This week at the duplex

What a week! I've never had a more productive Christmas break. I was off the entire week of Christmas, which was lovely. We spent every day but Christmas working at the duplex.
We mudded, primed, textured, and painted our way through the break.

Texturing the walls

The more work we do in the apartment, the more we see what a shoddy job the past owners did when they got the house ready to sell. Apparently it worked, since we didn't notice a lot of the things until we had already bought the house. But it's pretty pathetic when our first-time DIYer drywalling, mudding, and painting looks loads better than what they did. We would have preferred not to paint such a bright white color everywhere, but we didn't want to repaint the entire apartment, and the existing paint was very white.

 

Painted wood paneling

We also had to order all the cabinets, tile, and windows for the apartment last week. Measuring and diagramming the kitchen area to figure out what cabinets we would need took some time and patience. You have to plan around appliances, outlets, plumbing, and quirky structural components. It ain't easy.
After we had already ordered the cabinets, I realized I had accidentally reversed our kitchen's width and length dimensions :( Luckily, it didn't affect things too much. But it caused some temporary aggravation, at least on my end...Brandon is really good at rolling with the punches.
We ordered in lots of unfinished cabinets from Home Depot. We had combined their delivery with our tile and windows, since our little Civic doesn't quite fit the 72" windows, 84" pantry, or even the 24" cabinets. We were told all of our stuff would be delivered on Friday first thing. I planned my work schedule around their delivery, since we really wanted to get the tile down and the cabinets stained as soon as possible. We woke up bright and early on Friday, ready to spend our day staining and tiling on our knees.
Home Depot had other plans for us.
We were already in Springville, waiting for our delivery, when they called to say they wouldn't be able to deliver them until Saturday. They said we'd be the first delivery Saturday--probably around 9. So we woke up early on Saturday and got all ready for our day. We waited. And waited. They delivered our stuff at 2 p.m.

Unfinished cabinets, waiting to be stained

Once we began staining on Saturday evening, we found that three cabinets have some kind of goop on them that prevents the stain from taking. Home Depot is in the doghouse.

We've needed a LOT of tools during this renovation. Brandon's grandpa is one of the smartest people ever, and he has every tool you could imagine, so we've relied on him quite a bit during this process. He's an engineer, and boy, does his brain work like one! He's very detail-oriented, and very thorough in his explanations of how to do things properly. He came over to see the place and help us plan for tiling. He also gave us his very own invention--the CurlyQ--which gets the paint out of paint rollers. Check it out on Amazon. Sa-weet.

Once he left, we disassembled, sanded, dampened, and stained cabinets until midnight. I broke through two pairs of latex gloves unknowingly, which means I came out looking like I killed a horcrux. 

My horcrux fingers and the first coat of stain on the cabinet doors

Today we're doing a second coat of stain. Things are coming along...more slowly than we'd like, but HGTV has taught me that that's just how it goes.
Next projects:
-Coating the stained cabinets
-Installing cabinets and countertops
-Tiling

Progress on our Property

Since Brandon's decision to switch career paths from Physical Therapy to Real Estate a few months ago, a lot has happened. In an effort to kickstart that career and make our way toward some financial goals, we put in an offer on a house back in the end of September. Because receiving financing for the loan was dependent upon me getting hired at and having two pay stubs from Qualtrics, the process was L O N G. We finally closed on our house December 9. It's an income property in Springville--an up/down duplex, actually. We had seen a lot of Provo duplexes in our price range, and they were, to be frank, small, old, and gross. So, when we saw this property, we were much more excited. Here she is, in all her glory.

Six parking spots--a dream for us Provo residents

Yeah, she's not much to look at. But she's got potential. 

The upstairs was in pretty good shape, and the downstairs was, well...endearing. 

No, just cringe-worthy, actually. 

Ugly, old cupboards. Wallpaper. One room with no electricity. Wood paneling. An awkward,  half-carpeted kitchen.

But we had a vision.

The day after we closed on our house, Brandon and his brother John took a hammer to those white and green cupboards and the wall behind them. We wanted to open up the kitchen and living room. 

Our (extremely kind) friend Shane came and did the electrical work for us--moving electrical fixtures, adding outlets, nearly getting electrocuted multiple times etc. He has been a lifesaver. 

We've moved a door from one wall to another wall and patched a lot of drywall. When I say we, I mean Brandon, since I've been at work all day everyday. Brandon's cousin Danyelle moved in upstairs with her husband and daughter, and they have been super helpful and understanding about all the work going on downstairs. Yesterday was Saturday, so I finally got to put in some serious work. My sister and her husband came down to help with mudding and texturing. 

