Prairie Landing
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Back from the dead!
For the moment, anyway.
Two weekends ago we painted. All Friday night, all Saturday, all Sunday, and at 5:30 Sunday Colliculus announced, "I am never going to feel bad about spending money on painters. Ever." And we cleaned up our stuff and went to Sheffield's, which has one of the greatest beer selections and beer gardens in America. By then it was too cold to sit in the beer garden -- but what a statement that is! Whether you live here or not, can you believe it's been in the 70s for most of the last two weeks? Anyway, the next morning Colliculus called the painter and told him to do the rest and let us know how much it would cost. The painter was fine with this; he and his crew did the entire rest of the house in two days flat, it was a beautiful job, and he and Colliculus shared some Old Style at the end.
Our weekend of work, which probably added up to about 50 person-hours, saved us about $800. That's not all that impressive, but I'm OK with it. Especially when I put on my self-employment hat and remember that $800 out-of-pocket was more like $950 in pre-tax income. The pre-tax calculation, which I learned about when I was self-employed, is a great justification for all kinds of stinginess.
Last weekend we packed. The weather was more problematic. 80-degree sunshine is heartbreaking when you have to stay inside, but it's just plain hellish when the house next door is a factory of dust, chainsaws and Spanish curses from sunrise to sunset and you have to keep the windows closed and the music turned up. Even earplugs at the highest rating CVS offers (32) are not enough unless you're really sleep-deprived, which I'm working on. I am going to be so glad when we're out of here. I feel sorry for our landlord who has to lead prospective tenants to our apartment through a pile of discarded ductwork and sawdust (and cursing).
That brings us to next weekend: the move, featuring a pair of guys named Tom and Roland. Tom is the one who speaks English. More eventually.
Our condo looks SO much better now that it is white (not mustard, no checkerboard squares -- sorry to the surprising number of you who liked it) and the carpet has been cleaned (which I don't think happened in the previous 14 years).
Scene from painting:
Two weekends ago we painted. All Friday night, all Saturday, all Sunday, and at 5:30 Sunday Colliculus announced, "I am never going to feel bad about spending money on painters. Ever." And we cleaned up our stuff and went to Sheffield's, which has one of the greatest beer selections and beer gardens in America. By then it was too cold to sit in the beer garden -- but what a statement that is! Whether you live here or not, can you believe it's been in the 70s for most of the last two weeks? Anyway, the next morning Colliculus called the painter and told him to do the rest and let us know how much it would cost. The painter was fine with this; he and his crew did the entire rest of the house in two days flat, it was a beautiful job, and he and Colliculus shared some Old Style at the end.
Our weekend of work, which probably added up to about 50 person-hours, saved us about $800. That's not all that impressive, but I'm OK with it. Especially when I put on my self-employment hat and remember that $800 out-of-pocket was more like $950 in pre-tax income. The pre-tax calculation, which I learned about when I was self-employed, is a great justification for all kinds of stinginess.
Last weekend we packed. The weather was more problematic. 80-degree sunshine is heartbreaking when you have to stay inside, but it's just plain hellish when the house next door is a factory of dust, chainsaws and Spanish curses from sunrise to sunset and you have to keep the windows closed and the music turned up. Even earplugs at the highest rating CVS offers (32) are not enough unless you're really sleep-deprived, which I'm working on. I am going to be so glad when we're out of here. I feel sorry for our landlord who has to lead prospective tenants to our apartment through a pile of discarded ductwork and sawdust (and cursing).
That brings us to next weekend: the move, featuring a pair of guys named Tom and Roland. Tom is the one who speaks English. More eventually.
Our condo looks SO much better now that it is white (not mustard, no checkerboard squares -- sorry to the surprising number of you who liked it) and the carpet has been cleaned (which I don't think happened in the previous 14 years).
Scene from painting:
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Further painting-related deliberation
Sunday we got the expert advice of Pangaea, whose main qualification is that she loves to paint (colors only). She said, tactfully but with great certitude, that we could not paint the bedroom wall red. First of all, there was no way to sleep soundly in a room with walls painted red or orange. Bedrooms should be painted green, blue, or other soothing colors -- maybe a nice terracotta if we really wanted red. Second, a giant red wall amid all that white would be jarring.
I didn't buy the first argument, since nothing stands between me and my sleep, but I could definitely see her second point. We had been afraid of that too, in fact. In the end, notwithstanding all those helpful suggestions you all had (plus the Saab idea), we decided to paint everything white with an eventual plan of getting red shades (a dream of mine since I was 15).
Today I met with the painter, who happens to be our realtor's husband. Our realtor is an apple-cheeked, sweet-tongued Midwestern matron. Her husband on the other hand is a lanky, unsmiling Irishman, daubed in various shades of white, who does not mince words. He gave me the revised estimate, then some advice about the downstairs, which Colliculus and I and other willing and friendly parties are going to attempt this weekend: "Don't fuck it up." He then expounded on this theme. People think, "Anyone can paint." It's not true. Everyone fucks it up. Why, just look at this shitty job the previous owner did. (Points at smudged Grey Poupon in the corners, which I hadn't noticed before.) Couples call him, threatening divorce, asking him to come over and fix the crappy job they did. Anyway, he wasn't trying to get me to hire him to do the downstairs too, because in the end he offered me a tutorial on how not to fuck it up, insisted on buying all of our supplies at a discount and delivering them for us ("Everything they sell at Home Depot is absolute shit"), and urged me to call his cell phone at any time if the shit should hit the fan.
