenter Ants are Suck
There is nothing more I would like than to post a whole bunch of pictures of my beautiful new home. Unfortunately my new home is a semi-disasterous 50 year old home that needs more in repair than we had originally thought. For instance, getting rid of our 2000-3000 new pe(s)ts.
Behold the Beauty!
