Visitors--Round III (Sep. 2008)

As I mentioned recently, it's been nearly a year since we've seen any of our family, but then just a few weeks after we got to see Jon's parents, my dad came out to DC for a business conference, and we were SO excited to have him here! Unfortunately for him, we put him to work the second he stepped off the plane, and we didn't give him many chances to rest between then and when he got back on a plane 5 days later. To my credit, he did tell me before he came to keep in mind that he'd be willing to help with whatever we needed in our new place, so I was really just fulfilling his wishes (right?). :)

We picked my dad up from the airport and went straight from there to Home Depot to get enough carpet to cover the nasty lemon-yellow/lime-green tile that was previously our living room floor (let me mention that the realtor didn't even call it a living room, she called it a "rec room." Suffice it to say it needed some help to feel a little more like home). The landlord refused to carpet it, so we were determined to 'lay' our own carpet, meaning, put down padding and make the carpet fit wall-to-wall without actually tacking it down. Kind of like a big floating rug that's stuck in place, but better. Lucky for us, my dad's pro at every handy-man thing there is, so we bought the carpet, had the Home Depot guys saran-wrap it to our roof, and then dad and Jon had it laid in the room in an hour. They improvised near the fireplace and laid some nice leftover tile that we found in our storage room (laid, meaning really, just laying it on the floor. No grout, glue, nothing. Gotta please the landlord! and you can't even tell it's just floating there, see pic below).

It was awesome, and I can't tell you the difference it made. I didn't even recognize the room when I went back there. Before the carpet, Jon said once that we'd never spend anytime in that room, and after the carpet, we kept going back there just because something finally felt like a normal house. Thanks SOOO much dad!! You're the best! To see the before and afters, see the post on our move, or click here.