House Stuff. So much of it. All spring and summer.

We, here at The House of Fun, have been working tirelessly to get our crap together before the arrival of baby number two. We have done a whole lot of little and big projects this summer to get things more or less in order so that we can just enjoy this little man. Plus, newborns and house projects don't really sound like a fun mix.

Here is a little of what we've been up to.....more updates to come.

We painted the trim on our house black and added some black shutters. No more jungle green!!! Yay!!!
Before:

After: (maybe we'll get around to a new porch next year....)

I got kind of really bored with the curtains I made out of drop cloths sooooooo I painted them! Most affordable window treatments ever.

Before:

During. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, painting a few curtains, but you have to remember that I have 7 windows in my living room/entryway. 7. So that was a lot of measuring and taping and whatnot.

After: I love them.

Danny redid the upstairs floors ALL BY HIMSELF in July while Ava and I escaped to GramGrandpa's house (because of the fumes). When I say redid, I mean he sanded, vacuumed, mineral spirited, stained, and polyurethaned SINGLE HANDEDLY. THIS MAN DESERVES AT LEAST A BAKED GOOD OR SOMETHING.

Our room before: (pretty bad, eh?)

Annnnnnd after: (sorry for the blur. Also, I will mention that this room got repainted in this past spring and I looooove the color).

Ava's room before:

And after (this room was also repainted this past spring):

I still cannot believe what a HUGE difference refinishing the floors made up there. My husband is kiiiind of the best.


THEN. While Danny was in Las Vegas on vacation doing really really fun things with his family for a work conference, Shannon and I decided that we would do a few small projects to surprise him when he got home.

Shannon started off with the built-in bookshelves in my living room. I have hated the "shutter doors" on them since we moved in and Shannon was itching to do a project.

Before:

After painting the insides white and the back green (sorry about the night picture, but that's like, apparently the time of day when projects get completed around here):

All the books in. I still need to arrange everything in an aesthetically pleasing configuration of books that humans go nuts over annnnnd figure out where to put all my Let's Play Music stuff, but you get the idea. So much better. 

And for our last before and after of the evening we will TURRRRRRN BACK TIIIIIIIIIIIIME. 

To the year 2011. 

When these were my stairs:

You can't really tell the armpit-stain-off-whiteness from that picture but it was there. Trust me.

So, for our other project, Shannon and I refinished the stairs whilst Daniel was off gallivanting. It was a pain in the butt. More sawdust everywhere, only being able to do every other stair at a time, sanding the banister, removing the railing and sanding it, and, oh yeah, the SAWDUST EVERYWHERE. AGAIN.

Buuuuut, as of this evening, this is what my stairs look like:

Totally worth it, don't you agree? Even with the big belly.

Man, remembering how much we've done has exhausted me.  

Look for the second installment soon. 

Some meh and some yeah!

I know I'm missing the last installment of summertime happenings but man. Technical issues, people. Technical. Issues. So maybe in a couple months I'll blog part 3 (you're welcome, Shannon).

But right now I am pretty excited about my fireplace. It is done. DONE! Praiseallthatisgoodintheworld. Remember how it used to look? Need a refresher?
 

With the off-white paint and the red brick and the brass grate and the blah and the blee ??

 Had to go.

I have a bunch of "in progress" shots of this whole thing but with the technical bla bla bla I don't know where they are and I don't feel like looking so you just get the before and after. You're welcome.

We took off the grate, Danny put a wood facade on the front, we painted the outside white and the inside black, took out the ugly red brick (which was quite an ordeal and involved my husband being very manly with a chisel and a sledgehammer), laid the tile and grouted, and finally caulked it all. And now that I have a finished fireplace and a huge mantel, I. must. decorate for all the things. Even for back to school fun. (excuse the crappy night picture.)

Yes, that is a giant pencil and yes, I made a chalkboard (leftover black paint + unsanded grout = chalkboard paint) and no, you cannot eat those apples. Ava already tried.

I have my birch twigs....all I need are actual logs. Don't worry....I'm already working on my Halloween decor. So indulgent.

Herringbone-obsessed.

So. For the last few weeks we have been working on a little kitchen facelift. I finally took down alllll pineapple wallpaper and Shannon helped me paint all the walls and the ceiling white. You don't realize how not white something is until you put white on top of it....

Yuck. I think we all agree, non?

Anyhoodle, We put down the white, painted the cabinets gray, and put on new hardware. It's nice. Clean and sharp and all that but kiiiind of boring. I didn't want to paint any actual colors because they would be doing battle with our turquoise countertops and flooring so I decided on geometric accent wall. In gray.
I should have taken more pictures during the process but here's what I did.

