New pictures

It has taken me quite a while to post these pictures for a couple reasons...one, we just finished making most of these changes at our house (see previous posts), and two, Blogger has been not-so-good about letting me post pictures. So, it is 9:45 on Thursday night, I just finished getting our guest room together, and thought I'd try posting again. It worked!

You've seen the above picture before, but it didn't have the couch in it. We moved the khaki couch to the front living room and you can see the furniture in the back living room that dad brought us. I've posted a closer up picture of that further down the post. Here is the "before" picture of the guest bedroom. It took me two weekends to strip that wallpaper border. What a pain. I will be perfectly happy if I never see another piece of wallpaper again. And here is the after. I just finished painting this room yesterday, and just took the tape off today. Obviously there is nothing up on the walls yet and no window coverings, because I took down the miniblinds so we can put something else there.

Here's the living room with the leather furniture in it. We now have a couch, a chair and an ottoman, a papasan chair, two rocking chairs, plus the furniture in the blue room. I love getting hand-me-down furniture. Maybe someday I'll feel the urge to buy furniture, but I haven't done that yet. Here is the "before" of the hideous guest bathroom. I just noticed that ivy birdhouse thing.

This is what we did on Labor Day. I think this was the most time-consuming room that we did.

Here is the finished product. I took off all the cabinets and painted them pure white. Obviously, we painted the walls the same color as our living room. We put in a new light fixture above the mirror (the one there was gold), and we will be putting in molding along the ceiling because we got paint on the ceiling. Here's our bathroom before. This one took Chad a long time. Post-wallpaper stripping. He also took off all of that blue tile that lined the wall and the shower. About this time we're thinking, uh, what have we gotten ourselves into?
Here is a picture of Chad in action. I was playing with the levels on my camera so this one looks kind of funny to me. As you can see Chad textured the walls and we painted them. I love how the color turned out. For some reason I guess I associate blue with bathrooms.

We put white trim around where the blue tile was, to match the trim that was already in the vanity area. And here's the vanity area. The top part was the same yellow and blue wallpaper and the bottom was a yellow. That's the part we painted brown. I don't like the way these pictures turned out but I really like the way the bathroom turned out. We replaced this light fixture as well. Here is the before of our room. It had a yellowish tinge to it.
And the after. I haven't done much to this room either, but I wanted to show it painted and with our new bedding. The color I picked out is just a much lighter shade of the dark brown from the bathroom, and it's called Indian Painting or something like that. It's the same color that is in the first bedroom.

And here's an upclose of our new bedding, which I matched the colors from for our bathroom.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with our house, but I just thought y'all would like to know what Chad is learning about in school. I need to go buy the bigger box of Crayons for all the many organisms he will be coloring.

I think that's about it for the home improvements. We have one last bedroom to paint and I'm thinking I may wait a few days. We are both really tired of painting, but at the same time I like it when everything is done. Enjoy the pictures.

Tired and busy

Those are the two words that would best describe Chad and me over the last couple weeks. Chad's new job is in full swing, and who can blame the guy for coming home and settling in for a nice nap after a 24-hour shift. This week I only had one training for work in the evening (whereas last week I had two, and open house...and this training was to get my district-issued laptop so it was kind of fun), but it still seems like we are pretty busy when we're not at work. We were really gung-ho about all the home improvements when we first moved in, but if you have ever bought a house before you know that that can get really old when there is something you need to do in pretty much every room. I soon discovered that the actual time it takes to complete a task is much longer than the time I think it's going to take me to complete the task. In other words, "Oh, all we need to do in this room is strip the wallpaper, take down and paint the cabinets, texture the walls and repaint, and replace the hardware on the cabinets" sounds pretty simple, but it has taken us the good part of 3 weeks off and on to do all that stuff. We've been trying to do all the little odds and ends to get our house put back together, and we are down to 2 1/2 rooms left to paint. I say 1/2 because I painted our bedroom last night but it needs another coat, which will probably get done tomorrow. It's amazing that our bedroom even got painted because the other day Chad had the audacity to tell me that I am not good at painting. Duh, because I secretly act like I'm no good at it so he'll say, "Here, I'll just do it myself." Anyway, our bedroom looks good so far if I do say so myself. Chad has been retiling/grouting our shower and bathroom so I'll be sure to get pictures of all that soon. This weekend dad is coming up to bring us some more furniture...a couch, chair and ottoman, so I think our furniture collection will finally be complete. Because of the generosity of our family (or eagerness to get rid of all their extra stuff?) we haven't had to buy a single new piece of furniture to fill the rooms of our house. What a blessing! Anyway, speaking of dad coming, I had this idea that I wanted to get his room painted before he came to stay. Well, that didn't happen, and now I'm enacting a new rule at the Montandon household: if you'd like to stay in a room at our house, you have to paint it first. Not really, but seriously dad, bring your paint clothes this weekend. It'll be a blast!

