Saturday was a day devoted to the new house. And despite the early start and all the hours, it still seems as if hardly anything was accomplished.
I was at Menards before 9:30. I managed to find a mail box. Of course, this is Minnesota and it's February, so the box is in the garage of my house waiting until the ground thaws out enough to sink a post into the ground. I also picked up some rug gripper (which turned out to be a PITA, but that's a later story), and some Swifter duster and rug things.
As I was leaving, I spotted a Hirshfields in the same strip mall. I'd forgotten it was there, so I headed over there to look at blinds. The amount of choices was totally overwhelming. I did find out that the Hunter Douglas Luminettes that I love so much are extremely expensive. Just covering the patio doors would take half of what I was hoping to spend. I'm probably going to have to forget about them. :-(
I did see some other stuff that I liked, but there really was a lot of choices, and when you add on fabrics and colors, my head started spinning. Hirshfields, however, has an At Home service, so I'm going to do that. A designer will come out to the house with their sample books and we'll go window by window and decide on what I'm doing. Right now, they have free installation, so this will probably work out well, and then I'll be done.
Next came Home Depot. I picked up another roll of window film for the bathroom because with the bamboo pattern, two wasn't going to work. (I found out three didn't work either, but that's a later story). I also found some EZ Move things for furniture. Since I'm not 100% sure what I want where, this should make it easier to switch around. There were other things I picked up too, but the only thing I remember is the bar lock for the patio door.
My mom and I went over to the house to put up the window film. What seemed to be an easy job, wasn't. Getting the first piece of window film on wasn't horrible. Not easy, but doable. Then came the second piece. This one had to be cut to fit the window. Of course, nothing I had handy did a great job cutting through the stuff. Finally, manage to get it trimmed, then hanging it became a chore.
I had to line up the pattern of the two pieces and the bottom part was off, as if one piece was a quarter of an inch longer than the other. I ended up having to rewet the first piece and stretching it longer, but I finally got it to match. But as I tried to work out the bubbles with a squeegee, it kept pulling away from the first piece.
After I thought I had it set, my mom and I decided to take a break from the window and put the rug gripper on the underside of my runner. This turned out to be worse than the window. The gripper didn't want to adhere to the rug. Pulling off the tape from the stuff was even worse because it pulled it right off the rug. Once we had it laid down in the hall, the rug gripper stuck to the floor, but came right off the runner. We left it as is, but I'm returning the rolls I bought for the big rug. This stuff turned out to be pretty useless.
I did some clean up with my new Swifter things since dust had begun to settle, then we decided to finish the window. This was when the real nightmare began. The piece cut easily enough, but it would not line up. If I had it matching on the left, it would not match on the right. It was as if this piece were somehow wider than the first. After at least half an hour of trying my best, I decided there was nothing else I could do.
But there was still one section of window uncovered--5 1/2 inches by 17 1/4 inches. And despite the fact that I have a huge piece of window film left over from the other 5 1/2 inch bottom section, I can't use it because the pattern does not repeat within a sheet and there is NO WAY to match a different section with the piece above it and to the side. The only thing I can think to do is to spend another $20 and only use a tiny piece. As of last night, it remained uncovered. My easy solution to covering my bathroom window ended up being neither easy nor inexpensive and the situation remains unresolved. Sigh.
Anyway, by then I was tired and crabby. We called it a day. I need to go back over today and tackle a few things, but I just feel like dawdling. I have laundry to do and some other things, but I want to veg out and do nothing.
I did get my hair cut yesterday and I feel much better on that score.
