This past weekend we spent too much time shopping.  You see, the funny thing about our “Christmas” shopping is that we say we are going “Christmas” shopping… however, it ends up being a shopping spree for ourselves.  Funny huh?

We like it.

We are still trying to get everything we need to get each room decorated, and that has turned out to be a chore.  Especially right in the middle of the holidays. 

Sunday morning, we did find a nice piece of art to go over our mantle (which had been blank since we moved in).  We were at Bed Bath & Beyond and they had it laying back in the clearance area.  It was normally priced $150, but it was scratched and so it was marked down to…

 **drumroll**

$29.99

Heck yeah.  We are a fairly crafty bunch of crackers, so we decided to pick it up anyhow in hopes that we could touch it up.  So after picking it up, we headed to Micheal’s and grabbed some paint to mix and we were on our way.  When I say on our way, I mean on our way to many other stores in which we didn’t buy Christmas presents like we should have… instead, more crap for ourselves.

Once we got home from our journey, we grab the paint and mixed it to match - then went to work touching up the painting.  The cool thing, was that it had a nice gradient from dark brown to a light orange color - so I figured it wouldn’t take much to fade it. 

Sure enough, I was right (go figure).

In about 5 minutes, we had taken a trashed painting and turned it back into a loved piece of art.  Score.  See below for the final product.

P.S. - We also had a 20% off entire purchase coupon, so technically… the painting was about $24.  Even a better score.

Tags: Crafty Crap, Design by James
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I dunno, I couldn’t think of anything better.  Deal with it.

So we made it.  Life is getting back to normal.  Well, if normal means your house smells like carboard and you can’t find shit, because it is boxed up somewhere in the garage/backyard/kitchen/bathroom or where ever the hell else it shouldn’t be.  Yeah, normal like that.

We are so beat up and tired from the past two weeks, there is just nothing in DIY that accounts for working 8 hours a day, then coming home and working 6-8 more hours (at least).  Maybe it is in the fine print somewhere.  Maybe not.  Then factor in that we were on a deadline in which if we didn’t meet… we would be on the streets in the cold (and yes, it finally is cold in Texas).  Annnnnnnnnd… we had to move all of our crap as well, after all the rennovations were done (by us).

The smart part of me spent most of the past two weeks saying…

“Dude”

“Why did you do this again?  Are you high?  People can be hired for things like this.  You don’t have to always push the limits of your abilities and everyone else’s.”

When I say the smart part, I mean my wife.  I am suprised she made it through this whole she-bang.

She probably was my biggest motivation to be honest.  The first day we went over that the people had their stuff out, we really got a chance to see it all in it’s glory.  This made it more clear as to how much work really needed to be done.

Shala has never really been a part of a project quite this big and so she was not very excited.  The look on her face and the words coming from her mouth were sobering.  At that point I decided that it didn’t matter what it took…

I had to get this done.

The good thing is we had help from both sets of parents, some siblings and friends.  So it didn’t have to totally rely on me and her… but I can say that there were some nights when everyone was gone and I was working on something all by my lonesome and the only thing keeping me going was that look on her face that first day.  So my thought process was…

I had to get this done.

For her.  For us.  For mankind.  Ok - maybe that last one was a stretch… I’ve been watching too many Obama videos I think.  But you get the point.

Shala had her doubts, I can admit that I had a few myself after a few days and what seemed like little progress… but stick-to-it-tive-ness reigns supreme and as things started coming together and the paint went up and the new flooring & baseboards went down… each new fixture… ceiling fan… it was becoming clear that…

We were getting this done.

It wasn’t very easy.  Well - a few things maybe, but overall - it was hard work.  Sometimes we didn’t want to do it.  Sometimes we called it quits early.  Somedays we were there late.  My hands hurts, my back ached and regardless of what was going on my mind continued to race about what needed to be done.  Even to the point where one morning at 4AM as I lay in bed thinking of all the stuff that had to be done…  I decided to just get up and get some stuff done before heading to work. 

All the sleep lost, bruises… aches & pains don’t mean a thing now.  Because.

We got it done.

Tags: Design, Personal by James
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But not all days have funny stories.

In fact, the last couple of weeks and the next couple to come were/are filled more with sore elbows, creaky fingers and late nights.  There are some funny things sprinkled in to keep the comedy in the back of your mind, but for the most part it is straight up hard labor.

We are into our second week of the remodel/revamp/renovation and we are definitely feeling it.  We really have got a lot done, thanks to the team we had over the weekend.  Seriously, these guys & gals were working their butts off - and all we could do is feed them and keep them as happy as possible… they wouldn’t except our wages. 

