No rest for the weary.

The move is going swimmingly, exceptionally in fact, with the case being that Matt is not here.  My friends are magnificent and my dad actually used his lunch to drive to the house and install a ceiling fan today.  That's devotion and  I am truly blessed.  As always, the projects keep coming and I'm inching closer to finishing each one even though many haven't even started yet.  I finally got my ebay goods this week, one being a fabulous brass chandelier that I scored for $5.  I finally painted it last night and it looks excellent.  The chain was too short however for where I want to hang it so I need to head to Home Depot to get some extra chain and wiring.   Once it's hung from it's permanent home, I'll post the after.

The wood floor has been chosen and we decided on bamboo.  I'm not a huge bamboo fan as I don't like to walk into a room and know it's secrets immediately and I feel that's always the case with bamboo.  It just looks so much like.....bamboo.  However, it is the hardest solid wood floor (and apparently a solid wood floor is hard to come by.....EVERYTHING has plywood backing and a thin veneer.  EVERYTHING).  We are only putting it down in our master bedroom and master closet but the rest of the house is original solid old pine hardwood and the feeling of walking on engineered crap after stepping on the good stuff would bother me.  After consulting with the good folks at Lumber Liquidators and considering our furry pup, we decided that the hardest wood available was probably best for us.  And they even had this carbonized version that is a darker color, keeping a little mystery alive until you peer a little more closely.  It also matches very well with the original wood.  And for 3.99, it's really a steal.

I also have been working on Matt's and my dresser for the past couple weeks.  Or month.  It's been a long time.  When Matt moved into our rental, it came with this little solid wood mid century dresser.  Here it is in all it's taped up, Luke-ified glory.  Yes, that's his dog food next to my jewelry box.  Things need to change.

I'm a sucker for a free piece of solid furniture and while the handles of the original piece were really bad, I found something at HD called "wood filler" where you can actually fill in parts of anything that need to be smooth and aren't.

I used it on a picture frame where the holes had been drilled clear through the frame and it worked wonderfully!  I can't even see where the holes are now that I've painted.  So I disassembled the handles and slopped this thick nasty goo into each handle space.  With it being so thick it took about a week to dry.

And then it turned to marble.  Seriously, unsandable, possibly harder than bamboo, cement was now filling the holes of our dresser.  After it ripped my sander to shreds, I called my father in law who has some carpentry background and he brought over a hammer and chisel and chiseled away at the filler.  Call me Michaelangalo because it worked.  All it took was a light sanding once I'd gotten the filler down to a reasonable height and touch up filling in the holes.  Once I cleaned off all the dusk from sanding I got to painting.  I use "Kilz" primer because it's a classic and while I bought the oil base primer because I've heard it's the best, I'd already put enough sweat into this dresser and oil based anything is hard to apply.  I went out and got the latex kind to use instead.  When I use the other, I'll let you know how it holds up comparatively.    And here it is, our french inspired, whimsical/ modern seven drawer dresser.  I've still got some paint to do around the bottom and I bought dresser legs so it'll pop off the ground but I'm stoked.  I just emailed this to Matt, so I'll be sure to include his response in my next post.  He keeps saying "I need to see it in person" which is probably Mattspeak for "yikes".

So, one of my favorite magazines, Metropolitan Home just folded and like my Domino and Blueprint subscriptions, the owners of the company compensate you with another magazine until your subscription ends.  However, this is one of the last design mags in this company apparently so they send me "Woman's Day".  Great, just want I was wanting, EVERY SINGLE MONTH.  My whole Domino subscription has been like a continual downgrade as magazines are folding left and right.  Next I'll be receiving "Star Weekly" for 6 months.  So anyway, Woman's Day didn't turn out that bad and I was especially stoked to see a special article on their new editor.  She was moving into her new office and changing her decor and look what she has, could it be a startling replica of my chair?  Perhaps she reads my blog.  I'm going to hope she does to add to the list of my mom and Matt. Hopefully we don't share the same flair for fashion.