Crap. It's February already.

Well, I am officially an adult. I asked for doormats and lighting fixtures for Christmas, and was very excited to receive them. And then work got busy during January, so I was way too tired to think about anything other than USDA grant regulations and whether or not Scrubs was going to be on that night. I think the combination of being excited over doormats and caring about indirect cost rates has sounded the death knell to any claim I had at being a fun-loving twentysomething.

Anyway, by popular demand (read: Diana's demand), here's what we've been doing:

First off, we again demonstrated our ability to follow directions and use hand tools by fixing the leaky kitchen faucet, which had been dripping steadily through December. (I almost cried when I opened the water bill, and discovered that it would not force us to go into debt, as I'd feared.)


The faucet is now working well, with only one problem - we apparently put the facuet cartridge in backwards, so hot and cold are reversed. But that's a pretty fast learning curve.

We also painted the kitchen. I've decided I like painting - it's relatively cheap, can be done in a day or so, and produces immediate results. The color is "Raspberry Truffle" from Benjamin Moore.

A couple of before pictures:




That's a dropcloth, not my decor scheme.

The rather disturbing layer of dark gray primer we used:



And after:




I was amazed that it only took two coats of primer and two coats of red to get a good result. All the horror stories I've heard from friends who wanted a Trading Spaces-style red dining room are apparently just a good argument for buying good quality paint.

Finally, we replaced our 1970's Pizza Hut hallway light with this number from Rejuvenation (Merry Christmas!).


File under "Things that cost more to ship than you can sell them for on eBay."


Craig discovers that the previous owners/builders thought it would be a good idea to wire other rooms through the hallway light.


The finished product. But now it makes everything in our little hallway look cheap. And such is the curse of home improvement, sayeth Craig and Ellen.