The Dharma Initiative

"You seriously named your cat after LOST?" our friend Shelly asked. Well, yeah. To be honest, we were having some trouble thinking of a name, until our friend Katie suggested Dolce, which had a nice ring to it. But, when we went to pick up Unnamed Cat from her foster home, we noticed that a pattern on her back was in the shape of a large arrow. Well, The Arrow is one of the stations on LOST...so Dolce became Dharma.

I've told Erika that no one likes to hear stories about your cat. And it's true. No.one.does. So we're going to keep this posting brief so as not to be hypocrites. I will say that she is frickin' cute as hell and if you want to meet her, well, you'll just have to visit. And we promise that when you do visit...no cat stories.

Before and After, Part Two

This was our first project. Erika and I began to tackle this room all on our own, but we soon became discouraged at our lack of progress. If the previous owner of this house is reading our blog - seriously, four layers of freaking wallpaper? Didn't see that quaint little feature mentioned in the realor's listing. Anywho, Matt and his painting associate came to the early rescue and showed us a few little tricks. That kept our morale up for about a day. My mom did a fantastic job of keeping us focused. That got us to approximately this point (note chandelier upgrade between pics):


Then, near the end when we were ready to finish and accept the imperfections that our amateur eyes would gladly look past, the mother came to the rescue again to make the job look professional.

I think I've mentioned before in previous posts that parts of the house were livable. Well, the dining room was pretty terribly awful. Really, truly awful. We're pretty proud of the work we did in here. The color is actually a historic color called Covington Blue. Why does that name sound familiar? I'm sure it's because the Covington Blue Sox of Covington, Kentucky were the shortest-lived franchise of the Federal League, opening on May 3rd of 1915 and folding by June. And yes, I found that out courtesy of a Google search. Also, the color matches our Ceramica china.

Finally, here's a pic from today of Mike fighting a baby striper. No, you may not have the location of our spot:

Before and After, Part One

Remember this situation? This historic picture was taken about 1 week into our "project." Note the "stained glass" chandelier, the dark cabinets, the classic black appliances, the brown tiles, the floral soffit. This was stuff we were honestly willing to live with. It turns out that we were, in fact, not willing to live with this stuff.

The kitchen has a convenient little room that might have been a pantry at one time. The previous owner used it as a laundry room, and we decided that was a pretty nice feature. Matt noticed that some of that laundry room might be well suited to house the new, rather large refrigerator. We cut open an area and framed in the space that would be the fridge. As a sidenote, when I use the word "we" I use it as a sports fan might when describing his or her team. For example, a New York Yankees fan might currently say something like, "I can't believe how bad our starting pitching is and how many games out of first we are." Of course, I'm making that snide example as we're losing to the Tampa Bay Freakin' Rays, who are suddenly respectable.

I know I've also posted this picture before. This entire post is kind of like those "new" episodes of The Simpsons or Cheers that is 10% new, but the plot revolves around numerous flashbacks of old episodes. For instance, Marge might be cleaning out the closet and find the Mr. Plow jacket and we get 5 minutes of a clip from 4 seasons ago that we've seen 28 times in syndication...yet we still laugh. Anyway I just liked this picture because the floors look shiny and things are beginning to turn.

Here you can see the refrigerator sitting flush within the laundry room. It took Erika a loooong time to prime and paint those now-white doors. Those entire doors are her project. She even replaced the hardware.

Yep. This is it. All that is missing now are a couple of bar stools. The counter space is excellent. The lighting is great (recessed, by the way, in case you were wondering...which you probably weren't). There is enough room for everything and then some. We love this room and everything about it. It makes us excited to come home because that's what it feels like.

18 Boxes = 1 Walk-in Closet

I mentioned in an earlier posting about the wonderful product offered by the fine people at EasyClosets.com. You log onto their website, enter the dimensions of your closet, and use their site to create a well-organized closet. When the 18 boxes of various shapes, sizes and weights arrived at my door I began to question the accuracy and appropriateness of this company's name. The instructions were generic - not written specifically to my closet. Quite unlike the picture-happy IKEA diagrams. Luckily Mike explained a crucial part of the instructions (it's all about the track). Get this first part right and you literally cannot screw up the installation. They've been in for a full week and are still in place!

Camera Has Been Found (Stop Looking)

I found our camera.

Looking for Camera

Have you seen our camera? It's somewhere between Portland (CT, of course) and Madison. Hopefully, it's in one of those 2 towns.

Some random, imageless musings...

If you ever get a closet system from EasyClosets - and we recommend that you do; it's like California Closets, but you self-install - don't be daunted by the 18 boxes that they send you. The UPS guy asked me if I ran a business out of my house and that, "I must be used to getting deliveries like these."

There comes a point where you just can't eat another wrap.

Still not getting used to living on a street called "Princess" anything. I mean, the Princess Bride is a great movie, but I wouldn't want to live on Buttercup Lane, either.

On a night when the Red Sox have yet another bench-clearing brawl against the Dev...oops, the mighty Rays, and Paul Pierce pulls a Willis Reed impersonation in Game 1 of the NBA Finals is a bad time to be without cable. Oh, by the way, there's still room on the Celtics bandwagon.

I don't think I've ever had "bad" Chinese food. It kind of all just tastes the same to me.

How I am able to install an entire closet organization system, yet become befuddled at the subtle intricacies of putting in a window unit air conditioner is unfathomable.

Stove Looking for Name

This stove is quite heavy. So is the matching 7' fridge. Luckily, my brother Mike had some flower-sellin' muscle come in to move these appliances like a "Brighten Your Day" bouquet. It was still pretty difficult. Matt did a fantastic job of measuring everything up - the stove and fridge fits with a fraction of an inch to spare.

The floors are done, the counters are in and the paint is...painted. All that is left for us to do it reattach some lighting (I hope it's as easy to do as it was to remove), hook up the dishwasher and stove to water and gas (respectively!) and move in. Well, that's not entirely true - we will have enough "trivial" projects to keep us busy for approximately 18 years.

We've moved most of our belongings, such as they are. Unpacking is kind of fun. We haven't seen a lot of this stuff for about 2 years. Unpacking is going to be like a vaguely familiar Christmas where we recognize most of the stuff but are still marginally surprised.