a bit of alison and tony » Tony

Ice Ice Baby

alison — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:05:14 +0000

One of my goals while I am off of work this summer is to paint all or most of our house. We painted our living room this spring, but had yet to paint anything else until last week.

Dana stayed with Tony and I for a few days and the two of us decided to paint one of the guest bedrooms that I have had a “vision” for for quite some time. The room isn’t put together yet, but here is what we have so far: (I don’t have any specific before pictures, but here is a picture of the other bedroom that looked exactly like the bedroom we painted)

And here is a picture of the newly painted room:

We love it! I could just stay in there all day. My goal was to find a light, icy blue color that was NOT a baby blue, and I we definitely got it right! The color is much brighter in person; the picture doesn’t do it justice. Now I just need to hang shelves and pictures and paint a nightstand to match and the room will be complete!

A day or two later I was still in the painting groove, so I painted our front hallway the same color as the living room. We are really happy with the way it turned out (aside from a few touch-ups I need to take care of!)

Next on my painting list:
~ The kitchen: some form of a burnt orange color
~ The staircase and upstairs hallway: same color as the living room or a shade lighter
~ Our bedroom: some form of tangerine orange

Bring it on!

Problem Solver

alison — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:53:21 +0000

Due to the wicked storms and 16 hour power outage last Wednesday, Tony and I (who am I kidding…mostly Tony) had to keep an eye on the sump pump to make sure it didn’t overflow into our basement. Tony, an amazingly creative problem solver :) , came up with a way to quickly siphon the sump pump using a hose leading from the sump pump outside to the almost end of our yard. It worked like a charm!

Before we got ready for bed, I asked Tony if he was going to set the alarm to check the sump pump in the middle of the night. He casually replied that he’ll just make an alarm that will go off when the water reaches the danger zone. After spending a short 15 minutes, or maybe even less, he came up with a system in which a piece of wood with a light ball attached to the end would raise up with the water level in the sump pump and loudly ring a bell when the water reached a certain point. Here’s a clip of how it ended up looking and working. It’s dark, but fun to watch just the same!

Sure enough at one in the morning Tony woke me up saying, “Alison! The alarm is going off!” He went downstairs, used his hose system to siphon the water out of the sump pump, and came back to bed knowing that he didn’t need to worry about it overflowing. His newly created alarm system would let him know if he was needed in the basement again!