Quilt top finished

My mother-in-law offered to quilt it for me. She is way more talented at quilting. It will be so much fun to see what see does with it.

This top probably took about 8 hours. None of the blocks are complicated and they are nice and big.  So, it went fast.

Sneak peak at a new project

It should be a twin size quilt for the baby when I'm finished. :) 

A little sign

I used to sing this to James as a baby more than any other song. Now he likes Holy Holy Holy and For All The Saints better.  I was going to just put the words from the first line one the board, but hymns are written to be understood for and appreciated as the whole thing. The line felt off without the rest of the verse. Originally, I started this to hang in the baby's room, but then I used paints from the boys' walls and it just matches so much better in there. 

So the boys get some new artwork for their room. 

Updated Paint List

Paint jobs to do:

1. Baby's closet
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

2. Baby's Room
(Off white, pinkish hue)

3. Boys' Room
(two tone, dark blue up top, light blue on bottom)

4. Boys' Closet
(I want to do something fun like lime green)

5. Guest Room
(no ideas yet)

6. Hallway
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

Possible jobs:
(all the ceilings are still TAN, but who is brave enough to paint a popcorn ceiling?)

7. Ceiling in Baby's Room

8. Ceiling in Boys' Room

9. Ceiling in Guest Room

All we have left is the guest room, which is the boys' old room and needs some patching to the walls before we can dig in and paint in there.  But we are so much closer than when we started.  The boys and baby girl have a space all for them now.  So she can come anytime. :) But hopefully she holds off a few more weeks to give us a chance to knock out the guest room.

Boys' room (Final)

Before: Realtor photos of the room.  

It didn't look this bright and cheery in person.  It was much more dingy and dark. 

Before: I took this picture the day we settled on the house. 

Before: Goodbye baseboard heaters and tan carpet and tan walls and tan ceiling and tan trim! 

Goodbye cat smell!

Before: We don't have an attic anymore so this is where we were storing a bunch of stuff that didn't have a home.  We took a few loads to the dump and Goodwill. 

The carpets were all ripped up and the floors refinished the week that we bought the house.  Jared did the majority of the work of refinishing the floors.  I pitched in a little bit and some friends came over and helped pull up staples for three hours from all the carpet (and the carpet that had been down before that). 

Goodbye, cat smell. 

Look at that white ceiling!!!

Look at those blue walls! Here Jared is installing the trim for me between the two paint colors.  

Then he installed his old bunk bed.  

And we took off the closet doors to paint them. 

\

Here is a little before and after mash-up. 

After: Everything is so peaceful.  It might be my favorite room in the house right now. 

After: The only thing let is to buy curtains for the windows (I am thinking some sort of grey) and a shade for the lamp.   But otherwise, it is completely finished! 

Here is what we have done to the room:

✅Old carpet removed and wood floors refinished (Bono Mega - Amber seal)✅Baseboard heaters removed (they were condensating and leaking on the wood floors and causing discoloration)

✅Ceiling painted white
✅Walls painted (dark blue - Valspar Space Sky, light blue - Valspar Dreamy Clouds)
✅New trim installed on walls
✅New shoe molding installed
✅Old molding painted white
✅New windows

* Loft bed/book shelves was Jared and his brothers. Build by a family friend. 
* Twin bed given to us by people moving at church. 
* Crib/Toddler bed IKEA - thrifted for $40. 
* Dresser 1 - was Jared’s as a teen
* Dresser 2 - was given to us with twin bed

* Small Ikea chair - given to us

* Car rug - given to one of the boys

* Light blue leaf rug - bought on clearance at Lowes for $90

* Quilts - made by Grandma Cindy (priceless)

We have since switched the lamp with the one in the baby's room.  And I am really thinking of stealing the rug and giving them the rug from our room (it is dark red and would match their quilts still). 

It has been such a great project - one that I have been wanting to do since January, but that first trimester killed me and I never finished it.  We purchased the paints around 4th of July and they were having an amazing sale ($45 back on a 5 gallon bucket and $15 back on a gallon - I think we got an $135 gift card from them when it was all said and done - which we then used on the rug and a rug for the baby's room). 

