For real...nicest piece of disturbing junk. Period.

Some of you may remember the previous honoree of "Nicest Piece of Disturbing Junk" -- an impressive bison keychain found by Kenneth. Over Spring Break, a new piece of disturbing junk blew that bison out of the water:

Woody claims to have cut the diamond himself using the tile saw. True, he did excuse himself after our delicious dinner of short ribs (our first dinner sitting at a table in the dining room, fancy I know) but I didn't hear the telltale whine of whirling wet blade on porcelain. I say so long as he lets me keep it, I'll believe he made the pretty thing out of Sculpey clay if he wants me to.

Working out some knots

Despite my hard work vacuuming the upstairs, the only thing around here that has gotten a nice hot oil rub down from Woody is this:

Sure, I'd walk around holding my neck or muttering about my lower back, but Masseuse Moore was too busy going Shiatsu on our kitchen island to pay me any mind. For a whole weekend, oil, oil and more oil. Would that I looked this buttery and toned.

"I am never going outside to go again"

Maddy acquaints herself with the feet after square feet of tile now completed in the kitchen and back hallway. I swear I could hear her recalibrating her bladder and thinking "Yes, I have been such a good potty trained beagle for so long, it is time for me to have a mid-life crisis and I know just the tile where I'm going to start..."

Woody is now counting the tiles until he never has to use the tile saw again -- only the tiny powder room remains! I told him I'd be happy with a large well-placed rug or maybe some packed-down gravel in there (for a rustic look) but he is all particular. Another view without the old biddy beagle:

Better than Splash with a mermaid

is Splash with this man:

Backsplash, I mean, backsplash. (And here my weakness for burly mermen reveals itself...). Woody pretended to be intent on finishing the impressive backsplash and ignored my repeated requests for him to warble "Under the Sea" while putting up sticky tile mastic. I swear, he really never takes my needs into account. Here is the result of his handiwork:

Woody and I agree that this makes our kitchen look even FANCIER! We feel like we're in one of those fancy home design magazines except we have no countertop on our kitchen island right now and we don't wear heavy plastic angular eye glasses and we don't have a bazillion bucks.

Here's a closer view:

We are accepting any and all offers to clean our stove. We will cook for you. Just clean our stove. Please.

517's furniture waits to see who is next...

Will Woody seize you, rickety side table? Will he realize that after being vacuumed thoroughly by Rachel, upholstered chair, you are in fact not gray? Will he attempt to salvage the one serviceable wooden chair in the house? WHICH of you will he choose to receive a gentle rain of white high gloss paint?

Woody wrangled door after cabinet door under the paint sprayer today and, thankfully, didn't get to the rest of the furniture. The result? The beginning of polished cabinets in the kitchen! In addition he went about painting window trim which makes our already towering windows look huge!

A soothing pit stop for Jack n Jill

The shared "Jack n Jill" bathroom between the back two bedrooms has all the conveniences of a pit stop with none of the embarrassment of going around the side of a gas station building with a key attached to a hubcap. And while folks will no doubt miss the opportunity to purchase Mountain Dew and Slim Jims, we hope the shiny new fixtures and pretty countertops will distract them.


The walls are the same calming color as the laundry room. Thankfully they only prompted Woody to say "It's blue!" rather than the "WHOA!" that he exclaimed every time he caught an eyeful of the ill-chosen Gladiola accent wall.

Everything plus the kitchen sinks

Better than one of those collosal everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sundaes you order while at the beach and then instantly regret is a kitchen with the kitchen sink...plus one. 517's kitchen now has not one place to suds up but two. A big shallow sink to wash pots and a small deeper sink to contain little babies.

Pearl seemed to enjoy hanging out in the prep sink gumming a Burt's Bees lip balm when Amy, Brad and Pearl came over this evening to help schlep our bedroom furniture to the second floor.


We are passing a short sojourn upstairs in our newly finished office and den while the floors are being redone downstairs:

Maddy is clearly having trouble adjusting to the move:

(She is sleeping. Under the blanket. And snoring. Loudly.)

Our den area has Woody's beloved naugahide chair, the TV and the love seat:

Back to the Dark Ages

Upstate South Carolina got 4 inches of snow on Sunday. This closed down schools on Monday, shut down roads, felled trees and knocked out power for 80 THOUSAND folks in the Upstate. We, of course, were one of the legion of folks who could not use their paint sprayers. But we could eat leftover chilaquiles! Huzzah for gas stoves!

That said, being kind of freezing and unable to watch bad 80s movies on a snow day does feel like a bit of a gip...thankfully our power finally went on at 8:30 tonight. And within moments of arriving home Woody had his coveralls donned and his paint sprayer fired up -- bring on the completed kitchen cabinets!

Turns out it IS easy being green

Check out our painted hallway upstairs and our green accent wall at the top, completed on Saturday:
We also painted the wall across from the accent wall green as well:

The green feels remarkably more relaxing than the awful coral red accent color I bought at Sherwin Williams. I should have known that any color named "Gladiola" did not belong in a home not featured in a Tennessee Williams play. Every time Woody rounded a corner and caught an eyeful of Gladiola (again it sounds like a big ol' lady from a T.W. play -- "Come on over sugar and get an eyeful of Gladiola!"), he let out a shocked "WHOA!" And it wasn't a Bill and Ted "Whoa!," it was a horrified and blow to the chest "WHOA!"

The two shades of green now upstairs feel like the perfect shades for an area used for reading, writing...and getting your Playstation on: