Here are some before shots of the living room, sans furniture. That nasty carpet grossed me out...and then we discovered even nastier linoleum underneath the carpet by the front door--imagine those ugly tiles AND linoleum! Man, I feel sorry for this poor house...
While I was at work the other day, Dave and I were chatting on Gmail chat (I don't know how I'd get through the day without Gmail chat...) about his progress on preparing the living room for the new flooring. He said that he'd gotten all the tiles removed and had also prepared each of the 45 termite poison holes for patching. Being a dorky accountant, he reported to me that he estimated that he'd whacked the hammer 8500 times that day (with 10 whacks per tile, roughly 600 tiles in the living room, and 50 whacks required to chisel out each termite poison hole, and 45 holes). Double whew! When I got home that night he was visibly worn out. He didn't move his arms any more than necessary that night (except to change the TV channel).His 2.5 weeks of vacation are over now, so doing the final touches on the flooring project will go slower now. We have yet to paint the door casings in our room, install any of the trim in the hallway (there are SEVEN doors in there!), and install all of the 10 transition pieces at each door way. Yikes. Plus in the living room we have 4 "outside" corners where we'll have to figure out how to properly cut/install the baseboard. Before we can install the crown moulding in the living room we'll first need to purchase and install the much-anticipated over-the-range microwave and its vent pipe. This pipe will have to breach the kitchen ceiling, which means making a big mess of drywall sawing above the stove. Then we'll have to fashion a drywall "box" to hide the ugly pipe above the kitchen cabinets. (We have textured walls so to make it look intentional we'll need to try to match the texturing on the box...what a pain.) And there's more: the kitchen ceiling is that ugly "renter white" color so I will probably want to paint over it before we do the moulding. And since I've been cooking in there for over a year it means that I will have to WASH my ceiling to ensure that the paint will adhere. (Wow, all this sounds so familiar: "If you give a mouse a cookie, then he'll want a glass of milk...") I'm seriously tired just from listing-out all those tasks...
Like most females, I am always wanting new stuff for the house, forever dreaming up ways to redecorate. And like most Levies, I am also addicted to books. In fact, for my 22nd birthday Dave bought me a complete 1976 Bicentennial edition Encyclopedia Brittanica set. That was 4 years ago and my book collection has only increased. Lately I've been ogling all the pretty bookcases at Ikea every time we go there to pick up more flooring materials. Dave was adamantly opposed to purchasing the ones I wanted since they are fairly expensive. I wouldn't settle for the cheaper, shorter ones because I like tall furniture. (This stems from my many years as a student living in renal units: for ease of annual moving and low cost, students never seem to have furniture taller than about 4 feet--or made of real wood for that matter. Since I'm finally married with my own house I really want to have "real, adult" furniture. And to me, that means tall and real wood. Unfortunately, that also means expensive.) Well, on Friday we decided to look on Craigslist for the millionth time to see if there were any good deals on solid wood bookcases. And--hot dog!--there were two available for less than the cost of one of those Ikea book cases. They are 7 feet tall (yay!) and solid oak. So yesterday morning we were off to Roseville with the trailer in tow. I think they look great with our new flooring. (And even after I loaded all my books onto the 2 new cases and the 2 old ones, there's still room for MORE. No that I need anymore books. Last weekend Dave threatened to put me on a "book budget".)
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