Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Work in Progress
Before we took the day off to be VIPs, Rob worked really hard all day Saturday to get the kitchen cabinet frames put together. I got to supervise which I learned meant that I got to do very important things like fetch tools and make chocolate milk. The cabinets are ready for installation now but we still have some work to do to get the kitchen ready. The walls had to be patched and sanded, which Rob is working on at this very minute. I would help but he tells me not to. I don't think it's because I would do a bad job, he just likes to do it himself. I'm also smart enough to realize that not helping means I get to do whatever I want instead of working ;o) So I blog and wait for my turn to get in there so I can start my painting. We dediced on a light green called "Soothing Aloe" that we can use on the walls and ceiling and not have to worry about cutting in. It is so much easier that way. Here's my honey hard at work in a sea of cardboard boxes, tools scattered everywhere, a million little plastic packages of cabinet hardware, horrible instructions booklets (seriously- can you put some words in those instruction booklets, please?) and cabinets:
Monday, June 25, 2007
VIPs For The Day
One of Rob's best friends (who he hasn't seen in about 2 years) was in Iowa yesterday to play at a country music festival nearby, so we decided to go see him play and say hello. I hadn't met him yet so it was so great to finally say hi and introduce myself. He totally hooked us up with passes that got us awesome seats in the VIP tent.
Our great view of the stage- Jake Owen is up there singing in this photo:
Rob and his friend:
There was also free food and way better restroom facilities than the porta-potties everyone else had to use! I'm pretty sure I've never been a VIP before and I felt like a total fraud. I kept thinking, "We're not anybody special- they are going to figure that out and kick us out of here!" Apparently they never caught on because we got to spend the whole day in there and it was great!
Something cool about beer in Iowa? It comes in cups made out of corn! It says so on the cup- you can kind of see it in the picture below:
Our favorite act of the day was Sarah Buxton- I am usually not a fan of female singers but she is incredible! Her cd comes out on July 19th and I would totally encourage everyone to buy it. Or at least buy some of the singles from iTunes. Her voice is kind of raspy and she can just sing. She also writes a lot of her own stuff (and even some things for Keith Urban) and she is a very talented person.
It was so nice to have a day off from working on the house and getting to have some fun and see old friends. It was a great day and we really enjoyed our opportunity to be VIPs!
Our great view of the stage- Jake Owen is up there singing in this photo:
Rob and his friend:
There was also free food and way better restroom facilities than the porta-potties everyone else had to use! I'm pretty sure I've never been a VIP before and I felt like a total fraud. I kept thinking, "We're not anybody special- they are going to figure that out and kick us out of here!" Apparently they never caught on because we got to spend the whole day in there and it was great!
Something cool about beer in Iowa? It comes in cups made out of corn! It says so on the cup- you can kind of see it in the picture below:
Our favorite act of the day was Sarah Buxton- I am usually not a fan of female singers but she is incredible! Her cd comes out on July 19th and I would totally encourage everyone to buy it. Or at least buy some of the singles from iTunes. Her voice is kind of raspy and she can just sing. She also writes a lot of her own stuff (and even some things for Keith Urban) and she is a very talented person.
It was so nice to have a day off from working on the house and getting to have some fun and see old friends. It was a great day and we really enjoyed our opportunity to be VIPs!
Friday, June 22, 2007
Tornado Sirens
As I was writing that last post yesterday night, something interesting happened and I had to stop, turn off the computer and resume my blogging at a later time. See if you can guess what it was from the title of this post. Do you have a guess ready?..... Yes, that would be tornado sirens, plural. They started going off about 4:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. We knew what they were because the whole city we live in has a tornado drill the first Wednesday of every month. I have been told the following about tornado sirens, "When you hear them, you should go into the basement. But what everyone actually does is go outside to see where it is!" I mentioned this to Rob and we decided to be like everyone else and go outside to check it out. I've also learned that there really is a calm before the storm and if the wind dies down (it was blowing like crazy at this time) then you really need to get to a safe place because the tornado is coming. Well, we didn't get to see much and then the siren stopped. Well, it stopped for about 10 or 15 minutes until it went off again! We went outside again to check it out but there wasn't much to see- just a lot of dark clouds, wind and a few rain drops. We turned on the tv when he heard the first siren and the screen was completely black with big white lettering that said something like, "Tornado Warning! Get to a safe place immediately" and that was kind of crazy. But we still went outside and I took some pictures. You can see how dark the sky got.
