Crickets? Or the sound of saws?

If you check in regularly enough, you probably notice that I write something nearly every day. And it's been a few days, so you might be wondering exactly where I went...

The answer is nowhere.

Friday, my darling man went fishing for grouper with three other friends. They were lucky! He brought home a HUGE grouper. Big enough to share. So he called his parents and asked them if they'd like to come over for lunch Sunday after church - to which they enthusiastically replied YES!!!

Never let it be said that I am not like my mother. In some ways, I am EXACTLY like my mother. Especially when it comes to home improvement urges. All the time I was growing up, we lived in houses that needed work of some sort. And what would happen is that someone would call and say they were coming to visit. And all hell would break loose. Suddenly, the kitchen floor, which had been perfectly serviceable up until then needed to be retiled. Or the guest room needed painting. Or the tub re-enameled. Or the cabinets must be rearranged... You get the picture. It was like a sudden onset of pre-birth nesting and there was always a limited time window in which to accomplish the impossible.

When my inlaws moved out of their house, they offered me their dining set. It has a huge china cabinet, and a largish table and six chairs all stained a medium dark color. I said no, thank you. You see, even though I'd just moved into a nice new (to me) house, the diningroom was small and rather dark. Add to the mix tons of boxes that we'd stacked in there, along with all our pictures. AND it stank. OMG, did it smell bad! I'd cleaned the carpet, sprayed the carpet, cleaned the carpet - nothing helped. The previous owner apparently penned her dogs up in the diningroom and they had accidents of both varieties all over the place in there. It was hideous and I felt nauseous whenever I passed close by (nevermind actually going into the room). I said "no" to the diningroom set over and over. They asked me 100 times. I said no 99. You guessed it - the lovely, but large and darkish diningroom furniture came to live in my small, dark, smelly diningroom.

So... the invitation. The acceptance. Now what? We have a nice patio table on our back deck, but it's just too darned hot and sticky to eat outside. The only alternative? Pull a MOM.

Saturday, I informed my husband that we were "doing the diningroom". He had to work some on Saturday, so I told him to come home ready to work. Zboy and I pulled everything out of the diningroom except the big china cabinet and the table. I unscrewed switch plates, took down the curtains. I went to Lowe's and got new flooring.


Because of the flash, it's hard to get an idea of just how dark this room is. Dark gray green paint and that really dark gray green carpet. Also, I'd already cleared out the stuff and taken down the curtains, which lightened it up a bit and started cutting in the corners and baseboards. Tottie really wanted to "help" so Zboy helped keep her out of the way. That's the gigantic china cabinet.

When Darling Man returned, we took the rest of the furniture out and pulled up the carpet in there. The smell was overwhelming, but the house began to smell better immediately after we hauled it outside. The dogs obviously were in there A LOT. The stains and smell went all the way down and into the plyboard below. We scraped the bubbled up woodpulp so it was level with the rest of the floor and painted primer over it to seal it in.

While Darling Man and ZBoy took the carpet to the dump, I painted the room Crescent Moon. I love this color - it's not white (too stark) or yellow (too hot) but a nice sort of glowy color that picks up and reflects light beautifully.

Upon return from the dump, we started the floor. ZBoy helped, but he also managed to amuse himself when we didn't want his help...

We all stayed up until nearly midnight working on the floor. I put the second coat of paint on after the boys went to bed, then stumbled into the sack myself, exhausted.

We got up this morning and went right back to it. Lunch was scheduled for 1:30. We got up at 7. I went to the grocery store to get what we needed for lunch, then we finished the floor, rehung the curtains, put the china cabinet and the table back in - and proceeded to clean the rest of the downstairs, which had been thoroughly trashed in the process of doing the diningroom. I was doing the final vaccuuming when they pulled up.

And when they got in, this is what they saw:

I think it turned out pretty well, don't you?