All About the Details

Joe's right--the reality of moving (and moving on) is hitting us now. In just 10 days, we'll be moved out of the urban high rise and into the country estate. And that's when things will really get interesting. So far, working on the country estate has felt like more of a hobby than anything else. We drive up on the weekends, get some work done, laugh about the quirks of the old house, and then drive back to our new loft in the city where we don't have to worry about knob and tube wiring and rooms without heat. Very soon, we'll be living with the little things every single day.

In that spirit, Joe and I had a lot of little things on our list to get accomplished over the weekend. First, I wanted to get some closets painted. Doing this before the floor refinishing begins this week allowed me to sling a little paint without worry. Unfortunately--like every other project we undertake--it took longer than anticipated. For some reason, the 3 closets I painted had all been previously painted with a super-glossy beige paint, which you can see in the "before" picture of the guest bedroom:

Bedroom closet "before"

In hindsight, I probably should have primed the bedroom closets first, but I didn't. Fortunately, they turned out okay, but the new paint didn't really want to stick to the old, so it took a couple of heavy coats.

Bedroom closet "after"

In the bathroom, I painted the linen closet. I learned my lesson with the bedroom closets, so I primed this one first. The paint went on pretty smoothly and it looks a LOT better.

Linen closet, downstairs bathroom

While I was painting, Joe was working on some electrical issues. He installed a light--from scratch--in our newly painted kitchen. Notice it right over the sink. Even though the light isn't on in the pic, rest assured that it works.

Kitchen "after"

(You'll also notice that we finished touching up the kitchen cabinets and installed new knobs on almost all of the doors and drawers--the other 5 knobs are on order at Lowe's. We are happy with the finished kitchen for now but will both be even happier when the budget allows for a complete kitchen renovation in a couple of years.)

Joe continued honing his electrical skills by installing new outlets in the guest bedroom and installing a new dimmer switch in the parlor.

Finally, Joe painted the cabinets in the downstairs bathroom and installed new hardware and hinges. I don't know if you can appreciate it in the pic below, but we painted the cabinets a pale sea green and installed chrome hardware. That bathroom is also in 5-year complete renovation plan, but we think it will look pretty good once the floors get refinished this week.

Downstairs bathroom cabinets "after"

I know it may not seem that exciting to you, dear readers, but checking all of these little things off our lists gave us a nice boost this weekend. This week, construction begins on an upstairs closet, and the floors will be refinished by early next week. The packers come the 29th and the movers will be here on the 30th. Things are moving fast now, so we should have some great "after" pictures and at least one or two stories about our moving adventures over the next couple of weeks. Wish us luck!