And The Winning Color Is...

Green (tho I'm guessing those of you who've seen my place aren't shocked).

Mom and I painted the bathroom tonight with a shade called Mother Earth, it's hard to tell in the snapshot below, but it's kind of a mossy green color.

We did discover that we're going to need more paint for the Rec room than I originally anticipated.  Dad got about 3/4 of the primer sprayed in that room, and he'll finish that up tomorrow morning, while we make another run to the home improvement store.  I'm going to try a technique painting for the rec room called Bellagio Faux, which has an under coat and a top coat with some texture.  We only picked up a gallon of each paint, and I think we're going to need more like 3 gallons of each, oops (should have gone with the gut on that one I guess).  The undercoat is an off-white color, and the top coat is green.  I'm looking forward to when I get that done, but am guessing that's going to probably take a while.

Stay tuned for more updates :-)

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions. ~Brendan Francis

Okay, I'm going to put this out there right away. When it comes to non-work related topics, I am NOT good at making decisions, and try to defer to others when possible. I don't struggle with what direction to take a work-related project, and am confident in the decisions that I make for clients and my team, but somehow that confidence gets left at the door (or, perhaps at the keyboard) when I switch from work-mode to personal mode.

Personal decisions are something I try to avoid. When it was time to go to college, I briefly debated one other school before choosing Lakeland, but I didn't want to have to choose. So, I only filled out one college application, and only put one school down to receive my ACT scores and FAFSA information. In all fairness, my entire family is rather indecisive. Choosing where to go for lunch on a Saturday while shopping has sometimes taken my mom and I more than an hour, back and forth saying "You pick, no you pick." When my mom wants to paint, she brings home paint charts with about 25 different shades of white, and looks at them for WEEKS before selecting "just that right shade."

On occasion, I can make a quick decision on something. Ironically, the bigger and more permanent the decision, the quicker it seems to come for me. Case in point, when I was looking to buy a place 6 years ago, I went to two open houses, then saw a family friend outside of her new condo. When I walked in, I knew that's what I wanted, and in less than 72 hours I had secured financing and placed an offer on my home.

Don't misunderstand me, I do have ideas for what I want, but when faced with CHOOSING something that I hadn't already predetermined, it's ugly. When I put in the offer on my condo, I knew which of the two layouts I wanted (it was rather simple, I didn't want a shared driveway for two reasons: (1) I was afraid that my neighbors would park on my half of the driveway when I was out of town, and when I came home I couldn't get into my garage and (2) there are a handful of people I know who I could see not using common sense and parking on the neighbor's half of the driveway, thus creating the same problem for them that I wanted to avoid. I also knew that I did not want yellow siding; I wanted oak woodwork; I absolutely did NOT want that frieze carpet, as I could only imagine how that would collect cat fur; I didn't want brass doobs or cabinet pulls; and I didn't want any wall sconces. Fortunately, because I put an offer in on a completed place, the contracter made the decisions on anything I didn't have an opinion on.

Unfortunately, when I jumped into this remodel, I wasn't prepared for all of the choices I was going to have to make. I don't mean the furniture, like when I initially furnished the condo, I had an idea of what I wanted, and both times I just knew when I'd found the right pieces. In the beginning, some things made my decisions easier. Picking a sink was easy - I wanted to stick with the same manufacturer that I had for my upstairs plumbing, and if I didn't want to special order the home improvement store only had two styles - oval and rectangular. Picking a cabinet was pretty easy, since I knew I wanted something to compliment what I had upstairs. So, I wasn't fully prepared for tonight's shopping excursion.

When I was done with work for the day, my mom and I went to a local flooring store. YIKES, not only did I have to pick the style of carpet (still didn't want Frieze, but did I want plush or burbur, patterned or plain, what color). Making that decision took a while, but I am pretty sure I have an idea. Once the laminate is laid in the bar area, I'll bring a sample home and make my final decision. Next, we headed down to the home improvement store to pick up the primer/sealer for the drywall so Dad could spray that tomorrow. Next up in the process is painting both rooms. Initially, I thought that I had things picked out, but I like the texture on the walls so much I've decided not to do the Venitian Plaster in the bathroom.

As for the rec room, I know I want to do a specific style of painting, but the colors are still up in the air. So, instead of bringing home paint, I brought home lots and lots of paint samples (at least they're not all white). I have been staring at these for the past hour and a half and am no closer to making a decision than when I started.

For a variety of reasons, I need to get the painting done this weekend, preferably finishing the bathroom after work, leaving Saturday for the rec room itself, so I need to decide rather quickly. Some of the folks I work with have a joke that stems from long ago. When we find ourselves trying to troubleshoot something, we'll go wash our hands and hope for an Epiphany on what to do (ironically, it does seem to work most of the time - probably because we stop focusing so hard on the issue at hand). So, I'm going to go to bed, and hopefully when I get up in the morning, I'll wash my hands and the color choices will just come to me. If not, then in the next set of pictures I post, expect to see everything painted white.

From Basement to Rec Room at Breakneck Speed

I haven't blogged lately for a variety of reasons, but primarily because my basement remodel had gone absolutely nowhere. When you combine my schedule with my Dad's (who, like me, never knows what his schedule's like in advance) and my brother's (who, in addition to his day job serves on the church counsel, the church building committe - which has seen it's own remodeling project go ahead in the past month or so, the Plan Commission and Crimestoppers...whew, when DOES that boy sleep), it's been a challenge.

The thing is, I have plans for using the basement this year, and at the top of the list of which is when Santa and his crew come to visit all of my friends kiddos. An ever increasing population of kids really would fit in better in a rec room than in my living room with all the dangers that come along with my glass tables, glass entertainment center, open stairway, etc. Plus, I have other reasons for wanting the basement done. Not the least of which is, at some point yet this year, we are probably going to get severe weather while I'm home, and I'd rather sleep on a couch than on a piece of scrap carpet on the floor - more on this in a future post.

So, three weeks ago this past Saturday I picked up the pieces needed to add another drop for my central vac unit, since otherwise I couldn't clean downstairs. The pieces sat there for two weeks while Dad worked and JT was occupied with about 50 other things on his To Do List, as well as a weekend getaway for a friends "Bachelor Party." Finally, my mother had had enough, and pretty much told the guys if they didn't get the vaccuum piece in, she and I would do it.

A week ago yesterday Dad brought his good friend over and he helped calculate exactly how much wood we would need to stud the outside walls. That night, the vaccuum piece went in. Tuesday, Dad got the wood, and he and Mom carried it into the basement that night. By the time I got home Thursday night, the studs were in, and they'd started the electrical. WOW!!!

Of course, with things suddenly moving at the speed of a Category 5 hurricane, I kept myself busy this weekend. Friday after work was Trip 1 of the weekend to the Home Improvement Store to pick up lighting fixtures, cable and boxes for the TV connections, faucent for the sink (no room for the actual sink in this run) and return a couple of things that we didn't need after all. Saturday brought Trip 2 to the Home Improvement store, on my list this time: Vanity, Sink, and some other odds and ends stuff. Then, it was on to the furniture store to "look" at furniture. An hour later, I had ordered a couch and a rocker recliner. Sunday afternoon brought Trip 3 to the Home Improvement store, this time we picked up the toilet, the countertop, and tile for the bathroom floor. We were going to buy paint too, but ended up going home without that, but with questions for the Drywaller. My spare bedroom/home office is currently serving a third purpose, as holding area for all of my purchases.

Things haven't slowed down this week, yesterday the Drywaller was here and put up the sheetrock in both rooms. Last night, the plumber got all of the connections set up. Today the drywaller did all of the taping, and tomorrow he's going to start spraying on the finish, if everything dries. I have a day trip to Baltimore tomorrow, so it'll be exciting to see how much things have progressed when I get home tomorrow night. They figure by Friday they'll be ready for the primer.

So, here's what should be left by the end of the week:

Buy and install ceiling kit
Buy and install the can lights in the rec room
Install the wood laminate floor in the "bar" area
Buy the Venitian Plaster kit to paint the bathroom and paint (*)
Buy the paint and paint the rec room (two colors - rag painting) (*)
Install the tile flooring in the bathroom (*)
Install the bathroom light
Install the bathroom vanity, sink, and toilet
Find a carpet square pattern I like (at a reasonable price) and install that in the rec room. (*)
Put on the wood trim

To some, that may look like a long list, but given how fast the rest of this project has moved, I have high hopes that this will be done by mid-September. That is, of course, if I can get all of the items with an asterisk at the end done...those are things that require my involvement, and given the fact that my family, friends, and my family's friends have pulled up their bootstraps, I really can't be the holdup now, can I?

Note to self: Put "Request PTO" on the "To Do List"

Oh, and in case you were wondering if I got everything cleared out of these two rooms, the answer is yes (with the help of the parental units)....just don't pay attention to the clutter behind the curtain (or, in the storage room).

Yard Work

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I took a break from cleaning the basement and did some work outside. I've been in my condo a little over five years now, and have never really been successful in getting the grass to grow on the West side of my patio, so I decided to rip out what was there and turn that area into another perennial bed.

