The Fault In Our Stars

Saturday, while the menfolk of our urban family smoked and/or grilled lots of meat, us womenfolk went to the movies to watch The Fault in Our Stars.  We love John Green and his novels.  We love this particular novel very, very, very much.  So much so, it holds a rather sacred place in our hearts and bookshelves.  I was skeptical, as I always am when a book is made into a movie.  Rarely is the movie better than the book (except in the case of The English Patient and Legends of the Fall).  And although this movie was good, it was not as wonderful as the book.  The book is magical.  The book made me cry.  Ugly cry.  The movie only made my eyes a little sweaty.  And my nose may have burned some.  And there may have been a lump in my throat.

After the movie, we joined the menfolk and the kidfolk on the mountain and ate some of the meat that was smoked and/or grilled.  Children, slippery and pool-pruned, scampered about the backyard like woodland fairies.  Cafe lights illuminated our oasis...

Photo by Zoe.

State of the Bungalow Address 9 June 2014

Home improvement projects always occur in multiples.  Start one, and you end up with at least one other project that needs to happen in order to successfully complete the one that you started in the first place.

Case in point:  Eric and I hired a contractor to paint the Bungalow and the garage.  But the garage front was wonky and unplumb and needed to be fixed before we could move forward on the painting.  So, based upon some conversations with jack-of-all-trades and good friend Mike Utter, it was determined that some braces and some concrete board would take care of the job. Yesterday, Eric finished out the front of the garage with some (rather little) help from me. 

Now, if we could just figure out the colors of paint that we want to use.  We've had the chips for a week.  We have narrowed the body color down to a grey shade.  A grey shade of what, we don't know yet.  Green grey?  Brown grey?  Blue grey?  I DON'T KNOW.  I'll see Sherwin Williams later today about some sample paints...

Before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After

State of the Bungalow Address, 7 June 2014

We've been getting some more things done around here, things we've been meaning to do for some time.   So, to catch everyone up on the state of the Bungalow, here is an update.

In preparation for building a deck on the back of the house (one day), we had the AC compressor/condenser unit thingy (technical terms) moved to the side of the house.  The process was capably handled by AC expert and all-around great guy, Chad Brewer. 

Green truck in green landscape.

Choosing the spot.

Finito!

The following week, I decided to paint our small back deck because it had been poorly painted/stained by the previous owner and was showing some serious signs of wear.  As Eric and I looked it over during the scraping process, we noticed several rotting boards.  And, when Eric pulled on the stairs to see how difficult it would be to remove them from the deck, they released effortlessly...a scary thing to witness, considering how we had no idea how rotted out the support and facing boards were.

As with many home projects, the quick paint job of one weekend turned into several days of tear-out and rebuild BEFORE any priming and painting could ever happen.  And after about two weeks (we are having quite the rainy season again this year) and much gnashing of teeth later, the deck paint job was done.  No longer known as the deck of death...

Nice.