Thursday, September 27, 2012

Building permit approved! :)



We finally got the city building permit approved! yay! It's been such a long process! We're supposed to meet w/ the contractor tomorrow so hopefully we can get the ball rolling.

Today has been such a long day. Had a bunch of errands to run. We're trying to get price quotes on custom sneeze guards, counter tops, etc. Our license plates are expired.  Thought we had until the end of the month, but looks like they expired a couple weeks ago! So we've been driving w/ expired plates! Glad that we haven't been stopped!  Went in to the license branch to try and get our IN plates, but the system wouldn't let them process it.  I guess it's showing that we should have a Cali title for the car, but we only have an Indiana one.  So we had to call the Cali DMV. They're supposed to be mailing us a letter that explains the situation, but that will probably take 2-3 weeks.  Thankfully, we have my dad's truck that we can drive for the next couple weeks.

Mom and Dad are in Florida.  They flew out yesterday afternoon. D and I drove them down to the Indy airport and then went shopping @ World Market. Love that store!

We finally finished hanging the window paper tonight. It was such a painful task. Glad to have it finished!

Well, that's it for now. I'll try to post some pictures later. Night!

Monday, September 24, 2012

"To Do" List

I just made a list of things that need to be accomplished before TPW opens! It was at least three pages long. Yikes! There simply are not enough hours in the day...I'm starting to get a little freaked out! My stress level lately has been very high.  It's a good kind of stress though ( if that's possible haha!) There's a lot to be done, but I'm excited to see things begin to come together!

We got our state approval for the building permit last Monday, so we're just waiting to hear back from the city. At the middle of last week, I emailed the city to see how things were coming along. They said they were just waiting for the last two inspectors to sign off.  I heard from the water inspector a few times on Wednesday or Thursday.  Then we got a document from the fire inspector late Friday afternoon.  There were a few items that we had to respond to.  I've been talking to the architect today and he's been working on getting things finalized so that we can reply back.  So if things go smoothly we should hopefully get our city approval by Wednesday...or that's what I'm hoping. *fingers crossed*

D and I have spent at least three days working over at TPW tearing up carpet, putting up window paper, taking up floor tiles, removing carpet glue, etc. It has been difficult, manual labor.  We were over there last night finishing things up.  I think we spent almost six hours there. Whoever glued the carpet down at that place used BUCKETS and BUCKETS of glue.  It was ridiculous! I have so many bruises all over my body from that stupid tile/carpet remover machine.  My wrists are so sore I can barely move them and my fingers/hands are swollen,red, and blistered.  Construction labor is hard work!

Have been trying to figure out paint colors for the walls.  We found out that Sherwin Williams was having a 40 percent off sale on their paint so were under pressure to finalize the colors.  Jennica went to the store and helped me look through colors last week.  We bought some little sample cartons and tried some of the colors out on the walls. I think we've kind of narrowed down the colors, but still haven't finalized them.  We finally decided to just get the base paints today and finalize the colors later ( so that we could buy during the sale.) We needed like 20 buckets of paint and they didn't have it all in stock, so they ended up giving us a customized coupon that allows us to get the 40 percent discount even after the sale! How sweet is that?! We were pretty excited! :)

Have had lots of drama w/ our designer. Got an email from her on Friday night that was quite upsetting.  We decided to terminate the agreement.  So now we're without a designer during this last and very important stage of the process.  I've been upset about it all, but trying to remain calm. Jennica has been a tremendous help and maybe I can hire a different consultant to help me with questions that we arise. We shall see.  I'm pretty disappointed though. I guess I made a bad judgement call when hiring her. I really thought that things were going to work out well. But they didn't. Ah well, live and learn.

In other news, it is officially fall! It's been super chilly out! I'm loving it! Larry is coming out soon.  I think he's leaving sometime this week.  He'll be driving his truck out to try and sell it.  He needs a newer model in order to operate in California due to some new environmental rule at his company.  D's hoping to convince him to stay for a few weeks ( or months) haha. So I think he's super excited about that!

Mom and Dad are leaving for Florida on Wednesday. They'll be gone for about 2.5 weeks or so.