We also had Danyelle and Tim's help all day long as we tackled the kitchen floor. 

Dear friends, if ever you should contemplate putting down linoleum flooring, I ask you to reconsider. One day, you will have to take it out, and on that day, you will cry. Taking up about 100 square feet of linoleum took us over sixteen hours of labor. 

We got up the linoleum with a whole lot of scraping, chipping, and patience. We were proud of that. 

Some of the lovely old wallpaper and carpet remnants we discovered while ripping up linoleum

Little did we know the adhesive underneath the linoleum would be much more difficult. From searching online and talking to people with experience, we found out that soaking it in hot water would help. We did that. It did almost nothing, even after letting it soak. The concrete below was just cooling and guzzling the water. Brandon's grandpa had loaned us a propane-powered torch which we had also heard would help take up the floor. It didn't do much at all, either. So, after more elbow grease and frustration, we decided

Hey, let's try water AND fire. Best. Idea. Ever. It worked great. Someone poured water, someone torched the water, someone scraped, and someone swept. It was still extremely tiring work, but I don't know that we would've been able to do it without those tools. 

Aside from the part where I accidentally pressed the torch trigger and barely missed my husband, there were no incidents to report. We had fire extinguishers handy just in case. I'm sure a contractor would be appalled at our techniques, but hey, we got the job done.

Upcoming steps in the renovation:
Painting
Tiling
Cabinet staining and installation
Countertop installation

My New Job--the dirty deets

Guys, I hate when people do what I'm about to do. But I can'stop myself.

I work at Qualtrics now. If you don't know what Qualtrics is, you should find out. I used Qualtrics for various graduate products, and I really liked my experience with the product. I also remember really liking my experience with their support staff. Apart from offering an awesome product that is changing how both business and academic research are done, they are a great employer. Just a few of the things I love about working at Qualtrics after only 5 work days: 

Swag. 

The company gives its employees swag like crazy. And people don't turn their Qualtrics shirts into night shirts or work out shirts. They actually wear them. 

Yesterday the CEO told us that if we meet our annual goals (which we will), every single employee gets an iPhone 6 or an iPad. Qualtrics has around 550 employees. That's money the CEO and other executive staff could pocket or re-invest in the company. But they understand that investing in their employees is investing in their company. Happy employees do good work.

Did I mention that all of Brandon's and my health insurance premiums are paid by the company?

Food. 

Guys, I love food. And it's already a problem. There are kitchens all over our building. There's a sweets kitchen with cotton candy, drums of BYU Creamery ice cream, bulk candy, candy bars, fruit snacks...basically anything your body never wanted you to put into it. Brandon is excited that he never has to buy me chocolate again.

There's a salty kitchen with chip bags, goldfish, cheese nips, wheat thins, trail mix, and drawers I haven't even discovered yet. There's a fridge of apples, peaches, bananas, strawberries, string cheese, and celery. 

There's a breakfast (-ish) kitchen with 20 types of cereal, milk, pop tarts, hot pockets, corn dogs, and drawers I plan to explore in the days to come.

Soda/water machines on every floor. 

And to make my life even happier and more stress free, my team gets catered lunch every. single. day. of October and March--our busiest times of year. This week we had Zupas, Honey Baked Ham, Maglebys, and Which Wich. On Thursday mornings we have catered breakfast during our weekly company meeting. This week it was Waffle Love. 

Fun. 

Shuffleboard. Arcade basketball. Massage chairs. An entire band of instruments. A gym. Golf carts. Bikes. Nerf darts (constantly flying over my head and around me). A pogo stick. Foos ball. Billiards. Ping Pong. 

People can also bring their dogs to work. The company dog Barnaby even drinks from the water fountains (hence our soda machines).  

Incentive to work hard. 

Qualtrics is a meritocracy. And a transparent one. Literally. All the conference rooms are all glass. 

They're all named after the Seven Dwarves, other Disney characters, and Ancient Greek philosophers. 

Noone--not ANYONE in the company--has a closed office.

All of our weekly and quarterly goals are posted to our internal system. At any time, we can look up the goals and progress of our colleagues. That means I can look up the CEO's goals as well. 

This quarter, whoever gets the most points on my team goes to Hawaii for 6 days with their +1. And we all know what we have to do to get there. Any day a member of my team hits a certain threshold, he/she gets an extra $20. And it happens all the time.  Today they went around handing out dozens of checks. 

Money and prizes aren't the only incentives to be a hard worker, but I know the transparency of my performance will help me to push myself. 

