Sillybean

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Update: Finished loading ‘em up.

I put the finishing coats on the bookshelves today and we moved them into the study. There’s one endcap I forgot to paint—just as well; I reconfigured the whole setup so I’d have room for the papasan in there—and somehow one of the shelves didn’t get its topcoat of polycrylic, so those are drying and [...]

What I’ve been doing when you don’t hear from me for days on end.

Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil – Nancy Atherton

I found this pretty bland and unexciting. The series is about a woman who inherits a house from her aunt. Said aunt is a ghost who communicates with her heir by writing in a magical diary. If I’m fuzzy on the details, it’s because this book left no [...]

So we went to Houston for the weekend. Michael had an EQ get-together in Katy, and I stayed with my mom, two aunts, and a cousin. (The cousin and the aunt who is not her mother both live in an apartment complex near the Compaq Center. Have I lost you yet?) The cousin is mostly [...]

So the new IKEA store in Houston is open. My God, what a monstrosity that thing is. The old store has been reduced to a pile of rubble, and next to the new behemoth it looks like a small pile. A tiny pile. The new store even has a bigger sign, as Michael pointed out, [...]

One wall of the dining room is green. We’re waiting for the plaster to dry everywhere else so we can finish painting. My clever mother suggested putting up wainscoting over the evil wallpaper on the bottom half of the wall, an idea that appeals to me a lot more than peeling and scraping and mudding [...]

We got the mudding finished and the dining room taped and covered in plastic last night. However, the green paint is all wrong. We came to the conclusion that we can’t find a shade that won’t be too dark and still matches the remaining wallpaper on the bottom half of the wall…. so the rest [...]

Day 1

Supplies: scrapers, spray bottle, bottle of wallpaper stripper concentrate that has to be diluted in hot water. Discover lack of hot water. Opt to fill spray bottle with water instead and proceed as seen on Designed to Sell.

Spray.

Peel.

Scrape.

Peel.

Spray.

Peel.

Scrape.

Spray.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

On the way home, I found myself wondering how much water you’d have to spray on the [...]

The house is ours. The previous owners took the porch swing with them (sniffle) but they left us all the leftover paint and flooring so we can match it. They also left us a couple of plants, and the new grass in the back yard is growing well thanks to all the rain. They even [...]