Gift Card Love

It's a gifty time of year.  Less than a week before Christmas, knee deep in Hanukkah, my birthday is in about 2 weeks.  My dad's birthday was last week as was my mother-in-law's birthday.  It's really gifty for my family right now.  I'd like to speak up in favor of the much looked-down-upon gift card.
I get why the gift card gets a bad wrap (get it?).  They are considered "impersonal" and "lazy".  I guess it's not as "personal" as monogrammed towels, a new laptop for a blogger whose computer was spat into by a preschooler, or a handknit scarf in the colors of that person's Hogwarts House.  But honestly, how personal and caring is it to just get something for someone when you honestly don't know what they want or need?  
I know I'm not alone in not knowing what people want or need.  I love all my siblings, but I don't know whether my brother would appreciate cashmere socks or whether my sister wants a new Trollbead or something.  And there are truly people in my gift list who have everything they need, and it pains me year after year to think up something they don't already have.  It makes me dislike gift giving and that's not really in the spirit of the season.  
There are gift cards for every conceivable store, restaurant, website, and even generic Visa/Amex gift cards.  It can be a *personal* gift.  Get your crafty sister a card for Joann/Michaels.  Get your reading mom a card for Amazon or Barnes & Noble.  If you have a dear friend who has just lost weight, a card to their favorite clothing store might be really appreciated.  A gift to a favorite restaurant can give new parents an easy excuse for a date night.  And those Visa/Amex cards are a blessing to those whose budgets are extra tight for any reason (students, job changes, new homes).    
Honestly, I can't think of a time when I've received a gift card and thought, "Gee that wasn't very nice".  Actually I *love* gift cards.  I love shopping, I love picking something out for myself without the guilt of paying retail or feeling like something is a little frivolous.  
So if you give a gift card - trust me, it's not lazy or impersonal.  It can be just the right thing.  And if you get a gift card - trust me, you will enjoy it.

Boy's Bedroom Update - Reveal!

After a looooong day on Saturday, we're DONE with Chris' bedroom!  I gotta say, it's like night & day in terms of his ability and desire to play up there.  Saturday was the painting day - I started around 11 AM and finished at dinner time.  Chris slept down in Sarah's bedroom that night so we could air out any left over "wet paint" smells, and so we could assemble the furniture.

Let's take a look at the room before:

And here's how it is now:

What do you think?
The color is called Young Cadet - so it's a blue-gray or a gray-blue.  Depends on the lighting, time of day, and your outlook on life LOL.
We kept the bed & dresser the same as before.  We have added a new bookshelf (a 2x2 Expedit) and a toy storage/play surface (a 3 bay Trofast unit) both from Ikea.  
We also put up some vinyl wall stickers that I bought from Amazon.com.  The showpiece (LOL) is the large Buzz Lightyear.  I know that a lot of home bloggers stay away from characters and vinyl wall stickers.  And while they're not classy or they might not be seen on the pages of design magazines, the reality I live in is that this is a bedroom & play room for a 3 year old little boy.  It's not my room, it's his and if he wants a 3 foot Buzz Lightyear, then who am I to say no?  He loves it!!  

Boy's Bedroom Update - Let's go!

Last year or so we did quite a bit with our daughter's bedroom.  It's been tons of fun to do projects in there - big ones & small ones.  A quick rundown of projects - built out the closet, painted, new trim, created a memo board, and other stuff.  It's not done either (nothing ever is LOL), but it's time to shift our focus a bit.

Poor Chris.  He's suffering as the second child (not really).  His bedroom used to be Sarah's room, so when she moved out into her big-girl bedroom, the walls were princess purple.  And they have remained princess purple ever since.  Painting it wasn't the highest priority because of a few things, not the least of which was that Chris was an extraordinarily destructive toddler.  I didn't want to scrub, patch and paint walls only to have them dinged, scratched, and scribbled on immediately.   Well, the time has come!  The room has been adequate but a bit sparse in furnishings (but safe for his whirlwind lifestyle).  He's grown up a lot though in the last year and a half and now that he's approaching his fourth b-day, I think we can safely bring a few things back for him! The first thing we need to do is take a look at what we're working with - BEFORE PHOTOS!!  Jason already started patching up the holes & imperfections in the walls so that's what all the white stuff is :)   ENJOY!

The room is long and somewhat narrow.  Plenty of space for everything we need - bed & dresser (we are keeping what we have for now), toy storage, book shelf, and plenty of space to play!

Kid Fun - Sorting Beans!

I'm not one of those bloggers who spends their days coming up with unique/cheap/sensory games for their kids.  My kids play video games.  They play with legos.  They play with my phone.  Every once in a while though, I come up with something a little different.  Today it was an inspirational bag of mixed beans from the grocery store!

I hate beans, so when I saw this bag of beans, it looked more like arts & crafts materials than food, but it can be a sensory toy too.

  It's a pretty simple idea - dump some mixed beans onto a tray or bin (or onto a table if you're brave) and have your preschooler sort them by type, size, color, shape...  it's up to him & you. 

 
We sorted into an ice cube tray because I had one handy, but you cold sort into an egg carton, a muffin tin, little bowls, or even just piles.  The idea is to work on concepts like big/small, same/different, colors, shapes.  And it's fun for kids to play with them.  They have a nice tactile feel, too. 

With the stormy, snowy, icy, cruddy weather we've had, this was a fun and easy indoor activity for a bit.  

Recipe - Crustless Quiche

Long time, no blog, right?
Yeah, well January has been very January-ish around these parts.  We've all been healthy and all that. We've had more than our usual snowfall, which the kids have been enjoying this winter.  So where have I been?  Nowhere.  Just not posting.
Well here's a little something for you guys - a recipe!  I don't post recipes that often and that's really because I don't come up with them on my own.  I do modify recipes to make them suit our preferences or make them lighter or something.  Today's recipe, though, is one of my go-to low carb recipes.  We don't always eat low carb, but when we do, I usually make this.  It's very tasty. Crustless Quiche (and I apologize for the slightly blurry pics - phone issues)

1 yellow onion 1 package frozen chopped spinach (thawed and all water squeezed out) 6-ish oz of swiss cheese 1 small-ish ham steak (any flavor) 6-8 eggs heavy cream/light cream/half & half...your preference Salt, pepper, thyme, nutmeg Butter
Do ahead - caramelize your onions.  I usually slice & cook a whole bunch of onions and keep them in the fridge to use during the week.  Here's how:  slice up a bunch of onions and put them in a nonstick skillet on low heat with butter & olive oil.  Cook a loooooong time, stirring often.  They are done when the are soft & brown.  And they smell amazing.
On to the quiche!
Preheat the oven to about 375 and liberally grease your pie dish with butter (salted or unsalted, doesn't matter).
Cube up your ham steak and cook in a skillet on medium heat until warm through.  This isn't strictly necessary, but I like the way the juices of the ham taste when they sizzle up, so I do it :)  If you don't have ham steak, you can use deli ham, sliced up into small pieces.  Or you could opt for a different meat (bacon, sausage..) or leave it out.  I like it, so in it goes.
Shred your cheese into a mixing bowl, add ham, some onions (about a quarter cup cooked), and the thawed spinach.  Stir it up until all the ingredients are well combined.  Pour into the prepared pie dish.  

Using the same bowl, beat your eggs (I say 6-8 because who knows how many you have on hand and how you like it).  Add in cream/half & half and beat until it looks a nice pale yellow.  You can add more or less.  I'm not being exact here, which might frustrate some, but I don't measure when I do this.  Then crank in some pepper, add salt (like 1/4 tbsp - the ham is plenty salty), thyme & nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp each) and beat again.  Pour the egg mixture over the spinach/ham mixture in the pie plate.  If it looks like it will overflow, STOP.  Put the pie plate in the oven (on a cookie sheet if you're worried about splatter or overflow) and bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until the thing sets.  When you give it  a wiggle, it shouldn't really jiggle.

I like to let it sit & cool for about 10 minutes before serving.
Eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner!
YUM!

