Spring Cure: Week 3 Landing Strip

Before

We have never had a very organized way of getting into and out of the house. Our landing strip where we can always find our keys, the mail, my purse, and any items that need to leave the house that day is actually a jumbled mess taking up 25% of the available counter space in our kitchen. It is completely ineffective and often results in the mail spilling out onto the dining table only to be thrown into a laundry basket and transferred into an unceremonious heap in the office floor every time company is coming over. It's a good thing that I pay my bills online or my tendency to never deal with the mail would doom my credit score.

This week's action items:

• Create a landing strip to ease the transition between the house and out. No matter what this will not be a horizontal surface.
  
• Unsubscribe from mass mail to keep the paper from coming into the house in the first place. To add your name to the do-not-mail list, register online at www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action
  and www.optoutprescreen.com for credit card offers
• Install coat hooks in entryway so we stop draping our coats over the dining room chairs
• Buy a bench to use to put on shoes and store hats, gloves, and mittens in

Inspiration: Landing Strip

Spring Cure: Week 2 After House Floor Plan

So here is the "After" floor plan in progress. We are changing the orientation of the bedroom. Changing the exercise room into a guestroom and our catchall laundry room into a workout space. We also plan on dividing the living room and dining room better by positioning the sofa between the two.

Spring Cure: Week 2 Before House Floor Plan

Part of week 2 of the Spring Cure is to start working on a floor plan. In order to visualize what is working and not working I sketched up what we currently have as a layout. The Floor Planner website is a good way to kill a few hours. While not as sophisticated as Autocad, it is still tons of fun to play with and free to boot.

Spring Cure: Guest Room/Craft Room Inspiration

Guest/Craft Room Inspiration

My office is also going to be the craft room and guest room. Currently it is a pile of boxes and miscellaneous items from other rooms. We have guests so rarely that it isn't worth keeping a bed made up in there full time. I've been on the hunt for a nice reading chair which can convert into a sleeper bed and think that this one from Crate and Barrel may do the trick.

Spring Cure: Kitchen Inspiration

Kitchen Inspiration

I'm really attracted to this orange, blue, silver and black color scheme and have no idea why. Stainless steel and blue just go so well together and orange makes a great accent. I have used it sparingly with the main orange feature being a roman shade. It also shows up in a dishtowel here and a wine rack there. My main challenge will be the seating area and dealing with recycling aesthetically. I want a little built in bench and table seating area in my breakfast room and can't find any nice trash cans for the glass, cans, paper and plastic. Oh and hubby, if you're listening, I want this bag to keep my plastic bags in and could you throw in this blue teapot too?

Spring Cure: Week 2

I'm a bit behind doing my week two Spring Cure post, mostly because I've been having so much fun gathering my inspiration from week 1. Also, most of the actual work on the house happens over the weekend so this is what we were up to this weekend.

Focus Room of the week: Kitchen

Tasks:

• Mini-clean: wash and put away dirty dishes, wipe of the counters, and empty the trash.
• Deep-clean: Pick one major area to begin (the food pantry, the dish cabinet, the fridge, etc.) and remove all of its contents to begin cleaning it inside and out. If you focus on one area/appliance per night, you should be cooking a delicious meal in your sparkling clean kitchen by Saturday! We started with the refrigerator and were amazed at how out of date some of our condiments were. When it came to doing the cabinets I set up the same system as when I go through my closets. Three piles, keep toss and donate. I also added a fourth category for the kitchen: relocate, its amazing how many non-kitchen items have crept their way onto the counters.We took all of the kitchen gadgets and put them in a shoebox and are taking them out one by one as we use them. So far we have several knifes that I don't think we ever use, but have stayed on our knife magnet for years. We'll be making a run to the food bank and Salvation Army soon.
• Invest in a good water filter: Or, in our case we are going to change out the one in the refrigerator which is about a year old now. It took the place of our Brita pitcher, which had non-recyclable filters to change every few months. We have saved 4 filters and numerous water-bottles over the past year with our in-fridge filtration. If you don't have a fridge with this I would recommend an on sink filter rather than a pitcher.
• Cook a homemade meal: After your kitchen is pared down and clutter-free, it'll be begging to for a delicious mess. I'll be making an Italian meal for a friend's birthday.

One room remedy: Our one room remedy is our bedroom. We ordered some items from my inspiration board from last week which should be arriving soon. This week we are ready to map out our floor plan. As engineers we like to cut out all our furniture to scale on graph paper and move it around the room on paper first and then do the actual furniture move. I also like drawing things up in Autocad. Here is what Apartment Therapy has to say about mapping out your floor plan.

