Another brush with reality TV

What could be more exciting to an avid HGTV watcher like me than getting to spend a weekend in a suite designed as part of the HGTV DesignStar competition? Well, several things.. but I digress.

This is the suite. Its at the insane Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. Sara Evans was the celebrity style influence or something like that...

And here's moi sitting right there.


Have you ever watch those HGTV design shows where they give tips like "Just take an ordinary throw pillow and hot glue a fancy trim on the edges!"? Don't you ever wonder if that really looks as bad as it sounds? Hot glue? Well folks, the answer is yes, it does look bad... as bad as an 8th grade OM project. And it holds up about as well as can be expected too:



That reference to OM is a great segway into the real reason I got to stay in the lovely suite:

A Groundhog Day Resolution

Be it known that I am hereby resolving to update this blog more regularly. Let's put a number to it: twice a week. That's right. Call me craaaazy but important milestones in the journey towards our finished kitchen are being missed, lost forever.

Here's a major milestone: All 8 drawers are designed, constructed, assembled, and resting peacefully in their forever homes. I thought this would be a major ordeal, but we impressed ourselves by getting all that done in the span of a week or so. How did we do it? Well first we nixed the "dovetail" idea. That would've been a nice touch, and a major time sink. Second, the fancy Blum drawer slides we bought are, simply, a work of engineering genius. They are SO nice. They work perfectly, with tolerance for error built in on all dimensions. And they install in a snap, even without purchasing the pricey Blum installation jigs. They even have a soft-close feature, which I'm sure will add major $ to our bottom line when we go to sell this place. Check this out:



Here's something else that's pretty cool. We made one of the large desk area drawers in to a file cabinet. August just loves filing things and keeping them forever, so this will be perfect for us.













That's all for today folks. I can think of at least 2 more important blog posts that need to go up, and more topics are coming every day. I think we've finally found our long-lost motivation... more on that later!

Abby's Christmas Vacation

We are back from a two week vacation. Abby had a blast. She got to play with all manner of other dogs: Yellow, Jet, Shadow, Hunny, Babs, Deuce, Oakley, Pete, Zoey, and Boomer. Several all at once, too. And by "play with", I mean: chase, start fights, boss around, and tear up their toys. Kind of like that bully when you were a kid whose mom was friends with your mom but you dreaded hearing that they were coming over to play... sigh...

"I got the ball... Don't bother me."

Here she's the smallest of the 4 dogs, probably a first in her life.

Oh yeah, she caught something called "flacid tail syndrome" after swimming in the freezing cold lake. Don't laugh.

The drive back: not nearly as spacious. We really needed to bring that deer head with us.

Milestones

We are getting there! Not quite time to roll the credits but we really are making progress.. Well we were anyway. One milestone that is majorly in the way is - my LAST week of school. And the requisite LAST projects. Regarding the cabinet project though, we have finished the following things:

The LAST cabinet box
The LAST face frame - in fact we have even drilled the LAST pockethole
The LAST shelf built

Okay that's all I can think of for now but I'm still excited about it. :)

Business as usual...

I'm "working from home" today, sitting at the new desk area in the kitchen, which I love. There a great view of the backyard - snow coming down right now! Close proximity to the food. The optical mouse even works on the granite. No need for a mouse pad. What more could you ask for?
There's some new trim for the above window being stained in the garage as we speak. Odds and ends like that are about all we've done for the past few days. With the floor done and the appliances in their forever homes, there's no more sense of urgency here. I guess we are also anticipating the door making process which is sure to be slow and tedious.

Here's close-up view of the backsplash. As soon as that trim is installed, we're putting it up around the desk area too.
The slate floor is done as well. True to form we sold the extra 100 sq ft of slate to a nice family from Boulder for $100. That's a little less than we paid for it but I did sort through every single box and select the nicest tiles so... I think they deserved the discount. Grouting that stuff was no fun, let me tell you, and I'm not 100% sure that the grout/mortar wasn't a contributor to my mysterious allergic reaction. I do love the results, but seriously, for the time and energy and buckets of water it took to get that stuff clean, I don't know if I would do it again.

Over the hump

Despite lack of blog posts to serve as proof, work on the house has been progressing at the speed of light!! Ok, not that fast. BUT, I will get my appliances back and in their rightful positions, not the living room, THIS WEEK. Maybe even tonight. This is huge folks.

The biggest hurdle we jumped was the slate floor. We spent one entire weekend, all day both days, putting down the slate that I bought off Craigslist, hmm, over a year ago. It has sat there peacefully in the laundry room ever since. This was tough work... joint pain, back pain, muscle pain, you name it. In fact it took several days for us to recover, but we were determined to be done by Sunday night. Here's a shot of me right at the end of the process. (p.s. You can even see evidence of a mysterious allergic reaction that had moved up to my face by the end of the ordeal. So yes, monday morning was spent getting a benedryl shot and steroid pack.)


Allergy or not, I enjoy the tiling process. You get to work with mud. And, its all about appearances, rather than small details like if your grout lines are absolutely perfect. That doesn't really matter. You are going for the overall affect here people. August hates it for the same reasons. Thus, for once, I got to play the role of worker and August got to be the assistant.


Since then we have grouted the kitchen area only, because the grouting ain't so fun. But, in order to speed that appliance install, we did get it done where it counts. The latest effort is the backsplash. I found some glass tiles in a hurry and because we are tile experts now, we bought them Sunday, installed them Monday, and grouted them Tuesday. Tonight, Wednesday, we will clean them off one more time and then install the range in front and never take it out again.

Obviously meant to be

Many congratulations to Bethany and Keith!

As you can see they make a great team. And yes, we make everyone who comes to our house earn their keep.