Slowly

After a few days out of town so the Hubbers could accept an award (yep, I've got myself an award-winning Hubs), we've been nose-to-the-grindstone at the house. I'm relieved to report the bedroom are all prepped, minus dust removal, for painting. Speaker holes 5 & 6, above, are the smoothest yet. At the risk of sounding like a commercial or official endorsement, I must say CRACKshot spackling paste by DAP is the best stuff ever. Wish I discovered it months ago.

The kitchen is coming along. The water pipes to the dishwasher are gone from the middle of the floor as are the hideous, chrome edged, rectangular lights from the soffit (more holes to patch!). We're wired for 4" round flush mounted led lights that swivel. It's definitely the little things that make the big differences. Not to downplay the new half wall, a mere 3 inches from where the window blocking wall once stood. And the electric, water supply, and drain lines moved behind the half wall for the laundry. And we scored our kitchen sink at 1/3 the regular price. Just happened to be at Ikea picking up cable track lights for my studio and cruised through the "As Is" section where our sink - with all parts and instructions - was sitting there marked down 67% as a customer return. Nice.

This dull, boring, bad picture is possibly the most exciting to me. You are looking at one smooth wall where a wall cratered like the moon once stood. It's a section of the kitchen wall from which we removed a tiled backsplash, leaving behind a gouged, pitted, destroyed section of sheetrock. One application of CRACKshot and a light sanding is all it took to turn this section of wall into the smoothest bit in the whole kitchen. I'm telling you, this spackle is the bees knees. Just look at the "before" pic, below.