{Recap} Half Relaxing, Half Working Weekend

We finally did it. We finally managed to carve out some down time this past weekend, for the first time in months!

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights were spent building a new cat door and ramp for the kitties, so they could finally go outside and explore their new backyard. Which is what part of the wood was for that you saw in my Wednesday night post.

I'm going to do a full post on how we built the cat door, since there's a lot of details on how to both make it safe for the kitties, and how to make it secure so nobody can break in through it. But here's a look at the mostly finished (as in, good enough for the first weekend to let the cats use it) set up.

We finished the cat door late Friday night, and just shut the door to the den overnight, so the cats wouldn't find the door without us around.

Saturday morning we decided to go introduce ourselves to our new neighbors. Gotta get that out of the way early, so it's not awkward to be waving at strangers when you pull into the cul-de-sac! I also made some quick little cards with our names and contact info on it to give out, which worked well to leave a short note on the back for the neighbors that weren't home.

Then, it was time to get down to cat/relaxing business.

And This Is Why We Probably Need A Trailer

And a trailer hitch installed on my husband's car. Or else a truck.

Getting building supplies home from Lowes is NOT easy without something, that's for sure! Hence, tying plywood to my little Civic, with an 8 foot 4x4 out the sunroof, driving the two miles home very slowly, while my husband followed me in his own fully loaded car.

Yep, we know how to have fun on a Wednesday night! Getting stuff to make an outdoor cat door and ramp, wood to cover the gross pink pantry carpet, and supplies for various other projects to work on this weekend!

But seriously, how do you get stuff home without tying it to the car? I don't think I want to rent the hardware store truck every time!

Why Yes, You CAN See 7 Types of Flooring From Here

Today I thought I'd share with you one of the charming kind of annoying aspects of our 1970s house.

There is one place in the house, the breakfast nook, where you can see no less than seven kinds of flooring. Yes, you read that right, from just one vantage point! Seven!

Overall our house has eleven different kinds of floors, not including the concrete in the garage. Which is probably pretty standard in older homes, before cohesive flooring and flow were important to people (I can just imagine the previous owners getting excited about putting in a different type of tile or laminate in each room. Yay, so different and unique!).

But these days, it's kind of crazy to have so many kinds of floors, especially when they can all be seen from one place!

Standing in the breakfast nook, turning to my left, you can see the cheap laminate wood floors (#1). But wait, look through that doorway at the other end of the room, you can see worn Berber going up the stairs to the bonus room (#2).

Then, I take a quarter turn to my right, to look down the entry hall, out to the foyer. Hall, nook and kitchen tile (#3), with a brick floor in the foyer (#4), and no real transition between them. And OH, don't forget that *new* brown shag carpet (#5) going up the stairs! (Yes, that shag carpet is only about 6 months old. In the listing photos, they still had grandma pink carpet upstairs. Why, oh why anyone would get shag carpet these days....although I must admit, it is comfortable under your feet. Just god help you if you drop anything on it, you may never find it again!).

We Survived!

I can barely type, my fingers are still so sore (along with every part of my body!), but we did it. We survived our 8th move in 11 years!

I asked my husband which he'd rather be doing on Saturday, unloading our 3rd and final load from the 17 foot Uhaul, or driving 12 hour days across the country, like our last move. He said unloading, but finally agreed we should hire movers again next time. Moving everything ourselves from a split level house to a two story house took about 15 hours total, and toward the end we just started piling stuff in the dining room, to save ourselves a trip up another flight of stairs.

Yesterday we played with the kitties and let them explore their new house (they've figured out how to do laps up and down the two staircases, so that's fun to listen to), got our desks set up in both our offices so we'd be ready to work this morning, and got our couch, coffee table and TV unpacked. Baby steps, until our muscles aren't so sore. After all, we've got the next 30 years to unpack!

Anyway, just thought I'd check in. With work this week, slowly unpacking, and just adjusting to our new house, I don't have many interesting projects to blog about, but I do have some recipes from Easter I've been meaning to share, which hopefully I'll have time to type up later this week.

For now, I'll leave you with a picture of my new view out my office window. I feel like I'm in a tree house, and hopefully before long I'll be spotting some deer while I work!

Hope everyone had a much more restful weekend than we did! And has anyone else moved more times than we have (8 times in 11 years)? I am so looking forward to never moving again if I can help it!

