Another catch up

Friday night we had a little date night to Lowes where we checked out some carpet.

Saturday morning I went to the house to wait for the refrigerator repair man to repair our refrigerator, unfortunately they sent out a set up technician and not someone who could actually work on the refrigerator, so I had to get that rescheduled.  I mopped the walls for the brown paint and touched up some cabinets before going to my hs reunion (10 years!)

Sunday Mum, Dad, and Andrew came to the house to help paint.  We knocked out the rolling of the brown (Dad did at least), Mum and I started some trim.  Andrew rolled the doors and swept the pool.  Everyone was suitably impressed by my water fountains over the pool.  Eddie has taken  to calling them my show stoppers.  :)

On Monday, Eddie's Grandpa Mario, Grandma Esther, and Dru came over to finish all the painting.  Dru rolled the closets.  Grandpa Mario did touch ups in all the rooms and cutting of the brown.  Grandma Esther, Dru and I did baseboards.  The carpet guy came to measure and said that all the facts and figures would be in by this evening.  The refrigerator repairman came, fixed the refrigerator (woot), and chatted for a bit.

Jeff and his mom Pam came to check the house out.  Eddie's eliciting Pam's decorating advice.  I want to elicit Jeff's crazy bargaining skills!  Pam also offered to come over and weed on her off days, an offer I am more than willing to take her up on.

Today was a non house day.  Tomorrow starts with a trip to the dealership and then cleaning: dusting the fans, scrubbing the bathroom, sweeping/mopping the floors.  Minor painting: white touch up the cabinets, brown on the trim in the door jambs, spackle then paint the new wooden piece to the linen cabinet, MAYBE some ceiling paint if it's not too high up...  Then furniture shopping with Eduardo.

The BRIGHT Blue Room

So the color of the master bedroom is this BRIGHT BRIGHT blue.  I found it in an example used in a ducky bathroom!!..  It's a bright blue that matches the tropical kind of theme of the green...it's the Caribbean water.

Grandpa Mario and Grandma Esther knocked out the master bedroom on Tuesday!  I can now add painting machines to the extensive list of skills in their repetoire. 



Our house has no overall theme...we've got two rooms that are very...tropical...  one room that is a dark color, and a neutral taupe in the hall/living/dining/kitchen areas.   Here are some shots of the colors visible from the hallway:

The tropical colored rooms



The contrasting dark and light rooms across the hall from each other



The green was not Rainforest
Mist as previously posted, but
actually this BRIGHT Aqua Quartz

Catching up...

Wow, so I guess I've fallen behind a smidge with the daily updates with the house...  to recap last week:

Eddie's Grandpa Mario worked his sprinkler magic and fixed our valves in the back yard.  Now all the sprinklers work, yay! 

Look how beautiful the sprinkler valves are!

In the same vein, and on one of our many trips to Lowes, Eddie bought new sprinkler heads to shoot water in the appropriate directions for the raised beds in the back.  He also fiddled around until he got the right water flow for various sprinklers in the front and back.

While Grandpa Mario fixed sprinklers, Grandma Esther was a weeding machine!  She cleared out the grass/weeds from around the palm tree and in one of the beds! 

I started prepping the walls to be painted with this super cool putty stuff!  It starts out pink, but then turns white to let you know when it's dry and able to be painted on.  :)  I'm super impressed!

After watching my painful attempts at painting the cabinets, Grandpa Mario informed me that I was using the wrong kind of brush, so the next time I saw him, he had bought us a "good" brush.  :)

I've still been working on the cabinet doors, painting brown and white doors.  Even with my labelling system, I mispainted a door, so we had to sand it down and start over again...at least it was only one door.  We finished the brown doors and Eddie's dad reinstalled them for me (the first time upside down...which neither he nor I caught).  I have two doors that need a couple more coats of white, and one long door that needs both sides painted, but other than that, I  have all the other white doors ready to put their hardware back on and reinstall them.

With the weather being kind of funky, I took a break about halfway during the week and headed to Fullerton.

When I returned this weekend, we did some painting!  These are the 3 color choices for the bedrooms:



for the master bedroom; I'm envisioning
blue, brown/black, white...

For "Alex's Room," formerly the pink room;
chosen by Alex, channeling UFC gray...
I'm thinking some combination with
yellow and maybe purple?...:



A popping, energetic green for the green room;
makes me think of islands...


The previously green room


Before



After

The previously pink room

Before

Dru and Eddie's mom painting

Doing the detailed painting

Roller King

And finally, we've gotten to estimates about a custom closet in the master bedroom... one guy quoted $1895, the other lady quoted $1531, but the first guy said he'd beat competitor's prices and Eddie likes the hanging bar more in the first guy's closets...I like the price of the second lady.  I guess we'll see what happens, as we're meeting with the first guy again tomorrow.  In the mean time, we're also prepping the closet for any work to be done.

Tomorrow I'm picking up the mail key, waiting for the refrigerator to be delivered, finishing the white cabinet doors, putting the electrical socket plates back on, taping the master bedroom, double checking the spackle, and maybe taping the hall, entry, living rooms...

Ack.  I want the kitchen cabinets DONE like yesterday!

Cabinets Day 4

Painting for Day 4 started out a little slower than planned...

