3/31 It was 90 Degrees, What's Up?

OK, Mr. Heat you can pack your bags and head south for another 2 months please!  The record heat for the day was 101 so at least it didn't get that hot!

The house is all done!  April Fools!  OH, don't I wish it were so.  Since we decided to have the painters do ALL the rooms, our house has been a bustling place full of dreaded dust and flies coming and going as they please in and out of open doors and windows.  Seems like an Extreme Makeover Home Edition!  But...my oh my, it is looking so fresh and bright with all the newly painted rooms! 

My job today in between customers is to find replacement window coverings to replace the massive vertical blinds in the family room / home office area.  Of course that means letting my fingers do the walking not in the yellow pages but using the internet.  There are two 8 foot sliding doors and one 5 foot sliding door on the south wall and a large window on the east wall.  The vertical blinds were there when we moved in and they don't work very well and are really dirty besides being ugly.  Anybody have any suggestions?  Originally, we weren't going to paint this room and just leave the blinds and clean 'em really good but since it's getting painted, the paint is going to look so nice and will really make the blinds look especially bad.  My idea was white sheers to keep it clean looking. 

What's been happening as we paint or fix up this or that thingy what's right next to it just looks really bad and so it seems a never ending cycle of what to fix and when to draw the line on fixing things.  Like when the living room was painted I told the DH, now the guest bathroom (which is right next to it) looks really bad.  It is such a small room that I felt they could paint it in a jiffy.  He agreed that it would look better and then we noticed that the landing where the stairs come up from the basement would look so much better so then they painted that and then on and on they've been painting.

The biggest mess of all was the laundry room that was in such poor shape.  It has lath and plaster walls and in some places the plaster was coming off and it was all sandy and ugly (see around sink area).  It is located in the basement but it's an enclosed room.  There is even an old fashioned laundry chute that starts at the top floor in one of the closets and then on the main floor in the guest bathroom.  I've used it for mainly for towels; way more handy than walking them down the stairs!  The owners before us had a furnace or water heater catch on fire years ago and the walls were all dark at the top from the smoke.  It was a smelly and scary place to do laundry but after 10 years you just get used to it.  You ask, why didn't we fix if before now?  Well, the biggest reason was lack of funds!  AND A WHOLE LONG STORY THAT I WILL WRITE ABOUT SOMEDAY!  Here are some pics of the laundry room after some sanding and you can see some 1950's turquoise paint here and there. 

See the laundry chute?

Notice the newly painted door on the left

See some 1950's turquoise paint?

Original sink from 1948

See the smoke damage at the ceiling?

Plain cement floor with a floor drain in case of flooding

Now that you are ready to barf at the ugliness of it all, I promise to show you some after pics next week!

Stay tuned!




I spoke with the head painter about planting in the front garden and if it was possible for them to be careful while painting the front come Mid-April and work around the plantings and he said it should be fine.  So if weather permits, I'll be preparing the flower beds on Sunday as well as continuing on the kitchen cabinets.  What are you up to?