Our Deck Furniture

Purchased at a garage sale a few houses up the street. Two car trips and one chair brought down the street by Olga and we were set. It's not perfect. It's not our dream furniture. But it'll do. It probably cost less than our BBQ cover.

Study Floorplan

Courtesty of www.floorplanner.com. Olga didn't think a desk for her would fit. It does. Never mind the colors of things, including the rugs, pillows.

We Do Windows!

Our windows were installed today by very scary looking dudes. Scary but shy and nice enough. This about the most adult purchase I think we've made yet.

Wanted: Blue Paint Color - mature (not baby blue), not too bright, gets along with other colors in spectrum

Choosing paint is intimidating. Way too many choices. It took us less time to choose our wedding rings. Here's just a few samples.

The Pink Ceiling and The Ceiling Fan Installation

Some time ago, we bought a ceiling fan. It was one of our first purchases. It sat in the garage waiting for us to work up the knowledge and courage to install it. We were told it'd be easy -- just make sure to turn off the electricity and follow the instructions. Well, one afternoon, with other chores done, we decided to tackle the ceiling fan installation. We got our tools and step ladder and powered down the house. I proceeded to take down the existing lights and, much to our disbelief, we found out our ceiling had been at one time... pink. Bright pink. My guess is the old owners, hoping to sell the house, quickly painted over the bright pink. Of course, they didn't bother to take five minutes -- really less than five minutes -- to remove the light fixture for painting. If we put up the fan with the ceiling as is we'd have a nice pink circle around it. So, I broke out our white (fence) paint and painted over the pink. It wasn't a good match but it was close enough. It was better than pink. That was our first obstacle. Then I took some time to really look at the light casing. It was plastic and really not secured properly. It wasn't going to work. With the light of the day leaving us, we threw in the towel, humbled. That feeling turned to frustration as getting the original light back up with the dodgy casing in place proved very difficult. Let's just say that there's some plastic in the casing that doesn't really belong. The fan is back in our garage, waiting for another day.

Rocking the Towel Rack

We're very proud of our new towel rack that we installed all by ourselves drilling through tile without breaking the tile (it's the magical masking tape at work). And... it's, at least to the human eye, level - more than I can say of the shelf I installed in our old apartment. It's a temporary measure as the bathroom will have to be redone at some time. But that could be a couple of years from now. For now, we have some place to hang our towels. Now if we can only move the light switch near the sink mirror closer to the door. But, as I've learned (see next post), electrical stuff is not like drilling through tile.

Dirt Circle Gets Greener, Flowers Spread

The dirt circle is definitely getting greener, though it looks better from afar. The recent lack of rain hasn't helped the grass but with (nearly) daily watering, our inpatiens have really taken off.

Olga Cooks in Union Jack

A Simple BBQ Cover

There's no real reason to post a picture of this. It's just a cover for the barbeque. But... it wasn't too easy to buy. There must have been a run on bbq covers because we didn't have luck at any store we went to. And we kept hearing: "don't buy too cheap, you'll regret it." Afraid we'd make a decision we'd regret for the rest of our live, we eventually bought this online. It wasn't cheap.

Taking a Break on Slide Mountain

We took a break from the house with a hike up Slide Mountain, the tallest mountain in the Catskills (which is like being the biggest linebacker on the Pop Warner Pee Wee team).

The Key to Design: Masking Tape

The living room is either too large or too small, depending on how you look at. If it was smaller, one couch would be fine. If it was larger, adding a few chairs would be easy. It was, we assume, built as a sitting room. It's not optimized for flat screen TV viewing. The previous owners had placed two couches in the living room and the TV in the corner. It didn't really work. Here's our first attempt to layout the room with help from some masking tape. More on this later.