green

A quiet night: I install a new shower head in the bath; Ted installs the water filter which connects to the refrigerator ice maker. The bulk of the evening is spent reading comics in bed

I skip practice this morning to run some errands, finding myself shopping on a Sunday morning. THIS is the time to be at Home Depot. The flirty guy who’s mixing my paint confirms the observation. Monday through Saturday, they’ve got their regular customer base PLUS the contractors. Contractors don’t work Sunday, and regular folks are generally sleeping in/going to church, etc. So before 10:00am or so, it’s pleasantly empty. Make a mental note to try planning my Home Depot excursions before Sunday practice.

Bought a gallon of Baer paint. Color: Fendale (a shade darker than Herbivore) in an eggshell finish (easier to clean than flat, less glossy than satin).

Ted spends the day making many trips to/from B&B and Home Depot to acquire parts/tools to fix a faulty automatic sprinkler system valve. There’s much fiddling and discussion about what appears to be wrong, how we can dismantle the valve, isolating what exactly needs replacement. It needs replacement washers to fix a small leak, and a replacement valve head to fix the broken one (part cracked, wires disconnected). I help (a little) with diagnostics and testing, but Ted does the hard labor. We determine which valves control which sprinklers, where our (apparently clogged) drip line connects, and devise a plan for how we can correct the faulty layout. Ted learns about water-proof wire nuts (they’ve got a bit of goop in them to keep out the moisture) and acquires a pipe wrench in the process: the right tool for the job makes a world of difference! We’ll see if we can’t get new drip lines set up this coming weekend.

We take the night off to dine with friends and see The Mystery Men – it’s refreshing to actually get out of the house to see and talk to people. We’ll need to do this more often…

I work on setting up my office. Drilling cable/wire holes, installing a cord tray, wrangling all the computer cables and wires, ripping out TV cables and patching holes… much better. This weekend will be spent on prepping the room for painting (which I hope to do next week). The trim will be the same color as in the living/dining room, but with green walls.

I think Ted is beginning to enjoy crawling around underneath the house… his task was to track down a “mystery wire.” After a period of hearing him scurry below, I hear his muffled voice. Our exchange was something like this:

“Honey, where am I?”

“You’re under the house.”

“No, I mean where under the house am I?”

“Keep talking, I’ll find you… you sound like you’re near the closet. Are you *here*?” RAP RAP RAP

“ow!…that’s my ear you’re pounding against, you know…”

So we now control all the phone lines–forget paying that 50-cent inside wiring fee every month!–and were able to re-wire everything so that lunabase runs off our data line and all the other outlets run off the voice line. Ted’s quite pleased with himself; I am, too.

I continue to unpack boxes in the bedroom, segregating more stuff for charity and giving ourselves a bit more breathing room back there.

We prepare our first home-cooked meal in our kitchen (for those who care, it’s pasta with garlic/mushroom/basil marinara, tossed green salad, wine, and sorbet w/blackberries for dessert), as well as play host to our first visitor (Steve) and our first dinner guest (Lynne). Although we don’t yet have a proper dining room table, meals in the backyard in front of the chiminea are sweet.

I install contact paper in the second bathroom cabinets and unpack some of the less-essential toiletries. My first shower reveals a defective shower head and a horrid sound coming from our ceiling vent motor; it also becomes clear that ants enjoy safe passage in through gaps in our grout and caulking. Add a few more lines to our growing to-do list.

A day of (some) rest. Spent the afternoon having a long lazy lunch with some friends who are now in escrow for their first home. We talk about inspections, paperwork, easements and liens, insurance and escrow agents… it’s funny to be the seasoned veterans here. It’s an exciting time for them – I hope it all goes well.

We assume control of our kitchen. We can now walk through without stepping over/weaving around boxes. With its seemingly original cabinetry and layout, the kitchen’s flaws are now fully revealed – too few drawers, dead space in cabinets, not enough counter space. This is a definite target for remodeling…

We take a drive to EXPO, the new home-decorating superstore under the umbrella of Home Depot. What a strange trip that was. We have deduced that its core cleintele must be comprised of wealthy folk with no taste (or the home decorators who cater to same). We were bewildered. Gilt, scalloped bathroom sinks! Brass flamingo water spouts! Bronze drawer pulls shaped like moose heads! Copper elephant head shelf brackets! $350 life-size fruitwood and gilt pineapple-shaped drapery rod finials (replete with foliage)! A $2000+ gold and silver swirly abstract sculpted bath spout! Aisles upon aisles of home-decorating gee gaws and toss pillows to arrange on furniture to give your home that eclectic-yet-choreographed, casually precise, Architectural Digest feel. To top it off, a Seattle’s Best Coffee had a micro cafe near the back of the store, and several player pianos tinkling out lite jazz throughout the place, which made me think I’d accidentally wandered into some gargantuan, garishly decorated, brightly lit piano bar. The humor value alone made the trip worthwhile.

To be fair, EXPO *does* have a large selection of stuff, not all of it as tacky as I make it out to be. It’s just that the bad stuff is SO bad that it really outshines the things you’d actually consider buying. Point: among the peacock blue lamé and bronze/black leopard prints, Ted and I found some tasteful draperies we both liked, at a price which was competitive with the seven other stores I visited. Installed this very night – they look great!