• begin by using a pencil and graph paper to sketch a birds-eye view of the room you're rearranging.
• then take the measurements of the walls, windows, doors, and fixed features (ie- radiators), and jot the dimensions into your graph paper sketch.
• next take the measurements of all the furniture you already have in the room.
• drawing on your vision for how you'd ideally like the space to be used (ie- a living room that will double function as a home gym) pencil in only the furniture that you deem essential for achieving that vision. You may realize that you don't need a sofa AND a love seat AND a big chair.
• if you're having trouble envisioning how the rearranged furniture will look in the actual room, use blue painter's tape to lay out an outline of the furniture dimensions on the floor where you'd like them to be placed. Once the outlines are in place, walk through the spaces around the blue tape to see if there is the right kind of flow. This will save you the energy of arranging and re-arranging heavy furniture multiple times.

Spring Cure: Living Room Inspiration

I doubt we'll get to working on the Living Room during this Spring Cure, but if we do I've got some inspiration rounded up. Of coursem I'll have to make some of our existing pieces work, even though I would love to get some new ones. I would love to have this gray wing back chair and gray sofa, but I'll stick to recovering our recliner in gray fabric and taking comfort that our current beige sofa is cozy and can be dressed up pillows. I would like a new media stand, but I could probably paint our current one and just replace the knobs. Hubby likes traditional looking furniture too much to go for my choice of coffee table, but hey its my inspiration board so I'll post what I like on it. I have made one step towards creating this look by ordering the pattern for the Amy Butler poufs (shown below) and will go fabric shopping this weekend.

Living Room Inspiration

Spring Cure: Bedroom Inspiration

Bedroom Inspiration - on Polyvore.com

We're tackling the bedroom first as part of our Spring Cure. For week one I envisioned how we want to use the space and decided that it needed to feel more like a retreat. So less storage, less books, less laundry, more organization and all calming tones are the themes. Getting rid of the red duvet and hunter green flannel sheets is going to make that place feel so much more zen and less cave-like.

Week two is all about falling back in love with your kitchen if you're going room by room and planning a room rearrangement if you're doing the one-room workout. We will be finishing a few projects and deep cleaning the kitchen this week and hope to finalize our bedroom furniture layout tomorrow.

Spring Cure

Our house is sparkling thanks to the sun shining through our new triple pane windows. This has cast the cleanliness of the inside of our home into sharp focus and put me on a Spring cleaning fritz. I have signed up to do the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure, which if I follow through should have the house looking amazing in about 8 weeks. Right now I'm doing Week 1 which is essentially creating your vision. I am putting together Polyvore mood boards of the rooms I want to work on, which has been quite fun. Of course I'm trying to reuse almost everything we have rather than buying new. Creating my own home with its own style out of someone else's inherited furniture and thrift finds has been a challenge. Right now the house still has the feel of two college students, nothing matches and it all feels very temporary. I've been out of school for over 2 years now so its about time to get rid of the dorm look. Bye bye wire cubby shelving. Please bear with my seasonal madness and nesting instincts.

Things Hubby Says

You have no idea what fear the 4 words "I'm starting another project." brings me!

Home made Christmas

Our week was simply crazy this week, getting ready for our family Christmas party and other holiday events. Kept up the good eating and went to pilates class, but missed the WW meeting. Maybe I will go to another meeting later in the week. Oh well. 

You can see our Christmas tree from last year above. When we got it out this year to set it up, it just looked so small. Its about 3-3.5' tall. We looked at about 5 different stores in town for a new  Christmas tree. Apparently there is a lack of normal looking trees that aren't sized for a hotel lobby. A 7.5' tree does not fit in a 8' house very well, or at least not with a star on top and a base to stand it on. The only ones we found shorter than 7.5' were all scraggly or flocked with fake snow and glitter or looked more like a topiary bush. Scraggly, not in a good Charlie Brown minimalist Christmas tree way, but in a cheap Made in China way. 

Some may argue that a real tree is the most authentic tree and far more environmentally friendly. I would tend to think that having one good tree like my parents, which sticks around for over 26 years isn't really that bad. But, you should buy a tree that you're willing to stick with if you're going fake. Don't buy a fad blue tree, an upside down tree, a half tree, corner tree, black tree, or fiber-optic tree unless you really really love it. You'll end up throwing it away.