I was wondering if we were being the dumb people from California who run outside while all the smart Iowa people go to a safe place. I was thinking of all the not-so-bright people I saw at Yellowstone Park when I was much younger going up to take pictures with the wild buffalo even though warnings were posted everywhere about how dangerous they are. I remember thinking, "That is not very smart- they could be killed doing that!"
Anyhow, when I got to work today, everyone else said they went outside too so I don't feel so dumb. We later heard that two tornados did touch down here in our city but neither were close to our house. One was pretty close to our old apartment so that would've been pretty exciting if we still lived there.
I was wondering if we were being the dumb people from California who run outside while all the smart Iowa people go to a safe place. I was thinking of all the not-so-bright people I saw at Yellowstone Park when I was much younger going up to take pictures with the wild buffalo even though warnings were posted everywhere about how dangerous they are. I remember thinking, "That is not very smart- they could be killed doing that!"
Anyhow, when I got to work today, everyone else said they went outside too so I don't feel so dumb. We later heard that two tornados did touch down here in our city but neither were close to our house. One was pretty close to our old apartment so that would've been pretty exciting if we still lived there.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Weekend Review (aka "The Curse of the Enamel Paint")
Apparently I'm not one to learn from past mistakes. While I build up to that part of the story of our weekend, let me go over some other things first. We have been super busy this past week with the cabinets arriving and trying to finish up other things too. This weekend we decided not to touch the cabinets and, instead, we'd just tie up the loose ends with the yard and painting. I've been meaning to paint the bathroom white and this weekend I really wanted to get that done and over with. It had a rose/mauve color with green tile and brown/neutral floor. Just too much going on. I had all my painting and priming stuff out for the bathroom when we decided to paint a bedroom that we hadn't planned on painting. In fact, we had probably been in that room a combined total of 5 times prior to this weekend. It was just kind of a no man's land. It is the bedroom that we intend to convert to the master bathroom and had no plan for it in the meantime. The bedroom was a bright yellow and had some yucky carpet in it. Rob got all the carpet, pads and tack strips up and it was looking so good that we decided to use some of that primer I had out and some of our extra "Churchill Hotel Vanilla" paint and just get the room looking good.
Before:
After:
You may also notice the furniture in the room now- we picked that up at a yard sale on Saturday and the room is ready to go now. Well, I suppose we still need a box spring and mattress to go with the bedroom set before we have anyone stay over...
I think I'm ready to finally talk about how I sometimes don't learn from my past mistakes. I had a little, okay HUGE, problem when I painted the kitchen in my old house. I didn't know the difference between enamel and latex paint or that it mattered if you painted one over the other. After I painted bright red latex paint over the existing enamel paint and it started peeling off like a sunburn, I learned the difference really fast. When we were getting ready to paint the bathroom in this house, I was pretty sure the paint in there was enamel so I asked two different people, on two different trips to Lowes, what to do to ensure I didn't have the same problem again. Both people told me to sand the paint to get the shine off, paint a coat of the Valspar High Hiding primer and then paint the latex white paint on. After three coats of paint (1 primer and 2 paint), we peeled off the tape and the same thing happened! We scored the paint too before we peeled the tape off so that was not the problem. It turned out to be not nearly as bad as the kitchen incident and I think we were able to save it. However, as soon as we peeled that tape off, I remembered what to do to prevent this from happening- something I had learned from a professional painter after the first disaster. So for anyone out there needing to know what to do to paint latex over enamel, you use BIN. I did that in the kitchen to fix my mistake and it worked great. Anyhow, here are some photos of the bathroom:
Before:
After:
We got a new shower curtain that has a bamboo print and also bought a little bamboo plant for the bathroom and that really brings the green and brown together. Now it actually seems calming and peaceful instead of wild, mismatched craziness!
