Thank you SO MUCH for the Lowe's gift card!!

(What follows is a real, honest-to-goddess, thank-you note that I sent today.) Gene and Cathryn, I want to thank you so much for the Lowe's Gift Card you gave us for Christmas. I have a "real" thank-you note in the works, but it's been hard (no lie) to get the card, a pen, an envelope, my address book and a stamp all in the same place! So before way too much time goes by (I know--it's almost FEBRUARY!!), please accept this email as an expression of my heartfelt thanks. This is how much your gift card means to me... 

You gave us a generous gift of $25. Really, a TREASURE for us. And you know how much I love Lowe's. So we were sitting in the bedroom, debating what to use the gift card for, and I thought, "you know what, this room really needs a new paint job." It was the first room we painted when Ish and I moved in, and now it's got holes where the shelves fell out, and Bill and I have re-arranged furniture, exposing poorly painted places. And I would like to have a different color in the bathroom part. 

So I pulled out all the various paint chips I'd been collecting over the years, and I pulled out the tan colored sheets I would like to use for the accent color, and called Bill over. We agreed we would love a blue, provided it's not "Carolina blue" and we picked out "Chicory"--a nice, bright blue that leans toward navy and not too horribly far from cobalt. But brighter. Cheerier. For the bathroom area, which includes the sink section and the toilet/shower section, we chose "Honey kissed," which is basically a rich butter color. Nice and light for the tight space, but also a great complement to the brown sheets/accent color. 

And with my handy-dandy Lowe's card, I went and got the test cans because I've learned over time that I am horrible at imagining colors, and I need to do a real test section. (The two cans were about $5.) I ran in to Cathryn there, and I was glad to be able to tell her thank-you in person. We are going to paint the bedroom with your gift card! Yay!!! 

I put the chicory on the wall, and the honey kissed test spots, and I LOVE it. SO great. Thank you so much!! There's a little bit of a delay now, though, because really, if we're going to paint this room again, we need to smooth the ceiling. So I set the DVD player to play an astronomy "class" DVD, and I set to smoothing the ceiling. Unfortunately, there's a section over the sink where the ceiling had been patched, before my time, and it can't be smoothed--it will have to be redone. Which is cool, 'cuz Bill is a pro (literally) and has friends who are pros, and well, we'll get it done. And while we're at it, we'll redo the ceiling in the bathroom as well. 

Only, as Bill pointed out, we also need to replace the fan and the light fixture, which we should do while we're doing the ceiling, since we'll need to cut the holes to size. And I realized, as I stood there, that the cabinet under the sink is really wonky, and really, no amount of paint is going to make that cabinet look like new. And frankly, the sink is a kind of non-color. Not white, not a rich color, just kind of bile, blech, icky color, and, well, why don't we run out to Lowe's and see if they have a sink like the one I put in the other bathroom that was only about $125. And so we walked around Lowe's and found a half-dozen sinks with cabinets that were oh-so-cute and 26 inches wide for about $125. But in this bathroom, we really need the wall-to-wall cabinet that is 36 inches wide, and well, those are $500 or more!! That's like $37/inch!! Yikes!!

So why don't we just buy this adorable vessel sink that I love love love, and BUILD a wood cabinet underneath? We can do it!!! (Bill, however, went into a little bit of an apoplectic response at the thought and begged me to come up with a different plan. In the end, though, I won, and we'll have a wood-topped cabinet and a very cool vessel sink.) But hey, while we're here, you know, says Bill, I saw a freezer at Home Depot that was damaged and they were selling it for $150. Let's see if they've got something like that here... 

And so we were hanging out in the fridge and freezer section when we noticed a $700 refrigerator on sale for $300 because it's "damaged" (had a ding on the left side), and then we saw that the freezer that we need, similar to the damaged one at Home Depot, was only $160. So after some debating, we bought them both, especially when I saw that the total energy consumption for the two of them would be about $50/year. (Later I went on the Duke Power website and learned that my fridge is costing about $200/year, so I am looking forward to my savings!!)

So here's the tally so far... 

Refrigerator: $325 (with the hose to hook up the ice maker) 

Freezer: $160 

Paint: $75 (or so) 

Paint supplies: $50 

Adorable vessel sink: $140 

Wood for the cabinet (not including the blood, sweat and tears of making the door): $80

 Faucet (which is so cute and looks like a pump): $109 

Ceiling fan: $60 

Light fixture in the bathroom: $25 

Light fixture over the sink: $30 

New closet door (it has a big hole in it and we can't have that with the "new" room): $20 

New knob for the closet door 'cuz I've always hated that one: $30 

Ceiling repairs, including labor for the plasterer Bill works with: $100 

New hooks because we're getting rid of everything black and going toward brown: $30 

New sheets: $40 

New bedspread: Free (thanks mom!!) 

That comes to $1274. 

And the scary thing is, I'm not even kidding!! This entire email is TRUE!! And so, I sincerely say, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE GIFT CARD!!! Love you guys!!!