That is what family does I suppose, but really - they went above and beyond.

We had Shala & Myself all of last week.  Also my Mom made it over a few times last week after work and helped. I was able to get Friday & Monday off of work so I had full days that day to be able to work.  Shala’s Dad was able to spend the majority of the day Friday at the house also, not to mention My Stepdad who was able to shake loose from work on Friday around lunch.  Shala’s Mom showed up not long after that and My Mom was back.  Once Shala got off, we had a pretty full crew.

Saturday Shala’s Brother & his wife joined in bright and early, along with everyone else mentioned above and Sunday was the same. 

Unreal.

But just to give you an idea of what got accomplished since Tuesday of last week…  here is a quick list (and I’m sure I will leave out a lot):

Removed all baseboards throughout the house.

Mudded the Den that had panelling along with sanding it to make it appear like it had normal walls.

Textured all the ceilings throughout the house to cover up old horrible texture job.

Textured Den, Office & Master Bedroom walls and applied a California Knockdown texture effect.

Primed & painted Den, Master, Office, Bedroom #1, Bedroom #2, Sunroom, Living Room & Dining Room.

Primed & Painted all baseboard that were new and didn’t need to be removed, window treatments and doors.

Painted all closets bright white, along with laundry room and other small areas.

Removed all the carpet & padding in all the rooms with carpet (Den, Master, Office, Bedroom #1 & Bedroom #2.

Scraped, swept, vacuumed & mopped all rooms with carpet that was removed.

Installed new ceiling fan in the Den.

Installed all new 3 prong plugs throughout the house along with new switches.

Redesigned the Master Bedroom closet, demo/rebuild/rewire/drywall/mud/texture/paint included.

Repaired fence in the backyard.

Repaired gates in the back & side entrances.

Redesigned Vanity portion of the master (not yet completed), have all the pieces anyhow.

Replaced A/C vents throughout the house (still on-going).

Mudded over horrible texture in the kitchen that previous owners throught was cool to do in only a few places and leave big gaping gaps here and there and look stupid - so we had took care of that for them. 

Primed kitchen, preping for paint.

Cleaned, cleaned & cleaned (and continue to clean).

Demo’d built-in cabinets from the 1960’s that made our Master Bedroom NOT functional - added another foot to the room.

Made 9,000,000,000 trips to Lowe’s, Home Depot and the liquor store to allow for everything above to happen.

Not to mention we spent 7 billion dollars over the past couple weeks… but hey… who gives a…

Quite a list eh?  Thought we were joking huh?  Nope.  We have carpet being laid today, and then we have baseboards, trim and crown molding to put up.  Not to mention the hall has to be painted along with the baseboard in there and the kitchen.  Yup, it never freakin’ ends.  Oh wait.  And we have 4 new ceiling fans to put up, 4 light fixtures and about 8 or 9 a/c vents. 

I could keep going… but then my wife would bean me in the head with a shovel and jump off a bridge.

I promise we have done our best at trying to capture most of the transition in pictures, but hell… we missed some.  SO!

Get off our backs already.  Sometimes you forget, and sometimes your fingers hurt to bad to push down the lil button on the top of the camera.  This is one of those times.

So enjoy a few choice photos with my attempt at a humorous tagline and then you can go about your business today.  That is if you are still reading and haven’t jumped off a bridge yourself.  Welcome to Wednesday.

This is the Den before we bought the house.  Dark red painted panelling… SUPER overcrowded and gloomy.

This is the den after - minus the baseboards & crown molding & carpet of course… but freshened up a bit.

This is the Living Room & Dining Room before we bought it…

This is the Living Room/Dining Room after - with fresh paint, minus the crown molding.  Actually, this was the only picture we had… so its more of the Dining Room with a lil bit of Living Room - but still… you get the idea.  We will do better!

This is the best picture we got of the sunroom prior to move-in…

This is it with a fresh coat of paint, of blue…. who would have thought.  We have big things planned for this room, just wait.

Here are a few shots of stuff that just need to be seen, we have lots more to show, but need to take better pics.  The first one, our big pile of trash & stuff that got taken out of the house.

This one is of the old dishwasher that we are replacing (as soon as ours comes in), it cracked us up that it had a slider for “Clean/Dirty”.  Dirty was definitely what we left it on.

