I'm in love...

with my new countertops. Why didn't we do this sooner?

This is what I woke up to this morning...






Why there is dish soap next to the sink, I don't know. It's not like we're going to do dishes there.


Why yes there is a couch in my dining room. Hopefully it will be sold this week.

After the guy left:






Wow! It is Formica made to look like soapstone. Now we have to wait for Brian to get home to install the sink. Counting down the hours....

bunch of stuff...

Before:


During:


Now:


Love it and I can't believe we lived with that dinky doorway for all these years!



On the kitchen front, we got some of the tongue and groove up. We took down the 1970's paneling and it looks so much better! There was quite a bit of sheetrock to fix. We're waiting to install the rest until after we get our new countertops. This is going to be our backsplash as well.

I'm putting together a new color palette for the house and I don't know what I will paint the kitchen above the tongue and groove. I'm trying for a more neutral palette because I don't want to paint before we move (which we hope is by the end of the year) So the aqua walls are out. *sniff*

Here are the colors I've been jotting down while browsing various blogs.


The tans/greige for the living room, hallway and dining room. I'm trying for something with green undertones to counter our orange oak floors. The blue/sea salt for our bedroom. Greens for the school room and maybe the little kids bedroom. I'm not sure what I will paint upstairs, probably whatever I paint in the living room. I'm trying for safe colors because we want to sell our house as move in ready.

We can get wild again in our new house! Well I need to get back to priming kitchen drawers and put a coat of paint on them. I would like the kitchen project finished by the end of March. We'll see.

new to me...

Last night we went to pick up our new to us Ikea couch via Craigslist. It is in almost new condition and surprisingly comfortable. Of course I won't let anyone sit on it and jumping on it is out of the question! Or at least until tomorrow.

I'm used to my red couch and beige seems so boring. I may have to buy a green slipcover like this one or the gray one, *swoon*. They are only a little over $150.

We're trying to sell our couch to pay for this one. What I really want is a sectional but maybe at the next house.

busy weekend...

So we rented this:


to deal with this mess in the garage...




and it was looking like this at the end of the day


We still have to do quite a bit but at least we can walk in there and most importantly, I can start painting the cabinet doors.

My older girls took the younger kids to the play park behind our house so I could sand down the cabinet bases. Then I primed them with oil based primer (it took 2 coats to cover the dark brown well enough...


and carefully painted the first coat of Miller paint Acrinamel in white semi-gloss. It is too stark white so I will take it back in and have some yellow added just to warm it up a bit.

I didn't get a picture of our upper cabinets but they look really good. Of course I can't put anything back in my cabinets yet so we are living like this for now.



This Saturday I plan to line the cabinets with new contact paper and start putting everything back. I bought some turntables and some various organizational items so it will look good on the inside and out (which is kind of important as we won't have cabinet doors on for awhile).

Aw the life of a remodeler...

kitchen started...

With the countertops ordered (we got this by the way:)

Brian started tearing the backsplash off so the template can be made. This is how my kitchen looks now:

Duct taped beadboard and paper.


Took off the 1960's "brick" and Formica backsplash and discovered something funny.


The original color of the kitchen was almost the same exact color I painted it.


Nothing much changes, eh?

So today I'm busy turning the blue interior cabinets into white.


I didn't bother to prime as the blue is a flat paint so I just cleaned it real good and started painting Polar Bear white in Semi Gloss by Behr.


I'm off to give it a second (and hopefully final coat)

tweaking...

We ordered our new countertops today and I'm so excited. We're getting Formica laminate in a black basalt color. The quote was very reasonable and got even more reasonable when we agreed to do the tear out and remove appliances and disconnect plumbing. It saved us over half. So now I have to wait 4 weeks for them to come in. Meanwhile I will get started on painting the inside of the cabinets and priming the outside.

In other news, I've been tweaking the house. Our new mantle stain just didn't have enough red in it so I put another coat of a cherry stain right on top and bam! perfection.

Before:


After




Then I found a cute basket and mirror at Goodwill and hung them on my clock wall. I need more of them so hopefully I can find more at Goodwill.



and finally the stenciled dining room was bugging me. It was all too "hello, I'm stenciled, can you see me?" so I painted over it, stenciled it with a smaller stencil and used paint that was slightly lighter then the wall color.

Oh and I also sold the buffet on Craigslist because it was too big for the space and I wanted the money for countertops.

Before:


After:




So now I'm off to teach my kids their school for the day and then clean out kitchen cabinets so I can start the exciting process of priming and painting. Blah.

what I did today....

I couldn't take the half sanded banister anymore so yesterday I finished sanding it, primed it with oil based primer and this morning taped it off.

I'm using Miller oil based paint in black thinned with a little paint thinner (tip from my paint guy). It went on really well and almost perfectly covered the white primer. It says to wait 48 hours before recoating so on Saturday I could do that except we have some company coming over after church on Sunday and I don't want the fumes knocking anyone over. So I'll probably wait until Monday, otherwise we'll all be a little high on paint fumes. Might make for an interesting evening.

Way before, notice the little doorway and a chalkboard.


Primed. I kind of like the white but we are going for black countertops in the kitchen and I want to pull the black color to the stairs. Consistency and all that, what! (said in my best British voice.)


After 1st coat: