Happy Sunday!

Children's Letters to God, Coughlin-Saunders, Sept 13, 2009

Our friends' son, Carson, was in it. He is the one in red on the table.

We had a great time at the musical with our friends

Steven and me

Leah and her sons

Brad and his son

Kayley...at Cane's before the play

We took Vivian to see the musical Childrens Letters To God.  It was very cute.  After we arrived home, Vivian spent an hour dancing and singing!  I knew she would like this!  She watches a lot of the old musicals on Netflix.

Yesterday, before we went to work on our rent house, she had to dress up and have a fashion show.  She dug out her play microphone from Cracker Barrel and made me introduce her.  She also had a solution for world peace and some other things I couldn’t quite understand.

Vivian's entry

Exit

Coming back for a curtsy

Even though I was still in my nightgown, she insisted I participate in the fashion show too.  So, I strutted my stuff, complete with magic wand and all.  NO THERE ARE NO PICTURES OF THAT!  Thank God!

countertops and sink in...need to install pulls

The paint it took to make this house look decent again

I also posted the after bathroom pic here.  I put it with the before pics so you would have something to compare it too.  It is far from done, but, progress nevertheless.

Anyway, we had a good weekend. We hope you did too.  Back to work tomorrow.

Andrea

Work accomplished this weekend

Well, its that time of year again.  School is back in full force and my blogging is down to an all time low.  Work on our recent bungalow purchase has not slacked off though.  Friday, after we ate, we went over to 94 Bungalow and painted the kitchen.  Steven primed it Thursday night all by his lonesome self.  I have to say, I was impressed!  The kitchen is an old time bead board type both wall and ceiling.  So, Steven had to prime the wall, ceiling, trim and windows….basically everything in the room.  I painted the walls and ceiling with Glidden’s Cozy Light.

Kitchen before 1

Kitchen before 2

Kitchen before 3

Kitchen before 4

It was pretty gross, as you can tell from the pictures above.  It looked like the house was starting to be remodeled in most of the other rooms, but the kitchen had not been touched.  It has grease all up the wall and the large vinyl linoleum piece they had in there was peeling up around the room.  After we scrubbed the walls, scraped the peeling paint down, primed, painted and redid the floor, this is what it looks like…beware, it is not a true AFTER photo as we have a few details to finish, but you can see the difference:

Kitchen in process 1

 

Kitchen in process 2

The spots that you that are not painted very thoroughly are where the cabinets are going to go.  The cabinets will run along under the window and then “L” on the wall opposite the window.  Didn’t Steven do a good job on the floor?  I thought it came out very nice.  We bought some generic ceramic tiles and terra cotta grout.  Steven is going to install the cabinets sometime this week, and I will finish them off with a red chestnut stain and a coat of poly. 

Kitchen floor

Cabinets waiting to be installed and finished

 ***Update: Click here for updated pictures of the kitchen***

Here is a picture of Vivian doing “karate” with the shop vac attachments in front of the cabinets where I was trying to take pictures.

Vivian looking fierce, trying to do karate

Hi-yah!

Finally, I put a coat of black paint on this thing.  I think it makes it look better.  I need to get Steven to make some doors for the cabinet.  I tore out the cabinet pieces on the top half.  They were falling off anyway.  I figured whoever rents it can use it for a Kchotke shelf.  Hopefully, in the near future, I will post pictures of the complete house.  But for now, here are the in process ones.

Built In Before

Built in after

For more pictures of the transformation of this room, click here.  I painted the front three rooms of the house the same color, Timothy Straw by Glidden.  It makes it easier on the eye than seeing two shades of orange and one room bright Irish green.  We have a lot of finishing work to do, which we will try to accomplish on Labor day weekend, but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Once we get this one off of our books, we will be able to return to OUR house projects!

Happy weekend everyone!

Andrea

Bungalow Work on Memorial Day

Since we have not done a whole lot with the new bungalow rent house we purchased, we decided to go over there today to clean up, paint and plan the next stage for this house.  I painted the dining room and then, somewhere in there, I got bored and took my new SLR camera around to see what kind of pictures I could get out of it.  I have bought two books on digital SLR photography…by the way…so, I wanted to try out some of the tips in the book.  Even though they are not phenomenal, you have to admit that these photos are MUCH better than what my old dying digi cam was taking last month.  The last picture cracks me up.  It looks like Vivian needs to go on a FEED THE CHILDREN campaign poster!  LOL.  I found her in the living room eating a piece of leftover Popeyes chicken.  She looked so funny in her do-rag (I wear one when I paint and you know the old saying, monkey see, monkey do, monkey has to have one too!)  Although, I do believe she looks a LOT better than I do in a do-rag.

