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So, we really don’t want to make this a website about the cat–though we could because our cat is evil incarnate and the stories really are endless. But we recently made a little change that has proven so distressing to the feline of the house that it may take weeks to recover and that? Is worth writing about.
As we’ve mentioned , ever since we moved the cat has enjoyed spending quality time in the trusses between the first and second floors. Even after we put up all the drywall on the ceiling, reducing the impression that we were living our lives beneath the watchful gaze of a panther, the cat insisted on spending hours in-between the floors in her own private Eden. She could get in there because we hadn’t installed a critical piece of drywall by the stairs.
We did that this weekend.
First, we had to get her out of there:
Hey guys, what’s up? I heard the seductive rattle of kibble hitting my bowl. Is it snack time? Why are you looking at me like that? Hey! Let go! Put me back up there! What are you doing? Why are you shutting me in the bathroom? Let me out!
After getting the piece of drywall secured, we let her back out of the bathroom. That’s when the fun began.
There was confusion:
Wha…? What happened?
There was denial:
You aren’t doing what I think you’re doing, are you? You’re taking those screws out, right guys? Right? Guys?
There was bitterness and anger:
I can’t believe you’ve done this to me. You people are going to PAY.
After we were done, she took out most of her rage on the dog later (no photos available), then turned to the catnip sack for comfort.
I’ll get you people for this. As soon as I can walk straight again.
She has spent the days since howling plaintively on the stairs. Pray for us. All of us. Especially the dog. We don’t know how long that catnip will hold out.
So you all knew that when we said we’d write more "tomorrow" we really meant "sometime this week maybe, if you’re lucky"? Okay, good. We hate to be misleading.
What were we going to tell you about? Oh, yes.
1) The ceiling: The ceiling is covered in 1 inch, douglas fir beadboard. It’s currently unfinished, but will eventually be stained. We created the dormer angle by simply following the valley rafters back instead of building a flat front onto the dormer structure. There will be a ceiling fan in this room, too, to counteract the negative effect of cathedral ceilings on heating.
2) The vanity: the mahogany is milled down for the countertop, though we are still debating whether we should leave it as four large planks or further cut it to eight smaller strips. (Internet: It sure would have been helpful if we had a picture to look at so we knew what you two are talking about. M&C: Yep, sure would’ve. Whoops.)
3) The Christmas tree. What can we say?
We started with a slightly straggly tree that we scavenged from the back 40. (Or back 1.5, to be honest.)
Then we remembered that in past years weve only had a tabletop-sized tree because our old apartment was so small. Hence, we only have two strings of lights… and we couldn’t find one of them. So we draped our one string of lights around the tree (verrrry close to the trunk so that they reached all the way to top). And the one string of lights happened to be red, so our Christmas tree is in the red light district.
Of course, we only have enough ornaments for a tabletop tree also so things are a bit sparse. Luckily, we found an extra little something to serve as an ornament (Thanks, Annie!) and a piece of stripped wire leftover from wiring outlets made a lovely hook.
(Those who don’t remember the phone booth story will find it here and here.)
We also managed to get drywall dust on the ribbons.
And this, the ugliest angel in existence, has been Cherie’s arch-nemesis for years.
We keep putting it up because we kept forgetting to buy a new one.
Put it all together, and it still makes one heck of a Christmas tree.
On second thought, maybe not. It looks nice from outside, though!
Do you think we can talk Santa into helping mud drywall?
Yes, we’re late with the weekend update. Sorry. Work. Christmas. Holiday-related events. All are conspiring to produce a serious lack of time. Here’s an update in five minutes or less.
Cherie was gone for the weekend. Michael wasn’t.
The ceiling is done:
Here’s the neat-o dormer angle and the not so neat-o smoke detector:
The vanity is no longer balanced on a trash can in the dining room. It’s been varnished, given legs, and has drawers. And is in the bathroom.
That’s it. More tomorrow, including the low-down on the ceiling, the future of the vanity and whether or not that includes a sink, and the story of "The Christmas Tree That Even Charlie Brown Didn’t Want."
Later, gators.
This is what happens when you give an indoor cat a full length window.
She sits like this all day long.
She’s extremely upset with the injustice of the inside cat/outside dog situation. We fully expect her to start stomping around and hollering, "It’s not fair!" while kicking the litter box in a fit of teenage bitterness.
We did briefly discuss letting her outside right after we moved. Then a coyote ran through our yard one afternoon. We haven’t considered it since.
