Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Life is/in OK

We have been here for a month. Almost. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that we pulled in with our moving truck and angry animals in the car, and sometimes it feels like we have lived here forever. Yet, I only know a few people and don't really know my way around. So I guess it would be like we've lived here forever but never leave the house. And actually that is sort of how I feel most days. The first week was so nice because Bobby was here with me everyday and we did projects together and drove to stores together, but now he's busy as a bee with church stuff and I'm here alone doing the projects and shopping. But really, it's not all that bad. I do enjoy the downtime and he is able to come home for lunch most days which is wonderful.

The house is far from complete but I think we're still making progress. Last week was very unproductive because we spent two days in Dallas and the rest of the week preparing to make an even bigger mess - we decided to do a complete makeover on our little third bedroom, otherwise known as BR 3. This room is located in the front of the house when you first walk through the front door. Its short-term use is an office/library/guitar room. And the closet contains all of Bobby's clothes, of which I plan on adding some extra shelves at the top and some shoe racks at the bottom, eventually. And when my parents visit, we are going to possibly change out the main door because right now it is one of those cheap accordion doors. I am hoping to put in a sliding pocket door, but we'll see.

The room looked like this when we first looked the house:
























And this is what it looked like just before demolition:















































Light green, stained carpet, beat-up ugly oak colored baseboard, and white walls with markings all over them.

So we decided to rip up the carpet and install wood (laminate) floors. Ourselves! We have never done anything like this. Ever. The closest I ever came to installing flooring was when I watched the carpet guy install my beautiful ruby red carpet in my bedroom when I was 8. And Bobby? Nope, never laid flooring either. But hey, this is the age of HGTV and DIY. We can do it! And so the search began... we went to about a dozen places looking for a floor we liked, as cheaply as possible, and we found our floor at Sam's Club! Crazy, I know, but I typed in "cheap laminate flooring" on the google and Sam's came up. So we went to the store, put 6 boxes in our cart and checked out. It was weird, but affordable.

But the story's not done yet... Bobby suggested that after we rip up the carpeting and before we put down the new floor, we paint the walls and trim. Good idea, but we didn't have any paint. In about 7 minutes we decided to go with green walls, white trim, and he ran to Lowe's and bought the paint. We thought we could do all the painting in about 2 hours, wrong. These textured walls suck it up and we were still painting way after dark. That meant the flooring didn't get started until the next day, which happened to be Saturday, aka Game Day. So... we watched the game and started installing the floor at 7 pm. Needless to say that we didn't get it done and are about halfway finished, but it is looking good!

We have not been able to resume work on it because Bobby started getting sick and I feared that he was getting swine flu since we actually know a lot of people who have it. He is feeling better which is good because now our pastor is sick and Bobby will be filling in for him on Sunday. Good thing he was just installed this past Sunday! Oh, did I forget to mention that? He is now officially the Assistant Pastor (and church planting apprentice) at Christ the King PCA. His ordination was successfully transferred from Pittsburgh to North Texas (our presbytery) two days after we moved here and now he is installed at our church. Just in time. So it looks like our floor (and total house in general) is taking a back seat to the duties of flock leader.

Since you've been so nice to read through this entire post, I'll leave you with a sneak peek of the room.

3 comments:

we are the spencers said...

the room looks fantastic so far. can't wait to see the final product and hear how it was installing the floor yourselves. you guys are awesome!

Lianna Knight said...

Jennifer it looks SO good!!! We actually put down laminate in our old house...the ENTIRE house. It took us forever, but it looked great and we had a HUGE sense of pride because we did it ourselves :)

Annie said...

Looks like you guys have got it figured out! I'm pretty impressed!
Thanks for giving us a sneak peak!
~annie