It's like having my dad around, if my dad used four-letter words and a cell phone. This should be fun.
I didn't buy the first argument, since nothing stands between me and my sleep, but I could definitely see her second point. We had been afraid of that too, in fact. In the end, notwithstanding all those helpful suggestions you all had (plus the Saab idea), we decided to paint everything white with an eventual plan of getting red shades (a dream of mine since I was 15).
Today I met with the painter, who happens to be our realtor's husband. Our realtor is an apple-cheeked, sweet-tongued Midwestern matron. Her husband on the other hand is a lanky, unsmiling Irishman, daubed in various shades of white, who does not mince words. He gave me the revised estimate, then some advice about the downstairs, which Colliculus and I and other willing and friendly parties are going to attempt this weekend: "Don't fuck it up." He then expounded on this theme. People think, "Anyone can paint." It's not true. Everyone fucks it up. Why, just look at this shitty job the previous owner did. (Points at smudged Grey Poupon in the corners, which I hadn't noticed before.) Couples call him, threatening divorce, asking him to come over and fix the crappy job they did. Anyway, he wasn't trying to get me to hire him to do the downstairs too, because in the end he offered me a tutorial on how not to fuck it up, insisted on buying all of our supplies at a discount and delivering them for us ("Everything they sell at Home Depot is absolute shit"), and urged me to call his cell phone at any time if the shit should hit the fan.
It's like having my dad around, if my dad used four-letter words and a cell phone. This should be fun.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Happy days, Ianqui and Super G have come for a visit. It's not a visit to us, strictly speaking, since they're here for a wedding, but they're crashing here so we still get plenty of q-time.
This week was all about painting the condo. No actual action was taken, just deliberation. The big question was whether to paint it ourselves or hire someone. Inevitably, our two driving motivations -- cheapness and laziness -- have come to war, as we knew must happen with homeownership. In the end it looks like we're going to compromise and hire someone to do the upstairs but do the downstairs ourselves. This all has to happen ASAP, before we move in, which has gotten to be impossible, so I finally had to call Tom the moving guy and beg off moving for another week. So on tap for the next three weekends, we've got painting, packing and moving. Woo-hoo!
Also, we've been dithering about how to paint the master bedroom. We could leave it all white, but that seems kind of boring. All the colors have problems, though. Bright colors are too dark. Pastel colors are too wussy and unlikely to match anything we ever own, since we never buy anything in a pastel color. Blue and purple are too cold. We thought long and hard about a bright, golden yellow, which has none of these problems, but rejected it. I can't link to the exact color, but I had something like this in mind:
Nothing matches our comforter. But we never make our bed anyway, which means what you usually see is a bunch of hand-me-down, holey blankets that are 4 mismatched shades of green and blue, and of course nothing matches that.
The latest theory is that the great big windowless wall will be cherry red, the rest will be white, and we'll get red window treatments to match. Which means we've got to get our asses in gear to pick out the window treatments and the paint, because we can't change our move date again. It's all kind of scary, though, because if we don't like it, it's really gonna suck to have a wall that's 14 feet high and cherry red. And what the hell kind of pictures can you hang on a cherry red wall?
Any thoughts?
This week was all about painting the condo. No actual action was taken, just deliberation. The big question was whether to paint it ourselves or hire someone. Inevitably, our two driving motivations -- cheapness and laziness -- have come to war, as we knew must happen with homeownership. In the end it looks like we're going to compromise and hire someone to do the upstairs but do the downstairs ourselves. This all has to happen ASAP, before we move in, which has gotten to be impossible, so I finally had to call Tom the moving guy and beg off moving for another week. So on tap for the next three weekends, we've got painting, packing and moving. Woo-hoo!
Also, we've been dithering about how to paint the master bedroom. We could leave it all white, but that seems kind of boring. All the colors have problems, though. Bright colors are too dark. Pastel colors are too wussy and unlikely to match anything we ever own, since we never buy anything in a pastel color. Blue and purple are too cold. We thought long and hard about a bright, golden yellow, which has none of these problems, but rejected it. I can't link to the exact color, but I had something like this in mind:
Nothing matches our comforter. But we never make our bed anyway, which means what you usually see is a bunch of hand-me-down, holey blankets that are 4 mismatched shades of green and blue, and of course nothing matches that.
The latest theory is that the great big windowless wall will be cherry red, the rest will be white, and we'll get red window treatments to match. Which means we've got to get our asses in gear to pick out the window treatments and the paint, because we can't change our move date again. It's all kind of scary, though, because if we don't like it, it's really gonna suck to have a wall that's 14 feet high and cherry red. And what the hell kind of pictures can you hang on a cherry red wall?
Any thoughts?
