Busy Busy Busy!!!!

Hello All!

I haven't posted since I closed on my shabby home. It's been a very busy time with ripping up carpeting, pulling out old appliances, cleaning up the yard, stripping wallpaper and on and on and on. In between all this, I have to fly off for my trips to pay for all this luxury.... Below are some photos of what I've been doing.

The first is the view from the front door since all the carpeting has been ripped up and boy did it stink!! The house had been vacant for over a year and I don't know what comes out at night, but whatever it was must have gone into the carpet, pee-hew!! Under the carpet was lovely terrazzo flooring except for a huge cement square in the center of the great room. Come to find out, the previous owner had a baby grand piano on a stage in the center and they must have reinforced it with cement. That's another problem for me as we have to chip around it to even out the floor before tiling.

Below is a picture of the view from the back of the house toward the front. I'm standing on the fireplace hearth to take it. The 2 rooms look a lot lighter and very airy with the light colored floor. To the right is the torn apart kitchen.

This is the kitchen with all the cupboard doors taken off and all the appliances gone. It looks kind of naked, doesn't it? I'm lining up all the doors in the family room to paint them. It's way too hot to paint outside. It was like 100 degrees the other day so thank goodness for good old a/c!! Check out the foil 60's retro wallpaper. Isn't it AWFUL!! It's all coming down!!

This is a picture of the "library" (doesn't that sound la-de-dah) full of carpet.




This has taken me 2 days to do and it's not done yet!! Stripping bamboo wallpaper is very difficult since there is a layer of paper under the stringy bamboo material. This shows I'm vertically challenged since I didn't have a ladder (I do now) and could only work on what I could reach.



And finally, the pool is looking better! We can finally see the bottom. My helper actually dove in!! I'm going to wait til it's finally crystal clear before I take a dip. That should be very soon.



Well that's it for this post. I have to go pack my suitcase for a trip tomorrow. For those of you who don't know, I'm a flight attendant so when I go to work, I leave the state.

See you in about 3 days!

Linda

P.S. About the two little guys at the top of this post; the pretty one in the back is my bestest friend, Skyla, a maltipoo. He is helping me renovate our new home. And the cute one in the front doing a spread eagle, is my daughter's baby, Detective Munch, or Munchkin, a schitzu maltese. His name comes from our all time favorite show in the world, Law and Order. Aren't they adorable!!!!

It's a done deal! Now the work begins!

This is the key to my future! I closed on my shabby cottage yesterday and now the work really begins. Closing was at 11:30am and I was numb! It's a lot of money to fork over. I was really having buyer's remorse and was literally feeling ill. In my head this voice is screaming "WHAT HAVE I DONE, WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!", but I'm numb on the outside. Then I kept remembering that killer view from my front door and thinking with a little tile, paint and a sparkling pool, I could sell this place tomorrow and make over $50k. So I took a deep breath and felt better.

My lovely realtor, Britt, gave me a perfect gift. A very sweet card and a Lowe's gift card! How appropo! Since I'll be living there and the habitat for Humanity store. Can't wait to use it!

I had contacted a great pool company (If you're in the Sarasota/Venice area it's ElSol Pool) so as soon as I closed they started on the pool. My first post had a picture of the black hole. After 2 hours it was already a blue green and today it looked like this.
I took the picture through the window so it's a little out of focus but the pool is looking better, if a little cloudy. Ryan said it will take about 10 days to get the pool crystal clear. He'll be coming over once or twice a day to take care of it. I think it looks smashing! We still can't see to the bottom so still don't know if Jimmy Hoffa is down there. I'll keep ya posted!!

Anyway, after the closing I went to the house and did a lot of measuring, measuring and more measuring and had a spurt of energy so started pulling up the carpet. Under the stinky smelling carpet are terrazzo floors. I've never really cared for them, although they are very in. The floor isn't bad looking a very nice white. If I cleaned them and polished them they probably would look great but, as I said before, I just don't care for the look of terrazzo.



Today I brought some things to have at the house while working on it, tools, water for the fridge, scrapers for getting rid of the wallpaper, sharp knives for pulling up the carpet and cutting it into smaller pieces for the trash, hedge cutter for all the overgrown plants etc. I went into the back yard and found I had a tangelo tree, a huge ficus and tons of philadendron and wandering jew plants. I also pulled down a dead tree and have started a pile of brush to be disposed of.

This is my backyard behind the pool. The house sits on a very large lot so besides the huge lanai and pool area there is still a lot of backyard. It needs a lot of cleaning out of the bush but when It's done, fairies will be dancing in the dusk.

Linda

Independence Day

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend and exercising your own personal independence. I know I am by sleeping in and doing just what I want to do. So today I looked at tile and new countertops. Since I'm on a tight budget, I'm going with formica. I'd like granite or soapstone but just can't fit it into the budget right now. So I went to a tile store and saw formica that looks like granite or even corian. I'm getting the beveled edges which makes all the difference. The beveled edges makes the formica look extremely upscale and from a distance you can't tell it isn't granite. Ok, you can, but looking at it with one eye closed, you really can't. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The clerk at Lowe's almost had me talked into corian as they have a color called, butter cream that I really like but since I need a huge amount of countertops the price is like, 3 times formica plus it does scratch. So now I'm looking at all the colors on the formica site to find the closest color to butter cream. With the white cabinets and brushed silver hardware it's going to look fabulous!!

Anyway, continuing my "independence day", my daughter and I went to trivia night. We were the "fly girls". And boy, just like passengers with their luggage, I think we checked our brains at the door. Can you say stupid??? A tip, always go with your first inclination. We didn't so, hence, we got 3 answers wrong!! Well, after the first half we were in last place. Now I have been in last place before and in the second half gained a little and then at the end bet the farm and came in 2nd. But tonight, we were just plain dumb. So we paid our check and with heads down slunk (is that a word?) out of the door. I think I'll wear a hat next time so they don't recognize the "dumb fly girls".

I am continuing on with my painting frenzy. Here is a picture of my new pink rocking chair.
Pretty nifty, huh? The pillows, believe it or not, I got at 50% off at dollar general for a total of $8 for both!!!! I've also repainted the iron legs on the table in a previous post pink to go with the rocking chair and am almost finished mosaicing it.

I close on my house on monday and will post afterwards. I'm excitedly SCARED TO DEATH!! but in a good way....

Ciao for now!!

Linda

Inspiration and Motivation

Hi all! or hello to myself if no one is reading this.

I have been so busy painting! I looked at Joanne Coletti's site and was so inspired! Her house is GORGEOUS!! I just want to move right in!

Anyway, I have painted a cabinet white, a lamp peach, a small wooden table with iron legs, white (but I think I'm going to paint the ironwork yellow) and have the top of the table half mosaiced. This is all in anticipation of decorating my new home.

I gave an old rocking chair a dab of paint on one arm to see what it will look like. It's probably going to take 3 coats as it is very dark wood and I think I'm going to paint it shabby pink. I'm trying to get all this done before July 7 as that is my closing date and after that I will be extremely busy redoing the house. I don't plan on moving in until late October and I have my present home rented as of Nov 1.

I also am so motivated to finish other projects I have started. I want to finish this stained glass window to hang in the new house as some kind of room divider.

With all the skylights in this house, it should really glow! I scrounged up 4 of these wooden framed windows on freecycle and want to mosaic the frames of 2 of them and do the fourth on the glass again.

I'm also keeping my eyes open for a "shabby floral" couch on craig's list. I saw one in a huge red floral but I don't think I want red. I looking for one in muted colors.

Well as usual the day is getting away from me so I'll end this post and get back to painting.

Linda