Adventures In Moving: Day 2

Day 2 started bright and early and, for my mom, started with kisses from Henry.

I've gotta hand it to my dad.  After his shower in the dark the night before, he got a little more creative the next morning.  He took the blind-free, curtain-free windows into his own hands and found a solution: polo shirts.

After seeing that, I decided Day 2 would be all about hanging curtains.  We could not go all weekend with all of our clothes hanging on the windows.  You'd be amazed at how long it takes to hang curtains in an entire house.  It lasted aaaall day long.  Especially since my helpers kept quitting on me.

We started in the downstairs bedroom and Dad was on the ladder.

While I supervised Dad, Mom steadily ironed so that the curtains wouldn't be so wrinkly.

First window done!

And then my dad quit and passed off the tools to Doc.

With the first room done, the boys tried to take a break but I pointed out that Mom already had the curtains ready for the living room.  Carry on, boys!

Somebody doesn't look very excited about hanging those curtains...

While the 3 of us worked our way around the downstairs, Nick was busy setting up the tvs and dvd players around the house.  This was originally the job we'd saved for my other brother, Ben, since he's the techy guy in the family, but at the last minute he wasn't able to make the trip.  I'm just glad Nick was able to step in and get it done...Lord knows I wouldn't have been able to do it.

After finishing the downstairs windows, Doc and Dad switched gears and started to work on the washer and dryer that currently weren't working.  Assuming we'd have access to them all weekend, Doc didn't pack enough clothes.  He either had to get them up and running or we were going to have to go shopping.

While they were out buying supplies, Nick, Mom, and I rolled out the rug in the dining room and completely rearranged the living room from how we'd done it the night before.

With Doc and Dad on laundry room duty, Mom and I recruited Nick to help us with curtain rods in the Jack and Jill rooms.  He couldn't help without the proper tools: beer and basketball.

Whatever it takes, brother.  Just climb the ladder and hang some curtains!

These two rooms took longer than expected because Dad and Doc (the new Frick and Frack) kept cutting the power to the whole house.  Apparently there were lots of issues with the washer and dryer.  But no power meant no ironing and no light and not a lot of progress made.  Henry took advantage of the pause in curtain ironing.

Eventually, we got the curtains hung in those rooms and Frick and Frack Jr. gave up on the washer/dryer unit, though not until after completely soaking a load of clothes.  Hunger set in so Doc got to cooking up dinner while I turned my attention to finding somewhere to do laundry.  We got really lucky because there was a laundry room in some nearby condos that we were able to sneak into.  Only problem was that it was on the second floor and we had a laundry basket full of sopping wet clothes.  Dad came to my rescue and lugged the basket upstairs, which is why it kinda looks like the wet his pants in this picture that was taken shortly after.

Also, if you send two boys to the store to pick up a tension rod for your all white bathroom, they'll come back with a black tension rod.  Take my advice: don't send the two boys.

With our bellies full, it was very tempting to collapse on the couches and call it a night, but we were just one room away from completing the curtains.  I begged them to push onward, and my sweet husband obliged.  I love that every time he hung a set of curtains, he also took the time to arrange and fix them.  It's like I'm rubbing off on him or something.

Mom and I cheered him on while he worked.

Poor Henry was so exhausted he couldn't even hold his head up anymore.  He'd had a long day of having to move from room to room with us.  Heaven forbid he stay in a room by himself.

And with the last of the curtains done, we called it a night!  Actually, I still had to go get the laundry, but then we were really done for the day.  We were all looking forward to drawing our curtains closed and sleeping later than sunrise the next day.

So there I go again, dragging one day out way too far.  Sorry.  Maybe I'll do better with day 3...

Adventures In Moving: Day 1

We have officially moved in to the beach house!  And the whole experience was...adventurous.  It started with the house not being quite finished when we rolled into town.  But ready or not, the movers were on their way.  We were moving in anyway. My brother arrived into town late Thursday evening.  His plan was to sleep on the floor at the house, but when he talked to our contractor, he was thrown a little kink in the plan: the hardwood floors had just been sealed that afternoon and couldn't be walked on.  Ruh-roh.  Luckily, our contractor had a friend that had an available carriage house and, long story short, my brother suddenly had a place to sleep.  I guess in the end, that kink wasn't so bad since he ended up with a bed instead of a sleeping bag on the floor.

