Where Did The Time Go?

Kitten pointed out that I haven't posted in forever. The last thing I talked about was waiting to close on the house here in Florida. Mission accomplished on that front. I got moved out of the hotel and slept on an air mattress for a week until Kitten brought my dogs down. She flew back to Indiana pretty quickly, but then came down for an entire week. When she got here, the work began. We didn't like any of the colors in the house. They were mostly pale blues and funky yellows. The ceilings were nice and dingy too, so we immediately went and spent $700 on paint and a light fixture. The next day, we began painting. I've never painted one of those crappy 70s popcorn ceilings before and I immediately found a reason to hate them. The popcorn came right off on the roller. Now we were faced with either buying some kind of sprayer system to paint the ceiling or take down the popcorn. Kitten hates the way it looks anyway, so we stopped the entire painting process to take the popcorn down. You basically spray a little water on it and then scrape it and it quickly comes down. All over everything. We had planned to paint most of the house before the furniture got there the following Saturday, now we were in "Paint what's necessary" mode.

The long and the short of it is that I've been spending all of my free time working on the house since we bought it on May 12. First, the dining room was painted.Then I painted the living room and replaced the overhead light fixture.

The following Saturday, the moving truck arrived and those sons of bitches unloaded everything we own in less than four hours! During the move, it was discovered that somehow, we had busted all of the wooded cross rails on the bed. I would like to think it was my jackhammer ass that did it and Kitten is allowing me to believe it. So off to IKEA. Kitten refers to it as her Disney World. We bought a new bed frame, a cabinet/bar thing, a lamp and a sofa table. I have know idea how we got all of that into the FJ cruiser.

So we moved to the bedroom. We scraped the popcorn, painted the ceiling and walls and then I put together the new bed. Later, Kitten sent me the ceiling fan and I installed it.

Next I painted the foyer. That was the easiest thing I've done. Of course today, the deadbolt on the front door stopped working. You put the key in and it just turns. I've never had that happen before. At this point, I was getting tired of letting the dogs out of the back door and then having to walk to the back of the pool cage to let them out a second door. Since Daisy ran through one of the screens chasing a lizard or something, I decided to build a dog door on one side of that frame and then replace the screen on the other. I didn't really build the door, I bought that at Lowe's, but I had to build a frame from aluminum to match the cage frame so I'd have someplace to mount the door. That took a whole Saturday, but I'm pleased with the result.Next was the master bath. It was painted a horrible shit green. I just couldn't take it anymore.It still looks kinda green in the picture, but actually it's more of a grey now.
I've done some other things. Kittens step mom pointed out that really, the fridge door opened the wrong way. I wouldn't have ever noticed it, but after she pointed it out, it bugged me to no end. So I reversed the door. The kitchen needs a ton of work, but I think we are gonna save that for the very last and spend some real money on it.The den has painted over paneling. The plan is to pull that down and hang drywall. Of course the popcorn ceiling has to come down. The mantle over the fireplace is not only ugly, but it's also upside down. I did put together the sofa table (from IKEA) behind the couch.We also bought this cabinet thing from IKEA. We liked it for a bar.What's left after that is the two back bedrooms, hallway and bathroom. Lord.


Today I pulled out all of the old landscape timbers and trimmed the bushes back in preperation for the fence guys. The dogs get their new fence this week. All and all, I'm very happy here. I miss Kitten. I didn't realize how lonely I would get without her, but I know that she feels the same way and is doing everything she can to get down here.

Anybody got a free weekend they want to spend painting and renovating?