Name Decisions and the Renovations Begin Again!

Not only was the name "Caroline" the overwhelming favorite at the polls, but we could never remember any other name we tried calling her. Caroline it is. Here is our baby with her Aunt Jenny (Mom & Dad's dog). They are BFFs now, and Jenny even shared her bed with Caroline. She's wearing a sweater (sock with the foot & armholes cut out) because she got wet when she went outside, and she was shivering cold.

In other news, the remodeling has begun again! For some reason, we seem to wait until it is 8,000 degrees outside to do anything to the house... This time, we're doing our bedroom & bathroom. The first completed project, however, is in the kitchen.

See our old ugly acrylic sink, broken on the left corner (so that it snagged your shirt every time you got too close), and stained & cracked in both basins.



BEHOLD! our lovely shiny new stainless sink, complete with extra tall faucet with the pull out spray & built in soap dispenser. You may commence oohing & ahhing.

***and PS: James installed the new sink & faucet himself!

Getting There

THE HOUSE IS LOOKING SOOOOO GOOD!!!!

We are exhausted, but the house is finally starting to look great. The Living Room, Kitchen, & Entryway are almost complete! We hired a couple of friends that do this sort of thing as part time work to come help out, and they were AMAZING. Watching them work was like watching a show on HGTV where they give someone a job & put em on fast forward. Plus, having them there kept James and I from "taking 5" every 15 minutes. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH JR & KC!!! I promise, I will put pics up soon, but I don't want to take any until this part is completely done.

Today I ordered the fabric for my curtains!!! This pic is kinda hard to see, but they're a rich taffeta in gunmetal grey, with caramel colored flocking. I think the caramel color will really bring the room together. eeeeee I'm soooo excited!


AND, i just ordered my kitchen cabinet hardware! Including shipping, I paid about $24 for 18, as opposed to over $60 for uglier ones from Home Depot!.

In other news, Max got a catcussion last night... he bonked his nog sooo hard on the (newly painted!) coffee table, that he still has a big bump on the top of his little pin head. Poor Kitteh... maybe it knocked him normal...

I think Max is high...

The remodeling is slow going, but we're all in a much better humor than the first day of work. The ceiling is done, and we have a beautiful ceiling fan up & working. The retexturing of the walls is done, and we've repainted the silver trim around the sliding glass door/windows, so that it's all fresh & clean. We used spray paint to do it, and SHEESH, it's smelly. I am allergic to spray paint,
but I found this superduty SARS mask that is specifically for paint fumes, so I didnt get ded. BOY did I look sexy... Unfortunately, they did not have a kitteh-sized mask, so Max has been acting a bit loopy since yesterday afternoon. We covered EVERYTHING in plastic, newspapers, & tape, and so far, it doesnt look like we got any paint anywhere by accident. Anyway, today I get to start on the Color!!! :) I'm excited. Gotta run... will post my movie review of Wanted later.

Dashed are the dreams of the ambitious...

ZZZZZZZZZ

I am EXHAUSTED from my wideawake night followed by DIY day. We worked & worked & worked & worked & worked, and after 4 more trips to Home Depot/ Lowes, we have 1 1/2 installed fans, no light at all in the kitchen, 1/2 of the bedroom ceiling painted, 1/4 of the living room ceiling painted, and two very short tempers.

We bought this to help paint, and it works well, but it's pretty heavy when it's full of paint... I just read one tip to *duh* only fill it halfway, so I'll be trying that tomorrow. I don't have the upper body strength to paint the vaulted ceiling with it while I'm halfway up a ladder. We got one the other day, used one tube full, dropped it & broke it, then went back (trip #2 of the day) to HD to replace it.

Anyway, Max thinks we've built him his very own jungle to play in, what with all the plastic drapings & oddly placed furniture. OH... and... about that plasticwrap... yah, the camera is buried somewhere beneath it all... if I find it, I'll take a few pics, but I just couldn't be bothered with it today...

*sips lemonade* here's to better luck tomorrow.

It's 2:30 in the morning...

... and I can't sleep.

Musta been that pot o' coffee I had before bedtime...

oh well...

now my brain is spinning with everything I need to get done.

We are remodeling! The living room is in a TOTAL shambles. Everything is pushed to the center of the room & draped with plastic (which Max LOVES). So far, we've ripped up all the old baseboards, re-textured 2 walls (one of which was the lovely 70's dark wood paneling), taken down those awful vertical blinds hiding our 12 feet of sliding glass doors/ windows, and ripped off the old vertical moulding on another wall. AND spent a retarded amount of time & money at Home Depot... I think they must put Eau de Ambition in the air vents there... something about the smell of places like that makes me think I can build/ fix anything, if only I were to purchase all the most complicated equipment I can find.

Today, we bought wall paint (Cliff Rock), Trim paint (Ultra Pure White), more rollers, brushes, tarps, & tape than we can ever use, a new ceiling fan for the living room, a chandelier for the dining room, cool track lighting for the kitchen, heat resistant brushed nickel paint for the fire box & old ceiling fan, & new plates for all the switches & plugs in the house.

Tomorrow, I'm painting the ceiling, finishing up the 2nd coat of texture on the Wall Formerly Known as Ugly Wood Paneling, and hopefully *crossing fingers* gonna start putting up some color. All this white is soooo boring.

Then, we get to go pick out new baseboards & crown molding. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good "Before" picture, but tomorrow, I'll take a couple of "During" pictures, so you can see how bad it reeeeeeally is.

Of course, the longest wall in the living room passes through the kitchen, entryway, and dining room, so they'll all have to be redone soon too... I'm thinking a nice green for the kitchen... there's really not much wall space in there, so that can really be an accent color for the living room... I'm not sure yet about a color for the dining room... any ideas? It's a VERY small area, but it's got a big bay window, so it's pretty well lit.


Anyway... sorry... thanks for listening to (IE: reading) the rantings of a caffeined up, overly sleepy, whirring brain... it's now officially The Threes, & sleep is nowhere in sight... oh well... could YOU sleep with all this on your mind???