Doc and I had driven late Thursday night and made it more than halfway.  We woke up bright and early Friday morning and headed to Pensacola so he could have a quick work meeting.  The meeting didn't last long and we were quickly back on the road.  We were in town meeting up with my brother shortly before noon.  We were just as surprised as Nick as the lengthy list of things still left to do.  At least people were there working away.

The construction cleaning lady was there tidying everything up.  She did everything from vacuuming up sawdust to wiping down surfaces to scraping stickers off the new windows.

The painters were also at the house working on the stair rail.

Feeling good about the progress that was being made, Doc, Nick and I headed out to grab some lunch.  We took our time since there really wasn't much we could do at the house and we definitely didn't want to be in anyone's way.

I wish I could say that when we arrived back from lunch, everything was spic and span and the house was complete.  Instead, we arrived back to a completely deserted house.  No workers and an empty house.  Nick had picked up a couple of bikes from Target that morning, so we killed time by cruising around the neighborhood.  We were in constant contact with my parents who had left their house early that morning and would be arriving sometime that afternoon.  The moving truck (and two movers who we affectionally named Frick and Frack) had also left that morning and the main office put their estimated arrival time between noon and 2pm.  After traveling all morning with no calls from Frick and Frack, my parents finally got ahold of them around 1pm and found out they were at least an hour behind them.  They (my parents) wouldn't make it to town until around 3, so we weren't banking on seeing the moving truck before 4.  We settled in for a long afternoon wait.

A few months ago, we purchased a table from World Market and, since our house wasn't ready at the time, our contractor offered to store it at his office until move-in day.  That got delivered around 2:30 so Nick and Doc finally had something to do.  They got to work putting the table, benches, and chairs together.

I'll admit that at one point in the afternoon, I got so bored that I grabbed my snuggie and went upstairs to a carpeted bedroom to take a nap.  You can only wander around an empty house for so long.

Shortly after my parents arrived, a big moving truck turned down our street!  Only it wasn't the moving truck.  Rats.  This one was a delivery truck from a local furniture store where we'd purchased a tv armoire.  We'd scheduled the delivery for Friday and they were right on time.

This piece actually came from a second-hand furniture store that my parents found when they were at the beach before Thanksgiving.  This was my first time to see it in person and I was more than pleased with their purchase.

For anyone keeping score, it was now around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and all we had was a dining table and tv armoire in our unfinished house.  Not winning.  Our neighborhood association only allows moving trucks in the neighborhood until 6pm during the week, so we started scrambling to get permission to move-in after hours.  The head of the HOA understood our delimma and gave us the green light to do what we needed to do.  With still no Frick and Frack in sight, we treated ourselves to some dinner.

The guys were so hungry they couldn't even stop eating to take a decent picture.

After scarfing down pizza, my mom gave up on the movers and left to go get groceries for the weekend.  As luck would have it, they pulled up right after she left!  6:45pm and our furniture was finally in town.  The guys were more than ready to get this show on the road, so they hopped on the truck, grabbed some furniture, and got to moving.

I stood at the door and pointed everyone to the right location for whatever they were carrying in.  From my vantage point, I can safely say that my dad, brother, and husband definitely double-timed it compared to the two movers.  What were they doing after taking their piece of furniture upstairs?  This was no time for a break!

The living room was the catchall room for things that didn't have a set home.  It filled up very quickly.

And it was a good thing we'd already had dinner because there was no longer any room for eating in the kitchen.

The mattresses and box springs were at the very back (front?) of the truck, so we knew as soon as they came off, we were almost done.  Here they come...hooray!

It took the movers 3 hours to load the truck up the night before, and with the help of my boys, it all came off in 45 minutes flat.  This is what real furniture movers look like.

Poor Doc was battling a bad cold too and did not feel well at all.  I felt really bad for him because you know he can't halfway do anything.

Even though we were exhausted (and it was barely 8 o'clock!), we unwrapped the couches, unrolled the rug, and semi-set up the living room so we could collapse and finally sit (on furniture!) for a few minutes. Guess who was the first to try out the new love seat?  This guy.