After calling Diggers Hotline earlier in the week to make sure I wasn't near any buried utilities (even though I was 99.9% certain there weren't), I woke up early Saturday morning, grabbed my handy Maddock and started digging up the area and, with the help of my mom, we worked it up as well as we could. We also found out why the grass didn't grow well...seems that, like most masons, the guys who put my patio in were a bit sloppy, and buried the extra cement about an inch under ground...deep enough to hide, but not deep enough to let the grass roots take hold. Saturday night, Dad brought over the rototiller and we (yes, we...he actually let me use power tools - probably because it was actually my brother's) tilled the area, and by Sunday we were planting the grasses and flowers I'd bought. Take note: The entire time we were working on the project, the supervisor (a/k/a my cat) watched safely from his perch at the patio door.

Of course, what I had bought didn't quite fill the area, so I decided I needed to run to get a few more plants, and maybe, just maybe some sort of garden statue or animal to fill the space between the hose reel and the water fountain. Monday morning Mom and I made another trip to Plymouth, first stopping at Fleet Farm, where I got the most AWESOME frog whom the neighbor kids later named Ribbit and then went to the nursery for one more plant run. The rest of the project would have to wait, though, since we couldn't get the mulch until after the holiday.

Someone needs to tell my dad that his daughter is NOT a morning person, because he was at my house before 6:30 Saturday morning with the mulch, and was ready to get moving. Of course, he had the worse end of the deal, since he was the one carrying the mulch in 5 gallon buckets because the wheelbarrow tire had a blow-out the weekend before. My job was simply to spread the mulch. In the end, though, all of the hard work was worth it.

After two weekends of supervising, the cat is ready for the yard work to be over so he can get back to his normal life...all of this planting is hard work!

Dungeon of Doom

Wow! I actually do have a few readers of my blog, and thanks to those of you who've prodded me to keep going.

After a brief delay last weekend, I finally got started on the basement this weekend, with the help of my mom. My brother J had a crazy weekend so he got to skip out, but that's okay. We have projects for him when he gets home. For those of you who know my dad, you'll understand why it's going to be a much easier process if he stays away until the basement is clean and ready for remodeling (long story short...he doesn't do well with "purging" items). We spent a good portion of the day on Saturday and about half of Sunday cleaning what will continue to be the "utility/storage" room. At this point, it's about 80% of the way to where it should be, and since I'm working an hour from home on Friday, I should be able to get a little work done that evening. Hopefully by Saturday I'll have that room as done as he can until a certain totally awesome little brother gets a few things done (installs the tray under the washing machine in the laundry room above, plumbs the drain from said tray, etc).

So far, I'm still on track to being done with the cleaning by mid-June (4 more weekends). If I can pull that off, I can get my building permit and we can start all of the "rough" work that needs to get done behind the scenes (extending the central vac PVC piping into the new room, running the necessary wiring for television, internet, and electricity, and getting the water into the bathroom). My goal is to have that all done so that the drywall can go in by the beginning of September.

So thanks to those of you who've pushed me so far. Once the clean-up is done, I'll start posting pictures throughout the remodel.

Have a great week!

Basement Bedlam

Okay readers, I need your help and encouragement.

Growing up in Wisconsin, a basement has been a part of most homes in the area, although they were often different. By my Grandma K, it was the place the laundry chute led to; by Grandma and Grandpa H, it's where Grandpa went to put that one last log in the woodstove before the 50+ people arrived for Christmas dinner; by my Aunt and Uncle G, it was where my cousin's really cool bedroom (and the rec room with the freaky electric fireplace) were; and, at home, it was where I hung out during Tornado Warnings (okay, and watches).

Whatever the purpose, I never really gave a second thought to a basement, it was a basement. There really wasn't something "EXCITING" about a basement. That is, unless you're my cousin P. In all fairness, my Aunt and Uncle K moved out to California when P and his sister were still in school, but if you ask me, he was just a little too obsessed with my basement when he toured the "under construction" condo during a visit. At that time, the place was empty, so yeah, the basement was cool.

A year after I moved into the condo, I had done a good job of filling up my basement, with Christmas decorations (don't forget, I have in excess of 30 bins, plus three Christmas trees); a crib my cousin C gave me in hopes that someday I actually do "get" a kid of my own (along with some dressers from my parent's neighbors, for the same reason); Grandma K's walker and wheelchair; my crafting supplies; and assorted other "valuable" things that "I might need" one day. But, hey, it's a basement, it's not where I entertain, so who cares if it's a disaster area.

