Fixtures et cetera

Hidy Ho. Abbey Here. Gregg and I spent the few hours I was able to devote to the house this weekend finishing up the great painting job that Gregg started with the kind help of Ms. Kate Greenberg. They did a fantastic job. Unfortunately I bought brushes that didn't like the Behr Latex-based drywall sealing paint - that we chose to seal up the drywall. SORRY KATE. Everything looks completely amazing and we are already packing up for the big move. Gregg has done a great job keeping everything on schedule. 15 days to go, I can't really believe it.

Saturday also featured a stop at the local mechanic to save the Expedition - Jiffylube is not our friend and we would encourage all of our friends and family members to check all the hose connections and make sure everything is tightened after any service there. I am not mechanically inclined but these are the observations I can offer: 1) Gregg's car was vibrating and shaking, getting worse at slower speeds. 2) It smelled like cooked anti-freeze or coolent or something yucky. 3) The check engine light was on. From what we could gather, Jiffylube forgot to tighten something back up, as a result, after driving it, Gregg had no coolent in his car and the coolent fried something (I think its called a coil), which was making the car vibrate as the something (piston? thing inside the coil?) couldn't work/fire/whatever. The good news is, after a trip to the local mechanic (which Gregg appeared to be very excited about - powertools), the car is running fine and is no longer vibrating.

Our next adventure was to try our luck downtown at something called "THE BIG SALE" which was a 50/50 shot at trying to find accoutrements for the new house. We weren't quite sure what we were expecting to find, but find nothing we did. I circled the Staples Center 3 times while Gregg braved the mob-scene. The distress call came in and I picked him up on Figueroa St and we high-tailed it out of there.

Next stop: The Great Indoors and Lowes.
Items found at The Great Indoors/Purchased: 1/0. While we have plenty of kitchen items, a lot of what I had I left in storage at my parents in New York instead of carting it across the country. I really like the simplicity of this Oneida Basketweave dinnerware, which was a steal at $69.99 for an 8 piece set. We will return.

Items found at Lowes/Purchase: 18/19. We managed to buy the hardware for our front door, our doorknob hardware for the bathroom and other doors, felt to protect the new floors from the furniture that will be moved in, Clorox Cleanup, Bounty Papertowls, 2 rugs to trap dirt at entrances, a spare rug to protect the floor, and 3 hardwired smoke detectors. We forgot to look at Oilrubbed hinges for the doors that are currently shiny brass hinges, but all in all a successful trip.

All of that searching really worked up an appetite and we were curious about a restaurant Gregg had found. Its quite charming and a great deal, we had a good time in Glendale. We both had KRÓLEWSKI (Combination of Pierogi, Golabki, Gulasz). YUM!

On Sunday, we finalized our exterior lighting scheme. Gregg and I even had time to change our refrigerator door from pulling open to the right to pulling open from the left. Its now completely clean, running and installed in the kitchen.

A few of additional details (for those of you not yet asleep):
We have selected our grout colors (bright white and light smoke) for the bathroom. This will coordinate with the Dal tile Gregg and I spent 3 weekends pondering. We chose Ambrato Brown for the floor and the Marfil Linen for the walls of the shower. Gregg is expecting the Tiler to start on Friday, March 20th. We should have a fully functioning bathroom as long as everything arrives on schedule (we still have to find our toliet, but there is always the portapotty in the front yard!), including our vanity lighting and ceiling lighting. There is a variable - ordering time - that may prove annoying/challenging but this too will be overcome.
We also managed to pick out exterior wall lights/sconces which will be on the side of the house and in back either side of the frenchdoors. We went with a different look on the front of the house, trying to mimic the roofline and the traditional windows. All of this is subject to final installation and approval - we might decide to change to all of the same type of wall light.

Did I mention that we are hoping all of this arrives by the end of the week?
Stay tuned.....