Before:
After:
You may also notice the furniture in the room now- we picked that up at a yard sale on Saturday and the room is ready to go now. Well, I suppose we still need a box spring and mattress to go with the bedroom set before we have anyone stay over...
I think I'm ready to finally talk about how I sometimes don't learn from my past mistakes. I had a little, okay HUGE, problem when I painted the kitchen in my old house. I didn't know the difference between enamel and latex paint or that it mattered if you painted one over the other. After I painted bright red latex paint over the existing enamel paint and it started peeling off like a sunburn, I learned the difference really fast. When we were getting ready to paint the bathroom in this house, I was pretty sure the paint in there was enamel so I asked two different people, on two different trips to Lowes, what to do to ensure I didn't have the same problem again. Both people told me to sand the paint to get the shine off, paint a coat of the Valspar High Hiding primer and then paint the latex white paint on. After three coats of paint (1 primer and 2 paint), we peeled off the tape and the same thing happened! We scored the paint too before we peeled the tape off so that was not the problem. It turned out to be not nearly as bad as the kitchen incident and I think we were able to save it. However, as soon as we peeled that tape off, I remembered what to do to prevent this from happening- something I had learned from a professional painter after the first disaster. So for anyone out there needing to know what to do to paint latex over enamel, you use BIN. I did that in the kitchen to fix my mistake and it worked great. Anyhow, here are some photos of the bathroom:
Before:
After:
We got a new shower curtain that has a bamboo print and also bought a little bamboo plant for the bathroom and that really brings the green and brown together. Now it actually seems calming and peaceful instead of wild, mismatched craziness!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Wish You Were Here
If I wrote a postcard to my kitchen cabinets, it would go like this:
Hi! We moved in last week and we are anxiously awaiting your arrival. It’s great here and it will be even better when you get here too. Rob and I miss you and can’t wait to see you!
You may recall my Cabinet Debacle post from a few weeks ago. We ordered all new kitchen cabinets from IKEA and they were to be delivered to us, at our new house. There was a problem with the processing of the order (that they didn’t tell me about) and I had to re-place the order about 2 ½ weeks ago. Finally, after 5 ½ weeks of waiting, our kitchen cabinets arrived earlier this week on Tuesday, June 12th at approximately 9:00 a.m.
They came on a big pallet:
On a big truck:
And were delivered by two big guys who had a little trouble getting them up our steep driveway but they got them into the garage. Now they sit, reminding us of all the work we should be doing on them. And we will but first Rob had to seal the grout on the new floors (which he did Tuesday night- he did a great job!). Next up is the electrician who will be out next week to move some things around for us and add other things in. After that, I have to get the painting done which means in the next week or so, we need to pick a color. We’re thinking a light green right now but we haven’t picked out which “Fresh Cut Grass” or “Dewy Morning” or “Homestead Resort Parlor Sage” we want. Those aren’t actually colors we’re thinking of, I’m just trying to pick on the paint industry and the crazy names they give paint. After all that, then we can get going on the cabinets. We’ll be sure to take pictures as we’re (okay, as Rob is) putting them together and installing them. I am willing to help him, I just don’t know if I will actually be able to help, or just be in the way.
Hi! We moved in last week and we are anxiously awaiting your arrival. It’s great here and it will be even better when you get here too. Rob and I miss you and can’t wait to see you!
You may recall my Cabinet Debacle post from a few weeks ago. We ordered all new kitchen cabinets from IKEA and they were to be delivered to us, at our new house. There was a problem with the processing of the order (that they didn’t tell me about) and I had to re-place the order about 2 ½ weeks ago. Finally, after 5 ½ weeks of waiting, our kitchen cabinets arrived earlier this week on Tuesday, June 12th at approximately 9:00 a.m.
