Friday, January 05, 2007

Kaylee's first Hairdo. I'm so excited.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Small Changes Afoot

We have a huge bedroom. It is the result of the previous owner knocking down a wall between 2 rooms that were separated by a chimney. So, we have this long narrow room with a large chimney in the middle that is covered by drywall. One side of the chimney is "Kaylee's Room." The other half is ours. But the time has come for her to move into her own space. We have an attic room that Rich was using as The Office. He even has a little sign like the one on the TV show. We plan on moving her in there, and the other side of the bedroom will become the office.

However, it's the only room that wasn't touched during the renovation. The one thing they did do was take out the radiators to replace them with baseboard heat and they dumped about a gallon of rusty water onto the carpet. This left the nice Berber carpet looking like it had been used as a Men's Room for the better part of a month.

We rented a carpet steamer, but it was still pretty stained and I didn't feel comfortable having a little baby crawling on that floor. Plus I'm allergic to wool, so Berber isn't the best choice for me to begin with. So, we decided to replace the carpet. And since the contractors also trashed the carpet on the stairs going up to the third floor, we decided that that needed replacing as well. But before we did the carpeting, we really needed to paint the banister and the walls... ARGH! Sounds like a lot of work to move a baby into her own room.

So, in order to make this happen in a reasonable amount of time, ie before her second birthday. (She's 8 1/2 months old now), we would need to hire professional painters. This is usually easier said than done. When you have little kids in the house, you just can't hire random guys off of Craigslist. My mom had just gotten some painting done through my contractor, but I was having trouble getting in touch with him. So, I was just getting ready to grit my teeth and go through Craigslist and see if I could get somebody decent. Then I went to a Boxing Day party at a friend's house and they had just had their entire house painted and it looked beautiful. I asked the owner about her painter and she gave them a most enthusiastic reference.

I called them the next day. The guy came over within a couple days of my phone call. Two minutes later, I looked at the number on the back of the business card and said "When can you start?" It was a good price and I was not about to dick around with competitive bids on something this dinky. He said "Tuesday, January 2." I said "GREAT. See you then."

Not only that, but they actually showed up this morning with the right paint colors and got right to work. It's about 3/4 done now and it looks BEAUTIFUL. My dreary hallway with the cracked walls and the ugly gray trim is gone. It it's place are smooth, warm golden yellow walls and the dingy, dingy woodwork is gone and it's now a bright oh so shiny white.

The carpet guys are coming next Friday and come January 13, my girl will go into her own room and I'll be able to turn the light on and read at night again. I suppose it will be challenging to have her on a different floor. It will be more effort to help her in the night. But she usually sleeps through the night. (The last 2 weeks don't count, as she was getting a tooth, and she had a nasty virus).

But I'm psyched. I'm so looking forward to making noise in my own room after 8:00 PM.

And thanks mom for getting us the painters for Christmas! Rich never would have agreed to it otherwise.