Quick photo op!

I realized while looking at the blog today that I haven't shared with you the pictures of my room with the furnishings returned. These are a little dark maybe I will try to take a better one today. This is going to be a really short one, My best friend from high school is coming for a visit on Saturday. I need to get Halloween decor up and finished so that the house looks its haunted best.

I am so BAD!!!

WOW I am such a loser, I hadn't realized I left my blog go so long, I promise to be more diligent in the future. . .

Anyhow, my house guest was great, we had a lot of fun, the picture at left is of my friend Katherine with my son.

I have been busy trying to find a job and have started to prepare for the Halloween season. This year my boyfriend and I are hosting our second annual Halloween bash at my house again. He lives in a ranch that he built earlier this year and doesn't really lend itself to the creepy atmosphere that mine volunteered for.

I have lofty goals for the interior and exterior this year, as I did last year. This year I am going to have a salute to the sleepy Hollow scarecrow on the side of the house and am turning my front into a cemetery mausoleum theme. I love the Internet you can get such great ideas and instructions. I will try to get some pictures on as soon as possible.

Need to impress!!

I realize that my friend Katherine will love me no matter where I live however, I feel the need to make this place a little impressive! So, It is now about 8:30 AM on Wednesday and I have until about 6:00 pm tomorrow night. And all I have to do is:

Another coat of Poly on bedroom floor
strip rest of wall paper in loft and paint
Remove all doors from cupboards in loft/ paint
Organize books and various collections on newly exposed shelves
Top to bottom cleaning of house, including organizing the bath she will use to make it visitor friendly
Paint, dry, back sand then fill basket of new toiletries and towels for her to use
Hang new light fixture in Kitchen. . .
and, if I have time, quick fix floor in kitchen and paint kitchen

NO PROBLEM. . . SH*T!!!!!!

Anyway, thought someone would like to see a couple of picture of the bedroom progress, hope you enjoy!

So, I guess I lied!

I have been extremely busy the last few days. A friend I have not seen in a long while is coming for a visit, arriving on Thursday and leaving Tuesday. She is actually my ex-husbands cousin but you divorce spouses, not families, and we have gotten along great since first we met back in 1993.

Anyway, I did not want her to see the mess that I call my bedroom. This is actually after about 12 hours into the project, it actually had furniture and curtains etc.

Then it got worse...

Some Early progress!!

I thought since I have shared very little since the loss of my job I would take some pictures of the house as it is so that the 10 people who have looked can get a better idea of what the place looks like. Clearly I got rid of the aged looking whitish filmy walls and wet for color. . . something so needed after decades of rental properties.

The walls in the living room (left side of photo) are two Behr's Provincial Blue, north and east, and the other two are Behr's Cup of Cocoa, south and west.

The dining room is a lovely red that I think really makes the wood pop! I was worried that the tones would create a patriotic look, not what I was going for, but guests in my home swear it does not, no flags in the area. Although I am patriotic, I do not feel the need to decorate my domicile in it. I am however still searching for the perfect spot at which to hang the certificate that then president Bill Clinton signed :-) (mimeographed) when my father died in 2000 regarding his service during the Korean War.

I have to say that when the pictures are taken and you remove yourself from the room I am painfully aware for the need of some new furniture. Not that I will get it anytime soon. The hole I found on the arm of my chair cover is pretty glaring to me in the photo on the left. A chair by the way that as given to me when finance number three moved to New York to pursue a better job where, and I realize this going to to sound cooler or shadier than it was, he was supposed to be moving so that we could be together without all the political fall out it would cause here in River City, SheVegas, as the locals call it. Yes I have a fondness for jewelry and was after my first marriage a bit gun shy. I think however, 16 yrs to the day of my one and only nuptial event, I am no longer going to be a run away bride!!! ( A little personal affirmation for my friends and family who will eventually get around to finding me on the Internett.) Anyway, back to the chair, actually the man who gave it to me, he got married 9 months after we broke up. I should really have replaced the chair back then when I was replaced but, I figured like my only marriage I got the best part of him.

