pull up a seat

We finally have a place to sit!  We don’t have any time to sit but that’s another story.  Our sectional arrived this week and it looks even better than I had anticipated.  I had been eyeing grey sectionals for the past several months and finally settled on this sucker.  It’s sturdy, masculine, comfy, and awesome – all of the qualities I look for in a…sofa?  I have been obsessed with gray for a while now.   (…which is no reflection of my mood – bright yellow would be a more appropriate representation.)  We also got a large, dark brown, leather ottoman in lieu of a coffee table - its firm enough to use as a table but also cushy enough to rest our feet or use as additional seating.

The new sectional definitely brings a different look to the entire living area.  We still need a large rug for this room but, as mentioned in an earlier post, rugs cost mucho dinero.  I’ve been looking for a black and white striped rug to add some interest and pop.  I wouldn’t think a black and white striped rug would be hard to find but everything I have some across is zebra-ish and/or costs at least 400 smackers.  No thanks and no thanks.  A rug isn’t on our “gotta-have-now” list so I’ll just keep my eyes peeled and our living room rug will eventually come along.

I also had a chance to stain the TV stand this week.  I started off slowly and precisely applying the stain but after 10 seconds I said, “eh, screw this”, and just started slapping the stuff on there.  Getting in all of the nooks and crannys was a pain in the heiny but it only took about 2 hours of my precious time over the course of the week to complete.  Two coats of stain – 3 coats on the more-visible parts of the piece.  The polyurethane that I originally bought spilled in the back of the Jeep on the way home from the store so James and I made a Lowes run and grabbed a spray-can version instead.  It probably didn’t give the same amount of coverage/protection that the paint-on-kind would have but that’s aiiight – it still holds our TV.

Other happenings this week:

• We finished taking down the deck that was surrounding the pool.  The wood/metal/crap that made up the deck is in piles in our back yard waiting to be hauled away.  Hopefully we can get a few bucks for the scrap – we think it’s mostly aluminum.

• We started cleaning up some of the brush in the back yard but there has been about 12 minutes of sunshine in the past week so we didn’t make too much progress.  We were able to tear down all of the vines that were strangling a small tree but that probably only accounts for about 1% of the work that needs to be done.  It’s a start.

• The fireplace was cleaned and inspected.  We’re in the clear to start our wood-burning-insert hunt.  We hope to have one installed by the end of the summer so we can be ready to burn once the temps start to drop.  We don’t want to solely rely on oil to heat our house and the math tells us that we’d recover the costs of a new insert within a year or two.

• We are also planning on replacing the heating system – new oil tank, new furnace, new electric water heater.  The existing equipment is original to the house (50+ years old) so obviously isn’t very efficient.  A fella came and checked it out this week so we are just waiting to hear back to see how much time and money that overhaul will entail.

• We unpacked more boxes and started getting some pictures up on our bare walls.  I'm planning on blowing up some of our own pics and hanging them in the living room - and once we finalize the furniture placement of James' bedroom, we'll go ahead and hang all of the frames from his old bedroom, too.

• James discovered that he loves Cheerios.  He’s getting pretty good at picking them up with his pudgy little fingers – and has already figured out that it’s much easier to slobber all over his hands so that the Cheerios just stick to his them.

We have a lot going on over the next few weekends so we probably won't get much stuff done around the house.  I'd like to say that it will be a nice break but doing dirty work around the house isn't nearly as stressful as spending the weekends rushing from place to place - but at least we can come home after a long, busy day and plop down on our big couch for about 3 minutes before we decide to go to bed instead.


...aaaaand a few random shots from this weekend...