Boys' room

The closet doors are off because they are the last thing that needs to be rid of tan (aka painted white). 

We are setting up Warb's new bed and dresser tonight and tomorrow we will bring in Martin's mattress and Meem's bed. 

I love the colors. They are making me so happy. Full post coming after Saturday!!

Boys' room - sneak peek

A quick before and after. 

Trim being installed!

Now I just need to paint the trim around the windows and floor. Goodbye tan! 

Closet number two

I forgot to take a true before picture.  Imagine that their is a makeshift shelf (see the boards to the right of the closet) that is laid across the side shelves.  And imagine that they put a short little clothing rack under it (nailed to the wall with different size nails, of course, because nothing is done properly in this house).  For a while I thought about leaving the lower shelves so the boys could hang up their own clothes, but it just took up too much space.  So I gutted the closet and started from what it used to be.  

Here is a picture of the gross, tan side shelves.  

And a picture of the closet once I removed all the makeshift shelves and patched the holes in the wall. 

After:

Shelves painted bright white. 

Top painted white. 

Bottom painted a custom green (it was from a can of lime green paint from my sister's bathroom that I added some blue and black to). 

Two days. Three ceilings.

Room 1:

Before - Everything covered in plastic.  

Also, everything removed from the room.  

After - WHITE CEILINGS!!!!

They make me so happy. 

Here is a teaser of what is to come in the boys' room.  The bottom is going to be a light blue and the top a dark blue. 

**We still have to caulk the molding and finish drywalling where the wall heaters came off before painting anymore. (Those are Jared jobs - I am not good at either - but our water heater broke this weekend and he spent most of the day replacing that and putting in a dryer vent, so he gets a pass). 

Room 2:

Before - guest room --> soon to be the baby's room

Plastic covering everything and stuff NOT moved out of the room. 

After - WHITE CEILINGS!!!

The walls are going to be a pale pale pale pink (or a pink tinted white). I cut in the boarders today and it is going to be so fresh and clean in there. 

Room 3:

I didn't get a good picture of the boys' current room. But I did paint the ceilings today. Yay! I didn't take out any of the furniture or make them clean it first and I covered about half the room in plastic.  I got braver as I went along with the ceiling painting.  

Before and After:

Banish the tan from the house!

Paint jobs to do:

1. Baby's closet
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

2. Baby's Room
(Off white, pinkish hue)

3. Boys' Room
(two tone, dark blue up top, light blue on bottom)

4. Boys' ClosetFinished: July 3rd

(I want to do something fun like lime green)

5. Guest Room
(no ideas yet)

6. Hallway
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

Possible jobs:
(all the ceilings are still TAN, but who is brave enough to paint a popcorn ceiling?  Me! I was brave enough)

7. Ceiling in Baby's RoomFinished: July 5th

8. Ceiling in Boys' Room

Finished: July 6th

9. Ceiling in Guest Room

Finished: July 6th

New windows

(new on left, old on right)

(Jared working on removing an old window)

We installed new windows in all the windows.  It took about a month to finish removing the old ones (and metal frames), install the new ones, insult around them, and trim them out.  Now they just need to be painted!!!

We would have loved to keep the ones that we had, but they were falling apart.  If the previous owner had painted them and kept them up, then we would have made them work.  However, they were rotting and the glass panes were falling out. These new ones are so much more airtight! Yay! I will miss the frost on the windows in the winter though... 

Picture of the front of the house coming sometime. 

(I really want to paint the front door now)

Painting List for Before Baby Comes

(I kind of like the wood trim - I wish they hadn't painted every other piece of wood trim with that horrible tan color that everything in the house is painted)

Paint jobs to do:

1. Baby's closet
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

2. Baby's Room
(Off white, pinkish hue)

3. Boys' Room
(two tone, dark blue up top, light blue on bottom)

4. Boys' Closet
(I want to do something fun like lime green)

5. Guest Room
(no ideas yet)

6. Hallway
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

Possible jobs:
(all the ceilings are still TAN, but who is brave enough to paint a popcorn ceiling?)