Yep, my parents brought ol' Henry along for the trip.  (We left Lolli with some friends.)  Henry had stood guard and barked and whined at the movers the whole time, so we was pretty worn out too.  He gave the new couch and love seat his seal of approval.

With no blinds (ordered, but not in yet) or curtains on the windows, we knew we better go to bed soon.  We'd be up with the sun the next day.  Showers were necessary since we were so stinky.  I'm sure my parents thought they were lucky by getting the master bedroom and bath, but considering the bathroom has two large windows in it and backs right up to our neighbor's house, they found themselves in a bit of a situation.  Especially since my mom is a bath-taker, not a showerer, and one window was right beside the bathtub.  I'm pretty sure the neighbors weren't home, but waving to them from the tub was not a risk she was willing to take.  Her solution?  A bath in the pitch dark.

Originally, our rental company was going to drop linens and towels off at our house on move-in day.  Because the movers were so late, they rescheduled to bring them the following day.  Doc and I (and my brother too) were completely prepared for this.  We brought our own towels and a set of sheets (Nick had his sleeping bag and a blanket).  My parents?  Not so much.  They didn't bring anything.  Doc and I were very generous and gave them one of our two towels to use, although the thought of them having to drip-dry after their shower/bath in the dark would've been pretty funny.

They didn't have sheets for their bed but we did have the mattress pad, blanket, and quilt.  We made them a pallet on top of the mattress and they said they'd be fine.  My mom reported back that by the time morning rolled around, my dad had managed to get under the mattress pad and slept on the bare mattress.  Only my dad.

I didn't intend to drag day one out this long, but what's done is done.  I'll try to go through the next days a little more quickly and I promise that a home tour will be at the end of it all, so stick around!

One Last Project

Ok, I have one last beach house project to share and then I promise I'll stop for a while.  With the projects, that is, not the beach house.  I have lots to share on that front!  But first, this project.  I meant to post this last week and just didn't get time to finish it.  Oopsy. Way back - maybe a couple months ago - I made two "canvases" using recycled fence slats.  The slats were from the same pile of old fence that we used to make the lemonade stand and the potting stand.  To make the canvases, I cut 4 slats to equal lengths and then framed them on the back with 1x2s.

I love the look of the naturally weathered slats, but obviously the fresh new wood frame wasn't working with it.  To try to blend it in, I smeared some grey paint on it, trying my best to match the color and look of the old wood.

After that, I also took some grey paint, majorly watered it down, and then washed it over the whole thing - the slats and the sides.  My thinking was that it'd help blend the two woods together a little.

So that was done, and that was the easy part.  Now I had to figure out what to paint on them.  Going into it, I had a good plan.  We had already purchased several buoys to use in the beach house, so I was going to paint some buoys on the canvases and make them real texure-y and colorful.  Problem was that every time I tried to draw the buoys, they just looked like flat squares.  I couldn't get them to look right, and definitely not 3D.  So I tabled the project for a while.

Last week, between cutting holes for grommets, I picked them back up to finish them.  I knew I wanted to keep the weathered look of the fence slats as the background, so I needed some kind of beachy object I could just paint in the center (that wouldn't require a background, so no beach scenes).  I also knew that I wanted the canvases to stay horizontal so that the individual slats were vertical, just in case these ended up getting hung on a wall with horizontal paneling.

The winning object was birds.  Ducks?  Sea gulls?  I don't really know what they are exactly, but they're bird-ish.

First I drew a stencil out of paper so that I could trace it onto the canvases.

I wanted these two canvases to be so that they could hang together, or on either sides of something (window, piece of furniture) and still go together.  I toyed with doing one big bird on one canvas and two baby birds on the other, but ended up just going with the same bird on both but turned in opposite directions.

I lightly traced the outlines using a pencil.

And then I had to tape it off.  Taping all the curves and details (tail feathers) was hard!

With the outline traced off, I then taped newspaper over the rest of the wood to keep it safe from splatters.

If you've ever watched an HGTV show where they were painting stripes on a wall, you know the first step after taping off is to paint a coat of the original color.  That way, you seal off the taped edges and if there's any bleed through, it's of the color that's already on there and thus won't be noticeable.  Keeping this in mind, my first step was to do a coat of grey that sorta matched the weathered wood background.

