Some quick updates

Greg and I just returned from 9 days in Maui. Have you guys ever heard of Maui? It's freaking fantastic. I highly recommend visiting before the rest of the world discovers it.

I kid. October/November is a great time to visit--we had loads of sunshine and didn't feel like we were elbow-to-elbow with tourists the whole time. While we were away Meryl and Chris were interviewed by the NY Times about their renovation roadtrip. Holy shit, the NY Times!

They also wrote about their visit to my house on their blog, on Tinkernation, and on Bob Vila. I decided not to brush my hair on the big day, so I'd look extra schlumpy in photos.

The summary of all their posts is that they feel terrible that they were unable to rewire my entire house, despite the fact that they discovered and fixed a major fire hazard, possibly saving my life and the biggest investment I've ever made. We have one extra thing for the electrician we were already planning to hire to do. And they feel terrible about that. I'm guessing they must have been raised Catholic? That is some serious guilt over an awesome visit.

The good news is that I'm tan and I'm reinvigorated to work on my house. I finally, after three and a half years, weatherstripped my kitchen window. In the winter your hair blows in the breeze, the gaps are so wide. It took all of 15 minutes, but it took Chris and Meryl driving all over the US for me to get off my ass and do it. So thank you for that, Picardy Projectors. Projecters?

I'll post pictures soon of our visit to the Kahanu Botanical Gardens, AKA the land of angry falling coconuts.

Little things: the kitchen window

I painted the kitchen well over two years ago but I never finished painting around the window. I wanted to do a thin stripe of orange or some other funky color . . . but I couldn't find the right shade. So I ignored it and we endured this view for two years.

It didn't help that a former owner had sloppily glopped paint on the outside of the windows, obscuring the view inside.

I finally just said, "fuck it," painted the inside white and the outside trim with the color from the basement and called it good. Greg took it to the next level by scraping the outside paint from the windows and Windexing the glass.

Oh my god, it's like looking outdoors in HD, you guys. The amount of extra light that comes in to the kitchen now is staggering. We were both conflicted about cleaning the windows because we don't want birds flying into them, but then we realized that we have a bird feeder that has yet to be visited by a single bird and that we're probably okay. I have tried so hard to be the crazy lady with all the bird feeders but the birds aren't playing along.

Next up: replacing that awful light fixture (the installers did something VERY weird with the wiring or this would be done already), escutcheons on the faucet, and repainting the kitchen door. And maybe washing the rest of our windows.