With A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That.

So I've been busting my BUTT with little things in the house this week.  I started out finishing up the TV stand.  I didn't like how it came out the first time with the old hardware.  It was an old brass that I didn't like so I painted it a brushed nickle.

The hardware just stuck out too much to me.  And the paint looked more fake silvery gray than it did brushed nickle.  So I took the hardware off again and went to my trusty old friend Oil Rubbed Bronze.  It's a sparkly chocolately deep brown metallic.  It's my go-to spray on all things ugly. I sprayed all of the fugly brass light fixtures when I first moved into the house with ORB.   This is what it looks like today.

Ahhhhh yes.  A little less obvious.  MUCH BETTER.  Now just need to do something with those gawd awful wires.

Then I finished up with the garage.  Last week it looked like this.

Now the other side is done.  I finished putting together the second shelf.  I got rid of a few bricks (you'll see in a minute).  And threw out that nasty old insulation that they THOUGHT they were going to re-use.  I think not.

And as you can see- STILL NO PROGRESS ON THE GARAGE.  Fuckers.  Although he did call me to schedule for them to come on Wednesday.  So fingers crossed.

Then yesterday I planted 46 out of the 72 tulip bulbs in the yard.  While I was digging and shoveling and planting I came up with the genius idea of utilizing some of the hundreds of bricks taking up valuable space in my garage.  While I busted my ass, back, arms, and knees for 5 hours it doesn't look like much right now.  But once if they bloom  they will be beautiful.  They fucking better be after not being able to walk today.

These are the two types of tulips that I planted.  One will come up early spring and one late spring so I should have flowers for a few weeks there.  So excited.  Here is what they look like.

I found out that part of that little area if FULL of concrete and I just couldn't lift it all out by myself.  I was able to get most of it.  But some pieces were too big.  So I will probably just put a potted plant or two at the one end to make up for not being able to plant something there.

But the biggest transformation that I did this week was working on the light green chaise to go up to the TV room along with the changes to that room as well.  You've probably seen some pics with this chaise in them from the garage.  With tons of shit piled on it.  Poor baby.  Well I finally brought it into the house, vacuumed it off, and went to town.  Here's the before (after I had removed its wooden legs).

I started by busting out the dark walnut stain to darken up the legs a little bit.

Well that worked about as good as the stain did on the dining table.  Womp womp.  So out came the ORB again.  This time it went just as I had desired.  It comes off more black in the pictures but I can assure you that it so not the case.

Then I ripped off the skirt portion of the chaise.  This material is not staying whatsoever.  I'm going to look for some fabric in the next few weeks that is a dark navy and either solid or a print with a cream design on it to go with the pillows.  And it'll have some nail head trim.  Sexy nail head trim.  Rooooooaaaaaar! Here she is now upstairs in the room.  SO MUCH BETTER.

Here is what this room looked like before I started working on it last week.

And now with a few minor changes here is what it's looking like now.

The guy on the TV likes it too.  He's saying "Ooooooh.  DAYUM girl!"  Now I just need to change out the curtains (I'm working on that) and re-do the chaise and we might have a solid room going on here.  As you can tell I took up the rug which makes a big difference.  I'm starting to like it.  Even though I secretly wanted hot pink.

That's all for now.  I signed up for the race so the training begins.  Get ready for Bitchy Kristi.  It's gonna be fun!  There's actually about 5 of us so far running it.  This time I'm thinking of taking it seriously though.  because let's be honest.  I totally thought Sarah was kidding when we signed up for the last one.  I never thought we'd follow through with it.  But this one I'm gonna work my tail off.  I put my time as 30 minutes faster than the last race and I'm hoping to finish it faster than that.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I'm going to be sore, tired and hungry. Watch out.