They came on a big pallet:
On a big truck:
And were delivered by two big guys who had a little trouble getting them up our steep driveway but they got them into the garage. Now they sit, reminding us of all the work we should be doing on them. And we will but first Rob had to seal the grout on the new floors (which he did Tuesday night- he did a great job!). Next up is the electrician who will be out next week to move some things around for us and add other things in. After that, I have to get the painting done which means in the next week or so, we need to pick a color. We’re thinking a light green right now but we haven’t picked out which “Fresh Cut Grass” or “Dewy Morning” or “Homestead Resort Parlor Sage” we want. Those aren’t actually colors we’re thinking of, I’m just trying to pick on the paint industry and the crazy names they give paint. After all that, then we can get going on the cabinets. We’ll be sure to take pictures as we’re (okay, as Rob is) putting them together and installing them. I am willing to help him, I just don’t know if I will actually be able to help, or just be in the way.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Bunnies and Fireflies
I don't want to add to any misconception that there isn't much to do here in Iowa, but Rob and I have spent many of our evenings sitting in our living room watching the bunnies and fireflies. Well, we've only been here 10 days so far but we've done that for at least 6 or 7 nights. I think it just amazes us because that doesn't happen where we lived in California. I don't think there are any fireflies at all in California and they are just so fun to watch. I like to think of it as a mini-fireworks show. You don't know where or when they're going to light up, and then it's just so fun to watch the bright burst of light. I tried to take photos of our favorite little friends to share with you. The bunny wasn't so hard to capture with a camera but the firefly was very tricky. They only light up for about 2 seconds and it takes longer than that for the camera to take the picture. I just took photos of the dark night until I finally captured one that you'll see below. It's the one that is the blurr ray of light and you would swear was not a picture of anything but rather the camera mistakenly going off while it's operator is trying to figure out what is going on. But that is not the case- it really is a firefly. It isn't anywhere as cool as they are to see in person but I wanted to share it anyhow because I am so proud of myself for actually getting a picture of one, even if it does look like a blurry ray of light!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Settling In
We've been in the house for eight days now and things are starting to come together. The media room is set up. Just what we needed too- things to distract us from all the work we should be doing. The computer/work area is set up in the bedroom closet on the other side of the loveseat in the picture below:
The living and dining room are looking pretty good. Note our temporary cooking and food/dish storage along the right side of the photo:
It's still pretty chaotic in our eventual master bedroom (right now we are in what will be the guest room once we get this room done):
And I think it will be a while before we park in the garage:
Our kitchen cabinets are due to be delivered sometime this week. I won't know for sure until a day or two before but I'm hoping it will be towards the end of the week since the cabinets need to go in the garage you see above. There is absolutely no room for them. We better work hard this week to get it cleared out so the delivery guys will have a place to put the cabinets. It's amazing the percentage of boxes that are kitchen items. We've unpacked a quite a bit and still have some more but a lot of what is sitting around goes in the kitchen and it will be a while before we get to that. I purchased our gas range, microwave and dishwasher earlier this week at Lowe's. Rob didn't go with me because we had them picked out already and he doesn't really care for spending that much money. I don't like it too much either but it's something I was expecting and budgeting for so it doesn't bother me so much.
We did manage to get a home-cooked meal last night and had the leftovers tonight. I bought a Marie Callendar's crockpot-meal-in-a-bag thing in the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store, dumped it in the crock pot and it turned out to be delicious! We had the beef stew version but I think we'll be trying some others in the future. It was so nice not to eat out- even the leftovers seemed like a treat.
There's plenty more going on around here but I think I'll save that for another night!
