First-Time Painters

Before: Fireplace



Before: Close-up of wallpaper border



With the help of a vinegar and water solution and a putty knife, the ugly border comes down. (The lovely assistant you see is my mother).



The yellow's not so bad without that border...



...Except when you see the fireplace.



All taped up and ready to go.



Painting begins.



Artistic shot of our paint and crappy brushes.



Using the rollers was fun (but still hard work).



Artistic shot of our rollers and paint tray.



Contrast between the blue and the yellow against the fireplace. My grandmother noticed that the way the light played on the blue made the room look much bigger.



Painting continues.



After: Fireplace



After: Window

Waiting is no fun.

Still haven't heard anything from my interview. It's now been a week since "the end of the week." I think I can pretty much give up on that one...

Registered for a couple recruiter sites/temp agencies last night and have a couple more to do today. Keep your fingers crossed.

Weekend Update

We finished painting the living room in the new house this weekend. I hope to post a pictorial of that later tonight or early tomorrow. Matthew put mini blinds up everywhere except over the kitchen sink and we took a few things down there to leave. It's really starting to look like someone lives in it again.

We took the dogs down for the first time this weekend. They did ok for the most part. There was a thunderstorm early yesterday morning so Brogan woke me up crawling into bed with me because he was scared.

Matthew's parents came to visit and see the new place yesterday. It's a much longer drive for them from Rocky Mount to Jacksonville but they seemed to like the area. Matthew's dad helped him cut a hole in the fence so that we can use the circle driveway again. (For those that don't know, there is a fence running down the side of our yard on my grandmother's property line that was erected to keep the renters in their own yard). He has a lot of work to do to add the hole so we can use the sidewalk between the two houses. We may tackle that this coming weekend.

Yesterday, we drove down through Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach up to Morehead to eat at the Sanitary Fish Market and then we drove through Beaufort to see all the pretty old houses. It was pretty stormy yesterday afternoon so we didn't get out to walk on the beach or anything.

We had put Brogan and Angus in the storage building to wait for us until they got back (They're developing a nasty habit of trying to stand up in the windows to see out which scratches the windowsill and hurts the new blinds -- one piece in the kitchen is broken already). When we got back to the house, we saw that Angus was out of the building and Brogan's head was peeking out from under the sliding door of the storage building. My grandmother had seen Angus get out so she went out to keep him in the yard (he had just gotten out as we drove up and was barking at her). We went to see how they got out of the building and they had dug a hole underneath the door (dirt was slung everywhere). Next time I think we'll take down some extra crates so we don't have this problem...

Hopefully this week will bring a fixed door for the master bedroom that is coming out of the last renter's deposit and also a load of gravel to fix some nasty holes in the driveway. I'm not sure what we'll start on next in the house and there is a lot of yard work to be done as well.

On the job search front, I've heard nothing from my interview. Hopefully, I'll hear something today. As far as my current job, I'm training my replacement. She will take my desk full time starting tomorrow so she can do the day to day stuff with me watching over her. (This also means that I will not be available much during the day for a little while). I've found a couple other job leads that I've applied for. I'm hoping to hear something from someone soon so I can move on since I'm running low on vacation days to use for interviews...

The Waiting Game

I had my second interview yesterday. It went fairly well, as best I could tell. The president, who interviewed me, was nice enough but hard to get a read on. He told me that the job was basically between me and another candidate at this point and he would let me know by the end of the week. So, now we are playing the waiting game.

On another note, this past weekend, before I went in for the interview, I had to take a personality test online. You had to choose, between four given words, which most and least described you. This was hard on some of the questions because two words would strike me and I'd have to pick one. Turns out (got the results yesterday) that I'm a perfectionist who likes to calm down agitated people...

Interview Update

My interview on Friday went well. The person I interviewed with was very personable and we had a nice conversation. At the end of the interview, he asked me to come back on Wednesday to interview with the president, whose assistant I would be. He also told me that before he called me in for the first interview, he had narrowed it down to 6 candidates and was narrowing it down to three for a second interview. I feel pretty confident about it but please wish me luck for Wednesday.