Lake House Chron

I really have accomplished a lot here in the past month. Today, I installed pathway lights in the garden, seeds, seedlings, and a wall sconce.

List with strikes ( below cut. )

I painted like a person possessed on Thursday, both living rooms, the kitchen...a lovely sagey green that completely captures the spring-like conditions outside. It's nice to be in here now.

( Before and after pictures...YAY PAINT! )

Also! I got an estimate from Lowe's to carpet four rooms, 580 s.f. I chose a lower-middle price-range carpeting, and tried to take advantage of a $99 whole-house installation deal they're running right now. This guy called me to set up a same-day appointment a couple of weeks ago, bitched about the distance to my house, told me that an alternative appointment would take two weeks because I live "so far in the boonies" and showed up for all of 10 seconds to measure what I'd already perfectly measured. A week later the Lowe's guy called me and told me $2500 to carpet this tiny house and I told him I'd call him back. That's over $1000 over my own estimate of $1400. Turns out they're trying to gouge us to tear out glued-down carpeting in the living rooms (they can install right over it) and for tack-strips in the bedrooms (which are already in place). The Lowe's guy called me for a follow-up yesterday, and I told him my concerns, and told him that $2500 is almost two-thirds of my ENTIRE BUDGET for this little lakehouse and that they're going to have to try harder with their contractor. He said he'd get back to me. I have no hopes for reasonable carpeting prices.

So much done! Here're ( before, during and after shots. )

Christ, so busy. See...I dropped a grand at Lowe's on Sunday, and now I have 627 different projects underway. I painted the utility room and most of my bedroom yesterday, installed tile in the hallway and put up six sets of Roman-fold bamboo blinds in the living room.

A couple of things:

• Installing blinds (or anything else above your head) will make you weep like a pauncy schoolgirl, especially when you install one of the brackets wrong and strip a screw and can't get the bracket out and spend a couple of HOURS with a heavy drill right above shoulder level and now today you feel like your arms are two buckets of wet cement only with nerve endings and extreme pain because also yesterday you
  
• Painted an 18' ceiling with a 5' roller- extension, again over your head for most of the day.
  
• Chocolate-colored paint TRAGICALLY DOES NOT smell like chocolate.
  
• If you have a cat named Spoogie, he will christen your new tile with piss and will come dangerously close to becoming a homeless street kitty.

NEXT WEEK (I'm not falling for the beautiful weather starting today) I install the gardens here and at the parents'. THIS WEEK (and next week):

• Finish master bedroom paint
  
• Fix window -- master bedroom
  
• Install window treatments -- master bedroom
  
• Schedule carpet installation
  
• Install sconce in hallway
  
• Install solar security light over front door
  
• Clean out guest room
  
• Paint guest room
  
• Install shelving -- guest room
  
• Install window treatments -- guest room
  
• Finish tiling hallway

PICTURES NEXT WEEK! This place is finally starting to look so good.

Personal stuff over at lacyunderall.

The nature, freaking everywhere. Animals taking over the lake. The geese and ducks are back to lay their eggs. There's a hand-written bulletin on the guard shack at the entrance to the "resort" that says one should shake the eggs when they're found, to kill the goose before it can hatch. FUCK THAT. My next door neighbor Alberta watches the eggs carefully, and when the geese (and ducks) hatch, she starts feeding them bread so they'll follow her. I'M IN! Goose Mom.

Also, I just watched a beaver swim under my dock, and a couple of teals "doin' it." The raccoons are back on my metal roof at night and it sounds like a dance party.

I've started taking camera-nature walks around the neighborhood, with mace in one pocket and a box cutter in the other. I'll share photos soon. Perhaps of a dead dog or human! Mess with the bull, you get the horns*.

*Extra credit for getting that line.

Work goes well on the house, money allowing. I've been painting in spurts (that sounds dirtier than I intended), the hallway ceiling and walls. I tried two different colors and am happy with what I've done. Removing shuttered doors and rehanging one set as a wall for the utility room and moving the other into the master opened the entire space and it looks huge now. There's even light coming in from the front of the house to the hallway where there was none before.

The utility room gets it next, fucking pit. Rehanging the doors as a wall, new ceiling color, wall color, holes spackled and caulked, shelves installed. I'm on that today.

Below the cut, master "To-Do" list revisited, and before and after hallway pictures.

( Listy photos. )

I am without a doubt the luckiest girl on this lake, because my neighbors are wonderful.  They are Alberta and Bob.  Bob is 80 and Alberta is 68, and she just brought me tomatoes and gossip.  Bob pumped out my septic tank this morning with a pooper truck painted with large images of the Tasmanian Devil.  Alberta and I just spent an hour talking about mens, the former crackie owners, all the drama that goes down out here at the lake...See they've lived here since before there was a lake, 18 years.  Alberta tells me that when they bought the land, there were red ribbons around the trees, marking where the lake was going to be when they opened the dam.  They know EVERYBODY and every bit of gossip that can be had.  They already heard that I'm a mean lesbian with guns.  I told Alberta that was excellent, because that's the rumor I wanted spread, and then I told her that only the guns part is true.  We giggled like little kids and I'm pretty sure they've got my back from here on out, as I will them.  YAY!