They Don't Call it "Hard"Wood Flooring for Nothing...

On the last episode of OMG This Remodel Is Taking Forever, we had just gotten the outside prepped for stucco and the inside covered in drywall:

Since then, we've made some sweet, sweet progress (smells like tears of joy and extra deodorant, doesn't it?):

After several days of plaster work on the inside—and a thousand pounds of dust on every surface in the house—the room was ready for paint. There may not be any S&M activity taking place in our household (at least none we'll admit to), but we definitely have a 50 Shades of Grey thing going on around here. Living room walls are light grey...kitchen walls are light grey...kitchen countertop and flooring are grey...bathroom tiles and vanity are grey...outside is greyish...Mr. W owns a lot of pairs of grey underwear. You get the picture.

So it seemed only natural for us to go with a soft grey in the bedroom. But we also wanted to do something different with color, so we decided to add a big fat gallery wall accent stripe to the wall our bed will face.

The hope is that it'll have this effect when we hang some of our favorite travel pictures on it: 

Source

Once the paint was on the walls, it was time to take on what became the most arduous task of the entire process (says the girl who did pretty much nothing to help with any of the construction at any point...): Installing the hardwood flooring. If you ever go on Youtube and watch a video of someone installing hardwoods, it looks super easy. Tongue, meet groove, nail, repeat. 

The reality of floor installation was that the nailgun dealie Mr. W bought would more times than not push some wood splinters out, making it impossible to get the tongue tightly in the groove—so he had to slice off the superfluous wood after putting in every nail. And there were approximately a bagillion nails.

What we thought would take about 3 days to install took close to 3 weeks. Needless to say, there was a lot of cursing involved.

But now the floors are all in:

We just have to find some kind soul to come sand them for us. It continues to baffle me how many contractors and craftsmen never return phone calls. It's a wonder they're able to keep their businesses going. Fingers crossed that we can get someone do to it for a reasonable price.

And then we will finally get to move out of the guest room. And not make visitors sleep on mattresses and aerobeds on the floor. And stop overloading every surface with clothes we can't find a place to put. And start working on the bathroom...which currently looks like this:

Wish us luck. We continue to need it every day.

Wanting to Take a Big, Fat, Red Pen to 50 Shades of Grey

A girl can only handle so many non-fiction, self-help, and meditation books. When days upon days have been spent studying for life coach training and trying to educate oneself on the principles of more enlightened living, there comes a time when one just needs to give in to mental lethargy.

And so, this week, I began reading 50 Shades of Grey.

I am only 53 pages in, but already I know that Christian Grey has very long fingers. The author likes to remind readers on every third page. It's also been pointed out thirty or forty times that Ana, the main character, finds Grey "unnerving" and "unsettling."

If James cut back on the repetition of language she used, I think the book would be about half as long as it is.

The worst offender I've seen so far was on page 24:

"Saturday at the store is a nightmare. We are beseiged by do-it-yourselfers wanting to spruce up their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton and John and Patrick—the two other part-timers—and I are beseiged by customers."

Seriously? 

Was an editor not employed during any part of the publishing process? I'm thinking not. I cannot imagine ANYONE reading that and not drawing a thick red line through one of those sentences.

Not every page is as painful as the above excerpt. There have been a few scenes that flow relatively well and hold my attention enough to want to keep reading without complaining to Mr. W about something. But then I come across a word that seems so unnatural for a twenty-something to use in conversation...like "taciturn"...and I lose it. I don't think I've ever even heard any person—regardless of age—use that word in real life. It's like James is working weekly vocab words from English class into her prose. Very Dawson's Creek.

I plan to finish the book, although I'm sure I will keep griping throughout the entire process. I just wish I'd hurry up and get to the S&M parts already...

Perpetual Students

When I started to write this post, I immediately thought of Matthew McConaghey's David Wooderson character in Dazed and Confused. I don't actually think he was still a student, though. Just an old perv who liked high school girls. Anywhoo...

If one was to come into Mr. W's and my house and begin inspecting various surfaces, they would quickly realize that the two of us are perpetual students. The areas around our nightstands are cluttered with books we're trying to finish. The windowsill in our kitchen holds dozens of cookbooks. The coffeetable usually acts as a catchall to our paperbacks and magazines. Mr. W even had to build an additional shelf in our guest room to accommodate our growing library.

I think you can tell a lot about a person by the books they keep. 

For example, you might look up at The Urban Homestead book above and know immediately that I spent about 20 minutes yesterday picking worms our of compost. True story.

And you might predict by the picture below that Mr. W often leaves overflowing bottles of sourdough starter around our sink.

If someone didn't know I was training to become a life coach, they could probably pretty quickly make guesses about my interests or desired career path if they examined some of my recent reads:

It's not pictured here, but 50 Shades of Grey does exist in our house. And although Mr. W would probably LOVE for me to dedicate my studies to its subject matter, he'll have to wait. Gardening and career counseling currently trump S&M around here...

What are you reading right now?

50 Shades of Embarrassment: Naiveté in the Local Bookstore

My older sister, bless her heart, is a very devout (although liberal and equality-championing) Christian who is extremely active in all things related to her church. She is the girl who has never smoked a cigarette (although she did dress her husband in a thong and take pictures of him when he drank too much and passed out on their honeymoon). She is the woman who channels her nursing background into a Diabetes support group every Thursday night (and one time when I was little, she tried to shove my face in the cat litter box). The point being, she's a very upstanding citizen with great intentions (who is sometimes too innocent for her own good).

Case in point: Yesterday she shared a story with me and some other family members about how she went to our cute small-town bookstore to ask for a donation for her church's upcoming charity auction and, after the owner happily obliged, she decided to pay the store back by purchasing a book of her own.

Naturally, she asked if they had that "Fifty something" book.

The owner's teenage daughters looked at her funny and tried to recommend something else.

"No, I know my cousin and all her friends are reading that 'Fifty shades' book—or whatever it is," my sister insisted.

Suddenly the owner appeared and asked, "You mean 'Fifty Shades of Grey'?"

"Yes! That's it!" she exclaimed. Victory.

"Do you know that's an adult book?" the owner asked in a lowered voice.

Sister, horrified replied in a hushed voice, too—"Like pornography?"

"Yes, we don't even keep it out on the floor. It's back behind the counter."

Then my sister proceeded to turn fifty shades of purple and try to explain that she had no idea what the book was about—just that everyone was talking about it so it must be interesting.

I'm sure the bookstore owners thought it was unsettling and unfortunate that the nice donation-seeking church lady was actually a full-fledged pervert porn addict.

I hadn't shared this story with Mr. W yet, but today he came home from Costco with a copy of the book for me to read. I wasn't planning on buying it myself, but if my husband wants to try to make me all randy, I guess I have to obey, lest he bust out a ski mask and a whip.

Like the bookstore in Montrose, we'll be storing our copy somewhere out of sight.