Slow day at the office

Yes, this is another slow day at the office. Of course, it's Friday, which means that we might get something big or complicated or just plain pain-in-the-butt right at 5:25pm. Our clients have done this to us before, so why should today be any different, right?

Anyway, I know, I haven't posted for a while. But here's the thing - there was nothing new to talk about. My days are spent in the house, more specifically, in the kitchen. Not like I cook that much, but my work desk doubles as a dinning-room table for the time being. So as I said, I sit here all day, staring at the computer screen or at the bushes in the yard, which is a much nicer view with all the little birds and squirrels and sometimes a big grey cat. And then in the evenings, after Chris comes home, I cook food and then go upstairs to the only other piece of furniture that we have, the mattress, to read.

The only distractions from this routine that I have are tours of the house that I give to the contractors. Yes, the renovation saga has started with no end in sight. Chris does not have much time, between full time work and full time college, to do much work around the house. Plus a lot of it is pretty specialized. So I called around and so far had 5-6 people stop by. I wouldn't call it fun, since after the first couple of tours it gets very repetitive and boring. But I'd definitely say that it's an appropriate activity for the Halloween, since most of the quotes sound very scary.

We started with our master bedroom. Chris took the nasty popcorn off the ceiling. That didn't take long nor was it very difficult. But then he had to mud the drywall. Hmm, who knew that it'd be such a complicated process. So he spent his whole weekend last week on mudding the drywall and then priming it. Some butthole advised him to not waste time on painting with a roller and a brush, but get a sprayer instead. Right... After countless hours and many cans of primer, the room looked downright scary. You see, one needs to spend several hours practicing with a sprayer before starting a job and even then, each sprayer is very different. Of course, Mr. Butthole forgot to mention that to Chris. It's a good thing Home Depot has a great return policy.

Finally, today the contractor sent his crew in and they mudded the ceiling. This took them about 2 hours and cost us about $200. It should all be dry by tomorrow and Chris plans on sanding and priming/painting it himself. Thus he'd save us about $300 - our furniture fund.

In the mean time, we met with the kitchen designer, Susannah. She came over and measured our kitchen, something that we proved to be absolutely incapable of. Now we have to go see a guy at Lowe's since he's the one actually developing the plans for cabinets. So that's going to happen this Saturday. After that's done, we'll be pretty ready to order the cabinets and appliances and countertops and a sink and a faucet and light fixtures and other odds and ends that make this project such a nightmare.

Other than that, things are going pretty well here. It's been rather cold, so I mostly stay home (since I don't have a lot of warm clothes). Yesterday I finally bought a cheapy fleece jacket. Usually it means that the next day it would get considerably warmer. It sure did, but also it started raining. So I'm locked in the house again and my only escape at the moment is a potential trip to one of the area's malls.