Green Thumbs

Nancy and I whipped out our green thumbs and did a little landscaping in the back yard last weekend. We really had absolutely no idea what we were doing, so there is a good chance this is the last time you will see any of these plants alive. We planted a pear tree (sans partridge), an oak tree, and some smaller flowers and plants. I basically pushed the cart around Home Depot while Nancy picked stuff out. My only contribution was to veto the plants that would be toxic to Shelby, since she eats everything that doesn't eat her first. We are slowly running out of projects around the new house, and I am quickly running out of things to blog about. I may have to branch out from The Fitz and start discussing ALL the mundane details of our lives. You won't wanna miss it.

Paint-the-fence, young Daniel-san

We decided that, after seeing all the wooden fences in our neighborhood faded after 6 months, we would weatherproof our fence to prevent this from happening. We decided on Redwood Weatherproofing Fence Stain, and naively went to Home Depot to buy a couple of gallons. The math on the side of the can said we would need about 3 gallons to cover our fence. However, we found that the five-gallon bucket was a better deal than buying three gallon cans. So we grabbed two 4" brushes and were on our way.

We woke up bright and early this morning to get started, to avoid being baked alive by the sun. I poured a little of the stain in Nancy's pan, and we each picked a random wood plank to start on. Ten minutes later, after we had each finished a grand total of ONE plank, we decided the brush technique was less than ideal, and that continuing with this method would put us finishing sometime around Labor Day.

Plan B. I went and got the trusty bug sprayer out of the garage, filled 'er up, and got to spraying. Worked like a charm, and certainly covered the wood much faster than brushes. However, sending the gooey stain airborne on its way to the fence gives it the opportunity to also blow into one's hair, mouth, eyes, and clothes. Well worth it, we decided, to avoid painstakingly painting it with a brush. One other problem. The bug sprayer was 1 gallon, which lasted about ten minutes of spraying. So every ten minutes we had to stop and fill it up again. Which also meant that, while much more efficient, this method was using much more stain than the side of the bucket said. We got about 1/3 of the way through and ran out of stain.

We had planned on taking a break for lunch during the heat of the day anyway. So after lunch we ran by Home Depot for another bucket. We decided to go ahead and get 2 more, thinking that we probably wouldn't use the second one, and we could return it. We also bought a 2.5 gallon sprayer made specifically for our task at hand, so we wouldn't have to fill it up as often. Besides, the bug sprayer was getting clogged by this point.

The sprayer worked beautifully, and the rest of the left side fence and the entire back fence went off without a hitch. By this time, Nancy had given up on trying to stay semi-clean, so she was covered head-to-toe with red goop. Then about halfway down the right side of the fence, the sprayer broke. It would still spray, but only if I held it together with two hands while spraying. Add that to the fact that the house next door already has siding up, so we had to be extra careful not to inadvertently paint their house in the process...and the last 40 feet of fence took almost as long as the other 100 feet.

We finally finished just before dark. And we used all but about 1 gallon of the 15 gallons we bought. Here is a picture of Nancy. Without knowing the above story, you would just assume by looking at her that she had just gone on a mass killing spree.

What doesn't show in the pictures is the thick layer of red goop lacquered to her hair like an orange helmet. It is still there, by the way, even after an hour-long shower. She will be spending all day in the shower tomorrow, I bet. She vetoed my plan of dunking her head in a vat of paint thinner.

Anyway, here is the finished product. It was worth it...I guess.

Before

After

On an unrelated note...I talked to my Mom tonight. The first thing she tells me is, "hey, I got my colostomy last week." I almost swerved off the road. Because it would not surprise me for my mother to have major surgery and not tell me. And a colostomy, which involves severing the large intestine, cutting a hole in your side, and re-routing the end of the colon to this hole, where one's poop exits into a nice little plastic bag, is certainly major surgery. I didn't even know she had any colon problems, let alone had anything serious enough to need a colostomy. "Why did you have to have a colocstomy?" I asked. "Wait," she said. "Maybe it wasn't a colostomy. Yeah, it was a colonoscopy." Thanks, mom. You almost gave me a heart attack. Because a minor procedure sticking a camera up your butt is almost the same as re-routing your entire gastrointestinal tract necessitating the need to empty your poop bag twice daily.

Family Time

My mom, dad, sister Carrie, nephew Logan, and niece Brynna all made the trip down to Katy to visit for the 4th of July and see The Fitz. They made it down Friday after an evidently looong and exciting car ride. It takes normal people 2.5 hours to drive from Lorena to Katy. But my family has never been accused of being normal. Especially when you have a five-year-old and a one-year-old along for the ride. It took them about 4.5 hours. There were the requisite bathroom stops, food stops, and plus, I hear, a few poop false alarms from Logan.

The first thing we did was give them the tour of The Fitz. My dad, sister and the kids had never seen it in person, and the only time my mom saw it, it was barely framed. Then we went on a tour of the model home and introduced them to Mike, the sales manager for Meritage. Logan, of course, loved the bug room at the model home. Not as much as he loved the Star Wars Room at The Fitz, though. We don't actually have a Star Wars room, but I told Logan that is the name of the room where he would be sleeping...so it immediately became his favorite room. He spent hours in that room playing with his new Star Wars toys that we bought him. One of the toys was a huge, ugly monster called Rancor, which I think was his favorite. This kid is obsessed with Star Wars. He evn tried to make his mom sleep on the floor since Rancor monster was already neatly tucked in to the bed...and there just wasn't room for mom, too.