Bye bye orange peel!!  Hello Timothy Straw by Benjamin Moore!

This house has a beautiful yard.  Since it borders our yard, we are toying with the idea of moving our property lines and having it resurveyed, etc.  I cut several blooms from this very old hydrangea bush.  I am also toying with the idea of digging the thing up and planting it somewhere in our back yard.  I found this pink looking bloom.  I am not sure what it is.  I can’t tell if it is a weed or if it is some sort of old flower.  Anyone know?

Andrea

Pretty in Pink

My daughter and I have been enjoying our Easter holiday off.  We have accomplished many things this week.  One thing, of particular interest to her, we painted her nightstand and hat rack pink to match her room.  Today, hopefully, we will put up her new curtains and she will have a cute little girl room.

Paint it up babe!

Before...

Q: What happens when you paint latex paint over oil base paint?

A: Simple.  This happens:

(This is the Craftsman style bungalow next door we purchased in January.  For other related posts, click on the tag Bungalow)

Kitchen Door

And this:

Bedroom Door

 It appears that someone found a sale on green oil base paint and painted every door and baseboard in this house.  Then, later, a super smart person painted flat latex paint over the oil base paint.  Result?  A house full of peeling paint for me to scrape off and start over!   YAY!

Kitchen Wall

Dining Room Arch

Butler's Pantry

I am scraping, sanding and peeling off the paint at present.  When I am finished, I will cover the lovely green with white oil base paint.

Yay for me!

Andrea

Grand Finale

I thought I was finished working on projects for the weekend, thus my last post, touting all of my accomplishments for the weekend, was a little premature.  After coming home from church this afternoon, I decided that I was bored and wanted to work on another project.  You see, I had this little quart of red paint staring at me, sending me little messages saying he wanted to be used on my ugly swing out front.  Who can resist subliminal messages from a red paint can?  I can’t!  I love little shots of red throughout the house and, in this case, the porch.

So, without further persuasion, I managed to get my husband and daughter into the act and we sanded, cleaned, painted and painted and painted (its red remember, you have to put about 3-4 coats of red paint in order to get the correct color desired) and painted.  Then my husband rehung the swing in a different spot on the porch.  We have been saying for 2 1/2 years that we would like it in another spot — out of the sun in the later afternoon and evening. 

Before...

...After

In its new spot (ignore the peeling porch paint

While we were at it, we took down the porch lights, cleaned the 40 plus years of bugs and grime out and off of them and rehung them.  We also changed out the lightbulbs (I know this is exciting news, huh?  I am sure watching paint dry on my swing would be more exciting) with CFLs.  I do have to say, coming home tonight from church, our porch was lit up like Christmas! 

Sometime around Wednesday, I am going to try out my new belt sander on the porch rails, along with my new dremel bits on the spindles.  I am hoping to be able to prep them so I can prime and paint them next week.  I have a carpenter coming this week also to give me an estimate on repairing two column  bases and making some correct sized tongue and groove porch flooring.  If his estimate is not too high, we will have him rock on with fixing the porch.  Then, later this Spring, or early Summer, I will sand and paint the porch!!!!!!!!!  YAY!!!!!!!!!  That will be a Snoopy happy dance day!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Andrea

Accomplishments of the Weekend

YAY!  We are finished painting the windows at our bungalow rent house.  You may have remembered us complaining about it here.  Anyway, here is the before picture when we bought it over a year ago (this picture is before we did ANY work to it) and here is the now picture after the windows have been painted:

Before...

...After

I know it is not a huge improvement.  But it does look a lot better from the street. 

Also, yesterday evening, we pressure washed OUR house in preparation to sand and scrape the porch rails and porch walls to paint.  Here are Vivian’s pictures.  She was bored, so I gave her my camera to play with:

Yay! My legs. At least I got a pedicure yesterday.

And this is how we ended our day:

Vivian and Mercedes

Notice me in the background painting while my daughter is loafing!    Oh to be four again.  Hope you got everything accomplished this weekend that you had on your list!

Andrea

Wow! What an Improvement!

During my Mardi Gras vacation, I decided to paint the living areas of the bungalow we recently purchased.  Gone is the garish orange and the brilliant green.  In its place is a neutral, light green called Timothy Straw by Glidden.   By painting both connecting spaces the same color, it makes the space look bigger and less like a fun house.  The room you can see through the swinging door, which is another bright shade of orange, will be painted the same color.  The hall, which you can see from the living areas, will be painted Cream Tan, which is also by Glidden and on the lighter side of the same paint chip as Timothy Straw.

