Sassy Sunday

As I try to put my living room back together, I caught inspiration here. I'm not a star girl myself, but had a batch of Fleur-de-lis I picked up on a trip to First Monday. They were too dark for the red walls, but with a little paint and some clear coat, I think they just might work. I started with plain metal.

Then I added 2 layers of "linen" acrylic paint with a paper towel.Followed by a shot of clear coat. I was pleasantly surprised by the effect the clear coat had on the acrylic. (I also don't know how to right side up this one).And here they are hanging together in the living room... (sorry about the glare) I have some additional ones I may add in as well.

There ya go, project # 2 done. Yay! Can't wait to see what else I have that can be painted and re-purposed!

Free at last!

Yes, we have escaped from the loft! Yesterday we painted all the quarter round to match the baseboards (after tracking down trim paint that hadn't separated into nasty looking liquids). While they dried we took in a little minor league baseball at the Dell. Much to our delight, one of our favorite rising starts was back on the roster, JR Towles. We met him at Spring Training and he is such a nice guy. I had to get a picture, even if it meant doing the pouty lip and sad eyes after the game. ***At this point I would post said picture, but my stupid computer won't recognize my SD card tonight and I'm too lazy to walk downstairs and find the cable*** But trust me, it's a cute picture that I will be putting up in my classroom.

Yesterday was also Will's day of freedom; after 3.5 weeks he had his cast removed. I didn't think cast removal was going to be a big deal, but along the way he has apparently been told that the saw of choice is a chainsaw. We had to do a lot of reassuring, and eventually the cast came off. He wanted to keep it. ***At this point I would insert the picture of Will's purple cast being used as a "bat weapon"... you know like something Batman carried in his utility belt... he even added wings to it***

Last night we moved the furniture back into the living room. Hallelujah! So happy to have my kitchen back and room to walk around. ***At this point I would put the before and after pictures of my fabulous new floors, but you can just imagine the rich mahogany***
Now keep in mind that I chose really bad before pictures so the after would have a much greater impact (plus those were from pre-an orderly fashion)
Sorry for the pictureless blog... I feel like I shouldn't have even bothered blogging about it, but it's been 2 days since my last post and I was going through withdrawal. I promise in the morning I'll march downstairs and find the cable and all will be well. It will have to be after I get back from Schlitterbahn though :)*Pictures fairies have been here*

Prisoners in the loft

Today is the day! I had it all planned out in my head....

We'd wake up. Gather everything we could possibly need for the afternoon and set up camp in the loft. The installers would show up and *Presto* my floors would lock in place smooth as butter. We'd be crafty and organized and knock out my summer project list. And at the magic hour I would walk back downstairs to my reassembled living room and whip up a spectacular batch of chicken spaghetti for dinner.

This is what really happened:

I woke up at 8:49. The installers arrived at 8:56. I grabbed cheerios, a bag of banana chips, peanut butter and some crystal light from the kitchen. I found a bag of what I thought held some summer art projects to keep us entertained. It would have helped for me to check that the sun catchers were packed with their paint, and even better a paint brush. I have a glue gun, but only one stick of glue. I brought up scrappy paper, but didn't grab the scissors. Instead of hanging up clothes, I had to lock my cat in the bedroom so she won't escape through the open front door. I've counted at least 5 houseflies that are sure to drive both my husband and the cat insane. We've done a lot of this:

And 5 hours later those installers are still sawing and banging away on the floors.

Now let me give you a little background on this floor situation. 4 years ago when we moved in this house we knew we wanted wood floors downstairs. The carpet was super industrial and had been done by the bank... not pretty and not comfy on the feet. After watching way too many hours of DIYTV I decided that we could do this project. I talked to some friends that do this on a pretty regular basis and asked for thier input. I read all the stories on-line. I stalked the flooring guys at Lowe's and Home Depot. And I chickened out. But this summer we finally decided to get it over with. After admitting to ourselves that this was not something we were repared to do on our own, we found a great deal on flooring (gotta love those 4th of July sales) and called a local company to install it for us. We did make an effort to do as much of the project as we could on our own... like ripping up all the carpet, pads, etc. We called our good friends J & T to move furniture and rip up carpet last weekend. My impatient husband moved all the furniture before they got here, but there was plenty of carpet and tack strips for everyone.

J pulls up tack strips...

And T scrapes up glue and carpet pad....

Bob gets scraping with his special gloves :)

It got pretty sweaty and dusty...

It was a dirty job....but we got it done!

I don't know if this is going to get finished today, but I will post before and after pictures when it's done. Now if I can just figure out how to get my furniture out of the kitchen...