Thursday Thirteen...A Simple Painting Project

I'm seriously behind on my reader reading. I am actually way behind on pretty much everything because I got carried away with a tackle this week. I will be sharing the full story with pictures on Tuesday.

But for today...

After six years in our very old house, quite a few things still haven't gotten done. The bedrooms have each been painted a few times, but the kitchen has not. After so many attempts at cleaning the walls, I had HAD IT this weekend and decided NOW was the time to finally freshen up the kitchen.

Here are 13 "discoveries" I made as I tackled this huge project.

1. The light above the sink actually has no encasing and as the peg board above came loose, TONS of blown insulation came pouring out into the sink and ONTO my head

2. If you move a cheap computer desk just ONE TOO MANY times, it will COLLAPSE in your lap, along with the numerous things piled on top.

3. If your computer desk collapses, your kitten will be the first one to inspect the damage.


Thanks for the help, Pumpkin












4. If you move the refrigerator to clean and paint behind, and it has been several years, be prepared for nastiness beyond all comprehension


Minnie's turn to inspect
















5. Ditto for the stove



I STILL can't imagine how all that stuff got under the stove...ewwww!















6. When you buy special "kitchen paint", it will take two or three coats to cover, unlike the bedrooms where I got away with one, sometimes two.

7. If you take three days to paint a room, it will take that many different roller covers if you are not talented at washing them out (me)

8. If you put tape around a window that still has sticky from the plastic window insulation from last winter, then the tape will be REALLY DIFFICULT to take off when the project is over

9. If you paint the kitchen a completely different color, then everything that used to match no longer does

10. When you change the color of a kitchen, you now need to purchase all new window coverings, chair pads, etc. that there is no money left for, but need to be done...WalMart here I come.

11. Every painting project makes a bigger mess than before the project started

12. Now the adjacent rooms need painting even worse than before...just because the difference is so noticeable

13. I love the feeling of a "new, clean" kitchen, even if it means that I will spend the rest of the week playing "catch up"

I can't wait to share the pictures with you next week.

Thursday Thirteen: While the Boys Were Gone...

Thirteen things I got done in the three hours that I had to myself while Aaron and Noah were both at school on Wednesday. All of these things seem to be "little" things that would be simple to achieve. However, it is amazing how much more thought process things take when there are little boys fighting, I mean playing, around you.

Not in order, this morning I had time to:

1. Call Suzuki Corporation about replacement of tone chimes for church

2. Take more than five minutes to shower, dry, and curl my hair

3. Change pictures in the frames on the walls.

4. Re-sort and distribute ALL of the children's books from the living room: Aaron's room, Noah's room, garage sale

5. Run and unload the dishwasher (Steve does all the loading...I told you he was a saint)

6. Fold all clothes in the living room and put in respective rooms, followed by two more loads of laundry washed, dried and put away

7. Get bio written for church website and emailed to proper person

8. Clean out both litter boxes

9. Run sprinkler in both front and back yards

10. Find missing folder from preschool that the teacher yelled at me for when I dropped Aaron off this morning

11. Fill out paperwork for the government who had the wrong social security number for one of my payroll tax forms

12. Call the church to fix mistake of above said forms

13. Make VERY long list of everything that needs to be accomplished tomorrow during this precious three hour window of time.

I am hoping that I can get things in the house caught up, then I may be able to tackle some of the bigger projects I had hoped to accomplish this fall.

Tackle It Tuesday: Craft Cabinet et al.

I told you yesterday that this weekend turned into MAJOR home repairs. It all started with the craft closet. And it's ALL DEB'S FAULT!!! :)

While the boys and I were over there last week, Deb said to me, "I was going to ask you how you organize your craft stuff because ours is a mess." It forced me to actually think about the state of our craft closet:

Here's what she didn't know...




















and on top












UGH! All of you who were so impressed at the beginning of the summer with all of the crafty things we did and I posted about....this was the result of all the fun.

So Friday night while Deb and I were out at Lowe's, we saw some great deals of different kind of storage stuff that you see at the regular stores (Target, Meijer, etc.) and I got a great set of 10 pieces. So Saturday morning, I got motivated.

Does anyone else make a bigger mess when they organize than there was in the beginning?

So I started putting stuff on the table to get a clean slate



















But after the table was completely filled, I still had a cabinet full of stuff,.



















So then I put all of the empty containers on the floor and started sorting craft items by type



















Pumpkin felt it was very important to help by EATING some of the supplies so I wouldn't have to find a place for them...thanks for the aid, Little One.














After about two hours and warding the kids out of the kitchen about a millions times (they were so excited to see ALL of the craft stuff out), this is the final product.



















There's even space left for more stuff.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!!!

I couldn't just stop...

