It's prime time!!

Woo doggie! Just a warning to you that this is going to be a long, drawn out project. After removing the cabinet doors, I wiped down both the inside and outside of the cabinets with soap and water. Then I followed with a deglosser to take the current finish off of the cabinets. Deglosser is a new thing for me and I'm anxious to see how it works instead of the old sand and wipe down method of prepping. I'll keep you updated!

This is day one of primer on the upper left bank of cabinets. I'm using Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 primer which I bought at our local ace hardware. It costs roughly $20 per gallon. I'm all about doing my projects for next to no cost but a kitchen gets a lot of use and I have chosen to spend extra money on paint to make sure it holds up to my "wee three"!

I took out the light (well, my electrician did, thanks dear) and the mail sorter that was under the cabinets on the left. You can see that I have a little bit more cork board to remove there on the wall. Here is the before pic in case you don't remember those items being there.

After the second coat of primer, I'm pretty happy and now I wait. The primer needs 24 hours to be touchable but hardens completely in 7 days. 7 DAYS!! That's why this project is going to take forever. If I could paint everything at once and wait the 7 days, I would be fine but doing a section at a time is going. to. take. for. ever. Sigh. I guess I'll have to bore you with my goodwill and auction finds while I wait!!

Are you still here with me? Or did I lose you at 7 days?

 

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Kitchen, unhinged

Day two of the kitchen mess redo.

I removed the quarter round from the ceiling and removed one upper bank of cabinet doors. Since we can't function without our kitchen, I have to remodel in phases.

This is everything that was in those cabinets. I am now one of "those people" with the fridge top pharmacy! I'm already having some minor panic attacks with everything out in the open. I like things PUT AWAY! Sorry............. Vent over.

Here you can see that I removed the scalloped trim work above the window to make a cleaner, more modern look. It actually came down easily with a hammer and pry bar. I also scraped the popcorn ceiling and patched any bad spots. This step actually took me two days. Popcorn ceiling is not a kid friendly product so I only worked on it while Sally was sleeping. I will do a separate post on popcorn ceiling removal sometime.

I also intended to take down the wallpaper from the bulkhead but it was glued to plywood and it refuses to come off. Since I want to keep the bulkhead, the wallpaper will just be painted over later and I don't think anyone will notice (except every one I just told here) oops!

Did you tear anything apart today? Do you have a fridge top pharmacy?

 

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Destination, cook in style!

Thanks to some gentle poking from Mom and Amanda, I present my kitchen redo! Well, I haven't really done much yet. But I have some 70's love you can feast your eyes on for today!

Behold, THE COFFEE STATION! Enough said.

 

 

 

 

 

There you have it! The whole shebang!! Keep a watchful eye out for more posts because this room needs a miracle!

 

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Confessions of a nap time drywaller

I have spent lots of time getting this guest room up and running in the basement. With Christmas quickly approaching, I've spent several nights up working. It's made me nearly crazy!

I started out with a an office and ended with a guest room!

It definitely is not my colorful style yet but maybe I can find some good after Christmas sales to make it beautiful! I may also repaint the walls later but my goal was to give my parents a nice room to stay in for Christmas!

 

 

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The best of times

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! I know, I'm the bad one here. I've been so caught up in life that I neglected you. I'm sorry.

I recently, with Kaci's help, did some picture hanging in the dining room. I'm finally getting around to printing our family pics!!

Here is the dining room wall that I chose to do my Pinterest inspired project on.

 

You can also get a small peek of our new table and chairs (more on that later)!

I bought 5 clocks at Walmart for less than $4 a piece and 5 black 8x10 frames. I wanted white frames but the cheapest ones at our Walmart were over $13 a piece! So I bought the $3 black frames and spray painted them white (GO ME!).

The goal here is to have a picture of each one of our kids with a clock set at the time they were born. No, we are not some freaks whose kids were all born on the same minute, I just haven't set them yet! I will also add a sign at the top that says, "the best of times".

Isn't that sweet?! Sally turned one yesterday so I thought I would give you a close up of just her. This was such an easy project to do and makes a wonderful conversation piece for those times when guests are over for dinner. It's an awkward silence breaker!

 

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Pinterest is my friend

I've recently finished a Pinterest inspired art wall in the hallway. Anyone who is on Pinterest knows that this is a huge accomplishment because its far easier to pin things than to actually do them in your house!

Anyway, we have lots of art work coming home from preschool and I'm one of those "clean fridge" people so I had to figure something out to do with it. Also, art is expensive so why not have your kids showcase their talents. Maybe you'll inspire them to create and use their minds too!!

This was my solution. I used the laser level to hang some twine in between two screws. Then I used it again to create level lines to draw my words on. Here's a picture of that in progress.

Once I got the words penciled out the way I wanted them, I drew over them with a fat, black sharpie. After the black marking dried, I used my handy dandy magic eraser to get rid of any remaining pencil lines.

This wall has created a place where the kids can take daddy when he comes home from work to show off what they did each day. Kids have wonderful talent with art in the toddler years and I picture school spelling tests and future art projects here for years to come!

 

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A post to make Dad happy!

My Dad will be the first person to attest to the disaster that we call our garage. I was always proud of the fact that I could get the car in there but sometimes wondered how I would open the car door once inside. We moved in a year and a half ago and we've been fighting the mess in there ever since. With all of these projects going, I finally had enough!

Chaos in the truest form, right? Sorry Dad, keep reading, I fixed it.

Yes, a mound of vinyl cluttering up the work bench.

 

So, the before pics show a pitiful mess. I hope Dad isn't hyperventilating!

After only four days of blood, sweat and Halloween I did this!

 

 

Woohoo!! I'm awesome! All of my little orange tags on the cabinets are labels as to what's in there!!! Yay! I'm so excited about this! I do have a large pile of trash to go to the dump and a huge garage sale pile which I plan to sell partly on Facebook and the rest next spring. We actually may be able to get two cars in here after that. Go me!

 

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