It's been a busy weekend. We moved completely out of our apartment and spent last night in the new house for the first time in a bed (there was one night last week on the deflated air mattress, but that's another story). And now our cats are here, so it is really home.
Unfortunately, our DSL isn't working. D is going to experience a "first" tomorrow--first time having to stay home to wait for a repair-person to show up. Verizon has told us to expect them between 8am and 7pm. Very helpful. D, a well-read tech geek, tried pretty much everything that could be tried, so now we wait and see what the pros find...no updates for a little while until our Internet is back at full strength (I'm connected right now through a mobile phone).
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Guest Bedroom, part 2
Last week was crazy and we painted 3 rooms. I'll save the other two for a different post and put up more pictures of the guest room. D is still not convinced that the colors will go with our burgundy decor, but if it doesn't match then we'll just buy some new curtains and a new bedspread (I'm thinking deep teal--I love dark colors). It's more important that we like the room colors.
You can go back to here to see pictures of the bedroom before we started painting, but here's a reminder:
You can go back to here to see pictures of the bedroom before we started painting, but here's a reminder:
We primed and also tested 3 colors for our lighter walls, called--from top to bottom--Samovar Silver, Nuance, and Knitting Needles (those who know me and my hobbies may realize that when faced with many shades of similar colors, I am apparently drawn to names).
We spent at least an hour taping before priming and painting, only to realize 1.) that you should not tape before priming, especially in our case, where the previous painters were sloppy and the burnt orange had crept onto the baseboards, door frames, and ceiling. We missed those spots with primer because of the tape and had to go back anyway after we pulled the tape off. And 2.) that freehand painting with a nice beveled brush gave us a much better edge than the tape anyway.
Without further ado, here are the finished walls. Since these pictures were taken, we also painted the trim white:
Now we just need some furniture...
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Our Guest Bedroom
The furniture currently in our bedroom in our tiny apartment is going to be used in the guest room in our new house. For a few months though, we'll sleep in this so-called guest room while we slowly accumulate the furniture for our new bedroom. The paint colors and decor, then, have to match the reds of our current curtains and bedspreads as well as the stain on our wood furniture. This is the existing decor we're working with:
D and I both like bold colors and I somehow managed to convince him that purple wouldn't necessarily be disastrously feminine. On our families' advice, we're relying on Sherwin Williams paints. We were lucky to catch some sales on Duration, their best paint (I also like that it's low VOC and relatively green). Here are the colors we went with:
The one on the left is called Mythical. The name evokes a little girl's fantasies of unicorns and princesses. Not helping my argument that purple can be genderless. On the right is Samovar Silver. We decided on that one after considering a few different off-whites and grays.
We used the purple on an accent wall and gray for the other walls, with white ceiling and trim. I'm having trouble visualizing if purple is the best complementary color for the burgundies and reds in our curtains and bed spread, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'll post before and after pictures of our room once I can get to my camera again (computer's at the apartment, camera's at the house). This weekend we are painting up a storm. The office and the living room are getting a face lift too, and I'll post the details to them later.
D and I both like bold colors and I somehow managed to convince him that purple wouldn't necessarily be disastrously feminine. On our families' advice, we're relying on Sherwin Williams paints. We were lucky to catch some sales on Duration, their best paint (I also like that it's low VOC and relatively green). Here are the colors we went with:
The one on the left is called Mythical. The name evokes a little girl's fantasies of unicorns and princesses. Not helping my argument that purple can be genderless. On the right is Samovar Silver. We decided on that one after considering a few different off-whites and grays.We used the purple on an accent wall and gray for the other walls, with white ceiling and trim. I'm having trouble visualizing if purple is the best complementary color for the burgundies and reds in our curtains and bed spread, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'll post before and after pictures of our room once I can get to my camera again (computer's at the apartment, camera's at the house). This weekend we are painting up a storm. The office and the living room are getting a face lift too, and I'll post the details to them later.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Lock, Stock, and Barrel
Yesterday was a memorable day: we finally bought our house! And after signing away our life in the form of a huge down payment check, we experienced one of the most common joys of home ownership: paying a fortune for repair servicing.
Our families and our agent advised us to change the lock as soon as we had possession of the house. And so, obedient children that we are, we called a locksmith. Actually, two locksmiths. We wanted to be responsible and compare quotes. The factor we hadn't counted on? Our new house turned out to have 10 dead bolts (4 are double-sided, so we actually only have 6) plus a handful of knob locks, two of which turned out to be un-re-keyable (that's a word, right?). So including replacing the two broken knobs, we paid a whopping $450. It was unavoidable and we get the peace of mind knowing that the previous owners can show up for a surprise visit. But still, it was painful to hand over our credit card after the check we paid only 5 hours previously.
A weird feature with the house is that it actually is possible to lock oneself inside. All the deadbolts lock on a key, even from inside, so you could lose your keys in the house and not be able to let yourself out. It seems that while leaving a key in the lock on the inside puts you at risk of theft (a thief could see the key in the lock and break a small window, reach in, and take the key, making breaking in a whole lot easier), not putting a key in the lock means that you could burn to death in your house if you can't find a key. I think I opt for choice 1, though I would love to hear your comments, oh reader.
Our families and our agent advised us to change the lock as soon as we had possession of the house. And so, obedient children that we are, we called a locksmith. Actually, two locksmiths. We wanted to be responsible and compare quotes. The factor we hadn't counted on? Our new house turned out to have 10 dead bolts (4 are double-sided, so we actually only have 6) plus a handful of knob locks, two of which turned out to be un-re-keyable (that's a word, right?). So including replacing the two broken knobs, we paid a whopping $450. It was unavoidable and we get the peace of mind knowing that the previous owners can show up for a surprise visit. But still, it was painful to hand over our credit card after the check we paid only 5 hours previously.
A weird feature with the house is that it actually is possible to lock oneself inside. All the deadbolts lock on a key, even from inside, so you could lose your keys in the house and not be able to let yourself out. It seems that while leaving a key in the lock on the inside puts you at risk of theft (a thief could see the key in the lock and break a small window, reach in, and take the key, making breaking in a whole lot easier), not putting a key in the lock means that you could burn to death in your house if you can't find a key. I think I opt for choice 1, though I would love to hear your comments, oh reader.
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