2012 August

First of all, thank you all for the kind emails checking in on us. We’ve been MIA because things have not really gone according to plan with this move! Our washer broke the first day and we were on the hook for a new W/D right off the bat. Don’t get me wrong, we are beyond blessed and thrilled to be out of the other house (the money pit) and into a much more affordable one that is close to family and school!

Thanks to our great family and friends, we moved everything in a day. It was hotter than hades but the troops still had a great time just being silly and all were in good spirits. Remember that, my friends — it is FUN to help move us! Not that we plan on moving again, the next one will be vertical – to the pearly gates. Or to the home.

Poor Liberty just paced the entire day and was a Nervous Nellie. She simply didn’t know what to do with herself. She wore herself OUT with all that nervous energy. Enter exhibit A: we could have layed a steak in front of her nose when we snapped this pic. She wouldn’t have budged.

Before, I’ve shared one of our first projects which was creating a built-in entertainment center from a unit I found on CL. After Kevin added some trim moulding, cut out the wall, added drywall and then having me paint the whole unit, here is the official “after” with ~~his~~ our t.v. mounted. I just need to add accessories to the glass shelving.

I mentioned when we found out that we got this house that I had a new décor scheme in my head. Well, it’s slowly coming together, mostly because I like to wait until I find what I want on CL and can stand to live in disarray for a while. I’ve searched for months for Windsor chairs like these and finally found them for a great price! Of course, we don’t plan on eating on this folding table forever. We are going to make a rustic, farmhouse table that will fit the space perfectly. I’ve also sold a lot of my old furniture to make room (and cash) for the “new” furniture.

And, I put this “family rules” sign right where you walk by it a hundred times a day.

Now here is where things have turned to pot! I painted the kitchen cabinet casings before we moved in. I’ve done so much cabinet and furniture painting that I never saw this coming – paint peeling off like you’d peel an egg shell:

Here is what it looked like before the fiasco, all ready for their new doors to be painting and put on:

Nice, eh? Well, there WERE nice. Actually, beautiful I might add. But…I need to release some energy here…(insert my best George Banks voice, in the supermarket hotdog bun scene of Father of the Bride)….’because some big shot homeowner (that would be me) got together with some big shot (that would be the paint company) and conspired to make this DIY project a living nightmare!

Actually, the paint company did nothing wrong. This was user (my) error. I think the original owner used heavy oils on her cabinets and I didn’t clean or prep them enough. I was hasty and just wanted it done. Totally my own fault.

But this does mean that we are sanding the ENTIRE kitchen down to the bare wood because we don’t want to risk it happening again. Dust soup anyone?

So, this is now how the kitchen has looked for two weeks! At least we recently found some pendant lighting for the island, which brightens my state of mind when I walk into this room. We are also in search of a lot of lighting fixtures since the owners took it all with them, along with the grass in the backyard.

I am, however, loving my new office and it’s coming together easily. I enjoy working from this desk that I refinished a while back (another CL find), and the units we had at the old house fit well into the corners for a lot of storage a Mother needs. We just have some finishing touches to do in here and I’m calling it good!