d i n a n e . n e t 

Well, it happened. As of August 10th, 2007, I am officially a grown up. Or at least I’d better start acting like one, because that’s the day Mike and I became home owners. Or, well, the bank became a home owner, and we made a deal with them where we get the house when they’re done taking all of our money.

We haven’t moved in or anything yet, as we’re trying to set up as much as possible before we do that. We started by pulling glass shelves off of every wall (there were at least 8 in the bathroom) and removing the lace curtains from every window. Then we had some people come by to give us quotes on some new floors and the removal of the old smelly blue carpets. The other day, I got to buy my paints.

I love paint. I love to smell paint. I love to feel paint. I love to see paint. I might even find a way to love to hear paint. Tasting… not so much. But that’s okay. So you can imagine that I got excited at the prospect of being able to paint my own house the way I want to (with input from Mike, of course). To that end, I went online and bought myself a paint chip book, complete with every single color that Behr makes. It was awesome amounts of fun flipping through the pages finding the perfect colors. Of course, it kind of sounds like I’m painting my house with ingredients of a shake a serious health-nut might attempt to drink: Celery Bunch, Rye, Stable Hay, Pale Daffodil for color, and to get that blender going, a little Rain Water. Tasty! Hey, there’s that fifth sense, ready to go.

So, after a lengthy trip to the big orange box with Kelly and my sister, we started prepping the walls. I think my favorite thing about my house is the fact that the previous homeowners never painted the trim. It’s still it’s medium-brown stain, all… wood looking. It’s nothing super special, just a plain trim with a rounded top, but it just makes me so happy to see the beautiful wood trim throughout the house. Tasty. So, as I was saying, we’ve started prepping the walls. Kelly and my sister made a dynamite team pulling things out of the wall and filling the holes with Spackle, while I taped the heck out of the molding. I have to say, however, that this may take forever. I know that I’m doing the more difficult stuff first (hallway, stairway), so I really hope I can get through a bunch more taping at a much higher speed.

Meanwhile, Mike and Dave, along with Paul, beat the crap out of our kitchen. You see, we accidentally bought a house without a dishwasher. We told our agent we wanted one. We ignored houses that didn’t have them. And yet, somehow, we bought a house without one. We obviously weren’t paying enough attention any of the 4 times we looked at the house before we bought it. Anyway, while I know many throngs of people live without dishwashers in this world, Mike and I just aren’t willing to be among them. We have a hard enough time keeping the kitchen clean having a dishwasher. For the sake of our relationship, we just need something else to wash dishes for us. And so, demolition occurred in our new kitchen this past weekend.

Tonight, we’re meeting with a countertop guy, who gave us a real “what the fuck?” look when we wandered into the big blue box the other day toting a piece of countertop and a diagram. I can only hope he’ll be helpful. We did get the big blue box to provide us with (at a cost applied to a new credit card in their name) a dishwasher, a clothes washer, a clothes dryer, a dryer cable, 3 new door locks, a hole saw, and a lawn mower. Oh my poor innocent money. It is dripping out of my bank account at an alarming rate!

Well, hopefully we’ll have all this done by the end of the day on September 9th. See, the 10th and 11th we have Red Sox tickets, and the 12th is FiOs Day (which Mike is practically giddy with anticipation for). And at 8:00 AM on the 13th, four very tall men wearing a non-flattering shade of purple will arrive at our house to pack our stuff into trucks and move it all over to our house.