Environmental Impact

I'm really missing California today.

It's been hot, extremely hot for May. In the high 90's. Yesterday saw 98˚ before the sun went down. I started thinking about Carlsbad and Oceanside where I used to live. A cool off-shore breeze always took the edge off the midday sunshine. I even thought longingly of May Gray, June Gloom and the feel of the cool fog droplets against my skin as I wrapped myself in a soft hoodie to take off the chill, but wearing flip-flops, always flip-flops. Yep, I miss it.

My youngest son lives in Anna Maria, Florida, within walking distance to the beach and where we vacationed last month. It's even cooler where he lives than it is here. At least 10˚ cooler. It's always cooler near the beach.

Maybe I'm just missing the beach.

Although I grew up in central California, my parents were avid fishermen and we spent a lot of time camping on the California coast near Santa Cruz, generally at New Brighton Beach or Sunset Beach. Back in those ancient times, flip-flops were called zories or thongs, long before the word 'thong' was used to describe butt floss.

Anyway, when I was about 12 or 13, we moved to northern California, within 30 minutes to my parents' favorite fishing spots and the beaches where I would spend most of every weekend.

Within 10 years or so after Tom and I married, we moved to southern California, where we lived maybe 2 miles from the beach. Now, here, in Arkansas there's not a beach in sight for several hundred miles. {sigh}

When I was in Florida last August, I brought a little bit of the beach home with me and decided to inject the beach theme into our guest bath. I bought these little pictures at an outlet store in Florida and hung them on the wall....

And when I got home, I found this shower curtain that matched the shells perfectly...


I did the same thing during our vacation this past April. I've grown tired of Tuscan. I've grown weary of brown and vintage. I decided to bring a little more of Florida into my home, specifically the entry way. A large mirror with a brown vintage frame was replaced with a smaller collage of beach inspired illustrations and a 1970's photo of Tom and me in vintage western/cowboy garb lost out to a beach scene. The coat rack will be painted a lighter color at a later date.

Out are the dark metal plate racks on either side of the entry closet door. In are pictures of palm trees.


When my cousin and her husband joined us for the last few days of our vacation, they came bearing an armload of bright colored flip-flop gifts - hand towels, place mats, wine glass coasters, jewelry and a metal towel hanger. I love the colors; bright, sunny, cheerful. But when I took the towels into my bathroom, I realized how uninspiring and bland it was, even after the remodel and the new sink. The baskets are brown. The towels are brown, tan and dessert green. Not only are they BORING, but they are over 10 years old....



Tom hung the new towel holder for our new towels.


A quick trip to Target for some new, brighter colored towels....



The towel holder will be repainted another color....maybe a nice sunny yellow. And the off-white, nondescript shower curtain will be a thing of the past once this one is delivered...

Photo Source: BeachHouseLinens.com

Yes, dear friends, if I can't be near the beach, I'm bringing the beach to me. What if I had Tom build a low frame around the whole bathroom floor and I filled it with sand? Too much?

Just Because Everything Is Different Doesn't Mean Anything Has Really Changed

Nothing has changed really. I still live in the same house. I still hear construction and construction equipment every single day. There are days when I can cope, but there are other days when I finish the day in tears.

If I could move tomorrow, I would. I've been looking at the housing market in our area and it's not too bad considering the beating everyone else has taken in this economy. We could probably sell our house for a decent price, but with all the debt we've accumulated in the last three years because of the lack of work, it's just not feasible right now. In the meantime, we just grit our teeth and try to make our living conditions better.

We bought this house as a fixer-upper and fixing-upping we are, albeit a very little bit at a time. Have I mentioned that I'm sick of remodeling? I'm sick of sanding, scraping, painting, grouting...all of it. But we have more to do and we add projects almost monthly. Now we are considering enlarging our bedroom closet by cutting into the office closet and framing in the door on the office side to make it a wall. Huge, dirty, dusty and extremely inconvenient project.

Anyway, when we moved in five years ago, we started on the kitchen and dining room, which has been a work in progress until just recently when we finally had some painters in to finish painting as a trade for Tom's precious Audi convertible ~ which has finally met it's permanent death, but that's another story.

The kitchen started out as a closed-in, u-shaped room and we wanted to open it up into a kitchen/dining room. This is the wall that had to go...

And go, it did...


Until it was gone...


