February 2003
February 9, 2003: Our studio project is moving along nicely. We started this month by completing the drywall finishing work, and primed and painted the room a bright, clean white. We installed high tech halogen lights, which ended up being a lot more complicated to install than they looked! Here's where we are so far this month:
The lights look great, though, and it's a good thing, because we'd planned to use the same lights in the upstairs hallway to replace those ugly bare bulbs, but we weren't sure how they'd look. We brought our hardwood flooring material in from the garage to acclimate in the room (you can see it in the back of the room by the window in the photo on the left), so it's just waiting to be installed.
Most of the moulding is in, too, though we've still got to get window sills and skirts.
We also finally had the chance this weekend to install all the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in the house (we know, bad homeowners! Bad, bad homeowners to have lived without them so many months!) But they're all in now, installed in all the proper places and with fresh batteries throughout. Let's hope we'll never need them!
Once the floor is installed, we'll put up the moulding, give it a couple coats of good high gloss paint, and call this room "done for now." Right now, though, we're wrestling with a bookcase design for the room. We want floor-to-ceiling bookcases in the room, but we're just not quite sure where to put them, as we also want a gas fireplace in the room.
Well, we've at least got until we get the flooring installed to hammer out a design, but we'd still better get cracking!
February 17, 2003: Well, we'd hoped to put some fab photos of how far we've come after the ones above, but we're currently being blanketed by a foot of snow. It's absolutely beautiful-- bright white and unearthly quiet. Of course, there's no way to get anywhere to get the moulding we need to finish the studio, or to get to our tool rental place to get the tongue nailer for the floor.
But most inconveniently, we've run out of beer and are perilously low on wine. We do have plenty of scotch, however, and I think we've got half a bottle of tequila somewhere, so we should be able to manage for the next couple of days until the snow plows find us. Meanwhile, we look out the windows and once again realize why we love living here...
The photo on the left is our front yard, the photo in the middle is the western part of the property (you can just see the nearest part of the pasture fence) and the photo on the right is the pool. We promise it will look quite a bit different in June!
Other exciting news... we were delivered a new toy last week-- a brand, spanking new digital camera! We've been having a good deal of fun with it. It should make it a great deal easier to update this site more frequently, and we're working on new pics of the rooms for you all who've been requesting better or more detailed photos of certain areas.
February 17, 2003 (evening update): Well, there's now two feet of snow on the ground, and the tequila's gone (though in all fairness we think it was much less than a half-bottle). Since there wasn't much we could do in the studio without a tongue nailer and some moulding, we installed the lights in the upstairs hallway. Check them out, they look great:
By the way, the photos above were taken with our new digital camera. We can't believe the difference a good camera makes-- we love it! We're going to gradually replace a lot of the "after" shots on the website with good shots taken with our new camera. We'll let you know as we update them!
February 18, 2003: The snow finally stopped, and now the great dig-out begins. We shoveled snow for five hours, and ran around taking photos with our new camera, already blowing through one set of batteries! There are new photos up in the following gallery sections:
Even if you've been to these sections before, it's well worth checking them out again... the new camera makes a world of difference! If you go to the sections and you're not seeing the new photos, hit the REFRESH button on your browser.
February 25, 2003: We were able to dig out of the snow a lot faster than the city and state plow services were (thank goodness for friends who happen to be heavy equipment operators and happen to be working a plow contract nearby). If not for our friend with the industrial plow, we'd still be shoveling our driveway-- have you seen that thing? Oh, right, of course you have, it's in the gallery. Never mind.
Anyway, as soon as we dug out, we hightailed it to our nearest rental center, and grabbed a tongue nailer to start laying some hardwoods in the studio. Not that you asked, but take our advice: do not try to lay 350 square feet of hardwoods after you've spent the morning shoveling yourself and your neighbors out of two feet of snow. After this job, we were about crippled. Our chiropractor, however, is booking his spring vacation in Antigua just from our office visit fees:
We also quit dithering over where to put the bookcases, and got them installed, along with the crown moulding. Crown moulding-- ugh. We knew we should have paid more attention in high school geometry class, even if the teacher did wear short-sleeved plaid shirts and brown polyester Sansabelts. At least it's done, though we confess to an emergency Google search on "crown moulding interior angles" for cheat charts on the compound mitre saw angles.
So there's where we are currently. Check out next month's journal entry for our progress. We're going to be busting hard on this particular interior finish project, because after all, this is where all the filing will end up, and tax time's a rollin' around. The last nine month's worth of filing is piled in three banker's boxes in the kitchen, and our file cabinets are in the master bathroom. Nope, just. don't. ask. Anyhow, we just don't see the IRS being particularly sympathetic to our plight...
Switching gears for the moment, the other worthwhile discovery of late is a potential winner of our "what the hell do we do with that butt ugly fireplace in the family room" contest. The "before":
And the potential "after":
Okay, you caught us-- yes, we do peruse the Home Despot flyers in the Sunday paper, and even worse, the Ralph Lauren featured products. You've got to forgive Ralph his pretention (after all, he's built a multi-billion dollar design empire based on it) for occasional gems like the one above. What we are finding a bit hard to swallow, though, is that the color on the fireplace is "Tackroom White." We've spent a good deal of time through the years in barns, and can unequivocally state that we've yet to see a tackroom that is anywhere near "white." Cracked drywall grey, with patches of saddle soap tan, smudges of hay green, and assorted unknown smudges of dirt brown, yeah, but white? Yeah, right...
Anyway, continue on with us to next month, and see if we can get the studio finished and the filing squared away before the tax man cometh...
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