Painting Updates and Time Expectations {Spoiler: Much Longer Than You Think!}

Well, this past week has been very exhausting! And productive too, I guess.

Since last Tuesday I've managed to get all of the baseboards, crown moulding and door trim painted a nice shiny white in our family room. And let me tell you, painting trim is no joke. As in, takes at least 4 times longer than you think it will. Maybe even 6 times longer, if you're dealing with dark wood trim. And I'm one of those people who already doubles what I think for time estimates. As in, I think I'll be ready to go in 5 minutes, so I say I'll be ready in 10.

But no, trim is the hugest PITA ever. I dare say, even worse than the popcorn ceiling removal! Well, less messy, but soooo much more tedious and time consuming. Turning the dark wood trim in our house to white took 4 freakin' coats of primer and paint (2 of primer, 2 of semi gloss) to adequately cover it. Sigh. I am suffering from claw-hand syndrome, from gripping my trim paint brush so much!

But let me show some before, progress, and "after" (aka, as good as it's getting before we move in this weekend, but still not a true after, since a lot more work is needed) photos, before I share some painting tips I found useful.

The very, very before, with grandma-pink walls, back when the railing and post were still dividing the dining nook from the family room:

Progress, with blue walls, and of course, the smooth and popcorn-free ceilings:

And now, with pretty and modern white trim!

A Birthday Backyard Baby Deer

Recently I won a $50 gift card to Home Goods, and with all of that money burning a hole in my pocket, I decided that on my birthday this week, I would go spend it on something for our new house that we completely didn't need. Hey, free money has no rules, right?

So I wandered up and down the aisles of Home Goods for a solid 45 minutes, weighing my options. $50 bucks can either go a long way, or not even cover half of one item in that store, and you just never know what you'll find. And with no real idea of what I wanted, it took looking at everything they had to make my decision. I was just waiting for something (or multiple somethings) to jump out and grab me.

At first I lingered near the entrance, drooling over pretty vases for the many built in shelves in our new house. But when I wandered by the garden section, this little guy definitely jumped out at me.

Introducing Bernard, our new little stone carved baby deer, so we'll always have a deer in our backyard!

Easter Inspiration Comes To Life

Since last week I posted my Easter BBQ inspiration board, I thought I'd do a follow up with some photos of the decor and yummy food.

Here's my inspiration board again:

And here's how things turned out, with an indoor table set up with appetizers, and our outdoor dining table where we ate dinner on the deck.

Easter BBQ Inspiration Board

As I'd mentioned on Wednesday, we're having family over on Sunday for Easter. Not that we actually celebrate the holiday as it's traditionally meant to be celebrated...but I can't resist the pastel colors, and bunnies and chicks!

I've been gathering recipes and easy decor inspiration on Pinterest, and here's a quick inspiration board I put together in Picasa, to round up the party's look:

From right to left: Easter Rice Crispy Cupcakes, Easter Nests, Hot Cheesy Crab, Spinach and Artichoke Dip, BBQ Burgers, Cheesecake-Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs, Pasta Salad, Peeps, Corn on the Cobb, Blue and Green Dinnerware, Yellow Lattice Napkins, Easter Egg Garland, Flowers and Peeps Centerpiece, Using Grass Wraps for Decor, Napkin Decor (except I'll be using a carrot), Hanging Eggs, Yellow Lattice Tablecloth, and Broccoli Salad (but my mom's recipe, not this one)

Yes, this might be a little overkill for an Easter BBQ with only 4 people attending. But whatever. I'm pretending that this is also in part for my birthday, since I haven't gotten a proper birthday celebration in....so long I can't even remember. This year my husband is going to be out of town on my actual birthday day, and last year all we did was watch our movers unload our furniture and go to Target for cleaning supplies, since we'd just arrived in Raleigh the night before. So this year I'm just going to make myself happy with cute Easter decorations and yummy food, instead of being bummed that my big 3-0 isn't really being celebrated.

Saturday night I'll be knocking out the garland and hanging eggs decorations, and most all of the food items can easily be prepared ahead of time on Sunday morning before our guests arrive, leaving me time to straighten the house and get ready.

I've been hanging onto a sundress from H&M that I haven't had a chance to wear yet, and I think it will be perfect for Easter. It's similar to this material, but mine is in a different cut.

Source

I'm excited to have a brief break from house projects. It will be our last time having people over at our rental house, and I've been itching to work on something other than just painting, so I can't wait until Sunday!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a happy Easter!

 

{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!