A couple of weekends ago, Fred was kind of bored. He was caught up on all the farm stuff and looking for something to do.
Casually, figuring it would lead nowhere, I said “You know what we need?”
“What?”
“A medicine cabinet. I bet you could build a good one we could hang on the wall and put all our medicine in so we can stop using the secretaire as a medicine cabinet. It’s a pain in the ass having to dig through it when we need cold medicine or whatever.”
A while later, Fred came inside. “I was looking through the wood in the shed, and there’s a cabinet door. I think it came from the original cabinets that were in the house!”
Eventually, I came outside to see what he’d found, and I approved. “That would be the perfect size for a medicine cabinet!”
Ten days later, having built and painted it, he hung it on the dining room wall and I moved all our medicine from the secretaire to the medicine cabinet (after tossing out everything that had expired years ago, that is). It’s even big enough that an entire shelf can be devoted to cat medicine!
(pic) Pardon the crooked picture.
(pic) We clearly believe in keeping stocked up on band-aids!
I absolutely LOVE it. I’m a lucky gal, believe me I know that!
Now if I can just convince him to get going on that closet for the corner of the computer room….
I think I mentioned that Fred and I moved a lot of (HEAVY) furniture on Saturday. This is because we’d talked about it at length, and decided that we’d switch my bedroom and the guest bedroom around. It makes Fred a little nervous to have me on a different floor and he’s mentioned the idea of moving me upstairs a few times. After a year in the same bedroom, I decided I was up for a change, but I had conditions: 1. I needed a ceiling fan, 2. I needed decent blinds, 3. I needed to paint the bookcase, and 4. I needed to paint the upstairs bathroom.
While I was in Pennsylvania, Fred installed a ceiling fan in the guest bedroom, and blinds as well. A few weeks ago I painted the bookcase. And then I decided it was time to just move my ass upstairs and not wait until the bathroom had been painted. So Saturday, we moved the beds and the dressers. Let me tell you SOMETHING, that dresser of mine is fucking HEAVY. It seems okay when there are two of you and you’re moving it across the room or whatever, but once you start going up the stairs and you’re in the lead and it feels like the entire weight of the dresser is on you, you realize how heavy that fucker is.
But everything got moved, and I spent the rest of Saturday organizing the rooms and moving closet stuff around. In my new bedroom, I have TWO closets – a cedar closet where my clothes are hung, and a closet with shelves. I’m still kind of deciding where everything’s going to go, but I’m pretty settled in.
(pic) My new room.
It looks kind of cramped in this picture, but it’s not at all. I had no choice but to angle my bed, because the only other option was to put it in front of the windows, and I didn’t want to do that. What you can’t see in this picture: the dresser, to the left, and the bookcase to the right. I didn’t notice it ’til I’d moved in, but I can lay in bed and watch the birds and squirrels run around in the big tree.
That comforter’s just for now – I’ve got a new one coming, along with new (blue) sheets. The comforter works for the room (it’s a very light blue), but it’s too light. The cats and their grimy paws have already dirtied it up. I’m okay with a dirty comforter, I just don’t want to have to SEE the dirt, y’know.
(pic) The new guest bedroom.
But more than just a guest bedroom, it’s also going to be…
(pic)
a sewing room! That is, if I ever get the damn sewing machine out of the box! I’m going to set it up on that desk, which used to be my vanity. I don’t know that I’ll be doing a LOT of sewing, but at least there’ll be a permanent home for it and I won’t have to move it out to the dining room when I need to use it.
Last year when Fred was choosing paints for the various rooms in the house, we decided that he’d choose a neutral beige color for the upstairs bathroom. He picked two nice shades of beige, but once I got the bathroom painted, we realized that they were a little more pink than we’d expected – the darker color, on the bottom, looked just like the color of Barbie doll skin (caucasian Barbie, that is) to me. We talked about repainting it, but GODDAMN I hate painting, so we left it. It’s not like I ever had to use it anyway, right?