Ultimately, the search for the 30 year tree ended up nowhere. We were so frustrated that we decided to try a real tree this year. We were always scared of real trees, thinking that they cost like $200 and that the cats would drink all the water and after like 3 days we'd be left with a pitiful skeleton of a tree and a pile of needles to vacuum up. I didn't want to put up the tree and then have nothing but ornaments on a sad little dead bush. But, we went to Home Depot and dicovered that their normally $200 trees are on sale for $30-$40 and that each different variety has different characteristics, like how long they retain their needles and how they smell. We'll find a friend with a truck this weekend to go pick one up.

The idea of having a real tree this year is putting me in a mood to make our whole house feel more home-made and traditional. I found patterns for cutting complex snowflakes out of paper and will be spending some fun time tomorrow night snuggled up on the couch with a pair of scissors and my favorite movie at Christmas time White Christmas. If I get tired of snowflakes maybe I'll whip up some popcorn and make some garland. Heh, we'll see how far the home-made Christmas goes.

Black Friday? Hell no.

Black Friday, been there, done that. Not worth it. Instead I"ll be celebrating the season this Friday by spending no money. Instead I'll be decking our halls (or as many areas of our home as are finished construction). I'll be putting up my wreath and hauling down my Christmas decorations from the garage. If the weather holds I might even put lights up outside the house. That is definitely not a task for -30F weather.

What Does Your Home Say About You?

Long time no post? Um, yeah. Got back from Europe and basically began working two jobs. I don't blog at work so since I haven't checked my e-mail or barely touched my laptop from home in 3 months the blog kind of died. 2nd job? What does an engineer need with a 2nd job? I speak figuratively. Back in April we had a flood and moved 1/2 of our household into the other 1/2. This happened in the middle of our kitchen renovation which was immediately put on hold. In September we got our contractor started on a 2 week tops (we were promised) job. Well, its the 1st week of November and we're still trying to get him back to finish stuff. All of my spare time has been spent working on the house, scraping popcorn ceiling, painting, picking colors, drooling over furniture, rewiring lighting, switches, etc. etc. etc. So home improvement took over my life. I'll have a series of DIY posts in the future.

So what does my home say about me right now? We are in the middle of a tumultuous time in our life. People stopping by our house won't see the chaotic mess of someone who might have left the house in a hurry that morning. They get the impression of someone who was in the midst of an unsettling time, who'd yet to make peace with their new circumstances... As I read on another blog recently: "A healthy home is not a home full of the latest furnishings or decorated by the current hot designer. It's a home that says "Welcome. I am taken care of, can I take care of you?" There's a place to sit, a place to put your jacket or a bag, clean towels and extra toilet paper in the bathroom, and a clean glass to offer a visitor a glass of water. A chair has a table nearby to put down a glass, laundry and cleaning are done regularly, perhaps a light is left on for the inhabitant who comes home when it's already dark." Our home is a sick home getting healthy. We want it to say, "Stay and sit awhile." not "Get out of the construction zone!" We're getting there little by little. I better start finishing some projects or I'll never get my dream house. Hubby has already declared, "Never again!" Poor man, his healthy welcoming home that he agreed to give a small kitchen face lift has been under construction with boxes and supplies everywhere for going on 7 months.

Sick, but still Inspired

Day 3 of 3 day weekend/Hubby's Army duty, and what have I done? I've done almost nothing. I was ambitious with my to-do list, planning on getting all of my gardening and yard work done, buying my home improvement supplies, cleaning the house top to bottom, cooking healthy meals to take left-overs to work all week, the list went on and one. Instead I felt like total crap. I finally drug my sick self out of bed right before Lowes closed on Saturday to save $160 on all the supplies. We also saved 15% +10% at Sears on our washer/dryer. They were having a 15% off sale + 10% off on Kenmore. The washer and dryer we wanted were Whirlpool Duets . The store gave us the Kenmore discount after a little persuasion when I pointed out that Whirlpool makes Kenmore and we could get 10% off +10% off for military at Lowes. We agreed to buy the 3-year warranty and they gave us the extra 10% off. Of course, we can cancel the warranty any time within the first year, so I'll get that ~$500 back later. All in all, with the money we got from the City and the discounts I was able to negotiate we got a way better washer/dryer set for about $1,000 of our own money. We could have replaced the ones we had with equivalents for far less, but it was important to me to get Energy Star appliances and I wanted a front-loader to save 70% water per load over a top loader. Saving money and going green are both ideas I can get behind.

