roof

the house is looking SO GOOD!!!  we woke up saturday, went to look at the trim, liked it, and have liked it more and more the more we see it.  which is good, since we're not re-painting.  :)

turns out the roofers will likely be able to finish the job tonight yet - i am so excited.  (they may still have a bit to finish up in the morning, and the gutters are still going on wednesday.)  even by the time i got home from work tonight, the whole house looked SO different.  it's honestly like a brand new house.  i don't think i realized how dated i thought the house was until i saw it looking so sleek and updated.  yay!!  pictures will be forthcoming.  and, as a side note, now that it's 7:30pm and there's still occasional pounding, i think we might should bake the the neighbors some cookies as an apology for the noise ...

hmm

well, the trim doesn't have quite the zesty contrast that we were going for ... hmm.  in the parts where the trim is against the siding closer to eye level, it looks good, but the trim on the high trilevel peaks sort of blend in with the siding.  scott pointed out that the sun was setting when we got home, which could impact how the color looks, and that we really need to wait for the gutters and new roof to be on before we can really judge the full effect.  i'm a liiiittle bit disappointed thus far, but i'm trying to reign it in.  plus, as i pointed out to scott, we'll likely need to paint the siding at some point!  :)

high gear

• january 27 - we had a handyman out and he told us to call a roofer about the flashing.
• january 30 - we had steve the roofer out, he mentioned that we have hail damage and should call our homeowner's insurance to have an adjuster come out, and left us with sample shingle boards "just in case".
• february 11 - tedd the adjuster finally made it out (after a few delays due to snow storm), confirmed that we're eligible for full replacement, and wrote us a check to get started on the roof.
• february 25 - we had our friend nick the painter out to give us a bid on trim painting
• march 4 - steve the roofer came back out to answer my myriad of questions regarding the project, and gave us a ring of sample gutter colors.
• march 5 - i faxed in a signed acceptance of the roofing company's final estimate.
• march 6 - we finalized our color picks, e-mailed them off to steve the roofer to place the order, and took the old gutters off our house so that we can get the trim painted pre-roofing.
• march 7 - we gave nick the painter the trim color chips.
• march 10 - steve the roofer says that our materials are set to be delivered on the 12th and that they are on schedule to start early next week.
• march 12 - nick the painter is painting our trim to a lovely clay color as i write this!

and weather permitting ...

• march 15 - over two days, steve the roofer's crew will tear off the old roof, put on the new roof, and maybe replace a piece of water damaged soffit board or two if we ask nicely and pay them on the side.
• march 17 - daryl the gutter guy will install our lovely new galvalume gutters.

wow!  things have really kicked into high gear in the last week.  things went from "yes, we're getting a new roof at some point in the next month or so." to "our house will look completely different by the time we get home from work next wednesday."  very exciting!  i was feeling a little anxious about the process before the meeting with steve the roofer last thursday, but hearing the whole process laid out, and getting to sit down with scott on saturday and make the final color picks together, i'm just looking forward to seeing everything come together.  now i'd just like the get the second installment check back from insurance ...

sunshine!

we are having such a lovely sunshiney weekend!  we slept in this morning til 9 (ooh la la), finished picking our house colors, and went on a nice bike ride in the 55* sunshine for an hour or so.  so fun - i love lazy saturdays!  we also had leftover pizza for lunch, which i think is the 4th time this week that i've had pizza for a meal.  we had planned to hang out with friends tonight and bring over a pizza, which will make 5 meals.  i love pizza (truly, it's one of my favorite foods), but healthwise i think i might should take at least a week off of it.

last night was my birthday date, and it was super fun.  we had another 5280 dinner at the melting pot which was soooooo good.  i love fondue.  we had fondue once at geja's in chicago and loved it, and i have been wanting fondue again ever since (wow, just realized that our geja's date was six years ago).  i decided that if the melting pot participates in 5280 every year, i will happily make it my annual birthday dinner.  in keeping with our tradition of doing a cultural date activity for my birthday each year, we got tickets to guys and dolls at the littleton town hall arts center, conveniently located three blocks from the melting pot.  also very fun!  the theater is small, maybe six or seven rows deep, but they do seating in the round, sort of a semi-circle shape around the stage so there really aren't any bad seats in the house.  the musical was funny, engaging, and well acted.  had i known at the time that the melting pot extended their 5280 special through the whole month of march (it was supposed to end last night) i think we would have done dinner and the show on a saturday night rather than after work on a friday, but still, very fun birthday date night!

vacation planning

i keep trying to convince myself that vacation traveling isn't really a necessity, that i'd much rather do something pracical and useful with the money we'd spend on a vacation - like putting it toward student loans, or into a retirement account.  i'm not sure i have myself convinced, though, since i've researched five different vacations in the past week.

the vacation i had talked about surprising scott with was to san francisco.  (i told him about it this last weekend - i just can't make that level of decision by myself!)  i had great plans of renting bikes to ride over the golden gate bridge, taking the ferry to tour alcatraz, riding the cable cars, etc.  i couldn't commit to it, though, and plane ticket prices went up a bit, which made me waffle even more.  then last week i saw a 50% off special on rooftop seats for a cubs game, so i was looking into a springtime trip back to chicago - fun, right?  i've also researched cabin rentals in yellowstone for the late summer, going to a marriage conference (campus crusade's "a weekend to remember") in lake tahoe, seattle, and spring cabin rentals here in colorado to go snowshoeing.

i finally told scott this weekend that i don't really care what we do, i think i just want to have something on the calendar to go somewhere fun this summer, even if it's just back to the mountain cabin where we spent a lovely long weekend last year.  it's entirely possible that i was spoiled by the last two summers of amazing vacations - alaska two years ago, and our grand tour de colorado last summer.