First, cleaned my walls. Thoroughly. Then, put green frog tape around the perimeter of my wall. I measured the length of my wall - 110". You want to divide your sections as evenly as possible so, using a tape measure, I marked the tape every 11" along the top and the bottom of the tape. I "connected the dots" from top to bottom to create 10 even, vertical stripes.
Then, using the tape measure I marked every 5", running vertically, on every one of my tape stripes. Then, it was just a giant game of connect the dots. I chose to connect and paint them to make a herringbone pattern but you could totally do a chevron or zigzag pattern at this point. On the areas you leave white, you have to put the tape on the inside of the markings. Smooth down every single piece of tape and make sure to put a little piece of tape in the white areas so you don't accidentally paint it. That would be sad.

This is what it looked like when everything was taped. To reiterate: you want the to-be-colored areas to look bigger than the to-be-white-ones because the wall underneath the width of the tape will also be white.

It took about an hour and a half and 1 1/2 rolls of tape to do this.
Then, using the tiniest little trim roller you can find, get to painting. Don't drench your roller in paint as the paint may bleed under the tape (also, get some good paint to do this. I used Benjamin Moore Advanced. It is awesome. It's a water-based paint that acts like and has the durability of an oil-based paint). I did 2 coats. By the time I was done with the first coat at one end of the wall, the other end was dry enough for a second coat.

I began back at my starting spot and started to take off the tape. This is key: DO NOT wait for the paint to dry completely to take off the tape. You increase the chances of ruining your clean lines by like, 100% if you do. You need to allow it time to try just a little (maybe 10 minutes depending on the paint you're using) but, again, do not wait for hours or until the next morning to take off the tape.

When you do peel off the tape, do it like this, pulling at an acute angle, and go at a moderate pace.

I've got a little touching up to do on the white but I really like how it turned out.

The family room - Phase:almostdonepraiseallah

Happy houseiversary to us!!!!
I can't believe we have been in this house for a whole year. Looking at the progress one has made via photograph is tres important for the DIYer's morale. So let's take a gander at our back room, shall we?

Complete with delicious wood paneling, almond blinds and ceiling, and a sick carpet (hiding even sicker green tile).

Annnnnnnd some progress (because we aren't to the "after" stage yet):

We painted the wood paneling, put in new, white blinds, ripped up the carpet, ripped out a closet, ripped up the subfloor where the tile now sits, reinforced the floors joists, laid down new subfloor, installed backerboard and tile, and painted the ceiling. The carpet was laid this morning.

Mmmmmm. Delicious textures.

Well crap. You turned too far to the left. Bahahaha. We still have work to do on the old closet (obviously) but we are excited to create our own little mudroom.

Stay tuned for more exciting "before and progress" snapshots because we are so far away from "before and after" right now that it'll make me cry to think about it.

When life gives you lemons, make pie

We were supposed to have our carpet installed two days ago but I am still staring at gross, green tile every time I look in my back room. To keep my rage and sadness at bay, I decided to embrace all things happy today. So I bought Ava a little backyard pool and some gummy worms. Best $10.99 I ever spent. Who needs a nap when you have a pool, or lunch when you have gummy worms, says she as she squeals with excitement. And she has only taken off her "soups" (swimming suit) once today. I think my neighbors are used to her indecent exposures by now though. So? Blow up pools and gummy worms. Keepin' me happy.

Also:

This movie coming out soon (because I am I huuuuuuuuge nerd)

This post about modesty. I agree with 99% of it:
THAT WORD

The fact that my eustachian tubes seem to fiiiiinally be draining - my hearing is at 75% (which is better than the 25% it was at a week ago):

Consequently, the meds that are helping my ears get better also cause drowsiness. If a drug says it may cause drowsiness, it will definitely make me drowsy but I haven't been able to give into the drug monster this week because of the furious back-room-tile-laying-in-time-for-the-carpet-installation extravaganza. But today? Today I will nap.

 Annnnd finally, Father's Day is on Sunday. So I get to hear my little Primary kids sing in Sacrament meeting and celebrate my sweet husband with a delicious dinner of Thai Chicken and yummy yummy yummy lemon pie for dessert.

picture and recipe found at www.meatwave.com

Tile and Carpet - the stuff DREAMS ARE MADE OF

Can we talk about how excited I am getting? Good. In the next week this will all be tiled:

And this home decor abomination will have awesome carpet on top of it. Gray, patterned carpet. (Also, side rant: NOTHING good happened in the 60s and 70s in home decor and design. If HGTV had been around then, it would have been thuper lame. Just. I mean, how was this ever a good idea?)

