Finally

After only 18 months of not having a finished hallway and having bare concrete for a floor, the hall and entry way are finally finally pretty much finished. Finally.

A note about the carpet. Don't ever buy this stuff, it's totally not worth the money. It's carpet squares from Legato and the concept is great, tiles of carpet with foam backing that fit together like puzzle pieces and need no installation other than laying it on a clean floor. Like I said, great concept. We used it in the mobil home and it looked really good and is about half the price of real carpet. And, if a square gets totally ruined by a stain, you just pull it up and replace it with the extras that you had the foresight to buy. But, the newer version of it doesn't have as high a pile, so no matter how long it lays there and how much you follow the instructions, and how much you vacuum it, you can still see the tile shapes. They just don't blend together like they are supposed to. We're not real happy with it, but when you are poor and can't afford real carpet and the old carpet that was in the house was so incredibly nasty, you've got to work with what you can afford.

Anyway, the hallway is finally painted and carpeted. Since it took so long (18 months which is 1 1/2 years, which is a long long time) the carpet that was already in the living room all this time looked way older and dirtier than the new that (finally) went into the hallway. So, today I steam cleaned the living room carpet with my handy dandy little green Bissell steam cleaning machine, which, by the way, is SO worth the money. I vacuumed first, of course, but apparently our vacuum doesn't quite suck up all the cat hair because I ended up with wads and wads of wet cat hair that the steam machine sucked up. So, I guess I need to either A: Vacuum more often or B: steam clean more often or C: a combination of both. And don't tell me to get rid of the cats, we're still hoping we can get a reality show or something out of them. You wouldn't like it if I told you to get rid of your children because they got the carpet dirty, would you?

So, I'm exhausted now, but at least the hallway looks good.

This is the view from the living room, with the entry way and the front door to the left, and the hall to the bedrooms and bathroom to the right.


The lovely CD rack and mirror were handmade by Keith, by the way. The mirror used to be in my bathroom in the mobile home.

This view is from inside the living room, showing the archway that he built around the doorway.


This shows the front door which we decided to paint the brown of the trim. For the first few days after this was painted, at night time we kept thinking the front door was open because it was so dark down there.


The weird little indentation in the wall is just totally useless, I guess the builder of the house wanted to add some 'architectural interest' but it's not good for anything but a vase or something, and I'm just not a vase type person.

And the awesome sign on the wall is one that we picked up last year at an antique show. Back when we had expendable income. It was too cool to pass up.


This is the view as you walk in the front door. Notice the chic cat condo.


The chic cat condo that nobody is using right now because they prefer to sleep on the nice freshly steam cleaned carpet. That dark ball by the sofa is Pepper. She is supposed to be sleeping on the nice cushy blanket that is on the couch so that the hair gets transferred to the washable blanket instead of the carpet.

This is down the hallway with closet and bedroom on the left, bathroom straight ahead. At first, I didn't want to do the trim in a different color that the walls (too much work) but I really like the way it came out, so I'm glad we did it this way.


And this is my other awesome sign, which we got years ago in an antique store in Fillmore, CA. It makes me smile every time I look at it. Kids, no having fun at the circus, dammit!!


If we ever need to repaint this hallway, I'm hoping that we'll be better off financially by then to just pay somebody else to do the work.

So This is What We've Been Doing

Actually, this is what Keith has been doing, because we just don't get along when we try and paint together. My painting style is slap that stuff on the wall and be done, and his style is slow and steady, and make sure the job is perfect. That's why jobs like this never seem to quite get finished, it takes him so long that he loses interest in it halfway through, and then I have to nag him about getting it finished.

So, we had four days to get the hallway done, and it is still not done. Day one was spent washing and patching and sanding, day two was spent with both of us painting and one of us going back over everything the other of us had painted because apparently we (me) aren't doing such a good job, day three was spent with only Keith painting the second coat because I'm getting irritated by now with him being so picky about my paint job, and day four was spent with him sanding all the trim, taking a nap, and then sanding more trim, with no trim actually getting painted.

To make a long story short, the walls are painted, but the trim is not, and we still don't have the carpet down in the hallway because we are not done painting yet. It had been so long ( a few years, I think) since we picked out the paint for the hall that I had completely forgotten what color it was going to be and it was a good thing that Keith had labeled the paint jugs with 'hallway'. The color is called Harmonious Cream, so I'm hoping that walking down the hallway will have a soothing zen like effect on us, making us feel more harmonious and in tune with nature, or something like that. It's hard to describe the color, kind of a buttery warm creamy yellowy color. It coordinates well with the peachy color that the living room is. Here is a picture, the back of the door is still the original hallway color.

The trim will be done in the trim that we used for the living room, it's another color that is hard to describe, so we'll just call it brown, but it's kind of a reddish brown redwood sort of color, called Versatile Verve, versatile because it goes with lots of different colors, verve because, well, I don't know why since I'm not real sure what that word means and will have to go google it.

Okay, here's what google says about verve:

1. Energy and enthusiasm in the expression of ideas, especially in artistic performance or composition: The revival lacked the verve of the original musical.

2. Vitality; liveliness.

3. Archaic Aptitude; talent.

Apparently there is also an energy drink called Verve and also a pop music group that I think I may have once had a CD of.
So, our trim will make us feel energized and full of vitality while the walls will fill us with harmony.