Slow but steady...

... is apparently an apt descriptor of my painting skills. We have a whole lotta trim to paint, and that was the plan for this weekend...

...oh, along with painting the master bedroom, which was going to be totally quick, so no problem, right?

Um, right. Except for the part where the master bedroom has twelve foot ceilings, four doors, three windows, and five paired beams that intersect the walls. Not to mention the other part where we hadn't realized we'd have to fill all the tiny nail holes in the trim with wood filler before we could paint. So yeah... we'll paint the trim next weekend.

Is your refrigerator running?

How the heck does that old joke go? I just sat here for five minutes trying to remember it, and had a lot of trouble because somehow it got mixed up in my brain with a knock-knock joke. "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Where is your refrigerator going?" Which makes no sense at all, obviously. I think it must not be a knock-knock joke.

Anyway, I again didn't make it out to the house today before dark - not to mention there was white stuff falling from the sky?!?! - but wanted to post a quick update to the refrigerator saga. You guys are not going to believe this - THE SECOND REFRIGERATOR IS LOST. I wish I were making this up. As you may recall, the Lowe's delivery manager told me last week that our first refrigerator had gotten damaged and then gone rogue, and he'd placed an order for a replacement. I was supposed to get a call within five days to schedule delivery. Well it's now been nine days, and no call, so I called them this evening. There was no one in the delivery department to take my call, so I spoke to another manager, who went through many of the same procedures as the first guy ("Ma'am, we show the refrigerator as having been delivered last month." "No, that was the FIRST lost refrigerator."). Cue my head exploding. They are now "looking into it" again, and I'm supposed to call back in another two days if I haven't heard from them. All I can say is it's a darn good thing I'm not living in that house, refrigerator-less, or this would be a lot less entertaining - but the fact that they have now lost TWO ENORMOUS REFRIGERATORS is pretty hilarious. My hypothesis is that the second refrigerator has run off and eloped with the first refrigerator (where do you think those little dorm-size fridges come from?).

Standard Time is ruining my blog

Standard Time, I dig you in the morning when my alarm clock goes off and it isn't pitch black. Kinda dark, admittedly, but bearable. But we have a bit of a problem: YOU ARE RUINING MY BLOG. By the time I get out to the house after work, it's DARK and gloomy and I can't see things or take photos or let the dogs run around without losing them. Grumble grumble grumble.

Anyway, all to say that I don't have an update today. So why am I posting, you ask? This post is a plea for help. We have to pick out carpet for the two upstairs bedrooms soon. (The rest of the house will have wood floors courtesy of Brandon's grandma's barn, but we don't have quite enough wood for the whole shebang - plus I think the pooches will enjoy carpet in the bedroom - and yes, I make house-related decisions based on the assumed desires of my dogs. WHAT.) Ahem. The point is, you guys, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CARPET. I don't know what to look for, how to tell if it's good quality, how to tell if it is going to off-gas a bunch of weirdness and make us high. Help me, internet! Have you bought carpet recently? Any recommended brands or retailers? Extra points and kisses if it's made in the U.S. without murdering the environment. Mwah.

Clearly, we have pleased the shelving gods

I'm not sure exactly what we did - it certainly wasn't dusting our current shelves. Whatever it was, I am pleased as punch that one of our house dilemmas has been solved in a bizarrely fortuitous way. To back up, one of the many (many) things we're really excited about is having recessed shelving in the living room to house a bunch of media stuff - mainly, the mini-computer and projector that we use instead of a TV, and a receiver for the speaker system. Mounting the projector at the top of this shelving unit will get it up high enough that we won't be projecting silhouettes of people, wagging dog tails, etc., like we have been for the past five years (woohoo!). It will also provide some storage for part of Brandon's record collection.

Anyway, the idea for this recessed shelving occurred to us after the budget had been drawn up and agreed upon, which meant it was going to have to be completed either (a) as an add-on, or (b) by us. We got an initial add estimate for a *fancy* version... although to be honest, I can't remember what was so super fancy about it except for the price ($1500!). When I squawked about this, we got an estimate for a scaled down version (basically a box made of MDO plywood, trimmed out) which was still $600. Again, this seemed like an awful lot for something I felt like we could tackle ourselves.

One day sitting in the living room at our rental, I happened to be ruminating on this issue, when I looked up... and the clouds parted, and a blinding ray of light came shooting out of the sky! And then an apple fell on my head.

OK, not really. But I did look at this shelf - which was built by Brandon's grandfather - and I thought to myself, "self, that sure looks similarly-sized as the opening where the built-in shelves are supposed to go for the media cabinet." Low and behold, we measured the shelving unit (20" wide), and went over to the house to measure the opening... 20.5". Seriously.

So today we hauled it over, increased the height of the opening a bit...

...and plopped it right in there!

(...trapping Brandon in the wall in the process.)

Could that possibly be a better fit?? Ridiculous. All we have to do is slap a plywood back on it, paint the inside, and trim it out. Even better, we'd been unsure where this particular piece of furniture was going to fit in the house. Et voila!

(Here is Brandon when I told him to look like a drywall-knife-wielding serial killer.)

Hooray for saving $1500 and repurposing something you already have! Shelving gods, I promise to be better about dusting in the future.

In unrelated news, I checked my Google Analytics account earlier today. One of my favorite things is to see the ways in which people are finding the blog via Google searches. Apparently there's been a burst recently of people searching for "red house brown trim" (and likely getting to the blog via Google Images). The one that made me giggle the most today was "how to build an outdoor turtle house." My friend, I'm sorry you likely did not find what you were looking for... but please send photos of that turtle.

