snarkalupagus

flash

I am still alive, but haven't had any time to write about it.  Herewith, a (rather dim) photo of my Christmas tree, just to prove it in lieu of words.

o hai agin

Yep, still here, but currently sitting on the sofa in the rearranged living room, sucking down water to try to sober up so that I'm not hung over for work tomorrow...HP came over for dinner and I had probably two more glasses of wine than was really wise.  Dinner was good, though (boneless pork chops stuffed with cheese, apple, spinach, rosemary, and garlic, steamed broccoli, and roast garlic mashed potatoes...whenever I PMS, I crave garlic, and he wasn't complaining), and the bathroom passed his muster, and the Giants won, and before he got here I cleaned out the garage so I can park in there again and returned poppasnarx's lawnmower, Shop-Vac, and jigsaw, so all in all, it was a successful day, even if I did zero desk work. 

Good to know that I can still muster up a hella run-on sentence, too. 

yawn

I'm still here...well, actually, I'm in Denver at the moment, getting ready to go to bed so I can get up long before the ass-crack of dawn to return my rental car, take the shuttle to the terminal, and stand in the TSA line for an 8 a.m. flight from Denver to Detroit in the middle seat (I'd take a window seat further back in the plane, except I only have a 35-minute layover and have to get from concourse A to concourse C in Detroit, which is a nice long walk, and which means that a middle seat toward the front of the aircraft means I have a somewhat better chance of making my connection.  I'll be having a little word of prayer with the travel agent when I get back to the office). 

So...goodnight.

I think I was in the middle of talking when this was taken, hence the rather...brain-damaged look on my face. Finn, however, was bright as a button.

now that we're done, i'm starting

I do have to say "we" when it comes to the bathroom, because it was definitely a team effort.  I'm going to finish the last of the punch list this weekend, and hopefully get it inspected and get the CO on Monday.

So, now that it's been done for approximately 28 hours, I'm starting my next challenge...I was accepted to the Syracuse University Whitman School of Business today to pursue an MBA.  Three semesters a year, two classes a semester, three five-day residencies per year and the rest online.  The program starts January 9.

It's been a hell of a year...falling in and out of love (again), roofs and bathrooms and work oh my...and now some work on my brain.  It's going to feel good, even if I'm mildly terrified right now.  I'm starting to lose track of people's names and my formerly prodigious vocabulary, and I'm signing up for graduate school? 

Never said I wasn't crazy.

done*

SBJ isn't really good with lots of praise, but I can't help but sing it.  The man spent hours contorted on the bathroom floor, patiently connecting, disconnecting, soldering, lifting, positioning, securing, twisting, and otherwise being uncomfortable to get the toilet and sink installed.  He's the project type anyway--give him a challenge and he's there, teeth sunk in, until it's met--but this was seriously beyond the pale. 

There's not a lot left to do now except touch up the paint, install the towel bar, buy and install a TP holder, and put privacy film on the windows; I wanted to christen it this evening, but you seriously can see directly in from the campus, and no poor studentia need to be scarred by that sight.  I can wait another day or two to get the film up.

It's gorgeous, if I do say so myself.  We did the math and it ended up costing me about half of what it would have cost to have the contractor build it all out.  I'm really proud of the carpentry. 

But the best part, as weird as it sounds in relation to a bathroom, is that every time I look at it, I'll think of the people I love who helped...mommasnarx and the Belle, and especially SBJ.  I'm so lucky.

 

i swear, it's almost over

The cavalcade of boring-ass photos of my bathroom is nearing an end...I finished the trim carpentry last night.

Before that, though, I ran in the door and ran upstairs to the (as-yet only) bathroom, changed out of my work clothes (an outfit that included 4-inch $20 Killer Heels of Wobbly Death, unsuitable for carpentry), came downstairs and actually turned on the lights, grabbed an English muffin out of the fridge (the gnome home is once again nearly bare of food, a frequent occurrence), and popped it into the toaster.  I turned on the TV and thought, "Huh.  I left that on Channel 3 when I left this morning.  How'd it get to 62?  That fuckin' remote must REALLY be on the blink--damn thing doesn't work when I want it to, but park it on top of the TV and it changes the channels when the TV is OFF.  Goddammit."  I looked down while I was waiting for the toaster to pop and idly thought, "I don't remember dropping that roll of tape on the floor."

