Move over, Betty Crocker

And maybe the home improvement people on HGTV, too. I am DONE wallpapering! Yay!! Not only am I done wallpapering, but I've started to prep. for the paint part by moving all the furniture out of the room. So if there's a specialist in rearranging furniture so you can still maneuver in other rooms of the house, I've mastered that for the moment as well. No bed to sleep on (good thing there's a guest room), but I can sit on my living room couch.

But wait, there's more! For another hour and a half worth of time, I'm baking a chicken for dinner! Being homemakerly is going to wipe me out, but for the moment it's fun. . .

Emily is my hero!

Why is Emily my hero, do you ask? Look closely at the closet doors. Notice anything? (Pause while you observe photo . . .) Okay, so it's not as dramatic for anyone besides me, but these closet doors haven't worked properly since I moved into the house a year ago last May. Emily fixed them! Yay!! And she spent the whole afternoon helping me wallpaper the trickiest wall that had the most outlets and weird cut-out areas! She rocks!!

One wall done, three to go

How am I celebrating a very RAINY 4th of July? I put up wallpaper. I've only done one wall so far, but that one wall looks good. It took me about two and a half hours. Not bad, considering I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't even end up coating myself in wallpaper paste. Score! This already-pasted wallpaper is the way to go. I also like that I can focus on one strip at a time, which keeps me from looking at everything that isn't done already. One strip at a time is manageable.

It's 2:12 PM and raining steadily. I don't think I'm having a picnic dinner tonight. Or watching fireworks. Or listening to a big band concert at the park downtown.

I AM, though, going to a barbecue at a friend's house. So we'll be indoors-- it'll still be fun.

Britomart's sitting on my lap purring while I type this entry. She would like to say that she did a fine job of supervising the wallpaper hanging process. Now we're all going to settle down on the couch and read. (Well, I'm going to read-- Brit will nap on me, and Alice will probably join us.)

And to my Canadian friends, Happy Canada Day! And happy 400th anniversary of Quebec City! Je me souviens!

fun with wallpaper

See my pretty new French doors, installed in May to replace an ugly, drafty patio door? Look at the green wall. That's not wallpaper. THAT is my wall. The picture doesn't give you the whole sense. Think '70's trailer walls. This stuff is funky, and it doesn't take paint. Granted, it's better than the inch-wide green and white vertical stripes that on the wallpaper I ripped down. That stuff made me motion sick. I would wake up in the morning and grab the edge of my bed to make sure I wasn't moving.

So I thought it would be a relatively easy summer project to remove the old wallpaper (eliminating the cave effect) and put up new textured wallpaper I can paint whatever color I want. I bought the textured wallpaper-- all eight rolls at Lowe's. (I hope it's enough.) I read the directions, which said that I might need to prime the walls first. Off I went to Lowe's to make sure.

I got two different stories. The wallpaper person said that if I'm going to cover paneling (the one wall that's not covered in this funky green stuff is dark paneling), I need to 1) prime it 2) put up wallpaper liner, which by the way, comes without any adhesive and therefore needs to be pasted and 3) THEN put up the textured wallpaper, which I can then paint when it's dry. Besides adding $50 or so to the cost of the project, I didn't relish the idea of TWO sets of wallpapering. The wallpaper person also told me I need "special" primer for paneling (I didn't when I painted the paneling in the sunroom . . .).

Option two: prime the paneled wall and just paint it after that. That option looks much better.

Then, when I was cutting wallpaper to fit the other walls, I thought, "Hey, why don't I put a scrap of wallpaper on the paneling to see if it sticks without any priming at all?" Thirty minutes later, the wallpaper seems to be sticking. It's a bit dark behind it from the paneling, but since I'm painting a whole different color anyhow, does that really matter?

And thus the suspense: to prime or not to prime? Do I wallpaper that paneled wall? I'm thinking yes. The worst it can do is fall down and then I have to paint anyhow. Or maybe I'll need to paint primer over the wallpaper once it's up.

Why couldn't the original owner have just used normal drywall instead of this funky plasticky trailer stuff? And why doesn't HGTV have shows dealing with such issues? Where's the Design on a Dime team when I need them?

Mom, can I go out and play? Pleeease?

That's what I wanted to shout as I headed out of my office door early this afternoon. My office is a windowless cubicle, so once I'm inside, I don't know what the weather's like until whenever I go home. My office neighbor poked her head in and said, "Get outside! It's the only nice day before several days of rain!" So, instead of my original plan for the afternoon (wallpapering), I'm going to sit on my deck and read a book in the sunshine. I'm learning that when it's not raining in West Virginia, take advantage of it.

Speaking of West Virginia weather, it's been unusually cool this summer. Not that I'm complaining, because there's also been very little humidity. (Well, except for June 7th when I ran my half-marathon-- that'll be a whole separate entry.) Last night I went to a barbecue with friends and was actually a little COLD when the sun went down. We roasted marshmallows and watched the kids chase fireflies. (They named the fireflies all as they caught them and brought them over to show us. "Mom, this one's named Trudy! This one's named Kung Fu Panda! This one's named Rainbow!" By the way: very definite differences in name choices depending on the gender of the firefly catcher.) I could have sworn it was late April, but nope, it was July 1st.

I hope it doesn't rain on the 4th. How can I have a picnic and watch fireworks if it's raining?

Okay, I did my writing. I'm going outside to play! I'll be back home at dinner time, I promise!

The Walrus and the Carpenter

have NOTHING on me when it comes to home repair! Look what I did this afternoon:

Okay, come on-- you're impressed, right? Admit it! I am learning to master basic home repairs. Well, so it took me a year of dealing with the bucket under the leaky pipes to finally get fed up and decide to fix it . . . but it was easier than replacing the toilet and shut-off valve. But that's a story for another entry. I meant for the picture without pipes to be on the left-- it got switched somehow. Still learning to master the technology . . .

Oh, those crazy felines . . .

Okay, I promise every single entry won't be about the kitties. I wanted to start with this, though, to see how I do with adding photos. I took this picture on a windy spring Saturday when there were all kinds of leaves whipping around outside. My cats really like moving leaves, and since they aren't allowed outside, the screen is as close as they could get. They spent the whole afternoon watching. My favorite part of this picture, though, is the little brass cat doorstop behind the real cats. I love that they're all in the same pose.

About Brit on top of the cabinets. In January when it was check-up time at the vet, the vet, knowing that my cats are 13 years old, asked if they have any issues with arthritis. Brit climbs up on the cabinets regularly. What do you think? My cranky old lady cats (who will be 14 in two weeks-- that's 98 in people years) haven't slowed down a bit. They just smack each other a little more often when they're hungry. A couple of hours ago I left a SMALL drawer open and Brit tried to fit inside it. Are they hard-wired to smash into impossibly small or high spaces?