Celebrating

We celebrated my brother and his fiance last night with a couples shower at our house. It was a party for all their friends, no "adults" per say, so it was fun to get to talk to their friends and meet a lot of Melissa's friends that I have not met before. Preston partied for about 20 minutes and begged to go to sleep. Melissa and Mark got some beautiful gifts and we are so looking forward to their wedding in December!

3 Little Pigs BBQ. It is so cheap and so good!

"Tie the Knot" Nutella cupcakes

Someone was ready for bed

Mark and Drew hanging out

Mark and Melissa got some saki from Apple!

My other brother Joe enjoying the party 

Love this frame

B and I enjoying the party while P slept upstairs

The next morning, we were pumped for the UT/Georgia game. It's always a big day in our house. The dawgs won, and P wore his Georgia shirt.

Eating some breakfast

Friday was "Wear your favorite sports team" day, and he pitched a huge tantrum in the parking lot. He was still unhappy when I snapped this pic. Toddler attitude is the best.

Speaking of P, he has been busy lately.

Eating some peanut butter crackers

Visiting the train table at his favorite bookstore

Cheesing for the camera & being diagnosed with eczema. (see forehead, cheeks and chin) We got some meds from the pediatrician and it's all cleared up now! It tends to flare when his allergies flare.

Drawing on the chalkboard wall

Meeting Llama Llama! He was so excited. I did this without Brian and learned my lesson. Never again! Kids everywhere and a line for llama. There ended up being "llama drama" when Preston refused to wait in line and wanted Llama NOW. We had to do time out in the store. Quite an experience, but we got the picture and got out of there! :)

Preston has also been enjoying the weather. This is a portion of our yard. You can see leaves changing. Happy fall!

Quick & Dirty Kitchen Update

Our kitchen was not on either one of our radars just yet. We want to knock out a wall and expand, clear everything out and start from scratch. However, out of everything growing in our ridiculously overgrown yard, a money tree is not one of them (ha!) so we decided to make a little upgrade that made a big difference for us.

Since I spend the majority of my time in the kitchen, I was totally over the yellow and white gingham wallpaper. Here's how it's looked for the last year and a half.

Once again, old owners stuff. You can see the bad yellow wallpaper though.

That border. Can't believe I lived with it like this for so long!

There were a few reasons we thought we might do a little update. With my job change, I got the gift of two days off in between jobs. Since I can't ever relax and love to be busy, I knew I had to capitalize on two free weekdays. The second is that we're having a big party at our house in a few weeks for my brother and his fiance, so we thought, "let's just see how hard it is to take the paper down and maybe we'll make it nice for the party." So, on a random Tuesday night, without doing much thinking, I stood on a chair and started ripping. It came off in huge sheets! That was encouraging.

Then, we started on the border. We quickly realized that removing the border was going to be terrible. There was another border underneath, and awful bright blue paint. We couldn't get the first border off because it was put directly on sheetrock, so I primed several coats to cover it. You would never know it was there.

The two borders side by side.

This border was the only one we thought existed. It's scored here and ready for stripping. To strip, we score, use DIF concentrate or Piranha concentrate, then a steamer. It was still pretty slow going.

The border and paint waiting underneath. Seriously? Who would have chosen this? Who would say "Oh, perfect! There is a hen, a whisk, a lady holding a frying pan, mushrooms and a chicken. SOLD!!!"

This was the area where the yellow gingham had been living. Even freshly stripped walls looked so much better. 

After everything was finally stripped, Brian spent an entire afternoon sanding the walls. While they don't look perfect, they actually have a small texture on them that is kind of appealing. The only problem was that it soaked up primer. I had to prime three times before I could paint, and kitchens have a lot of trim!

One of the things I was most excited about was removing the gigantic rotary-dial phone that was taking up vital counter space next to the sink. After whacking with a hammer, unscrewing, tugging, etc. over several days, it finally took my dad coming over and removing it for us. It left a gaping hole in the wall, but Brian is a master at covering this stuff up, so I wasn't too worried. 

Saying goodbye!

Since this was not a completely planned project, and I wanted to keep things cheap, I planned on using some leftover Benjamin Moore Gray Horse paint from the nursery. But, I checked and realized I didn't have enough so I would have to buy paint anyway. After doing some Internet research for about 10 minutes, I settled on Sherwin Williams Repose Gray. Emily Henderson, one of my favorite designers, called it the perfect shade of "French Country Gray" - I just LOVE it. One of my favorite colors to date. It's lovely in person. Not too blue, not too green. I didn't paint the cabinets or trim, saving us some time and effort.

Here's the after, nice and fresh! 

I actually painted that lovely painting above the sink a few years ago. Ha!

Would you EVER know a phone was there? or a big hole? Joint compound will cover just about any imperfection, although you will get best results if you sand the area down first. You can find it in the paint section.

I ordered a bay window curtain rod from Amazon and got some Target curtains at $15/panel. 

Some free online printables that say "Roll with it" and "Be Grateful" in cheap black frames.

This will definitely hold us over until the big redo happens. For me, it was worth the 3-4 days work and about $100 price tag when you add it all together. I am enjoying it much more and keep going in and turning on the light to look at it. I would say that's a success!

Hall Bathroom Update

This update is long overdue :)

Our hall bathroom is finally finished. What a nightmare! What we thought would take 8 days, took over three months, but we are very happy with the results.

We had not planned to makeover this bathroom. However, the shower pan went out and leaked water into our downstairs living room. We had an insurance adjuster come out, and we realized we were going to have to tear most of it out anyway. So, after many months of leaving it like it was (this happened in December), with a hole in our ceiling and bathroom floor, we finally took the plunge and the bathroom renovation began. Here's the damage on the ceiling above the bathroom. A nice hole in the ceiling and some rotted wood in between floors.

We hired a contractor because the job was over our heads. The contractor was terrible, but we all made it out alive. Tearing something down to the studs and rebuilding it, moving plumbing and electrical, is definitely not something we wanted to do, so we had to hire someone. He took SO long and didn't communicate. He would show up like twice a week with workers.

The bathroom is in the upstairs hallway and will serve Preston and (hopefully) another child one day, and also guests. Here are the before pictures of the bathroom.

This is a pic from when we first looked at the house, with the old owners stuff.

I always liked this custom curved cabinet, but in the redo it had to go.

One night, Brian took down the wallpaper in about 15 minutes. 

This bathroom had a walk in shower, but no tub.

It had a custom built cabinet under the sink which I hated to take out, but had to do it for the greater cause. :) The contractors removed the divider wall that separated the sink and closet from the stall shower and toilet. This allows much more room for multiple people to use the space. We put in a double vanity, a soaking tub, 13" floor tile, subway tile around the shower, Delta faucets throughout, added sconces over the vanity, new toilet, and created a deeper closet space. We added 18" to the room by going into the guest bedroom. I know taking away bedroom space is a big no-no, but it is still a good size room with a walk-in closet. We had guests over, who told us that you would never know that we took away space. That made me happy, because I kind of agonized a little over that.

It was dark, so pictures were hard, but this is when they first started.

New floor going in!

Subway tile installed

And the after! Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray on the walls. Love the color. 

Double sinks with limestone counters. 

Delta plumbing fixtures throughout.

New toilet

Nice big closet. It's hard to tell from the pic, but you can fit two regular size hampers on the floor, below the first shelf.

So nice and open now!

The cabinets have the slow shutting feature. Love that with Preston.

Much better! Glad to cross this room off of our list.