Saturday, November 1, 2008

Yes, it's been quiet, but now we'll get back up to speed

If you're a regular reader, you may have noticed that my posting has slowed down considerably. I apologize for that. Part of it started when I was flagged as a spam blog; it really threw me for a loop. But then, as my blog was reinstated (I guess "they" figured out it wasn't spam!), I became very busy with various things. One of those was I now have a new blog, called Cancer Commentary. It is also on the b5media network, as are Help My Hurt and Womb Within.

Now that this is all settled and launched, I can begin putting my efforts back into my original love, this blog.

That's not to say I'm not busy! I'm renovating my house right now. We just had the bathroom done and it's just about finished except for the painting and I have to finish refinishing three cabinet doors. We ripped out the ugly, ugly, ugly, puke-green bath and bath insert (the walls too!), toilet and sink. We now have a lovely white tub with gorgeous tiling around it, and a new toilet and sink. I also repainted the vanity with a white melamine paint, as well as the mirror trim and the lamp trim. It looks so nice.

The kitchen was also targeted. Last Monday, our contractor ripped out the whole thing. Everything. So, all of our stuff had been moved over into the dining room, including the fridge. Cooking in such cramped quarters, without a stove, is - shall we say, challenging? As of yesterday, the floor had been laid and grouted and was dry. The cupboards (most of them) have been installed and the stove is now in and workable. We still can't use the counters and there's no sink, but that's ok. I'm not complaining. :-)

As soon as the kitchen is complete, hopefully by midweek next week, we'll still have painting to do, but that's minor, compared with what we've had. Then, our dining room is next. For one full month, I scraped and scraped and scraped to get some horrid, awful stucco off all four walls of the dining room. Not the ceiling, but the walls. Whoever applied it (and did a horrible job at that) should be forced to live the rest of his life removing stucco. Anyway, the walls underneath are ruined, but we found a great type of wall that we can cover them with. It's much thicker than traditional panelling and it comes in different styles. We can then stain them or paint them. But, it will be a big job to get that all up.

Those are the big projects - there are more small things to come. So, as you can see, things have been incredibly busy!

Anyway, so that's all the news there's fit to know about the blogs and time and renovations.

See you around!

Marijke

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marijke, can you please tell me the name of the wall material that's thicker than panelling & can be repainted that you purchased. We put up bad wall panelling as a temporary fix in our bedroom and have to take it down. The reason we put it up was b/c the wallpaper was extremely difficult to remove. This material you wrote of might work a bit better than panelling we have up now.
Thanks.

Marijke Vroomen-Durning said...

Hi Kathy,

The wall board is made of MDF and is stainable and paintable. It's about a quarter of an inch thick, thicker than panelling. I grew up with panelling everywhere. I hate it. :-P

I'm in Canada and I found it at Reno-Depot, Rona, and it's supposed to be at Home Depot, as well. It's much thicker and sturdier than panelling but you can get some nice designs in them to add interest to your walls.

Good luck!