And moonwalk in silence.
Remember an artist who could take a four minute song and turn it into (one of my favorites of all time) an eleven minute video that includes everything from racial tension and the need for less hate in the world to Macauley Culkin dressed liked Flava Flav.
That takes talent.
May he be remembered for his incredible contributions to American music.
RIP King of Pop
I have not forgotten about my loyal readers. Just been a little busy- wading through crap I haven’t laid eyes on in two years and stuff like that.
But don’t you fear my loyal readers (you know who you are- all twelve of you) I shall return soon!
As we go off to our barbeques and beach vacations (that is where I’m headed!), let’s not forget the true reason for this holiday.
For all those who have given their life for this great country- Thank you.
here in the ironbunny household today!
Our storage unit, which we filled when we moved to south Georgia the first time two years ago, is being moved today!
I’ve already come across numerous things that I had completely forgotten about. Unfortunately I’ve also discovered a few pieces of fine “Fred’s” furniture pieces that Mr. IronBunny is such a fan of. If it is assembled using plastic tubes that screw together, then he wants to buy it. I foresee it as a lifelong battle.
The flip side to all this excitement (and the $100 a month that I now have at my disposal) is that my almost unpacked house is right back to being a cardboard forest. Ugh.
I forget what number I’m on and I’m too lazy to go back and look.
Anyways… It’s time for the entryway! I actually just finished painting it so there isn’t anything on the walls (nor is there a new light fixture) but I figured I’d put up some pictures anyways.
Here is the old entryway-
You gotta love that light fixture. And the previous owner was so kind- she left and entire plastic cup full of little hangydown things so I could add to them. Or not.
Not sure why the door looks pink there. Hmmm.
So we took down the wallpaper (it was actually the first thing we did when my sister was here I believe) and got it primed- including the door.
And now….
I think the top color (both are Valspar) is called Oatbran and the bottom is called Ivory Brown. After much deliberation I let the chair rail the bright white and I think it looks quite nice with it.
I haven’t painted the door yet but it will be the same bright white as the chair rail. And the doorknob will match the deadbolt which is oil rubbed bronze.
I’m still looking for a new light fixture. I want to find one that is a smaller version of one that will look good in the dining room as well. The hunt continues!
The table is from Pier1. I found it hiding in a corner and it was on sale so it wasn’t hard to convince the husband which is always a plus. I love it. It is a dark brown with a leather inset on top.
So that’s the entryway. I’m taping off the living room tomorrow (using a sprayer because it is a bigger room and there is no chair rail so I can just spray away!) and hopefully I’ll have pictures of that in the next week or so.
we call him “Bronco the Destroyer”.
This is why.
That would be a paw print on my floor.
And this-
is a paw print on my cabinet. Along with hair. And dirt.
Which leads me to a public service announcement.
Whosoever comes into my home and makes any comment on the black hairs on my freshly painted white cabinet faces will be escorted to their vehicles and not invited back ever again. This is for anyone and everyone. And I do mean everyone. Not even giving birth to either my husband or myself makes you exempt from this rule.
I have found it damn near impossible to paint white cabinet doors when you have a black lab. And before this incident he hadn’t even been around the doors! I’d had the door shut to the room they were in. I turned my back for a moment and next thing I know- I’ve got a black lab with white paws.
(and good god really disgusting nails!)
It is a damn good thing he is cute because I wanted to kill him. I had to repaint every single door that was drying because he took a nice little lap around them.
Damn dog.
Got off track, my bad.
The husband decided to help paint so we spent the evening priming the living room. I love the man to death but he sucks at painting. Oh well.
On to the bathroom. Remember that I have to rip out the dry wall at some point so it isn’t the best finish but it works for now- especially since I hung a picture and put up a storage shelf over the toilet.
The picture is one I found on WallBlank.com- it’s called Empty Park, I think. All I know is I’m a big fan of it!
We got the storage shelf at Target. It was very much needed. Not only is the wall messed up behind there but there is next to no storage in this bathroom.
These are the towels my mom sent a little bit ago. I think they match perfectly- especially with the chocolate brown rug (now I just need to find a brown toilet seat cover).
The color is Valspar’s Field of Pines. I’d say it is a far cry better than Freaky and Assplosion!
By the way- I was totally kidding about the toilet lid cover.
Here it is.
You would think that the buildup I’ve given it would result in a huge overhaul… but it’s not. It’s a small change but it’s enough!
This is one of those rooms that I forgot to get “before” pictures of but my sister did salvage a piece of the lovely wallpaper so without further ado- the master bath.