We are coming up on a year of owning this house. We have made a lot of progress but nothing is quite "finished" yet, which isn't a source of frustration and doesn't cause DIY lethargy AT ALLLL (psh, it is TOTALLY a source of frustration and DEFINITELY causes DIY lethargy. And DIY lethargy is like, totally hard to overcome). BUT. We are doing our best. You can only spend so many weekends of home improving in a row before you start to not care about the outcome - and not caring is dangerous because then you enter Craptasticland. Craptasticland is a sorrowful place filled with wasted money and marital arguments. It is hard to feel real happiness there and I would advise that the best way to stay away from that forsaken place is to do nothing. All weekend. Just read books and watch movies and play at the beach and sleep and eat. Oh, you don't have a beach? (sucker) Theeeeeen go to the park, I guess. Heh heh heh. Another way to stay out of Craptasticland is to take 2 months to finish a project that could be done in a week, which is what we're doing right now. But once that tiling is down two men will come and install our carpet for us. AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS. I keep thinking about the process and it makes me kind of giddy: two men will enter our ugly back room and a little while later they will leave the backroom and it will look 10,000 times better and I won't have to lift a finger. Sigh. What are you guys DIYing right now? And how gross, on a scale of 1 to 10, is that singular, cheese covered macaroni on my disgustingly dirty and unattractive floor next to my feet?? A 10, non? YOU'RE WELCOME!

Pilgrim's Progress

The house. It is coming along nicely. Here are some updates for your eyes.

Here we have the dining room. We refinished the floors, painted all the trim, windows, and built-ins white, repainted the ceiling and painted the walls a nice "fresh butter". This is the table that my dad and I made together. I also repainted our chairs sage green. We still have to put down the quarter round, caulk, and eventually put up a few shelves and crown molding.

The living room is finally looking nicer. So far we have pulled up the carpet, refinished the floors, repaired cracked plaster, stripped the baseboards, painted the trim, baseboards, built-ins, and doors, and repainted the walls a nice Miss Martha Gray. The ceiling needs special attention and so does the fireplace - hence no pictures of it. We totally lucked out and got a nice leather couch and chair from Danny's boss. I guess he needed more space for his painting and yoga, no joke.

Painted built-ins that are eventually going to be ripped out. C'est vrai.

 

The only downer about the couch? There are big scratches on the (new) floor from moving it in. Blaaaaaa. Also, I don't like the rug anymore. Too modern for this space. Typical me. We'll be moving it upstairs to hang out in my office.

 

 The gray actually makes my front door less heinous. 

So it feels good to have a house that's prettier. Ish. Now to hang pictures and things..... I was totally going to make this post witty and funnier. Alas, I have to save all my wit for my next post about how I am a terrible mom and my toddler is scarred forever.

CLIFFHANGER.

Still squeaky but a lot prettier

Man! Enough heavy posts for at least a month or two. I love all the feedback I got from the last one though. It's important to talk about these things, ladies. Helps the healing andsoforth.

So in the spirit of lightheartedness, here are my new floors:

Aren't they pretty??? The wood has a nice redness to it. No stain needed. Now all we have left to do.....oh wait.....is EVERYTHING. We are getting a lot of help with it though. Danny's dad is visiting for a while so we hope to have all the plaster in the walls fixed, sanded, primed, and painted by the end of tomorrow and my dining room is a lovely shade of "fresh butter" as I type this. We just need to paint the trim, baseboards, and built-ins, change out the overhead lighting and I then I can put my NEW TABLE and freshly painted chairs in and call the dining room done for a while. hu.zzah.

I am currently dreading the painting of the trim right now though. The ONLY room in my entire house that had white trim when we moved in was our room. The rest of the house has this gross shade of off-white enamel on the trim. That's right, ENAMEL. Bla. And the windows also have it. There are 6 windows in the living room alone. It's the price you pay for buying a house with a lot of natural light whose previous owners had turrible taste. Just turrible.


Buuuuuut. I'm really getting excited. Like, thuper duper exthited. And I'm so glad for the help. Aren't parents awesome?

We can do all the things!

Welp. It's pretty gross outside today and it's supposed to be that way allllll weekend loooooong. But that doesn't really matter because we'll just be working on the house! Yeah! More of that!

We refinished our floors last weekend while my fasha was here. We had a few technical difficulties (read: we've never done this before) though so the last coat of polyurethane will be going on tonight. I'm also finishing up a table that fasha and I built together during his visit (squee!). Tomorrow, Danny is working on the walls (because they could give a crack house a run for its money), I am working on the baseboards, sanding and repainting our old kitchen table and chairs, and deep cleaning the carpet in the family room (you know, the disgusting carpet.....the one we're tearing up in 2 months anyway.....that one), and Ava will be sharpening our knives.

