Faber Flip

Dear Bloggers …

This one is for Mark. It’s Saturday, and when we woke up it was raining. The temperature is gradually edging up toward the 50’s, but I don’t expect a Spring Easter this year. I’m procrastinating, which is one of the things I do best. I have a list of repairs I want to do in the house this weekend, and re-grouting the tile in the foyer is one of those things. I started it last week. Why did I ever think I could mud the foyer? Man. It is WAY harder than it looks. Hard to get the lines precise, hard to clean up the haze. Not to mention the fact that being on your hands and knees, for, like, way too long, is a requirement. The entire project is hard. Yesterday, I played hooky and Leslie and I replaced all the bulbs and light diffusers in the ceiling fixtures downstairs. It’s really much better, now. But here I am still staring that foyer in the face … ugh!

Update on Sunday, March 16, 2008 -- no success! I tried working with the grout again, and it's just not sticking. We give up! Gonna call a professional!

As you know, Leslie has been very busy upgrading and changing parts of the house to make it more sellable. These are her projects, and she's been very diligent with cost control and quality. She recently had the security system in this house re-hooked up to the monitoring company. We believe this is a big plus to a buyer, but every time we generate a little bit of smoke cooking in the kitchen, we have to worry about that alarm going off. It did this morning when I was making quesadillas. What a mess! It shrieks so loud, I feel like my heading is popping off! Then, I input the code as quickly as possible, and race around looking for a phone so I can tell the monitoring company it was a false alarm. The last time it happened, we had four fire fighters here, the boss of which was required by protocol to come into the house and verify it wasn’t on fire. I practically had to hog-tie Daizy, who is, as you know, in charge of security here.

I look some pictures of other work we’re doing … here you go, Ambie, as promised.

Here are the sliding glass doors to the three season room, which is still a mess with Christmas things and all the other bits and pieces no one wanted to lug downstairs. We’ve got some guys coming to help move things around in a few weeks. I’ll get it dealt with then.

Here is the beautiful new storm door Leslie had installed. It totally changes the look of the front door. You can exchange the glass for screen.

Here are the new garage doors. There is nothing quite like new garage doors to give an old house a face lift. It didn’t cost much, and the installer had it done in an afternoon.

This is the front part of the living room. We painted two walls a beautiful green, and it really makes the room feel less sprawling and more cozy. I painted this myself. We’re going to paint one wall in the master bedroom a different color, too.

Last on the list of big things is putting new flooring in the downstairs. We’re using a product called Kenecto, which is a lot like Pergo, only it’s a vinyl product and will wear better. It installs right over the existing tile so there are no worries about pulling anything up. We're also putting new railing on the front porch. If we have enough time, we might change out some of the cabinets in the downstairs kitchenette, too. We’ll see how it goes.

Here, just for your entertainment, Mark, is something silly ...




*************************************

Take care, Mark! We love you!