There's a hole in my cabinet, dear Liza

A couple holes, actually - the GC is getting ready to install the over-the-range microwave, so this cabinet had to be modified to accommodate the vent:

Apparently one of the mounting screws was missing, though, so he had to pick up a spare at Lowe's. It is exciting to think how close we're getting to things like appliances and counters going in... I know I keep saying this, but it's starting to look like a REAL HOUSE!!

The other hole is unfortunately a big chunk of paint/finish missing from one of the cabinet doors in the little desk area (cue sad trombone). I haven't pointed this out to the GC yet but it'll have to be replaced/repaired... I am actually stewing a bit over the whole desk region, because I am feeling a bit "meh" about the color we picked for the cabinets.

At the time we went with the cream to set this area apart from the kitchen cabinets, which are just around the corner, and we wanted this to feel like a separate space. Now I am wishing we'd just gone with white, because this color is really not going to agree with the Summer Lime paint selection. Hrmmm... I am considering options like maybe painting the surrounding wall a different color... maybe one of the blues we've used elsewhere in the house... what do y'all think? I should get back to the house and put up some samples next to the cabinets so you can get a better picture of it.

In other areas of the house the trimming is moving along... like around the door and window on the river side porch:

And the pantry:

This will be painted beadboard - I know right now it's giving me scary flashbacks to the rampant wood paneling disaster that was the original Turtle House, but it'll be a nice touch when it's painted. The front side of the island will also be beadboard so they can be friends. No one wants lonely beadboard.

The master bathroom vanity that we are making out of an old refinished dresser has also been moved to the bathroom. We have to cut holes in the top to accommodate the rectangular vessel sinks and faucets, and I still have to figure out how exactly I'm going to shorten all the drawers so they don't hit the plumbing. Oh and add trim around the bottom. Details, details - it is going to be super pretty when it's done! I am really pleased with how the staining/polying came out.

I updated the exterior slide show for the first time in a while today... can you spot the difference?

Let me give you a hint - there is a little less plywood going on. That's right, our super classy front door - which had had the glass busted out and subsequently replaced with plywood - is history.

This door will eventually be painted a warm golden color, and there will be a concrete porch instead of the current plywood version. But you know, we can't get rid of ALL of our plywood accoutrements at once.

Taking care of business

Quick update today to report some progress in the "office" - that is, the small nook around the corner from the kitchen that will house our files, printer, pens and pencils, and other businessy stuff. Probably also my TI-82 calculator.

I only got one picture today because I was visiting with a friend who was really there to talk about herps and wetlands - and let's be real, if there's one thing that can sway my attention from my house, it's some good salamander habitat. Anyway, this little mini-office is going to be rad. The cabinet on the upper right actually has an outlet inside it, so we can plug our printer in there. The lower two cabinets are lateral file cabinets. Three cheers for being able to get rid of the steel monstrosity currently hulking in the guest room!

Also, I forgot to mention yesterday that we made a morning trip to Tractor Supply Company to get our wood stove! We bought this model - $600 at TSC, versus over $1000 at Lowe's. Score!

The case of the missing refrigerator

It ain't every day you can say that your refrigerator went missing. Yesterday, however, we could honestly claim this to be the case. As I mentioned in this post a week and a half ago, our appliances were scheduled for delivery on Friday 10/21. Our GC planned to be at the house that day, so we coordinated with him so he would meet the delivery truck and have them unload everything into the garage. We never heard anything further, and assumed (you know what they say about that) everything went fine - even peeked into the garage to ooh and ahh over the couple things that were unboxed (the range and microwave). As you'd expect when you're acquiring a whole house's worth of appliances, there were a whole bunch of big boxes. It wasn't until a few days later that Brandon noticed the lack of a certain REALLY LARGE box... there was no refrigerator anywhere to be found.

I emailed the GC, who said that a fridge was never delivered, and that it hadn't been on the list of items he got from the delivery crew. We found the list and indeed, no fridge. Cue a major sigh of relief, because when I talked to Lowe's, they said their computer showed it as delivered! I was really happy that we had documentation that this was NOT the case. The delivery department was extremely helpful, though, and I talked to them several times while they tried to track down the rogue refrigerator.

Long story short (too late), it turned out that it had been damaged somewhere in transit, and so the delivery crew hadn't delivered it. Apparently there was some confusion because it wasn't in Lowe's warehouse, but also wasn't with the delivery company... but as I was told on the phone (and fully agreed with), none of this is my problem. They put in an order for a new fridge, and it's supposed to be delivered sometime next week. Whew! The other one will probably show up somewhere having "fallen off the back of the truck"... Also, I feel like I just wrote some permutation of the word "deliver" about 100 times (drinking game, anyone?).

OK, if anyone is still reading, I have a design dilemma for you! Maybe should have considered leading off with this, instead of rambling about refrigerators for three paragraphs... The decision regards the fascinating topic of window trim (Brandon, stop rolling your eyes). The trim in the original design was to look like this:

The carpenter doing the installation felt like a little something was missing, and that it looked "bottom-heavy," so he made this modification:

Can you even tell the difference? In the bottom pic there is an extra trim piece along the top edge. What say you, interwebs? Classic and simple, or a little more dressed-up? Brandon says it's up to me - oh, the pressure!