And if you have to fix the floors, you have to paint, and if you paint, you fix the ceiling…

Shortly after we started planning what materials to replace our floors with, it occurred that we would need to repaint. And if we needed to repaint, why not replace the ceiling texture?
We had Gavin’s ceiling scraped and retextured a couple of years ago due to a leaky ridge vent in the roof. Since that time, we had often discussed retexturing the ceiling in the rest of the house. It’s a dusty, messy process to go through. However, we were planning to move the majority of our furniture into the garage for most of the remodel anyways, so why not start earlier? It was quickly decided to scrape and retexture the living, dining & kitchen ceilings. We stopped short of any other rooms in the house as we were still trying to live there. (Seriously, what were we thinking?)

As you can see, it was musty and dusty. Isaac Grant was our sheetrock guy and he did a stellar job. In addition to scraping everything, he repaired several places that needed new tape or were finished incorrectly. After that, he added new texture called Skip Trowel.

This was the texture added to the ceilings throughout our living areas. Man, it is pretty. Now Isaac doesn’t paint, so we were left to do that part ourselves.

Once the ceilings were fully painted, we turned our attention to the walls. And we had quite a few walls to consider.

It all started with a leaky dishwasher…

Last December I cleaned my house thoroughly for a home appraisal for a refinance. I am an appraiser and know that we don’t check under furniture but my manic cleaning defied logic. There is “friend clean”, “family from out of town clean” and then there is “stranger clean.” (You know, the “I have to have this house immaculate” level of clean.) In my ferver to make the house beautiful and illogically do better on the appraisal, I was moving furniture and frantically cleaning. I pulled out the couch and was horrified. My wood floors were black.

Apparently something was leaking and doing this. I narrowed it down to my dishwasher. The traitorous appliance was leaking from a back drain line to the wall between the kitchen and living room. Hubby quickly replaced it with a shiny new stainless steel dishwasher that is so quiet, I don’t realize that it’s running half the time. Unfortunately the damage was already done. Discolored floors and a cracked cabinet later, we decided to contact our homeowners insurance to determine what we should do next. I was concerned about mold, especially under the wood floors where moisture had been an issue for such an undiscovered long time.

After the insurance adjuster came out, he quickly determined that there was not mold visible under the kitchen cabinets. He did decide to pay to replace the wood flooring and half of the kitchen cabinets. I think they were fair with their assessment and settlement. However it was just the start of a grand, messy adventure for us.

This is part 1 of the kitchen/living area remodel. The rest of the story I plan to post as quick as I can write it over the next few days.

A few notes: my homeowners insurance is currently through Frontline purchased through Brian Brennan/Ken Spraggins with Affordable Home Insurance. If you need insurance in the Destin area, please call them. They are truly awesome. (No one is paying me to write any of this. I just really like all of the companies I’m going to post about here.)

Bunco night

Destin is a neat community. So many of the full time residents cross paths on a regular basis. It is such a common thing that I joke with Cam that there is less than two degrees of separation between most of the people here. Even if you aren’t a local, after a week or so you will have run into someone that I know.

To help increase the camaraderie with the moms in the area, one of our group started a Bunco night once a month. If you’ve ever played Bunco, you can attest to how easy it is. Really the point of the game is to drink wine and catch up on the latest gossip with the excuse of rolling dice and occasionally yelling Bunco! (Something you get when you roll all the dice in the chosen number for the round.) I’ve played for charity before and with other groups but this group has been fun, mostly because I know some of the ladies with enough new faces to expand my circle of friends.

Last week was our monthly Bunco meeting and we met at the local offices of a real estate group owned by our hostess. We spent more time socializing than usual, so it was tossed around as to if we should play or just hang out more. Then our hostess brought out a different dice game to try.

It was called Left Right Center and was easy to pick up, even after a glass of wine. We photocopied a few ones to represent the pot (we each contributed $10) and everyone started with $10 in fake ones.

The point of the game is to end up with all the money. Much of it ends up in the center with some getting passed left or right. Each time someone rolled all dots and got to keep their ones, we passed around a tiara. Everyone had a chance to play princess!

It ended up with Audrey and Tina having the last of the pot and deciding to split it.

The entire evening was a blast and I can’t wait to see what next month holds!

Do you play Bunco in your area?