Back at it

And just like that, the next project begins. The dining room space, which will actually be a sitting room.

Chandelier down and donated. Trim off and cut up and thrown away. Plastic up (and down). Popcorn soaked and scraped!

Our list for this room:

Scrape ceiling, patch, sand, paint

Find and install new semi flush light fixture

Patch and sand walls, prime, paint

Replace door frame and window trim, baseboards

Replace all outlets and switches, plates

Finishing touches like caulking and maybe painting the ceiling medallion and vent covers

Fun fun fun!

Deliveries

It's been a fun week of deliveries. First, the shutters for the office and dining room.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

They add so much "finish" to the spaces. Well, at least the office. ;)

Speaking of, the furnishing of the office is coming along. Light fixture was installed this week and my organization of 10 years worth of paperwork is 1000% complete. Still a few small decor things I'm working on, but it feels great to be done-ish.

The second delivery is our new mattress. Sprung for a Tempurpedic! And since pics of a new mattress aren't very exciting, here are a few of A climbing the old one. She called it her mountain.

Happy hot Sunday!

Walkin through the woods

(Studying bugs.)

When we woke up and realized it wasn't already a thousand degrees outside, we threw on scrubby clothes and bolted to the park. Pool on the agenda this afternoon it the rain holds out!

Xoxo.

Office paint

The office painting is...done!

All thanks go to the painter we hired to finish the job. Ha. He completed in one week what would have taken me a year with my ten-minutes-a-day work schedule. THRILLED with the result.

The wall color is a very light beige, one of the first paint colors I've picked from only the teeny chip sample. It's light and has no red/pink undertones, stands out from the trim yet doesn't overpower the ceiling. That was our goal with the room: lighten everything up in order to highlight the ceiling.

Can't wait to get all our office boxes out of the living room and organize like crazy. It's been two years since we have had any type of office and paperwork organization and our random piles of papers are getting a little ridiculous. But fest I need to decide on some storage furniture, and a new desk, and decor, and get all the cabinet and switch plate hardware in, and and and...

Finishing touches, that I can do. ;)

While he was here, we had the painter tackle the dining room window too.

(Ugh. Those boxes.)

The one white spot in a sea of dining room pale yellow. Painting windows is the worst, and we knew this room was next on our list. Stay tuned...

Sister hugs

We went furniture shopping the other day and took a sec to check out their pretty landscaping. There were bumblebees all over the flowers, and when I pointed that out to A with something like, "Look, the bees are eating out of the flowers." She responded,"Mom, they're drinking the nectar. (Eye roll.)"

My bad, smartypants. My bad.

I didn't get big smiles, but I did get a cute hug. ;)

Chillaxin

Cutie patootie

Preschool open house

Addy's achool held an "it's almost the end of the year" pizza party and open house last night. 

A loved showing daddy her favorite books and pointing out what artwork was  hers.

And eating pizza, of course. ;)

Only a few more weeks left! 

Office update

The office! If you've forgotten that project, it's the one I started 16 years ago and have yet to finish.

Or, we started it last September, stripped the wallpaper, then realized we should be outside working on the landscaping while the weather was still nice. Skip to mid January. I finally hit my limit of having to dig through a box in order to find any of my books, and I was motivated once again. Only problem, of course, was time. By evening time I'm pooped and definitely not interested in painting or sanding on a project with no required completion date. So I fit the work in during the day, which means I work on it, like, 7 minutes every day. Needless to say, it's taken fooooooreeeeeeveeerrrrr.

Here's what we've done:

- strip wallpaper

- steam and strip glue 

- clean walls

- sand walls

- patch bajillion holes in walls, sand, clean again 

- clean baseboards and built ins

- strip all trim with deglosser

- prime all trim, find holes and patch, sand, prime all trim again

- caulk baseboards and built ins 

- prime walls

Still to do:

- patch holes in walls I missed earlier that I can see now that we have white paint up, sand, prime those spots again

- remove plantation shutters, patch all holes, sand

- prime window

- remove window pane inlay thing, prime, paint exterior color on one side and interior trim color on the other 

- finish paint on all trim, two coats

- finish paint on walls, two coats 

- degloss, prime, paint the built in cabinet doors and shelves (currently hanging out in the basement)

- poly two or three coats the built ins

- figure out how to temporarily salvage the 30 year-old carpet 

- hire electrician to wire and install an overhead fixture 

- order and install new plantation shutters 

- furnish!

A couple in-process priming shots.

All primed!

Ceiling is looking AWESOME. The lighter everything else gets the more beautiful it becomes.

Inching closer. Hopefully I'll have my books back by 2016. ;)