Home improvement
Over the weekend, hubs and I decided to let booger stay overnight with one of his sets of grandparents (Brian's folks). In the interim (in addition to have a magical date night at Biaggi's), I decided to help my folks with a little home improvement project.
A while back, they'd had the interior of their house painted. But when the job was complete, they didn't re-hang their curtains and pictures and things. As a result, the walls looked kinda bare and the rooms unfinished. So I open my big mouth and offer to go over there, measure the windows, buy curtains, come back, and hang them. (The curtains they had were as old as me. Seriously. I can't remember a time when they weren't hanging lifelessly on the window, begging me to put them out of their misery.)
Satuday was easy. The plan was to remove all the old hardware from the windows, sand and patch the walls, measure the windows, talk with mom about what kind of curtains she wanted, then go buy the stuff. However, we ran into a teensy problem when dad didn't have any sandpaper. (This is characteristic Dad. He HAS every tool and home improvement implement known to man. But dang if he can find any of it. It's always "somewhere around here.") No big, I thought. I'll just patch and sand the walls tomorrow.
So I go out and buy the stuff we need, then return on Sunday. I sand the wall, patch, then sand again. Now, we just need the paint to touch up the areas I've repaired. Dad has sworn up and down that he has the paint. Well, he does have about a million cans of paint in the utility room, but none of them are labeled. Soooo, we open tons of cans of paint, going, "This isn't it." "That it over there?" "Nope." I finally grabbed a red crayon and starting writing on the cans we'd already opened, big letters - GUEST BATH, MASTER BEDROOM, etc. (Trust me, this will pay off for me at some later date. I guarantee it.)
Then when we finally find the paint, we can't find a paintbrush that isn't ruined. Dad is telling me that we can use a little roller and fill up a tray with paint, etc., etc., but I'm thinking that we just need to dab paint on a few areas, not paint the whole dang wall.
In the meantime, mom is sitting serenely in her chair, working the crossword, and looking up occasionally to tell us to make sure we're doing this or that we should keep from doing that.
By now, as you can imagine, I'm getting a little frustrated.
We eventually worked the whole mess out, and by the time I left on Sunday, we'd hung four curtains, replaced one lamp, and hung a whole bunch of pictures on the wall. The place looked WAY better than it did when I showed up. Curtains just have a way of finishing a space, and we moved a little furniture around, too, to create a more symmetrical floor plan. There's no way Dad could have done all that by himself (You really need two people to hang curtains so you can make sure everything is level.), so I was super-glad I'd gone over there.
Dad asked me when I was coming back to help out again.
I told him, "Not until I forget how horrible the last two days have been."
But then we giggled a bit, I kissed them both, and I headed out. NEXT time, I'm thinking we'll hang some more pictures and merchandise a couple of the shelves in the den. But that might not be for a while. Heh.
A while back, they'd had the interior of their house painted. But when the job was complete, they didn't re-hang their curtains and pictures and things. As a result, the walls looked kinda bare and the rooms unfinished. So I open my big mouth and offer to go over there, measure the windows, buy curtains, come back, and hang them. (The curtains they had were as old as me. Seriously. I can't remember a time when they weren't hanging lifelessly on the window, begging me to put them out of their misery.)
Satuday was easy. The plan was to remove all the old hardware from the windows, sand and patch the walls, measure the windows, talk with mom about what kind of curtains she wanted, then go buy the stuff. However, we ran into a teensy problem when dad didn't have any sandpaper. (This is characteristic Dad. He HAS every tool and home improvement implement known to man. But dang if he can find any of it. It's always "somewhere around here.") No big, I thought. I'll just patch and sand the walls tomorrow.
So I go out and buy the stuff we need, then return on Sunday. I sand the wall, patch, then sand again. Now, we just need the paint to touch up the areas I've repaired. Dad has sworn up and down that he has the paint. Well, he does have about a million cans of paint in the utility room, but none of them are labeled. Soooo, we open tons of cans of paint, going, "This isn't it." "That it over there?" "Nope." I finally grabbed a red crayon and starting writing on the cans we'd already opened, big letters - GUEST BATH, MASTER BEDROOM, etc. (Trust me, this will pay off for me at some later date. I guarantee it.)
Then when we finally find the paint, we can't find a paintbrush that isn't ruined. Dad is telling me that we can use a little roller and fill up a tray with paint, etc., etc., but I'm thinking that we just need to dab paint on a few areas, not paint the whole dang wall.
In the meantime, mom is sitting serenely in her chair, working the crossword, and looking up occasionally to tell us to make sure we're doing this or that we should keep from doing that.
By now, as you can imagine, I'm getting a little frustrated.
We eventually worked the whole mess out, and by the time I left on Sunday, we'd hung four curtains, replaced one lamp, and hung a whole bunch of pictures on the wall. The place looked WAY better than it did when I showed up. Curtains just have a way of finishing a space, and we moved a little furniture around, too, to create a more symmetrical floor plan. There's no way Dad could have done all that by himself (You really need two people to hang curtains so you can make sure everything is level.), so I was super-glad I'd gone over there.
Dad asked me when I was coming back to help out again.
I told him, "Not until I forget how horrible the last two days have been."
But then we giggled a bit, I kissed them both, and I headed out. NEXT time, I'm thinking we'll hang some more pictures and merchandise a couple of the shelves in the den. But that might not be for a while. Heh.
Comments
Overnight without booger was actually really fun. Hubs and I had the most relaxing dinner out, then we drove the convertible all around out near the reservoir. Heaven! I felt like such a "young married!"