The rest of the weekend wasn't nearly as productive, I basically laid on the sofa feeling sick, lonely and sorry for myself. I watched way too much HGTV, Food Network and Law and Order. Normally having time to just do my own thing would be nice, but when you don't have anyone else around and you're feeling bad its just lame. Normally I have the best husband in the world. No matter if I have a slight headache or he's the one holding my hair for me while I puke he always cares for me as if I'm on death's door. He generously gives me his zealous attention, taking care of my every need. My sister thinks I'm just high maintenance, which I probably am, but its hard to say no to someone who willingly hops up and runs for the Tylenol for you, covers you with a blanky and sits through a marathon of home improvement shows and girly movies just because he knows they make you feel better.

I'm still going to get my to-do list done before he gets home. When we first met and I saw his dorm room I was amazed. Everything was lined up, organized, minimal, and totally decluttered. He is still the neat one in the family, and having a clean house is a big zen moment for him, which totally destresses him. It doesn't happen often that the house is guest ready, but I try to make an effort to give him a clean house to come home to. If I could also get the renovations done and some of our projects finished it would be such a great way to say thank you to the man who takes such good care of me. Hopefully I won't feel like this too much longer and I can actually get started on some of these projects.

For the first time since I was 18 I'm not currently enrolled in any classes this semester. I have been taking classes fall, spring and summer semesters solid. In some ways I'm addicted to school. It's strange to not be doing something, learning something. I love new school supplies, the feel of a new (I could never buy used) textbook, and have a tingly sensation when I obsessively hit reload on the grades web page at the end of each semester. I guess I'll substitute transcript watching for highlighting when I start my Patent Bar review. The books look enormous. Vast swaths of white paper ready for my multi-colored highlighters and sticky-note collection. Ah, now all I need is some hot tea, I'm feeling inspired to start studying.

Advantages of Being a Military Wife

The City looked like it was going to take a long time to respond to our claim, leaving us with a mess of a house for months on end. They wanted more quotes from contractors, our insurance information, detailed photos, the list kept going. Then my husband sent them an e-mail which asked them to CC me on correspondence because he's going out of the country on military duty and the very next day they called with an offer! I can't help but thinking its because they felt bad making a military family wait and they decided to settle. They didn't give us the full amount of our claim, but close enough that with some careful budget planning I should be able to get the house put back together.

Hubby left last night for Germany for three weeks for his annual training with the Reserve. It really stinks to have his training in the summer. In Alaska, there aren't that many weeks of summer and having him gone for three of them really cuts into the summer. I am going to try and get the house back together while he is gone and begin studying for the Patent Bar. For whatever reason, when he is gone I am way more productive. I think it's because instead of getting home from work and trying to figure out what we both want to do, waiting around until we have consensus or worse yet, sitting in front of the TV, there is only me and I don't have excuses for not getting things done. When he's gone it's so quiet that unless I'm doing something it's really easy to be lonely.

One of the other advantages of being a military wife on memorial day are all of the sales. Lowes has 10% off for military, which I'm going to use to replace our ruined washer and dryer from the flood. I'll also pick up a few things for the flooded room.

Of course there are many disadvantages to being a military wife. I still feel isolated and a little bitter at times. We have been lucky so far in that he hasn't been deployed. This is his units year to go so the constant threat of that happening really hangs over us all the time. I was actually enrolled in law school last fall with tickets to move to Arizona and start my 1L year at ASU. I had the perfect schedule of classes and everything was falling into place. But, then we found out that he might have to be deployed as soon as October and there was just no way that I could deal with 1L year and him being deployed so I called the Dean, explained things, was denied a deferral and dropped out before paying my deposit.

This year I gave up on applying together. Hubby's window of deployment extends until this October so he can still be deployed at any point between now and then. We started saving money towards my education so I wouldn't have as many loans, I switched engineering jobs to one where I am far happier and even though I make less money I don't come home every day wishing I had not woken up and gone to work that morning. Once the threat of deployment is over and his unit is in its reset year rather than deployment year we'll sit down and weigh our options again. It's kind of nice to be approaching this with such a financially responsible plan. With the economy what it is, I really worry for a lot of law students who are taking out $100k+ loans, with no guarantee that they'll ever be able to pay them back.

I'm so proud of my husband and while I never truly love the fact that he's in the military, I know what it means to him. It has changed the path our lives have taken, and definitely added a lot of stress. But I don't think delaying law school for two years will ultimately be something I look back on with regret. I'm only 25, and while I sometimes think that's old and I've wasted time waiting, it really isn't, I have plenty of time to take care of my family and my career.