2014 New Year's Resolutions

For the past few years, I've taken the time to actually do a little post abpit my resolutions.  Last year's were quite traditional:  lose weight (fail), get more sleep (fail), take on a big house project (SUCCESS!) and build blog readership (hard to say....).  And this year, I wasn't all jazzed up to set out any more big resolutions.  But today I read a little something and I changed my mind.  I do have one.

STOP PROCRASTINATING!

I really think this is a good one to focus on.  I read a little thing online today that really hit home.  While procrastination may be a "victimless crime" (nobody is going to starve or be forced to wear dirty undies on my watch), it does impact overall happiness.  

Think about it this way.  I like to watch tv.  But which is more satisfying - watching an hour of TV with piles of laundry around waiting to be washed/folded?  or watching an hour of TV in a clean and uncluttered space because all that laundry is DONE and put away?

I find myself taking my leisure whenever I want rather than taking it after I earn it.  This leaves some tasks un-done (or done after midnight, pushing bedtime out later...hence the fail at my "get more sleep" resolution from last year).

So that's it.  End Procrastination.  I start tomorrow.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot...

And however the rest of that song goes.... This is that time of year that bloggers across the world wide interwebs take the time to look back at their year and summarize what's happened on the blog or summarize a series of significant bloggy and/or personal events.  I guess i'm much the same.  Actually, it's not just bloggers that do this.  With the year ticking up one more notch, I think it's human nature to think about the year in review and try to make some sort of sweeping generalization or judgement of whether it was "good" or "bad".  I think that's a bit unfair to good old 2013...it was a long 365 days.  Too much happened to summarize in a few snappy paragraphs.  I'll do my best to hit a few hghlights (some of which were mentioned, some are new).
We did a lot in Sarah's Big Girl bedroom - check out a few of the posts here:

• New lamp
• Memo Board

And the biggie is that we did a full-on down-to-the-studs renovation of our kitchen. 

• Meet the kitchen
• Moving Out
• Demolition
• Designing
• Sliding Door
• Framing
• WALLS!
• Paint
• Tile
• Cabinets
• Counters
• Reveal!!

So one thing I've come to see is that I didn't do a lot in 2013.  Less than half the posts when compared to 2012 (my first full year of blogging).  I should fix that (do I sense a resolution there??).  There are a few reasons - the biggest reason was the kitchen.  In a small house like ours, a huge kitchen renovation like we did was so disrupting, that it was difficult to even think about anything else, let alone DO something about it .  Pretty much no matter where I went, I was facing evidence of the destruction/or construction that was going on.  So other projects were untouched and or dining room (a.k.a. my craft space) was cluttered and messy.  I'll say this, no other project has had such a positive impact on our day-to-day life than our kitchen reno has, and it's only been done for a few months.  Baking Christmas cookies in there was FANTASTIC.
Now that all the excuses are out of the way, I'll say that 2013 was a great year.  We've had tons of fun, completed off the BIGGEST project on our house so far, potty trained the 3 year old.  To do's for 2014 include addressing our ugly stairwell, maybe the basement, and getting healthier.  Plus, I want to do more crafty things, smaller decor and organizational projects.  I hope to have closer to 100 posts in 2014.  About 2 every week if all goes well.
I'd like to take a moment to wish everyone a very happy Happy HAPPY New Year.  I hope 2014 brings joyful moments, fun projects, and fabulous memories.  I hope for health and happiness for me & my family and for you and yours!  

Shades of Greige

I've been a bad, bad blogger.  And I've maybe been a lazy homeowner.  Since we got our kitchen to a usable state, we stopped.  Nothing much has been going on around here - in the home improvement area anyway.  We have been enjoying a bit of a break from the work we do around the house.  It been nice to have a break because the kitchen had been such HUGE project, and while it's not *done*, the bulk of the inconvenient/messy/frustrating work is over. YAY!

The break is over and I've switched gears to something completely different.  The living room.

Meet the living room as it was when we bought the house in 2007.

A few things we did first: Mirror, Wallpaper & Carpet = Gone.  That table is gone too (although it did hang out in the basement for a long time).  The front door and windows have been replaced.  And we painted.  The paint color I chose was called "Coastal Sand".  It's a neutral brown, sort of a medium toned tan.  It's the color in my parents' family room.  It worked because it went with everything.  It was fine.

