less pink

Last night was my first night in my new house.

The weekend of the 9th and 10th was entirely given to refinishing the hardwood floors. The final coat of finish didn't go down until 5:00 Monday morning. At least I was able to take my parent's to Como's for a Mother's Day dinner.

Last week I helped out with some Online jobs while other Assistants had the day off. It was nice to do some of the work that had been so routine for the past year but that I had been away from since I started working with Chris. I took Thursday afternoon off to pick up paint and supplies. Friday I left work a little early and decided to paint the enclosed porch as a surprise to my parents when they showed up Saturday morning. Alex came out to help, and we were able to paint the entire living and dining room areas as well as the kitchen. I chose an olive green for the kitchen and dining room (the kitchen in a semi-gloss finish) and a matching brown for the living room. I have a flair for very saturated room colors. I really enjoy the natural look of the green and brown together: much better than the light/pink decor that the house had before I moved in...

Sunday my dad brought his truck over and we moved all of the large furniture into the house, and after they left I made several trips in my car to bring over all of the essentials so I could stay the night there.

Today I am going to paint the inside of the kitchen cabinets that we weren't able to do on Saturday, and then I can put all of the cabinet doors back. I also need to replace all of the light switch covers and hang my pictures. My best friends Alex and Ben are going to be the first friends to stay the night this upcoming weekend, so I'm hoping to have everything moved in, unpacked, and in place by then.

I'm planning to have a housewarming party in June. Hopefully, I'll be able to host the June family get together during the day, and then in the evening have friends over. I want to have as many people as possible over, so if you want to come and there are any dates in June that won't work for you, let me know. I especially want Julie and Laura to make it, but they have a lot of wedding activities in June, so there's a chance it might even get pushed back to July. I've missed Julie, and she isn't even going to be getting back from Africa until June.

change one thing...

I've said it before, and it still rings true: change one thing; change everything. Or, at least change so many things that it sure feels like everything.

So, I have the keys to the house. Last Thursday I drove to Dearborn for the closing. I got there at the same time as the seller, which was a good ten minutes before everyone else showed up. My mortgage lender walked me through everything, which was really great. I'm sure the closing agent would have done the same thing, but it was nice to have someone I knew walking me through the process. I meant to do a mental count of the number of times I signed my name, but I would guess it was around fifty. The whole process took a little over an hour, and afterward I drove straight the Ferndale city hall to register the title. The first thing I did when I got inside the house was start pulling up the carpet. Once I got down to the padding, I realized that it had been on for so long that the padding was stuck to the finish and about 1/3 of the finish had to be scraped away with the padding. My parents came over on Saturday and we removed all of the remaining carpet staples, the tack strip, and scraped away 99% of the stuck padding. As it turns out, we're going to sand the floor down to wood and refinish, which is going to take another weekend - hopefully this upcoming weekend. Once that's done, we can really get moving forward moving in furniture and painting.

As for other notable changes... I've been able to keep up reading. So far in the past month I've read four of Vonnegut's books: Bluebeard, Breakfast of Champions, Galapagos, and Slapstick. I just started on Player Piano, his first novel. I decided to completely change over my bank accounts, so now I have everything at Chase. I went to BestBank today to close my account, and I felt kind of bad doing it. They gave me all of my money in cash so I went straight to Chase to deposit it. I've also decided to grow my hair out until after I've finished moving. It's already longer than it's ever been, and I haven't completely decided if I'll cut it at the end of the month, but chances are I will.

Anyone who's interested in helping me paint/move: most of it will be taking place on May 16th and 17th. It sure can't come fast enough for me!