Enter Cousin P once again. He and his wife M were coming to Wisconsin for a visit, and I offered up Staci's Bed and Breakfast for them to stay at, since I was going to be out of the country for work. The only condition...stay OUT of the basement. Note to self: P takes after his father and his grandmother...he's stubborn and he doesn't listen. To my horror, I learned he took M downstairs to look at the basement. How embarassing! I vowed by the next time the two of them came for a visit, I would have the basement cleaned up.

Four years later, I've acquired more, um, stuff and the basement isn't ready for any tours. I had taken a stab at it more than once, but for some reason it likes to become cluttered quickly. I did have great intentions to fix up the basement this year, since I had to do something with credit card points when the firm switched providers; I have several gift cards to a major home improvement retailer waiting to be spent. The problem is, I just really haven't had the time yet this year.

Now I find out that P and M are likely coming, along with P's sister, for a visit in July. Odds are about 100:1 that I'll need to be at a client that week, since it's quarter end, so the logical place for them to stay is once again Staci's B&B. Only this time, I know that P won't listen to me, and they're bound to want to look at my basement once again.

So, my readers, this is where you come in. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to come help me clean the place...instead, I need a little push from each and every one of you. I cannot start the organiztion this weekend, since I may have to work at some point, and I have a 1st Communion to attend in Chicago on Saturday, so I only have 8 weekends to get this all done. While it may not be fixed up, I cannot have a repeat of June '07. So, please, help encourage me to get moving and get organized. If you don't see reports of progress (and, in upcoming weeks, as I've gotten through at least SOME of the things, pictures to support the progress), send me a note to help me get moving.

Hopefully, I will soon be able to move from "Basement Bedlam" to "Rec Room Remodel."

Surviving Travel During the Great Blizzard of 2011

I got an unexpected call tonight from a friend of mine who thought I may be going stir-crazy in my hotel room. What an awesome suprise that was! One of the things that we talked about was her blog...she's got a natural talent for writing, so reading her musings about this or that is a great way for me to get my head out of my work for a bit. I had thought about blogging myself for a while, but figured my life wasn't really something anyone would be interested in. Not like H, who writes about her hubby and kiddos, or like another friend of mine, D, who initially started her blog as a way to keep everyone informed on the progress of her son, who was born super early (now, he's like any other 3-year old, but she still blogs about her family).

H told me tonight that she was suprised at who actually reads her blog. She uses her blog as a way to write something her children can reflect on in the future, but also as a way to blow off some steam when she needs to. She never really thought people would take the time to read it.
While I'm not foolish enough to think that my blog is actually of interest to many, I thought it might actually be a good place for me to blow off some steam and detach myself from work for a few minutes every once in a while.

All of this brings me to my first entry on my blog, the Great Blizzard of 2011.

Anyone who knows me will understand why I titled my blog what I did. It's a turn of words on my hometown, and the fact that I'm often traveling to multiple cities in a month. This week was supposed to be an "easy" travel week. There was no air travel, all I had to do was drive to Illinois for the week. Easy enough, right?

Over the weekend, weathermen started to go into their panic mode, as Stormageddon was supposed to bear down on Wisconsin and Illinois during the week. Usually, when the media gets this hyped up about a storm it fizzles out, so I didn't panic too much about it. I was, however, proactive about a few things "just in case." I packed some "comfy" clothes (jeans and a sweatshirt) in case I had to work from the hotel one day; I picked a hotel that was surrounded by restaurants, so I could walk to dinner rather than drive if the snow was a blowing; and I even packed my portable DVD player and 3 seasons of The West Wing, in case the DirecTV at the hotel went out.

Unfortunately, there was one thing I didn't think about: what happened if the power went out at the hotel. Last night, the lights flickered a couple of times, and when I made a comment about it on Facebook my cousin commented that I should call down for an extra blanket just in case. So, I did that, and I dug out my flashlight just in case the lights did go out for a while. I pulled out the power strip that I carry in case I get stranded at an airport (it's a great way to make friends while waiting for a delayed flight if you have a place someone can charge their phone - and it makes it easy to convince someone to let you plug into the outlet if they aren't giving up their charging capability), since it has a surge protector, and plugged in all of my electronic garb.

When the power went out a little after Midnight, I grabbed the extra blanket, turned on the DVD player (I needed some noise to drown out the drunk group of people who'd just gotten back to the room next door) and snuggled into bed. No worries, I figured, by morning everything would be fine. Unfortunately, when I woke up at 6:00, the power still wasn't on. Since I'd drained the battery in the DVD player, I couldn't do my kickboxing workout, so I figured I'd go back to sleep for an hour and hope the power was back on when I woke up again...WRONG.

