Homeownership

So, we continued the painting adventure in earnest on Sunday after a quick post-church lunch at Arby's (I always carry my Arby's coupons for just such occasions). Christina came home late that evening and was very impressed, but that quickly turned to distress when I didn't stop painting again till 1 AM. Apparently she was having trouble falling asleep and needed me by her side to conk out. Sorry, babe!

What was keeping me? Well, she wanted a red accent wall in the library/office (the middle room) downstairs. I picked up a gallon of the closest color I could find to the one she specified. However, the first coat looked like crap and the second coat didn't do much to help. I ended up waking up this morning (painting day 3) to put a third coat on and then put a fourth on this evening. I used the entire gallon, but it looks awesome! Pics to follow soon at the new Szrama Clan website.

While I continued to work on the accent wall, my step-dad was making awesome headway in the kitchen. The whole thing is taped and primed, leaving me with a much shorter weekend of painting to finish the job. It's been fun to take care of little annoyances around the house as we paint. I fixed a picture frame and a cabinet shelf, and we finally scraped the stickers off the windows that pre-dated our purchase of the house. I think next I'm going to have to clean all the windows downstairs, because they're straight nasty.

Today was probably the best "painting" day yet, because it included a trip to the movies, Moe's for dinner, and Dairy Queen for a late night "we finished two rooms, hooray!" snack. We saw X-men Origins and Terminator Salvation. Both flicks were awesome, but I was definitely more excited about and impressed by X-men. Watching Wolverine and Gambit in action just rocked. If you have to pick between these movies, go get some X-men.

Now it's past midnight and I'm continuing my trend of working all day and working all night. I'm hoping to hit the sack soon, because I have to get up to prepare for a business trip to Chicago where I'll be teaching Ubercart to a room full of learners. I can't wait! Christina's in Toronto for a couple weeks, so she won't miss me being at home. Here's hoping the garden doesn't dry up while I'm gone!

So, this Memorial Day weekend, Christina drove off to visit with family in Nashville while my step-dad drove up from Atlanta to help paint the downstairs of Top Porch. For those just tuning into my life, that's the name of my house, and he's the one who made us the sign that proves it. Painting downstairs is quite the task, as our ceilings are 11' tall. However, after a yummy breakfast at Denny's and a trip to Lowe's for paint and supplies, we dove in undaunted by the long weekend ahead of us.

I'm happy to report that things went quite well and possibly better than expected! We managed to paint and trim the living room and half of the library/office. We had to leave a few sections unfinished, because we didn't have the sandpaper necessary to smooth out some patched spots. We'll take care of those tomorrow and finish at least the library/office tomorrow. Who knows, we might even make some headway on the kitchen.

I don't have the color cards on hand, but I'll be sure to post the colors tomorrow. They're earthy and quite appealing, and even just the work we've done so far feels like it's transformed the house. Our walls thus far have been a dirty, scuffed white with small trails of stain and running down them here and there. We inherited them in this state and meant to paint them but never really had the opportunity. However, with baby Eowyn on the way and a pregnant momma able to leave the premises for a weekend, it was now or never!

I walked out of my house with my wife to run some errands with my wife last Friday when lo and behold I got to meet my city's mayor! We saw a group of people in Shelby Park a stone's throw away from our house and I decided to investigate. Undeterred by the news cameras and dozens of people wearing suits and seeming to be a little more important than me, I took my stand in the midst of the group and listened to our mayor.

If I'd known I was going to meet him today, I might've walked out of the house looking a little more like a grown-up. As it was, I was in sandals, my hair was wet from my shower, and I was sporting my (awesome) Mega Stega t-shirt... not bad, except it's a screen print t-shirt with neon pink writing. Classy.

Mayor Abramson was discussing a government initiative to tear down or sell to property investors foreclosed and dilapidated homes in our neighborhood. This is great news, as our streets here are riddled with abandoned homes. I live next to one of said homes, and I can vouch for the fact that it was being used as a crack house until I was able to get the city to board it up. (Well, it was being used as one while it was still occupied, too, among other unsavory uses.)

After the mayor finished speaking, I walked up and waited a minute to shake his hand and introduce myself. It was fun, if not a little awkward. He's tall. And so is my councilman, David Tandy, who was hovering by his side. It was nice to be able to introduce myself as a property owner in the neighborhood who's actually interested in purchasing and tearing down some of these worthless properties. I was able to get a couple of good leads on ways to cheaply reclaim abandoned properties. Gotta put my master plan of a double-wide lot into action...

I think he was impressed by the Mega Stega.

Well, at work I was able to put together a great Drupal site for the Sound Home Resource Center and handle most of the content migration from the old site. What's best is that it comes at a very good time for me, as I'm a new homeowner here in Louisville, KY. The site is a compilation of the knowledge and general wisdom of George Guttmann, a home inspector and guru in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently he runs a radio show as well... and the site is just great. The content that is, though I'm equally as proud of the innards of the site. I hope to do a write-up in the near future about some (innovative? there's nothing new under the sun...) cool Views usage to construct articles out of individually posted sections.

Anyways, the site... http://www.soundhome.com