I'm sure those of you who read the blog were not really interested in the minutiae of our home redecorating, except for maybe my mom and sister. But, that's what we've been up to, so that's the update you're getting.

Happy birthday to Kellen who turns three in a couple days...

And Ava who turned one a week ago.

Weekend update

Well, let me first start off by saying we wish we were in Georgetown right now to see Shawn & Emma's house and celebrate Ava's first birthday, but that just ain't happening this weekend. Chad has his first official 24-hour shift today (good news: he's done with the training classes), so our schedule of being able to go out of town now officially revolves around the 24-48 schedule.

I had a good week at school. I am feeling more settled in and got to order my first batch of cameras...yippee! They are much nicer than the camera I own and I think the kids will be excited to get to be the first to use these brand new cameras. I also have a yearbook adviser's workshop on Monday at LCU so that should be a fun break from my routine.

Today will be busy. Since Chad started back to work (and I have been slacking for about a month now), our house is pretty much chaos. We are still in the "moving-in" mode which means we don't really put anything up, so I am devoting today to cleaning the house, putting stuff up in its proper place, finishing stripping the wallpaper in the front guest bedroom (it's just a border, so you'd think it would be easy, but it's not which is why I only did half of it last week), buying new hardware for all the bathroom and kitchen cabinets (I'm tired of looking at all that "bling"), and maybe starting on painting our bedroom. Now that I look at all this it sounds like a lot, so I probably won't do it all. After all, it is the weekend.

Yesterday Chad and I switched cars so he could go get my car inspected and registered. I love paying the state of Texas $400 for the privilege of driving two cars here. But seriously, I am excited to get Texas license plates back on my car, except for the fact that when you buy a car in Arizona there is no easy way to get a front license plate on when you move to another state because you don't have a front license plate in Arizona. So another thing I need to add to my list today is trying to figure out how to attach a license plate without having to completely drill holes through my front bumper. I think that's a job for the guys at Autozone or whatever they have here. I still remember when we put Arizona license plates on our car over two years ago. It felt so permanent. We had to go in two separate shifts because it took so long to get one car registered (seriously, like 4 hours) so I went back a different day and registered the Civic, and I kid you not, when I took off my old Texas license plates, I seriously cried. I felt like I was leaving Texas and never coming back. I guess that's what two years feels like at the head end of it. But in my defense, at the time we thought it was going to take Chad three years to finish school, and we also thought we'd be staying out west. That was before we looked at the price of a normal house. Anyway, all this to say it all worked out for the best and I'm glad to have Texas plates again.

Well, I better go. At 10 I have to go take an Excel Intermediate computer-based test for a competency I have to pass in order to write the grant for the rest of my cameras. There are all these classes I have to take and tests I have to pass, and the Excel test is the only one I haven't passed. I've taken it already, I just failed it the first time. You have to get an 80 and I got a 60, which by the way is passing in Arizona. Ugh! Stupid high standards!

This blog post has no main idea

This is a sneak preview of our bathroom and why you will be so impressed when Chad finishes with it, which will be this weekend. It already looks really good!






