Before and During

Or, Guinness World Record holder for most pictures in one post.

As many (or maybe all?) of you know, we've been remodeling our living/dining room for the past two months. I've been promising several people that I would post before and during pictures, so of course I get in the mood to do this post on a night when I'm really tired and should be going to bed. But I'm not going to bed. I'm posting pictures.

*Remember, for a larger picture and a better view, you can click on the pictures.

Also, I thought we should all flash back and see the TRUE before pictures.


The top picture is the living room, the bottom is the dining room, and this is the day we moved into the house. As you can see, we inherited some lovely paneling, and for an added touch of, er, glamour, two of the walls had flowery, SPARKLY wallpaper over the paneling. You can't see the mantel very well, but I think it's a nifty maroon/brown color. Also notice the very classy ceiling fan with looped cord, and the total absence of a light in the dining room. There is also (which you will see in later pictures) a purple-y indoor/outdoor carpet and some really interesting ceiling tiles. Very nice.

As a reminder to us all, what we did in the first remodel was purely cosmetic. We stripped/sanded off the wallpaper and sanded the shiny veneer off the paneling, then painted the walls, trim, and mantel. We also removed the ceiling fan in the living room and hung one in the dining room. I didn't remember to take pictures before the guys started demo, so these next "before" pictures have a little bit of "during" in them. There's been a lot of "during". And enduring, for that matter.


Oh yeah. we put in a new door about a year after we moved in, but not as a part of either remodel.


This is the door that led from the living room into Noah's room. Sorry, didn't get a great picture of it. This is also the picture that shows the colors the truest. The first time around, we painted the walls cream and the trim a taupe-ish color.

Here you can see the ceiling fan we (read: Aaron) installed.

Now, true "during" pictures.

As the paneling and the ceiling tiles came down, the house began to reveal her secrets. I love how you could see where the two rooms used to be divided. I hadn't thought about it before, but the house was built in 1929, so it makes total sense that the rooms would have been separate. You can also see the hardwood under the wallpaper/cheesecloth. On the floor you can see the crown molding that we thought had been pieced together. It turns out it was a solid piece of wood that had been milled for the crown. Unfortunately we didn't keep it. It was neat and all, but there just wasn't much room between the ceiling and the window trim, so we went for a no-crown look. (Die-hard renovators around the world are clutching at their hearts right now.) Also, if you look at the top of the wallpaper, where the crown was, you can get a view of the unfaded (or, less faded) wallpaper.

(Actually, I guess, in a roundabout way, this is the truest "before" picture I have!)

The dining room wallpaper.

The living room wallpaper.


And then the sheetrock went up.

No more door into Noah's room.


And then the carpet came up! Now, I know there's a lighting difference between these last two pictures (there's a work light on in the last one), but one of the things that has surprised me most about this remodel is how much of a difference there is in the brightness of the room without the carpet.

Note the carpet pad. This comes up later. Also note the floor grate in the...well, in the floor. This was a broken heater that we removed. We'd been living with it covered with one of those pieces of carpet you see by the front door. It was always under one of the couches, but it was still a pain. There was also a thermostat on the wall linked to the heater by a wire that ran under the carpet. It pleases me to no end that all of these things are now gone.

The trim goes up. Aaron did a fabulous job putting up the new trim. I think it looks really good.


See? No floor grate. These are the finished floors (in this picture we're covering them so we can paint.)

Here are the fixtures I picked out. The fan is in the living room, and the chandelier is in the dining room. (Bet you could have figured that out by yourself.) Don't they go so well together? That's why, after searching EVERYWHERE, I ended up buying this chandelier and painting it because it ONLY came in pewter (despite the Lowe's commercial that dealt with this EXACT same issue, that led me to believe it would be oh-so-easy to get a light in bronze/brown instead of pewter. Don't believe everything you see on TV.)


And those are all the pictures I have. At this point, almost everything is finished except for the furniture. Well, I assume the furniture is finished, wherever it is, but we don't have it yet, so you'll have to wait for "after" pictures. That, and we can't find our camera right now. Hopefully soon...

There have been several issues and hiccups along the way, such as the broken glass in the first light I bought; the issue we had with the walls sweating the day we painted while it snowed (we had to touch up all of the places there were nails--very weird); Bob peeing on the carpet pad and us not knowing about it for several days and then there were 4 big, dark, wet stains on the raw wood floors, but they sanded out really well and now you can barely even tell where they were; and how our furniture still isn't in 6 weeks after we ordered it. However, know this: I could not be happier with the way this remodel has turned out. Aaron asked me what my favorite part of the room was, and my response was that it looks exactly how I wanted it to look. That's big. Especially given the fact that this whole project got started because I wanted to change the colors of the room. Even after the first remodel, there were so many things about the room that were still ghetto. All of those things--except one--are gone now. It makes me very happy. I know it's just a room, and it's just a house, but this room is now a true expression of me, and the finished product feels to me like finding the perfect word--so good you can almost taste it.

I know--I'm a tease. I promise, as soon as the furniture comes in (and we can find our camera or use someone else's), I'll post "After".

The Great Contest About Some Random Person's Broken Arm, Which Took Place in April 2007 (the contest, not the broken arm).

This is Bob. Can you see Bob?
Bob can blog. Bob has two arms and two hands and ten fingers. Bob can blog with his arms and hands and fingers. Bob likes to blog. He blogs about his feelings. Do you have feelings? Everyone has feelings. Bob can blog about his feelings, and you can, too. Blog, Bob, blog!
Oh no! Bob has blogged too much! Do you see? Do you see Bob blogging too much?
Bob types and types on his computer. His fingers move fast. Watch Bob’s fingers as they type on the keyboard. But Bob’s fingers move too fast. The keyboard cannot handle Bob’s blogging. The keyboard explodes. Explode, keyboard, explode! Watch the keys as they fly through the air.
The force of the explosion breaks Bob’s arm. Do you see Bob’s arm? Do you see Bob’s arm break? Poor Bob.
But that is not all that happens to Bob. Oh, no! The keys from the keyboard fly through the air and hit Bob. One of the keys hits Bob hard in the arm. A key from the keyboard has lodged in Bob’s gaping wound. Poor Bob.
Bob has a foreign object in his body and a broken arm. Blogging has turned into a dangerous pastime for Bob.
Will Bob blog again? Maybe Bob will blog about his broken arm. Blog, Bob, blog!

Walking in a Weird Wonderland

I have strep right now, and I would totally post pictures of my tonsils (which are more white than pink/red right now--I'm fascinated by gross, weird stuff like that), but I won't. It's really, really bad--just know that. I'm actually resorting to spitting instead of swallowing at this point. And the cruel irony of it all is that the substitute doctor (my real doctor is out of the country, wouldn't you know) prescribed me a super-duper decongestant, and it's preventing me from taking naps. I tried yesterday and today with no success. Can you imagine? Sick, and can't nap. It's just wrong.

But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is Easter weekend. What an experience.

First, the snow. It was awesome, but very weird to get so much in April. Well, to get so much at all, let alone in April.

It was hard to capture how hard it was snowing, but it was really snowing hard. For hours! Of course, we don't get snow like this in December, when it might stick, but I'll take it however I can get it. The proof of how hard it was snowing is in the amount of accumulation. Of course, at first it was just melting as soon as it hit anything. But after a few hours, things started to turn white. Observe:

See that house across the street on the right? That roof has brown shingles. Also, if you click on the picture to make it bigger, you should be able to see the snow falling.

More snow!

Snow, snow, snow!


Preeeety snow!

The girls were able to make several snowballs and throw them at each other.

There's just something about snow that makes me all warm and fuzzy--y'know, in that strictly metaphorical sense. I really enjoyed it.

Aaron and I spent that afternoon paiting the living/dining room, and, oddly enough, the cold, wet weather made the paint dry very slowly! I'm not going to post pictures just yet--probably the next post will have remodel pictures.

Finally, on Easter Sunday, we went to Burleson to see my friend Kim from high school. We also went to a "real" church for the first time in...gosh, 4 years? It's been a while. It was sort of surreal. There were several parts we liked, and some we didn't. There were some things I don't miss at all (offering, alter calls), and some things I do (instruments). It was a good experience overall, and at the same time it made me very grateful for our little church community and the way we're fleshing this thing out. In any case, we went out to lunch after church and snapped a few pictures.