This next one is the Master before we got started and it had a tiny closet that we demo’d and made HUGE.  You can also see the edge of the vanity that we are totally redoing in the next couple of days.  The vanity that DIDN’T have a plugin AT ALL.  Seriously.

Another Master pic with the awesome colors… and imposter furniture of the ex owners still in it.  Not to mention their awesome paint selection that made the room look so dark and sad.

We could go on and on, but we want to drag this out so you guys have more to read when you get bored.  So we will give you an update when the carpet is in and we have some more progress made.  Just wait.

Tags: Design, Personal, Pictures by James
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The new house is officially ours and we have started the renovations.  So you know what that means.

Drunk painting.

& 

drunk drywalling.

Actually neither of us has even been close to drunk - yet.  Too damn busy to get drunk. 

We finally got into the house on Monday, and started by preping for some priming and a little bit of carpet removal.  Got some remodeling figured out (which we eventually nixed) and mudded up a room before heading home.  Day one in the books and we put in about 13 hours between the two of us.  Not to mention, my Mom & Grandpa came over to help assess the situation - so another couple hours of their time.

Glad we don’t pay anyone. 

Tuesday we got our new dishwasher ordered and commenced work for the second day.  Mashala’s Dad came by and he assessed the fence and we came to an agreement just to repair it for now, instead of putting a whole new one.  Shala went on to paint the dining room and I put a second coat of mud on the living room. 

We took off early last night to get some rest and check on the election - so we only put in about 8-10 hours in yesterday between the two of us.  Add a few for Donnie (Shala’s Dad), and we are about at the 30 hours mark.

This morning about 4 I woke up, because I have a bruised heel and it was bothering me… then after being up for about 30 min trying to fall back to sleep… I decided “To Hell With It.”

So I told Shala I was headed to the house (it is just down the street, couple minutes) and I got started about 4:45.  I got the living room mud sanded down (which I hate doing more than anything).  Pulled some more trim off and rolled some texture on the ceiling to try out something.  Before I knew it, it was almost 7 and I headed back home to get ready for work.

Tonight should be a good night.  We should get some texture on the wall and change the floor plan a little as far as our closet goes.  Shala & My Mom are going to continue the priming quest and hopefully I can hop in with that as well.  Expect to see big changes in the next couple days… hopefully we can get some pics for you intra-web-ers!

Wish us luck… we need it.

Tags: Design, Personal by James
4 Comments »

A boring one if you ask us.  We have been shopping for an outdoor fountain recently and you know how it is…  spend your day looking through sites that just do not cut it… until you finally find a place that has your style.

Well we found it, Ethan Paul Outdoor - home of some killer Gas grills, Outdoor fountains and Garden fountains.

You can see right off the bat that this site has some awesome stuff for your patio & garden areas, and immediately we were hooked.  We are semi-addicted to firepits and so seeing a whole section dedicated to them had us saying…

“Where’s my checkbook?”

Also… a section dedicated to barbecues… I have been telling Shala that I needed a gas grill.  They had it covered.  TONS of gas grills and not your run of the mill ones either… we are talking HIGH END Napoleon Gas Grills.  You know those stainless steel ones that you dream about when you sleep… or is that just me?

If you can’t afford to spend the money on the super high end ones, they do have a few of the lower end (bust still super nice Napoleon gas grills) ones as well.  So you don’t have to spend 2 grand to get an awesome gas grill.

Ethan Paul does have a nice selection of fountains, which is something we have been trying to find a place for in the backyard.  Since we have a veggie garden, we were thinking we could put it in our pool area.  We have a few spots in mind, but seeing some of these fountains… you could practically build a spot dedicated just for them.  They are THAT… NICE.

The Terracotta Cascade Fountain had us hooked, since we went with terracotta pots for most of our potted plants.  This one would fit in nicely and at a good price.  140$????  Are you kidding me, sign us up.

Even if you wanted something more fancy than a terracotta pot fountain, they have TONS of outdoor & garden fountains to purchase.  We looked for about an hour dreaming and trying to figure out how we could work some of these awesome fountains in… however the Terracotta has to be the best one in our case.

Check out all the Garden & Outdoor Fountains at Ethan Paul Outdoor.

Go check some out, whether you are in the market for a new gas grill, outdoor fountain, firepit or anything dealing with outdoor entertaining or patio fun - you will be loving this site.  Ethan Paul Outdoor kills it when it comes to outdoor goodies.  Hope you can find something worth taking home… if not, maybe you can purchase something and send it ourway.  ;)  Enjoy.

Tags: Design, Gardening, Link'age, Reviews by James
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