A little paint buying, or rather MISbuying, ... but here are the results!

Compared to:

*yawn*

I am so unbelievably tired!  Probably because I was up by 5:45 to be ready for 6:30 Mass.

In any case, another busy, productive day.  Another trip to Lowes (two actually).

We started the day off with a trip to the MoVal Lowes to pick up the brown paint (Chocolate Chunk...a special Valspar match to the Dunn Edwards color...) and another toilet valve.  We headed to Eddie's parents house for the weed wacker and lawn mower.  Then we headed to get started working at the house.

I finished off whatever contact papering I could do.  Actually I ran out of contact paper so then I started painting the frames of the lower cabinets.  Eddie found some white spray paint and tried it on a door.  He liked what he saw, so we decided to hit up Lowes on our lunch break.  While I contact papered and painted, Eddie worked in the yard, mowing the lawn, fixing the sprinklers, trimming back a tree, falling of the ladder...all that good stuff.

Our Subway lunch finished, we hit up Lowes yet again this time for a sample sized Swiss Coffee for the top cabinets.  Eddie was pulling for a pure white, but I wasn't too keen on the idea, I think from something I had read somewhere or other.  In any case, we decided on the Swiss Coffee because it was light enough for him, but not pure white for me. 

I think our visions are different...  I'm channeling "Old World" ...

I think he's channeling something more...contemporary?

Kitchen Cabinets Day 2

So today we got the cabinets cleaned and sanded. 

-Side bar- Our day started off with a bargain buy!  Just before driving to the new house, we passed a garage sale and a big piece caught Eddie's eye.  It was a little bar.  So Eddie practiced his (illegal U turns and parking) bargaining skills for a bar which the owner assured was just like the bars in Vegas (?).  We loaded it into the back of the Jeep and I had to hop in the back seat to hold onto the bar because it stuck out!

We also made a side trip to Tennessee Gardens, but that's a whole other blog.  ;)

So back to the cleaning of the cabinets.  Oh ew, I had to clean out what had to some mouse's vacation home...coffee filters, tea bags, and a pot holder.  Ugh.  I knew as soon as I saw the shredded paper there had been some Mickey living there at some point.  I could also tell which cupboards were used for the previous owner's baking...powdered sugar, frosting, etc.  Also, there seemed to be a lot of melted chocolate everywhere!  It wasn't even centrally located, just random drawers and shelves had melted chocolate.  After Pine Soling everything, I got some of the cupboards contact papered...what I learned:

1. Work with smaller pieces
2. Measurements are important
3. Contact paper can be pulled up

While I was working on the cupboards, Eddie and Dru cleaned out the shed and took away the bottom of the fountain.  They hauled all the stuff to the dump in Rialto.  All 400 (!!) lbs of stuff cost $15 to dispose of.  Their return trip was also adventurous with them running out of gas!  They had to push the truck to the side of the road, while Eddie jogged(!) to get some gas, and with that they finally returned.  And poor Dru was sent off without even a lunch! 

Lowes = Danger Will Robinson! 

We spent probably an hour plus at Lowes today!  Surprisingly we only picked up a toilet valve, a paint roller, sponges for the roller, and the paint.  We ended up still picking a brown...one with less black.  We tested it on the unpainted wood usually covered by the refrigerator.  We'll do the painting tomorrow.  While at Lowes we also looked at some cabinets...which the guy said we should not order unfinished, but rather choose the style and stain we liked and to order it ... more for a remodel than for just working on the doors.  We also looked at some tile for our bathroom and browsed in general.

I'm going to show Eddie a white and brown cabinet mix...I'll save the pix and post them later.

Kitchen Cabinets Day 1

Yuck.  I hate cleaning, but cleaning I did today.  Scrubbed down the kitchen cabinets, mopped up the floor a smidge.  Taped up the walls.  Took off the doors and other hardware. 

Sans cupboard doors

Seriously shed some sweat doin' work today

Next step, cleaning and papering



Thanks to Eddie's mom, dad, cousin, grandpa, and grandma who came to help us! 

Eddie's Grandma Esther and I tackled the cabinets, while Eddie and his Grandpa Mario walked around looking at all the honey dos.  Then Eddie's parents and Grandma Esther took charge of the yard work.

Eddie's parents saved the day with the power screwdriver which made our job taking off the doors SO much easier!

Grandpa Mario and I fixed a new stopper in this toilet

This whole fixture needs to be fixed

We have the part, we just needed the tools...Monday

And the evening ended on a lovely note:

Tomorrow's agenda: Buying paint (a door's in the car to match at Lowes/Home Depot) and contact paper, sanding, cleaning cabinets, and painting

Gathering supplies...

Painting supplies from Fullerton to Highland

Thanks Dad and Pris ee ee for their painting supplies.  Hopefully we'll start with the painting by this weekend (or at least the prepping for painting)...

I need to measure the walls to know how much paint to buy.  I also need to find what colors we are repainting with...the paint cans in the garage are not really that clear on names etc...

Once I have the measurements and paint, then the actually prep work to the walls will begin.

I need to start by washing walls/sanding and filling the holes with putty or whatever.  After vacuuming/wiping it down again, I'll remove all the light plates etc and tape up trim and such.  THEN we can actually start painting.