Workshop, Pillows, and a Piano!!!

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Brandon's parents came out to visit. They were great in helping us get a few projects tied up.

Raymond helped Brandon put wiring into the shed attached to the house. The live wires that were already run out to the shed were a much higher amperage than could be used for regular outlets, so it was a great thing that he was there to help Brandon. Brandon would have had no idea, and would have fried every single thing he plugged in!

Brandon made a bench in the shed, and together, he and his dad hung the bikes and built more shelving!

Meanwhile, Barb and Debra were taking apart the hideous pillows, and resewing dark brown in place of the bright floral print. Brandon really sucks at taking pictures, so there are no pictures of Barb doing any work. Which is unfortunate, since she did so much of it!!!!

the process

the completed product!

While Barb was sewing up the pillows, Debra took off ALL of the remaining wallpaper in the kitchen. She scored HUGE brownie points for this. Way to go, Mom! :)

The most exciting adventure of the weekend was the one that Barb was nearly as excited about as Brandon! The piano! Brandon's predecessor at work had moved an acoustic upright grand into the music classroom, but it wouldn't stay in tune due to the fact that the room is not climate-controlled year-round. Thus, it was mostly just a piece of furniture. She gave Brandon permission to take it home on loan for as long as we wanted!

We rented a U-Haul and went to get it. Luckily, we didn't set off any alarms at school. Then, we had the challenge of moving it into the house. It took three drivers and five brains to get the U-Haul aligned to the front door correctly, but we got it in! HUGE "Thank-You" to Charles Peters, in addition to Brandon's parents, for helping us get the piano in place. We couldn't have done it without you guys!

...Now we just have to wait for it to acclimate to the temperature, and then tune it! Brandon has been itching to tune a piano... Just in time for Christmas Carols!!!

White Paint and Couches!

We knew that the brown of the front door was not going to work with the browns in the room. After debating over the merits of different colors, we decided that a white door would be the best for the room.

Being a vinyl door, we were faced with some interesting challenges. Regular primers didn't work at all, so after some serious eyebrow scrunching, we realized how silly we had been:

Vinyl is just plastic!

Three and a half cans of spray paint later, and a VERY sore pointer finger, we had a white door!!

Java loved the white door!

She was a bat for Halloween!

 But that's not all, folks. There was still MORE white paint to be painted!

We were quite tired of not being able to have all our kitchen wares out and usable, so Barb painted the INSIDE of the bottom cabinets and drawers.  This way, we could move things down from the upstairs closets, and into the kitchen. It was so nice to have bowls and service wear back!!!

Barb's Mom, Joanne, came to visit us at the end of October. She was a champ, and followed us around all day on Saturday sitting on couches with us. We finally settled on an AWESOME couch. It was the exact color, texture, and firmness that we wanted. The only problem was that it had a VERY bold pattern on one half of the pillow. And this bright pattern of yellow, pink, orange, and brown, was the exact opposite of everything we wanted in our front room. For the time being, we just turned around the pillows, and pretended they were normal. hehe

Painting and Trimwork

Barb painstakingly took off the wonderful wallpaper from the walls in the dining room, and prepped the walls for painting. Wallpaper removal fluid is a bunch of hooey. And even when you score the wall, it really doesn't do anything. All it did was mar up the walls. Barb found that the best way to remove the wallpaper was a spray bottle of warm water, and a putty knife. And LOTS of patience.

Once the paper was removed, all the little score marks had to be filled, and a hole in the wall (from the previous tennant) had to be fixed. Then, Brandon had to remove the crown molding, and Barb went to town painting the walls.

Brandon worked hard to put all the trimwork back up, and to lay all the baseboard trim in the front room.

Not all the trim was on yet...

While Brandon was away at the NC Music Educator's Conference, Barb painted all the trimwork white. It looks so bold and beautiful!