Caulk is a funny word.

If you’ve ever built/remodeled a home before, this tool might look familiar. Personally, I had never seen or used one of these until yesterday when Keith and I decided to get started on caulking our base boards. Working on this project was not without its challenges and roadblocks. Let me just say that it was a lesson in teamwork and communication. It was a true test of our relationship. But we were victorious and much stronger for the experience. No seriously, it [the caulking, which sounds incredibly strange to me] was a bit rocky at first, but once we got going, we worked like a well-oiled machine. I found that the little tool I bought to smooth the caulk out actually kind of sucked, and my index finger was much more useful. After most of the afternoon, we’d caulked all the baseboards in the house except our bedroom, and I had filled nail holes on all of the baseboards except the kitchen and the guestroom. Because I love to make a good long list, I’m about to bullet every single thing we have left to do in the house. Consider yourself warned, and ENJOY or not.

• paint, cut and nail quarter-round for baseboards; caulk
• paint over filled nail holes on baseboards; touch up where wall meets baseboards
• clean and seal gutters
• reseal windows and doors
• adjust water pressure
• repaint living room and kitchen ceilings
• paint, cut and nail crown molding for kitchen and master bedroom; caulk
• clean the remainder of the blinds
• get a new garage door opener; clean garage so that we can actually park there
• paint all the trim in ivory lace
• strip and paint cabinets and kitchen drawers ivory lace
• replace kitchen countertops
• redo both bathrooms: remove popcorn, replace master vinyl, paint
• find out what’s stuck in the guest bathtub drain and remove it. Yuck! Bringing back memories of my college days living with three other girls and having to dig hair out of the shower drain.
• replace all brass door knobs and hinges
• work on back yard so that it drains better
• get t-molds down on floors

Ok, I think that’s pretty comprehensive. It’s not that much I don’t guess, but it just seems to take forever to get it all done. And who wants to work on it when could be as low as 6 degrees on Thursday? I just want to curl up on the couch and nap…or hibernate.

Also, some more news. I am working on the wedding planning. (gasp!) I actually made some calls today and have made some decisions. However, Keith and I are still debating some of the details so I won’t release the plans just yet. It’s about time, I suppose. Although I didn’t actually make any new year’s “resolutions,” I do have the intention to procrastinate less and handle stuff more head-on. So here’s to that. We’ll see how it goes.

And…we’re back. Again.

Keith and Amanda have been really awful bloggers for the past several months. But here’s a pretty good excuse, and you can choose to either take it or leave it: We’re homeowners! Indeed. After my last blog post, on what I believe was Labor Day, we looked at probably six or seven houses and decided to go ahead and put an offer on the one we liked the most. I’ll post some photos later, but I currently can’t get my photos to computer.

When we looked at the home, there were a couple things, all cosmetic, that we wanted to change. The kitchen was blood red, and that would not do. There was carpet pretty much throughout, which also wouldn’t do. But other than that, we were purchasing a house that we considered “move-in ready.” HA! It’s amazing after you sign the papers and the house is yours, what you really want to do to it. First up, remove the popcorn ceilings, also known as “blown on” and “cottage cheese” ceilings. We’ll both admit that when we looked at the house, the textured ceiling was an eyesore, but it certainly wasn’t a deal breaker. We agreed to look past it, and concluded that potential buyers (five or so years down the road) would also look past it. But once the keys were in our hands, we decided to take on the task of scraping that stuff off. We’d start with the laundry room, and if that was easy enough, conquer the entire house. We closed on the house on October 10…we scraped the ceiling down for at least two weeks. Luckily, our lease at the apartment allowed us to stay until the end of October and we were able to work on the house, get dust in our eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, and then seek shelter at our clean (sort of), popcorn-free apartment. We moved in to a semi-finished house on Halloween. All of the popcorn ceiling was gone at least, and that was quite an accomplishment. We ended up replacing almost all of the floors in the house: laminate with tile, vinyl with tile, some carpet with hard wood and some carpet with new carpet. We decided to re-paint all of the rooms, replace all the baseboards (just need to caulk), repaint all the trim in the house an off-white (still not done). We’re basically finished with everything; it’s just those finishing details that seem to be the hardest to wrap up. Anyhow, I’ll post some pics either tomorrow or later this week so you can see just what we did.

In other news, here’s one of the coolest things I found this holiday. This is a really crappy image, but it’s a five-year journal, with approximately two-inch tall entry spaces for each day. For each day, you turn to the next page, so that the following year’s entry is directly under the previous year for that particular day. So you end up with an entire page of December 29 entries for five years, and an entire page of January 1 entries for five years, etc. It is so awesome. I had a diary like this when I was a kid, and I loved it. This is not too much of a commitment, so it’s perfect for me. I can write a couple sentences for each day, and that’s it. I’m finding lately that life is getting away from me. I want to hold on to memories that I sometimes forget. It’s those minute details about the day that make them so special. Visited with my cousin Amy today. She sent me home with a jar of pear preserves made from her pear tree, the tree that was once my grandparents’. I first saw the journal on Fred Flare’s web site, but it’s cheaper, of course, on Amazon. I will be back tomorrow, hopefully with photos from the house. Ciao!