The joys of homeowner ship

We closed on our house today. They said the closing would take about an hour but of course, that was a dirty lie. First they had the wrong number on some form so she had to fix it. While she was fixing it, the bank emailed her and said "oops, the closing cost you have is wrong, fix it and we'll approve it later" So it ended up taking 2.5 hours but we got it done and it was fine.

The plan for the weekend was to prep the kids' room for paint today, paint part tomorrow and the rest on Sunday, since MF wanted walls that were 2 different colors.

In order to do that, we needed to rip down the panelling that was in her room because it was UGLY. So we got in there and started ripping down the panelling about noon. The first wall came down, no problem. There were a million nail holes but I've worked mud before so I knew what I was doing with that. Then we got to the second wall. Evan started pulling the panelling down, to find that they used glue on it and instead of coming off and leaving a few nail holes, it was tearing off chucks of drywall with it.

I called my friend who is going to help us paint tomorrow and asked her if she thought the wall was salvageable and she said she really didn't think so, that when they have walls that look like that, they end up replacing the drywall. I decided that drywall isn't rocket science so we headed to Lowes and bought stuff to drywall with (including the knife, putty knife, etc because we really have nothing). We got started tearing down the old drywall about 4:30. We had it down to bare studs by 8

After we ate, we cleaned up some of the mess and started cutting and hanging the new. A few minor hiccups, like my not holding the top board tight enough so one side drooped a little and had to be moved, later and we had a wall. While Evan put in a million screws, I patched the nail holes in the other wall and then did the screws on our brand new drywall. We need to tape and mud and sand tomorrow but once that is done, the wall will be ready to paint. Since MF has now decided that she doesn't want 2 different colors on each wall, it will be a lot easier to do and we should be able to handle it ourselves. We finished all the mud up about 10, so a total of hour 6 hours work.

The new plan is to paint as much as we can tomorrow and spend Sunday cleaning the carpets and scrubbing the garage floor and so forth.

They're so fluffy, I'm gonna DYE!

Back in April, we dyed WF's hair blond. He really enjoyed having the blond mohawk last year and thought it would be fun to do the whole head.

He said he was going to grow it out, but every time it got in his eyes, he decided he wanted it cut. In May, I paid to have it cut and was irritated that I paid $12 to have him look like Spock, I said "never again". Yesterday, he asked to have it cut and I said I would do it at home. I did, it was a fail!

This doesn't show the back that was bi-level, two tone mess. The only way to fix it was to buzz it all off. He was sad about losing the blond but his hair was pretty trashed from having the blond and swimming and sun so it wasn't the worst thing to get rid of it in favor of the healthier, un-dyed hair that has grown in since April.

BUT! He didn't want boring brown hair so I agreed to help him dye it BLACK! It is sure black too.

Because it isn't cool for her brother to get something and her not to, I agreed to put the pink streaks she has been asking for for months in her hair. I chose not to bleach it, to start, because I don't want her to have blond streaks forever in that hair we are trying to grow out. So, they aren't terribly noticeable and even less in the picture but she has 2 cotton candy pink streaks on either side of her face! She is going to be the coolest Kindergartener ever! :)