Finishing the bathroom

February 1-10th, 2013:  There are few things less enjoyable than painting a bathroom.  At first, I thought it would be easier - less walls, but then I realized there are fixtures, toilets, mirrors and stuff that you have to get around.  Check out our earlier post: http://sharingsheridan.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-wallpaper-party-goes-disco.html.  When Bailey was in town, she offered to sand while Talla and I went to the store.  We came back about an hour and a half later to see her still sanding.   I painted two coats of mold preventing (expensive) primer.  then I finished the job with two coats of premium egg shell textured paint.

After it was all finished, we had to remove the toilet to get that portion de-allpapered and painted.  I did all of the plumbing work myself, but my dad helped to provide some valuable guidance.  When I asked him if he had ever replaced a johnny seal before, or if he had ever moved a toilet, he replied: "No... but I have seen the plumber do it a few times."  I shut off the water to the house, mopped up the toilet water with some of Talla's new white Turkish bath towels (very absorbant!), and lifted it to the shower.  Then I scraped the 30 year old wax ring from the toilet base so that we could start painting.

What is wrong with this picture?:

After the toilet was removed:

The new Sheridan resident

Last night Alex turned over in bed and jumped. He thought there was a person or a ghost in the house. I turned to see why he jumped and did the same. But we were safe, it was just the head.

Last weekend we went furniture hunting at the Sleepy Poet. Alex walked out with a massive cedar hope chest and I walked out with a head. I've been intrigued with Phrenology since watching My Girl back in 5th grade (I love that movie). Now I can be like Vada and analyze people's personalities. Who wants to visit?

According to my new Phrenology head the part of my brain relating to selfish propensities is over utilized and the part relating to moral and religious sentiments is under utilized. My vitativeness is over utilized as well. Huh.

I'm no Phrenology expert but I've also determined that Alex over utilizes every part of his brain, especially the alimentiveness part.

If I had purchased one of these back in high school I might have scored higher on the verbal section of the SAT...

Black and Purple

The Ravens finally made it back to the Super Bowl.  After four straight years of heartbreaking Ravens playoff losses, I knew that this was our year.  So determined was I that I took an oath to not shave my playoff beard until the Ravens won the Super Bowl, be it this one... next year... or five years from now.
I am really glad that they won.  When describing my beard, I can't help but think about a quote from the movie Joe Dirt:  "You mean it just naturally grows in... All white-trashy like that?" - Said the radio show host, Xander Kelly to Joe Dirt.  Not only does my beard not grow in very well, but my neard (neck beard) gets unbearably itchy.

My playoff beard the morning of Super Bowl Sunday:

After getting a full day of landscaping duty out of Bailey, we headed to Thomas St. Tavern to watch the game.  Here is me in between my two favorite ladies... all decked out in purple of course.:

Bailey Visits

February 1st:  Our first visitor has arrived!  My sister, Bailey, became our indentured servant for the weekend.  We paid for her flight, food and drink.  In exchange, she worked tirelessly around the house... sanding walls, painting, plastering, moving heavy furniture, cleaning, taping... etc.

This is Bailey first thing on Saturday morning.  Here she is happy.  We clothed her, fed her a nice breakfast, and even let her play with my iPad.  Several back breaking hours of manual labor later, however, that grin would be long washed away... 

(just kidding, she had a great time.)

Happy as a clam:

The real reason that I shipped her down of course was to have her watch the Ravens win the Super Bowl with me...

January 29th

Me: "Hey Tim, do you want to come over and have a beer/check out the new place?"
Tim: "Hell yeah!"

Tim came over and had a beer... Then he helped me:

- Move a bookshelf from upstairs to the basement
- Re-organize the storage room
- Get a car load of stuff from Talla's place
- Arrange the Living room
- Set up the bedroom

Me: "So uhh... Come over for a beer.. same time next week?"
Tim:  "Uhhhh... maybe at my place"

(Thanks Man!)

Here is us setting up the bed.... We got it put together in no time.

The next day I snapped a picture of the living room with the natural sunlight pouring in:

Unfortunately, I do not have a before picture, but the room looked like a furniture storage room before Tim came over.

Working from home...

... Is really tough with a broken computer

Jan 29, 2013 - One small drop from 4 feet and this is the screen that my computer would freeze on when rebooting:

The "screen of death" is what I think bloggers and tech forum gurus refer to this display as.

According to Geek Squad, the hard drive was toast.  It would take them a few days to fix + I had to get the reboot disk shipped from Sony, and new MS Office Software.

In the mean time, Talla let me use her computer to do my work.  Luckily I didn't break that one too.  After 7 trips to best buy and $350 in repairs over the past 2 weeks, I finally got my computer back last night (Feb. 13).  She is now up and running better than ever. : )

Painting the Bedroom

January 27-29, 2013:

The bedroom was this strange pinkish color when we moved in.  It didn't make sense to move everything in there when we knew we had to paint soon anyways.  So we stayed the first few nights in the guest room..  Porpoise was the color we chose (which is a shade of grey...).  Choosing paints reminded me of this clip from Lost In Translation:  Well ok, I didn't find the clip, but it is when Bill Murray's character opens a package his wife sent him with 20 carpet samples that are all a maroon/burgundy color.   He scatters them on the floor and studies them for a second.  Then he reads a note that says: "tell me what you think of the burgundy".  He says to himself something along the lines of "They are all burgundy."  Haha.

The color looks great in the bedroom, and we have it mostly set up the way we want.

And here is the finished paint job: