State of the Union

Although the house is still in chaos, it seems to be controlled chaos for the moment. Between work and some weekend trips, and working on the house we have been extremely busy. You know your renovating when: you spend your weekend days and nights doing projects or at Lowe's, you wake up at 8am so you can work outside before the sun gets too hot, you cannot get manicures anymore because it would last about 4 hours, alternately your manicure is a menagerie of house paints, you have a sweet farmers tan and you don't care, you have about 30 cardboard boxes in your house at any given time, and you carry detailed plans of your house around with you at all times just in case. Sound familiar?

Friday night we picked up our new grill (Dan's birthday present) and our new front door. I have discovered a love for Zipcars and rented a Honda Element for a few hours. The grill box was enormous and fitting that and the door in the car took some serious effort. When we finally got home after about 3 hours, we were faced with the daunting task of unloading the car. Carrying a 300 pound box = not easy. So, we rolled it. Yup, we rolled it on the grass, threw a tarp over it and called it a day. Anyway, it matched the two extra large boxes holding our patio furniture which were also covered in tarps. We finally dropped the Zipcar off at 10:30pm and headed home with our Wendy's burgers.

Saturday we put the furniture and grill together, and cleaned up some of the yard, creating what looked like a furniture storage center. Boxes and parts of patio chairs littered the yard for the majority of the morning as we simultaneously entertained contractor visits for estimates on the work we want to do in the backyard. But, the end result was great and we certainly felt good sipping Mojitos at our new table. It's like we added a whole new room to the house. Although the aesthetics of the yard are not great yet, it will be spectacular when we are done and I cannot wait!

Sunday we painted the guest room, assembled the daybed, went back to Lowe's to get all the stuff we forgot (and couldn't fit in the car) on Friday night, and looked at some puppies. Dan really wants a dog and it seems we may end up with a new backyard and a puppy to destroy it. We'll see. They are pretty cute. I'm not sure Nina and Dylan will like it though.

So, here are some pictures:

New Paint:

Bad picture of guestroom (painted with new bed and rug - rest to be finished in a week or so):

New rug near stairs (and NINA!!):

Boxes of crap filling my living room:

New front door blocking the laundry (note the overflow. . .oops):

Grill!:New bench:

New chairs:

Far away picture of the new table with the grill box. See how big it is!:

Until next time. . .