Weekend Plus One

Posted on by Jordan

What did we do over this past weekend?

Well, I moved furniture! Remember all that craigslisting I mentioned? It has paid off!

The down side to paying off is that it means I had to haul the things that sold out, and the things we bought back up.

On the bright side, we aren’t repainting this stuff, so it still isn’t taking up as much time as last years campaign 🙂

And then there was Independence day; a Wednesday this year so it wasn’t an obvious choice to extend into ether weekend. So what did we do?

Painting!

That is the before picture, and what you can’t really see is the places where the vinyl wall decals lifted the paint off the wall. Given the size of the damaged areas, it made sense to paint the entire wall.

This meant I got to buy a paint tray and full-sized roller! (ahh the simple joys in life)

The end result was perfect in the sense that you cannot tell that it was ever done. 🙂

Sorry, the photography isn’t the best, and I have been trying to include Heather or myself in the blog pictures more… maybe the next iteration of the room will lend itself to an action shot!

 

-Jordan

 

The Wall, We Have Hit It.

Posted on by Jordan

Actually… it isn’t that bad, after a ‘down’ weekend Heather and I are starting to feel like attacking the unfinished tasks again.

Let me catch you up on the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago, we were living in an apartment, and Saturday morning, the view was this:

As some short update posts already gave away, we had plenty of help and got things moved fairly quickly. What took more effort was unpacking and finding a home for everything that was in a box. We powered through that as fast as we could so that our house would be ready for company. Quite a bit of company as it turns out.

On the following Thursday, my grandparents stopped through on their way out to a wedding. That was the first night that we hadn’t both worked until midnight on something, but we still managed to sneak in a few minutes putting our house together. On Friday, Heather’s parents came into town, and they brought our favorite(only) nephew Holden.

He got the deluxe tour:

We took Holden and his grandparents down to the farmers market, and then later he did some fabric shopping with Heather and Pam. We quickly discovered that although the main area in our house was mostly put together, it wasn’t what you would call kid-proof. He kept us on our toes.

That crew headed home Saturday evening, leaving Heather and I a few hours to pull a few things together and grab some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, my parents, sister and brother came into town, just in time for church. We had some really ambitious plans to take them out to see the bike bridge I did a post on a while back. The triple digit heat index, combined with the fact that they had spent a considerable amount of time walking the previous day at the Omaha zoo put a pretty solid kabosh on that idea.

It turned out that a nap and breaking out our new copy of Ticket To Ride was about the perfect use for the Sunday afternoon. I can’t remember if I mentioned Ticket to ride when recapping our visit to DJ’s house out in Colorado, but it has quickly become Heather’s favorite game.

On Monday, Heather and I both worked, leaving the rest of my family free to head down to Pella for some touristing. They came back with some amazing pastries so I have to assume the trip was a wild success. That evening, Heather and I met up with them and headed just outside of Des Moines to where an annual balloon festival is held.

The weather was not ideal for hot air balloons, and we didn’t get to see the kind of numbers featured in the postcards I have seen of the event. That being said, it was really cool. I really don’t understand how they pilot the balloons, except to say they appeared to have more control than I would have expected.

After the balloons, we stopped and got pizza. This is noteworthy only because the local Cub Scout pack was busing tables as a fundraiser. It wasn’t the best table service we have ever had, but it was some of the best mealtime entertainment we have had… perhaps ever.

My family headed home the next day, leaving Heather and I finally home with no impending dates on the calendar. We haven’t been as productive this week as the past few. Today we finally got back into painting and may have a dresser ready to instal soon.

In hindsight, I don’t know if we would have really planned the past few weeks differently, as there were events outside our control driving each visit. All the same, I know we would have been better hosts had there been a few weeks between each event listed above.

On the other hand, we have proven that we can comfortably host three to four guests, and are always happy to have people visit!

… Just give us a week to wrap up this furniture painting 🙂

-Jordan

Prepping The Apartment

Posted on by Jordan

As some of you may know, my current roommate is getting married soon, leaving my without a place to live.

The plan Heather and I came up with was for me to move into her apartment, and for her to move in with her grandmother for the 3 remaining months until we are married. Heather wanted to have a few things ready before the move, primarily a desk that wasn’t as ugly as the table thing I have my computer setting on currently.

We stopped by Nebraska Furniture Mart Sunday, looking for a desk. Checked “Mrs B’s” the “scratch and dent” section of NFM. from what I can tell they don’t actually have much stuff there that is truly damaged, so much as maybe odds and ends of discontinued items, and just their more discount oriented products. We found a desk that would be about ideal, the proper size, and color almost as soon as we walked in. They had two of them, one that had a somewhat obviously backwards brace holding up the keyboard tray. That wasn’t a big issue for us, because to actually fit me comfortably at the desk, my plan was to remove the keyboard tray.

On our way over to find a salesperson, we stumbled onto mattresses. Heather and I had decided to just use the mattress she had in her apartment for the time being. we hope to not be in the apartment too long, and a bedroom set would be high on the list of things to buy once we moved into a house. The problem with the current mattress is that it has a feather pillow thing giving it most of its padding, and I am slightly allergic to down. We asked about mattress pillows in NFM, they didn’t have any but the sales person pointed out how cheap a mattress alone was. We picked out a new mattress for a price that was within $40 of what I was expecting to have to pay for a new pillow cover.

back to the desk… we lead the same lady that just sold us the bed back to the desk area to add that onto our order. I pointed out the assembly problem it had, and asked if we could get a discount. She took 25% off the desk, and we had all the furniture we needed to fully outfit the apartment for a *lot* cheaper than ether Heather or I expected.

moving the new stuff in, and the old mattress wasn’t the most fun way to spend the rest of our Sunday afternoon, but it was really satisfying to get that taken care of. I am almost looking forward to moving the rest of my stuff, it feels like I will be moving into a “home” instead of another apartment.

-Jordan