This is the first time I've been genuinely excited to work for a company and to work my hardest in both their interest and my own interest. 

Do I sound like I'm bragging? I don't even feel bad. Because, for anyone who has an interest in working in an environment like this (doesn't everybody?), Qualtrics is hiring like crazy, and I can refer you. Holler.

Paris Day 4: Macarons, Museums, and Sparkling Towers

I have some really great memories of the Paris Saint Merri Ward from my internship in Paris and from surprising my brother in the church courtyard with a huge bear hug in 2010. So, when Brandon and I headed toward the church building, we were looking forward to meeting some of the members and getting a spiritual uplift. True to form, we rode our Velibs to the church. I had wisely chosen to bring a pencil skirt for my Sunday outfit, so biking around in that was a real joy.
Church was lovely. The Saint Merri Ward is full of locals, study abroad students, interns, and tourists. I love how they involve the visiting students in the sacrament program. Some attempt to give their talks in French, broken though it may be, but they had a translator for the English-speaking student who gave a talk on this particular Sunday.
After church, I was anxious to shed my pencil skirt for something more bike-friendly, so we returned home and ate some lunch. Our quick trip home turned into quite the awkward hour. Our Japanese host Azusa was with her friend Shimizu. Azusa introduced us to Shimizu and told us that the apartment owner would be coming by to do some quick maintenance. She asked us to pretend we were close friends of Shimizu, even though Shimizu didn't speak English...What we pieced together over the next strange hour was that Shimizu was renting the apartment from a Japanese-speaking Frenchman. She was then subletting it to Azusa who was sub subletting it by allowing renters through airbnb.com. Clearly the owner was unaware of any of this. Awkward.

Next stop: my favorite free museum in Paris--Musée Carnavalet in the Marais. I love this building architecturally, and I love that the inside is such a mishmash of objects. It's a Parisian history museum, and I always notice something else strange and new when I go. The gardens are beautiful, too!

Once we left the museum, the weather was insane! It would rain cats and dogs for half and hour, then switch to bright, sunny skies for a half hour. It switched between these opposites ten times before finally deciding to stay sunny. It was our last chance for Brandon to experience Paris, so I took him to one of my favorite Parisian churches (Saint Germain l'Auxerrois) and then made him bike all the way to Opera Garnier so that we could frequent the Pierre Hermé shop and eat macarons on the Opera steps.

Saint Germain l'Auxerrois

I don't know if Brandon will ever forgive me for making us spend $10 on four strangely-flavored, small macarons. But we had a great time listening to the street performer who was singing pop songs in about five different languages. We enjoyed hearing him sing made-up, jibberish "English" lyrics of American songs.
Even though we didn't take a tour of the opera house, I made Brandon come inside and admire the splendor of the opera's entrance as well as the statues of musicians like Handel and Bach.

After that, we biked our way back to the 1st arrondissement and then to the Champs-Elysées. For those of us unwilling to spend $500 on a shirt, the Champs-Elysées does lose a bit of its classic lure. But there are always great street performers there, and Brandon loved watching them bring in audience members for a dance competition. We walked our way up to the Arc de Triomphe and admired the memorial.

 

We then picked up some bikes and rode the downhill streets toward the Eiffel Tower. We'd visited on our first day, but Brandon hadn't yet seen it in all its glory--sparkling. We didn't ascend the tower--our opportunities to do that were on cloudy days where we would have missed the spectacular view. More importantly, though, Brandon is not a fan of heights, and I forever ruined the possibility of him wanting to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower when I told him that the top of the tower moves in the wind. It's only five inches, but still enough to kill any desire he had to walk up 19 stories of stairs.
We got to spend quite awhile at the Trocadéro, admiring the view, people watching, and avoiding salespeople like the plague. We were also asked to be in a video being made as a surprise for someone. So, SURPRISE, whoever you are!

After watching the sparkling tower (I never get tired of that view), we biked the four miles back home. The bike path that follows the Rive Droite is so great. You pass wonderful bridges, the Tuileries, and  the Louvre. Paris is magical at night.
On our bike ride home, we had to switch bikes and make a pitstop (at McDonald's of course). We accidentally left our tripod next to the bike stand, and when we came back not five minutes later, it was gone. Someone in Paris is now the proud owner of the tripod we bought specifically for that trip. In the morning, we had to prepare for our departure. We said our goodbyes to Azusa and lugged our suitcases through the metro and on the bus to Orly Airport. We happened to depart Paris when the Orly Airport was doing a social media project called #iamtheguest (whatever that means). They took our picture which was later put on the airport facade as part of a huge collage. Pretty cool beans!