This is proof that I actually have a job. I always thought it would be cool to have a sign on my door with my name on it...like I would finally be a legit teacher, and that's what they did for me. I guess they figure they'll keep me around for a while.




One thing I like about teaching in Texas is that I have lots of students that say "Yes ma'am" and they're not being sarcastic. I've also discovered that I like teaching journalism because I don't really have to teach students how to be creative, which I'm not sure can be taught. I was always a little scared that I would be assigned to teach a creative writing class. I've also discovered in the two weeks I've been teaching Journalism full-time that I have been out of college long enough that I've forgotten a lot of things about the subject that I majored in, and I am having to study pretty much every day. That's okay though, because that keeps it from getting boring. Well, that's enough ramblings about my new teaching job. I'll be getting my brand-new laptop in a little over a week! Yippee!

Another thing I think about a lot lately is Sonic. I drive by two Sonics twice a day, so that's four Sonic drive-bys. The reason I have thought about Sonice lately is because they claim to be the ultimate drink stop. Here is something that is going to blow your mind: why is Sonic the ultimate drink stop? It's because they have good little ice chunks, styrofoam cups and flavored syrup. It seems no other fast food places have shown a desire to infiltrate Sonic's cornered market up to this point. I think I have an idea here. Buy some syrup and change your ice machine, and people will soon be driving through to get their drink from you instead of having to wait at a drive-in.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for pictures of the newly remodeled bathrooms.

Labor Day weekend

It has been a very eventful weekend. Friday when I got home from work, Barbara and Louise had already been in town for about an hour. Friday evening we went to eat at a yummy burger place here in town. Saturday Louise wanted to show me how to make her caramel pie recipe, only we didn't have all the ingredients needed, so I went to the grocery store. I guess Louise wanted to get started to make sure the pies had cooled in time for dinner so she had already started making the pies by the time I got back from the store. She was well into making the first pie, but I was there when she made the second one so now I'm a caramel pie expert, and Barbara I'll make one for you any time. :) Then, Saturday afternoon I got on this "I want my house to start looking like my house" kick, and I went shopping at all those places that you can only truly enjoy when you are by yourself and don't have a husband or kids with you. You know...Stein Mart, TJ Maxx, the fabric store, etc. I was on the lookout for bedding and bathroom linens because that way I could figure out a color scheme for each of the bedrooms...I've been holding off on painting and doing curtains because of that. Well, TJ Maxx was having a clearance and boy did I clear them out. Not really, but I bought bedding for two of the beds in our house and new towels for the guest bathroom, which will have the same blue on the walls as our piano room does and everything else will be white. I got so excited because I'm not a fan of most bedding I find, or it is way too expensive. So now all that's left to do in the bedrooms is paint, and completely change the floors but that's for another day and another paycheck. Anyway, I got off on a tangent...back to Saturday. I went to the fabric store to look at fabric for curtains for the kitchen and bathroom but realized it was time for me to come home and start working on dinner, because we were having Lynn, Celia and Margie over. Thanks for the dining table mom, we had room to spare! Anyway, I had this bright idea to try a new lasagna recipe while I had all this company at my house. I should know better than to do that, because Murphy's law dictates that if you don't do a trial run of a new recipe before serving it to guests, it's bound to be bad. But in this case, it worked out fine and the lasagna was good. In fact, I made two of them, so we've been eating lasagna leftovers for the past two days. Sunday we went to church and rested in the afternoon. This morning Barbara and Louise left pretty early, taking the dresser Chad has used for the past couple years with them. Chad's family plays musical dressers like my family plays musical beds. Today I have been in the guest bathroom stripping the totally sweet mauve wallpaper off the walls, which I still have not finished. It will take me all day. I'll spare you the "during" pictures and post when we are finished with our updates. Don't hold your breath though.

Whew! That was a lengthy update. Secretly I'm just avoiding stepping into that bathroom again, getting nasty wallpaper glue all over myself. Yuck. That's all for now I guess.