The top of the dishwasher

Before














After












No, I'm not a complete slob. Life just kind of took over for the last couple of weeks and I have been slipping in my household duties. There has been a lot of discussion in our household over the last few weeks lately about what I could do to bring in extra money in the mornings while Aaron is at preschool 4 mornings a week and Noah is at school all day every day. I would have thought that Steve would be the one pushing for me to find something. He surprised me yet again though (I love that guy) and said that he would rather have me be able to spend the time finally getting this house under control. Every room in our house has had a half-baked improvement project started and left to be finished over the years. This is the time to finish them. The list is growing so stay tuned for a very active Tackle It Tuesday for at least the next few months. It should be very entertaining.

But for now, anyone want to take bets on how long the craft cabinet STAYS clean?

Weekend Top Five 8/17/08

A much less thrilling weekend than last weekend for the kids. For us, however, we got so much accomplished. I don't have a whole lot of pictures to describe, because we were too busy. Let me explain...

As many of my readers know, Deb has undertaken a major house switch around that involved painting all the bedrooms, switching all the furniture and toys, and cleaning up all of the messes left behind.

Much to my shame, her messes created by major house changes were still neater than some of my everyday messes. So I decided that something needed to be done. I will share one of them one Tuesday, but the other now.

So with that explanantuions, our top five activities from this weekend.

5. A little straightening up turned into a full kitchen overload...while the kids were running mad Saturday morning while Steve was still at work (pictures on Tuesday). Along the way, I determined that the entire kitchen needs a paint job VERY BADLY and I intend to do that the first month that the kids are back to school. This weekend DEFINITELY taught me to never paint again with the kids in the house.

Along the way, I got frustrated that every room is our house has has a renovation projects left unfinished in the six years we have lived here. So after lunch and a trip to Home Depot, our second home repair project got underway.

4. Our bedroom...it originally had a "fake" bathroom, aka a toilet surrounded by paper board walls. Because the room was so small, we tore out the wall and toilet, leaving holes in the floor and nastiness where the walls had attached to our real wall. The wall had been patched, and I had repainted the walls about a year ago, but the fan had never gone back up because the ceiling never got painted. There were three different colors showing through and two different colored blinds on the window, floor boards left unpainted, and paint peeling off the ceiling. So after painting the ceiling, finding wall border, and getting the fan back up, here are the before and after shots. I still need to buy valances today.

Right after the wall came out















The bedroom this morning










Noah's quote during the entire ordeal sums up how the kids handled the whole thing
"Daddy, Mommy just turned into the Hulk."

3. As a reward for putting up with painting, etc. all day, we took the boys on separate dates Saturday night. Aaron and Daddy went to Richmond Park to swim. Mommy and Noah went to Space Chimps. Cute movie but WAY too many "stupids".

2. Sunday afternoon we needed to finish border and Aaron desperately needed a nap but afterward we stile made it to Richmond Park to swim as a family for probably the last time this summer.

1. How sad is this? The most momentous thing of the weekend was moving Pumpkin's litter and food into the basement. They are getting along well now and he can navigate the stairs well. It means that I no longer have kitty litter and kitty food in my living room.















I am quite sure that anyone reading this had a more exciting top five than me...let's hear about them.

Photo Story Friday: Operation Mean Mom

Remember my little Whine Fest yesterday (regarding legos/K'nex and my messy house, among other things)? Well, whining has never accomplished anything.

So this morning, while the boys were watching Caillou, I gave them a warning. "In a half hour, I will be collecting all of the K'nex and Legos that are one the floor" And when neither one of them moved, I devised my plan. Operation Mean Mom had begun. So I told them at the beginning of Curious George, that when George is over, the television will go off and we will begin cleaning up. In the mean time, I would begin going through some of the junk bins. I would make the decision as to what would be thrown away.















When Noah saw the garbage bag come into the living room, he sprang into action. I gave him a plastic bucket for all of the things he wanted to keep and he began. He then took the bin of thing and DUMPED them all on top his train table in his room. A start...














Does anyone else get a satisfaction from a bag FULL of miscellaneous pieces heading to the trash? I am not talking about BIG toys, but the various burger toys, missing game pieces, and other little useless junk.

So begins our adventure. I told the boys that they need to each pick up 5 things. I gave them each a list.



















About half hour later, Noah is ready to proclaim that he is...(read his sign)














I helped with the entire process as a way to help him work toward being able to do it all himself, but Mean Mom is asserting herself in one way. The bin of legos, K'nex, and mini pop beads each need to be EARNED back with 10 tickets apiece. Sorry to those of your that got them for Noah for his birthday, but something HAD to be done.














I'll let you know when he gets them back.

By the way, Does anyone have any suggestions about what to do with all of the INSTRUCTION BOOKLETS that go along with the building sets? They don't stay with the sets, but I know the boys will want them eventually.

Now to tackle the laundry...unfortunately, that's all me :(