So, I started out today with a fully charged laptop and a cell phone that had already lost about 13% of its charge...the major downfall of the iPhone, and no TV, Radio or DVD Player to provide me background noise. Immediately, I set the laptop to "conserve energy," hoping the power would come on before I drained the battery completely. I turned off the 3G on the phone to conserve what power I had left, and started my workday. Just before noon, the laptop gave me the "find a place to plug in" warning message, and I saved my files just before it shut down.

By this time, I knew that the hotel was going to be serving a complementary banquet lunch downstairs, so I figured I may as well eat. I was on the fifth floor of the hotel, which has 16 floors in total. Since they were operating on generator power, only one elevator was operational, and by the time an elevator going to the lobby reached the 5th floor, it was full from the first 11 floors that it stopped at....which leads me to my first real gripe of the day. What kind of architect designs a hotel where the stairs don't go down to the lobby? (I have more to say about architects, but will save that for another day). In some architect's logic, it made sense to have the stairs allow you to only get to the second floor, where you would have to exit to the outside world. I don't mind walking the stairs, but in the middle of a blizzard I really didn't want to go outside and walk around the hotel to go in the lobby entrance. All of this led to the very interesting approach of pushing the UP button of the elevator, catching it on the way to the top, and riding it all the way back down to the lobby, a process which took about 20 minutes.

Well before this point, I had come to the realization that it was very likely the hotel wouldn't be getting power back today, but they were still advising people to stay off of the roads, and from my hotel window I could see that the roads were not in any real driving condition. This made for a VERY long afternoon. I realize now that I probably should have packed a book, or at least a magazine, from home, but I never thought about what would happen if the power went out at the hotel. For all of my laughing at my co-workers who hadn't thought about not being able to get back to Chicago last night, and bragging about being prepared, I really wasn't. Of course, I did at least have enough clothes along, but I was going out of my mind from sheer boredom. At least I knew I wasn't alone...at lunch I met a group of 5 women who were so bored they went "shopping" at the tiny hotel gift shop to pass the time (I'm not sure if they bought the "Someone who loves me very much" T-Shirt, the glow in the dark Willis Tower statue or some "incidental" items, but that was the wide selection they could choose from, so I'm sure they didn't alleviate their bordem for long.

Finally, at about 4:00, traffic seemed to be flowing a bit better, and I was able to get a reservation at a nearby hotel. I packed up everything, made the trek out to the parking lot and loaded up the Trailblazer. I have never been so glad to have a radio in my entire life, but it made me feel like I was back in the real world. What's usually a 7 minute drive on Lake Cook Road from Milwaukee Ave to just East of I-294 took about 25 minutes. Only one lane was plowed, and there were some cars that had spun out or gotten stuck that I had to make my way around, but I made it to my new home away from home in one piece. I unpacked my suitcase again, and then settled in with my laptop in front of the TV, checked on the shipping status of my iPad and then got back to work.

That's when I realized how much I depend on electronics as a part of my daily routine. If I had drained my phone's power, there were only a handful of people who's phone numbers I had memorized...Mom & Dad (home, work and cell), my brother's cell, my aunt's home phone, and two people from work (and I wasn't 100% confident that I had committed one of them to memory). I couldn't even call my two best friends. In anticipation of my iPad, I've started downloading books for the Kindle app, rather than buying real books. I'd actually been hesitant to do that for a long time, because I struggled with the fact that I couldn't read while the plane was taxiing (which, when I was traveling to Houston, could sometimes be 40 minutes)...and now I have just one more reason to go back to my paperbacks.

As the Great Blizzard of 2011 dies down, I'm safely tucked away for the night, have eaten dinner, and I've been able to cross off two of the items on my "to do" list. Of course, when I went through my emails tonight, I got to add three more to the list, but at least I feel like I've accomplished something. Tomorrow, the client office is open again, and life will start to get back to normal. Anyone who's lived up North knows that after the snow comes the cold, and it's going to get COLD-D-D-D-D tonight, they're saying it will be about -6 without the wind chill when I head out in the morning. As I'm typing, I realize that I brought the snow brush, but left the ice scraper in the other car, so I need to allow myself some extra time to warm up the truck in the morning.

On the bright side, Phil didn't see his shadow today, so Spring should be right around the corner. Since the Milwaukee Zoo cancelled Groundhog Day in Wisconsin, I'm hoping Phil's prediction was for WI as well as PA. I know that it's cold across the country (who'd have thought the Frozen Tundra would actually travel to Dallas with the Pack), so I'm guessing wherever you are, most of you will agree.

Keep warm!