How to Live Through a Remodel

Hi Friends! 

These past two weeks have flown by! I’m happy to report that today is the last day of the bathroom remodel, and we made it! Ha! No more living out of storage bins and sleeping in the guest bedroom! 

It really wasn’t as bad as I was anticipating. Sure, there’s dust everywhere, and there’s been a trailer parked in front of our house for fourteen days (SO SORRY to my awesome neighbors) but by four this afternoon, we should be done! Hallelujah! I’m excited to get everything back in order, you know, free of dust, tarps to protect the bedroom, pictures hung back on the wall. This sort of disarray keeps me awake at night.  

Here are a few things I’ve learned to keep myself sane during a remodel.

1.       Walk away. Try to keep in mind that this is a short season, and it will be over soon. Don’t stress about the mess or that the trailer parked on your front lawn is killing your grass (Corey’s worry, not mine). Just walk away try to forget it. Or close the door and pretend everything on the other side is exactly as it should be. 

2.       Be flexible. My boys need naps/rest time, or else all hell breaks lose later in the afternoon. I’m a spazz about them sleeping in their rooms but realized this probably wasn’t going to work with the loudness of the remodel during the day, so we set up a pack in play in the playroom, and everyone was happy. 

3.       Stock up on wine. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. 

 

I hope these tips help if you're about to start a remodel! 

Enjoy!

So Long Triangle Tub

Hi friends!

Today is demo day on the hill! We're so pumped up.... But I'm already over the mess my house is in 😂 how the heck do they do it on Fixer Upper?!?! Oh well. 1/2 day over only two weeks left 😳

We're definitely diy-ers but this master bathroom project is out of our expertise (major plumbing and electrical) so we called in the expert. I'll post updates as the project moves along! 

Enjoy!

Before

Sorry neighbors! Don't worry- it will all be gone today 😁

Delivering the new soaking tub!

Boys Bathroom Revamp

We experienced a blizzard (not really, but it did feel like it) a month ago and I took a couple hours to update the boys bathroom- for the millionth time, but who's counting.
First, I added a fresh coat of gray paint to the walls - replacing the original tannish color that I was never happy with.

 Then I continued my small obsession with painted ceilings, and the color Comfort Gray and added a coat of that to the ceiling.

After that was done I added a new aqua Octopus towel hook from the Young House Love line at Home Depot.
I hope you're all doing well!

An Evolution. Becoming a morning person: day one.

 

I am neither a morning person nor a night person; basically, I’m an middle of the day person (at best).  I also don’t make new years resolutions because I think you should just change behaviours as you see fit and not wait until the next year. So, I’m beginning a journey to become an early person. I just decided this morning. It’s going well so far ;)  

 

How I came to this realization was a coupling of things. First, I read a blog and the author gets up every morning at 4:20 am or something absurd (that will NEVER ever be me), and secondly,  I accidentally woke up 15 whole minutes before I was supposed to today and it was glorious. I unloaded the dishwasher and read a quick devotion all in the quietness of a house of snoozing boys. Then I started thinking of all the other things I could do if I actually woke up thirty minutes early. I’m not going to rush into this, of course. But I’m going to try to start getting up 15 minutes early for a week and then bump it up. We’ll see how that goes ;)  Think of all the projects I could accomplish! The one obstacle that may prevent me from doing this is the fact that when I usually have to get up early, all of the boys (even the dog!) wake up earlier for some reason. My almost five-year-old still comes into my bed at some point during the night (go ahead, judge away. I know I would) and the baby, who is normally a great sleeper, somehow also coincide their desires to become early risers with mine- which eliminates my desire to start the day accomplishing things. I’ll work on them becoming mid-day people while upping my early morning game;) 

Wish me luck!

Filling In

Hi friends!

I've been trying to figure out what to do with the space between the top of the cabinets in my kitchen and the ceiling since we moved in this house three years ago. 

There were lots of things I knew I didn't  want up there, but I couldn't figure out what would look authentic to my house. After lots of pinteresting I finally decided to hang plates! 

The traditional metal plate hangers intimidate me, so I did a little research and found these plate hangers online. 

They've been up about two months now and I've only had one plate fall off the wall 😂 I'm sure that was due to user application error ha!

I didn't really have a plan when it came to hanging the plates but I'm happy with how they turned out... But I'm sure I'll still move them around a bit!