Imagine if you will… you’ve had a long day filled with cheese and banannas. You head into the bathroom to sit for a spell and you are faced with four walls covered in this:
Please note- the stains are not due to the wallpaper being removed. Ponder that a moment.
Yes, it is a freaky ass bird staring at you. A freaky ass bird staring at you while sitting amongst a field of nauseating blue, brown and baby poop yellow. This is not pretty.
Don’t think that this bird is alone. Oh no!
He’s got a friend whom I call “He who looks as if to be projectile vomiting out of his ass”. I call him assplosion for short.
Hard to believe I wanted to take that down huh?
But I did. Well my sister did. And as she will tell you, that drywall did not want to give up freaky bird and assplosion. No siree. So it’s not in the best of shape. There will come a day when I rip out the dry wall and start fresh but I assure you that day is not in my immediate future.
…… I’m going to post this now and go make dinner (the native is getting restless) but I will update it later this evening. Roast shrimp and broccoli here I come!
My own internet.
So fabulous.
And I must apologize for the obscene amount of typos in my previous post. It isn’t the easiest thing to do, typing that much on an iphone.
Come Monday (have to go out of town for the weekend) I will finally post some more on the house.
In addition to the never-ending rain I also still don’t have Internet (I love how the iPhone automatically capitalized Internet).
Originally we were going to go with mediacom bit after three days of sitting at the house waiting for them to come (as we were told they would me) we found out that no one was ever coming! Needless to say this made me very angry. So we decided to give AT&T DSL a try. They said it would be a couple of days to provision the line. A few days comes and goes and nothing. So the husband calls over and they say “oh Mr. B we have you down for connection on the 16th”.
That is ubacceptable so be was able to get them to connect it today. All day I watch that damn blinking light, waiting for it to glow solid… Which didn’t happen.
So once again the husband calls and asks about it. Now we are scheduled for connection on the 24th!!!!!!! The 24th? How did they think that was at all acceptable? They are very lucky that I’m in love with my new iPhone and I’ve been able to keep up with the world otherwise I’d be much more aggravated than I already am.
So long story short (too late! I love that movie) we still have no Internet ( and the Internet we’ve been stealing from a neighbor has been completely inrellable which I find to be just rude and unneighborly of them) and I’ll be going by mediacom on the morning to start making some demands.
Watch out for headlines tomorrow: “South Georgia woman holds cable company office hostage untilcproff of connectivity is shown.”
And as my mother told the poor, alone, tired woman who spoke no English as she endured hour after hour of hard labor- soon. Soon I will have Internet. Soon.
This is the scene from south Georgia.
We have much rain. We have too much rain. We have hail. We have strong winds. We have tornadoes. We have sirens. We have downed tree limbs. We have more rain.
We have kitchen cabinets, hallways, entryways (which I got a new fabulous table for last night), bedrooms, offices, dining rooms and living rooms that need to be painted- but can’t thanks to the aforementioned rain.
We have damp.
We have damp smell.
We have rain.
I know I promised the Master Bath today but it just isn’t going to happen. I’ve been busy trying to get some boxes unpacked and (to no avail) find my flatware. I ate dinner with a spoon last night- baked chicken and green beans, not fun- and so far the flatware has been hiding.
A little prayer to St. Anthony might be in order!
So the kitchen/den wasn’t the only room we tackled this past week.
Nope, we also hit the master bedroom. The idea was that it would be nice to have a place to go to at night where there was no paint trays, no dropcloths, no boxes, no crap. And I can honestly say- it is very nice to have. I do still have staples and tack strips to remove in there but for the most part it is done for the time being.
The day I moved up here I arrived at around 1:30 in the morning. The movers arrived 7 hours later. My sister 6 hours after that. So things were a little crazy that day. That is why I don’t have many “before” pictures of the rest of the house.
As a matter of fact I’ve only got this one lonely picture of the master bedroom. And it isn’t a true before picture because I had already ripped up the carpet when I took it. The carpet was my first act of remodeling. And it felt good. Well it felt good until the decades of dirt and carpet deodorizer hit my nasal cavity and sinuses. But that wasn’t anything that a little Claritin could solve.
At first glance this pale blue might not look that bad- but believe me, it was. It was just gross. Definite need for a change.
And change we did! This was actually the only color that I did not ponder. My sister happened to open one of the color pamphlets and I saw it and immediately said- “That’s the color I want for the bedroom.”
