June is slipping through my fingers
Random bits:
Good news: We found someone willing to give us a realistic dollar figure (read not five figure) for our gutter project. Hooray! Bad news: He strongly suggests we do the roof while we're at it since there's going to be much shingling going on over the damaged ends of the roof. (There's a lot of rot up there.) We weren't planning on doing the roof this year.
We keep going back and forth - do the roof since it makes sense to just keep shingling, don't do the roof so as to incur less debt at the moment, do the roof because it's already 20yrs old, don't do it because there's nothing wrong with it right now. Honestly my biggest fear is that having the roof done will constrain finances such that I'll still be bathing the girls in the basement a year from now. I really want to get to the bathroom project. (but the gutter project is many times more important)
Speaking of projects: Finally touched up some of the paint on the walls and marbellized the mantle in the girls' room. That's only been hanging over my head since . . . January. Hooray for projects moving forward! Yet to do in there: Finish decorating - hang pictures, obtain and hang curtains. Order carpet. Replace doors. Get Claire a big-girl bed, since the littlest monkey has learned to climb out of her "cribby."
Target interior project following the girls' room: The hallway/stairway. The hallway/stairway is dark. Sloppy. A wreck. Big.
There are balusters missing in the railing. (we've got a bucket of matching replacement parts in the garage that the previous owners obtained from a salvaged house) Some of the ones already installed (poorly) are their native dark varnish color, others have been swathed in flat white paint. (like so much of the house's trim work) The stairs need to be finished. Or rather, their refinishing job needs to be completely redone. Correctly. As does the mess left on the decorative trim up the sides of the stairs and along the upstairs hallway. On the walls, there's a spot of loose plaster with a chunk missing. There's many other spots where the plaster has more in common with cottage cheese or Play-Doh in texture. One piece of wall is actually a piece of plywood painted to match. Painted in a very dark orangish-red. And antiqued. As is the ceiling on the first floor, which had first been wall-papered to resemble a tin ceiling. Which is just as well because from what I can tell the wall paper is the only thing keeping the plaster up.
I have no hopes of perfecting the area - only to make it less dark and ominous looking for now. Safer would be nice, too.
Myna birds: There is a dangerous intersection near my house. It's the scene of regular accidents. I was waiting to make a left turn when the person behind me decided that my decision to not barge into oncoming traffic was inconveniencing him/her. They registered their displeasure with their horn, and my knee-jerk response was, "Screw you!"
From the back seat came a tiny and enthusiastic, "Screw you!"
Oh yeah, forgot the kids were back there.
Good news: We found someone willing to give us a realistic dollar figure (read not five figure) for our gutter project. Hooray! Bad news: He strongly suggests we do the roof while we're at it since there's going to be much shingling going on over the damaged ends of the roof. (There's a lot of rot up there.) We weren't planning on doing the roof this year.
We keep going back and forth - do the roof since it makes sense to just keep shingling, don't do the roof so as to incur less debt at the moment, do the roof because it's already 20yrs old, don't do it because there's nothing wrong with it right now. Honestly my biggest fear is that having the roof done will constrain finances such that I'll still be bathing the girls in the basement a year from now. I really want to get to the bathroom project. (but the gutter project is many times more important)
Speaking of projects: Finally touched up some of the paint on the walls and marbellized the mantle in the girls' room. That's only been hanging over my head since . . . January. Hooray for projects moving forward! Yet to do in there: Finish decorating - hang pictures, obtain and hang curtains. Order carpet. Replace doors. Get Claire a big-girl bed, since the littlest monkey has learned to climb out of her "cribby."
Target interior project following the girls' room: The hallway/stairway. The hallway/stairway is dark. Sloppy. A wreck. Big.
There are balusters missing in the railing. (we've got a bucket of matching replacement parts in the garage that the previous owners obtained from a salvaged house) Some of the ones already installed (poorly) are their native dark varnish color, others have been swathed in flat white paint. (like so much of the house's trim work) The stairs need to be finished. Or rather, their refinishing job needs to be completely redone. Correctly. As does the mess left on the decorative trim up the sides of the stairs and along the upstairs hallway. On the walls, there's a spot of loose plaster with a chunk missing. There's many other spots where the plaster has more in common with cottage cheese or Play-Doh in texture. One piece of wall is actually a piece of plywood painted to match. Painted in a very dark orangish-red. And antiqued. As is the ceiling on the first floor, which had first been wall-papered to resemble a tin ceiling. Which is just as well because from what I can tell the wall paper is the only thing keeping the plaster up.
I have no hopes of perfecting the area - only to make it less dark and ominous looking for now. Safer would be nice, too.
Myna birds: There is a dangerous intersection near my house. It's the scene of regular accidents. I was waiting to make a left turn when the person behind me decided that my decision to not barge into oncoming traffic was inconveniencing him/her. They registered their displeasure with their horn, and my knee-jerk response was, "Screw you!"
From the back seat came a tiny and enthusiastic, "Screw you!"
Oh yeah, forgot the kids were back there.
