Sunday, May 31, 2009

Still here...

Hi there! We're still here -- there's just been a lot going on and intermittent internet access. Let's see...we moved out of the apt (finally.) around the 9th/10th. With some assistance from a big team of awesome helpers:


The moving crew, after the second load up.

We then spent a solid week cleaning and re-painting. Which took way longer than we expected. Our lease was up on the 21st of May, and we made it by the skin of our teeth. But now all of our stuff is in one place. And I mean ALL of our STUFF (two 17' truck loads and a later 10' truck load. sheesh.) The house got full pretty quickly. I'm hoping we can do some more culling as we unpack.

where'd the floor go? sigh. the kitchen.

Also - the peonies bloomed! (and more roses. and some irises!) Gorgeous. Alas, it's a fleeting gorgeousness, since peonies only set buds once a year. Really, I'm finding that nearly all of gardening is a pretty big life lesson in appreciating what you have when you have it. Mother Nature is on her own time table and doesn't care that you want peonies in September, because she only provides them in May.

peonies!
Iris


So, that's the current news in bramberville. Doing lawnwork (that grass grows fast!), unpacking boxes, dreaming of house projects, and returning to wedding planning (less than 4 months away! yowza.)

Oh, and for a cliffhanger, I'll leave you with a tease -- we'll have to tell you about our new friend Rosemary. Maybe Bryan will write about her :)

Friday, May 8, 2009

stop and smell...


DSC08411


Rose #2 of the season :) Gorgeous, no?

Monday, May 4, 2009

sanding, staining and sealing, oh my!

"I understand why people pay to have this done." -- Bryan Powell.

The floors. Wow. Refinishing our upstairs floors has been intense. It's A. LOT. OF. WORK. Work commenced last weekend--Bryan, Nathan and Dan kicked off the whole project and started sanding. And sanding. And sanding. I was out of town, but fear not, I definitely didn't miss out on anything, because this past weekend we continued. And we sanded. and sanded. and sanded. Oh, and then for a change of pace, we finally got to stain. Oh, and vacuum. And sweep. Over and over. I did more vacuuming and sweeping in those 3 days than probably in the last two years (of course, those of you who know me are probably thinking that that's not saying much. And you'd be right. But really, I did it a LOT this weekend!). There was sawdust everywhere. But Bryan engineered an air flow system with a window fan unit that seemed to minimize the dust spread beyond the second floor. He's pretty handy like that.

I am woman, hear me sand.

Dust, dust, everywhere!

de-dusting all the nooks and crannies

Bramberville product placement

Sooo... as of today? Our floors are looking pretty awesome. Minwax wood stain Provincial #211 is doing us pretty right:

Zebra-wood!

It's a bit darker than I think we bargained for, but the first coat of poly sealer is down as of this moment and it's looking fantastic- 2 more coats to go! The second floor and staircase are going to be noticeably darker than the lower level, an issue we thought we were mediating by picking a stain color in between what we really wanted (fairly dark) and the downstairs color, which we would not have picked had we been given the option, but, oh well. Maybe someday we'll forget about how much work this was and attempt the downstairs for a match. Maybe.

Speaking of the stairs; they're not done. We finally unmasked the staircase on Saturday, which was my pet project for the day - I pulled up carpet staples, ripped off tack strips, goo gone-d the double-sided tape that was for some reason on the treads ... and then started sanding. And spent literally 45 min sanding one single step. And it still wasn't near done. Since simple math led us to the conclusion that: (1 hr+) x 11ish steps = more time than we had, we abandoned ship for now. We had to keep our eyes on the prize, which was getting the upstairs floors done so we can move in next weekend. So, it kind of sucks that the stairs aren't finished but we came up with a plan to get it done much faster when we can finally return to the project, so fingers crossed.

In other news, spring has sprung at the 5407 -- we've got gorgeous hot pink azaleas in our fairy circle (our nickname for the random circle of plantings that is in the middle of our front yard), rose bushes that have produced our first rose of the season (which smells FANTASTIC) with many more buds on the way, and my prized peony bush gets bigger every day and has 8-10 buds waiting to spring forth big, fluffy, gorgeous flowers. And the buds have developed enough that I'm pretty sure they're pink peonies, which is exactly what I was hoping for!

Spring!

We need smellavision...

Peony buds -- pink!

I think that's the news fit to print. We are planning to rent a moving truck this Sunday and make the big move... hopefully that will go smoothly! Still lots to do before then - you know, like pack the apt. And, I'm hoping to get the upstairs walls painted this Friday and Saturday.

Lots more photos at Flickr -- link at the top left of this page.