Our house, in the middle of our street

Looking at my last post, I realized it has been a while since I've written anything. Ah, the joys of home ownership. My parents warned us. "You'll never have free time again." "A house is like a sponge. It will just keep sucking up your money." My parents are into the realism approach. No congratulations or well done, just the hard facts of life. And they were right as usual.

Besides the home of never-ending projects, work has also kept me extremely busy. To make a very long and complicated story a shorter complicated version, our IT department decided to integrate our applicant tracking system with our HRIS system. This involved scrapping our old ATS for a new, shiny one. It has been painful, to say the least. In fact, just thinking about it is tensing up my back, so that is all I will write on the subject.

Back to the house. Okay, so when we bought the house, we realized the entire inside would need to be painted (except for the bathrooms and kitchen initially because they are all wallpapered, which is a separate blog in itself). So we have the lower level painted, the living room and hallway, my office, and we just started our bedroom. One of my friends accused us of being pokey, which while true is only half of the story. We are perfectionists when it comes to painting. My wife is the perfectionist with the actual painting and I obsess over the taping. Need proof?

This is our living room accent wall. We were feeling particularly inspired by our 70's furniture and decided to run with it. This took us about a 4 days and if you look up close, the squares are pretty much perfect. My wife touched them up freehand. We have an illness, the two of us. Eventually, I would like to get a 1950's credenza for the TV and gadgetry that goes along with it, but mid-century modern is in right now, so the credenzas start at $300 and go from there. That's money that could be used elsewhere in the house. Plus, I would feel pretty awful if I bought a nice vintage piece and then proceeded to drill holes in it for our wiring. Something about that seems just, well, wrong. Unfortunately, there aren't new options out there that I can find.

Speaking of money, we live at the Home Depot. It started off all fun and such, but as time has gone by, I've grown disillusioned by the mega box hardware store. They usually do not have what we need and their prices really aren't all that good. We've started shopping elsewhere lately, hitting the local hardware store (which has odd hours but has what we need) and contractor supply places. The internet has proven useful as well, as our tastes tend to run left of center and the neutral palette of Home Depot just doesn't cut it. For instance, I decided that in keeping with our mid-century theme that the Schlage Orbit line of door knobs would go splendidly (which they do), but Home Depot carries practically everything else except that line (idiots). We found a discount doorknob place and got all of our doorknobs for about $300, which isn't bad considering we've got plenty a door. Oh, and if you are looking for retro-inspired curtains, check out this site. Her prices are reasonable and her curtains come in an array of mid-century and retro patterns. Yay!

Okay, that's all I got for now. With any luck, I will be inspired to write more (Or have more time on my hands to do so). However, seeing as this house won't paint itself and the yard won't prune or mow itself, chances are good that my next post won't be until September (although once the leaves start falling, I will be busy once more). Oy. It never ends. :)