And while we’re at it, why do parents make the rule, “no jumping on the bed?”

Baffling.

Sorry, but painting is not an easy fix!  If you do it yourself, you need a couple of days per room, plus the cost of supplies which is not insignificant.  You can’t paint a little bit here and a little bit there.  You need to have big blocks of time, so, if you’re like us, you’ll have to hire it out.  If you do, it is close to $1000 per room (at least that’s the big city price), and you still have quite a bit of inconvenience.

I got three quotes to paint the entire interior of our house including all doors and trim, and two of them were higher than the cost of replacing all the windows in the house.  Can you imagine that?  Something just seems off here.  Luckily, I think I found a guy who will do it for just a bit over half that.  He was recommended by someone I trust, so as long as I watch him and his crew like a hawk, I’m hoping it will be ok.  There’s nothing more disturbing than a bad paint job.  We’ve been living with what one painter called “the worst touch up job I have ever seen” for a year now.

Tip: When buying a house, if the paint is in bad shape, ask the seller for a credit of about $1,000 per big room (don’t count bathrooms and hallways – just bedrooms, living room, kitchen, etc.).  And if they won’t give it to you and you still want the house, make sure you have that much to spend.

And don’t trust HGTV!

Since that mystery was solved, here’s another one.  Why doesn’t anybody make a lightweight children’s step stool taller than a measly 8 inches?  We have stools all over the house, but have yet to figure out a good solution for the bathroom sinks.  Right now, this is what we have to deal with in our tiny powder room:

If you look closely, you can see that the stool blocks almost half the doorway.  It is a tiny space and I can’t imagine keeping it like this as long as Sammy needs a stool.  She has to stand on the 2nd step and she can just barely reach the handles to turn on the water.  She cannot reach the soap because of that completely non-functional sink.  (For the life of me, I cannot understand why anybody would ever buy a pedestal sink.  There is no storage and no countertop space.  But that’s another mystery altogether.)

Anyway, this is a mystery I haven’t been able to solve.  Any ideas out there?

I’ve been paying the high prices for the past year because I couldn’t find a better option, but it was making me so sick to spend that much money that I finally went to Hair Cuttery and got an excellent cut for $21.  It’s definitely better than my last $65 cut, which I had to fix with my own scissors the next day.  Also, it took less time and I didn’t need an appointment.  Granted, I probably got lucky and got someone with skills, but I was prepared to try every person in that shop until I found someone who could do a good job.  I’m sure there are a couple of good people at all of these low end chains.  And even if a salon cut was better, could it really be THAT much better?  I really think we women are suckers for anything beautifying.  It’s the female equivalent of the mysterious success of the “male-enhancement” products.

So I’m free of the need to spend outrageous amounts on a hair cut.  Highlights, however, are another matter.