A Very Long Weekend Indeed

Weekend Warriors


the momentous first stroke of color

The last weekend of May is the 3-day Memorial Weekend, the unofficial start to summer here in the States. But as most of America plan their start-of-summer trips, my husband and I geared up for our first-ever DIY home improvement project --- transforming our kitchen (including the ceiling) into a warm, cozy sunny yellow from its present cold white appearance.

We worked from 8am to 12 midnight of Saturday, and from the afternoon of Sunday to the early hours of Monday.

And these are just some of the lessons we’ve learned (some of it, the hard way) along the way.

Lesson #1: Take off the painter’s tape while the paint is still wet!

I can’t stress this enough! This is actually our biggest and most time-consuming mistake. We were so tired after painting the top coat that we came around to removing the painter’s tape the day after. And we were so dismayed to discover that some of the paint strips off with the tape :0P What resulted was a long overtime of retouching the stripped areas.

Lesson #2: The preparation time is longer than the actual painting time.

It took us most of the day to prepare our walls for repainting. We scrubbed, wiped, spackled, sanded and primed before we even got around to applying the first brush-stroke of our yellow paint.

Lesson #3: Take into consideration the colors of the switches and outlets.

As we were basking in the glow of our sunny kitchen, the dingy off white switches and outlets seemed to be shouting their desire to be changed. That meant new switches, sockets and plates plus rewiring everything.

Lesson #4: Make a list of everything, and I mean everything, you could ever need for the project and get it in one visit.

Returning to the Home Depot again and again ate into our actual project time thus extending it.

Lesson #5: Share the work.

Mr. A helped in returning everything to its proper place and I helped in rewiring the outlets and the switches. This way, he learned something about balance and design and I learned a thing or two about power drills and wiring.

Lesson #6: Turn off the power of the whole house while rewiring.

We were properly outfitted for the painting job with safety goggles, gloves and masks. But when we were rewiring the switches and sockets, we first tried turning off just the kitchen zone. Mr. A found out the hard way (by touching a live wire; he's ok, just a lil startled at the experience :0P) that one of the switches was still alive.

Lesson #7: Enjoy yourselves!

It was tiring work, I admit. By the time we finished painting, my hand felt numbed and I had zero grip strength, my husband, on the other hand, had neck and arm strain with a VPS of 7/10 :0P But since we talked, laughed, sang and even danced through it all, it was also bonding time for both of us.

After everything, it was rewarding to finally get rid of the coldness of our kitchen. Plus our much brighter and cozier kitchen is another tangible evidence that we really are good together :0)

Destressing


Our bargain finds

After working so hard for the first two days of the weekend, we decided to destressed on the third day. What better way to destress than to shop our fatigue away!

We traveled the ~100 miles to the Gilroy Premium Outlets.

It's 145 stores of shopping heaven :0) Our best bargains of the day were my Hello Kitty bag and cellphone holder, both for just $9, my funky Nike walking shoes for $31 (with a free pair of Nike socks thrown in), Mr. A's Geoffrey Beene shirt and my Van Heusen blouse for just $14 each.

Even found three $5 dollar coupons lying around at the counter when we stopped for drinks:0) Really helped us in making more of a bargain.

Actually bought more stuff to send to my family in Manila, but will just keep to myself how much of a bargain they are lest my family thinks that I'm such a cheapskate hehe :0D