Tom reused some of the cabinets by extending countertop and cabinets further into the dining room...


Then he built hood-like features over the sink and new stove, constructed the island with huge drawers for storage on one side and a space for seating on the other, then he laid ceramic tile. After we had the marble countertops installed, we have this...

...the extended cabinet...


...and the island...



..and the dining room went from this...


to this...


Then we did the guest bath. We started with this:


Notice the lovely, bright turquoise color on the walls and the equally lovely southwestern style wallpaper border just below the ceiling...


Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan, so we ripped out the existing cabinet and sink, painted, installed a new free-standing cabinet and sink and laid more ceramic tile. Much better.


I didn't have anything on the walls for the longest time...probably a couple of years. Then, last August when we visited Chris and Kelly, I went to Bealle's Outlet (if I move near there, I fear that I will regain my love of shopping) and found these three canvas prints and I knew I had to have them for the bathroom. And they were CHEAP!! - like $2 or $3 bucks each.



A couple of weeks ago, I was headed toward the hardware department in Walmart and took a shortcut through the bed and bath department and this shower curtain caught my eye. I couldn't believe that it matched perfectly the prints I purchased in Florida. $19-bucks


The only thing left to do was replace the toilet seat that had a major ick-factor - the paint had worn off in spots so it never looked clean even though it was. Done.

Interspersed between and throughout the more extensive projects, we worked on our den and living room.

The den. A bright, sunny room that apparently screamed to the previous owner, More sunshine and flowers, please!!". So she painted it a BRIGHT yellow...


And since that wasn't quite abrasive enough, she added a coordinating sunflower wallpaper border..


Tom constructed built-in shelves for our DVD collection, our extensive accumulation of books and his nautical memorabilia. We took down the cheap blue curtains and hung wooden blinds. Then we painted. I'd still like to do something different with the mantel, but that can wait until the mood strikes me and I see something I really like.



My mother had a peculiar euphemism: "All her taste is in her mouth," and the first time we walked through this house, that's exactly what popped into my head.

The living room. What you can't see very well are the filthy white roll-up vinyl blinds that I ripped out of the front window the first week we moved in. Maroon curtains and green walls. I think I vomited up something resembling those colors once.

It's funny what a little paint and new trim can do. Then...




Now...new wood blinds, beige sheers, sand colored paint...




I didn't take any initial "before" photos of our master bathroom. I don't know why, other than the paint color wasn't as horrifying as the rest of the rooms in the house so it didn't seem necessary to document any changes.

In October 2008 we bought ceramic tile, a new light fixture and a framed mirror.


Over the course of the last three years, we've only tackled the easier stuff. We removed the huge flat wall mirror and hung the framed mirror in it's place. Then we removed the cabinet doors and installed shelves. I purchased baskets to fit underneath the shelves for all the miscellaneous bathroom toiletries and sundries, so Tom had the idea to screw the baskets onto flat wooden bases secured to drawer guides so the baskets could easily be pulled out and slid back into place. Genius (I know, I'm prejudice). The new light fixture was next. While I was in Florida in May, Tom painted the bathroom a zen green and I brought back two flip-flop wall hangings, again from Bealle's Outlet.

Finally, two weeks ago, we started the floor. We had enough tile, but I wanted something a little more decorative, so we purchased some strips of smaller tiles interspersed with glass tiles and used that as a border. The bathroom floor went from this linoleum...


To this...


The following weekend, we were going to start the countertop and we wanted a glass sink with a cascading faucet, but we couldn't find anything we liked for under $1,000. The clerk at Home Depot told us we should look online because they had a lot more stuff there than they did in the store. We did and found a really cool sink and faucet set for only $200.

So Tom removed the old countertop and sink...


...laid the same kind of tile as the floor onto the countertop...


...installed this very cool green glass sink with matching glass cascading faucet...


and all that we need are new drawer fronts and a little bit of touch up paint.


But that's not all that is left to be done. The next big thing is flooring...in the den, hallway, living room and all three bedrooms. When we moved in, all the rooms that had been carpeted were stripped down to the concrete foundation/floor and the concrete had been stained with a sponge and wood stain. I could live with that rather than dirty carpet. But I've lived with it too long.

Tom just finished a job for a local lumber company and was "paid" in hardwood flooring...enough for the living room. It is stacked in the extra bedroom waiting for time enough to remove all the furniture for a couple of days, install the flooring and return the furniture to it's original position.

