Apart from my full-time painting job...

I actually have been doing other things besides painting lately.  Not many things, but some.  Painting the cabinets has put a kink in my plan to take things slowly and enjoy each step... because I just want them done!   Sometimes a girl's gotta relax though.  Or at least do something that doesn't require a brush or roller.

One day last week I got home from work and got a huge spontaneous urge to rip up the carpet in the upstairs hallway.  It's not necessarily the carpet that was driving me crazy, but the specific color and pattern.  Plus it felt dingy on my bare feet.  Ew.  I think I was still in my work clothes when I started pulling it all up.  Then when I thought I'd call it a night, I decided last minute to go ahead and mop the floor instead of waiting until the morning.  Good thing too... I found all these staples that I had missed before.  We could've had some major pug-foot injuries!

The floors are a bit roughed up underneath, but I plan to find a runner to put here.  The longest stretch of this hallway is 20 feet, so it'll have to be a pretty long rug.  The guest room floor at the end of this hallway needs a lot of work, so maybe I'll touch up this hallway too when I get to it.  One project at a time, Lindsay!

The longest part of the hallway, before...

...and after.

The shorter end of the hallway, before...

...and after.

Most of the work we've done has been on the inside the house, which makes me eager to get outside when I have a chance... despite the fact that it's 100+ degrees every day.  The heat has been giving me cravings for iced coffee recently.  I hate paying a lot for iced coffee at Starbucks, and McDonald's is too sweet for me, so I've been making my own.  Plus it's super-strong... how I like it!  After adding my Splenda and a little cream to a plain old cup of coffee, I stick it in the freezer for about 10 minutes or so to cool off.  Once it's completely cool, I top it off with ice cubes.  Yummmmm.

We've been enjoying all our morning and evening drinks on the porch.  Will takes my photography very seriously.

When we walk downtown, we pass a ginormous antique shop with multiple floors of goodies.  I haven't been lugging the beast camera with me on our long (hot) walks, but here's an Instagram of one of the displays.  It's so much fun to explore here.

Lastly, as previously mentioned, our neighbors are awesome.  We came home one day last week to a bag-full of homemade snickerdoodle cookies from a neighbor we haven't met yet.  Needless to say, they're long gone now.

Now that there's an end to the cabinet-painting adventure in sight, I hope to have many more relaxing happenings to share!

Project 2: Kitchen Clean-Up

My kitchen is a war-zone.  Projects are so much easier when they're not taking place in the most-used room of the house.  How'd you like to cook dinner here?  Scary, right?  I'm still excited though... I've been dreaming about redoing this kitchen since the moment I saw it!  Our budget's preventing us from replacing the floor, cooktop, and some other things I've got on the list, but we're making a few little changes that I think will make a huge difference.

The most time-consuming task in the process is painting the cabinets.  Hence the stained wood-turned-splotchy-white cabinets in the picture above.  This is after the priming step.

Here's the "before".

First, we took all the hardware off, then removed the doors from the cabinets.  I dragged all the doors outside to start cleaning them up.  A positive aspect of this crazy drought we've been having is that I didn't have to worry about rain interrupting me.  While the doors were out on the patio, I used a rag and deglosser to wipe down each one.  This step was good for cleaning off any gunk or grease that had built up over the past- who knows how many years.  I wore rubber gloves and used an old washcloth to get the job done.  It's best to wear splash-proof goggles or safety glasses as well.  Apparently deglosser isn't effective on eyeballs.

Look how much grossness was on these things.  This wasn't even from one of the cabinets near the stove.  Those were extra yucky.

After an hour or so, I used wood putty to fill all the hardware holes in the front of the doors.  Once they had dried for a few hours, I quickly sanded off the extra putty with a fine 200-grit sandpaper.  Some of them required another layer of putty to make sure the holes wouldn't be visible once painted over.

Next, per recommendations on the wood putty container, we gave the doors a 24-hour period to harden-up prior to starting the priming process.  The frustrating part of priming/painting cabinet doors is that there's virtually no way to work on both sides at the same time.  This forced us to prime the fronts of the doors, wait 24-hours, then prime the backs.  So most of the weekend was spent just preparing the cabinets for paint.  Ugh!  Over the weekend we also primed the drawers and cabinets themselves.  We chose to use Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer from a small hardware store nearby.  The recommendation for this particular brand came from this blog, although they chose a slightly different type.

