Saturday was a catch up day. I had to get up early to bring the SUV in for an oil change. Then I wanted to pick out the flooring and countertops for the house. The store where I was supposed to go keeps short hours (9-5) except on Thursdays when they're open till 8pm. How is someone who works supposed to fit this in their schedule? Seems like mighty poor planning to me. They're only open on Saturdays until 1pm.
Friday night, I pulled up the store's website, got directions to St. Michael which is way out there, and noticed they had a store in Burnsville too. Burnsville is closer, but it can be a pain to get around there because of all the traffic.
So while I'm getting the SUV taken care of, I tried to get in to the store to pick out the stuff. No go. They only had ONE person working and she was busy. Well, I wanted this over with and I wasn't spending my Thursday night driving out to and from Timbuktu, especially in the dark when I'm very unfamiliar with the area. I decided I'd go to Burnsville and that store could accommodate me.
This ended up being an easy set of choices to make. To stay within the flooring budget, I had 1 choice of carpeting in only 6 colors. Even the other colors of the same carpet were more money. I picked a color called Nutshell with the standard pad behind it.
Then it was on to the vinyl flooring. I had a few more choices there, but not a huge number. I'd guess maybe 20. I did find one I liked right away and put that in the master bath. I used the same pattern in a different color for the main bathroom and picked something that looked like fake tile for the laundry room.
Countertops ended up being easy too. I had hundreds and hundreds of choices here, but none of them were as cool as my retro boomerang style (posted here yesterday morning). I just had to make a choice of countertop for the laundry room then. I went with a medium gray color with a subtle pattern in it. Probably it doesn't match the taupe flooring that well, but I decided the hell with it. There's a hint of gray in taupe, right?
Last was the tile for around the master bathroom tub. There was only a stark white, glossy tile as my choice. Since the tub and everything else is bisque, that wasn't going to work. I had to upgrade to the bisque tile.
Before I left, my mom spotted some area rugs and we went over to look at them. I told you, she totally hates the rug I like. :-) Everything was a bit too traditional for me, but as we were walking back, I saw the window treatment display. They had these really cool patterned shades and this sheer curtain that when you close it, there are vertical slats like a blind that close out the sun. Those were way cool! The saleswoman is going to price them for us and make a bid, but I'm guessing it'll be too expensive.
On the way home, I stopped by the new house and took a bunch of pictures. It's really coming along now and almost looks like a house with the sheet rock up. Then I spent forever trying to get House Gallery Three up. (See the link from yesterday). I went over my allotted space on my free Earthlink site so I had to delete House Gallery One and move all my other pages to a different email account.
I also printed out a copy of Eternal Nights to send to my agent and worked on entering some tax information into a spreadsheet. The fun just never stops!
On the plus side, I found a Doris Day Christmas CD with all the songs I wanted on it. I also found the Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Christmas song I'd been searching for. The CD was almost $25, which I balked at, but I finally decided to buy it. I also picked up two Andy Williams CDs. My childhood Christmas music collection is nearly complete now! Hurrah!
Slept till nearly noon today, and I finally feel semi-human. Now if it weren't for this darn, pesky Christmas/holiday stuff, I'd be almost caught up.