(excuse the bed- I was lying there watching a movie before I took the picture)
The color is Valspar’s Jekyll Sans Souci Green which is part of their historic landmarks collection. I didn’t put two and two together when I first picked it out, but it is actually from a hotel on Jekyll Island, GA which isn’t too horribly far from where I live. I went saining for shrimp there just last year.
I need to at some point go back and put a second coat down- as evidenced by this picture.
There’s the movie I was watching- Cadillac Records. Pretty good.
So that’s the Master Bedroom! A nice place to relax after long days of painting and hauling carpet, and the various and sundry other things to do around the house. It will be even nicer with I get all the tack strips and staples up, put up the crown molding and quarter round (for the floor to cover up the little strip of discolored wood around the edge of the room) and of course the second coat of paint. But it serves it’s purpose for now.
Color!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously by the time we got to actually putting color on the walls I thought we were going to need padded ones. We had already stripped very stubborn wallpaper from the entryway and master bath, primed those two areas plus the hallway and bedroom. We were desperate for some color.
So without further ado…
You can see where we’ve stopped the one color just under the cabinet. At some point I’m actually going to go in and put in a backsplash of some sort. For now I just have to deal with the abrupt color change. I’m also going to have to paint the ceiling some day. And the windows- although we liked the brown wood with the blue (after we had primed the window sills), we couldn’t get the primer off the sills in order to leave them wood. So paint them I will.
Here’s a shot from the kitchen to the backdoor. The door on the left (with the dog leashes, which have since moved) is to the dining room and then the accordion doors are to my laundry closet. We decided to make the wall on the right (which is part of the cabinet surrounding the fridge) white because we feared it would get too dark in the pass with another wall of blue.
These are the walls of the den. This picture reminds me that I need to go in and paint over that little drip of white on the back wall. We did two different colors of blue called (I do believe Valspar’s either Laura Ashley or Eddie Bauer collections) Bayport and Peninsula. We decided to bump up to a little higher quality of paint than Valspar’s normal line due to the fact that it will be the most used area of the house not to mention it is home to two dogs. A definite need for scrubbable paint!
Here you can see the difference in the two colors pretty well.
Here’s a shot of the rest of the den.
Please excuse the mess in all these (and future) pictures. Outside of a few kitchen boxes, nothing has really found a home yet and is just floating aimlessly around the floor and counters. Anyways, you can see where we made the side of this cabinet white as well. The overall feel I was going for was beach house, airy, open, not oppressive dark wood paneling. It is a much more cheery room than it was before.
Which leads us to the most difficult thing to paint in recent memory. The section of cabinets that I had originally intended to take down.
Instead I decided to go ahead and leave them open and get some different colored glass pieces to display. To say painting this was a pain is a huge understatement. For the top shelf we had to stand on the counter and have our faces laying on our shoulders in order to see the top. Then you had to kneel on the counter for the next shelf (even 30 years of being a good Catholic didn’t prep my knees for that adventure). For the next cabinet you had to go between kneeling, crouching on the stepladder and sitting on the counter. For the last shelf- well I don’t remember what we had to do for the last shelf because I actually ended up spilling almost an entire tray of paint on that shelf and spent a frantic few minutes trying to get it all spread out. Craziness.
One important thing I learned from painting these cabinets. They sell those paintbrushes with no handle for a reason. It is for painting cabinets. I ended up taking my nice Purdy brush and actually dremeling the handle off. It was much easier after that.
Because it was such a pain- here’s another picture of it. I’m on the lookout for a few more pieces to fill it out. I did grab some fun glasses from Kohl’s which you can barely see in the bottom left corner.
I am working on getting the cabinet doors done. We had a few days of questionable (read: terrifying- we actually made the Weather Channel!) weather. Even the primer was taking forever and a day to dry so they aren’t quite done yet. I’m hoping to have them dry and up in a couple of days.
But I was able to get another project in the kitchen done.
Another middle of the night picture-
Here’s what they look like finished.
I’m ready for my close up Mr. DeMille-
The fabric is a (I think- too lazy to go check for sure) “Brother and Sisters” pattern that we got from Hobby Lobby. We were originally looking at doing each chair a different pattern and had all four picked out until luckily my sister realized that we’d be putting them on bright white chairs and each fabric we had picked out was cream based. Disaster averted!
Well, that about does it for today’s installment of This Ugly House. I’ll do the master bedroom tomorrow and then it all depends on how much I get done each day as to what I’ll post about next. I’ve got wallpaper to remove in the dining room, and the hallway/entryway/living room to paint. And of course I need to finish the cabinet doors!
