Productive relaxation

Fun fact: it is possible to reach the end of a weekend and feel both well relaxed AND well accomplished. Typically, these two have been mutually exclusive for me (perhaps because most of the Ithaca accomplishments to date have included a manual labor component).

We enjoyed the weekend immensely (Justin particularly so because we finally timed it right to attend our favorite restaurant on all-you-can-eat crab leg night) and I've got 25 checkmarks on my wedding checklist (fewer than half of that number remain). In addition, the quarter rounds for the den are cut & painted, and the heat vents are looking MUCH better.



Ironically, this simple task (painting the vents) was one I was looking forward to for a long time. It's one of the things that embodies what I love about restoring this home - a little elbow grease can go a long way. In this case, it was mostly just finger grease that got these looking good. After scraping the crusty rust with a wire brush, I sprayed them with high-heat black spray paint and they're looking several decades younger.

This isn't the same vent in the "before" picture, but they all looked equally as bad. Notice the carpet to wood change, as well!



Those pictures are about all I've got to show for the weekend, but in other home-related news, we purchased a queen size bed on Saturday, so we will NOT have to return from the honeymoon to share a twin.

A good weekend all around! The best part - as I said - is that despite all of the progress, I'm not going back to work with sore muscles or utter exhaustion :)