This picture is of the light fixture in the dining room, it is one of five or six originals in the house, two of which adorn each side of the arch between the living and dining and match this one, so I am very happy for the fact that in eighty years no one has removed them. The whole set has these cool paper candle spheres to the lights, which are miss matched because I keep leaving the store with joint compound and tape and paint and forget the dam lights, and really great green, yellow and gold paint. The other originals are not nearly so impressive the fixture in my daughters room is sort of neat in that it has some cool detailing but, bare bulbs hanging from an ornate gold base sort of lack the softness I would like to see in there.

I think I will have to go, need to look for a job for a while today and also have to get plaster and tape on some cracks I am trying to fix in my bedroom. I will post again today or tomorrow thought because I have a serious amount of work going on in my bedroom and I want to share a few items I have encountered in there.

P.S. Got the glass in the door fixed!! A friend of mine did it for 30 bucks and a couple of beers, I had to supply the glass, which if you don't have the glass company install you can get untempered, for a cost of 10.46 plus tax, not too bad!!! The kids paid for it!

I guess I have some time to work on it!!

So, it isn't that I didn't know it wasn't going to be long but yesterday I got laid-off from my job. I sell cars at a small, family run, dealership that is slow and they don't need me anymore. I was a bit freaked that I don't have to get up and go to work today or Monday or the day after that for many days to come. I have made a decision, I don't sell cars anymore. . . for good. I hate the hours that are involved in the car business. I want a life and weekends.

On top of the job thing though was an even greater tragedy. My lovely little children, teenage brats who fight constantly, broke one of the panes of glass from our entry door while fighting. . . I have no job and I am going to have to put ugly glass in my door.

I got one estimate for the repair it was from a national chain, a company completely out of there league when it comes to a 1926 door and it was $175. $175 sound like a lot for a piece of glass that I know that I will hate. I love the old wavy glass in the other two panes in the door.

Has anyone had any experience with this type of door? it looks Like the pane was set into the opening and then the door was continued to ge assembled. Am I going to have to take the door apart? that may not be so bad because apparently if anyone finds out that the new piece of glass is for a door they are going to force on me tempered glass which I think will look like crap in that old door.

This is what I started with, not bad hey!!!

I decided to begin blogging because I have lost steam for a lot of projects and think that I have ADD. Probably not but, hey it would explain my lack of completion!!! I read web blogs almost daily. I love the Enon Hall site, I discovered it about three weeks ago and read the whole thing in about three days, I was addicted.

The things I have done include, painting all three bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen. I had a new roof put on a couple of months ago. I also did a lot of cleaning and old gross carpet removal. The yard had no landscaping at all so, I dug all the sod from the side of the house to the concrete walkway and put in perennials, another perennial bed around a large pine tree in the back yard and yet another in front of the garage.

Here are pictures of what the house looked like when I bought it, they are the originals I saw on-line when I found the house. I will take pictures of room that are basically done for now and post them soon. I figure the sooner I show what has been done the sooner I will be forced to continue work on it.

Any Ideas for a kitchen that has 5 door two windows, a built in ironing board and a laundry shoot? Yeah that's a problem. . . especially since I think that ironing board is great and I am unwilling to close off any doors and really couldn't if I wanted to. I have made a temporary change in the kitchen but, still dream of more functionality. My family that reads this will find this next bit hard to believe, I like to cook. I just don't have time or space!!

Why this house?

Last April I got a wild hair at work to look at houses for sale in my home town and see what a payment would be if I bought. It turns out about $40 less than I was paying for rent. So, I bought a 1926 bungalow. It was the third house i saw on the Internet and the only one I looked at in person. If that sounds like the easiest home purchase ever, it wasn't. . .

Initially, when I called the realtor I received no call back and got busy so I didn't call back for a few days, I did drive by it about four times a day wondering why a realtor, whom works on commission, would neglect to call.

Then, a realtor came in to look at a car on my lot, I am a car sales person. He happened to be with the same company as the listing agent and checked on it, it had an accepted offer. He continued to send me a barrage of listings in my price range but nothing interested me. If I could not have that house I was going to let it ride a while. Then one day about 10 days later, he called. The man who was to buy the house has had a heart attack and as an over the road truck driver he may be out of the running.

I looked at the house that afternoon with my sister and my step mother and then, an hour later I wrote an offer on it.

The first potential buyer had another heart attack while in the hospital, he is fine but unemployed, so. . . I GOT MY HOUSE!!!!!