Until then- I’ll leave you with this. I find BS much easier to take when it has a little seasoning.
Until next time!
It’s a two post day!
So here in southern Georgia we’ve got these pine trees that are for real tall. I do believe they are called slash pines. Very tall and they don’t branch until well over 10-15 feet up.
Anyways, we’ve got a ton of them in our yard. In the backyard we’ve got two that are dead and four that need to leave in order for us to a.) expand the driveway so the ass wipe next door shuts up about us even putting a single tread on his property (the property line is really weird towards the middle to end of our driveway- basically once our driveway ends his property begins) and b.) so we can build out our patio at some point.
We were going to leave the two in the patio area for a later date but the tree guy came by and gave us too good of a deal to pass up. So they are currently decimating the tree population in our backyard. There is quite a bit more sun right now, but once we get the patio built we will be putting in fruit and smaller trees so some shade will return.
But I wanted to share some pictures I took of this dude. He is 67 years old and has been climbing trees for over 40 years. He took that tree like Grant took Richmond. It was unreal.
I’ll make sure to get pictures of the much more open backyard when they are done. Maybe I’ll be able to catch some of the scandalized looks from the neighbors on film as well!
To begin today, I’d like to introduce you to my little friend…
The 5 gallon bucket of Kilz. He and I have become quite close over the last week. We’ve spent many an hour together. Good times.
Here we are in the breakfast area…
And in the den…
And what my sister so lovingly referred to as “The Beast”
My sister got a little too up close and personal with my dear friend. She was very thankful that we have a reflex to shut our eyes when something comes near them!
Here’s another shot of the den- complete with the dog pound we are running. The small one is my sister’s dog Carson and the medium and large are of course the much photographed Ginger and Bronco.
Speaking of the much photographed ones…
Bronco says hello!
I’ll leave you today with what was a very anticipated moment in the week- our first bit of color! It was very exciting.
Please note how dark it is outside. I do believe that this picture was taken at about 1 in the morning. It was a very, very long week. One I’m still not completely recovered from.
Tomorrow- more color!
Installment #2
Let’s see where we left off. Oh yes- the kitchen.
Here’s a picture of the breakfast area.
You can see the toolbox that we had pulled out in order to replace all the doorknobs and deadbolts in the house. Little did we know that the only tool we ended up using was a hammer. Those things really did not want to leave the house! Luckily Matt was able to beat some sense into them.
I was originally planning on taking this set of cabinets down but I didn’t really want to deal with repairing the ceiling just yet. It turned out much better than I could have thought.
From there we move on to the den. This room really is going to be one of the most difficult I fear. We have a projector and I’m trying to figure out how to get it all set up. It will probably involve building some sort of unit on the wall the little dog cage is on. We’ll see how it turns out.
A final picture for today- all the cabinet fronts all stacked and ready to be cleaned and primed.
Coming tomorrow (or probably the next day as the husband is now home and wants to help- I’ve got him pulling up nail strips): Pictures of the breakfast area/kitchen/den in progress and (almost) finished!
Installment #1.
I don’t know if you heard, but we’ve moved again. And this time we (after many trials and tribulations) bought a house.
What you may not know is we bought an ugly house.
Bless her heart but the lady before us had some horrible, horrible decor.
Please keep in mind that this assessment is coming from a person who has used Target patio furniture in their living room for the last year or so. That is an indication to just how bad this house was. But it was sort of like Emma Thompson in Nanny McPhee (I loved that movie), even with warts and misshapen teeth you could still see a beautiful person underneath. My house is Nanny McPhee.
Thanks to severe sleep deprivation (when will I ever learn to actually do things such as pack my belongings well before a mover arrives so I don’t have to stay up to all hours of the night frantically throwing shit into a box? When?) I forgot to get “before” pictures of the entire house but here is what I do have.
This is the cabinet unit in the breakfast room which is the first thing you see (that is if your eyes aren’t immediately drawn to the stunning linoleum) when you walk in the house.
Sidenote: You may notice some Girl Scout cookies. As I was making my final drive between Tampa and south Georgia, I stopped at a truck stop and lo and behold! found myself standing in front of a table full of Girl Scout cookies. I thought this child to be a genius- GS at a truck stop where people are tired, thirsty, hungry and vunerable. Amazing. Then I overheard the conversation concerning the trucker titty bar a few exits down and I was immediately concerned for the innocence of that enterprising young Girl Scout. Anyways, back to my ugly house.
