Moving In

We had a forecast for a ton of rain starting Sunday night. I did not want to be stuck in the Little Old House with no way to get to work on the House on the Hill. Sooooo, Sunday afternoon we moved in enough stuff to get by with. Sort of like camping only better. This is our lovely sort of campsite.


Like the paint swatch on the wall? I'm living with it to see if I like it. So far I do. It's a kind of a muted shade of the spring green leaves outside the window. Just for a teaser, only the top part will be the green.

We put the guest bed up in the master bedroom until we finish the guest room. Then we will move it into the guest room and finish our room and bath from there. Seems a little backwards but the guest room is a quicker fix. I've got a little more drywalling in there and then the painting begins. (M even told me it looks pretty good.)



YES! Why do I love to put fresh paint on walls so much?

After we got moved in we discovered a couple of really good things. This works.


The other really good thing? This doesn't work.



Wahoo! Gas cook top here I come. When we really looked at it, we realized that the former owner had evidently removed a good cook top and replaced it with a piece of junk. It is not hooked up and there are no inner workings for the downdraft. The knobs are not the right knobs and have been glued on. It is also very grungy and the rest of the kitchen is very clean.



See how white the grout is between the tiles? The whole kitchen is that clean, under the redo dust. The very grungy stove just didn't seem to fit the rest of the kitchen.



So it will be disappearing very soon and replaced with something that looks more like this. After the lovely almost mauve tiles have been replaced. Of course.



After we moved in I also realized my computer could not move in with me. Unless it wanted to disconnect from the internet. It did not. So for the time being it is staying in the Little Old House and I will be making visits to it when I am not working. This week's list has "contact the phone company" on it somewhere.

So what else have I been up to? Scraping popcorn off ceilings and scraping more popcorn off ceilings and scraping more popcorn......a bunch of scraped off popcorn.



The living room ceiling is done



and so are all 3 guest/sewing rooms, the foyer, the hall and the guest bathroom. I've started on the kitchen family room but it has been painted at least twice. It's hard....scrape the knuckles hard.



I've also been really missing K and My Girl because I've been trying to make choices.

Formica choices



and flooring choices. I could really use some help.



We have decided to put ceramic tile in the kitchen/family room, the foyer and the bathrooms. I'd love to do a natural product but they are just beyond my budget. We are thinking about going with an engineered hardwood for the living/dining room and our bedroom. I've found a factory direct store on ebay that is VERY affordable. It will have to be. The living room/dining room will take a lot of flooring.

When I took the lovely not quite mauve pink tiles off of the kitchen counter, this is the profile that was underneath. I was hoping for something that I could just put wood trim on after M laid new formica. No such luck. So this is a huge factor in my choices now. I will have to find some kind of tile to put back on the countertop edge.



Here is one I'm looking at with a couple of countertops I like and the floor tile that goes with it. One of the countertops has a high gloss finish like polished marble. The other looks kind of like a honed granite.



These are what I'm leaning towards right now. But I want to get to a tile store to see if they have more edging choices. I haven't found a whole lot.



The ceramic tile and the wood floor are the ones on the right in the flooring picture. I like the colors a lot with the trim and cabinetry in the LR/DR Kitchen and family room. The wood floor has a slightly distressed look. So when my guys damage it somehow, (which I know they will) I can wipe a dark stain on it and it will look like the rest of it. Both the ceramic tile and the wood tile blend very well with red dirt too. That is very important. Very. Important.

BUT, I'm taking a trip to Dalton, GA sometime this week. Dalton, GA the carpet capitol of the world.


You name a carpet and it's mill is probably near there. All of the carpet mill stores have drawn in bunches of other flooring stores and prices can be dirt cheap. So I am not making any firm choices until I visit there.

The tons of rain we were supposed to get? Didn't really happen. We did get some Sunday night but nothing like the flooding in the Nashville area. My Girl told me yesterday that she had been in Nashville for the rains. An AU girls get together. I'm so glad she told me after she was home.

The rainy weather did leave us with foggy mornings. This is the way the hills have looked the last two mornings








and this is a new view I have.  A sorrowful thank you to my trees sacrificed to the Power Company.



And this?


Is across my valley, it's Dugger Mountain. The only real mountain in the midst of all our hills. I have to wonder if I visited Dugger if I could look across the valley and see the House on the Hill.