Tom is milling flooring for the den and hallway, which will have to be stained and sealed before we put it down. Who knows when that will get finished, since I'm the person who is supposed to stain and finish it. I'd like carpet in the bedrooms. That will have to wait for another more financially robust time.

Five years into it, we are still remodeling. But it has to end sometime, doesn't it? And then what? What will we do with our time and money once we are done?

"You never run out of things that can go wrong." ~ Murphy's Law #12

It's been a morning and a half and it's only 8:16 am.

Tom woke up dizzy this morning from sinus issues. It's a common occurrence when his allergies act up, but it's unsettling for him and takes a while for the sinus meds to take effect.

When Tom leaves in the morning, I listen to make sure he has used his clicker to close the garage door. Usually he remembers, this morning he didn't. I went through the laundry room to the garage and pressed the button and the big, rolling garage door started closing and I turned around and walked away and closed the door behind me. Then I heard the garage door stop...then go back up. WT?? Thinking our neighbor's cat had been in the garage and ran out and tripped the garage door sensor when she heard the door start to close, I went back to the garage and hit the button to close the garage door again. As I left, I heard the garage door stop, but this time it didn't go up again. Huh?? Retracing my steps to the garage, I opened the door and look around the garage to see what is going on. Nothing registers. I press the button again. The door goes up, but the rolling door looks crooked. Maybe it's my imagination. I hit the button again to close the garage door and it stopped less than half way down. Finally, it registers. Before leaving for work, Tom was apparently loading some stuff in his van and moved a step ladder out of the way and leaned it against the frame of the garage door. When the garage door tried to close, it stopped, wedging the step ladder between the door and the garage floor. It wedged it in so well, I couldn't pull the step ladder out.

At this point, while raising the garage door one more time, I noticed that the huge door was really cockeyed. Great! I removed the step ladder and walked over and pressed the button to close the door, but it still only closed 2/3rds of the way and stopped. I tried two or three more times, but it wouldn't close completely.

Today is my Strong Women class day. I can't leave with the garage door open. So, I called Tom. "I'll be right there," he said.

A few minutes later, he's working frantically with the door. Something came off or came loose or both. He decided he needed help, so he called The Kid, who was already waiting for him at the shop. But he can't get through to The Kid because the kid is apparently sitting in his car waiting for Tom and texting.

Finally, after several attempts, he got through and asked The Kid to come over to our house to help. After The Kid arrived, they worked on the door several minutes and finally got the door fixed.

"There," Tom says to himself, as the door opens and closes several times without issue.

Feeling relieved, Tom got in the van, put the key in the ignition and turned it...click. Nothing else, just click. Again. And again. And again. The fifth or sixth time, the ignition catches and the van starts, but a short discussion between us ensues and to avoid being stuck somewhere in Little Rock at a jobsite unable to start the van once again, we decide he should take the van back to the shop, have The Kid drive him back home to pick up the Extra-Bitchin' (Expedition, for the uninitiated) and use it to run his jobsite errands for the day. Tom came back home to pick up the Extra-Bitchin' and he also took a check with him to purchase a new starter for the van. Good thinkin'.

So moving right along, backwards to this past weekend, we went up to Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Several weeks ago, we bought a new, smaller dining room set from Pier One. I love it.



But, my bar stools didn't match because they matched the old dining room set. I saw that Pier One carried a line of counter chairs to match my dining chairs, so earlier in the week I purchased two of them, at clearance half price, at the Pier One store in Jonesboro. We drove to Jonesboro over the weekend to pick them up with the Extra-Bitchin' (obviously they don't fit in my small convertible).

This is one of the chairs from the dining set...



And these are my new counter chairs...



I am such a happy camper...except for the fiasco this morning. Oh, and the mess Tom and The Kid made last week in my house.

Yes, Tom had some time between jobs last week, so he and The Kid worked at our house. They scraped and painted the ceiling in the den and put up crown molding, sanded and primed nearly all the new trim in the house, replaced lights in the entry, hall and office and generally made a dusty mess.

I have decided today I will focus on cleaning up all of the dust that settled everywhere. I will forgo my Strong Woman class for today. I have all of the exercises copied down, the weights are in my car and I will do the exercise routine later this afternoon. Today, I will just dig right in to everything that needs to be done here at home so we can start the week anew. Starting fresh always feels good.