Furniture Refinishing Update

Things are never as easy as they first seem. That has become my motto for the past two weeks. Let's see, where to start...my last post was on the great desk that we had gotten at quite a steal. Well, we thought that we would just bring it home, refinish it and then move it upstairs into the office. Shouldn't have been a big deal, right? WRONG! The entire process has completely spiraled out of control. Here's why...

We started last weekend with the small of the two pieces (the two pieces form an L-shape)...we stripped the varnish and paint and repainted it. The desk looked awesome after it was finished. But it wasn't the fastest project; it took all day on Saturday. I have some pictures of the desk in different stages, but will post them when it is all complete.

On Sunday is was going to snow, so we wanted to get the larger piece out of the garage and into the house so Jeff could get his car back in the garage. It took everything we both had in us to move that desk into the house...and we even used a dolly to help. We only had to go up 5 steps into the house, but it left us exhausted. When we finally got the desk into the foyer (which is where it still sits) we decided to take the smaller, refinished piece up the stairs into the office. It took a lot of work, but we got it up there pretty quickly. It was when we came back down that the craziness started...

Both Jeff and I begin thinking that the large part of the desk would never fit up the stairs and into the office; even if we removed the handrail, I think the desk is still too wide. So I started thinking...what if we switched the office upstairs with the library downstairs? It makes a lot of sense...the room downstairs is large and can hold the size of the desk. The light is also better upstairs with the two large windows, so that makes a better library. Still, this means a lot of moving furniture up and down the stairs and repainting bookcases (the bookcase in the library moved upstairs and the one in the office was brought downstairs, sanded and painted black to match the new desk). Plus, we needed to have an internet connection installed in the old library/new office. To make a long story short, my house is currently turned upside down. However, when all is said and done (which should hopefully be this weekend), I will have two completely different rooms. I am excited for the change (and really glad we have the room to do things like this), but will be really thankful when my house is back in one piece. Right now, I will just continue to live with a huge desk in my foyer...good thing we come in through the garage and never use our front door!

I have bene taking pictures of the process and should have them posted this weekend. In the meantime, we are exhausted. We come home from work and then work all night on the rooms. Oh, the life of a homeowner!

More to come soon.

The Find of the Century!

On Saturday morning, Jeff and I drove to the state's warehouse to look at the furniture they had for sale. We didn't really think that we would find anything (and had no idea how much things would be), but decided it was worth a try. When we got there, there was a lot of surplus furniture on sale. Nothing was over $40.00. As we looked around, we found a really nice L-shaped desk. It needs to be stripped and refinished, but it is real wood and extremely heavy. The wood is over an inch thinck in places. It is going to look nice in our office; we have been looking for a nice desk for a long time, but didn't want to spend $2,000 on one. This one we got quite the deal on...take a guess how much we paid?...only $30.00! The desk must have originally cost well over a $1,000 dollars! What a deal. Now, with a little hard work to strip and refinish the wood, we will have an awesome desk. Thanks state of Utah for the great find!

I think we are going to start stripping it next weekend....I will post more pictures of the progress as we go along!

Sleepy Weekend for others...

While Jeff and I were working hard in the basement all weekend, Kira and Koda were doing just the opposite...they spent the entire weekend curled up on the furniture sleeping.

On Saturday...

and Sunday...
Must be nice to have no responsibilities and just be able to lay around and sleep the weekend away!

Workin' Weekend for some...

This weekend we had some big goals...to paint the bathroom and spare bedroom in the basement. This is because my mom and her husband and my brother are coming to visit in May and we want to have the entire house painted by the time they get here. It was the perfect weekend to stay indoors and paint becuase the air quality was unhealthy due to the inversion. We started prepping both rooms on Friday night. I also went out to Home Depot on Friday and got the paint and all the supplies.

When we started to paint, I was getting excited...the basement is the last floor that needs to be painted. This has been a lot of work and a lot of different colors and it will feel good to have it all done and all our pictures and art hung up so that it looks like home down there.