Paris Day 3: Sacré Coeur, Chaos, and Dessert!!

Our third day in Paris, I woke up with quads on FIRE. Two days of riding bikes all over the city was taking its toll on my non-biker legs. They were screaming at me. I could feel the microtears in my muscles with every step. Did I mention that I was sick for the duration of our time in Europe? 'Cause I was. I felt so guilty, staying in people's homes and coughing/sneezing/sniffing all over their hospitality. Our plan for the day was to head to northern Paris to the flea market at Saint Ouen and then to Montmartre area. The combination of my quads, my sickness, the distance to our destinations, and the fact that it was raining outside, decided us on a metro travel day.

We headed out for Saint Ouen where Brandon got to be accosted by sellers of faux-everything. Most of my experiences at Saint Ouen were solo (once solo at night--awful and scary idea), and having a black male at my side definitely decreased the amount of sketchy people trying to force interaction on us. With the history of my Saint Ouen experiences, I insisted we leave our camera equipment safe at our flat. Saint Ouen is enormous, and, since we had no plans of carting large antiques with us for the duration of our trip, we walked a relatively small part of the market. Hunger and rain drove us away from Saint Ouen and on toward Sacré Coeur and Montmartre.

The view of Paris from Sacré Coeur is pretty amazing, not to mention to the basilica itself. The walk up is a workout (for those of us too cheap to pay for the funicular). Thankfully, I had warned Brandon of the aggressive bracelet men who lurk on the steps (so many steps), start tying a friendship bracelet around your wrist, and force you to pay them afterwards, even though it's unsolicited. These guys don't take "no" for an answer. Thanks to my experience in the city, I have developed what I call my "metro face." It's basically a facial expression that would translate roughly to "Touch me and I'll kill you." It's worked wonders for me in throwing off the American stereotype of loud, fat, smileyness, and in deterring the aggressive males that plague Paris.
Don't be fooled by the smiles in the below pictures. I can throw off a happy face faster than you can say "stranger danger."

 

As many times as I've visited Sacré Coeur, this was my first time going inside, and thus, I was unaware of the stricter rules governing behavior inside the basilica. In tourist-ridden places like Notre Dame, cameras are flashing, people are talking, and actual worshippers are in the minority. If you're Parisian, going to worship in silence at Notre Dame would be somewhat like partaking of the sacrament in the nursery. However, this phone shot earned me quite a lecture from the caretaker of the basilica. He also raised his voice to indignantly chastise everyone else in the nave, saying that this was a sacred place of worship, and to put away our phones.

Chastised for an extremely unflattering shot

 Even though I felt chastised, I was actually very happy to encounter such such respect and reverence for a place deemed sacred. It was refreshing to experience that in such a secular-minded country.

Speaking of the secular and material, our next stop was to a mall outside the city. Why would we go to such lengths to shop when there is shopping all over Paris, you ask? Only one response makes sense:
PRIMARK.
Never heard of Primark? That's probably because you live in America. Primark is a clothing store based in Ireland that I became acquainted with during my study abroad in Wales. I don't care to say how much Primark merchandise I came home with from that study abroad, but suffice it to say, I needed an extra bag. This store in Villeneuve la Garenne (Saint Denis area) had opened a month prior to our arrival in Paris, but when we arrived at the mall, there was a line hundreds and hundreds of feet long--looping around, down the stairs, looping around again. I've never seen anything like it. Especially when the store had already been open a whole month.
There was a line for the line. They were only letting a couple people into the store at a time, and the sight inside the store was no less chaotic.

 I wasn't feeling well that day, and our claustrophia-inducing shopping expedition did nothing but aggravate that. Even though I was excited to return to Primark after a wish to do so for the past five years, it made me slightly sick to see the craze inspired by nothing more than fabric. It was like Black Friday times 20.
Once we got back into Paris with our wares, we stopped by the supermarket (my favorite thing to do in foreign countries!). Among other things, I happened upon this:

Banoffee!!!!

 Once again, if you don't know what banoffee is, it's likely because we live in America. Banoffee is my dessert of choice, thanks, once again, to Wales. It's pie made of banana, toffee, and moist graham cracker crust. To help you grasp my love for banoffee, perhaps this picture will help, since it shows how I finished off my own piece as well as three other people's pieces in Edinburgh.

It is a powerful demonstration of my love for Brandon that I let him have one of the two banoffees when I could have easily eaten 4 or 5 alone. We ate them at home while stunning our fellow Argentine housemates with the knowledge that we're married, and Brandon is only 22.
Mormons, amirite?