Ready?

I took some photos today -- finally! (You're welcome, Mom, Aunt Connie and Lauren, our faithful readers.)

Rich and Billy are off to the Depot to get plastic for the vapor barriers and better parts for the recessed lighting, and I finished hanging more curtains a little while ago. We've started moving stuff out of the second bedroom to prepare it for painting (I'm really excited for this room).

Don't judge -- I haven't steamed the curtains yet. I'm just happy they aren't in boxes anymore.

The dining room. We'll get another leaning bookcase

for the other side of the window.

The ottoman's temporary spot.

Why curtains are a risk in this house.

A view into the living room from the dining room. (The frame on the ottoman is the frame and mat meant to be signed at our wedding. Oh, it was signed, but someone forgot to take off the glass, so everyone had to sign the glass. All it took was a shot of Windex for all of it to come off. I have new plans for that.)

The living room. The rug is meant for the office, but I'm still looking for a reasonably priced round black rug.

One of our favorite pieces -- the Frog's Leap poster I won at the winery. (Question: About how many bottles are in a barrel of wine? Answer: 300. Yes, I pay attention to some numbers.)

Looking into the dining room from the landing.

Looking down from the stairs.

A view into the kitchen from the hallway (Rich is "meh" on the curtains).

Not much has changed here, but say hi to Woody!

The office.

Stuff on the walls!

Stuff everywhere!

Stuff ... stuff ... stuff ...

A few little pieces in the bathroom I like.

Another piece I like.

Rich cleaned the glass -- it made him feel better.

The current state of the porch. All of this stuff will go into the bookshelves ... in the bedrooms, once they're painted.

And the current state of our bedroom. Sigh.

At least it's neat.

The second bedroom. Broken Rising Star awards included.

Rich's dresser, which he's had since childhood. I get to use it now. Yay?

I think everyone has that cat poster.

We never finished the ceiling in the stairwell. And I never got past priming the wall after the movers took a nice, long chunk out of it.

We've got our hands full this week, but it's still better than going to work.

Staycation

First, you should know that Rich's interest in blogging has once again flagged to the point of complete inactivity. He promised to blog here last week; he broke his promise.

Second, out of sheer stubbornness, I haven't been willing to do it on my own (or take the pictures) as it's called House of Bich, not House of Brooke.

Third, we go on vacation next week. While I am sorely, sorely tempted to bag the house projects and just go to Napa anyway, I won't. We won't.

And while I meant to take more pictures, the battery was -- once again -- dead. It's a shame, because the curtains look awesome in the living room and dining room. They have instantly cozied up our space. Woody went three days before he tried to climb them. Maybe pictures this week? ... Maybe not.

Last night we went over to Mike and Chris's new digs, a mere 6 miles away, to see what's new. Cleaning appeared to be it, but as I told Chris: I didn't clean my own kitchen before I moved in because I left it to the cleaning crew, so you're on your own. (Man, in hindsight, saying this to a pregnant lady just seems wrong.)

So what's on tap for the week?

1. Paint the risers white.

2. Finish painting the hallway leading upstairs (the ceiling never got finished and we have to fix the walls, which the movers had to scratch to get the bed upstairs).

3. Paint the second bedroom ... entirely. Ceiling to floor. That room will be almost entirely gray (Flint Smoke), except for the white trim.

4. Paint the enclosed porch. A bright green, perhaps?

5. Hang the pot racks for the kitchen; unpack pots; revel in the gleam of copper.

6. Install the vapor barriers, which (as I just found out) Rich will help Billy do over the weekend. Yay, Billy!

7. Continue cleaning up the yard and killing weeds. One, and possibly two, large bush is diseased and has to be dug out.

8. Possibly hang the wedding pictures up. I left all the proper screws in the apartment walls, but hopefully in all of my trips to Home Depot, I've managed to get the right anchors and screws.

9. And, if it doesn't kill Rich, paint our bedroom. (That color is Shale Gray, same as in the Edgewater apartment. It's actually a very calming blue.)

And on Wednesday, we're taking a break to go to the Blind Tiger for their weekly beer event. Across the street? Murray's. We've also got a tip on an all-the-curried-mussels-you-can-eat lunch. Good thing the train station is so close to our place.

The Chad, Giovanna and Allison Commemorative Post

Oh, my God, we're tired.

Thank goodness for Chad and Giovanna, who came on Friday night and absolutely busted their butts helping us at the house, and Allison, who surprised us with pizza and sweets before we put her to work (we taught her to paint!) this afternoon. Honestly, I don't know what we would have done without them this weekend.

We're calling the window in the dining room the Chad and Giovanna Commemorative Window. There should be a plaque. After all the paint that was scraped off and all the priming, I'm hoping the two of them aren't having nightmares.



At one point today, the bathroom door became unhinged. "Oh, man," I said to Rich. "We bought the 'Money Pit.' "



In the end, we got the majority of the trim painted, and we each made a trip to Home Depot (in an homage to my dads). And our kitchen underwent a transformation.

Before:



After:



Yes, that table was actually rigged into the wall out of some boards and random cabinet pieces. We'd been afraid to take it down in case it was covering some ugly or destroyed wall, but it turns out -- after poor Rich dropped the "table" on his head -- that the wall was in good shape. I trashed the boards and we stashed the cabinet under the basement steps, and suddenly, I've got a nice, big kitchen.

The chandelier in the kitchen is also somewhere in the basement, where our friend Phil unfortunately had to spend some time this weekend in preparation for taking out the radiator in our bedroom. (The entire house is baseboard heat, except for that room. Bizarre.) Rich took it down with the help of Ricca during a telephone consultation -- really, he should charge for this kind of thing; he's darn good -- and he graciously also walked Rich through detaching the fans from the ceilings so we could paint.

If I ever see another paintbrush again, I'll vomit. Looking forward to that this week. Yet another thing (besides movers) we'll never, ever do again on our own. We haven't even touched the upstairs yet.

LOOK AT ALL THIS SPACE!