I Want My Baby Back

I picked up Rob from the airport Friday after I got off work at noon and it’s so great to have him home again. We were only apart for a few days but I hated it! We got some lunch and ran some errands in Des Moines before heading home. There are a ton of things to do to get ready for his parents’ visit this week and though we didn’t do much Friday evening, we were very busy on Saturday and Sunday. We were going to be bold and paint our bedroom some shade of green but we couldn’t agree on one and finally decided to stick with Valspar's Churchill Hotel Vanilla (the color we used in the hall and other three bedrooms) because we like it so much. Our floors and wood trim are a very yellowy color and that makes picking a wall color pretty tricky. The hotel room from our honeymoon in Aruba is providing the inspiration for what our room will look like.



I love the green and orange and the color scheme looks great with the curtains and pillows we already picked up at Ikea. It's just too bad we don't have that same view out our window! I ordered an orange quilt to go across the bottom of the bed and it also comes with two pillow shams. All we need now is a few accessories and it’ll be done. Rob built the bed and we got the mattress on it but we haven’t slept in the master bedroom yet because the paint and the foam mattress are quite a powerful combination in producing strong odors. We’re keeping the windows open to let it air out and probably won’t sleep in there until Thursday though we’re both very anxious to sleep in our new room. It was a very productive weekend but we still need to mow the yard, clean, finish master bedroom, clean out remaining boxes in living room, finish one of two last cabinets in kitchen. . .

Getting Good at This

It's off to the airport again- this time to Phoenix for a conference for Rob that his employer is sending him to. I didn't really want to be away from him for a week so I'm going for 4 days. I didn't have enough vacation time to go the entire time but that's okay. Since he'll be in classes and things like that all day, I have big plans for working out at the hotel gym and going swimming and reading. That's it. After all the running around we did last weekend, I'm looking forward to just being in one place for this weekend. It's hotter than hot there and I don't think either of us is too excited about Phoenix, but we're trying to make the best of the trip. We leave tomorrow morning so there won't be any postings for a few days while I'm gone. I hope to convince Rob someday that we need a laptop PC but I haven't yet. One good thing about all the traveling? I am a pro at the USPS website when it comes to requesting them to hold our mail.

There wasn't too much going on this past week since we were just getting back home and then getting ready to take off again. I did make some lemon cookies that were very tasty.



They were pretty easy to make too but the bad news? The recipe only made 16 cookies! I made a note of that on the recipe and I think from now on I will always make at least a double batch. That was pretty much the only cooking I did this week. It didn't make much sense to get groceries when we are only home for 4 days.

Tonight, we went to Des Moines and joined Costco so we could finally buy ourselves a new mattress. We had tried out the Tempur-Pedic beds at a local mattress store but those are crazy expensive. We did a lot of research online since there are many other options for memory foam mattresses these days and decided to purchase this one. We're not ready to set it all up yet but that will happen soon. Rob's parents are visiting in less than two weeks and we sleep in the guest room now so that will be a problem when we actually have guests. We have everything we need now for our master bedroom, we just need to paint the room and put it all together. More painting, I can't wait. Seriously, it is very exciting to have everything now and get that much closer to being settled in our house. That is a great feeling.

The Next Project

Last week I noticed some water spots in the ceiling in our basement in a spot that is underneath our bathroom. The hubby did a little investigating and discovered we had some loose tiles in the shower and water was getting into the walls there and dripping down. Monday night Rob began his next project which entailed removing approximately the bottom two rows of tiles which are just above the tub in our one and only shower. I was none too thrilled to discover that he was doing this at the beginning of the work week and I can't say I'm feeling much better about it now. We had to remove and clean nearly all the tiles you see below that are marked with blue tape and then dry out all the soaked wood. That's right- wood. For some reason there is wood behind those tiles instead of backer board. We didn't change it out like we probably should have but we'd like to redo the whole thing at some point in the reasonably near future. We spent this evening re-grouting the entire shower- actually, Rob is still working on it now at 10:30 at night. Getting clean has been quite a challenge this week and I'm so glad it's almost done. We're going to Minneapolis tomorrow night and are staying in a hotel- I don't think I've ever been quite so excited to stay in a hotel. We need to do a few more things at Ikea and then we can come home and totally finish up the kitchen. Here's some photos of the bathroom job:







By the way, I would like to highly recommend the Hyatt Place hotels. We stayed in the one in Minneapolis last time we were there and will probably stay there again. The price was very low and it had the style and services and amenities you would expect from any other Hyatt hotels. They always have the best price on their own website and if you have AAA, you can get it even cheaper. The lady who checked us in was telling us that Hyatt bought out AmeriSuites (I believe it was that chain) and now they are working to convert them all to this "Hyatt Place" line. Anyhow, that is my two cents for travel tips for today!

