This is out of order but we also did the trim and finished the Utility Room. MK stole some of my pictures so I unveiled the guest room first. I think the funniest thing about the trim was that for the living room we literally pulled it off the wall, primed it, painted it, and stuck it back on. It’s a little loose but it worked. They don’t show you that on TV.

In reality, you have a room where you’ve trashed the trim, like our Utility Room. I’m not sure what else to call it, it’s a huge storage room really, the guy that lived here before us used it as an in-house work room. We cleaned it thoroughly and painted it. It’s nice enough to sleep in now. Not having an in-house work room meant that after a week of sitting in my dining room the trim had to be cut outside. Brr.

MK’s work space on the back deck was hilarious:

We sectioned out the new wood trim we’d picked out, measured it, found studs (well, I was in charge of finding them and I missed one, so we found MOST of the studs) and measured where to cut the wood. As I think I mentioned, I wouldn’t let MK spring the 400$ or whatever for the nail gun and air compressor after reading it’s perfectly do-able by hand. So we drilled holes, sunk nails, and realized the nails weren’t long enough. MK ran to the store for some enormous nails. We also realized that the room is right on the intersection of concrete becoming pier-and-beam so it was a little crooked. Oh well. We made the wood fit, put wood putty over the nail head holes, and filled the seams with sealer. It was hard work since the laundry main goes through the floor in one spot (hoping FIL can put my laundry IN this room when he visits):

But overall we think we did okay. As you can see the floor isn’t that great, so I decided to roll out a rug we weren’t going to use. Made the space much happier. There’s enough room that I’ve kind of been using the space as a workout room too, and it otherwise holds crap, paint, and the ironing board I hope I never have to look for.

It’s all cleaned and there’s nothing on the floor now but that’s another story…

You blog about what’s going on in your life, and I can’t not tell you all these house stories. I really hope you’re enjoying hearing about our misadventures (to borrow a friend’s term) as we learn about home ownership, whether you’ve been through all this before, are shaking your head in disbelief, or are taking notes on what NOT to do when it’s your turn.

Seriously, we could have a HGTV show. No host, (or I’d be the host, it’s my idea) where they film novices reading out of books, consulting the internet, and trying to keep a marriage together while taking on the projects. On the shows they have now there’s someone showing them what a patina is or giving them a 400$ air compressor and nail gun. That’s so not how it is in the real DIY world.

MK and I awoke Christmas Eve to the decision to paint the basement guest room – we have company coming! TB and I picked out a subtle yellow that I was certain would compliment the bed set. Problem is, when I started painting, I couldn’t tell what I had done. The paint was so light it matched the white on the walls at that point. Trying not to cry I finished the job and refused to paint a second coat since it dried a little darker and I was still grouchy. We rearranged some furniture and voila. The trim was acceptable except for one piece, MK was able to salvage a piece from the Utility Room and we were able to fit it exactly to the wall. You’d never know, but underneath is properly sealed. We need some wall art and MK is going to rehang the door so that it opens in the opposite direction just because (I’m lying the house is settling and it’ll be less noticeable that way HA) and that room will be ALL. DONE.

Of note in these pictures: That is my first teddy bear ever. My Dadd won it for me at the St. James Bazaar. The sheets are not that gaudy and shiny in person, it’s the flash. MIL gave those to us and I really like them, so be nice. Can you tell the paint is yellow? I’m thinking a giant wrought iron swirly thing over the bed headboard, thoughts? And finally, NOW ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS.

Things sound different when you have a house.

Of course we are on such a roll around here, we can’t stop. Finished a bathroom yesterday. Minus the towel rack, Home Depot didn’t have a single one in bronze. But it’s so much better than it was!

Woke up this lovely Christmas Eve, and started painting the guest room. Don’t want to lose momentum…

Somegosoftly wishes you all the best your holiday can bring, no matter what you may be doing!

On our drive from Austin to Park City the only place I would have stopped and visited was Moab. We could just barely make out the arches at the National Park as we drove past right at sunrise. It was really beautiful. I could have gotten Mom and Dad a kokopelli souvenir. That place was that capital of kokopelli everything. It was too early to get any good photos.

Hopefully we’ll go back sometime.

Saw this over at WalMart a little bit ago. I’m thinking, “Hmm, a burnt orange giant van for two grand? Sounds good to me.”

Put these on the front…

We’d have a niiice ride to Pasedena. Like this blog, I see orange, I think Texas.

This is the second year that we attended the Park City Ski Swap.  (I don’t think I’ve written about it – couldn’t find anything by searching but not sure how well that even works.) Anyway, last year MK and I went with BB. Some strangers gave us beer. It was hilarious. Like I said, maybe I told you.

This year, BB didn’t need anything. It was just us. MK got us coffee, which was sweet, and we met some nice neighbors of ours in line.

The line is crazy. I took one picture of the line to pay inside. Pretty much everyone you see is in line.

The line is totally worth it – I got a pair of skis that retail right now for over 800$ and only cost me around 120$.

Snippy and sybo guessed it! But really, it came from a lot of help from Snippy’s ideas.

We’re doing a green and burnt orange room. After visiting a design store that had the room as a bedroom, I wanted it to be the guest room, but the linens MIL gave us were so nice that we have to use those and make it match. Snippy went to the trouble of looking up colors and helping with ideas. She noticed a candle and holder (not shown) I have that are going to theme out the room. They’ll go in the center table I’m trying to choose. So the paint came out great in two coats, the second one which I managed to knock out all. by. myself. So I’m pretty proud. The room still isn’t done, we need to prime and paint the trim. Hopefully soon!

The Santa suit pub crawl took us all over Park City Friday night.  We might have been to every bar here now! It had only barely started snowing so we figured we were all right. We made some friends and decided to meet them out the next day, but it was starting to snow quite a bit. We made it out to dinner at Shabu, which was a ton of fun. I got talked into trying to ski Sunday, since the storm was really picking up.

MK and I had to go and get my skis, which were being tuned in the Valley. We thought the roads out of our neighborhood weren’t that bad. So we went for the skis. It really started coming down when we hit the Valley. We had left the house at 9am, and it took about an hour to get down and two hours to get back up. Our car held up great, but there were other people out there that must be crazy. I can’t fathom getting in a little car without snow tires or AWD, you really probably needed a 4×4 to be out there. People were skidding out and making us nervous, we took our time.

We finally made it to Deer Valley to meet my friend KS and ski. She was super patient, as of course, I had no ski legs from last year. She was also super patient since she was the awesomest skier I’ve ever seen. She happens to be the SIL of a world famous skier. It was amazing to spend the day out with her. We met MK for an Apres Ski drink, and ended up meeting KS’s hubby AS too. He made it up in time for us to all meet up at the brand new St. Regis resort, after a ride up the 25 MILLION DOLLAR FUNICULAR.

What is that you ask? Wikipedia can tell you here. And then there’s the ton of pictures I took all weekend, there’s one photo of it there.

View the pictures.

It is the ride from the base to the resort. Not sure if it was worth the price tag, but it was a thrilling 2 minutes up or so. We had a snack and decided to hit No Name Saloon for some burgers. That put us home at about 7pm and we had left the house at 9am. We’d shoveled about a foot of snow to get out, and there was over a foot waiting for us when we got home. I already told you about that here.

It was totally worth it for a day out like that, and MK and I skied Monday too.