Painting

In addition to our kitchen adventures, we've been painting a few rooms. After we moved out of our apartment, we had to paint the living room and entry back to white, and that was so not fun. It is much more exciting to add color.

For our bedroom, we wanted something that would look good with our white furniture. We've been having a gray moment, but after learning the hard way that only dummies paint a room without trying out paint samples, we tested a few options. After painting our apartment's entry a lovely gray that was really more of a  lavender, we wanted to make sure we avoided purple undertones. As you can see by the samples, we found even more lavender grays:

Gray samples

We went with the lower left color, which is more of a blue-y slate. It is lovely.

When we moved in and were sleeping on a mattress on the floor in what looked like a heroin den, having a painted, put together bedroom was the only thing that kept me from freaking out over the disorganization. It didn't matter quite so much that we had boxes all over the place, or that our kitchen was in various states of disarray, because we could close the door and in that one room, everything was done.

Painting the bedroom

For painting part two, we moved on to the "library." Our home has a room in the center of the house that used to be a bedroom. At some point, someone added a sunroom to the back of the house, which was a brilliant decision. But it left this weird landlocked room between the kitchen, the sunroom, the living room, and the bedrooms. It is a good sized room, but it doesn't have any windows, so we decided to be fancy and have a library.

TJ had a hankering to paint something a dark brown, so we thought this was a great place to experiment. Except for our existing bookshelves, it is a clean slate of a room - we'll have to completely furnish it. Our plan is to take advantage of the neutral brown to add some bright colors like orange. We're cray like that.

Painting the "library"

Kitchen DIY

Before we bought the house, we realized that the kitchen needed some work. Previous owners had installed a marble countertop and fancy backsplash, but we didn't love the cabinets. We both thought the finish was pretty blah, and the hardware definitely needed updating. We also saw right away that the cabinets were dirty, but I naively thought that they just needed a good  deep cleaning. However, as we started to unpack our dishes, we realized the cabinets needed the deepest of cleaning. Gross! So we packed everything back up and tackled our first big project as homeowners.

Kitchen before

Deep cleaning

After taking off all the doors and scrubbing the insides and outsides of the cabinets with a lovely bleach solution, we primed and painted the insides of the cabinet boxes so that we had a nice clean surface.

Primed insides

Painted insides

Then we primed and painted the outsides of the cabinets and the doors. I picked out approximately 10,000 paint chips to try to match the backsplash and the counters. Both have a lot of beige, but apparently it is a damn near impossible beige to match. But I've been told it looks good, so I am trying to quell the insane obsession with matching the colors exactly.

Counters

Backsplash

Don't you wish your kitchen could look like this? It is as fun as it looks.

More priming

Our dining room slash sunroom became painting central while we painted each side of the cabinet doors and drawers with several coats.

Painted doors

The beige we painted the cabinets has a lot more green in it than I thought slash intended. But again, trying really hard to tamp down the crazy. Perfect is the enemy of the good and all...

Painted cabinets 

Now that we've cleaned, primed, painted and re-installed the doors, now that three weekends of work is done, the kitchen looks SO much better. See?  Scroll up to see the yucky original finish.  

Ta-da!

Homeowners

We bought a house!

New home

After several months of looking, we are homeowners.

Homeowners

We're moving out of the city to Silver Spring, MD. I wish we could stay in the city, but after seeing what we could get in DC, this made more sense. So goodbye to urban living, goodbye to the 2 Metro stop commute, goodbye to walking home on nice days. And goodbye never-ending tourist traffic, goodbye fire truck sirens, goodbye shared laundry room.

Break out the champers!

Hello lover

I've been thinking I need to blog more, and then I never actually blog... so...

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I was feeling pretty meh about it.  The many MANY years when I was single, Valentine's Day was another sad reminder that no one would ever love me (ever).  Then I got a few coupled-up Valentine's Days under my belt and got the whole this-is-incredibly-important thing out of my system.

Now that I'm married, I can hardly be bothered to celebrate.  I suppose it is nice to have A Day devoted to really cherishing the one you love, but shouldn't you be doing that all of the time?  A few people asked me what TJ and I were doing, and it was really hard not to project that Meh feeling and pretend like I was super in to it.  I don't want to be the shitty person who makes someone feel dumb for going all out on Valentines.  Just in real life though, clearly I don't care about being that shitty person on the internets.  

Even though I was less than infused with the Valentine Spirit, we did have a nice night.  TJ cooked dinner - and dropped nearly done stuff on the floor while cooking, which is my FAVORITE thing to do.  Maybe my clumsiness is contagious?  We shared a bottle of wine, opened our cards to each other, which of course are a little off because we're weirdos.  TJ got me flowers and I admired them and rearranged them so they looked their prettiest (wannabe florist here).  And I got him a piece of Pueblo pottery while I was on my business trip to New Mexico.  It did not break in my luggage, which I consider a huge victory.  After dinner, we watched a DVR'd Top Chef cuddled up together on the couch. Nothing crazy, just how we do.

Fatherly advice

My dad emailed my siblings and me this morning to advise us to disable Java.  His warning?

"If you don't do this, flu bugs can come right up the intertubes to your house."

Oh noes!

Brainstorming

The Texans are in the playoffs again, which makes my dad and brother very nervous.  During the game against Bengals, Coach Mike and I brainstormed new names for the Houston Texans, even though Coach Mike says he likes Texans. And we brainstormed a few new names for the Washington Redskins.

Houston
Armadillos
Rattlers
I-10s
Fender benders
Slime in the ice machines
Strip malls
Sprawl
Gallerias
Pick-up trucks
Gun racks
Varmints
The y'alls
Rascals
Bandits
Gallery Furnitures
Mattress Macs
Heat Waves
Mosquitoes or Skeeters
Humidity
Rodeo
Rodeo Clowns
Prison Rodeo
Tailgates
Nachos
Hombres
Quesos
Steers
Dagnabits

Washington
Lobbyists
Gridlock
Super PAC
Insiders

Which proposed name is your favorite?

Happy Birthday Z!

Lil Z turns 24 years old today and her beloved Irish football team gave her a present of beating the snot out of Oklahoma.

I remember when she was a newborn and didn't do much, as newborns are wont to do.  When I held her as a tiny baby, I'd marvel at how someday she would have a real personality.  In her earliest days, I'd watch her intently, trying to figure out who she would be.  She quickly grew in to a very independent little girl, and she always sang little songs she made up.    

Z remains independent today.  Like the honey badger, she does what she wants. She is intensely devoted to service, ministering to youth and helping them through some pretty tough years.  She's visited Haiti and Ghana on mission trips and has returned from each more in love with what she's doing.  I really admire her commitment to social change and her community.

So happy birthday to my independent baby sister with the wicked sense of humor.