Hi. Long time no see. Nice ant hills.

Hello Dear Friends.


It's been a long time and I profess, that I'm deeply apologetic for not updating sooner. It's been a busy busy few weeks around the Nap-time house and not because we've been busy busy busy doing work, but because Number 3 has decided that he's no longer willing to nap in the Pack'n'Play while his mama bear works her paws off. I learned this last week when I was busying myself around 11pm, assembling a shelf for our playroom and heard a little voice from above saying "Wash-a-hands in the toilet" and then a quick succession of flushes coming from the upstairs bathroom. A certain little person (not mentioning any names or birth place), has become quite the little toddler. Toddling his way up and out of his crib. Up and out of his play pen. Up and out of the rooms we put him in, turning knobs, unfastening diapers, and basically performing magical Houdini acts at the blink of an eye.

So to summarize where we're at with the Nap Time house. 
- The painting is complete, thanks to the Dear Painterman who finished up last week. 

I'll miss our daily visits. I told him that perhaps he should keep the key and just show up on rainy days, visiting us for coffee and light conversation while he works and I follow him around the house with paint chips clutched in my knotted fists.


The play room / den is set up (somewhat)


 Unfortunately, two weekends ago our front porch was broken into and the stools that belong with our play table were stolen. So if you live near and Ikea (which doesn't ship to where we are) and would like to be super duper generous and kind and mail us two more, we'd be forever indebted to you. 

Here is a link to the "before"

The floors in the Master Crack Den have been scraped and sanded. This was a project I had planned on doing myself, however, Dr. Handsome was slightly more than reticent to allow me anywhere near the sander, so we opted to hire a friend of ours who does casual floor refinishing. When I say casual floor refinishing I mean, he charged us next to nothing and we tipped him with a play date for his son and some beer. 

sanded. 

first coat.

and I do have to say, that Dr.Naysayer was wrong. I totally could have done the floors, after having watched carefully to what the Floorguy did, with a rented sander, it really wouldn't have been very difficult whatsoever. However, the cost of renter the sander, buffer, sand paper, edger, and finish, it would likely have cost me about the same as what it cost to hire our friend, which we are very fortunate for having such great hookups. 

So if you plan on doing your floors yourself - these are the things you'll need.

- an industrial floor sander

- appropriate grit of sand paper (you need a few different grits, coarse, fine and then super fine)

-a Shop Vac with a good fine particle filter

-a sharp paint scraper for edging and corners

-a buffer with superfine sand paper

-polyurethane

-a paint pad or very low pile paint roller 

and

-paint brush

-Clean your floors

-Sand your floors going in the direction of the boards, overlapping the last pass slightly (don't do more than two passes or you'll pop the tongue of your boards AND - on this note - it's best to get your floors assessed if they're in very rough shape, they may not be able to be sanded at all)

-Scrape the edges and corners well with a paint scraper

-Vacuum the room very well - let dust settle for 10 mins, and then vacuum again, ensuring that you get all of your dust up

-Buff floors with super fine paper

-Let dust settle for 10 mins

-Vacuum well again

-Apply Polyurethane to perimeter of room in a very light coat with paintbrush

-Then working from the farthest corner, coat the floors with a paint roller and polyurethane, lightly. 

-3 coats, 18 hours of dry time in between. Buff with super fine grit paper in between each coat, cleaning the floor very well each time.

Enjoy your floors.

So that's about it ladies and gents. 

I've also seeded half of the lawn, where there's no grass, but that's far from exciting. 

Tomorrow I'll do a little bit more work and post some more photos, but right now, it's off to dreamland for this nap time renovator. <3

-

Crack den Ceiling Repair. Day two.

Have you ever met one of those wonderful couples that are so incredibly in love that they do things like finish one another's sentences, and say things such as "We never fight".


Thankfully, Dr. Handsome and I are one of those couples who are not such as the above and are not so proud as to shy away from a good relationship building task. In fact, we are so incredible and wonderful that after our last "relationship builder" last year when we attempted to assemble a crib together, we've honed our bickering skill to the point that we know our limit - well before he screwdriver fly's across the room. Well before we take what is said personally, and so once a year, we put our love to the test to see if we've achieved perfect-dom, and attempt something absolutely stupid, such as... 


wallpapering.


So that was yesterday and yesterday is in the past and we're all smarter and happier and brighter and moving forward from yesterday, aren't we? Yes we are.


With babies still sick, still dosing the Gravol, armed with even more wipes and plastic bags and diapers and changes of clothes in tow, I headed over to the house, put Pukey and Poopy down for their respective naps and got to work.


This time, alone.


Now you might be saying to yourself "She's going to hang wallpaper on the ceiling, alone?"


And yes, you're absolutely correct. 


Now while I know you're shaking your head in disbelief, you must understand that things like barbecue and crib assembly, one might be better off doing the work, guided by flexible appendages as supports, rather than attempting team work with someone with whom you must sleep next to and parent with for many, many years ahead. Wallpaper, in my opinion, falls into that same category. As difficult - no - as impossible as it might sound - it is easier in fact, to wallpaper alone, than to wallpaper with your spouse, when you and your spouse are both two people who are always right, but share very different opinions on who in fact, is correct with their approach. (for what it's worth, I'll say right now - that it's my way that is the correct way.)


So to work I went.


What I should have done is set my camera on a tripod on a timer to take photo's of my work in 30 second intervals. There, would be a comedy of errors for us all to laugh at, one by one, each one become more and more ridiculous than the last, like Sunday night's on America's Funniest Home Videos, the dog with the sunglasses on his arse and then the dad getting whacked in the yarbles by the son and then the kid barrelling down a hill on his bike when the front wheel slips from it's quick release. 