Dear City Dept. of Risk Management

Attention City Department of Risk Management:

On 4/20/08 frozen city storm drains caused the storm water drain in front of our house to begin welling up with the backed up water. This flooding is a known problem that has previously occurred. The City planned for the likelihood of this event happening by dropping a few sandbags outside our home in the spring. When the flooding occurred we immediately utilized the sand bags in an attempt to block the water from entering our home. We then called the City Public Works Department. With water coming in at an ever increasing rate, and unable to make contact with anyone who could help us at Public Works, we had to resort to calling 911. The 911 operator assisted us in making contact with someone at Public Works to come and deal with the problem. A City pumping and thawing crew was dispatched to our home. By the time they arrived the sand bags were doing little to keep water out of the house and the entire depth of the house was flooded not just the area near the doors. The rate of water was so great that it was also pouring into our crawlspace.

Because of the flood levels, which could not be contained, our home has sustained flood damage in the garage, one 309 sq. ft. room and in the crawl-space. Thankfully we were able to move most of our personal belongings to a higher level before they were soaked. On the city’s recommendation, we had Servicemaster come and do the cleanup of the flood affected areas and remove the materials ruined by the flooding and subsequent mold infestation. Servicemaster will be submitting their bill directly to the City and we will do a separate claim to submit a copy of their bill. This claim is for the reconstruction to restore the affected areas to the condition they were in prior to the flood. Additionally, this claim is for replacement of those items damaged by the flood.

...Detailed claim info...

Total: $14,399.65

So, for anyone wondering how the kitchen remodel is going and why I haven't posted in awhile, now you know. We had a bunch of friends come over and bail all of our belongings to higher ground which they did quite well. They saved almost everything, it's just in no particular order all over the rest of the house now. 1/3 of my house is under construction, probably closer to 1/2 counting the kitchen. I'm learning how to deal with claims against the city, insurance, contractors, quotes, blah blah blah. It's been a tough spring.

Halfway through flooding and the City hadn't shown up to pump yet. The water is welling up under the carpet, pushing it up. Ultimately it flooded the whole depth of the house in this room.

Water got behind the paneling and wicked up the vapor barrier causing mold to grow. I was so allergic I had to get prescription eye drops to keep the swelling down in my eyes.

Painting in Winter

One problem with the kitchen project is that painting when its still hovering around 0F outside means opening the windows and doors to vent the paint smell is a chilling experience. We ran out of primer half-way through so when I went to buy more I checked out the Freshaire line of paints at Home Depot for the following reasons:

-Fresh Aire paint has NO VOC'S, (Volatile Organic Compounds)
*VOC'S are a major contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer & poor indoor quality
-No harmful effects or chemical odors
-LIFETIME WARRANTY on performance and appearance
-Environmentally safe, not only the paint is good for the environment, but:
-the can
-the label and packaging
-the color chips
ALL ARE RECYCLABLE AND MADE FROM RECYCLED MATERIALS
ALL ECO FRIENDLY

Only downside is the price $35-$38/gallon for paint, less for primer and the fact that no color matching is available due to the fact that the color comes in little packets which are then mixed into the base paint at Home Depot.

I'm curious to see how well it works. The Home Depot people also told me I could order 3 free color samples which come in the mail: http://freshairechoice.com/contact.html I called them and my samples are on the way. Looking forward to seeing how well it works and how well our regular Lowes paint goes over the other primer.

The HGTV/Bloglines Addicted DIYer's Dilemma

My bloglines have grown recently. Which results in my not getting any homework done at lunch due to the fact that my feedlist is full of inspiring home improvement sites. I've been obsessively checking the Apartment Therapy "Small Cool" competition submissions for ideas. It has me regretting my choice/purchase of taupe paint for the kitchen and wishing for a spring green next to my oak cabinets. Hubby is wishing he could pull the bloglines plug in the same way as he sometimes limits my HGTV consumption by watching guy shows (poor man can only watch so much paint dry). I've become fickle with all of my decisions, second guessing myself. Do I really want a tile backsplash or should I go with back painted glass or just semi-gloss paint. Should I really hold off on getting new counters or will people think the kitchen looks unfinished without Corian, Silestone, Ceasarstone or Granite?! I know I should care, but there are so many cool options out there I can't possibly try them all. I need to find my own style and stick with it and not follow these design show trends. They may look easy on a 30 minute program with two full-time carpenters and electrician and a designer on board, but they really take a lot of time to put together with two DIY'ers at home. Worst of all it's making me discontent with my house, which is really not that small 1,300 square feet and either wishing for something larger or much much smaller (like 600 sq.ft.). I must settle down, finish some projects and live with the results for awhile. So this weekend my goal is to finish painting the kitchen, put it back together and live with it for awhile before moving on to other projects.

