May 2009

We moved into this house three years ago. I’m not sure who built it but I do know one thing about them…they liked pink. A LOT. Now, you all know how much I like pink but when it comes to walls and woodstain…not so much. It’s not like it’s PINK PINK, it’s more like the wood and the paint were beige but had undertones that turned pretty princess pink when the sun hit it.

When we moved in, I fully intended to pretty much gut the house. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great house and I love it but it’s just not me yet. As far as girls go, I’m a little weird in that there is nothing I dig more than construction. While I was off work for four years, I managed to build two houses from the ground up and decorate several others. I love it, I live for it…nothing gets me more excited than blue prints, paint chips and texture choices. Throw in some drywall and a bucket of nails and well, I can’t speak of what happens next.

I know, I’m really exciting and all.

Long story short, or short story long…whatever…I went back to work immediately after moving into this house and have spent the last three years walking around growling at all the flaws. There are many areas that I wanted to take a blow torch to but the chief offender has always been the cabinets in the family room. Every day I would look at them and wish that I could spork my eyes out so I would never have to look at them again.

Not anymore! Last week, we finally called in the professionals and started renovations.

This is what the den looked like the day “Project Pink” started:

Here’s the offending cabinet before I put it to death:

Can you see the pink in that wood? Also, I was so desperate to cover it up, I actually used the Thanksgiving Easter Bunny Turkey that was such a joy to create…can you see him in the shelves? Also, the Pagoda Cat House makes us “internacional” because we are all about being global.

We also did the mantle and the TV cabinet but I’ll try not to bore you with those.

Here we are midway. The cabinets were painted with an undercoat of gold first which as shocking as it was, it was better than it was the day before.

Here’s the rest of the room, the part that caused me to go all Rain Man and start walking in concentric circles while yelling, “Five Minutes To Wapner! Five Minutes To Wapner!” because disorder in any way, shape or form causes me to go just a tiny bit crazy.

These are the drawers that caused me to go all street rat crazy like Kate Gosslin on Saturday, minus the hair. Much like her Jon, The Man rolled his eyes a lot at my antics and was smart enough to duck when I started spontaniously throwing things in the general direction of the trash. Thankfully, he was also smart enough not to go bar hopping with any 23 year olds during my rant either. This is one of the many reasons I love him so. No drawer was allowed back into the cabinet without being totally dumped and washed. Much like Bitchmas, everyone stayed the hell out of my way. Smart, smart people.

Also, do you know how many wires it takes to connect one TV? THIS MANY:

The end result was worth it though. After about ten hours of trying to get our family room back in order on Saturday, it looked like this:

And my old friend, the pink wood cabinet, looks like this:

Not pictured: The bonfire that resulted from the burning of the Cat Pagoda.

A special shout out to The Painter Chicks who made this possible….if you are in the Frisco area, these girls are the bomb…and no, they didn’t give me a financial break to post this, I love them just that much!

Next week, we start painting the entire room. Because I know you care deeply about these things, looks like we are going with Wheat Gold with an umber glaze.

I know…YOU CARE.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I’ll be the first to admit that I am typically the first to find themselves in an odd and slightly uncomfortable situation.    I fall out of elevators, I have been known to  make an ass out of myself in front of major movie stars, I sometimes say unfortunate things that members of senior management see when they check their facebook status.  Those are just a few of the tales I’ve shared with you.  Long story short, I usually manage to bust myself at every turn which is why I rarely try to bust on anyone else, especially in a public forum

But last week, I sort of went out on a limb with Prom-a-Palooza.

And I got busted again.

I did my due diligence,  I really did.   The friend who set me up for prom, Chris,  and I recently re-connected on facebook.   I browsed through his friend list to see if my prom date, Ben, was there.   He was not.   In fact, I hadn’t heard a peep about him in 25 years so I felt pretty safe throwing my little story of teen angst out there on my blog.

What I didn’t count on was that Chris and Ben would be sitting in Chicago together  (even though they both still live around the same area we all grew up in) some 26 years later,  waiting to go to a Cubs game.   Yeah…that kind of stuff doesn’t happen to anyone but me.    Don’t rub it in.

So here’s how the bust went down.   Chris is explaining all things facebook to Ben who had not joined at that point and had never even really looked at it.   Chris starts to scroll through and show him pictures and profiles.   It bears repeating here that Ben has not really been on facebook so the odds of him looking at it the very day I wrote about him are slim at best.   Yet there they are, scrolling through, looking at pictures of everyone they went to high school with and all of a sudden, according to Chis, Ben says, “Wait a minute!  That was a picture of me!”

Seriously?  What was the chance of that happening?   Add me into the situation and the answer is INCREDIBLY HIGH.

Needless to say, I got a message on facebook less than 10 hours after I had posted letting me know Ben had in fact seen the story I wrote.  At that point, after a minor freak out,  I had to re-read my  post to make sure I had not been a total bitch…which THANK YOU GOD,  I had not.   (Some days are better than others with my attitude, you know?)     The resulting comment flurry on my profile page was the likes of which I have never seen with several members of my high school class either taking turns laughing at me getting busted or trying to figure out which particular brand of malt liquor we drank as Seniors, because we were all classy like that.

The next morning, Chris pinged me to let me know they had died laughing over the whole thing.   They spent the day calling Ben “Internet Sensation” at which point I promptly had to inform him that I have many Canadian readers as well as a smattering from the UK and that Ben was, in fact, a “WORLDWIDE INTERNET SENSATION”.   I mean really, he should know about his *cough cough* worldwide fame at this point, right?    Chris, of course, was not going to let such an opportunity go and told me he would spend the rest of the day at Wrigley Field saying, “Hey, Worldwide Internet Sensation, can you hand me a beer?”

Sorry, Ben.  Really, my timing is almost as bad as my stalking when we were 17.   Some things never change.

Thankfully, Ben still has his sense of humor and we are now friends on facebook.   I look forward to trying to live this moment down should we ever have the class get together we are all now chatting about.

In the meantime, I’ll probably keep my mouth shut about any more dating stories…or at the very least, I won’t post them on facebook.

PS:  Jen over at Steenky Bee FINALLY got her prom pics up…um, I really don’t think you want to miss this…go there!

{ Comments on this entry are closed }