Logan also loved our goldfish, Holt, which we kept in a big bowl on the kitchen counter. We had been wanting to get an aquarium and a few more fish anyway...and since Logan seemed to really like the fish, I went ahead and bought the aquarium and fish while he was here. He then promptly tried to name them all...after Star Wars characters.

Brynna is the sweetest toddler I have ever seen. And she is fearless. Turn your back on her for five seconds, and she is halfway up the stairs, ready to jump off. We had to put up the baby gate to keep her on the first floor.

All in all, it was a fun weekend of 1.5" thick ribeye steaks, fireworks, and swimming. We love it whenever we get to spend time with our families...since it doesn't happen nearly often enough.

And last weekend we got to see Brandl and Danielle and Brooke and Tyler, who came to visit for a few hours while Nancy's mom was in town. Wish we got to see them more, because those twins are growing like weeds.

Hopefully, we will be able to see Laura, Scott and Makinley soon, too. Every picture I see of Makinley, she looks cuter and cuter. And I can't believe how big she has gotten.

Bottom line is, we are both very thankful to have such wonderful families...and as crazy as it can get sometimes, we love just hanging out with them whenever we can. Now that we are kind of settled in, hopefully it will be more often.

I finally finished the wall art I did for above the fireplace. I'm not sure how well it turned out, but since Nancy forced me to hang it on the wall, I guess it turned out okay. Especially since I've never done anything like this before, and I changed it a hundred times before I got it right. Our back bedroom-slash-art studio has now officially been declared a disaster area. After this mess, I think I'll go back to painting less abstract paintings, like these:

Here are a few pics of the wall art:

Mad Crown Moulding Skillz

Nancy and I decided to take on the seemingly simple task of trying to put up crown moulding. The plan was to start simple, in the powder room, with its 90-degree angles and horizontal ceiling, and work our way up to the more difficult rooms. First, we had to buy a compound miter saw and 24 feet of crown moulding, which we did yesterday at our new home away from home..Lowe's. Nancy painted them yesterday so they would be dry by today.

After lunch today, we decided it was go time. We ventured out into the newly organized garage. The sweltering 120 degree sauna that is our garage did not deter us. First we decided to "practice" using our new saw on some of the scrap 2x4s from the house going up next door. So far, so good. No severed fingers or mangled limbs. Then, we decided to ratchet things up a notch and try it on the actual moulding, of which we had just a few feet extra. We had bought a nice little Do-It-Yourself Crown Moulding book at Lowe's, which I offered to go get from inside before we attempted this. "No", Nancy (the Geometry teacher) says. "The walls are 90 degree angles, so you just cut each end at 45 degree angles, and nail it up." I reluctantly agreed to the trial and error vs. read the directions approach, since this is typically my philosophy in life anyway.

We made the first cut, held the two pieces together, and...well, they would have fit together better if we had just wacked off the ends with a machete. Eight practice cuts later, and no closer to acheiving even the slightest degree of congruency between the two ends of moulding, we agreed it might be time to go get the book. A few seconds into thumbing through the pages, we soon realized this wasn't quite as simple as we had envisioned. There were charts, that took up three pages, to determine the cut angle of the saw and the tilt angle of the saw, which all depends on the angle of the corner, the angle of the moulding (all crown moulding is not created equal), the relative humidity, the phase of the moon, and application of Newton's 45th Law of Thermodynamics.

Five more practice cuts later, and long since having used our "extra" moulding and halfway into what we had planned on actually using, we finally figured it out, with the help of our trusty chart. The "simple" angles of the cut and the tilt respectively, are 31.6 degrees and 33.9 degrees, by the way, for a 90 degree corner. I'm sure we would have eventually figured that out ourselves.

We took some notes while trying to figure it all out:

In the end, after an entire afternoon of sawing, nailing, sanding, painting, and cussing...we managed to finish the 5 foot by 5 foot powder room. Thanks to Nancy's mad caulking and puttying skillz, it even looks halfway decent.

I think it will be awhile before we tackle any of the other rooms in our house, with all their vaulted ceilings and non- 90 degree angles.

If my Dad has said it once, he has said it a million times: When all else fails, read the directions.

Lost desk parts, Chinese furniture, and a magical cordless TV

It's like magic. I leave at 7 am, put in another day's work saving the puppies and kittens of Greater West Houston, get home at 7 pm and something in the Ol' Fitz looks entirely different. Nancy has been hard at work this week finishing our office, painting the powder room, and painting the kitchen. That is all after a busy weekend of sewing and hanging curtains with her mom (Okay, she didn't do much of the sewing or hanging, but she is a damn good supervisor). I'm just afraid what she is going to do with her time off this summer once all our projects are done, when every room is painted, and every curtain is hung. I fear she may turn to drugs or even worse, Oprah, to fill the hours of the day. She's been very busy, and the house looks great...but I really haven't done a thing. Well, I did help her organize the garage, and I do water the grass on occasion, but all in all I have done about 1% of the work since we moved in.