The living and dining room are looking pretty good. Note our temporary cooking and food/dish storage along the right side of the photo:
It's still pretty chaotic in our eventual master bedroom (right now we are in what will be the guest room once we get this room done):
And I think it will be a while before we park in the garage:
Our kitchen cabinets are due to be delivered sometime this week. I won't know for sure until a day or two before but I'm hoping it will be towards the end of the week since the cabinets need to go in the garage you see above. There is absolutely no room for them. We better work hard this week to get it cleared out so the delivery guys will have a place to put the cabinets. It's amazing the percentage of boxes that are kitchen items. We've unpacked a quite a bit and still have some more but a lot of what is sitting around goes in the kitchen and it will be a while before we get to that. I purchased our gas range, microwave and dishwasher earlier this week at Lowe's. Rob didn't go with me because we had them picked out already and he doesn't really care for spending that much money. I don't like it too much either but it's something I was expecting and budgeting for so it doesn't bother me so much.
We did manage to get a home-cooked meal last night and had the leftovers tonight. I bought a Marie Callendar's crockpot-meal-in-a-bag thing in the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store, dumped it in the crock pot and it turned out to be delicious! We had the beef stew version but I think we'll be trying some others in the future. It was so nice not to eat out- even the leftovers seemed like a treat.
There's plenty more going on around here but I think I'll save that for another night!
Friday, June 8, 2007
We'll Be Right Back After This Short Message
We will be online again sometime tomorrow- Yay!! We also will finally have cable tv. We’ve been using the antenna which gets a great signal and gets HD channels pretty good too- except when it’s windy. I have now come to the conclusion that it’s windy a lot here :o( It will be nice to watch uninterrupted television and play on the internet again.
We got all moved in last Saturday and turned in all our keys and such to the old apartment. It looks a little crazy through most of the house but it’s getting better. It sure was nice to have some time off when we moved into first apartment in Iowa. I had about two weeks to get us all settled and unpacked. I wish I had even just a week to do that again in the house. We’ve been doing a ton of yard work. It seems that the previous owner probably just couldn’t keep up with everything so there’s a lot of cleaning up, weeding and pruning to do in addition to just mowing all the lawn we have. Once we get it cleaned up and cleared out, we’ll go back in with some borders (there are none anywhere now- everything just grows into each other and it makes me crazy!) and wood chips. We want to make it all look good for now and then add plants and flowers back in as we’re able to fill in any bare spots. We’re trying to keep a lot of things but some just have to go.
We got all moved in last Saturday and turned in all our keys and such to the old apartment. It looks a little crazy through most of the house but it’s getting better. It sure was nice to have some time off when we moved into first apartment in Iowa. I had about two weeks to get us all settled and unpacked. I wish I had even just a week to do that again in the house. We’ve been doing a ton of yard work. It seems that the previous owner probably just couldn’t keep up with everything so there’s a lot of cleaning up, weeding and pruning to do in addition to just mowing all the lawn we have. Once we get it cleaned up and cleared out, we’ll go back in with some borders (there are none anywhere now- everything just grows into each other and it makes me crazy!) and wood chips. We want to make it all look good for now and then add plants and flowers back in as we’re able to fill in any bare spots. We’re trying to keep a lot of things but some just have to go.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Moving Day- Again
Today makes the third time in 13 months that I moved. I am very tired of it. I don't plan on doing it again for quite a while. It made me think though that I never took any pictures of the apartment while we were here. Here are a few. They were taken after we packed but it doesn't look much different than before. We knew we were going to buy a house and move again quickly so we left a lot of our stuff in boxes. It was a little like living in a mini-storage locker.
The Living Room
The Kitchen (Dining Area is in the foreground)
Hallway and First Bedroom (we've used it for storage and the desk is in there too)
Our Bedroom
Our Bedroom- Part II
Finally, since today is moving day, I will be packing up the computer. We don't have internet service hooked up at the house yet so I will try to do posts from work in the meantime but it may be a little while before we get a new post up.
The Living Room
The Kitchen (Dining Area is in the foreground)
Hallway and First Bedroom (we've used it for storage and the desk is in there too)
Our Bedroom
Our Bedroom- Part II
Finally, since today is moving day, I will be packing up the computer. We don't have internet service hooked up at the house yet so I will try to do posts from work in the meantime but it may be a little while before we get a new post up.
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