Yard Work

We've really been dragging ass this weekend. We went to buy paint and couldn't really decide colors or how much we needed. We went around to different retailers seeing what brand we wanted and who had the best price. We checked out two other cabinet places. One was closed (though according to their sign they should have been open) and the other we needed an appointment for. We're going back next weekend.

Instead of going down to the house today (since all we can do it work outside until that jerk Sam gets some work done) I stayed home and started planting my garden. Tony went down by himself to do some work.

He started cleaning some of the useless crap out of the yard. The rusted broken swing set now has a new home in the dumpster. He started the clean out the equally rusty shed, but the wasps that were making their home there didn't appreciate his presence. We're going back later this week to take care of it while we still have a dumpster. Sometime this week we're really going to plan this shit out too, what we want and how much in supplies we need. I started doing this at the beginning, but it was so long ago and so disjointed that I think we should just start from scratch.

Grumble

Sam hasn't done any work on the dry wall at all. Its been like two weeks since he's worked on it. All he's done this week is loaded the trash into the dumpster. I am getting pissed.

The story of how we didn't order cabinets

You know its bad when you have to explain to someone how to do their job when you have never done it before.

We went to the cabinet store today to order cabinets. The last time we went to get an estimate we talked to a very friendly competent man who created a hypothetical order and saved it for us to come back to later when we were ready to order. So we thought going in today would be a breeze. We'd update some measurements and the order would be fairly simple to do since it was mostly done. We were even feeling industrious enough to go there straight after work, stomachs a-grumbling, to order that and the bar cabinets.

I don't want to sound racist when I say this, but.... if you come from the back hills of *ahem* some foreign neighboring country (hell, if you come from the back hills of this country) where you've never even heard of computers before you might not want to consider a job that revolves around them. Or you might want to ease into them a little slower.

The woman we talked to decided that since we had slightly new measurements that we needed to strat over from scratch. Not only was she terribly slow at using the computer, having stop to look up what I thought should be fairly normal product codes, but we had to explain to her several times what we wanted the cabinets to look like. She, the professional cabinet designer, should really be giving us advice on how to design the cabinets, not vice versa. several times she had to call over her supervisor, co-worker, whatever, to show her how to do something, and I was thankful every time she did because when the other woman was around we actually made some head way. After over an hour we were about where we were when we started. After question of whether to change the cabinet faces (plain, okay-ish faces $1800, fancier slightly more than okay-ish faces $2600) we just decided to save the project to 'come back later'. That experience has convinced us to at least explore other options.

I came out of it wishing I could say that we ordered cabinets today despite the stupid ordeal we had to go through. But that woman was tripping over just about everything she did. And I don't want my $1800+ order to be her 'learning mistake'.

Oh, and in other bad news we can't get a dumpster until we get the PODS picked up. Not enough room.

Tall, Tall Grass

Well we had to do the whole yard with a weed whacker, but its all down to normal size.

Never again.

There were some grasses I didn't even know grew like that. Seriously, this really regular looking grass that you see everywhere, we found a patch that had grown about hip height and had really neat looking purple flowers. Purple catnip and wild strawberry was matted in the backyard. And sumac trees are rooted in the driveway. There was a poor, tiny, forgotten rose bush was hiding under some tall grasses on the side of the house. That yard is going to need a lot more work (just like the rest of the house really). I've really wanted a garden for a long time now, and I've been inspired by watching all sorts of home improvement shows. So I guess a totally screwed up landscape is as good as any to start on.

After measuring out the space we want for the cabinets and the bar, we took a quick trip to Lowes to look at dishwashers. Truthfully, we meant to order cabinets too, but we got distracted by cheeseburgers and sitting on our butts after Lowes. We actually didn't like their lighting selection too much, but we did pick up this tasty little number for the bedroom:

Pla-dow!

It will join the ranks of such noble light fixtures such as these, that we bought earlier at Home Depot:

For the kitchen

For the bar

And a couple of other illusive bastards I can't find pictures of online. BTW that plant theme you're probably sensing, that's for real. Going to order cabinets tomorrow. They'll take a month to get in, so can't put it off much longer.

Walls!

I was really excited to finally get back over to the house today because Tony told me the dry wall was up (mostly). We spent this morning buying as many lights as the car could fit and a lawn mower, ran some other errands and then went over.

I was so happy! It almost looked like a real house. I could picture what it would be like to live there.

The floor was still a terrible mess. There were pieces of cut dry wall everywhere. So working inside of the house is going to be impossible until its done. Tomorrow we're probably going to do more shopping (now that's renovation I get get behind :D). We still need more lights, paint and to order cabinets. And we need to do something about the grass. Its about up to my chest in the back. Sam also volunteered (for a few bucks) to clear the trash out of the back yard when the dumpster comes on Monday.

I took pictures of the new walls but it hard to take pictures of just plain white walls *shrug*:

View the May 16th Album here.