T Minus 5 Days....

 On the very real chance that you did not read yesterday's post, let me tell you that I am on a countdown to Saturday. I am on that countdown, because I am throwing a shower that day. And for some reason, we began so many projects all at once Some of them have nothing to do with the shower. Some of them were because we were waiting on cooler weather so we could get started.  Realistically, I would like for things to be done by Saturday. Did I mention that the Hubs and I both work full time?  And that we commute two hours per day?  Gluttons for punishment is what we are!

It may not seem like a lot, but we got a lot done today. I painted the part over the new door that had to be patched up, since our door was not as enormous as our window. When I got through and it was dry, you couldn't even tell that it wasn't part of the original wall. 

The Hubs and our son Luke got a lot of the new (to us) cabinets put back in. There are more to still put in, but we have decided this kitchen reno is going to be a three-part reno. We will get Phase 1 done by the shower. Phase 2 will involve buying some more cabinets, and we will do that soon. Phase 3 involves moving the sink and the stove and installing a set of double-ovens I bought, as well as electrical work. It's a big job, so we will probably not even start that until after the first of the year. It would be nice to get it all done at once, but we pay as we go, so we will have to save back up. 

By the end of the evening, the kitchen looked like this. I think we are getting our countertops on Wednesday or Thursday. We already have the new sink. We are still debating about the freshly stripped kitchen floor. It got the final coat of stripping today, then we had to take a hand sander around all the edges. We can't decide whether to stain the floor like the rest of the house ( a dark mahogany) or to checkerboard it. I'm leaning towards checkerboard. Of course. Because it is labor-intensive and all I have is time! ha! 

If you look closely, you can see that I got all the hinges on the cabinet doors. That was not hard to do, it just took a while. So when I was resting my feet, I was putting on hinges! 

This has nothing to do with anything. I just found this knot-thing in the wood and I thought it looked like an owl. What do you think? (Regardless, he is getting either stained or painted over soon!!) 

OK. Here is one of the other issues we are dealing with. I bought a huge (16-12.5) all wool carpet on Craigslist. It was in very good condition and even came with a thick pad. It had been rolled up for a little while and wrapped tightly in plastic. We rolled it out and put our furniture on it. Then during the week we started to get "bubbles" in the rug. (Our dog Abe, INSISTS on taking his toys to the middle of the living room each and every day. We take them back to his box and he brings them out one-by-one every day.)

So we moved all the furniture back off of the carpet, so the rug could "breath". That's what I read on the internet to do. So far, I don't see much difference. In the meantime, all the furniture is crammed on both ends of the room. 

Can you see the bubble in this picture?  Do you think we need to take the pad out from under the rug? Good grief. Nothing is ever easy! 

Like my kitchen table in the middle of the yard? That's where it sat while we were stripping down the floor. At least now it has made its way to the carport. See that giant piece of wood platform? In reality it is a deck that will hook on to the house so that we can use our new kitchen door. The Hubs has been working on it little by little in the back yard over the last month or so. He tore out an ugly deck we had and completely remade this new deck using the salvaged wood. 

It is so heavy we had to have two sons and the Hubs move it around to the new door. And even then, they just dragged it. By the end of the evening, it was standing, although it had not been cemented in yet. 

Plus, the Hubs will still have to make the railing and the stairs. I will stain it when it is all through. It will certainly help getting out our new kitchen door! 

Then in the meantime this week, my sister VERY GENEROUSLY gave us her children's playset. Believe me when I tell you it came with every piece imaginable. Some of the pieces we don't even have connected yet, because our (grand)babies are only 19 months and 7 months. So we put on the swings we thought they would enjoy. It has a fireman's pole still to attach and all kinds of other swings. It also has a climbing wall, a sandbox (with cover) a rope ladder, and a telescope in the fort. Is that a kids dream or what? Yes, that ball attaches somewhere too, but that is for later. I just have it sitting in the for for now. That is our neighbors orange treehouse you can see in the background. 

In addition to building a new deck, the Hubs also built this huge table out of the salvaged wood. I am going to paint and distress it, but it is not on my pre-shower agenda. The table is big enough to seat our entire family.....And takes most of the males to move it! We need to get some chairs for it too. (Notice the old fence we saved from the original yard landscaping?) 

My ever-generous sister also sent this cute picnic table for the (grand)babies as well. Her children could actually still fit at this table, but when she is ready to get rid of things, she does not waste time. We are the very lucky recipients of many of her hand-me-downs!

Then my son gathered all the rocks we had from an old wall (that was doing nothing but weirdly sitting in the middle of the yard) that we tore down. For now he put them around the magnolia tree. He has plans on how he is going to make them in to a patio. We'll see. But he moved each one himself and they are beastly rocks. I do appreciate that, so that they are all in one place now. 

Speaking of the magnolia tree, while they are beautiful and oh-so-Southern, they can also be a pain. All those red seeds are from the tree. They also shed huge leaves and their pods. That's part of having the beautiful trees. 

So my same son that moved all those rocks and helped with the deck and the cabinets and the stripping and everything else we ask him to do, raked up and cleaned up the entire backyard. With all the new amenities in the back yard, he thought it needed some sprucing up as well. Those sacks are mainly twigs and leaves and pods from the magnolia. The yard looks good now, although we need to sod it now. I Facebooked that it was probably too late to do that, and my oldest son text me back what to plant and how to do it in the fall! ha! I wish he would come do it for me! 

Now moving on from the yard we worked on today, we also took everything out of the laundry room and tried (again) to strip those floors. This is the third time we have tried. What you see above is glue remnants (and a little linoleum). It must have been some kind of massive glue. We have tried everything and can not get it up. I caved today and said we will have to cover these floors. I had wanted to checkerboard the laundry room since we moved here, but it looks like that will never happen. 

While we had everything outside, I repainted this storage piece that one of my sons's made in high school . 

Then I started in on this dresser that is also in the laundry room. It is the only piece of anything that I tried to paint that will not hold chalk paint. I worked on painting it a little today, but still need to finish it. It is a giant, and I mean GIANT pain. 

I took these pics at midnight, so I had to use the flash. The freshly painted storage piece was put back in the laundry room. It looks much better. 

Because it is supposed to storm tonight, the sawhorses and work table that we had outside came in to the middle of the laundry room as well. That is only temporary though. There is that dresser mocking me, waiting on the rest of its paint job. 

I took the chicken coops off from above the washer and dryer and put them on the storage piece my son made (for the time being). I am going to put one of the old kitchen cabinets above the washer and dryer. Right now it is sitting in the middle of the kitchen. 

Let me leave you with how the dining room still looks. The stove and the cabinets around the stove are still in there. The dishes that go in the new (to use) cabinets need put up. The wall to the left still needs bead board. The rest of the bead board has been caulked and is ready for its final coat of paint. I plan to do that when I get home from school tomorrow. In the meantime I have to be out the door in 5 hours and I still have laundry to fold. T Minus 5 days and counting was a successful day, but man oh man, I still have a long way to go!