7. Ceiling in Baby's Room

8. Ceiling in Boys' Room

9. Ceiling in Guest Room

New porch lights

We did hang these new porch lights. 

So much better than these yellow ones. 

Now if it will just not rain on Saturday. 

Ps. We ordered new windows this week. We will get them in two or three weeks and start replacing them one or two at a time. Hooray for easy to clean windows and lower humidity inside because they don’t leak!! 

Porch - slow going

We haven’t really done much because it has rained or we have had plans the last two

Saturdays. Until the porch roof is fixed we can finish the rest of the porch. Oh well. It is getting lots of use.  And we did cut down the big Camilla that was in the way of traffic and ugly. We left the little ones at it’s base and hope to shape them into something better.  You can see where we cleaned out the floor beds and sort of made an estimated start of a path (we will get stepping stones eventually). And we moved the fire pit! Which just flows so much better now and is out of the way from the boys running down the hill. 

I’m loving my grill right off the porch. It is just turned around now so I don’t have to walk out th door of the porch and in the yard. I don’t even need shoes now. And the old

Doorway is the perfect size for the grill pad. Otherwise that piece of concrete looks a bit out of place. 

In other news, the weather has been gorgeous on days not named Saturday. 

And we have spent plenty of time outside walking around the zoo and park. 

And some trails nearby. 

And climbing trees. 

Yay for spring and 50-60 degree weather! It is my favorite. 

Planter boxes and mud

Today we bought tomatoes and peppers for half the boxes. They are color coded with the popsicle sticks. Yellow for cherry tomatoes, red for tomatoes, green for peppers.  The other halves have some garlic that had sprouted over the winter (so why not try to grow it) and some wildflowers (a mix, black eyed Susans, and zinnias). The boys and I planted those last week. Their endurance in gardening is about as much as filling the boxes with dirt. They are enthusiastic, but lacking in endurance. They have to start somewhere. 

We spend most of all day outside. The weather recently has been amazing. I should take them to a park or the zoo or the trails, but they have so much fun running around in the yard and digging in the dirt. 

They are usually covered in dirt by the end of the day and they leave muddy footprints all over the house. Oh well. It is good for their immune systems. 

But this is why the mudroom is the first big project on the list. Maybe next summer... Maybe. This year it is reroof the porch and replace the windows. 

Back porch update #3

I didn't do any of the work this weekend on the porch. But the walls are gone. Thursday night I stepped off a kitchen chair the wrong way and all my weight came down on my right ankle which was sideways. It swelled up a lot, but after a few days of resting it and keeping it mostly up, it seems to be on the mend. 

Here is where the planter boxes will be. The wood for them is sitting on the porch waiting for this weekend! The boys have been waiting since Christmas for this. The older two received real tools and we told them this would be one of their projects. My dad helped Martin build that birdhouse for his birthday. 

Unfortunately we won't be able to open the roof up and have exposed beams. They built the porch oddly, like everything we get into in our house. There are four layers of the ceiling before you get to the rafters. It just doesn't make sense to tear that much stuff out. So it stays... For now. 

It feels so much better out there! We are going to paint everything and finish the posts more decorative. Jared is working on repairing the roof and rotting soffit. And the light we get it the back room now is incredible! I don't need a lamp to read anymore. Hooray hooray for natural light!!!

A little before and after

It is going to look a little top heavy without the top being opened up too. What is that giant roof sections doing balanced on those tiny poles?  But it is better that before. And we will actually use it now. Hopefully when we paint it and finish the posts it will add some weight to the bottom half. 

Oh yeah. It needs new lightning fixtures too. I wanted to tear of the old ones and use that switch as a ceiling fan with the open ceiling. Now we aren't sure yet. That will be one of the last changes. Functional this first. 

Porch inspiration

This is the photo I sent Jared that finally convinced both of us to take the walls off the porch.

Porch update -day 2

So much light!!

I can't wait for a warmer day to be able to sit in the shade while the boys run around. It is a chilly 40°F today and I'm out basking in the sun to warm up. 

So much light!!