Finally, I was able to start having a little fun.  I slapped on some yellow in random places.

Added a little red.  (Looks like someone went duck huntin'...especially with the holes from the fence nails.)

Thought a little turquoise might help the bloody situation.

I wanted the bird to be mostly white with these colors peeking through, so I spread a thin coat of white paint over the whole thing.

I had no idea how this was going to turn out, but I was done messing with it.  I let the paint dry and then took off the newspaper.

I peeled off the tape outline and was left with two bird bodies!

Every duck/bird/seagull needs some little legs and an eye, so I added those and called it done.

My mom and I named the birds Sunrise and Sunset because that's what we think they look like.  And guess what?  They're already hanging on the wall at the beach house! Yep, so many pictures to share this week, so get ready.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy heart day, friends!  I hope your day has been full of hugs and kisses and roses and chocolates and balloons and cards and anything else that Hallmark encourages us to buy this time of year!  I, for one, got some brand new socks from my Valentine!  I love me some soft new socks and I love even more that Doc was paying attention last week when I offhand said I needed some new ones.  Yay for practical gifts!  (Not that I would have turned down chocolate.  I love that too.)

I mostly wanted to pop in today to show you the Valentine I whipped up late Saturday night.  Since we got Lollipop on Valentine's weekend last year, it only made sense that she was the star of our Valentine card this year.  And yes, this is a picture of a picture.  I could've uploaded the original .jpeg file, but then you wouldn't have gotten the full effect with the lollipop!  (It's supposed to look like its in her mouth, by the way.)

 

Sticking the sucker through made the card (picture) a little wavy, but I still think it turned out pretty cute for a last minute idea.  And my coworkers seemd to enjoy them so I call it a success.  Yay!

That's it.  Hugs and kisses and all that other Valentine-y stuff!

Farmhouse Bedside Table

Even after revamping four Ikea Rast tables, we were still left one bedside table short.  Mom and I searched high and low for a yardsale or thrift store table that we could redo, but all to no avail.  And for some reason, this bedside table is just something we didn't want to shell out a lot more cash on.  So, we turned to Ana White and found her plans for a Farmhouse Bedside Table. I'm going to be honest here and tell you that this table is a joke.  Almost a hunk of junk.  Not because of the plans - those are great.  It's a joke because everything that could possibly go wrong while building did.  It was downright laughable by the time we finished.  We started with wood that was less than stellar; it was bowed and twisted and knotted and our 2x2s were more of furring strips than finishing pieces, but we used 'em anyway.  On top of that, it seems like every single scew we put in hit a knot and came out in the wrong spot.  It was a hot mess.  But at this point, we're all in the "oh well, it'll do" mindset so we painted it up just like it was our best piece ever.

I didn't take in-progress pictures because I wasn't even sure we'd finish it.  I think at one point I told my dad to just tear it apart.  But we did complete it and we sanded and puttied and caulked and by the time it got a coat or two of paint on it, it looked okay.  Not great, just okay.

This piece will go in the same room as the yellow dresser, so we painted it the same shade.

Another tricky part about this table is that it has a drawer.  I personally try to avoid them whenever possible because there's no margin for error when it comes to drawers.  They have to be square or they just don't work.  This one really didn't want to work.  It fit fine when we finished building but then the weather changed and the wood expanded and it didn't fit anymore.  We adjusted a few boards and got it to fit, then gave it a paint job and it didn't fit anymore.  Ay yi yi.

Normally, if I was working on a piece of furniture with few details and crappy wood, I'd sand and distress it instead of adding glaze.  But since I wanted it to match the yellow dresser, adding glaze is what I did.

See how the glaze highlights all the flaws in the wood?  Oh well, it'll do.

We added poly and the same hardware as the other dresser and called it done.

We used a bar of soap to coat the drawer and slats so that it slides in and out easier.  Hopefully it won't expand anymore.  Oh, and if you're thinking the drawer pull looks a little crooked, you'd be absolutely correct.  We have my dad to thank for that.  I leave him alone in the shop for just a few minutes...sigh.

Oh well, it'll do!

Just like with everything else, I'm eager to see it in the room.  Surely it'll look better there, right?