Other Stuff

Since not having the computer, other really great stuff has happened besides the renovations and I want to share.

Most notably, Jared, Wayne’s youngest, graduated from high school and was formally accepted at University of Louisiana Monroe to chase his meteorology degree.  It was a great (but very long) ceremony.

Letting the graduate decide where to eat had us at Benihanna’s which was  yummy!

I promised cute kitten pictures and since he isn’t here any more this is all I have left…but Josh (my oldest) has claimed Mr. Shifu as his own and they are batch’ing it together.

Finally Wayne and I finally finished a project that was one of those “If I’d have only known it was this easy I would have done it years ago”.  When we got our furniture from Basset it broke within a month so we had to have it fixed.  They overstuffed the cushions and they were so uncomfortable but we figured it would take a lot of work to fix them.  Surprisingly it was easy.

Very overstuffed chair which is uncomfortable.  Also they under stuffed the back so it was hard to get out of.

1.  unzip the outside cover

 

2. take off the under cover

 

3. Peel off the top cushion which is inconsistently glued down so it is easy in some places and horrible in others.

4. Pull out lots of extra stuffing

 

5.  Use General Adhesive and glue top cushion back down.

  Step to seal and repeat OFTEN!  Another project down.

Did Ya’ll Miss Me???

I am finally back with a mostly functional computer and let me say that being without a reliable computer really isn’t fun.  As it stands I had to try to boot this one numerous times this morning because it doesn’t automatically find the hard drive and I get a boot disk error.  Hubby was in a meeting so I had to figure it out myself – which took 3x as long as it should have!

Man do I have pictures to show you…We are almost done with the renovations, the contractors only have to come in for touch ups and as Holmes on Holmes says, “the lipstick and mascara”.  Yes, the amount of HGTV watching that is going on in this household is scary.

When I last blogged about the renovations, I was waiting for the contractor to come back in and fix all of the issues with the columns and archway and the John was getting pretty annoyed with his subcontractor at having to redo things all the time.

 

They took down the columns and reinstalled them, capped them with the WRONG grade of wood (they used paintable instead of stainable), had to purchase a $90 piece of paper thin wood to cover the error, then stained the cap.  Of course part of the touch up is that the arches and columns have a very shiny finish and the fireplace is a mat finish.  And I have no idea how they are going to fix that but that is not my problem.

After that, the tile guys came in and put the tile on the fireplace.  I love how it turned out!

  All they had to do was remove the wood pieces, add the wood trim and it would be done.

Then we had a paint issue.  I chose my paint and really loved it but it looked almost identical to the wood…which would really negate the cool effect of the new fireplace you know?

Thankfully Carmen didn’t feel well that day and left around 9:30 so that I had time to take the tile, a stain sample and the sample of the bottom color back to Sherman Williams to choose a different sample.  I taped a 1970’s feel on my wall just to shock the hubby when he got home.  He didn’t think that teal, lime green, hot pink and purple was an appropriate choice.  Apparently, this one was better:

Now we are back to working on our own stuff and boy did the contractors spoil us.  Lots of things being accomplished with little work being done by me.  Spoiled I tell you.  But we managed to pull out carpet, level the floor and at least get one room full of flooring.  Wayne came home Monday night and we got the library done in just under 3 hours (and since Ben is at camp in CO, I actually had to bust tail, which I still feel today)

Putting the last piece in was a real challenge.

Baseboards are the last piece then touch up the paint and DONE!!!

Sigh

Last night my computer died. Not a happy death either but a "let's crash everyday for a week then finally get around to trying to fix it" died. It took with it my Photoshop, my Outlook, my latest school paper that was due yesterday and my calendar. Thankfully most everything else was moved to the external hard drive. You would think the college educated woman would be saving the paper that was due on an ehd as she was going wouldn't you? That would have been too easy, and much too smart. GRRRRR

This morning I am working my way through 600+ emails (7 days worth), resetting up some of my programs and rewriting a paper. *Hubby just called and he found my old mail and calendar, Thank God!! I was hoping he would rewrite my paper for me as well but no such luck. Downstairs the construction effort has started up again after a very quiet 3-day weekend where we could sleep late and have the house to ourselves - ahh bliss. I will be so glad when it is done.

Oh yeah, the kitten is gone :( He was adorable and I loved him BUT I was getting tired of cleaning up kitten poops wherever he wanted to go, including the middle of my bed. He really was too little to be away from his mommy so I sent him back with Josh to where he came from. His mom ran away from him and his siblings but there is another mom who is letting them nurse and teaching them how to be cats. This works for me. I did get a number of really cute pictures from before he left which I will post when I get my machine back.