Removing Wallpaper the Green Way

Once Monday hit home improvement came to an almost hault. After a long day at work we weren't up for intensive tasks. We spent most of the week removing the wallpaper. Like any Gen-Y person with limited home improvement experience, the first step was Googling "diy wallpaper removal." Next we made a visit to our friendly people at Lowes and asked for their advice. We came home armed with wallpaper removal spray, squirt bottles, a wallpaper scorer and putty knives. In the end we used a combined approach. We initially thought that we should follow the Lowes instructions to the letter:

"Before using any method to dissolve the glue holding the paper in place, you must score the paper. Vinyl or other non-porous paper will not absorb any removal product, so you must make tiny cuts in the paper to let the product soak in. Even porous paper will remove easier when it is scored.

Specialty scoring tools are available to make the process faster. Though it might be tempting to use a knife or saw, those tools are more likely to damage the wall underneath the paper. Score all over the paper to be removed, paying attention to the corners and edges of the wall."

So we scored one section of wall, put the remover on and tried to scrape. We followed all the instructions to the letter, and...we made a mess! I also had a huge allergic reaction to the wallpaper remover and glue gunk and had rash all up and down my arms. I also felt decidedly un-green.

So we developed our own method of green wallpaper removal that requires just as much work, but only requires hard work and water, no nasty chemicals. While this method might not work for every type of wallpaper, we at least recommend that you try this first before buying the nasty wallpaper remover. We actually had two different types of wallpaper in our kitchen which required slightly different approaches, and one was easier than the other.

Removing wallpaper the green way:

1. Find a corner from which you can peel the paper, try removing a wallplate from an outlet as a good starting point if edges are hard to find. Turn power to the outlet off while working with a screwdriver to remove the plate.


2. Begin peeling back the paper from this point. (On half of our kitchen the top shiny layer of wallpaper just peeled right off).


3. If the wallpaper won't peel back at all then you'll have to use the scoring technique to get at the glue underneath.


4. Once you have either scored the paper or removed the top layer off, you'll need to get out your spray bottles. Fill these with boiling hot water. Spray the walls to the point where they start to drip water. (Other options to water include 1 part water to 3 parts vinegar or a 50-50 mixture of water and fabric softener.)


5. Get out your putty knifes and start scraping. Make sure to work in small enough sections that the water doesn't dry or else you'll have a sticky mess on your hands.


6. Once the paper is off you'll still need to do some prep work before painting. Wash the walls thoroughly to remove any remaining glue, then sand and wash again, prime and paint.

This takes no chemicals, no remover and it worked. One of our walls we just peeled, sprayed and scraped, and the other we had to score, spray and scrape. If, after trying the water you still can't get the paper off, we'd recommend renting a steamer before going with the harsh chemicals. Even after removing the paper, we tried using the remover gel on the bare walls to get the little bits of glue off again and still did nothing but make me break out and gum up the walls.

All in all this was a messy project which consumed the better part of our evenings for a week and all day Saturday. It was nasty, messy and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I hope to never hang wallpaper. Paint is way easier, easily changeable and better looking in my opinion.

Now I've just got to decide whether or not to try and use putty to get rid of the orange peel texture (taking the chance that the walls won't look perfectly flat) or leave the orange peel and go ahead and paint.

How to get 10% off at Lowes/Home Depot

If you want to get 10% off without employing your mad negotiating skills there are a couple ways. If you have military I.D. you can wait until memorial day weekend. Every year for as long as I can remember Lowes has offered 10% off to those with military I.D. on purchases less than $5,000 dollars. Last year I bought all of my plants and gardening supplies. This year I plan on getting a few last things for the house, but I couldn't hold off purchasing everything. So I went in search of another way to get 10% off. If you go to the Lowes website you can get a coupon for 10% mailed to you simply by filling out a form at http://lowesmoving.com/. I filled mine out and got my coupon 2 days later. Best of all, if you print out two copies you can use one at Home Depot as well because they honor their competitors coupons.