Making some head way....feeling more like a home

Remember how I said I was going to be blogging more regularly...oh...ummm....

Yeah, 

I'm totally playing the "busy card" sorry.

I have no idea how Young House Love is always blogging when they are so busy! (I mean, yeah I know, our situations are a bit different, and they are getting paid to do what they do...but still! I'm impressed.)

Ok so last I left you, we had gotten sick at new years.

So we are better. It took a while. And we threw in an ear infection about a week later for Jasmine, just for good measure. But we are all better now.

So somewhere in the last two weeks wow almost three weeks since I last wrote, we accomplished this stuff:

Blake's parents and grandma came to visit/ see our house for the first time. And while they were here, Blake's dad helped Blake lay our vinyl sheet flooring out in the sun room.

You may remember our debacle buying this flooring, and how I was worried that it wasn't going to look right in there, since I didn't actually get to pick it out. But it looks fantastic. I'm not sure I would have picked this floor out of all the flooring in the world, but I'm seriously glad it happened. Fate chose better than I would have. You might recall that we thought vinyl sheet was our best choice out there (we thought real tile would be too cold -- this room isn't really going to be heated much, since it has electric heat, and we didn't want carpet out there getting muddy.) And if I had over thought it I'd probably have tried to find one with a tile look, but it's really hard to pull that off convincingly, especially in this scenario where I didn't want kitchen looking stuff. So what we ended up with is a concrete look, and it has just the right tones for this space. I think its perfect! I love it. (Good job Blake.)

On a side note about the room: I'm thinking we will leave the wood.(Which is why its so great the vinyl has perfect tones for the room as is.) At first I was totally set on painting the space. And Blake was totally set on keeping the wood. Then in one of those rom-com meets real life moments we literally told each other at the exact same time that we would be ok with their idea. What got me to his side? The fact that the wood is cedar. I couldn't tell that with the pet smells in the house, but once the house was clean, I walked in there and was enchanted by the cedar scent. (I've always loved the smell of cedar. I had this tiny cedar box I got on vacation as a kid and I would just open it and smell it all the time.) So I don't think I can say good bye to the smell. (Paint would kill it.) So I'm gonna learn to love the look and make it work for me. And I know Blake will love keeping the wood.

Anyway... more stuff we've done.

I also finished painting all the closets white --- finally.

Jasmine's Room -- those are mostly play princess dresses up there. Lucky girl.

So that means I've gotten all our bed room stuff unpacked finally!

Ruby's Room -- before I unpacked it

In our room we are doing drywall work. Remember that weird built-in in our bedroom? We tore that out, and it broke some holes in the drywall (it was REALLY nailed in.) 

So Blake and his dad patched those, and Blake's been sanding and remudding it for a bit when he gets the time. I think one more sanding is needed before I can paint in here.

Speaking of paint. I was DYING To paint our eating area. We have this yellow all over our house, and I DO NOT like it. But of all the areas it was in, the eating area was the most irritating to me. Just because I was in this room a lot, its the heart of the home, and therefore I was staring at yellow a lot.  So I made that the room I HAD to paint first. And paint it I did. 

And life has felt seriously so much better since. It just has made me feel at home, and like I am getting somewhere in this house.

The ceiling trim was waiting for white paint...yellow taunting me! It's been fixed.

Its a crazy color -- I like it a lot, but its really hard to really say which color it is. I wanted it to look like it does in the top picture. But often it looks much bluer. Sometimes its plain grey. And in other lights its totally different. For instance, I took the plastic paint try upstairs, and in our bathroom it literally looks tan. (I saw it on a different day and was asking myself "What room did I paint that color?" I didn't recognize it at all. ) But overall I really like it. I'm hoping though that when I get different lighting in the rooms (currently its florescent) it will look a tiny bit less blue and more towards green like it actually is. But no matter what -- its WAY better than yellow.

I got a dresser for free from craigslist and in the mean time between stuff I am (slowly, very slowly) making it over. 

And apparently I make over dressers in the entry way. Why not -- its not like our house make sense right now. I think its gonna turn out pretty cool. At least I have hight hopes for it.

Our downstairs bathroom got a MINI make over.

Before

I finally got around to putting a mirror up. I had taken the old one off like day one, and left nothing there... forever. And I finally needed to fix that. We hung a mirror we've had since our first house in there. I'm really liking it. I'm just not sure It will work in the finished space, time will tell.

Progress

And I also had Blake switch out the light fixture for me. (I should also say, it was really Blake who hung the mirror.)

I found this cute outdoor lantern for $3 at Restore and thought it would be a good temporary replacement for the very strange light that was in there before.

Since the light isn't centered over the mirror I had to figure out a light that would look ok to the side. After looking a lot at stores and online, I saw this cute $3 lantern and thought it would just be great. 

Progress

(We MIGHT move the location of the electrical later. But the ceiling is low in here and it might be tight to put a light over the mirror because of that. So maybe I just keep my lantern forever?) The lantern somehow really makes the room's portions feel better.

I'm not sure if I'll pain the "new" light later, its weathered bronzey brass right now, I need to see the space put together before I decide.

But yeah the bathroom feels better already. (But big plans ahead for more.)

And then just today my mom came down and helped pull all the wallpaper down in the kitchen! WOOHOO!! It feels soo much better with it gone!

My mom peeling wallpaper behind the fridge

Doesn't the tile look more tolerable without flowers in sight? I think so.

Before: Tulip Wallpaper

And After she got that done, she hung out with the girls so I could fix this space.
The brown paneled hallway hole.
It goes from the eating area of the kitchen to:
Garage - straight ahead.
Family Room - to the left.
Laundry Room - to the right.

So I got to prime it for paint today.
The paint guy told us it needed bonding primer to make sure paint will stick. So I primed away.
There is also some paneling on the other side of the laundry room wall, just one wall, that I primed (after some major cleaning back behind the dryer....it seemed like a decade of lint was GLUED to the floor.)

Part way done priming

It's not even painted yet, and its already like 20,000 times nicer.

I also primed the stair risers right there.

HUGE difference

And the funny (super shallow closet) doors.

I don't know how long it would have taken me to get that stuff done without my mom around. It was huge having her help!

So that's where we are at.

Thanks for putting up with my negligence. :)

(If I don't get better at blogging progress...you can still see what I'm doing on Instagram. (I have a button on the side if you wanna follow me.) That's a little easier for me to keep up with. :) )