Here is the "window treatment" (that is a new phrase I learned) in the master bedroom that I forgot to show you last time. Her and her mom used some pillow shams (I think) to make this.



Here is the powder room, complete with elongated toilet, that Nancy painted this week.



She also painted the kitchen today. No, the laundry detergent and trash on the island are not permanent decorations.





Here is a random picture of our formal dining room.

Oddly enough, I think the office is the thing Nancy is most excited about. The pride she exhibited when she first ordered this desk is something comparable only to the birth of one's children. The problem is, she hasn't been able to properly organize the office because the oh-so-critical corner piece was lost somewhere in UPS purgatory before it ever made it here. They never did find it, but they did send us another one. The original, according to the ever-so-accurate UPS tracking system website, is still pending delivery. Of course, it said that three weeks ago, too. The office is not quite finished yet, but the desk is finally complete. It is very versatile, too. It can be used for bookkeeping for a one doctor veterinary clinic, or it can be used to seat a meeting of the United Nations, with room to spare for a few rogue dictators. Why we needed a desk that big is anyone's guess...but we got a great deal on it, and as always, that is all that matters.

We are very proud of our bedroom tv, complete with pre-wiring so that no cords are visible hanging from the tv.

Never mind that our cable box is currently propped up on a cardboard box in the corner, next to all the folded clothes on our floor. At least we do not have those unsightly cords dangling in plain sight. Hopefully, the cardboard box and using the floor as our dresser is temporary, just until our dresser arrives. Our original was damaged at the warehouse, and apparently the only other one like it in the world had to be shipped from China on a rowboat, only after being assembled by hand in a Chinese sweatshop by underpaid 8 year olds using wood harvested from African jungles and carried to China by camels, one board at a time. What I'm trying to say is it is taking a really long time to get here. We are expecting it right about the time that we have all our furniture paid for. Late August of 2011. Until then, we will have to just be content with our magical, cordless TV.

Oh boy...decorating

Now that we are all moved in, I have been diligently working on my Honey-Do List. I have been in charge of not letting our newly laid sod die despite no rain for two months. I don't think I've ever watered a lawn in my life, and now it is like a daily ritual. We may even get it mowed soon. We also stained the concrete on our back patio...which turned out pretty well even though Nancy and I had no idea what we were doing. (Public service announcement: when frantically rolling ACID onto concrete, it is a good idea to wear safety glasses. Some shot up in my eye, which caused me to dance around the back yard like my pants were on fire. Luckily, I still have two functioning eyes. I'm also glad we do not have neighbors as of yet.) We have gotten most of the odd jobs done by this point...except for the big one: organizing the garage. I have put it off so far, but I may actually have to buckle down and do it next weekend.

The current project du jour is interior decorating...of which I am completely clueless. Thankfully, Nancy's mom loves that kind of stuff, and the sewing that goes along with it...so she came down for a few days to make curtains for some of our windows. And she works cheap. Here are some pictures of what they have done so far.

Living Room Small Window



Living Room Big Window

Dining Room

Roman Shade on back door, open

Roman Shade on back door, Closed

I think everything turned out really well, although I am easily impressed. I was in awe that the curtains matched our couch. Turns out they planned it that way.

The shade on the back door is something called a "Roman Shade". It basically folds up like an accordion when you pull the string. Pretty cool, but I have no idea how one would even begin to make something like that. I guess that's why they just tell me to stay out of the way.

To keep me busy and out of their hair, they assigned me the job of creating an abstract painting to go over the fireplace. I think I got this job because I can draw. Only abstract art is not at all like drawing, and I can't recall ever painting anything abstract. So we'll see how that turns out. I haven't let Nancy and her mom see much of it because a) I like to wait until it is finished before anyone sees it, and b) I do not want Nancy to see the horrible mess I have made of our back bedroom. Let's just say oil painting is alot messier than I remember. Hopefully it will turn out decent and be presentable enough to actually hang up on the wall. If so, I'll post some pictures.

That's all the fun and exciting news for now. It's 2 am, so I probably ought to go to sleep sometime tonight.

More Pictures

We finally got everything moved in and semi-arranged. We still have alot of unpacking boxes to do, and some furniture assembly that Nancy is working diligently on, but most of the hard work is done. Now we just have a list of about 500 "projects" to get The Fitz up and running.

Today, they delivered our fridge, dining room table and hutch, tv stand, end tables and coffee table. We may be sending the coffee table back, as it is too big for our living room. And Best Buy forgot our bedroom tv today when they were supposed to deliver it with our fridge. That was the only thing I was excited about! Oh well, it will give me something to look forward to tomorrow after a long day of saving Houston's puppies and kittens.

We thought this house was huge until we got all our junk in here. How we ever fit all this stuff into a 1400 square foot house, I will never know.

Here are some pictures of how everything looks now. I say now, because I am sure Nancy will be making me rearrange it all three or four more times.