Baby Steps

There hasn't been much to post about lately, as I've been working on packing and cleaning the townhouse in preparation for the big move (I have to be outta here by Halloween). I have had a little time to "get dirty" lately though, including climbing up on the roof to clean out the gutters, powerwashing the pool cage (again...algae is gross) and being cute and domestic by potting flowers! (Who knew, right?) Forgive the outfit, it was a get-dirty day, heh...

Despite the fact that most of my work so far has been centered around getting out of the townhouse, big progress was made at the house this week as painter extraordinnaire Bill Lainhart has been putting in hours  painting all of the ceilings, rooms, closets and the front door, and along the line saving all of us one, giant headache.

The house, as is expected, is an absolute mess as he got in all the prep work Monday night (removing fixtures, placing drop cloths, etc). I promised to stay out of his way until he's done on Thursday, but sneaked over there Tuesday night to snap a few pictures of the work in progress.

 Who paints a bedroom dark green? Honestly...yeesh.

It seems as though all of Bill's prep work is done. He's painted all of the ceilings and gotten to the walls in one room...but it was the area of the house I was most excited to see done -- the master suite! I tried to keep everything colorful and bright, (hence the orange/yellow walls in the great room) but wanted to tone it down a little in my bedroom, so I chose a blue that goes with any kind of crazy bedding motif I could throw at it (my zebra comforter will be right at home!). My beautiful bathroom was still unpainted and heavily covered in plastic as of Tuesday night, but I DID see color creeping toward it, woot.

I was happy enough with the progress that I brought my first decoration from home, heh. Hey, you can't blame me for being eager to get started with the move-in. :)

Another bit of good news: The backyard neighbors have decided to go in half on a 6-foot privacy fence across our yard. Growing up on a farm in Michigan where only thing behind me was miles of farm field and the river, it has been a big adjustment so far to remember that my new neighbors are less than 20 feet away when I'm on the lanai. You can hear everything that goes on over there and vice versa, and they have two little dogs that go absolutely nuts any time I go outside, so in the end the fence was a necessity. I'll still need to be more quiet than I'd like in the backyard, but the fence will at least cut down on me having to have the curtains pulled at all times!

Of course, Sarasota County is crazy-Nazi about all types of things, including needing building permits for anything taller than a foot, so we've had to wait a couple of weeks for the permit to be approved. But the fence folks showed up on Monday and started to sink the posts, and they should be done by the end of the week! It was too dark to take pics in the backyard, but I'll post them as soon as I can get over there during the day.

Getting excited about moving into my own place after 12 years of renting! The day slowly approaches. Lots and lots to do before I go (clean, repaint the townhouse, pack everything, move, unpack, repeat) and just 12 days to go!

Oh, and for those of y'all who think I exaggerate about nearly everything...I do (I'm a writer! It's how I pay the bills.) But I'll leave you all with proof that the spiders in Florida are no joke. My rule of thumb is, if it's furry, has eight legs and is bigger than my hand, it's worth taking pictures of. How'd I do? ;)

YELLOW!

There was something that fell just short of an epic battle between my mother and I at Home Depot while choosing paint colors the other day. Because I'm a writer and therefore entitled to skew anything I want in my favor (and also because I like to entertain you all), let us assume the conversation went like this:

MOM: So what color are you thinking for the great room?
ME: Orange. Orange, and maybe dark orange.
MOM: You're ridiculous and you have no taste, I will not allow anything like that to happen.
ME: (whimpering, tearful) But...but....
MOM: Shut up! Stop talking now before I get angry!
(she then grew a second head and used the giant teeth contained in it to eat my face off before moving on to more important things, like the gardening section.)

OK, she was really more just apprehensive about the house looking like Skittles and she never called me names or said it wouldn't happen, but who wants to read boring stuff like that? Mom was actually semi-supportive of the color scheme and after some debate, agreed to trust my judgment (which scared me more than anything because I really have no idea what's going on half the time). I called the painter and read him the colors I picked, and spent the rest of the day praying that it wouldn't completely blow up in my face.