Our foyer is now a storage center for cabinet doors.

You've probably noticed we haven't included a full sanding step in this process.  I actually planned to use our sander, but since the deglosser and primer claim to eliminate the need for sanding, I decided against it.  Hopefully I won't regret this later.  I'll post an update on how everything holds up after a while.

By this point, we had already chosen the paint color.  On one of a million Lowe's trips we've made, we grabbed a couple paint samples to take home and try.  We ended up going with "Bistro White" by Valspar.  I know it sounds crazy... white is white, right?  But the slightest change in tint can make a huge difference.  Another option I picked up called "Du Jour" looked too bright, for instance.  Almost a little blue next to the white subway tile I chose for the backsplash.  I originally intended to use an oil-based paint, which my mom recommended for durability in the kitchen (I think she changed the cabinet color in the house I grew up in 20 times... she's a cabinet-painting pro).  Unfortunately, when I talked to the staff at Lowe's and Sherwin Williams, it seems no one sells it anymore.  I heard a rumor that oil-based paint was going to be banned, but I never looked into the details.  Must be true.  Anywho, I was sort of forced to go with the boring old paint I normally use for walls.  The only difference was the sheen.  I chose a satin sheen for super-easy clean-up.

With priming complete, I was able to start painting the cabinet doors Monday evening.  Just a heads up: a whole evening of painting after a full day at work... not fun.  Every day I lose a little more of my sanity.  This is what I sacrifice for updated-looking cabinets.  Sigh.

As of yesterday evening, the cabinet doors officially have one full coat of paint.  At this rate, the cabinets won't be fully painted and put back together until the beginning of next week.  So for now, we're living with the chaos in the first picture on this post.  Just for a little foreshadowing, here's a peek at the overall plan:

The tile will make up our backsplash... ETA in 2 weeks!  The lighting makes it difficult to see the paint colors well, but the white above the tile is the cabinets, and the pale grey will be the wall color. The foil represents not only the stainless fridge we've ordered, but also the tin ceiling :) 

We'll be waiting a while to get the countertops (sample at the bottom here).
For now, we'll have the same black ones, which is the background of this photo.

And this is the hardware... yay!  I'm probably more excited than I should be about new hardware.  Well, take a look at the old stuff:

And the new stuff:

Kirby obviously approves.

I cannot wait to be done... Updates to come this weekend!

Project 1: Living Room Redo

Upon moving in, my least favorite room in the house was probably the living room.  It's also the one I felt had the most potential.  

Exhibit A: blue carpet.  Good quality carpet- but blue.  Luckily the pine floors were lurking beneath the surface and didn't look too roughed up when we pulled back a corner of the blue beauty.  

Exhibit B: wainscoting.  I L-O-V-E wainscoting.  But not when it's so dark it makes the room look like a cave.  Easy fix.

Exhibit C: blue ruffly curtains.  Okay, the blue curtains only lasted about 30 seconds.  Literally.  We got the keys to the house, I walked through the front door straight into the living room, and pulled down the blue curtains.  

This picture is from before we bought the house- when the previous owners were still living here.

First, Will removed the nails from the walls and filled the holes.  Pretty simple.

The next step was dealing with the wainscoting.  I bought a sander at Lowe's for about 50 bucks.  Not bad considering I'll probably use it 10 times in the next couple of months, although I'd recommend investing more if you're doing a ton of big projects.  We decided to go with one that had "random orbit action" to avoid swirl marks.  Not a big deal with this project, but maybe important down the road.  Other than that, we just wanted some sort of filtration system so there wasn't (as much) dust all over the house.  In case you're like me and not a sandpaper connoisseur, the higher the number, the finer the paper- meaning the paper takes off less and leaves the surface smoother.  We didn't need a super rough sandpaper since the wood wasn't painted, so we used 120 grit.

After I got over the concern that the sander may take off at any moment (these things are powerful!), I quickly ran over the panels.  The spaces my sander couldn't get into I sanded by hand.  It only took me about 20 minutes since the wood really just needed a good roughing-up.  Afterwards, I went around the room with a damp cloth and wiped off the accumulated dust.  Easy-peasy.

See my bulging muscles?!  No?  Darn.

