DIYers

Well, as most of you know, we are moving to Abilene. That is the reason I haven't been on here too much. You know, trying to pack and clean and do all the other normal things that are required just to keep our household running. And, as most of you know, I'm married to a pastor, but what some of you may not know is that a lot of pastors live in parsonages, which is basically a house that is owned by the church. And, I have to say, parsonages can be pretty awesome! You don't pay your own bills, when something breaks, you just call someone to fix it, and the church pays. It's a pretty sweet deal. And most of the parsonages have at least some furniture. That can be good and bad. Sometimes, people in the church get new furniture for their house, and then, out of the goodness of their heart, they donate their old furniture to the parsonage. And we should be grateful for the stuff they don't want anymore and display it prominently in our house to show our gratefulness. Now, I have to say, we have been more than blessed in that respect - that has never happened to us, and people have actually bought new stuff for the parsonage out of the goodness of their hearts.

But, there comes a time when you start to wish for your own place - a place where you can decorate and make changes, and not have to worry if the next pastor or the parsonage committee will like it. And some churches, mostly those in bigger towns, have gotten rid of their parsonages, and instead give their pastors a housing allowance (which is basically just part of your salary that you don't have to pay income tax on, which is nice since pastors are self-employed). So, Steve & I had been saving our money, just in case we were sent to a church that had a housing allowance, so we would have enough money for a down payment. Well, that time has come...we are moving to Abilene, and we have bought our first house. Here it is:

Ain't it purty? Well, we are beyond excited to get there and start fixing it up and making it ours. The people who have been there had a real liking for the color white. As in white walls, white carpet, even white furniture. Now, I have nothing against white. It's just that I live with 4 children who I sometimes wonder if they are really humans at all, but instead some sort of alien life form sent here undercover to pollute our house. They must have received excellent training. So, the white can stay, but it will only stay white for, well, I'd say about 2 weeks if we're lucky, and then it will be a dingy beige color.

So, anyway, the whole point of this post is to say we are becoming excellent DIYers. In our minds. We record all these shows on DIY, and say to ourselves, "Yeah! We could totally do that!" I mean, look at all they got done in 30 minutes! So, we are dreaming of paint and flooring and built-ins, and granite counter tops, and tile, and resurfacing walls and fireplaces, but we are stuck in our reality of not being able to do anything until we close, and that is just a shame to waste all this great talent.

So, that brings me to the point that we have almost zero furniture of our own. So, recently we got my Grandmother's dining table and chairs. Now, let me say, I love this table. Mostly because of all the great memories associated with this table. I can still See Granddaddy sitting at one end, and Grandmother at the other, and all the people I love in between, and there was always lots of great food and even more laughter. But, I also have to say that this table is not exactly cool. In fact, it would go great in this room:

Which is the front room of our house. But, we are on a mission to make that room look cool and modern. So, we started to talk about what we could do with the table.

"Well, we could definitely recover the chairs," I said.

"We could paint it," Steve said.

I looked at him in utter horror! "Um...no we could not! Are you crazy? My Grandmother would roll over in her grave. We are NOT painting it."

Then, I was talking to my Aunt Pam, who is my grandmother's youngest daughter, and she said she has seen tables like Grandmother's with the legs and the chairs painted black. Then she added, "But we could never do that because Grandmother would rise up from her grave and haunt us both!" I laughed and agreed. But then at one point, she said we really could do that if we wanted. I casually mentioned it to Steve, but said I still wasn't sure that was what I wanted to do - it made me too nervous. What if it ruined it?

Well, I guess Steve had just had enough of only dreaming of fixing things up because one day he came in with one of the legs completely sanded! I was shocked, but that committed us! So, here is our first official DIY project. Chairs before:

Chairs After:

And the picture really doesn't do it justice! It looks SO good! And Steve has done most of the work - all I've done is recover the seats. We'll be sure and show you the whole thing when we get it into the new house. And I figure that Grandmother would be proud of me, after all I am her granddaughter and can basically do no wrong! Aunt Pam, I don't have a good excuse for you - you really should have known better! So, if Grandmother shows up here to get on to me, I'll be sure and send her your way!