Saying Good-Bye to Macy

31 Oct

It’s been a sad couple of days around here as we lost our cat Macy Monday night. She escaped from the rental and we found her a few hours later by the side of the road after being hit by a car.

Although she didn’t get to move into 12 Oaks before she died, we laid her to rest there tonight. We found the biggest tree on the property (the huge weeping willow in the front) and buried her there with her favorite blanky, her favorite toys (a ping-pong ball and a mouse her foster Mom gave us when we adopted her), and a picture of Ben, Doc and I with a note on the back. We marked the spot with the biggest rock we could find on the property.

Macy’s resting place

We also planted a new tree, a red maple, in her memory.

Anyone who has pets knows how much they become part of the family. On top of that, I have never lost a pet before (my childhood cat is still kicking at 18), so it is a new experience for me.

At risk of being the crazy cat lady,  I’d like share some of my favorite photos of her and share a few of the things I will always remember about her.

Macy acted more like a dog than a cat. She would pant when she got hot, growl, drink out of the toilet, bark at birds and squirrels, and was best buds with Doc. We would often find them cuddled up to one another on Doc’s bed or in front of the fire.

They even shared a birthday, the 4th of July. And we didn’t make that up, that’s what the vet told us.

Macy was fearless and loved climbing trees, ladders, or anything she could. She never got stuck or needed rescuing. A few times we found her locked in the attic because she would climb up there without us knowing and we would shut the hatch.

She was no stranger to construction. When we first got her we were in the middle of a full bathroom remodel. Here she is in the first week we got her and then in the same shower niche a year later.

She was a pig. It didn’t matter what you were eating (ice cream, chicken, even salad), she was there scrounging to get some.

More than anything, she made you feel like you were home. She was always there to greet you when you came home, sleep between your legs at night, barge in on you in the bathroom, and cuddle up (on her own time) with you on the couch.

We will miss her dearly, but take comfort that she will be out at 12 Oaks with us. RIP Macy girl. xxoo

P.S. We were going to wait a little while longer until we moved in full time to 12 Oaks to get more done, but given the circumstances, we are getting the heck out of this rental and into the house tomorrow.

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Skunked

30 Oct

Doc got his first taste of the country last night. Or should I say smell? As the title suggests, he was skunked!

Here’s the story: I had to head out to 12 Oaks by my self at night, so naturally I brought the dog along for protection. As we were walking up to the front door, Doc sprinted off chasing an animal. I didn’t think anything of it, until I caught a bright white stripe down the back of said animal. I called him over telling him to come before he got sprayed. But it was too late. As he walked up to me my eyes started to burn from the smell. Imagine how bad it smells when you are in the car and you smell a skunk from the road. Multiply that by about 1,000%.

There was no way I was letting him into the house so I left him outside and called Ben. Just from being next to him and walking into the house, the whole house (and likely me) started stinking of skunk. Ben said he would come pick Doc up and put him on the back of the truck so he wouldn’t stink up the car. He called Petco and they recommended we bathe the dog in their self-serve dog wash area.

Ben and our house guests, Trevor (our sister in law’s brother) and Mike (his colleague) who were stranded in Chicago because of Hurricane Sandy, showed up and threw him on the back of the truck.

At Petco, people started gagging from the smell. They gave us “skunk off” shampoo and skunk deodorizer and Ben washed him up. We also got some doggy perfume to help.

The dog is still a little pungent, but not too bad that he can’t be in the house. We’ll see if he learned his lesson. For all of us involved, I sure hope so.

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Sayonara Sharapova

29 Oct

The title will make sense in a second if you don’t get the reference yet. We had a marathon first weekend of painting and moving. With the help of Ben’s friend Lee and my Mom and little brother, we were able to accomplish a ton. We moved all of our things from storage, the basement and garage, plus painted 5 rooms, among other misc. projects.