Things Are Looking Up

Hi friends!

It's been a bit since my last post, but I have some free time thanks to the snow storm that has had me quarantined the past few days 😁

One of my latest projects was a fairly easy one (thank goodness!). I painted the ceiling in our master bedroom. It's a project I wanted to do for awhile and finally got up the nerve 😄 This is the first ceiling I've ever painted and I really love the way it turned out. 

I started with several different sample colors and painted the same ones against the wall color and against the whitewashed pallet wall to see which one went the best with both.

I really liked how most of them looked and ultimately chose one that was one shade lighter than the lightest one- so four samples and I didn't choose any of them ha!

The lighting in the final result isn't great but you get the idea 😁

The Thorn in My Side

This adorable chest of drawers has been a…. challenge even before I ever met it.  

I spent more time than I care to mention scouring second-hand stores, contacting people on craigslist looking for the perfect vintage dresser to fill a spot that has previously been held by our (hated) highchair.  I’m about to chuck that thing to the curb as soon as I can talk my four-year-old into watching his morning show at the actual kitchen table and not in a seat for a tiny baby. That highchair is the worst. I loved it when I first purchased it, and the colors are fabulous but all the nooks and cranny's… I’m certain there’s food stuck in there from three years ago. Doesn’t that make you want to run out and purchase one? Anyway, I digress, back to the dresser. 

 

So, I finally found THE chest in an unlikely place- one Saturday eating lunch that also is part of a cool little store. I snagged it from another man who was interested it was able to purchase it. Victory! Finally! After months of searching, I finally found the perfect one. The sales people loaded it in the van, and I was on the way. This was one of the weekends of torrential downpours and Corey was out running errands, and the baby was napping so I was just going to wait patiently for him to return it to unload it. After all it took two men to load it up. My patience lasted a record five minutes before I decided I could bring it in myself. I had to park in the driveway and not in the garage due to another project I was working on so I put on my raincoat and headed out to the van to figure out the best way for me to carry in the chest of drawers by myself… without having to take out any of the drawers because it would be easier to carry them in all at once. Easier not lighter, I’m not strong, but I am determined, which counts for more than actual physical strength. First I maneuvered the chest out of the van and onto the driveway and then stood there in the rain trying to figure out the next step. After trying to hoist it up on the double stroller and failing, I decided just to pick it up and see how far I could carry it. I surprised myself and got pretty far before collapsing of exhaustion. I took a tiny break to grab some M&M’s and an old towel and was able to put the chest onto the towel and drag it to the doorway then I lifted it up into the house and put it on a rug and dragged it to its new home. It looked great, just like I’d imagined. But not before I got stains all over my favorite jeans. Then I waited for Corey to come home and help me drag it back to the garage so that I could start painting it. 

 

I painted that stupid thing with four coats of Annie Sloan chalk paint, and the original stain would immediately bubble up to the surface and show through my lovely gray paint- pink. I texted my girlfriend (the google queen), and she told me to put polyurethane over the paint to seal in the original stain and then paint over that. It sounded good to me so off to Lowes I went. Before making my purchase, I spoke to the paint manager and explained my problem to him and what I intended to do. He looked and me and said, “You are not going to like what I have to tell you at all. But you’re going to have to sand off all that paint and stain and start over.” I almost lost it right there. This “simple” project, one that I’ve done a million times before, was becoming a huge pain in my… you know. I told Corey that I needed him to sand all that paint off, and I had to start painting over. He sanded ½ a drawer and that took him 45 minutes so he went to Lowes and bought spray poly and sprayed them to seal in the old stain and it worked! I did have to poly one of the drawers (loving referred to as the possessed drawer) four times before I couldn’t see any pink under it but worked! 

 

Finally!!! Everything was painted beautifully and ready for wax, and it only took about 700  weeks. Everything went fine with waxing the drawers but when I went to wax the chest I had a black stain (from another project) smear all over the top. I almost chopped that thing up right there. After composing myself, I repainted, rewaxed and carried everything in and assembled it.

 

**Excuse the excessive snark in this post. My dog got sprayed by a skunk at 11 last night, and I’m fairly certain that I smell like a skunk today, so that’s putting me in a cranky mood. But, don’t get me wrong. This chest of drawers was a huge disaster even without the snark 😁

***Here's a closeup of the Anthropologie pulls 😍