Moved back into the living room!
Today, a ton of things happened. I was working from home today, which gave me the opportunity to run some errands today. First on the list, after dropping off Jenny at work, was a stop at the Pittsburgh Mills Mall for a few Christmas gifts, furnace filters, a water filter for the refrigerator, and new light bulbs for the chandeliers on the first floor. In addition to this, I was picking up my personal “yay, you finished the room” gift: An Xbox 360. I arrived at home just in time to get online and start work for the day.
On my lunch break, I went out to a local carpet store (“Chuck’s Carpet Outlet”) over in Tarentum to see if I could find a suitable area rug. I found one that I liked, checked it with Jenny, and picked it up. $200 for a carpet from the exact same manufacturer and pattern that would have cost me >$3k at a department store–that was a great feeling. On the way home from there, I stopped at the hardware store to get a new flapper for the upstairs toilet. It had gotten to the point where it would be draining a small amount all the time, and then would be refilling over and over and over again. It was quite the irritation, and probably used a decent amount of water without need. I came back from this little jaunt, unloaded the carpet into a corner of the living room, installed the new flapper, and went back to work.
As soon as I could reasonably finish what I was doing at work for the day, I started back in on the room. I removed a lot of staples. I hate carpet padding and its associated staples. Argh. Once that was done, a shop vac run to clean up any big dust, then a dustmop over the whole floor. The carpet was unrolled, the curtains re-hung, and I started to do move furniture from the dining room out to the porch for the Freecyclers who are picking it up. Then I started to move the new(er) furniture from the storage room on the second floor down to the living room. That was an adventure. I managed to get almost everything down on my own, but I needed Jenny’s help for the couch. While I was working on moving the radio and associated stuff, Jenny cleaned the seating apparatus. It was good teamwork.
After all of that, I finally got myself some late dinner, then unpacked the Xbox to get it set up. It came with two games, so I got to play for a little bit. It was a good time. It was even better that Jenny and I were spending it in our “new” room.
Our cats are going crazy. They are used to this furniture being in the storage room, and they haven’t been really allowed into the living room while it was under construction, so they just came through a lot of changes all at once. By the end of the night tonight, though, they were happy and enjoying the new space, just like us.
I have some pictures, but left the cable that I need to get them off of the camera at work, so I’ll have to post them tomorrow. It feels so good now to just sit in the room on a real piece of furniture and admire things.
jonathan