How did we become such productive people? There is something about getting a huge project done (refinishing the floors) that gives you some serious umph to keep going. We're all, "yeah! we can do things! and we have proof now! we can do all the things!" and it feels goooooood.

Pictures of housey things to come. For now, on this chilly, rainy Friday, enjoy some sunshiney pictures from a couple of weeks ago. 

A new love and a shameless plug

Welp, I should be napping right now. Or cleaning. Instead I am blogging. See how I give up nappy time to update you on things in my life, about which you don't really care??? I AM SO GENEROUS, YOU'RE WELCOME.

Well, Dustin and Rebecca and the niecews came last weekend. It was kind of wonderful. I got to chill with people I love love love and snuggle a warm, delicious new baby. We stayed up too late, ate waaaaay too much Captain Crunch (and ice cream, and meat, etc...), and went through lot of towels but it was a special occasion, right? Do you know what else? Wanna know what else??? Wanna know what my sweet brother and awesome husband installed in the kitchen???

A DISHWASHER. (Said with reverence and humility. And an echo.)
(The Before:)

(The After:)

I understand that before dishwashers were invented, the real washer of dishes were also called children. However comma my child is not yet old enough for her to be an efficient means of getting the dishes warshed. Mostly she just makes a bubbly mess and sucks on the dishrag because she knows she's not supposed to. So I've been the dishwasher since moving to Michigan and my life has been so hard. Such a trial to have to wash all your dishes every day, twice a day. Cannot believe I got through that tribulation.

But seriously. I have gained back at least an hour of my life every day thanks to this magical contraption. And you know what's extra awesome about it? It was free. (www.freecycle.org) It's only 4 years old and it was at a rental property. The property manager said they always got complaints about it not working but apparently the people loading it didn't know you couldn't stick things down below the bottom rack (really??) and, upon instillation, Dustin figured out that the hose they had been using wasn't the right one. So anyhoodle, we're only out the cost of the hoses, electrical, and plumbing doodads and the labor was easily bought with hot fudge sundaes. It does a fabulous job and I have no complaints. All I have is praise, in fact.

So now I can devote all that time saved washing dishes to my latest venture - my new etsy shop. (Click on the picture.) 

 

I'm still working on upping the inventory and, as the name suggests, there will be a variety of things to buy - hair accessories, pillows, wall hangings, maybe a printable or two, jewelery, and  vintage finds. Why? Because I have craft ADD, THAT'S WHY.

That's the news for now. I'm going to go pet my dishwasher.

A Moment of Genius

That's what Danny had last night. Installing a pocket door in our problematic bathroom will be a mess and require us to higher a professional. Annnnnnd we're not so much about that. So? Bi-fold door it is.



In white.

Yeah, he has good ideas every so often. Sadly, none of those good ideas ever coincide with outfit choices for our daughter. Tim Gunn and I don't get it but beggars can't be choosers.

DIY has commenced

So, here at casa de AWESOME, we are in full do-it-yourself (diy) mode. I'm painting the wood paneling in the back room. It's taking roughly 17 coats of primer of the oil-based kind and ALL of my patience. You know that point when you just want to be done and you don't care how crappy it looks? Trying to avoid that point has been SO HARD. But alas, I want our house to look nice. So i paint during nap time. Not favorite.

We have also started on the upstairs bathroom. This is what it looked like to begin with (I didn't get a really good shot because it's pretty much impossible to do in this teeny bathroom).

View from the stairs:.

Classy vanity and tub:

Flooring and wallpaper. Even the ceiling was wallpapered.

And the most annoying thing about this bathroom (and the entire house, actually): The door is kind of huge in relation to the size of the bathroom. You can't just walk into the bathroom and shut the door. You have to lean way back against the sink: 

or shove yourself against the toilet and lean back (there is also like no room for a traesh can (pronounced traysh) in there either) to close the door. Sooooo annoying. 

 Needless to say, this will have to be fixed before we think about having another babe. I can't imagine being large with child and bathing my other child in here. Or peeing, for that matter. I could just leave the door open but it's also in the way then. Gah. So, we're thinking pocket door. We'll see what we can actually do though. Any suggestions? I'm open to 'em.

Alas, the only redeeming thing about this bathroom? Tbhe faucet. Lurve it. Will keep it.

So far we've torn down the wallpaper to reveal a never-before-painted plaster wall and mold on the ceiling (awesome) and we've plastered over some holes. Next, we'll sand and paint. Then do the tile flooring and replace the vanity and sink.

It's really hard to fit the rest of my life into all the home improving going on here. Oh, and we got an estimate on replacing windows yesterday..... $18,000-20,000.

BAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Yeah, right. Right?