On a Roll

We are really on a roll, both in our schedule of making it up to Payson, and in working on the home improvements.  It is a good feeling after having so much time when nothing got accomplished.

Laurie went back up to the house on her own after spending her regular weekend in the Valley.  This gave her a few days to get more painting completed.  She was able to finish the base color paint in the den closet and three of the walls.  The fourth wall will get an accent color.  She also worked on the exterior trim around the front and back doors so Mike can install the security doors over the weekend.

Once Mike arrived for the weekend, the first order of business was to put the den back in order to clear out the family room, then off to Home Depot.  We needed to buy more blinds as we had placed an online order for them earlier in the week and immediately realized we did not take into account the standard 1/2 inch allowance which Home Depot deducts from the window measurement.  The order page does not state this and we forgot until we had already placed the order.  We called Home Depot the next morning to cancel and they said they would send it on to the company who makes the blinds.  We did not hear anything about the order being cancelled but, when we called again a day later, we found the order was already shipped.  So we had to return all the blinds we ordered and get new ones.  We cannot believe how bad their process was for this, but we were happy they allowed us to return the blinds.

So that we could get some of the the blinds up without waiting for a new online order, we bought four blinds in the store for the master bedroom, den and two back windows in the kitchen.  These were not much more expensive than the online items, but we did place another online order for the two blinds for the main room as those were significantly cheaper online.  Mike was able to get all fours blinds put up over the weekend while Laurie finished the accent wall painting in the master bedroom.

Our small window above the kitchen sink - had to take quite a few slats out of that one

One of the dining room windows

One of the newly painted walls in the den and its new blind

While at Home Depot, we came across a new item we had not seen before.  It is an attachment for the window in our back door that has a built-in blind (blind is inside the window).  We have built-in blinds in our master bedroom french doors that are very easy to use.  Laurie liked the idea of being able to close off this small back window and this insert allows you to, not only rotate the blinds, but to fully pull them up - just like regular blinds (cannot do that in our french doors).  It was a very simple install to give us a little more privacy.

Our new door window blind with the slats open

The same window with the shade partially pulled up

Another purchase at the Home Depot was a mirrored sliding closet door for the guest bedroom.  We were going to reuse the original closet doors (also sliding mirrors), but the brass trim color did not go well with our new Dapper Tan paint, so we bought some new doors and donated the old ones to the local Habitat for Humanity Restore.  Laurie was not sure how the mirrored doors would look in such a small room, so we bought one set to try before getting one for our bedroom.  It was a surprisingly easy installation with good instructions and the doors look great.  We think we will be getting another set.

Mirrored sliding closet doors in the guest bedroom - adds some depth to the room

Well speaking of Home Depot purchases, Laurie wanted to get a new toilet seat for our guest bathroom.  We replaced both toilets in this house and three in our other house and all of them came with plastic slow-close seats.  Using the seat for its intended use is not an issue, but if you try to sit on these seats like a chair, they are very flimsy and move all over.  Laurie did not like that since she likes to sit on the seat while working on the tub.  Mike did not have any real preference about the seat, except that if we replaced it, we needed to get another slow-close one.  So we did some research and found really good reviews on a wood slow-close seat at Home Depot.  The new seat has a great installation feature, with a quick release option that allows you to remove the whole seat for cleaning.  This new seat is much more sturdy and Laurie likes it much better than the old one.

The new wood slow-close toilet seat was a good fit

After years of having the security doors sit in our shed, it was finally time to put them up.  Mike started with the back door for a little practice, since mistakes would be less visible there.  He found some guidance online of how to use clamps to hold the door in place while working and that really helped (plus allowed Laurie to do her work).  The biggest issue he had was the one-way screws.  He did not buy the special tool for these screws as it says a standard screwdriver will work.  Word of advice - get the tool!  You need a really big (actually really wide) standard screwdriver, which he did not have. So, he tried other flat head tools (chisels, scrapers, etc.) and was able to get the screws seated, but it was a lot of effort.  Another tip he read after he got the back door up, was to coat the screws with lubricant to help them turn easier. Will be sure to use that idea when he installs the front door.  Overall the door looks good, but somehow his measurements were a little skewed and the door is a little off-center.  Glad he started on the back - a few lessons learned.

You can tell the door is slightly more to the right - better luck next time

Laurie spent much of her weekend painting the accent walls in the guest and master bedrooms.  We abandoned the original accent color pallet and found two new colors to use.  The color for the bedrooms is a cinnamon and the den and main room will be a variation of green.  For now, only the cinnamon walls were painted and then she started on the base color in the main room.  By the end of the weekend, all the edges were done in that room and she will finish the walls during the week.  To help her with her painting, we set up two of our foldable ladders and one of our ramps for our quads as a make-shift scaffold.  She found it too unwieldy to move on her own, but then came up with the idea of using the furniture moving disks (we love these things) on the ladder legs.  This allowed her to slide the scaffold around without taking it all apart. Quite an ingenious idea.

Cinnamon accent wall in guest bedroom - touch-ups still need to be done

The master bedroom, with its new blind though it does not have its base color yet

Main room trim mostly done with our make-shift scaffold

Furniture moving disks used to help slide the ladders

Now that the guest bedroom was complete (walls painted, blinds up, closet door hung), we could set up the room for our guests.  We removed the old piece of siding headboard (did not want to scratch new paint), replaced the rug under the bed, removed the bed from the risers and cut down a king-sized egg-crate bed topper to fit the queen mattress.  We had an old topper we used for the bed we borrowed for the master bedroom after we first bought the place because the bed was very hard.  We have had a few people tell us the guest memory foam mattress is also a little hard, so we thought the topper might help.  In order to make the sheets fit, we had to cut the topper to the mattress size.  We had enough of the cut topper to beef up the padding in one of Zena's beds.  The room is now ready for visitors.

Our completed guest room just awaiting 4th of July visitors

Zena's pumped up bed

Before Mike left on Monday, we took some time to visit the Payson MVD to change the truck to the Payson address.  Since Laurie will be up here with the truck for most of the time, we decided to have the truck reside at this address as Payson does not require an emissions test.

It was quite a busy weekend, but it is wonderful to see the changes being made and how the house is finally coming together.

Just to keep you up-to-date, the mini rose bush Laurie planted for Mother's Day in May is still thriving.  Each time we come up, it has some new blooms and showing new buds.  This one just may live awhile, though it does need to make it through next winter.

Just one of the many blooms we have seen since we planted this bush

Stats: 3 Home Depot trips; 2 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 6/10/14-6/23/14: $617
Remodeling expense to date: $41,021