08.26.09
Posted in Photos, Reno saga at 7:21 pm by jeci
For this is all I’ve been doing with my time, lo these many months. Tonight, the en suite bathroom.
Before
What you’re looking at: Well, not much. It is but a wee room that is rather tricky to photograph. Anyway, first allow me to draw your attention to that mirror/medicine cabinet combo…thing. That’s glued to the wall. Glued. Yes. We’ve also got going on a faintly musty, yet decent and sturdy vanity; a deplorably chipped beige (BEIGE) sink with ugly faucet; a surprisingly unstained counter top that is unfortunate only for its old skool “pork chop” that runs over the toilet; a rather clunky, big ol’, water guzzling HOG of a 13L toilet that’s also a wee bit on the drippy side; some actually rather lovely blue paint that had to go anyway as it matched too exactly our towels — but, really, we also wanted the colour to be the same as the bedroom; and some truly hideous, asbestos-era linoleum that’s topped by three (3) different types of mismatched baseboards. Oh, and you can’t tell, but the knobs on the vanity doors are a slightly weird size and somehow indescribably odd and ugly, even though they look like they should be cool and modern.
There are no “during” pictures because of the cramped quarters, but the during part did include me applying four (4) coats of paint. Not including the primer. All the other walls took two coats of paint, so this remains a mystery…our only going theory is that yellow paint just doesn’t cover blue paint all that well. My blood pressure is going up thinking about that, so moving on before the ranting overcomes me.
After
What you’re looking at: more Moonlit Yellow paint (four layers of it — ahem!); a proper medicine cabinet (switched out from the main bathroom, actually); a scoured, cleaned, and painted vanity (that has new contact paper on the inside too!), cured of its mustiness and affixed with appropriately sized knobs; the same counter top after undergoing a pork-chop-ectomy; a white sink also switched out from the main bathroom that is sans chips(ish) (I touched up the one chip that it had and you can’t see it at all!); a pretty, new water saving(!) faucet; and a bad ass (so to speak) new, water-saving(!), dual flush toilet. (You’re also looking at poor lighting due to the fact that one of the bulbs in the light fixture burnt out and we…just can’t right now. Too many balls in the air to attend to routine household maintenance, you know? Anyway.)
And in this picture, you can see a little more clearly my pride and joy:
The new tile! Tiling is the one renovation we didn’t take on ourselves because for the tiny amount of square footage we needed covered, hiring a professional was only marginally more expensive than doing it ourselves (once we factored in the cost of the tools we needed for the job). And with hiring someone, there was much less swearing and feeling put-upon, what with all the First World problems. The tile is accented by new baseboards. That all match.
Now to briefly switch gears, a wee glimpse of the living room — the merest hint of a preview — because you need to know that Kes and Logan are fully in love now. They’ve been flirting for years, but now it’s come down to openly snuggling and grooming each other’s faces.
Nermal usually sulks when they do this, as she is convinced that Logan is her nemesis. Nermal still gets tons of Kes cuddles, though; she just wants ALL the Kes cuddles. Here is Nermal, not sulking but demonstrating why we sometimes think she’s a spy from the cat home planet.
Permalink
08.25.09
Posted in Hmph, Photos, Reno saga at 7:52 pm by jeci
I am aware that this couldn’t possibly be as exciting for you as it is for me, but please bear with me anyway. Because it’s exciting! To have a home! That is not squalid and filthy and covered in grit, not to mention a home that doesn’t have a miter saw on the dining room table (or toilets in the dining room for that matter!).
Annnnnnd, I’ll stop there. Because I could go on all night about the hating and the hate with all the hating of living in a mess. Which is over. So it’s okay, self, shh, shh.
Tonight I have for you the master bedroom. Complete! Clean! Yellow! My favourite colour!
Let’s start with the before, shall we?
Before
What you’re looking at: a poorly lit shot of a very drab, grubby room. The poor lighting has something to do with the fact that there is no lighting. The walls are filthy beige — and by filthy I mean when I washed them down before painting them, they turned out to be an entirely lighter shade of beige — and a filthy beige carpet. There was also, for the record, no baseboards, no closet doors, and the door to the en suite bathroom had a sizable hole in it.
During
The first order of business was to remove the filth sponge carpet. And, dudes. Carpets are gross. There were PILES OF DIRT trapped under there (you can click here to see, if you want). I was truly horrified and have sworn that I will never have carpet again, if I can help it. Next up was painting the walls with fresh paint and — hey! — a colour. OTHER THAN BEIGE.
Then it was time for new flooring…
And then ceiling paint, and closet doors, and doors, and baseboards, and curtains and…voila! A MERE THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER…
After
And we have a beautiful new master bedroom! With lighting and colour and cleanliness. SWOON. Aside: See the bedside tables? They used to be green and last weekend I painted them white to match the bed frame. This was a task I put off for several months because I thought it would be fussy and annoying, but spray painting turns out to be quite the opposite of fussy (although, I’m afraid, extremely toxic). I put it off to the point of considering buying new bedside tables, which would have cost at least $100 instead of, like, uh, $5.
Here’s a less artful shot of the room from the other side, if only to demonstrate Kieran’s handy work in that we now have closet doors that, you know, exist and entry doors without holes punched in them. It also nicely shows off the colour of the paint (it’s called Moonlit Yellow, which is apt because it has a delicate silvery undertone to it). The paint! Which is yellow! My favourite! Did I mention that already?
Tomorrow: the en suite! But for now, bbs, I have a date with Harry Potter. Oh, did I tell you? We’re relaxing this week and not doing renos. We were both gravely run down. Besides, what’s left is so negligible, I won’t even bother boring you with it. But for this week we’re enjoying what is as good as done.
Permalink
08.15.09
Posted in Meh, My Life Is Punctuated by Useless Bouts of Panic at 8:51 am by jeci
Sigh. This right here is one of the more awkward aspects of blogging. Where you write something and put it up and then after you’ve marinated on it for a while you change your mind. You didn’t like how it came out. In real life when I’m perhaps saying sarcastic, graceless things, as I am wont to do (most unfortunately), I have the benefit of other people’s falling facial expressions to provide useful cues as to when to STFU. Here, I say stupid things and then have to wait half a day for my brain to catch up with my mouth. And then I have to writhe in horror that I’ve said something stupid on the Internet. Where many, many people can see it.
Which is to say: my post yesterday…I don’t like how it came out. It came out all negative and jabby at blogging in general (hopefully not at other bloggers, because nooooooooo), when what I was trying to say is that **I** suck at this. At blogging. Me. I suck. (Case in point: RIGHT NOW.) Blogging doesn’t suck; I do. Because I’m not entirely convinced that what I’d hoped would be a self-deprecating tone didn’t ratchet into just plain old deprecating, I’ve pulled the post. I don’t know how much weight anyone gives to my opinions in these here parts, but I don’t want Blue Yon Belly to be a negative space. I’m posting this retraction for the four of you who pick me up in your reader. So, gentle readers, if you caught that last post, forgive me.
Permalink
08.03.09
Posted in Big Agnes, Photos, Sparkle at 4:17 pm by jeci
Because how could you not?
First to Nelson, BC for some camping and navel gazing…
Then to the Okanagan for some more camping and navel gazing…but with more wine.
There are still renovations to be done, but we are close. Thisclose. Pictures to follow shortly. And then we can speak of other things! That I’m doing! With my time! Or that you’re doing with your time! Really!
Permalink