Decorating Diaries - Primer Complete

It's Saturday morning and we had the bedroom prepped and primed by 9 am.  That's what marrying the God of Dawn does for you - gives you a little jump on your day.  And since I've had e-mails from people wondering about the taping war (seriously y'all, get a life), here the scoop...

We started out switching positions.  I started:

Me: "Let's tape."

Blair: "No no, it was a bad idea.  You're right, we shouldn't tape."

Me: "No, better safe than sorry, we should tape."

Blair: "I refuse to tape!"

Me: "I insist we tape!!"

We ended up not taping. =)

Blair is so cute.  He is Mr. Precision and it takes him an hour to do the trim along one wall.  Admittedly, it's a much better looking paint job than my slash and dash method, but there is a balance of time to be had.  He was priming around the crown molding and I was priming the bottom half of the room and rollering the walls.  I had 3/4 of the room done by the time he finished his part.  "I was worried you would lap me," he confessed.

The funniest part though, was the radio.  We were listening to a country station and the signal was clear the whole time we painted.  Then Blair moved his ladder so he was standing pretty much right above the radio antenna and the signal weakened and faded in and out.

I glanced at the radio then at Blair.  He looked back at me.  "Just say it."

"Say what?" I asked.

"That my butt is blocking the radio signal," he said.

I almost dropped the brush I was laughing so hard.  He cracks me up.

We're heading out for some Saturday errands (foraging for food, that sort of thing) and then we'll put the first coat of color on tonight.  The only thing left to do is barricade the room before we leave to keep the cats out.

Decorating Diaries: Conflict- Yuck, Yuck, Yuck!

Aaargh!  It gets worse.  Turns out the contractor thought our appointment was on Thursday instead of Wednesday which explains the no-show.  (Not that it's entirely forgiven...I had my planner out in front of me when we made the appointment and it WAS for Wednesday - I'm confident b/c we already had a Thursday appointment elsewhere and I remember thinking I was glad she could fit us in on Wednesday).

The contractor was SO NICE about it which almost makes it harder.  She left us a voicemail and ran over all the work she had done for us that day and said she'd fax us a list of the sub-contractors she recommended we work with and her drawings for the bathroom, etc.

I'm not wavering on I think it was the right decision to let her go.  Mixed up night or not, there were other things askew.  But I still feel bad.  Not quite sure why.

On a brighter note, we've given the go ahead for the bedroom fabrics and in 4-6 weeks should have new curtains and bedspread and pillow shams (must have pillow shams. What is life without coordinating pillow shams?) And come Sunday we'll hopefully have a cheery new banana-yellow bedroom.  The name of the paint color is "banana." Like  I don't have enough stress in my life already...

Decorating Diaries - Bad News

Ouch, this is painful.  We've decided to let our bathroom contractor go off the project.  She was supposed to show up last night and never did and no phone call.  It's not the first time.  As Blair said, "Shame on us if we keep working with her when we've seen the writing on the wall."  Still, it's hard "firing" someone...

It really is nothing personal.  I think she is a very gifted designer with a ton of energy and ideas.  What I don't like is I don't feel listened to, the budget has gone wildly astray, and most importantly, the follow-up isn't there.  I'm a pretty forgiving person.  I can get over you not showing up if you just call and tell me you'll be late or that you won't be there.  But this whole no-show thing gets under my skin.  I arranged my schedule to meet with her - no phone call shows a lack of respect for my time.

So I'm to be the one to do it.  Yuck.  For all my big talk, I really don't like confrontations.  Not that I think it will be bad.  She's a very nice person and I expect she'll be gracious and apologetic.  I just don't like hurting people's feelings.

We are painting this weekend.  The tape issue has yet to be resolved but I think we've both lost steam over it.

Just offer a prayer that we like the bedroom color. Otherwise Saturday and Sunday have LONG WEEKEND written all over them.

Family Promotions - Take Two

Okay, I apologize.  My sister is on the ball.  We spoke last night and she said not only has she sent my correct website address out, that people looked at the book site and liked it.  One woman said she didn't even like cats but thought the book looked interesting. I'll have to attribute that to my website designer, Melody Watsonfor making the site look so appealing. Another woman said she was linking the site on her favorites page.  That really makes me feel good - what an honor.

My sister also said she'd also look into seeing if my book could be sold through the college bookstore at the campus she works at.  This is how this book is going to have to take off - small venues and word-of-mouth.

My editor at Cats & Kittensaccepted 4 more humor stories from me which will almost set me up as the humor columnist again for the coming year.  The grand part is all the stories are book excerpts so I'm hoping that will generate more sales as well.

Just have to get the book to the printer!  The final version, hard copy, is on it's way to me in the mail.  I'll do a final proof and then send on to the printer.  My bookmark design is almost ready, so we're close! I can't wait to have the book in hand.  Although I need to get busy sending out galleys for review.  Never a moment to spare.