Next came priming.  I should mention up-front, I hate priming.  Actually, I hate having to put more than 1 coat of paint on anything.  I know most of the time it's necessary, I just really don't like it.  I used to skip the primer and just use multiple layers of paint, until I realized primer is less than half the cost.  And for painting wood, primer is 100% necessary- in my opinion.  So I got to priming.

We wanted to leave the carpet in as long as possible in case there were any spills, but it was difficult to prime/paint the baseboard without removing it.  Leading us to steps 3-10,000.  Taking up the carpet.  Generally this task isn't extremely daunting, however we discovered that under the carpet and pad was a 1/8" layer of tempered hardboard.  Neither one of us could figure out why they laid this first, but nevertheless it had to come out.  Unfortunately it was riddled with nails.  Tons of nails.  Damaging our poor wood floors below :(  Several nail-pulling hours later, we revealed the pine floors we were in search of.  Maybe for reinforcement, or maybe because of a previously laid floor, there are rows of screws through much of the boards.  We planned to cover the screws with wood putty and stain them to blend with the rest of the floor, but the rustic look is starting to grow on me.  I love that the floors (along with multiple layers of wallpaper I've found while painting- ugh!) sort of tell the history of the house. Every screw and nail, every ding and scrape.

Pulling up the last piece of hardboard!
Will was feeling pretty good at this point.

With wood floors exposed, we finished priming the baseboards, let everything dry overnight, then got to painting.  We painted a layer.  Then another layer.  Then I had to go back a third time and touch up some spots.  And you know I hate painting multiple coats.  

Lastly, I got to work on the upper section of the walls.  Much easier than the wainscoting without all the nooks and crannies.  

Once semi-dry, we moved the furniture back in and rolled out the rug we had just bought.  I'm pretty happy with the look of the rug in here, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for something that might work better.  We need a ton of rugs with most of the house being hard floors, so this guy will always have a home in one room or another.  

Voila! The completed living room!  Well, almost complete.  We need some different window coverings, a tv stand (that's the top of an antique table we haven't put together yet), and a narrow piece for the space between the doorway and recliner.  I suppose I'll replace the outlet covers too- they're in the process of being painted as well.  So the living room is still a work in progress, but it feels a lot more like us now.

Our next project is the office.  Pictures are soon-to-come!

It's Ours: Beginning our New Life in an Old House!

Well, we're finally in.  The new house, that is.  After 2 closing reschedules, a couple of nervous break-downs on my part (that may have involved a little childish whining and crying), and 2 full days of moving in record-high temperatures, we're in.  The good news about the multiple delays was that Will was able to be here.  He had to cut school a little short this summer, but it has worked out so much better this way.

The keys!

The week since move-in day has been completely consumed by the house.  In addition to cleaning and unpacking, we've been ripping up carpet, painting (and painting and painting), and hanging out at Lowe's like it's our second home.  And we love it!  Updating and making it our own has been (and will be) exhausting, but so much fun.  I've got a bazillion ideas- props to Pinterest- and it's a blast following through with them and seeing the transformation.  I'm saying this a week in, mind you.  I can only imagine how different this place will look a year from now.  Apart from awesome-ifying the house, my main goal is to take our time.  We'll work room-by-room, project-by-project, for probably the next million years that we live here- and I plan to document every step of the way.  

Kirb enjoys the new yard- despite the post-drought grass.

With this new house we've inherited a new redecorating/remodeling hobby, as well as a cat.  Yep, a cat.  How did we inherit a cat?  Because it's me, and my life will always be overrun with needy animals.  Her name is Keekee.  Her owners couldn't take her with them, so naturally we decided to adopt her.  She's always been an outside cat, which means I'll be making plans for her winter housing arrangements.  More on that to come.   

Keekee.

The on-looker.

One of the best features of our big ol' house is the porch.  Complete with fountain view.  We've spent a lot of hours here in the evenings already.  It's such a peaceful place to wind down and enjoy the sound of crickets and running-water, but it's also where we meet all the new neighbors.  Everyone's been over-the-top  welcoming.  It's a pretty great feeling.

Gift from the welcoming committee in the neighborhood.

Mint plant from the back yard... perfect for mojitos!

...okay, so it's not all work around here :)

And thus begins a big adventure... stay tuned for updates and pictures of the evolving house!