I walked over to the bathroom door, inspecting my quarter-round installation job on one wall as I went.  It didn't really click until I turned the corner and snapped on the lights in the bathroom."...hey, wait a minute.  I didn't tape off the floor after I put that quarter-round down last night.  I barely even turned off the compressor and lights--I sure as hell wasn't taping anything."  I looked back into the bathroom and marveled that the purple low-adhesive tape that had basically clung to the wall for forty seconds was all readhered.  And there was more tape on the floor.  And around the door casing.

When I finally looked up at the door casing, I realized that it wasn't bare wood anymore--it had been primed.  Along with the quarter-round and all of the corner guard that was raw wood.

Mommasnarx, supreme goddess of all mommas everywhere forever and ever amen, had come over while I was at work and primed all of the raw wood as a surprise.  I stood there and sniffled for a minute, got myself under control, chuckled that it had taken me easily five minutes to figure it out, and called her.  Santa is going to be very good to mommasnarx this year.

So.  I'm glad I ripped up and redid the floor (hard to see in an overly flashed cellphone photo, but it's an order of magnitude better than it was):

and imagine this, without the painter's tape...the trim, she is done.  Alleluia.

 

Ew, sorry...that's a really blurry photo.

so close

The bathroom is so close to done it's making me very very very antsy...worse than usual, which is pretty damn bad.  Another weekend of work, augmented by awesome help from the Belle and mommasnarx, has produced amazing progress...

Eventually, the beadboard will wrap all the way around the kitchen, on the sides of the cupboards, etc., but right this minute I can't face any more of it.  Please pardon the disarray on the countertop...that's the staging area for tools.

 
 And yet another shot of beadboard.  I like beadboard.

I also like baseboard.

Now, before we all get too excited about the floor being in place, I'm ripping it up tonight.  The contractors cased the door all the way to the subfloor, and instead of doing it right and getting a dovetail saw and removing enough casing to slide the flooring under, I jigsawed the flooring.  Mistake.  Poppasnarx stopped by yesterday afternoon and said, "Wow," which made all of the effort worthwhile, until he looked at the door frame and said, "Um, so...what happened here?"  I cannot stand not doing it right, so I will be fixing that this evening before I put down any more quarter-round.

Up until that point, however, here's how it looks now:

 
 and here...

 
Mommasnarx and I are going to be painting a lot this week...after I reinstall the floor.

briefing

Item 2 on the agenda for the weekend, following submittal of the fling-flarn grad school application, was buckling down and addressing the trim in the bathroom and kitchen.  I am pleased to report that progress was reasonably decent:

I got the door pretty much trimmed out on Saturday; this side worked out nicely.  On the other side, I had to do an emergency run to the home improvement emporium for a 1x3...when we were installing the switches, we, um, put the light switch inside the bathroom, um, a little too close to the door frame. 

Same wall from the other direction, after I had tried out some wood filler to see about the gap between the beadboard panel and the chair rail, but before I discovered that white paint makes it invisible anyway.  So I have a little sanding to do now...

By 8:30 or so last night, I'd finished the beadboard and chair rail all the way around to the door...I wanted to get the baseboard down and the floor in too, but there are only so many hours in the day and I only have so much sanity to lose making miter cuts, even with my fabulous compound miter saw (the saw is fine.  The brain that has to remember which way to cut chair rail with a different top-to-bottom profile on inside and outside angles?  Not so much).

What amuses me is the difference in how the paint looks with a flash and without.  In real life, it's way less disco than this:

See (when you look at that photo you can also see the 1x3 trimming the door, if you care...)?

 
Ew.  That must have been before I dusted the walls, too--the brown dust from cutting the panels is now everywhere, making a lovely two-tone effect with the bright white dust from the drywall sanding. 

So.  Boring.  Sorry.  But I'm excited.

overachieving already

About five minutes ago, I filled in my credit card information and clicked the "Submit My Application" button for my grad school application to Syracuse University.  I spent two weeks sweating blood over two essays and a business plan, and finished the last of it this morning (with help and moral support from all of my beloved friends, who I am sure are as sick of all of this angst as I am, and perhaps more so).

What steamed me, however, was that when I went online to upload them, there was only a specific page for one of them.  After about fifteen minutes of freaking out and four separate trips through all of the pages of the application form, I still hadn't found them.  I copied the damned topics off of the form weeks ago, so at one point, they were there; the only thing I can think is that the form is customized by program, and they've changed it, or one of my answers pulled me into a different form.

Anyway, I was not about to waste all of that effort, so I attached the extra ones anyway.  So there.