I chose two colors for the bathroom...a toasted grey and a rich mocha. Here are some pictures taken during the work...

When it was all said and done and the bathroom was put back together, it looked amazing.

After the bathroom was completed, we started working on the spare bedroom. The theme for this bedroom is a nautical one; we have a lot of sailing items and a few large replica ships, so I used this to make the room feel like a little oasis. When it was finished, both Jeff and I were impressed...
The transformation was incredible. It was a lot of work and we are both really sore from all the hard work, but it was worth it. And, although I was extrememly tired, I was also energized to keep going and finish the basement. Now, just two more rooms and we are done!

Koda and his little buddy

On Christmas I wrote about the little Shiba Inu figure that Jeff's parents had gotten us as a gift. He is really cute and looks just like Koda and Koda has been obsessed with the figurine ever since we opened it. We decided to put it on the new TV stand we got for our main floor living room. It is on a shelf in a TV opening, so it should not bother him at all. However, being that it is Koda, this is how Jeff found him yesterday and just happened to be able to get pictures of it...




He adores the little "mini-Koda". He must be wondering why it looks so much like him. You are too cute for words sometimes, Mr. Koda!

New Year's Eve with Rockapella

For New Year's Eve, we had tickets to the Rockapella concert at UVU in Provo. We heard them back in February and they were AWESOME, so we decided to go see them ring in the new year. It was a great concert....once they came out. The opening acts were not really good at all. The first was an all-girls acapella group called NoteWorthy. I think they could have been quite good, but the back-up singers drowned out the melody singer; there were too many of them!

The next act was the Osmonds 2nd generation, a group of five Osmond children. It was pretty bad. First of all, they are way too old to be dancing around and singing party songs. Jeff said it reminded him of what he envisioned a New Kids on the Block concert being back in the day. They basically just sang cover songs for other bands.

Finally, it was time for Rockapella to come out and they did not disappoint. They sang a bunch of Christmas songs and even made "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" sound new and exciting. For those who may not know, Rockapella became famous after singing the theme song for "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". It was a great concert and I was really glad that we went. Here are some pictures of Rockapella....

The guy in the solo picture is the groups bass singer. He actually sounds like Barry White when he sings...we like to call it "baby-making music"!

After the concert, we picked up some dinner and headed home to ring in the new year with Kira and Koda; they both hate fireworks, so I was happy to be home to console them. It was an exhausting but really fun night.

Happy New Year to you all and we hope 2009 is a great year...we are hoping it will be one for us!

Zoo Lights

Last Tuesday night, Jeff and I went to Hogle Zoo for Zoo Lights. This is a really neat thing to do in the winter when it is cold outside, as you get to walk around and see all the pretty lights that the zoo has put up. You don't get an opportunity to see many of the animals because it is dark and they are sleeping. Still, it is fun to go and Jeff and I have kinda made it a yearly tradition since we have lived here.

This year was much better than last, as there were more lights and it wasn't snowing. Still, it was freezing...but nothing that a little hot chocolate couldn't cure. Anyway, here are some of the really cool pictures of lights we took.

We walked around for over an hour and then starting taking some crazy pictures of us with the lights; hey, you have to be creative sometimes (and I was in a crazy, silly kind of mood)...

I actually look like I am really riding the rocking horse, huh?...I'm really just bending down beside it.

It was a great night and I would highly recommend it to anyone in the area. We can't wait to go again next year!

On the way home, we stopped by Arctic Circle to grab some dinner and go home. Luckily, there is one not far from our house. As we were waiting for our food to be ready, Jeff pointed out the thermostat on the wall of the restuarant...and I just started busting out laughing. This is what it looked like...

I don't know why, but we thought this was really funny....I laughed until the manager came over and fixed it. Too funny! Jeff was surprised I wasn't kicked out of the place for laughing so hard, but I couldn't help it. It was the perfect ending to a crazy, silly night!