Where We Belong

We recently found something in our basement that turned out to be pretty amazing. I think it is definitely a sign that we are doing the right thing and are even in exactly the right house that we should be in. Below is a picture of the general area in the basement where we found our sign; yes, it's an actual sign. You can see a little bit of the bottom of the sign right in the middle of the picture below.



The gentleman who owned the house before us was big on reusing items in the house for different things he was doing. The little bit of that sign (a label really) you can see was actually off the end of a wooden fruit/vegetable crate. Upon closer inspection, we saw that the label actually looked like this:



We were both pretty blown away that it had Fresno on it- the place we moved here from! And I don't think there are too many packing sheds in Fresno since it is more of an urban place. Most sheds are located in smaller towns surrounding Fresno. It seems so amazing that the label/sign would turn up in the house we bought in Iowa and it makes me feel pretty good about what we are doing.

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!

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.

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!

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.

The Cabinet Debacle

The tile floor in the entryway, kitchen and back hallway was all finished up last Thursday and here is what it looks like:



We are so happy with it and think it looks just wonderful. We're also glad we spent the extra money to get the tile floor because it just looks so nice and will last forever. We need to seal the grout on Monday and make sure we do that every 3-5 years to keep it looking good. Next step is the cabinets which we thought would be delivered by now. However, I just discovered a major screw-up with my order from IKEA and it never got placed and they never called to tell me that they were not going to place it or to discuss the issue. I don't really have anywhere else to go for a comparable product so I'm stuck waiting another 2-3 weeks for the cabinets. Just a helpful hint for everyone- make sure your phone number matches up with the phone number your credit card company has because some retailers use that for verification in addition to your address. Ugh- so disgusted.

This weekend we've been working very hard to get everything painted so we can move in next weekend. We got primer up in the living room and entry last night and painted two of the bedrooms and the hallway today. The bedrooms and hall were already white (thanks to some primering I had done a few weeks ago) and we only did one coat but I think that's going to be all we need. We'll check it out when we go over tomorrow and see what we think but so far we think maybe just a few touch-ups and we're done with those areas. The color of those are "Churchill Hotel Vanilla" which looks white if you just walked in and could not compare the color to an actual white. But it's a little more warm and creamy and looks like, well, vanilla. We'll be painting the entryway and formal dining/living room a color called "Homestead Resort Parlor Taupe" which is basically just taupe. It's a nice, really light tan color and we'll be painting the ceilings that color too. Rob originally wanted white ceilings. I don't really like that and neither of us wanted to cut in along the ceiling or tape all that off. So we compromised and picked out the two really light colors so Rob could have the lighter ceiling he likes without the hassle. We're very happy with the decisions we've made about colors and how to paint it all. It's looking great and it just feels wonderful to have it feel more now like our house and be how we like it. If you remember, the living and entryway used to be a peach color and you can see them below with just the primer on. It is amazing how much it brightened them up by doing that, especially the entry which used to feel so dark and yucky when it had peach walls and dark red tile. We'll be sure to put up more pictures after the painting is all done so you can see the finished product.

Yard (Or Should that be Hard?) Work

So here is what our house looked like Saturday morning:




Here is what it looked like Saturday afternoon:




And here is what it looks like now:




The house has this really cool stone on the front of it that you could hardly see with those enormous bushes in the way. The chair of the horticulture department stopped by our house last Thursday night and gave us some tips and advice on different things. One thing he recommended was taking those out- which just happened to be something I was advocating for a while now. So while Rob's in California visiting with friends and family and racing, I thought it would be a good time to tear them out and have a little surprise for him when he gets back home. As you can see, I still have a little pile of branches to be picked up and bagged but I ran out of time. There are still three stumps there too that I was unable to get out. I worked on the first stump for about 5 hours on Saturday but it still wouldn't budge. I think I'm going to have to get some professional yard help to get those out. However, we now own pruning shears, a pruning saw, an ax and something we always called a "persuader" in my family. It is a piece of metal that is about five feet long and probably weighs around 50 pounds. One end is pointed and the other is flat. Thankfully, all my limbs are still attached although I do have numerous scratches, cuts and bruises that I didn't have before all this started.

Technical note: They just "helped" us at blogger by adding an autosave feature which makes it nearly impossible for me to post. They claim to have it fixed but that's why I haven't posted for a week and why they may be a little sketchy for a while.