Well, that's if or now.  I will leave you with some photos:

TPW a couple weeks ago during demo

View last week after the contractors had finished demo


9/15:  Garage Sale

Garage Sale


Sunday 9/16: Jennica helped me sort through paint colors

Tuesday 9/18: D and I went out to Jasper Junction. So this really pretty vintage cake carrier!


9/19: Dinner @ Jennica's. Lasagna and garlic bread. Yum!!!

Fall Decor

Jennica practicing her speech on campus

She had a speech the next day. I have to say that I never want to hear another speech about James Dean. ;)

Group shot

Underground hallway from Beering to parking garage


9/19: Checking out the coffee @ K. Dee's

Nice place!



My peppermint steamer

Lots of old cameras @ an antique shop down town

Vintage typewriter



In front of the antique shop...I can't remember the name!


9/20: Pulling up carpet!

haha We look kind of scary!

Taking up the laminate
Friday 9/21:  We got locked out of our apartment. haha. Walked out and forgot the keys. Oops! Our landlord didn't have a spare copy of our key (how does that work? haha) So Billy Bob brought a lock pick kit by.  It took awhile, but we finally got it open!

Don't the clouds look so cool?

Friday 9/21: We rented a carpet/tile remover. I never want to see one of these machines again! :p

Hard at work

Old carpet


9/21: We opened up the paper for the windows and realized it was the wrong color. It was supposed to be lime green. So we had to return it on Saturday.
We had to get yellow paper because they were out of the lime green.  It's not my favorite. I really wanted that lime color! Ah well...

We've gone to Bob Evans twice in the past few days. Love their chicken and noodles
Speaking of Bob Evans, we went there for dinner tonight. Some have affectionately dubbed it the nursing home.  Well, guess what I saw in the bathroom this evening? Business cards for a local funeral home. haha Seems appropriate I suppose.  I thought that was kind of funny. At least, I got a good chuckle out of it. ;)


Well, that's it for now. Goodnight! :)




































Thursday, September 13, 2012

Mom's Bday!

It's the end of the week already? That went by quickly! D and I just got up to Rensl. We're hoping to have a garage sale this Saturday and so we have to get everything ready tomorrow. We stopped by Billy Bob and Beth's house to pick up a few things from them and I think Aunt Key might be dropping some things off tomorrow. I really don't have a whole lot of things--mainly jewelry. Jennica cleaned out the front hall closet here so we have  bunch of old coats/jackets and shoes to get rid of. So that's probably what I'll be working on tomorrow.

Monday was Mom's birthday! We went out to dinner and then went back to our place for cake and ice cream. We surprised her with a cake from Penny.  It was decorated as an anniversary cake since she doesn't do birthday cakes! hehe And it really was Mom and Dad's anniversary this week so it worked out!

Dinner @ Hour Time Restaurant



Dad and D got an appetizer: calamari...yuck!

Amazing pasta and garlic bread!

haha funny mirror

Our apartment all decked out for Mom's Bday

Mom w/ her flowers

Mom had really wanted a cake from Penny, but we told her we got her cupcakes.

Then we pulled out the big cake from Penny!
What a good picture! And that's a big cake!

This should be enough to last Mom and Dad for a month or two

Getting ready to dig in to the cake!

56 candles!

Cutting and wrapping the cake to put in the freezer

haha


awww

That's a lot of cake!





On Tuesday we had a meeting with the health department.  There was a bit of drama over the city building permit and with the contractor. We hadn't applied for the city building permit yet, only the state ( and we're still waiting to hear back from them.) The contractor reminded us that we need to do that asap. So we worked on all that paperwork and got it turned in on Tuesday. I doubt we'll hear back from state for another week or two, which is about when we should hear from the city so it should work out okay. We've been a bit frustrated w/ the contractor because we'd been trying to contact him all last week and he never returned our call. Dad called him on Monday and he said that he would be there  Tuesday, which he was. But we were hoping to meet with him before he started the demo work. Anyways, we ended up meeting on Wednesday. They worked on demo Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I think it's pretty much finished. Now we just have to wait for the state permit to go through so that the build out can begin.

Well, I think I'm going to head to bed. G'night!