{Wedensday} What's Up

A random mid-week post for ya!

First, how is it already April? March straight disappeared in a haze of paint fumes or something!

Speaking of paint fumes....still working on painting over at the new house, pretty much every day. This past weekend we scraped the popcorn ceilings in the entry foyer, living room and dining room, and I've been getting a coat of primer on the ceilings each night this week. Tonight we'll get the coat of ceiling paint on, and then clean up.

A couple of more thoughts on popcorn ceiling removal--unpainted ceilings come off SO much easier! The first set of rooms we tackled were painted, so required a lot more muscle to do the scraping. These less used formal rooms weren't ever painted by the previous owners, and the popcorn material came off like butter. But on the down side, the unpainted popcorn was a whole lot more dusty once it was on the ground, so we had to be extra careful to wear dust masks the whole time. Plus, working over carpet meant we had to do a really good job taping down our plastic sheeting. But back on the positive side, doing these extra rooms only cost us about $25 for plastic and tape, since we already had all of the tools, primer and paint left over from our first weekend of popcorn ceiling removal.

I also had the joy of completely resurfacing the walls in the kitchen this weekend. Just one of many, many things I've looked at around the house, while muttering under my breath "OMG, I hate these people." Probably they must have had wallpaper up at one point, and did a really crappy job of removing it. Or else they're friends with the Lord of the Dance, and would frequently have him come over and dance facing the kitchen walls. Or possibly they thought it would be a fun game to attach battering rams to their cat's heads and watch them run into the walls. Otherwise, I have no idea how they could have dented the walls so horribly.

This was after my first pass at puttying the walls on either side of our pantry, and along the wall where our fridge will go.

After I let this dry, and sanded it all by hand, I then went back and puttied it all again, over the entire wall, scraping it with a putty knife until it was as smooth as possible. Yes, primer was needed after this step, and no, I haven't gotten to actually apply paint in the kitchen yet, because of all of these extra added steps. Apparently painting prep work takes about 2-3 times longer than I expect, every single time. But all of the work will be worth it in the end, to have non dented walls. I couldn't have lived with smoother ceilings than walls, after all!

In other, non house related things, work is slowly killing me. I'm still working 10-12 hour days, with no end in sight. Which of course makes house progress slower. If only I had a couple of weeks off, instead of a couple of hour chunks of time, we'd be a lot further. But oh well, gotta make money to spend it on furniture and painting supplies!

Luckily I'll get a little break this weekend. Friday night we're going to go see the Hunger Games (finally!) and out to dinner to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Then Saturday night I'll be going to a wine and crafting party, to work on Easter decorations. The night before the holiday isn't too late to start and finish crafting, right?!? Sunday we'll be having my brother and sister in law over for Easter dinner, so I've been checking out quick and easy recipes on Pinterest. Cooking and entertaining haven't been a priority for me lately, but hey, throw some Peeps and Cadbury Mini Eggs on everything, and you can call it Easter food!

Hope everyone is having a great week. I might not be back to update for the rest of the week, since I've got very little time to edit photos and write posts, so hope you have a great Easter too!