You may also notice a piece of rolled up carpet. That’s because I wasn’t in the house 9 hours before I started ripping it up. We got really lucky and the floors underneath are in very good shape.
Well that is going to have to do it for installment #1 as my eyes are losing their ability to stay open. Much has been done to This Ugly House and I’m sure all twelve of you who read this will be all a tingle with excitement as I post more.
For now, good night and thank god you don’t have ugly ass wallpaper covering up even uglier wallpaper in your homes.
Na
Please let the house we looked at today show no major issues at inspection.
Becuase if I have to come up here (really it’s better to house hunt when you have a chance to go to your seperate corners.) and look at one more house with that man that I married of my own free will and volition, of sound mind and body, of… well you get the picture… I am going to kill him.
Kill him dead.
We’ve worked our way through the stages of home perusal.
Step 1: Opening the discussion of purchasing a grown up house instead of renting yet another crappy apartment filled with crappy furniture that reminds one of their college glory days.
Step 2: Gaze dreamingly into each other’s eyes as you discuss all the fabulous things you are going to do with said grown up house.
Step 3: Realize that the house you see in your partner’s eyes looks nothing like the house in your eyes.
Step 4: Shake it off as you both really just want whats best for you as a family.
Step 5: Start scouring every possible online listing you can find.
Step 6: Wonder out loud how anyone expects to sell something without providing pictures. What on earth could be so bad that they couldn’t take a picture of it? (It should be noted that one of the houses we went to see that had not provided pictures ended up not having a floor in the master bath shower and the surrounding floor was falling into the subsequent sinkhole.)
Step 7: Hook up with a realtor. This is a tricky step because when you do hook up with the realtor you just might find yourself back at step 2: Gaze dreamingly into each other’s eyes for a brief moment. However, I assure that this relapse is momentary because the first time that you hear your spouse say “Why on earth do you need a formal dining room?” you will find yourself hurtling towards step 8.
Step 8: Come to the bitter realization that your fear back in step 3 was completely justified.
Step 9: Hate every house you see.
Step 10: Start hating your realtor.
Step 11: Start hating your spouse.
Step 12: Start hating life.
Step 13: Start hating the kid who does the Welch’s commercial- no not Alton Brown, I’m talking about back when they had the cute little kids talking about grape juice. You now hate them. Yes even the blond little girl who did the commercials a little while back. You don’t know why, you just do. All you can see is that kid traipsing around the non-existant now ruined in your mind’s eye forever, house of your dreams staining every possible surface with that grape juice and my god why won’t they just sit down at the table in your fabulous eat-in kitchen which is nestled nicely inbetween a family room, not a living room- those are two seperate space, and a formal dining room. WHY? WHY CAN’T THEY REALIZE THAT THEY NEED TO BE OUTSIDE IN A FENCED IN BACKYARD THAT DOES NOT INCLUDE A DRIVEWAY? DON’T THEY KNOW THAT THE DOGS WILL RUN FREE AND MORE THAN LIKELY BE RUN OVER BY SOME HEARTLESS BITCH IN A CAMARO AND THEY WILL DIE ALONE ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD? AND THAT WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IF THERE HAD JUST BEEN HARDWOOD FLOORS INSTEAD OF CARPET?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Step 14: Come to grips with your hatred of Camaros. Really the car has never done anything to you.
Step 15: Walk into a house (on the same day that it snows in southern Georgia for the first time in 10 years) and realize that it is possible that this stranger you find yourself married to just might be the same one you married and holy crap you just might be able to live with them in this house.
Step 16: Put in an offer and pray to god that the inspection comes back all right.
Step 17: Write a blog post- using it as your therapy outlet.
Step 18: Apologize to all innocent bystanders.
Step 19: Go back home and start packing up the college dorm crap for Goodwill because you are back in a grown up house!
Caveat: The steps involved with packing/moving/unpacking are similiar but involve more bungee cords, cuss words, and mother in law putdowns.
I don’t know if it was obvious or not- but I’m currently around Step 17.
It’s a day to day process.
Please help me dearest baby Jesus.
Love,
Amanda
I would like one of you to explain to me (slowly) the allure of wood paneling.
For the life of me, I have been unable to come up with a single redeeming quality of the horrendous wall covering.
Was it the nasty brown color? The dark and lifeless gloom it cast upon a room?
Did you think- In 50 years I want no one to buy this house?
What? What was the reason?
Your silence speaks volumes. And your paneling hurts my soul.
We are done here.
Bird-day, and other little quirks 