And a few of the inside too....

Pictures

More updates to come later, but thought I'd post a few pics of the outside of the house. This will be more impressive when I can locate a "before" picture.

Who Has Time to Write?

It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve written, for several reasons. First and foremost, we have been so busy with all of this house renovation/moving out/moving in stuff that I am exhausted and my creative juices are running dry. Secondly, the little time and little juice that I do have has sadly been rationed toward my grant writing duties. Unfortunately, the monetary gains of that endeavor surpass those from writing this little blog. But, due to a surprising (albeit slight) demand for entries , I have decided to expend a bit of energy this evening providing updates on the house.

Because there has been so much that has happened since my last post on September 14^th (wow! It has been a long time!), I will break up the events into little chapters, the first being titled:

Home/Time Sucking Depot:

I cannot tell you how much time I spent en route to and at the Home Depot. And I cannot tell you how much time I would have saved had I known that there was a Home Depot located in Poulsbo, Washington, which is a good 15 minutes closer than the one we’d been traveling to in Silverdale, Washington. Sigh. At least we found out before we had completed all the home renovations, cause that really would have been hard to take.

Each location, however, has come to recognize me. I felt a twinge of pride when I walked through the door at one of the locations (I cannot even remember which), and an employee stationed at the front of the store said, “Oh, you’re back again.” This feeling was quickly replaced with embarrassment as I rolled the cart over my toe, but I digress.

Home Depot has provided pretty much everything and the kitchen sink. By the way, kitchen sinks are heavy and I strongly advise against any attempts to lift a boxed sink into your cart on your own. (My toe could have experienced much worse than an empty cart incident.) I picked out a beautiful bronze faucet to go with our sink, and a very helpful employee recommended that I pick out the drain at the same time. (Side note: why don’t kitchen sinks come with drains? Isn’t that like selling someone a car without a steering wheel? What good does that do me?) The employee recommended special ordering a bronze drain cover thing to match my faucet (because how embarrassing would that be if someone noticed the drain was silver and the faucet was bronze?). And then she told me the price. Seventy five dollars. As opposed to $20. I started laughing somewhat hysterically, and I think the employee recognized that the sale was about to disappear and she rapidly backtracked from her previous argument. “But I mean really, are you having your company do the dishes? How would they even notice the drain didn’t match? Ha ha. Ha ha.”

I also color matched my “Divine Paint Colors.” Our downstairs walls, if referred to by color name, sound delicious. We chose a “cocoa” for the kitchen and living room accent wall, an “almond” (which is deceiving – it is actually a shade of blue) for the family room, and a “vanilla” for the ceiling and hallway walls. The upstairs include Ellie’s “Grapes and Beans” – a lovely lavender, Sam’s “Full of Beans” – a lovely blue, the office’s “Birch” – yellow, and our room’s “Manzanita” – an awesome shade of green. Kind of Easter-ish upstairs, but I love it.

My Father the Hero

So, my Dad came up to help the week after we ripped out the carpets. He is amazing. The man’s work ethic is seriously unparalleled. He has tackled so many projects here at 201 Ihland Way, that I am embarrassed to say I can’t even remember what all he has done. Removing light fixtures, taping and painting many, many, many interior walls, including the aforementioned cocoa accent wall which actually is enormous and required some serious creative solutions. He will be a key player in the next several chapters, because he was pretty much there for it all. And, he came back for seconds, which is really impressive. I thought we’d never get him to come back, but after a short reprieve in Oregon, he made the trip back up to Bainbridge to paint again the following week and help with the move out/move in. I am seriously lucky.

El Gato No Es Una Parte De Mi Cuerpo

The previous owners here at 201 Ihland Way used the wooden stove. A lot. The downstairs walls in this place were completely covered with ash and soot. The outdoor painter that we contracted, Jose Ponce, had given us a business card that also included his wife’s cleaning business. We hired her and informed her to bring another individual to wash the walls with TSP which helps prep them to accept paint. Unfortunately, my high school Spanish class was not very good. We literally learned the Macarena dance for one full semester, when we weren’t learning very helpful phrases like the one that serves as the chapter title for this entry (it translates to: The cat is not a part of my body. I think.). So my attempts to communicate with Maria were comical – at one point I was trying to tell her that I’d be back but I had to first pick up my “ninos,” and I think she thought I was asking her to watch my kids. Anyway – she did a fabulous job, alongside her daughter-in-law. They each spent 8 hours ridding the walls of smoky remnants. They didn’t get a chance to finish the ceiling in the downstairs, so my Dad and I came back for the evening. What a job! We spent roughly two and a half hours on just the kitchen and the family room ceilings alone. My Dad came back the next day to work on the crazy hallway ceilings and the accent wall and living room ceilings, which were much too high for Maria. “Muy grande” she finally told me after several other attempts that left me clueless. Oh Seniora Mareno, you have failed me so.