all epic. all. the. time.

i've really been meaning to update every month. looks like we didn't do much during december. hopefully this brand-spanking-freaktastic january blog will make up for it.

some people like to relax during vacations. not anybody living at this cabin. well, the female persuasion would appreciate chillaxin' time, but that was not to be. and to be honest, the 3.5 days of straight up standing-on-chairs-taping-electrical-paint extravaganza was more than worth it.

the living room before:

the living room had many issues, spanning from a totally crapola color scheme


to a ceiling falling apart


and very poorly done electrical outlets and vent.

i mean, ridiculous work preceded our moving here.

so, we fixed things in a few ways. since we're in no hurry to strip walls to the studs in order to re-sheetrock (what is known in my family as "some real shit work"), we instead texturized the walls with this great pre-tinted stuff known as 'manda mudd. check it:



the guy also practiced his audition routine for stomp:






and ceiling painting is totally the best and most fun thing to do



preceded by almost blowing my head off with the super-charged ceiling texture repair



but, finally, we conquered city cabin.

just to remind you, before:



and after:


and then there's the kitchen and accompanying hallway. an unstunning underwhelming use of some potentially cool space. here we re-painted the brick, more new outlets and covers, and new color in general. it was his idea for the blue, i think he credits mad men (which is, stylistically, a time period i envy in every way).

before:


(notice the little yellow helper above?)


during:



and after:
before:





during:


after:


and thanks again, swank, for cool old affordable stuff to tie things in together. the fact that it's a cat was a very small factor. really. really.

and lastly, two new light fixtures, one in the kitchen, one in the hallway, work off the same switch.

before:

(let me preface this by saying that we don't leave fixtures dangling from the ceiling. this might have been influenced by an early beer and a "let's get new fixtures!" decree.)



check the excellent taping job on this light:



after:

so, that's it. hours of grueling labor. a fair amount of trips to the hardware store. but i guess we did manage to have some fun over our winter break aside from digging the new digs: