Sam worked all night at the lock-in for SAS and didn't get home until 9:00 this morning. Ever since our house got robbed in Hawaii it's been hard for me when Sam's not here through the night. I sleep with lights on and the bear repellent spray next to the bed. Anyhow, I made it through just fine. Sam's someone who really needs his sleep, so he went right to bed when he got in and didn't get up until about 2:00. I think he would have continued sleeping had someone not called needing to talk to him.
I didn't get as much done on the house today as I'd wanted. Last weekend I started painting the living room area. There was only so much of all that white I could take. Surprisingly it went pretty fast, but I had a little bit to finish up this weekend. I got that done this morning. We went with yellow. At times I love it and other times I wonder if it's too much. Regardless, it's definitely an improvement over the white.
This afternoon we went to a couple of furniture stores. We're looking for some pieces that would fit in the living room better than what we have, but I'm really not too crazy about what we find. I like the old style German furniture, but a lot of what's in the stores is very modern looking. It looks more like furniture you would find in a business rather than comfortable furniture for a home. Every time we sat on a chair or couch it was like sitting on a board. Definitely not comfortable. So, the search continues.
The last few months have been so overshadowed with everything that needs done with the house that I'm really looking forward to putting it all aside when Mom and Dad get here. I'm so excited to share our lives with them. I've been trying to decide on what we want to do while they're here. There's so much to see and do here that it's quite a decision to narrow down our options. We don't want to be traveling the whole time, so I'm trying to keep the longer trips down to just 3 or maybe 4. There's still lots we can do within a day's drive of our house.
Mom's bringing her cat to stay with us. He was a stray kitty that she couldn't turn away, but Dad's allergic so it's not the best situation to have a cat in their house. It's going to be very interesting since Gabby attacks every cat she's ever met. At times I wonder what I could possibly be thinking and worry that it's going to be all out war between the two. But he's a big boy and so sweet. Sam calls him Konishiki, after the Sumo wrestler in Hawaii. I'm really hoping for the best. If Gabby would be nice I think she would enjoy having another cat to play with and keep her company when we're not home. We'll see how that goes.
Well, more to be done tomorrow, so I better close for now.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Still working on the house
The weeks go by so quickly. One week turns into two...then into three...and the time just slips by. I realized just a few days ago that in only 6 weeks Mom and Dad will be arriving here in Germany and I panicked. I thought back to 6 weeks ago and realized how little headway I've made in the house in that amount of time. At this point I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it all together, but I'm really excited about them coming. No matter where I am in getting the house around I'll stop and just enjoy them being here then hit it again when they leave.
This past Saturday Thomas arrived early in the morning to start painting the stairway. Picking out a color had been stressing me because that's a big decision, especially when it's going to be through all floors of the house. If we didn't like it, we'd be stuck with it until we decided to repaint. If we went with too conservative a color it may look really bland, but too dark of a color may be overwhelming. Of course with the whole house being white, any other color is going to look drastically different. We finally decided on an olive green thinking the earth tone would warm up the place and would go fine with our tile color (which I would not have chosen, but was already in the house). When we showed Thomas the color we had chosen, he thought it was too dark for the stairway. We went back to the color cards and came up with a green that's just a little lighter.
Ok, so I don't know how the German's ever get the same color of paint twice. Thomas brought in his paint tinting kit which amounted to a few bottles of color. In my experience with paint we pick out the color hand the card to the guy at Walmart, Lowes or Home Depot and they proceed to add so many CC's of green and so many CC's of yellow, etc. Not Thomas....he just started squirting color into the white paint and mixing it. The color that came out of that fiasco was something similar to auqa blue or as Sam put it "Toothpaste blue". It was horrible. There was no way he was going to paint my stairway that color. He painted a little part and wanted to know what I thought. Unfortunately I don't speak his language and couldn't tell him what I really thought, but I got the card and said "I want this color" pointing to the color we chose. Well, by this time he had run out of a color he needed so he packed up the paint and headed back to the office to get the color he needed.
He came back a couple of hours later with the color we wanted. He had taken it to a store to get the right combinations of colors(thankfully). Sam and I had some errands to run so we left Thomas here to paint. While we were gone I kept thinking about the green we chose and worried that it would be too green, but when we got back and saw the stairway I was very pleased with the color. It looks really warm and magnified in my mind the need to paint the rest of the walls. I probably shouldn't take the time to paint at this point, but I figure better now than after the curtains are hung. So, that's something I'll be working on.
This past Saturday Thomas arrived early in the morning to start painting the stairway. Picking out a color had been stressing me because that's a big decision, especially when it's going to be through all floors of the house. If we didn't like it, we'd be stuck with it until we decided to repaint. If we went with too conservative a color it may look really bland, but too dark of a color may be overwhelming. Of course with the whole house being white, any other color is going to look drastically different. We finally decided on an olive green thinking the earth tone would warm up the place and would go fine with our tile color (which I would not have chosen, but was already in the house). When we showed Thomas the color we had chosen, he thought it was too dark for the stairway. We went back to the color cards and came up with a green that's just a little lighter.
Ok, so I don't know how the German's ever get the same color of paint twice. Thomas brought in his paint tinting kit which amounted to a few bottles of color. In my experience with paint we pick out the color hand the card to the guy at Walmart, Lowes or Home Depot and they proceed to add so many CC's of green and so many CC's of yellow, etc. Not Thomas....he just started squirting color into the white paint and mixing it. The color that came out of that fiasco was something similar to auqa blue or as Sam put it "Toothpaste blue". It was horrible. There was no way he was going to paint my stairway that color. He painted a little part and wanted to know what I thought. Unfortunately I don't speak his language and couldn't tell him what I really thought, but I got the card and said "I want this color" pointing to the color we chose. Well, by this time he had run out of a color he needed so he packed up the paint and headed back to the office to get the color he needed.He came back a couple of hours later with the color we wanted. He had taken it to a store to get the right combinations of colors(thankfully). Sam and I had some errands to run so we left Thomas here to paint. While we were gone I kept thinking about the green we chose and worried that it would be too green, but when we got back and saw the stairway I was very pleased with the color. It looks really warm and magnified in my mind the need to paint the rest of the walls. I probably shouldn't take the time to paint at this point, but I figure better now than after the curtains are hung. So, that's something I'll be working on.
The stairway after painting
Another view heading up to the top floor Sam's been getting the tiles in the bathroom finished so he can hopefully get the medicine cabinets up over the weekend.
Back in March I interviewed for a position at Patch Barracks and haven't heard anything from them so I figured it had been filled. On Monday I got an email from Human Resources asking for preliminary information for this position. I'm still not sure what it all means, but it appears that I may still be in the running for the job. I'm hesitant starting a new job, but the pay would be much better and would probably not be such a stressful workplace, so we'll see what happens with that.
Well, that's about it from here. Until next time...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)