Random Updates

Well, the last few weeks have been busy to say the least. We've been tying up some odds'n'ends before we can purchase the new carpeting, and we both ran 40 miles on Saturday (race reports and pictures coming soon). The new tankless water heater and air handler will be installed on Friday. It will be nice to see how much room in the furnace room that frees up. Eventually, we want to make it a true half bath instead of just a toilet behind some vertical blinds. The truck is limping along. John's back up plan is to have his bicycle in the back, just in case he breaks down somewhere.

The flowers are almost done for the year, but here's what the yard looked like a few weeks ago. I just recently realized they sent me one of the wrong colors. I ordered a red/gold mix and instead I had small fuchsia tulips pop up with feathered edges. Oh well, at least everything grew.


I couldn't believe how long the daffodils hung on. We'll probably move the bulbs around some this fall, but I was glad to see everything came up just fine.


The mural in the bedroom is finished. With the flash, it's hard to see the silver tree. I'm debating putting another smaller one on the left side of the wall...




John took apart the headboard for me to paint. The bed will be painted the same, as will a bookshelf from the living room. Most of the furniture in the living room and our bedroom will be a black/brown finish. It was actually really easy to do. I watch WAY too much Color Splash.

Here's the first coat of chocolate brown paint, put on thin enough to still see the wood grain through. That was followed by a thin coat of black using a dry chip brush. It turned out nice, but we didn't take a close up. Maybe when the entire bed is finished.

The fireplace was stripped and John started slurrying in the air voids. He even pulled out his latest concrete toy - the dry polisher - and polished it. Much less of a mess than the wet grinder out in the driveway. I guess it does pay off to let him buy his "toys." Actually, he's working on it while I type.

Ooh la la. The proportions worked out perfect. I can't believe what a big difference it makes. I ordered some samples of crushed glass online and they showed up today. I think we found our color, but that will have to wait until the whole thing is finished. When we have the living room finished, the fireplace will be such a cool focal point. Maybe next winter we'll actually use it.

Besides our own projects, John is trading labor with Jerad for one of his projects. John is cleaning up some recycled metal chair legs for some furniture Jerad is building. (We're hoping that six sets of those chair legs will end up under some chairs in our dining room some day, but that would also require us to unpack the boxes still stacked in the dining room) I swear, any tool you can imagine can be found on the circle in at least one person's garage. There's a rumor that the PBR Fairy will again be visiting this Friday.

We're hoping to go carpet shopping sometime this week, John wants to finish the fireplace this week and then pull trim and paint this weekend. That means realistically, we could have new carpeting in the next month. I don't know what I'll do when there's no exposed sub floor!