Taking a Break With Some Arch Madness

We enjoyed a half-day off from working on the house on Sunday afternoon at the St. Louis Regional Final game. We had awesome seats, pretty much right on the floor thanks to Erica, and saw Florida beat Oregon to advance to the Final Four. Not a bad deal, even if we forgot about the no alcohol policy.

We were right by the Oregon cheerleaders, bet you didn't know that the Oregon Duck is the original Donald Duck... The duck had a get well message for the North Carolina mascot written on the bottom of his "feet." Sad ending to that story though.

The game was also significant in that it marked the first time either of us had seen a delay because the net ripped... And we've seen a lot of basketball!

After the game it was back to the painting and yard work. Our lives would be soooo much easier had the wind carried the leaves away before they started breaking down into the grass.

Bettering Our Bathroom and Dumpster Diving, All in One Day!

Work at the house is moving along nicely. Today we just about finished one of the bathrooms, all we need now is to paint the trim and pick up the right piece for our new faucet and we're set. Definitely an improvement from a few weeks ago!

The Rogers (I and II) installed a new light fixture where our kitchen table will go and updated our kitchen cabinets with brushed nickel handles to replace the ugly gold and white ones.

Rog's mom and I took care of making sure Shamu and his friends would not greet people staying in our guest room. It got the first of two coats of paint this afternoon.

While it was a VERY productive day working at the house, what has the potential to be our most exciting news of the day came when we threw away our stuff at the apartment. Rog found a 43 or 45" Hitachi plasma TV at the top of the dumpster ... and since we have a new TV on our list we did white-trash thing and hauled it upstairs.

As far as we can tell, the only thing wrong is that the screen is cracked. But we'll have to make some calls to see if it can be fixed. Would sure look nice in the living room!

Spring Has Sprung

Several weeks ago, Mom was poking around in our front yard instead of helping Larry, Rog and I paint the ceilings. She noticed some bumps popping out of some of the landscaping rocks around our front porch, and pulled back the plastic to find lot of flowers starting to come up.

Some warmer weather, a little rain, a little sun and a few days later.....

We have our first flowers of the season in bloom - a true sign that its definitely springtime in St. Charles. I found even more flowers when I was working in the yard last night. At least these are nice surprises, and not ones that require an unplanned trip to Home Depot :).

Move Over Spectrum Painters

Since we heard Spectrum Painters is a defunct company, we're having to recruit family and friends to help us with all of our painting ... or do it ourselves.

We were fortunate enough to have both sets of parents down to help out this weekend. Neither set could make it on the same day, so one on Saturday and the other on Sunday. It's amazing how much gets done with you have a couple of extra sets of hands.

All we need to do in the dining room now is paint the baseboards and trim, which will wait until the rest of the trim is ready for paint. Get it all done at once so it’s not so horrible. Our downstairs bathroom has a new light fixture and the walls have had the holes fixed and are primed. The bedrooms have had their ceilings re-painted – sadly, no more sky blue – and are partially primed.

Hopefully in two weeks we’ll have our colors selected and walls painted. Just in time for the new furniture to come in and painting to begin in the living room…

And did we mention that people who lived there before didn't really do much in terms of upkeep? They were pretty good at rigging things, the front door and our bathroom curtains are pretty good examples of that!

Oh and if you're wondering, the ceiling paint that goes on pink and dries white actually dries pink on the carpet. Just ask Larry. Lucky for him the Little Green Machine works wonders.

Roll Wave

After winning the Conference USA regular season championship and running up a record of 25-6 on the year, Tulane was relegated to the NIT .... earned votes in the Top 25 polls for the last month or so of the season yet not selected for the NCAA field of 64. Kinda makes you wonder...

At any rate, the Green Wave crushed their first-round WNIT opponent tonight by 34 points making a strong case (in my opinion) as to which tournament should be penciled into the itinerary. ISU also happens to be in the NIT, but the only way the two will meet is if they both advance to the championship game.

Sorry for the rant, this is the team I worked with during my time in NOLA. They're a great group that has the tools needed to make a good postseason run.

Making Progress...

Baby steps to re-do the bathroom, baby steps to prime the walls, baby steps and lots of frustration to remove the hot glue and fill the holes in the ceilings...


We've been working on our updates to our house now for a little more than a week, and things are moving along. For two people who appreciate instant gratification, it sometimes seems like things are moving really slowly.


Two bedrooms, the dining room and a bathroom are in the process of getting primed for paint. No real paint in the picture yet, still planning what we want. Figured the real paint should start at the ceiling - which are painted like the sky - and work its way down.


A few more surprises this week, including the plumbing upstairs. Besides an open drain in the main upstairs bath room that had a spoon and a massive hairball in it, both toilets had sedement in the "jutters" and needed to be cleaned. Not a lot of work on our part for these fixes, just a phone call.


The biggest annoyance of the week - and yes the plastic stars are involved - came in the "princess" and "shamu" bedrooms. The person who painted and decorated the rooms, rather than using sticky tack, used HOT GLUE to attach a few stars and butterflies to one ceiling, and apparently some type of curtain to the ceiling and wall in the other room. Not an easy job getting this removed, and it creates some additional spackle work. You can check out a few of the holes in the ceiling ...


BUT ... we took out some frustration in the downstairs bathroom. They also glued an ugly ceramic towel bar to the wall. We had no idea it was glued until is was too late...


We have helpers coming to town this weekend and will have our new mattress set delivered on Sunday. Slowly but surely it's coming together!

Star Light, Star Bright...

So just when we thought we had all of the stupid glow-in-the-dark plastic stars and stickers removed from what will be our guest room ... I go to our house "get a lot of things done" tonight and find the ENTIRE back side of the door in the Shamu room covered with them!!

About an hour later they were gone. Makes me scared to look behind the doors in the other rooms.

Several good things happened today to offset the whole star and comet issue.
1. Rog's 1995 Ranger (aka The Green Machine) passed its emissions test, probably the last one it will ever have since it's good until 2009.
2. American Airlines has agreed to refund half of my round-trip airfare since my flight was cancelled, causing me an inconvenience and a complete change of plans :).

When you get two good unexpected things to happen in one day, you have to say it's a good day.