Ben and Lee doing the heavy lifting

We also spent our first overnight in the house on Saturday! My mom and Jared stayed the night too so they could help bright and early on Sunday. Even our cat Macy came and stayed the night.

Ben and Jared relaxing Saturday night

Macy inspecting the place

We’ll start with paint before and afters, because that is always fun.

This is where we said good-bye to the first Maria Sharapova.

Before:

Yellow Sharapova room

During:

After painted “Soft Suede” by Glidden. All of these only have 1 coat of paint & primer-in-one and need one more coat to cover the horrendous colors and writing on the walls.

Here is the upstairs hallway painted “Perfect Greige” by Sherwin Williams.

Before:

Upstairs hallway before

After:

The “Purple Sharapova” room is now Mineral Alloy by Benjamin Moore.

Before:

During:

My mom, the master “cutter inner”

After:

Here is the dining room, which we painted “Cliff Rock” by Behr above the chair rail. Under the chair rail will be shadow box molding and be painted all white, so we just primed it white for now.

Before:

Dining Room before

After:

Finally, we decided to slap a coat of paint on the kitchen walls. We’ll be removing the main wall and renovating the entire kitchen but this will get us by until then. We used leftover paint from our last house called “Crisp Khaki” by Benjamin Moore.

Before (grody):

After:

In addition to all that painting and moving, we did some small projects including replacing a broken window in the old purple room.

Cleaning out the leaves from the pool and filling it up.

Jared helping out.

Not only will filling the pool before it freezes ensure our pool doesn’t pop out of the ground when water around it freezes, we will get to go ice skating! Score.

Pool filling up, slowly but surely

The beauty of being on well water is that all the water to fill this massive 20′ x 40′ x 12′ foot deep pool is FREE! My mom said it takes $300 to fill her much smaller pool on city water, so we lucked out there.

We also chopped down a half dozen dead trees/weeds around the property. This is one of those things where its going to look worse before it looks better, but its a start.

Ben hacking down a tree by the pool with a machete

Pretty much everything you see in the picture behind him is eventually coming down too. They are all weeds. Ben is investing in a chain saw before then.

We also put a few homey touches around including hanging the American and Kiwi flags and a front door wreath my friend Stacie made for me.

Iwo Jima pose

Lastly, check out this amazing sunrise we caught this morning from the bedroom window. Don’t mind the piles of logs, we’ll be burning them up this Friday in a big bonfire for Ben’s 30th!

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Let There Be Paint

27 Oct

It’s truly amazing what a coat of paint can do.

Exhibit A. Our scary basement went from this:

Basement

To this:

Basement with Kilz paint

Our garage from this:

Garage before paint

To this:

And my favorite, the living room painted 2 coats of Analytical Gray by Sherwin Williams.

Living Room on Closing Day

New living room paint

Excuse the badly lit pictures, it was dark by the time I snapped the photos.

Here are a few more “afters” of the living room. We love the color, it’s a good mix of gray and beige (aka greige) and should go great with our furniture.

The problem with painting one room, it makes all the others around it look even worse!

Ben did the majority of the rolling, and I did most of the cutting in. I loved using Ben’s scaffolding to cut in on the ceiling. I call it my tight rope, but it makes it so much easier than moving the ladder every few feet.

On my tight rope

In addition to painting those 3 rooms, we’ve also changed the locks on all the exterior doors, ripped out a moldy bathroom ceiling (and sprayed it with bleach), patched some holes in the walls, defrosted the fridge, filled some pot holes in the driveway with gravel and cleaned the place within an inch of its life.

Not bad for just 3 nights of work. Here’s a few pics of us working away.

Spraying bleach on joists to prevent mold

Tomorrow morning our friend Lee is coming over to help move our stuff still in boxes and furniture that we didn’t move into the rental to the new house. Most of it will go into the garage or basement so we have room to work before we move in.

We’re also hoping to get a majority of the rest of the painting done this weekend. My Mom and brother Jared are coming on Sunday to help. Wonder what they will think of our progress so far!

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