whhaa happen?

so the flooring dudes showed up. on time. and proceeded to knock out half the house in one day. i was a little blindsided by this, and am not sure what to say. so i'll just show you the pics.recall how i said they were the most fashionable workers we have had thus far. case in point. he has on dress shoes, and his hair is styled. in a faux hawk. oh yea.needless to say this sort of behavior (arriving on time, doing your work in a timely manner, brushing your hair, etc.) is unprecedented at the ole job site.

another case in point. these guys. i know you can only see half of them. but they are my painters. rest assured. now they have been about there about 3 weeks or so painting. there's only two of them, so that's no problem. but they usually cut out at about 5. but not yesterday. i think they were not to be outdone by the flooring guys, and were there past 6:30. so either they were waiting out the fashion flooring dudes, or they were too scared to come down off that scaffolding.bless their hearts tho. it is far up there. and i'm pretty sure the fumes and height were getting to them. they do good work. ("you like? this pretty color. it's white.")

and speaking of paint. this room is now pink. which has sent a number of people into a tail tizzy. and most surprisingly of all, chris hasn't said a word. fast eddie (my house framer) was more concerned than chris. don't ask why eddie is still there. our house is the house that will not die according to him.don't worry too much. i have a manly vision for this area.

you like? this the right color?

this is what my painters asked me the other day. i said "NOOOO! its not the right color!" then they fainted. and i said "i'm just kidding. its good." then they gave me a dirty look and said "ok lady". (warning, this tactic will backfire on you, when it actually is the wrong color. which happened to me in my closet area. they said "you like? right color?' i said no, its supposed to be blue. they said "no its white. you like? its white. haa" um no, really its not right. then they said "we call the boss" whoops. ) ok so anyway.

our bedroom, looking into the blue bathroom. (formerly country blue, now its van duesen blue)and a shot of the tub area.
and looking into the now semi-infamous, elvis bathroom. from the "i didn't know it was going to be THAT much turquoise hallway".and a little peek into the elvis area. (ps, still don't discuss this with chris. he is still getting used to the pink sitting area. yea. pink. more on that tomorrow).so look forward to more fun conversations with my painters tomorrow. and a discussion about my very fashionable floor install guys.

a few things

just some quick shots, because its hard to have a job and build a house at the same time. so i of course need to leave my real job and head to my house job in just a few.

so the finished fireplace in its entirety.
and the beginning of the living room ceilingand a cute pic of bo. just because.

wonders never cease

he finished. and in a timely manner. and with good results. i'm amazed. i will try not to fuss about the brick mason anymore. much. at some point, when chris returns home from planting season, we will have a nice mantel. as mentioned here bo says she can't wait until winter. when we can sit by the BIG fireplace and the BIG fire. me too. me too!

the weekend

this happened. a fireplace, or the start of one. and its IN the house. i will reserve judgement until i see if the masons showed back up today or not. that is how i grade the workers. you get points for just showing up. which speaks to how often somebody just doesn't even show. and just a little more tile. i promise i will stop with the tile soon. it just looks so niiiiice.and i started yet another project this weekend. refinishing my dining room table. its old. like real old. like 50 ish years old? so i decided the best thing for that, would be to take a hand sander to it. it needed it. plus somebody else wanted to charge me lots of monies to do it. so i figured the worst that could happen was that i could end up having to pay monies. so why not? its actually turning out pretty good. lets hope for the best here. there's not a whole lot that a hand sander, some stain and a beer can't make look better.

is all this really neccessary?

really? really? so moving on from the a/c units that i am pretty sure got mixed up, and actually belong in some large warehouse or something. maybe more like the refrigerated section of your grocery store.

anywhoo. so the shower floor + grout = loveliness. i think we think it's extra nice because of the shower we currently have. i won't go into details. but its gross. its about 60 years old. and i know i exaggerate, but i'm not here. and i am pretty sure that the orange stuff on the ceiling is not from me getting overzealous with the cherry blossom shower gel. so anything better than that chris and i would certainly compare to a shower at the ritz. we are super pleased. i say we. chris hasn't actually seen it, but i assured him he was super pleased.
i mean how could you not be? there's a seat in there. a seat! for years chris has told me he wanted to sit down in the shower. he really wanted to put a plastic chair in our current shower. i told him that wasn't a good idea because 1) there isn't room for you and a seat. he would have to actually bathe while sitting in it, and i am pretty sure there are a few key items you wouldn't be able to wash if you were sitting on them. 2) we really don't need anything else dangerous in the shower. we got the orange moldy stuff going on. lets don't add a slip and fall into the things that can harm us while we shower.
also, if you are wondering why in the world i haven't cleaned the orange stuff off of the shower ceiling. its because that prior to chris and i getting married. he decided it would be a good idea to spray popcorn ceiling in the entire house. everybody else was frantically trying to find a way to get that horrible mess out of their house, chris was putting it in. and its in the shower. which i am fairly certain its not an appropriate place for that. the mold just clings to all of those little nasty hang down popcorny things. thankfully, all of that is going to be remedied when we move out.