Workin' for the Weekend

We've been spending all our time lately at the house, working on getting the kitchen torn up so that we can put it back together. We had the plumber out last week to take care of a few chores and the new tile floor is getting put in this week. I finally earned a little weekend furlough for all my hard work, as you will see below. Rob was ripping up the vinyl flooring in the kitchen but the cardboard backer on the vinyl would not come up too. I had to wet it all down with water and then scrape it off with a putty knife. It sucked. I have no idea why I'm smiling in the picture.



You can see the purplish-stuff is the cardboard layer that I still needed to get up. And it smelled like.... well, it was bad. I'll just leave it at that.



As I mentioned, I got to take the weekend off and I went out to LA to visit my bestie, Nanette and her husband. We had a great time- mostly eating, shopping and doing girly-stuff like massages and pedicures. We made it to my favorite LA places to eat which are Versailles and Bay Cities Deli. We also tried a new place, Jin Patisserie, in Venice and had their high tea special which was wonderful and a good deal at only $18. And then you just can't beat seeing a good butt statue in Beverly Hills.



It was a wonderful break but we'll be back at work this week. And don't feel too bad for Rob- he gets this weekend off to join his buddies at the race track in California and have some fun time there while I'll be painting and working on the house.

Busy Little Bees

We have been so busy lately, buzzing around the house trying to get everything torn out of the kitchen and lining up everything that needs to happen next. We go over to the house every day after work and stay until at least 9:00 p.m. And we've been there for the past two weekends, working all day long on things. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave me much time for blogging :o( Anyhow, Rob and I worked together on getting the vinyl flooring out of the kitchen and that was tough. Rob got the existing tile out of the entry but then I had to go back through and pull out all the staples that were left behind from the plywood board the tile was sitting on. There were hundreds of them and that was a pain. Literally. I kept getting my pinky smashed between the pliers and the floor while I was pulling those staples out. I got a blister on my hand too from the pliers. We ordered the new tile floor and that goes in next week, after the plumber comes out and does a few little chores for us. We also ordered all our cabinets from IKEA and those should be delivered to us in 2-3 weeks. On top of that, we have to keep up with the yard work and the grass grows like crazy out here! Speaking of...

Spring is definitely here and it’s gorgeous. Everything is clean and fresh and in bloom and it looks so much better than I expected it to look. The grass is such a beautiful green- you don’t see grass like that in the Central Valley in California. It almost hurts your eyes to look at it. There must be a thousand poppies in our backyard (not really but there are a LOT!) that are just starting to bloom. When they really get going, I’ll be sure to take a picture and post it here. In fact, I’ll be putting up a few pictures soon of what we’ve been up to with the house lately. I would’ve done it now, but the battery on my camera is dead and that needs to charge up first.

So Much To Say

Sorry that it's been a while since the last blog- it's been a busy time for us. Our home search really kicked into high gear and two days ago, we got a house! It is exactly what we were looking for and the price was great. One thing I learned is that it is way different buying a house here as compared to back in California. It moves so much quicker! The house wasn't available for showings until Friday so we went at 11:00 that morning, made an offer about 1:30 and got a call from the realtor at 3:30 that the house was ours. But when we made the offer, our agent told us we only had to give them about 4-5 hours and I just couldn't believe that but she said that's just how it works here. And then we found out after only 2 hours- wow! Another thing is that most closings happen in 30-45 days here. I had a 60-day closing period when I bought and sold my house and I think that was pretty standard for Californnia. We opted for the 30 days since the house is empty and we are anxious to get out of the tiny apartment we occupy now. Best part of the house- no ponds with geese nearby! Maybe not the best part but it's definitely going to be something we'll appreciate. I will be sure to take some pictures and then post them when we go inside the house for the inspections in the next week or two. Rob is so excited and I am too though my previous home-buying experience was pretty bad and kind of kills my enthusiasm a bit. Seeing Rob get so excited about it is good for me because it gets me going too. I think I'll be much more excited when we actually get the keys and get in the house. We're already dreaming of all things we want to do to fix it up and make it ours. We've even been to Lowe's twice already just to look around and get ideas.

I would've posted the good news a little sooner but I had a little trouble with the Mac and had to go into the Apple store in Des Moines today. First time in over two years I've had a problem and it was totally my fault. I talked with one of the geniuses there in the store and he helped me get a few things set up that I've been wondering about for a while. He also told me about a plan where you pay $99 for the year and get to go into the store for little lessons. I'm seriously thinking about doing that. I think you can even go in as often as once a week. My bit of advice: Everyone should use a Mac.