I think they're being Easter bunnies.

I love the way he's holding his hands.

Kim and I also had to take a picture together. Aaron offered to take it, but we had to explain that it's tradition to take it ourselves! Once again, observe:

See? Tradition. (That's actually my husband at the bottom. The other guys is our friend Aaron May. These are all from about 10 years ago, and I've got dozens more taken in this same fashion.) Anyway, here's the Easter picture.

After lunch we schmoozed with the Horton's ('cuz we're society like that), and then the kids and I drove home while Aaron went to the Ranger's game/bachelor party. Noah had a long day, and he fell asleep within about 5 minutes of getting in the van.

And that's all I got.

Actors, Vegans, Members, Followers

I want to let you all know that I have been accepted into the UIS Online English Program! They "received a record number of qualified applicants for fall 2007, so" I am "to be commended for being selected as a student in the program. Well done!" (See how I commended myself there?) Registration starts in two weeks, so this afternoon I'm going to figure out which classes I want to take. I'm very, very excited.

The acceptance took away all the sting from not progressing to Round 2 of the Gather.com First Chapters Contest. Really, it did. I expected to be a bit more bummed, but I'm really not. So, that's good.

*The title of this post was swiped from the subject line of a spam email I got several weeks ago from "Collection Agency". I've been saving it for just the right time. It's what I do.

Just so you know...

I have posted the remaining parts of my story on my NaNo blog.

**If you haven't read the story (or have only read the first chapter), you may want to wait to read the story on the blog. I'm planning on re-posting the entire story, as it is currently edited, and in correct order (the first post you see on this page will be chapter 1, then chapter 2, etc.)

April's Fool

I’ve been in a funk this past week. Not only are we (still) confined to two rooms of our house (well, three if you count the girls’ room, which I don’t), but it rained and was generally really funk-nasty weather all last week, so I spent most of the week in my bedroom. As a result, I was VERY stir-crazy, and wanted to be outside as much as possible this weekend. This afternoon I decided to paint my toenails outside while watching the kids play. (This multi-tasking dream was not well-thought-out.)

It started to go awry when, while I was bent over painting my toenails, Noah grabbed the fingernail polish remover and removed the cap. I saw this, and the undesirable possibilities, and reached for him. Then, all in slow motion and before I could stop him, he pulled away from me and dumped the bottle. Granted, there wasn’t much left, but it all ended up on the porch. Okay, no big deal, I thought, I’ll just get some more this week. I returned to painting my toenails and Noah returned to playing with a caterpillar (which he accidentally killed because he “broke it”.)

Toenail painting resumed for a moment or two, and when I looked up again to see what Noah was doing with the poor caterpillars, I saw that he was not playing with any caterpillars. No. He had removed the lid from a bottle of black, sparkly fingernail polish (I have no idea why I have black, sparkly fingernail polish). He was painting his fingers and his arm. Mind you, this all happened in about 30 or 45 seconds. I, of course, quickly confiscated the polish, but—Oh!—I couldn’t clean this mess up because I HAVE NO FINGERNAIL POLISH REMOVER. So I grabbed little cotton balls from my box of fingernail polish stuff (polish, files, clippers, etc.) and tried to clean up, when I realized that Noah had also dumped some polish on the porch and he was now standing in it. You know that feeling you get when you have to remind yourself that you love your children? It was not a shining mom moment for me, I’ll just tell you that.

(Just so you know, I did find a small fingernail polish removing pen thingy and got *SOME* of the polish off of Noah’s feet and hands. He’s still grey in many areas, though.)

During all this, the girls made up a new jump-rope song. Obviously, the only criterion for a jump-rope song is that it rhymes; logic has nothing to do with it. The song goes like this:
Tic-tac-toe, let me go,
How many pickles did he throw?
One, two, three, four…

Yeah. Luckily I was able to recognize the humor in that. I'm sure there's humor in the rest of it, too, but I'll look for it tomorrow.