Had just about enough of drywall? Yeah, us too. We don’t really see a light at the end of the taping-and-mudding tunnel yet, but why don’t we take a break from all that dust anyway and talk about something a little more exciting?
This weekend, we built things out of wood. And, lo, it was wonderful.
We built this:
The beadboard in front of the tub, that is. It currently has one layer of finish on it with another to come. The tile that is missing has been missing since the day after we tiled back in August. We have a problem with getting things fixed around here. We don’t want to take time to backtrack right now, so if something breaks/starts peeling/pops off we just leave it like that. We take a similar approach to housecleaning (why bother? It’s just going to get dirty again in five minutes), so we don’t recommend looking too closely at the shower.
But that wasn’t nearly enough beadboard for the likes of us:
This is the dormer in the second bedroom. We thought narrow beadboard on the ceiling would be a nice touch and so far it looks like we were right. We stopped halfway because we ran out of wood. We could have gone to buy more wood to finish up, but Cherie and the miter saw were having some disagreements. Sometimes it best just to walk away. But we are very pleased with how the ceiling is turning out. After it is all done, we’ll show you how we angled the peak of the dormer back in a very cool way. You can’t see it from this shot, so don’t even bother trying.
To get to this point, of course, we spent most of Saturday sanding and priming the walls. But we aren’t going to talk about drywall. We are all about the beadboard. Beadboard, beadboard, beadboard. Isn’t there something else that needs beadboard? Less drywall, more beadboard. Give beadboard a chance. To beadboard or not to beadboard, that is that question.
Okay, that’s it. We’re done. And we’ll stop sniffing the wood finish.
Dear Weather People,
It’s possible that I just don’t understand your complicated weather forecasting terminology, but I didn’t think that when you said today’s weather would be "partly cloudy," that meant "you’ll wake up to four inches of snow on your car, will spend fifteen minutes digging out your vehicle while being pelted in the face by the howling wind and snow, then have a terrifically harrowing drive to work only to spend your whole work day watching the blizzard outside and wondering how the heck you are going to get home."
But again, this may just be my lack of education.
I don’t mind the snow, but I do feel a bit caught unawares. Maybe you can send me a Weatherperson-English dictionary so that we don’t have this misunderstanding in the future?
My most sincere regards,
Cherie
PS- Thank you for updating your forecast to "snow showers with 1-2 inch accumulation." However, I’m looking out the window at about 6 inches of snow. And the "snow showers" seem to be falling sideways.
We didn’t run away to a warmer climate this weekend, so yesyesyes, we got some things done, stop harassing us. But first, look at what’s sitting in our driveway.
Michael is no longer driving a truck so delapidated that it loses its radio whenever it goes over a bump and Cherie no longer has to refer to his vehicle as the Truck of Death. This is a very exciting development for us, and we love our new GMC. (Note to the Ford Motor Company: Your trucks are nightmares and should come with warning labels like "This truck will start self-destructing at 70,000 miles" or "This truck will start rusting through instanteously upon contact with water. Please do not expose to rain or puddles." )
We did tear ourselves away from gazing at the truck and climbed down out of the sawdust-free seats long enough to get some things done on the "actual work" front. For example, we started building the bathroom vanity.
You’ll notice that it’s not actually in the bathroom yet, but instead is balanced precariously on a trash can in the dining room. We don’t explain our mysterious workings, we just tell you about them.
The vanity is made from Douglas Fir and will eventually have a mahogany top with a vessel sink. We have the mahogany, but it’s not milled down yet and in fact is buried somewhere down in the basement. We also have the vessel sink, which was last seen in its box under a pile of drywall scraps. We’ll try to pull ourselves together sometime soon, honest.
Because the vanity is balanced precariously on a trash can in the dining room instead of where it should be, you can see what else we did this weekend: drywalling in the dining room. We are approaching 90% completion on drywall hanging, which would be more exciting if we weren’t only about 30% done with drywall mudding.
We also spent part of Sunday picking up the debris, trash, and tools that were scattered around the yard. It is December now and we figured that were pushing our luck with the (relatively) warm weather we’ve had recently. So we packed away the rake, threw out the bits of housewrap and shingle that have been floating around the yard since the summer, put the hose down in the basement to thaw, and generally tried to give the impression that we are responsible homeowners ready for the winter. And then it snowed Monday morning. Not enough to keep things buried until June, but enough to make us feel very justified in spending that time cleaning up.
Now, who wants to go ride through the one inch snow drifts in the new truck?
