Weekend.

Walls, pre-paint. // The new color! Gray Cashmere.

Even though it was our anniversary on Friday, we decided to forgo a night out for a homemade meal and an early bedtime to get a jump start on our weekend home improvement plans. Lee made delicious lamb lollipops, roasted new potatoes with fresh dill and broccoli sautéed with garlic. And what made our meal even more special is that my dear friend joined us. Jaimie recently finished her dream of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada! It was so good to catch up and hear about her trail life, her engagement, and her plans to transition back to the real world after five months of hiking over 2,600 miles.

It is so good to have you home, my friend! And it is so good to be living in the same city again.

Saturday morning, I took Alice over to her grandparents house so that we could work on painting our bedroom and reattaching our closets to the wall. As we were getting organized, I headed out of our loft to our storage unit to grab something.

And the smell of natural gas was so strong when I opened our door, it was like a punch in the face.

I asked Lee to come out into the hallway to make sure I wasn't delusional and he smelled it, too. And we concluded that it smelled the strongest right outside our loft door! After a quick call to the gas company, Lee headed to Home Depot and I opened our windows and doors and then headed to the new bakery in our building for a coffee while I waited for the technician to arrive.

So long story short, the technician arrived and detected gas on our floor. And yep... it was the strongest outside our door, specifically outside our neighbor's door. He knocked on a few doors and checked inside other lofts but, after an hour or so, his machine detected less gas than when he'd arrived so he concluded that our next door neighbor had accidentally turned on her gas stove without it igniting and then had left it running for who knows how long and the gas eventually slipped into our hallway. After opening a few windows, the place aired out and, sure enough, his theory proved correct as the smell never returned.

The good news is, he figured it out! The bad news is, we're living next door to someone who didn't notice that terrible smell filling up her place (she was home the entire time).

Anyway. The rest of our weekend included a lot of spackling, sanding, bickering, and painting. We also removed unnecessary electrical conduit, made plans for rerouting some electrical wires and heating ducts, and researched how to seal our concrete beams and walls. Very productive overall! But so much more to be done.

And as soon as we get those doors back on our closet, I'll take a proper after photo of our bedroom. It's amazing what a change in paint color does to a room!

That conduit and electrical box are gone!

Weekend workouts: None! But I did climb up and down that ladder a few dozen times.