BEFORE:

Living Room and entryway

AFTER:

Once we refinish the floor and put down a baseboard shoe, I am going to repaint the trim in a white oil based paint.  Right now it is painted with a flat wall paint!  So, every time you touch it, it gets smudged.  Who would paint their trim in flat paint?  Insane!  I wish I had the time to strip the paint off of all of it.  There is a small chip missing on one of the columns and underneath all 3-4 layers of paint, the trim boasts of beautiful wood.  If I were going to live there, I would take the time and scrape all of the paint off.  However, I have enough paint stripping projects in my own house to contend with.  For the time being, it will get painted and if someone buys the house from us in the future, I will let the paint stripping become their headache.  Right now, I just have to get the thing back in good condition (New HVAC, new windows…most of them are broken or cracked….new appliances, floors refinished, new light fixtures, etc.) so we can rent it out without having to make two house payments! 

This color turned out so well, I can’t wait to get the rest of the house painted! 

Andrea

Pictures from the “What Were They Thinking?” Archive #2

Before I sign off of the laptop for the night, I will post the Living Room realtor walk through pic, along with a most recent one from this past Christmas.

Before:

For the all of the before and after living room pics, click here.

Andrea

Projects – 2008 in Review

I was sitting around trying to think about what we did all year.  It seems like 2008 was a slow year for us as far as the DIY scene was concerned.  In the early part of the year, around March, we spent a lot of time getting construction bids and filling out mountains of paperwork for our construction loan, only for the subprime mortgage crisis to hit and, in the end, we ended up scratching the whole deal.  I had to go back through my pictures to see what exactly we DID accomplish this year.  I was glad to find proof that our year was not wasted.  Here is a pictorial review of our year:

January:

Finished the rent house (Hallelujah!) and took our three year old employee to Chuck-E-Cheese.  Hey, we had to pay her somehow for all that painting she did!

February:

We celebrated our five year anniversary

March:

My birthday!  Ahem….anyway.  In 8 hours, I cleaned, primed and put two coats of paint on the living room walls.  It wouldn’t have taken me 8 hours normally except that I: 1) painted alone; 2) pushed a very heavy 10 foot ladder around the room 8 times while I painted the middle and top of the room …twice! I have 13 feet ceilings.  [is it 13 foot, or 13 feet?]

April:

In April, I redid an ugly 80’s dresser for Vivian’s room and, for storage, we revamped an old shelf my brother made many years ago by adding crown moulding to it and painting it.

May:

We took down the ugly drop ceiling in the attic.   We also painted the Master Bedroom.

June:

I sanded, repainted and recovered an old chair I bought for $5.00 at a junk store.  I also managed to tick off the entire Ratcliff family and get called a potstirrer.   Hahaha….that’s definitely a new one for me!

July:

I started this blog. Yay!  I pulled a metal tray on wheels out of the garbage and remade it into a plant stand for my porch.  Click here for the details and pictures.  Even my husband could not believe I wanted something this ugly.  But it turned out well.

My new plant stand

August:

We went to the Philippines.  What a life changing experience!  Click here to see more photos of the trip.  In case you cannot figure out who I am, I am the very white girl in the middle!

handumanan

September:

Vivian’s Birthday.   Hurricane Gustav hit Cenla.  That was very interesting.  It took us about a month to recover and get all of the debris cleared and everything back to normal.  I can’t complain though, we did not endure anything like New Orleans did.  Click the link above to see pictures of that fun.

October:

Was definitely not a project month.  I was caught up watching the media and reading the news regarding  local and national politics.  I did get a call from the Louisiana Historic Preservation Office in Baton Rouge telling me that they want to put my street on the National Register.  Which reminds me…..I need to give her a call.  That nomination is supposed to be sent to Washington in April.  I am definitely going to help make sure that happens!

Precious!

November:

I repainted and reappointed the guest room and stripped a fireplace mantel.

December:

We worked on the attic/loft area so we can add another bathroom upstairs.  Steven put up two porch lights in the back.  Steven stripped a door and a transom down to the bare wood.  We also stripped some paint in the hall that was caked on to the wainscoting.  Click here for December’s project pictures.

I guess all in all it was not a bad year.  We did not get as much as we wanted accomplished.  We didn’t nearly come close to the amount of work we did in 2007.  Oh well, put it on the list!  It will get done eventually!

Andrea