Before Megan could get on the road, she had to find Tyler’s passport.
Ty applied for a passport weeks ago, as he’s got to go to Europe for bidness. The document still hadn’t arrived by Megan’s last day of school but she was champing at the bit to get out of the Lone Star state and join the family she hadn’t seen in a week.
So she got on the horn and tracked it down. Turns out the problem was that since they’d sold their house a month ago, they had their mail sent to a PO Box. The carrier wouldn’t deliver the passport to a PO Box.
Got that? They wouldn’t deliver a government issued document to a United States Post Office Box.
I guess the government doesn’t trust the government with government stuff.
Who can blame them?
In the end, all it took was about four hours of driving madly around the greater Austin area to catch the delivery truck. That’s a great way to warm up for a twenty one hour drive, isn’t it?
But she’s here now, so it’s all good.
Ty, the kids and I drove south and met her at the house. We emptied her car while the kids ran around the living room of their new house, enjoying the way their shouts echoed off the hardwood floors and empty rooms.
Cousin Jake the Carpenter was there as well; he’s been working on finishing the basement since Ty got the keys. He and Ty discussed the project and when all was settled, we came back to town, grabbing Hoagies on the way in to celebrate having everyone home at last.
Saturday morning, Megan, Babydoll and I walked up to the hardware store and grabbed dozens of paintchips.
The entire house is painted a neutral gray. It’s nice but a bit dark and too cool for Megan’s taste. Also, the two main bathrooms (there are four) are painted Longhorn orange and a bright bile yellow. Believe me, they’re even uglier than they sound.
The PODS with all their furniture were being delivered right after lunch. We went back out to the house, when several of Ty’s buddies arrived, ready to help unload. Megan and I taped up paint chips all over the house. We unpacked drawers and boxes while the men did the heavy lifting.
Completely unlooked for, my parents arrived. They brought a very lovely housewarming gift: huge packages of toilet paper and paper towels. Mom had been with us the day we first saw the place but Dad hadn’t seen it yet.
Like everyone else, he was suitably impressed. “Makes me wish I were young and rich again.” He joked.
It is really a lovely bit of land.
And when we get all the new colors on the wall, the house will be even prettier than it is bare bones; it’s a great layout. Every single show on HGTV, the clients always say they want ‘open concept’. Well, this house is open as open can get. It’s wonderful! Every window in the great room has a view of rolling hills, forests and corn fields. It’s all so pretty it hardly seems real.
Katie and Josie arrived later in the afternoon and helped us choose paint colors. It was all a lot of fun.
The kids came back here for one more night, since they hadn’t had time to set up the beds or unpack bedding. Plus, our plan is to get the kids’ bedrooms painted before moving them in.
Sunday, I headed south shortly after church. Grandma Peg and three of her sisters were due to arrive after lunch to help unpack and paint. By midafternoon, we had ladies all over the house, unpacking boxes, setting up the kitchen, up on ladders painting bathroom and most importantly, unpacking the wine, the glasses and the corkscrew.
We had a blast.
Megan and I attacked the bathrooms. Longhorn orange is now a soft, pale blue that looks stunning with the slate tiles. Bile yellow is now a warm brown with a hint of purple that really complements the neutral stone tile work and just happens to work really well with the existing window treatment. The old shower curtain may have to go. That’s where the bilious yellow came from.
Then, while Jay and Ty cooked dinner on the deck and the sisters unpacked dishes and flatware, Megan and I tackled Babalouie’s room. Megan isn’t interested in baby colors or gender colors so Babalouie’s room was turned from a nice neutral gray to an even nicer neutral green. I had found a great fabric remnant at the shop, covered in cowboy boots of varying colors and designs that Peg (a master seamstress) said she was sure she could squeeze a valance out of.
We finished just in time for dinner to be served.
It rained a bit during the afternoon, which meant that the world smelled wonderful while we ate the burgers and brats that Jay and Ty cooked up. It’ll be awesome when they get some deck furniture and we can eat dinner out there! The deck has a southwestern exposure so dinners will be beneath the sunset. I see large umbrellas in the future.
I was worried that I’d be stiff after a day of so much painting but I took some Tylenol before bed and a hot shower and I wasn’t any stiffer than I usually am when I got up. I headed back out to the house in the morning, to help with Babydoll’s room and the master bedroom.
The gals had continued working long after dinner last night; they got Babalouie’s room all set up and even painted the living room wall behind the TV, so Ty could set that up.
It’s starting to shape up as their house, with their furniture etc. falling into place.
I don’t think I’ll really feel like they live here until Megan retrieves her horses, dogs and cats from the farm.
Then maybe it’ll seem real.
By Tuesday afternoon, most of the boxes had been unpacked, the kitchen and linen closets stocked, the kid’s bedrooms set up and decorated and the master bedroom mostly painted. New curtains were purchased for the sliding doors, since the vertical blinds were a million years old and partly broken.
(They weren’t partly broken until I tore them off the wall to paint it. Sometimes, you’ve got to sacrifice the ugly blinds to turn a wall beautiful.
You’re welcome.)
Interesting thing about a truly neutral gray; as we painted a few walls in the living room brown, the gray turned brown. I love the way color reacts! We were all wondering how we’d deal with the very high wall around the stairs to the basement and thanks to the behavior of the gray, now we don’t have to; it looks great with the surrounding browns.
We did but a coat of very dark brown on the fireplace surround, too; it made the place and the mantel pop.
When I wasn’t helping to paint new walls, I hung a few things on the finished walls. Megan had several pieces for the bathrooms and I gave some things to the kids for their bedrooms.
The only thing I like even better than painting walls is knocking nail holes in them.
I gave each of the kids paintings I had done nearly forty years ago, for my grandmother.
She was a fan of the artist Bjorn Wilblad; especially the jokers he designed for a deck of cards. I did large copies for her back when I was in highschool and she loved them. She hung them in her stairway. My Uncle Pat gave them back to me a few years after Nana died.
I had them in my kitchen and Babalouie loved them. Every time he sat in his high chair, he’d point at them and grin at me, as if to say “Lookit! Aren’t those cool?”
So I gave two of them to Babalouie and the third to Babydoll.
They now have paintings in their bedrooms that were done by their grandmother, for their great, great grandmother.
I believe that’s what is known as an ‘heirloom’.
When all the painting was done, we had tacos for dinner. It had been up in the nineties all afternoon but by dinner time, a storm had rolled in. We got a bit of rain but the bulk of the storm missed us. I drove home underneath a double rainbow.
Welcome to Minnesota, kids.