An update on the kitchen

A dear friend of ours is helping Michael with the kitchen cabinets. He came over and measured and they talked about the floorplan on Saturday. A day later he had built a really cool model- it's to-scale and everything. I kind of want to paint it and put tile down. Would curtains be a bit much?

My favorite part is how much the finger puppets like it.

How do you access electrical wires after the drywall has been installed?

It's February? It's the END of February?

I'm not sure where the last month has gone. Although if you're going to steal a month from me, February is definitely the one I would prefer for you to take. I cannot WAIT until the Spring. This happens every year- I somehow convince myself that I will never be warm again. The flowers will never bloom, there will be no more leaves on the trees- ever. The White Witch has truly cursed us and it will be always winter but never Christmas.

So, to get myself out of this funk, I've been taking pictures with my (new) camera. Nature really is beautiful, even in it's dormant state.

Primer, Shrimer

To the casual observer, it may look like Michael is slacking off. He is, in fact, hard at work. I'm not sure who he's talking to in this picture, but I'm sure it is very important. Really.

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In other news, painting the roof is taking alot longer than we had hoped. Who knew 1) it would take so much freakin' primer and 2) the weather would be so uncooperative. Let's total up the amount of primer purchased thus far:

2 gallons initially
5 additional gallons (after we realized it took 2 whole gallons on one side of the shed)
1 more gallon (just to be safe)

Guess what Michael said to me last night? I bet you can see this one coming... that's right! We need more primer!

The guys at the paint store already think I'm an idiot. I'm not going back there. I have my pride.

And your bird can sing

Soon, like a pheonix that rises from the ashes, a new kitchen will emerge. Until then, we will continue to eat off paper plates, cook in the dining room, wash dishes in the bathroom, and store canned goods in the living room.

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Behold- the most amazing technological advance to hit home improvement (according to my husband.) I'm not sure exactly why he's so captured by this new deadbolt. It is very cool that you can program multiple codes, set time limits for the codes (for example, if a repair man was coming, you could give him a code that was only valid for 24 hrs.), and never again be locked out of your own home. But... when it comes down to it, it's just a lock. On a door. It does light up, however. Much like the face of my beloved when he talks about his new deadbolt. So I guess, in that sense, it really is the coolest thing to come along in a while.

True Colors

I've always known that picking a wall color is not the easiest thing. When we first moved in five years ago and I told Michael I wanted to paint the living room purple, he was unconvinced- and rightly so. It took me several attempts to find a color that wasn't too soft or too bold. I finally got it right and have loved this color ever since.


Picking a color for the tin roof should be easy, right? After all, it's not like I'm going to agonize over subtle shades of yellow, orange, blue, or even green. I knew I wanted red- it's a nice shade of red right now and it looks really good. How then did we end up with a color that looks less like "fire engine red" which is what I envisioned, but instead looks like it belongs on the head of a very scary clown?


I should have gotten one of the guys to go on the roof and get me a paint chip from the beginning so we could just match the color it currently is. Instead, I made the 40-minute drive to the paint store (the first of many such trips) and told the lovely Avi that I wanted to paint my tin roof red. At this point he probably should have given me some counsel and informed me that most people paint their roofs a color called Barn Red. (He held on to this information until my 4th trip.) Rather, he let me order $200 of paint that should not come in that color- why would exterior metal paint come in a color that is the preferred lipstick choice of prostitutes everywhere?


In my defense, it has always been difficult for me to imagine how the color on the 1 inch square color swatch will translate when painted on a wall. Or ceiling. Or roof. When I saw the new paint on the barn roof, I wasn't sure that it was the one I had picked out. It looked so bad.


The good news is that Avi is going to fix it for us. He's going to try to tint the awful paint to a color close to what we have right now. If he can't, he's going to take back the paint and start over. So, that's $200 not down the drain.


And finally, a picture of the tin ceiling- complete.

Tin is so IN

The tin ceiling is looking great. One advantage of having wood ceilings is that it's really straight forward when nailing up tin tiles. There's no need to install a wood grid system. We are probably going to paint the tin a gloss white, but it kind of looks cool unpainted, too. Thoughts?



One thing that isn't so cool about having an old house is that nothing seems to be square. Not only are the walls bowed, but an added complication is that the tin might not be the very best quality. It seems that the pattern isn't stamped quite as consistently as Michael would like. He's doing a great job, but it's a bit frustrating that the tin doesn't always line up well.



Eleven foot ceilings are awesome for many reasons, one of which is that it's so far away that you can't actually see minor imperfections. It looks great from the ground, doesn't it?