you're my blue sky, you're my sunny day...

As much as I like high ceilings, after painting our porch ceiling,

I am somewhat relieved that ours are not. Here's before:

During (notice truck in background):

And after:


Brandon removed a piece of trim on the ceiling and was surprised to find that that we had come close to matching the old ceiling color! We had no idea that it used to be blue. Next major project here would be to remove the paneling on the ceiling and restore it to the original beadboard...but no time soon.

slackers

Yes, we are...at blogging, at least. What have we done since June 10th and our last blog post? Not a whole lot, really. We spent a weekend up in north Georgia with Brandon's folks, and got to visit with our new nephew a bit. He's adorable and quite chubby, I mean, healthy ;) We've been trying to keep the plants alive with the little watering we're allowed, and trying to keep the veggies away from the squirrels and whatever else is eating them--unsuccessfully. An entire stalk of one of the tomato plants was gone yesterday, along with our largest tomato so far! So unfair! The only thing we're harvesting so far is a lot of grape tomatoes, a radish or two, and a few zucchini squash.

We did finally buy the paint for the exterior trim, and it's quite Craftsman. We ended up going with Lowe's Valspar brand (okay, so it wasn't like a huge decision...we were at Lowe's, and one of us said, hey, let's go ahead and look for some paint). They have a National Trust for Historic Preservation line of paint colors, so we ended up with "Churchill Hotel Olive" for the main trim color and a less pretentious-sounding "Rustic Earth" for the window pane trim. I tried finding links online but the colors look very washed out, so hopefully we'll have our own photos soon. Brandon spent a few hours today scraping and sanding, but we've still got a long way to go.

We also picked up a new ceiling fan for the front porch. We've been wanting this one since we bought the house, but couldn't convince ourselves to spend the money. It's made by Hunter, and it's called "Northshore, Rustic Bronze." Brandon's parents have the same fans on their porch. After our visit last weekend, we came home and just bought the fan. It will be replacing our very small, very boring, very white shiny plastic-y fan that came with the house. It's not terribly Craftsman, but it has some elements. It's kind of old-fashioned and simple, though, and we like it. We do hate the way the outdoor fans have those fake wood blades, but in our price range, that's what we're getting! See pic below.

In other front porch news, we found a can of oops paint in a light blue to paint the porch ceiling with. We've been wanting to get around to doing it for a while, but I think thirteeneleven's recent work reminded us of the project. The paint we got is actually a little brighter than we want, but they also had another can of palest blue/almost white that we plan to mix with it.

Brandon's been adding trim to the basement door and window, and repairing the roof trim on the garage. A neighbor who works as a contractor is coming by tomorrow to help him install a solar attic vent in the roof of the house, and soon we'll be getting around (finally) to figuring out what kind of gable vent we want. The solar attic vent will pull air out of the attic, but now we're not totally sure there's enough air coming into the attic for it to pull out, and we don't want it sucking our air-conditioned air out of the house. We thought we had soffit vents along the eaves, but now we are inclined to think they are just "decorative" (as in not in the slightest bit decorative, but not useful, either) and don't actually open up to anywhere inside the attic.

Hope to have photos to post soon of all the coming work.

chandelier love

We got a lot accomplished yesterday, so it looks like we'll be able to close by Monday right on schedule. By "we," I mean me and Katie at the bank, not me and B. ;) Noticed this morning that one Gmail message from the bank had over 40 emails in it, and that's just ONE of them from ONE of their mortgage staff. Not to mention the countless ones (and faxes, don't get me started on faxes!) from our agents, the people at the bank's local office, the seller's agent, etc. My sister said she didn't have to do anything like this when they bought their house--the agent did everything and then they showed up and signed papers in the office. Guess times have changed!

We did go to Home Depot last night and take advantage of their Behr paint "sale" and get a couple of ceiling fans, though. (Sale meaning you send in a rebate form and in 3 months or so you get a check back for 25% of what you spent.) The fans were 20% off through yesterday, so we lucked out on that, and got the fan we'd picked out last time. We fell in love with another one last night, but fortunately for our budget it was too large for the house! We picked out paint for the living room, hall, kitchen, and bedroom. And got a $1 can of exterior oops! paint for the front door (dark sagey foresty green).

Here's the ceiling fan we got for our living room:

Unfortunately, we didn't fall in love with a more affordable light fixture for the dining room. At $279, I hope we get a lot of Home Depot gift cards for Christmas this year...