My mom's first words about the orange were, "I don't hate it," which was good enough for me.

 

I'm not sure whether or not I don't hate it, but I think once I get the furniture moved in and some things on the walls it will make the yellow accent wall a little less seizure-inducing than it currently is. Moving along....

So now that it's been established that mom and I didn't actually fight over Skittlepaint, we moved seamlessly from the paint department to the outdoor area. The green exterior is fairly drab as far as houses in the neighborhood go and she's quite good at finding green stuff to make it look pretty, so we played around outside in the garden section for a while.

She picked out lots of fun, colorful things but, having actually killed a catcus in high school, I let her point me toward only the flowers that are hard to kill (marigolds, palm trees and chrysanthemums). Plants turned into pots and pots to dirt and everything we couldn't cram into our two cars during our first trip, so at the end of Trip 2, the post-checkout situation looked kind of like this four-cart disaster:

The next day (Sunday) marked mom and dad's last in town and we celebrated by working outside. I potted my new plants, mom trimmed the bushes out front and dad nearly gave us all heart attacks by climbing on the roof to clean out the back gutters. Then we all went on the back patio and powerwashed as much as we could of the pool cage before I went to work (oh! and dad hung blinds on the back of the cage so the neighbors can't look in...which will hold nicely until the privacy fence is installed in two weeks).

So the folks headed back north, and while I spent Monday cleaning at both Rosewood and Amnesty (and hosting an impromptu, no-furniture birthday get-together for Jasmine on Monday night), I was a little busy and under-the-weather to go back Tuesday. Let's hope the place didn't burn down.

Next update: Clear pool! And furniture! (maybe...)

Getting Our Hands Dirty, Round One

I wasn't kidding about the sign being stuck in the ground! (And yes, I have my pajamas on still...I knew I was going to get dirty throughout the day, why ruin good clothes? I forgot we'd be taking pictures)

 Thursday marked the first full day we spent in the house, and we got a lot done...sort of. The entire house needs to be painted (even the ceilings) and because the new washer and dryer were getting delivered Friday morning, my dad's efforts were spent in getting the laundry room done before they arrived.

I chose greenish for the laundry room, partly because I had already decided on it and partly because it was pretty close to the original color (no priming = bueno), and with all the trim done, it ended up looking pretty snazzy...

Mom was on guest bathroom duty throughout the day, and she really went to town on that disgusting wallpaper and stand. The bathroom itself was already a nice size but without all the junk on the wall, it looked even better.

And finally, I was sent to the kitchen. When the bank shut off the power the folks forgot to open the refrigerator, so there was lots of nice black mold growing EVERYWHERE (blech). It took about three hours but the fridge is again looking sharp :). 

 The fridge-cleaning was the first official task I had in the new house and I was so excited to get my "first" thing done that I had an Annie moment. (You know, the movie Annie where the orphans spend all day escaping the orphanage and finally find 5th avenue where Annie supposedly lives? "We did it! We found it! Number 1, 5th Avenue!" (long pause while they read the address...) "...We gotta go to 987...") If you didn't follow that (and I know it's hard to follow my train of thought sometimes), the refrigerator was my 1 5th Ave. and me turning around to look at the rest of the house was my 987. Hey, it made sense to me.

Anyhoo, the project that has given me the most satisfaction so far was tearing down the jungle. Most of that was because I like climb on appliances and destroy things while I'm there, but it's also a whole new kitchen now, boys and girls. :)

Tomorrow, painting happens...I think. And also, the well guy comes to help out, the lock guy comes to change the tumblers, the insurance folks need to be visited, the pool guy stops by, pest control swings through and the drywall fella may make his presence known. As someone who lives one of those charmed lives where always disaster always roams freely, let's hope at least half of those people have good news for us. :)

G'nite! :)