Rehabber’s Rehab

After half-heartedly finishing the painting in the office Tuesday before, and whole heartedly taking Wednesday night off, our plan was to go appliance shopping and paint the front bedroom. It quickly became apparent that only the appliance shopping was going to happen when once we arrived at the store we became paralyzed by indecision.  It felt like buying a car sans test drive. Laying down that large sum of money on something that you are then basically stuck with for the next (hopefully) 10 years and hoping it works out was a little bit stressful.

We knew we wanted stainless – these days it seems like you pretty much have to if you ever want to re-sell your house.  But the idea of just laying down thousands of dollars just like that was kind of nerve wracking.  After some sniping we decided to go with our original choice of a standard sized side by side fridge stainless.  Although the bottom freezers are more energy efficient, they are just so much more expensive.  The main reason I liked the one we chose is the ice bin is in the door and takes up less room, leaving more shelf space.

Picking a dishwasher was pretty easy.  Right price, and right look.  We liked having the controls on top and out of the way.  It makes for a cleaner look.

The biggest debate was slide-in range vs. cooktop and oven.  The two turned out to be about the same price, so cook top and oven won.  I think it looks a little bit nicer.

After all the trials of appliance shopping, we were done.  No painting, just resting and looking forward to moving.  My condition for Thor was that even though we don’t have a kitchen, we at least had to have a refridgerator.  It’s being delivered on Monday, so next week we’re finally going to start sleeping at the house.

When we got back from our rafting trip in Pennsylvania this Labor Day weekend, we returned to our half painted office and all disorganized house.

There seems to be a strange phenomenon in the house that as you work in the evenings, instead of cooling down the house gets hotter.  Maybe the stucco house releases heat stored up in the day as the evening goes on.  By the end of the evening I felt like I had spent an hour sweating it out at a bad spa and we finished putting up the paint on the walls of the office.  We painted the office “spinning wheel” by dutch boy, and decided not to change the color any (we were debating making it lighter), and are in retrospect both pretty happy with the results.  I’m leaving the trim white.

The office is not part of the great trim reclaiming project since if we do decide to add on a second story, this room is currently the top contender for where the stairs will go.  No point is doing a lot of work on it when it might all just be ripped out.  Plus it will be nice to have at least one room that is done.

Still to do: touch up the trim, paint the pink closet white and put up a curtain over the closet.