Well, now that I was moving upstairs, I was going to move all my bathroom stuff upstairs as well, and obviously I wanted to repaint the bathroom a color I liked. On our road trip from Pennsylvania to Alabama, Nance and Rick and I stopped at the JC Penney outlet store and while we were there, I saw a set of deep purple towels that I really liked, which got me thinking – why not paint the bathroom shades of purple? I told Fred that I wanted purple in that bathroom, so when he made one of his regular trips to L0we’s, he picked out the paint for me.
So then, the rooms moved around, I fully intended to paint the upstairs bathroom on Sunday. I started getting all my stuff together, which is when I realized that the paint roller was nowhere to be found. I could have hauled my ass 7 minutes up the road to L0we’s to buy a new one, but I jumped on the “Oh! I don’t have a roller! Can’t paint today! Too bad!” excuse with both feet.
Fred promised to stop at L0we’s on the way to work on Monday, so when yesterday dawned, I had no excuses at all.
I so love to paint, you know.
I got up early and after my shower the first thing I did was scrub down the bathroom to remove all the dust from the walls (there’s a litter box in there, which creates a lot of dust), then I spent two freakin’ hours taping around everything. Bathrooms are a bigger pain in the ass to paint than bedrooms, because there’s so much more to tape around. With bedrooms, you move everything away from the walls, tape around the trim, and get it done lickety-split. With bathrooms, even if you remove light fixtures, there’s so much more you have to tape around. I hate the holy hell out of taping. If I could get someone else to prep a room for painting and just swan in, paint, and swan back out, I wouldn’t hate painting nearly as much as I do. I might even like it!
I taped, took a break for breakfast, and started painting a little before 10:00. It took me two hours to get the first coat of paint on the upper part of the bathroom, so I took a break, spent time with the kittens, and then put a second quick coat on. A break for lunch, then two hours of painting the lower part of the bathroom. Getting behind the toilet was a NIGHTMARE, and if I have to paint that bathroom again, the toilet tank is going to have to be removed so I can get back there. Fred got home just as I was finishing up the lower part of the bathroom so I took a break, then put a second quick coat of paint on the lower part of the bathroom.
The paint dried pretty quickly, so I pulled up the tape and put everything back where it belonged.
I think I like the new colors – but the darker color is a bit more purple than either of us expected. It kind of looks like the color a preteen girl would want in her bedroom. It’s going to take some getting used to. But I tell you what – it’s better than it was, and I’m not painting that goddamn bathroom again.
Not for at least another year, anyway.
(pic) Before.
(pic) After.
(pic) This gives you a better idea of what the purple really looks like.
On the top: B44-1 Guardian Angel, Olympic Paints.
On the bottom: B4404 French Violet, Olympic Paints.
The trim could use a fresh coat of paint, I might do that this weekend.
I’ve got purple towels coming from JC Penney (in the same shipment as my new comforter), so the beige towels will be going.
Poor Splash. She just wants to be left alone and we keep coming in and trying to make friends with her. She finally came out from under the dresser – Fred went into the room Monday evening, and she was up in the top of the cat tree. Instead of sitting there looking terrified, she hisses, and she actually took a smack at me when I had the nerve to get too close and offer her a snack.
I’m going to consider that progress.
Last night, Fred wanted to give her a cat treat without getting too close, so he BALANCED the cat treat on the end of a feather cat toy and put it next to her, and the sight made me laugh. It’s like “Your majesty, if you don’t mind, would you like this tasty cat treat?”
HG has completely come around and will let Fred pet him now. Every time I walk into the room, he “talks” to me. I think that, tonight, we’re going to let him out into the house for a couple of hours and see how that goes.
*************************
I try to tell Fred that Splash isn’t any more feral than Miss Stank was when we first got her. He’s not buying it, though.
*************************
Previously
2007: “What the fuck did you DO?” I accused Sugarbutt, who looked up at me with the most innocent face in existence.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Stupid Steven Cojocaru.
2003: I think I speak for most Alabamans in this area when I say “Uh, what the FUCK?!”
2002: sights from my walk
2001: I am SO PISSED OFF.
2000: It’s not stealing if I give them credit, right? Uh… right?