Sunday, August 30, 2009

GOOD NEWS--

Just an update on the "Hopeful" saga. We finally got the color on the walls in the bathroom in which they were intended to go on. And, yes, it was by a brush and not a splash from the can hitting the floor. Nikole loves the color. It is very pink, but it is what she wanted and that is what mattered.
So, third time is a charm and perserverence yeilds success. A little luck didn't hurt either.
And, can I just say that the man at our Home Depot paint department was very sweet in offering to send an armed guard home with us after learning of our mishaps. Thanks Home Depot paint guy!!

Friday, August 28, 2009

THE SAGA OF "HOPEFUL"


So, you know how on television they have the home improvement shows. In the 30 minutes they go to the store, buy the paint, go home, paint the room, stand back and admire what they've done...well, I have to say that I now know the true meaning of D.I.Y--Doesn't Include You!!!
So, Nikole's room is pretty much done except for her atached bathroom. While Adrienne was here, they went to Home Depot and chose a color for her bathroom that will look good with her tile and with her room color. This color is (appropriately) named "hopeful". It is a light pink color. So, we measured the bathroom, figured out that we needed a quart of paint to do the bathroom, went to Home Depot and got it mixed. Got it home and put it on the desk in Nikole's room to wait for the painting day. Quick side note, the last thing a mom wants to hear at 6:00 in the morning is "Mom, come quick and look, it's an emergency"!! During the night, Molli, our almost exiled cat, got up on the desk, decided she needed to stretch out and knocked the paint onto the carpet-upside down--lid popped off and all of it spilled. So, Lorin, F.Y.I. painting the carped DOES NOT work so much. Philip and I spent about 3 hours in there cleaning the paint out of the carpet.
Paint the bathroom: Take 2
Thursday we went to Home Depot to buy another quart of "hopeful" pink. Paid for it, put it in the back of the truck, went and got the kids from golf and came home. It got left in the back of the truck as the minds were on dinner, homework, and relaxing when we got home. About 8:30 that night, Nikole decided that she wanted to paint a little, went out to the truck to get it and got all the way up to the front door..yup, it slipped out of her hand, dropped, lid popped off and our front porch and front door ended up pink!! Clean up time, about 1 hour.
We decided that we will try one more time. We are renaming the color "hopefully" because "hopefully it will actually make it onto the bathroom walls this time". If something happens this time, we told Nikole she will be chosing a different color because obviously our house has something against the color "hopeful" pink.
Wish us luck!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The "WEIRD" Happenings

Let me preface this by saying mom can verify all this...
One of the days that we were in our new house, but hadn't gotten everything out of our other house, our next door neighbor from the old house stopped by. He told us that they were out on their porch and saw someone come to look at the house. She walked around the back yard and then came out the front door. He said that she must have locked herself out because (our bad) we had left the living room window open a crack and she pushed it up and crawled back into the house. He said that she then came back out through the window carrying--I kid you not--my family sized box of Tide laundry soap!! Not the vaccum or anything else, just the Tide. When we went over to investigate and take the rest of our stuff before she could, we found the top of the box on the floor. It had been cut off with a razor blade and left there. Why??? Maybe you have some thoughts on it cuz we sure didn't.
THEN: We decided that we needed a break from the house (that and we didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn) so the day prior to mom's plane flying out, we went and spent the day in Santa Fe and had dinner there at this yummy restaurant called the "Blue Corn". We got in and seated and then from a few tables down this little girl about 5 or so came over and just stood at the table. We asked her name and she told us and then proceeded to tell us why she was there and who she was with. Then, instead of returning to her seat, she climbed up on the bench next to Meganne and sat and chatted with us. After the waiter brought our drinks, she was nice enough to unwrap Meganne's straw for her and tell us that she also liked the rootbeer. All total she was there for probably 10 minutes with us with no parent coming to get her. When our waiter came to take our order, I mentioned to him that this little girl kind of invited herself to be with us and we didn't know where she belonged. He went over to her dad and mentioned that she had joined us and he finally called for her to come back to the table. I really believe that he probably would have let her sit with us until he or us were finished with our meal.
Oh well, keeps life interesting I guess :)

Thursday, August 6, 2009

New Homeowners and Wallpaper is EVIL!!!

Sorry for the delay - we have been quite busy. We closed on Thursday July 30 and started going into the house that day. We had to assess what needed done. We promised the kids that we would paint there rooms first. Nikole's room took about 5 hours total this includes cleaning the wall, painting (2 coats), and taping. Meganne's room took - ready for this - about 1 full day to remove top of the wall paper; 2.5 days to remove the wallpaper backing and adhesive - more on this in a bit; and 1 day to prime (1 coat) and paint (2 coats).

Okay so why 2.5 days to remove the wallpaper backing and adhesive. We theorize that the wallpaper was professionally done and they owned stock in an adhesive company. That blasted adhesive was thick and for some reason was thicker on the lower part of the wall - I think gravity was working. So what did we use to remove the adhesive?? Very hot water, some kind of adhesive remover (which really didn't work well), a bunch of elbow grease, and (ready for this) Downy. Yes, that is what I said Downy fabric softner. Crazy huh - we thought so but we were so disperate to get this stuff of we thought "Why not?" And you know what with all of the items it worked. I was skeptical and so was everyone else. But it did work; however, it works best with very hot water and Downy at full strength. You still need the elbow grease - keeps things lubricated - I think.

Both rooms look great - I would give details but I think the girls will cover that in their blog.

What's next - Master Bathroom. Yes we will be dealing with a very slow draining shower and wallpaper. WALLPAPER is EVIL!!! But we already removed the wallpaper now we just need to remove the backing that still remains in spots.

I definately feel that wallpaper is not of this earth - blasted Aliens!!