Hello from San Antonio!!

Wow, I haven't posted since April 20?!

So much has happened since then so let me fill you in, and by you I mean me, basically writing in a "Diary of Cindee" format while under the pretense of reaching out to a society already inundated with worth while bloggers. That, and I am pretty sure no one else reads this.

Anyway, we had to put the house up for sale. Randy got a job in San Antonio and had to be there by June 1st leaving me stuck in Kansas getting the house sale-ready. We put the Realator's sign in the yard and, I kid-you-not, we got an offer within 12 hours from the first people who looked at the house. Then, several offers and counter-offers later, we had a signed contract on the house within 24 hours! Can you believe it! Well I couldn't because that meant that we had a little over 3 weeks to move out of the house and by we, I meant to say me because my husband was 2 states away. So I packed up 15 years of accumulated crap, some of which went to the Salvation Army and Goodwill, and moved myself and the boys to San Antonio.

So here I sit, sprucing up my resume' with all intentions of finding a Job! Oh, and according to the locals, this happens to be a record breaking summer of the worst heat index in history! I love my air-conditioned house!!!!!!

San Antonio is great though, heat index aside, with so many choices of eatery, shopping and did I mention shopping? The choice of fruits and vegatables here at the local H.E.B. are fantastic and the authentic Mexican and Tex-Mex food are wonderful. Although I must say that the G.P.S. is my new best friend! The streets around here are in the formation of a wagon wheel, I kid you not, so there is no straight way of getting from point A to point B. I do, however, know my way to the local shopping area that is filled with Target, Lowes, Barnes and Noble and quite a few eating establishments. :)

Maybe next time I post, I will have a job! Sweet!!!

Hasta luego,
C

Done remodeling...now selling?!

O.K. So I know I haven't been writing down my endless mind numbing thoughts lately, but here goes. We have officially finished our first remodeling job and were revelling in the glory of our new digs.

You know, life tends to intrude at the most untimely moments. Like my husband being laid off his job of 5 years and on the hunt for a new one. He said to me just the other day, "you know, I hate looking for a new job and going through all this resume and application crap again?" I told him, "I know, I do too especially since I have to make your resume, search probable job listings for you, send out your resume and sit with you telling me how you want your applications filled out!" He just looked at me with a blank stare and said "Uh...right".

So it's good that we have done all of this nice remodeling for the big selling of the house. As it stands today, he has 1 job offer and a good chance at having at least 1 more. Both mean selling the house and leaving the state that I was born in. Not that I am absolutely in love with this state, but most of my family lives here.

So now that we are going to have to sell the house, we have one and one-half more rooms we want to remodel as well. That is tackling the butt-ugly full bathroom and tiling the half bath that is already partially remodeled. That means...yes the dreaded word...stripping more freaking wallpaper off the walls, changing the base cabinet out and tiling the floors(which we are hiring that done this time).

Next time I just might be posting from somewhere in the big state of Texas!

Remodeling...chapter 3

O.K., so, continueing on, we picked out the kitchen tile and have proceeded to tile the kitchen floor. Most of the tile has been painstakenly laid...to my amazement...and hubby has grouted about half the kitchen. I now know how to lay ceramic tile, but wouldn't quit my day job to do it. I am very happy with the way it came out though. I even picked out a runner and another rug placed at the sliding glass door.




Five weeks later than what we were told, the granite countertop was delivered and installed! They attached the granite sink and then we installed the faucet and all the attachments that came with it. I think it looks great and I am pleased with the job they did at installing the granite. Oh, and of course all of the cabinets and toe kicks are in place. The first time we moved the refrigerator back into it's place we heard a crack and pop! I just knew sound was not good. So, yes, a tile had cracked and we had to move the refrigerator back out and replace the tile. When the boys and I, carefully, moved the fridge back into place the second time, we also heard a

crack but never saw a cracked tile. So I guess we are good then...that's what I keep telling myself. we just finished ordering the back splash and we have another two weeks until it comes in.

We are now looking at wood laminate flooring to be put into the livingroom and hallway. My husband thinks that in order to do the best job he can, we need to spend some money on a 12" sliding compound miter saw. I suppose that he should have tools that allow him to the best job possible don't you?

I will update again after we get the backsplash installed. That might be some time though since we are only working on this project on the weekends!

C :)

Adventure in Remodeling: chapter 2

As you know we are remodeling our house right now and have started by gutting the kitchen. You don't realize really how important a kitchen sink is until you have to live without it for a tad bit. However, before we started on the kitchen we carried out the fine art of peeling wallpaper off the walls. I don't mind telling you that, if I never see wallpaper again in my life, it would make me complete. Anyway I digress, after that fun experience I decided to scrape our popcorn ceilings off. This was quite a job but also very theraputic endeavor. Do you know that you can spray that stuff with a mixture of water and liquid softner and it just peels off like butter with a putty knife. After that was the fun part of picking out paint (thank goodness for Sherwin Williams) and priming and painting.

We bought new cabinets and called a contractor to install them. My husband got tired of waiting on the contractor after a few weeks and decided that we could do it ourselves, "really, how hard could it be" were the last words that came out of his mouth before he grabbed a hammer and started ripping old cabinets out of their stately place! Well, I'll tell you how hard it can be working with a perfectionist who wants the new cabinets to be, not only level, but exactly, perfectly, level! Anyway, three days later we have all of the upper cabinets in and most of the base cabinets down. We had to finish the rest the next day before the granite countertop people came in to measure and by the way they commended my husband on the great job of installing the, oh so level cabinets. It seems that is an important element in the world of granite countertops. They left an hour later with our new granite sink in tow and said it would probably be three to four weeks until they could come back and install said granite...ARGH!

While we are waiting for all of that, my husband decided that we would install undercabinet lighting and also thought that we should pick out tile for the kitchen floor.

That is where we are right now, still deciding on tile and waiting for the granite to come in...

To be continued.......