If you can picture it, there I was. Standing on my scaffolding, wet roll of wallpaper in hand. In my mouth held an open Xacto knife, blade out about 4", tucked under my chin was a smoothing brush and between my knees a scraper. Across my shirt, held a half dozen or so pieces of 2" long strips of painters masking tape and deep down, beyond the recesses of my atria of my warm little heart was that little train, chugging away "I think I can... I think I can..."


Holding the wet paper to the ceiling with my head, I used my fingers to line up the pattern against the now dried paper from last night and slowly, slowly, knife in mouth, I backed up, unrolling as I went.
Down dropped the brush. Insert mumbled expletive.
Back up a few feet, unroll, unroll, carefully line up paper pattern... you're doing a good job, careful, careful.... you have a knife in your mouth... unroll, unroll - dammit, the pattern is off. Move forward. Drop scraper. Mumble expletive. Re roll paper, slowly, slowly... unroll, unroll, smooth with hand, smooth again PERFECTION! Tape section in place with masking tape. Repeat until you reach the end of scaffolding and then with all of your 118lbs, knife still in mouth, begin rocking your body back and forth until you gain enough momentum to get the scaffolding (which by the way has the worst casters on the face of the earth) rolling the remaining four feet across the room and continue what you were doing.


And repeat. And repeat again, when all of the paper (which was too wet, and I knew it) sags and sags and sags all of the way off of the span of ceiling on to your head.


And so it went, for three hours.


I have done some very exciting things in my lifetime, stories of which I will regale my children with when they have come of age, but this one, this one - is up there in my top ten of great things I've done. In fact, when I die, I want this included in my obituary "Hung wallpaper on the ceiling by herself".


So proud of myself I was and still am. In those three hours I laid a FULL TWO STRIPS OF WALLPAPER. If you break that down, it took me about 2 minutes per inch of paper that I rolled. By gosh darn it, I did it, all by myself and it didn't look to terrible in the end. By the time my fevered children woke from their naps, vomiting again, and soaked in their own excrement needing baths and Tylenol, I was beaming with pride for what I had accomplished. 


And while you may still be sitting there, shaking your head - all I can say is that by doing tasks like these alone, might be harder, but it brings Dr. Handsome and I closer to being one of those couples who are so contrite to say "We never fight"...


Photos soon to follow. <3

Day two-ish.

Oh hello House. Hello Keys. 
Hello, hello.


The first phone call after receiving the keys and clicking open the lock, was my lovely girlfriend Carol and she said "Is it as beautiful as your remember it to be?" and yes, yes it is. In fact it's even more beautiful, because when Dr. Handsome and I first did the view, bid and win - we had only seen the house for a total of about fifteen minutes in person. 


Our city is probably one of the last mired in the up and up with respect to the hot housing market and bidding wars on weekends are still happening, fast and fierce. Between Dr. Handsome's work schedule, nap times, sitter availability and open house showings, we had only seen the house once, made a quick decision and with a nod of our collective heads, ended up a few days later, exhausted from a late night bidding war - as home owners.


That was months ago. When the city was buried under a blanket of snow. 


So as quickly as we bought it, so began the ping-pong game of our possession date. Early. Now later. Nope early again. No, later. Then finally the phone rang, it was the lawyers office and the keys(!!!) were ready for pick up. Slinging a baby over each hip, we piled into the truck and drove down and fifteen minutes later, I was headed to the back door of our glorious new (old) house.


And with the key in the lock, one turn and a click, we were in. 


And it was as I remembered it, and even better - because the previous home-owner was kind enough to have it thoroughly cleaned and sparkling (not something I can say about the last few home-owners of the last few houses we've been in. You know who you are. You know i'm looking at you). The wide open deck in the middle of a fairly beautiful yard. A patio. Grand oak trees sprouting brand new spring buds. A small perennial garden beginning to flower. 

We were fortunate enough that the previous home-owner had spent a small fortune of time and money on restoring the previously painted oak woodwork throughout the house, to it's original state.

However, with all upsides, there are downsides. One of them was the scary second floor bedroom that will eventually be transformed into #3's toddler room. 


I can't pin point what it was that made it scary - perhaps the bizarre former cut out in the ceiling or the oddly scented carpeting that ran from wall to wall that smelled something akin to the wet stuff you'd find in the bottom of a garbage can in the corner of a hoarder's garage. Or perhaps it is the slide lock on the bedroom door, perhaps from a previous inhabitant, to keep out people who might interrupt his late night gaming session or the cheap buzzing fluorescent fixture overhead that cast the room in tear inducing glow reminiscent of the lights in a high school gymnasium. 

Regardless, the room sucked. 

As does the Master. 

We knew it sucked when we saw the house, but the suck was amplified once we were in the house and the previous owners's furniture was out, only to reveal the giant crack in the wall behind where his bed had been and the bizarre light fixtures that work only by unscrewing the bulbs. And the ceiling. Oh the ceiling. The sagging, yellowed, plaster ceiling, complete with old cigarette and water stains. Oh ceiling. You're right out of a Baltimore crack den. I have you on my radar. You will be my first target.


The photos are doing none of it justice - from the good and the bad. Because the good is great, but the bad is terrrible. And i'm not even going to get to the floors.


But in between the good and the bad and the very very ugly are things like the wide spanning covered front porch and the gorgeous brand new energy efficient and cost-a-fortune leaded glass windows that we don't even have to bat an eyelash at. 


And so we go, with keys in one hand, a wall paper scraper in the other and a baby on each hip, begins my first attempt at making this house, our home.


<3