Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 294, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Dominica and I were exhausted when we woke up this morning.  The painting all weekend really took it out of us.  Today there is a crazy amount of cleaning to do now that the painting is done.  We were unable to really do any cleaning this week because of the painting so the house is actually is pretty rough shape.

I went in to the office this morning but planned on staying home to work this afternoon so that I could help with the immense cleaning tasks.  I came home at lunch but got stuck working the entire time that I was home and then it turned out that I was needed in the office and I had to rush back down to Irving.  Dominica was not very happy.  At least Maggie was planning on coming over early so that she could help Dominica with watching the girls to make it easier to clean the house.

I left work as early as I could and rushed home.  The house really looked amazing.  Dominica did an awesome job of cleaning today.  I immediately got to work digging out tables, cleaning the patio and doing other setup tasks for Dominica.  It was great getting some time to visit with Maggie.  We have not seen her in many months and she has had a gallbladder operation since the last time that we have seen her as well.

It was a mad dash to try to get things done in time for the SpiceCorps event tonight and people started showing up quite a bit earlier than expected and I was not able to get some things that I had wanted to get done, done.  Things like the video camera and streaming feed so that people could watch the event remotely.  It was quite stressful trying to get as much done as we did.

Joe brought over a projector and screen that he set up so that the guys from Unitrends who were sponsoring this evening would have that for their vendor presentation.  It was good that he did, having the projector kind of gave the room a focal point to reduce the “milling about” effect that holding the SpiceCorps in the house sort of engendered.

We had RSVPs for about fifty people and the real world turnout turned out to be roughly thirty four which is a very respectable number as well as a good percentage of those who RSVP’d.  The presentations went well – we had three tonight – and overall I think that people had a good time and the event appears to have been a success.  The use of the house seems to have gone over well.  I think that we will do that again.

The last of the stragglers were still hanging out until around midnight!  We had one casualty that needed to be escorted home so it was around one in the morning when I got back from delivering him back out into the country.

Tomorrow we will be busy trying to get the house ready for dad.  He arrived late afternoon to DFW.

Medifast Status: Day 293, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

It was grand to come out to the living room this morning and discover our house completely bathed in sunlight.  It feels like we just bought ourselves a whole new house!  I can’t believe what a difference the painting and cleaning has made.  This is awesome.  We were not planning on just how much the changing out of the blinds and the paint were going to alter the look of the house.  This was time and money well spent.

Today was a day of continued painting and a lot of it.  We got started straight away this morning and worked at it all day.  In between coats we worked on getting what parts of the house that we could ready for tomorrow.  I put in a lot of time today up in the attic.  The garage is looking much better with a lot of the stuff that was piling up in there moved up to the attic instead.  Now we can move around and find things, well some things, that we need.  The garage has been a major issue for us.  Getting stuff up to the attic is really critical.  It seems like half of our kitchen supplies remain out in the garage.

The painting went on late tonight.  We knew that leaving any for tomorrow would be a disaster.  We ended up painting until two in the morning!  But everything was done.  The entire living room is painted and there is enough time for the paint to dry before SpiceCorps DFW meets here tomorrow and that leaves the entire day for cleaning.

Medifast Status: Day 292, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

The painting of the living room began first this this morning.  We have a lot to do.  A good portion of the painting must be done from high up on a step ladder.  So Dominica has been focusing on the ground level painting while I am doing the high level painting from the ladder.

We painted most of the day interspersed with periods of cleaning.  So much to do.  We pretty much took the entire weekend off to deal with the preparations for this coming week.  Thank goodness that this turned out to be a surprise holiday weekend and I have tomorrow off from work so that I can be home to focus on this.  There is no way that we will get this done today.

From the very first coat of paint we can tell that this was a good choice.  The old paint in the living room was a taupe colour that seemed decently light with nothing to compare it to.  But now that we are painting a light cream colour over it we can really see just how dark it really was.  We thought that the blinds really made a difference in making the house brighter but now that we are applying this lighter paint to the largest room in the house it is getting far brighter still.  The difference is far more dramatic than we had anticipated.  It is going to look great.

I don’t think that it is easy to express the level to which we have made the house brighter than when we first came to look at the house fourteen months ago.  The house was painted dark, there was extremely dark wood finishings and nearly all of the windows were covered with large furniture items.  It was, needless to say, dark.  Now all of that has changed.  The house is open and airy, the paint is light, the blinds are gone, the carpets have been cleaned and everything really pops.

The new paint makes the house really scream for some colour.  We’ve decided that we are going to address that through the use of really colourful, Dutch modern styled 1960s furniture.  Dominica has been shopping for some and has some good ideas.  The first item on our list is going to be bar stools.  We are going to get the bar up and usable before moving on to addressing anything else.

We got roughly two coats of the living room done today and are in good shape to complete the room tomorrow.

Medifast Status: Day 291, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Today begins our crazy painting weekend.  We have SpiceCorps DFW meeting at our home on Tuesday and my father is coming to visit for a week starting on Wednesday so we only have a very small window from now until we need to have everything done.  There is a ton to do too.  It is not just painting but we need to get the house cleaned up – really cleaned up.

We did a bit of preparation today in order to begin painting.  The house is going to be a real mess until the painting is completed as we need to move everything in order to do it.  We are also working on getting stuff moved up to the attic and stuff from the house moved out in to the garage.

Moving stuff around in the garage resulted in a wall of garbage stacking up against the garage door.  The garage is so full of stuff that we can barely move out there.  My office is also filling up pretty quickly.

Joe came over this evening and helped us to get set up with some of the basics for the painting – mostly helping with things like patching the walls and stuff like that.

We did not start painting tonight.  We decided that that would really start tomorrow morning.  But everything is ready at this point.  We took down the blinds today.  We talked about it and decided that we really needed to just do away with the awful vertical blinds that came with the house.  They are all broken and old and look just terrible in the front windows.  Even if we manage to open them, which we never completely have, they block a ridiculous amount of light while providing no effective insulation.  We will come up with a good replacement for them sometime soon.

What a difference taking the blinds down makes.  The house is ten times brighter.  That alone makes the house feel like a new home.  I’ve been railing against those blinds since we first moved in but even I am amazed by what a difference it made taking them down.  I am already much happier about having purchased this house.  It really looks great.

Medifast Status: Day 290, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

I got so far behind on SGL that I don’t really remember today.  Sorry.