Just Kristin

D and I had a more-than-painless visit with the tax­man (Roy Tara­m­asco of the Hill­crest H&R Block — can’t praise him enough) this year, so quite a few of the ren­o­va­tions and addi­tions we were look­ing for­ward to are loom­ing close on the hori­zon. We will be tak­ing for our own the bed­room in which Miss Mil­lie used to live, and chang­ing the mas­ter bed­room into an office, for two main rea­sons: 1) to move all the com­put­ers out of the front room, open­ing it for enter­tain­ing and what­not, and 2) to allow Unka J. his own bath­room, as well as an entrance to the house from his hut that will not require him to traipse thru the halls to go to the lit­tle scout’s room in the mid­dle of the night. We are also going to work a bit on the kitchen. Here is the plan:

the bed­room
• Bam­boo floor­ing from http://www.bamboo2000.com will be installed (after Smoo has removed all the old linoleum tile that the pre­vi­ous owner didn’t bother to trash when he bust out walls and recar­peted; she requested this task, and see­ing the joy on her face as she wields the crow­bar, demol­ish­ing house­hold things with parental per­mis­sion, is enough to make both D and I envious).
• Clay paint of an earthy hue from http://www.bioshieldpaint.com/ will adorn the walls — we are think­ing a gold or sage — as well as white trim and base­boards, and per­haps an addi­tional sparkle on the ceil­ing and door. We are toy­ing with the idea of remov­ing the pop­corn on the ceil­ing as well. All the paints are non-fume, for the fids’ and our safety.
• Other mis­cel­la­neous fixes will have to hap­pen as well, most likely before the above can hap­pen — things like patch­ing the dents in the con­crete sub-floor, patch­ing holes in the walls, and remov­ing the nasty 70’s-style pan­el­ing on the inside walls of the sky­light. We will also be cur­tain­ing the closet; we got rid of the doors a while back.

the kitchen
• We will be pur­chas­ing a new dinette this week­end. The one we have picked out will fit in a cor­ner, two sides with benches, to opti­mize what lit­tle space we have in the kitchen. As Unka J. noted, it will be a per­fect gam­ing table.
• We will be rip­ping out the cen­ter island and pantry, (Smoo, you wanna do this, too?) and replac­ing it with my hutch, a stand-alone pantry from Ikea and a cen­ter island.
• We hope to also have enough left to do a semi-inexpensive Pergo-style floor fix in there as well.

Should any­thing remain, there more needs on our list, but these are the ones I am excited about. So excited, I had to share. :)

I have finally put my fin­ger on an ail­ment that, tho I am a suf­ferer, I didn’t truly under­stand until today. I have started so many journals/diaries/notebooks/blogs in my life that I had become com­fort­able blam­ing my lack of per­se­ver­ance on the need for instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion that *soci­ety* has taught me to value…blah blah blah. I have finally, how­ever, come to the con­clu­sion that it is rather a not-so-vicious cycle start­ing with an addic­tion to the tan­ta­liz­ing excite­ment and angst that the mere sight of a blank note­book causes in me. I pon­der and worry and plan and gen­er­ally beat any and all ideas to death before the great Ini­tial Deface­ment, after which noth­ing seems right — not the first entry, nor any­thing that may come after — and I give up. This con­firms my medi­oc­rity, prov­ing me right in my esti­ma­tion of myself, a com­fort­able feel­ing. Last comes the naive yet sweet hope that the next attempt will be dif­fer­ent, that some­how I will con­quer my own lack of moti­va­tion and dis­ci­pline and con­tinue mak­ing entries for longer than a week. How could I not be addicted to all this? Oh, well. This time it will be dif­fer­ent. This time I will stick to it…