Weekend Update: Pre&Post-Thanksgiving

Stefan and I headed to Texas on Monday to visit my family for the Thanksgiving festivities. We stayed Monday to Friday but saved the weekends on both ends for house work. The first weekend, we started off by catching up with some friends over margaritas on Friday night and thus staying up well past our bedtime. Saturday we slept in super duper college student late. It was AWESOME. After waking up about noon-ish, I headed strait outside to enjoy the one hour of tolerably warm weather we have each day. I needed to clean up my final garden bed: The gladiolus.

They are beautiful flowers. The row of them was quite stunning.

Here they are at there peak and after I dug up the corms and insulated the bed:

The corms are HUGE. They are probably 3 times bigger than the ones I planted in April and I have HUNDREDS of cormells (little corms).

If you look in this picture, the corm on the bottom left is representative of the size of the corms we dug up. The corm directly to its right is the size of the corms we planted. HUGE! The crop next year is going to be amazing provided I don’t completely mess up the drying/cleaning/planting cycle. I left tons of cormells in the bed (I couldn’t get them all) which is why I mulched it so heavily. It will also help it to warm up quicker in the spring so I can get those corms in the ground early.

I left three boxes full of corms setting out on the kitchen counter to dry while we were away. The weekend after our vacation, I clean them off and stored them to be planted next spring.  One box wasn’t quite dry so it will wait for another few days.  

In addition to the gladiolus excitement, we also started some electric work in the Den. If you take a look at our handy-dandy floorplan, you can see that the wall we took down to create the den is directly above the wall between the entry way and the formal living or piano room. Since the wall-removal gave us access below the floor to the top of the entry/piano wall, we are able to fairly simply drop lots of wires. You can see the big hole in the floor where the wall used to be in this picture:

This wall also has a 3gang box with switches. The number of gangs refers to the number of slots. So 2 outlets or 1 switch fit into each “gang”. Dumb name but that’s what it is. These 3 switches go to the entry light, the piano room light, and the front porch light. We pulled a new supply to the box and new lines to the entry and piano room lights. We still need to do the front porch but since it is an exterior light, it needs to be on a GFCI breaker so we need to run a seprate supply. We will probably tie the front porch light in with the basement lights which also require GFCI.

On Saturday night, we went on a “date” to home depot. We grabbed 5 Guys for dinner on the way. Standard Wolpert date but I love it. I meant to take pictures and I even brought the camera but I was too busy chowing down. When Stefan saw the camera he didn’t get it but honestly, I think our 5 Guys/HD trips will be some of my fondest memories of our first year of marriage. Doesn’t it make sense to capture that? So, I will get picture next time 🙂

At Home depot we picked up some motion lights for outside, some paint samples, and some drywall screws to try out the plaster buttons we heard about on this awesome blog www.oldtownhome.com. I wish these people lived closer. We would seriously be best friends.

The plaster buttons worked well after we got the hang of it. Despite the recommendations over at OTH we found that the smaller ones flatten all the way and we had a hard time getting the large ones to really flatten. We haven’t tried to plaster over the buttons yet but we’ll report when we have.

We also picked up some motion sensor lights. It gets dark really early here…like 4:00 early. After living at a much more southern latitude for all of my life, the darkness is unbelievable. What this means is that I come home from work in the dark EVERY DAY. It’s awful. I generally come in the back door into the kitchen but it is so dark. I decided a motion sensor light was an absolute necessity. We bought this cute one and installed it in no time. The one snafu was that I dropped one of the decorative acorn nuts.. 🙁 One held it well enough and we ran by Lowes later that night and picked up a new one. No biggie but I’m still kicking myself.

We got another more flood-light style motion light for the driveway area. That will help with the trash taking-out but unlike the back deck light, I can handle another couple days without that light installed.

I mentioned I also picked up some paint samples. I’m working on browns for the den. Nothing is decided so far but there are squares of brown paint all over the room and a ton of paint swatches strewn on top of the library cabinet.

If it sounds like that wasn’t enough work for one Sunday, you’d be right! We also pulled 9 different wires through the entry/den wall into the den floor to wire up the den. Yes, 9 wires. 1 for power, 2 for cable, and 6 for Ethernet. We’re going to be WIRED! The next step is to route all of those wires along with speaker wire to all the places they are supposed to go. So much wire!

We also went to Lowes to check out black Friday deals on washers and dryers (Best Buy is better) and packed for our trip. For a weekend with only one and a half days we sure managed to get a lot done.

After a wonderful week with my family, we came back at about 1:00 AM on Friday night and after an uneventful flight and a harrowing cab ride we saw our cuddly and neglected kitty and jumped into a very, very cold bed.

We slept until noon, as usual, and went to work.  After a Home Depot trip we were armed and ready to get some attic stairs in and build a ramp for the shed.  We accomplished neither the stairs project nor the shed project but we made progress on both.  We did, however, finally foam the windows in the closet and bathroom as well as one in the basement.

And for the crowing glory of our weekend, we got the garbage disposal working!  It took a second trip to home depot but tada:

Garbage Disposal!

Not much to look at but oh so exciting.

In addition to work work, we did some thinking work too.  We finished out the major purchasing for the bathroom.  We ordered the half bath sink, the second master sink, the half bath toilet, and chose the medicine cabinets.  In addition, we planned out the heated floor in the bathroom.  It’s nearly time for a bathroom design plan post and that will be coming out soon.

All in all, Thankgsiving was a success.

 

I hope your holiday was as good as ours and Merry Christmas!!!

Sarah