and finally. if the brick mason doesn't show up and actually do some work at my house asap, he is going to have to find somewhere else to be employed. i think he has been out there. and kinda looked around. do something while you are there. i mean just push some bricks around with your toe to act like you thought about the fireplace while you were there. i don't even know if he went in the house. i am not sure if he's ever been in the house actually. because as you may recall, the fireplace is more like outside of the house. so its totally plausible he may be surprised to find out there IS an inside. firePLACE not firePIT. lets try to get it together.

why my tile boys hate me

it's pretty much because of our shower. apparently working in a shower for 8 hours a day, for 2 days really isn't that fun. even if you are getting paid. even as they cussed me, they turned out this. pure awesomeness up in there.and they still aren't quite finished. but very very close... chris picked the green. i of course picked the turquoise blue color. bo's bathroom floor was pretty much child's play for them. i think they turned this out in an afternoon. if you could hear what bo is saying at this point its "why's all this junk in my tub? trash, trash, trash. why is everybody around here so junky. they are littering up our earth." no kidding, that is a direct quote. later on that night, she said (and i also quote) "i don't understand this world. why does everybody have to have money." there is no answer to that for a four year old. anyway, back to the tile....
as we were leaving. bo said i needed some pictures of her, with her crown on. and her play dress. and then she acted like it was some sort of model photo shoot. a new pose for every shot.

a hint of tile and siding

ok so i say hint because i had a propped up door, an electrician and a 4 year old all up in my space as i was trying to take these pics of bo's bathroom floor. maybe today there will be less of a crowd. also our shower is getting close to being done. but again, with 2 tile boys in there. it gets kinda crowded. at any rate. it all looks really really good. you NEED these boys to tile your house. that is of course, if you live near us. and are in need of some tile.and, drum roll please, we actually have one side of the house that has the siding completed. i just don't know what to say. only that i am glad to no longer be advertising for a company with that house wrap paper. how weird does that look? we had gotten used to the two tone look.

trim and tile

have made the most progress lately. if they are the only people you can get to show up, then that is really a no brainer. anyways, as we were looking at accent tiles for our shower. bo spied some bright red ones, pointed to them and said "these red ones totally need to go at the new house. totally." um, ok you are four. how do you know what totally is? plus my bathroom is blue, not red. get it together.

example. my tub. well i mean the tub is in the middle of the floor. but check out the tile!looking out from the shower

master bathroom floor. few tiles short. great.

half bath floor. which incidentally i am one tile short. sweet.
crown molding in the hallway/sitting roomdown the stairway
on another note, i have pretty much decided i want to fire at least one person from the job. i feel like its a right of passage when building a house. and i've got a couple to choose from. i am also putting that word out on the jobsite. to keep them on their toes. there's certainly a front runner though.

my daughter the gypsy. and her closet.

if you are familiar with the gypsy people, from up around north augusta. you will appreciate this. if you aren't familiar, this is what to look out for in identifying a gypsy. or more specifically a gypsy child. 1) flashy outfit which is age inappropriate. 2) make-up. also age inappropriate 3) too much jewelry. 3) a shoe rack in her closet, that gypsy child says looks like a store shoe rack. (by the way, she is eating a bowl of shredded cheese).extra closet upstairs.i am pretty sure she is thinking about taking a running leap off the front porch into the pond. she might could pull it off too.

bo has the best outfits

especially those she chooses to wear to the house in the afternoons. she insists on changing into these things when we get home. i would never let her wear them out in public. right. riiiiiiiight.

she also has some new move. i am not sure whats up with that.

here she is doing it again. on the porch. um princess, you might want to call those seamstress mice up and see if they can fit you in soon. that seems to be last years ball gown.

speaking of the porch. here it is. mostly finished. it turned out better than i had imagined. because at first, i wasn't really sure where it was headed. i didn't have porch vision.

front porch

back porch.

front porch. with some side porch thrown in. we like the porches around here. what can i say? i have a lot of plants that require varying degrees of sunlight.

the tile beginnings in our shower. you know it is hard to take a picture while you are in the shower. which i guess, is probably really for the best.

my tub. the tile looks good. the country blue. not so much.

finally

we can walk into the house. walk instead of climb a ladder!

walking into the house, from the garage. there are railings and columns up now as well. so i will post those later.

see the actual columns on the front of the house? instead of just a 2 x 4 kinda stuck up there. i mean the 2 x 4's are still there. you know. just in case.

and bo posing while i take pictures. she is on the porch off of the kitchen. i didn't think she was paying me much attention. until i realized as i was taking the 3rd or 4th shot, that she was being a little more dramatic with her drinking of gatorade than she need be.

and the base boards are up. they look awesome. if you need a trim guy. call me. i will tell you who to use. in fact, if you need anything house wise in my area. you call me. i will who tell you who made my nice and naughty lists. and who is on my "try not to hurt this person" list.

its shaping up.