Fast forward to a few years after that when we painted our bedroom a color called "Kindling Wood".  This was before this color family got trendy and got the name, but it's a shade of "greige".  I remember as i was rolling it on, I said to Jason, "I really wish we had put this color downstairs because I love it."  And I do still.  Truly, ever since we painted the greige in our bedroom, I've hated the color in our living room.  Hate is a strong word, but maybe I knew the tan color just wasn't it.  

So last week while I was procrastinating writing a paper for an education class I'm taking, I decided it would be the best time to paint the living room.  And since the Home Depot guys convinced us that we would need 5 gallons of paint to do one bedroom, we have had 2.5 gallons of this paint in our basement.  So I did it.  I shook the heck out of that can of paint, grabbed a brush and cut-in cup and went to town.  

Here's where we are now:

I LOVE IT.  It's so much more the feel that I was going for.   This angle is the same as the last of the 3 living room pics from 2007, just so you know what you're looking at.  And sorry for the weird shot - I"m trying to shoot around the Christmas tree :)

Here's a peek at this year's tree compared to last year's tree so you can see the old and the new colors side by side.

And is it crazy to decide to repaint the living room a month before Christmas?  I guess a little crazy, but it's totally worth it.    

So what happened to November?

That's the big question, isn't it?  What happened to November?  I'll tell ya, if I can sum up theme with one phrase, it'll be this: Everyone Got Sick.
Sure, it started with Sarah and Chris trading sick days, but not super sick.  Then came Chris being super sick.  Like down & out for about a week.  I think it was the flu, poor dude was full-on miserable.  Then as that was wearing off, Sarah ended up at the pediatrician for a checkup and bam - ear infection.  Then the very next day - I kid you not - the VERY NEXT DAY I woke up with a sore throat.  And that was it.  All down hill.  Sick sick sick for over a week.  The flu, I think.  Fever, aches, headache, chills, cough, congestion. Grossnesss for DAYS.  And not just me - Jason had it too!   And you know what's not fun?  Being sick when the other adult in the house is as sick as you are.  
It was so pathetic.  The two of us, bundled in blankets and suffering through hours of bad TV for a week.  Oh and we had to cancel our Thanksgiving plans.  So that was a little unexpected fun for November, my first ever TG dinner to prepare.  Can't let the kids down, ya know?  
So I bet you are wondering what's going on in the house...NOTHING.  A zillion things to do and we've all been too sick to get anything done.
Needless to say, I'm glad to put November behind us and I'm so looking forward to December and Christmas and 2014!

Kitchen Reno - The Doors

So far we had been keeping drawers and doors in the basement to avoid dinging things up before we had to. We didn't want to worry about granite installers or appliance delivery guys accidentally banging tools into brand new cabinets.  So this past weekend we finally installed all the doors and drawers!  

The doors we chose were full-overlay meaning that the cabinet doors cover the frame basically from edge to edge.  There was no big reason I chose this other than it was what I liked.
The style I chose was a good balance between a bit of detail and a simple classic shaker style.  It's hard to put into words what I was looking for, but I knew it when I saw it.  I also knew I wanted white painted cabinets.  Now the designer cautioned me against paint saying it doesn't wear as well as stained cabinets, and while this may be true, I wanted what I wanted.  I didn't want to settle for a stain and then spend the next 5 years wishing I had just picked what I really wanted.

I love them.  They are perfect!  Or not exactly perfect....  I'll explain that.

Painted cabinet doors are not perfect.  The paint is like a shell over wood and because wood expands and contracts, it is expected and totally normal for there to be joint lines where the pieces of the door are originally glued together.  What I noticed when we installed the cabinets is that some of the joint lines were HUGE.  I didn't like it.  It bothered me.  And one of the cabinet doors had some chipped paint.   Ok, I get that over time we might end up with paint chips, dings, dents, and big joint lines, but I thought things should be pretty darn perfect on day one.  And so I called my designer and she came by the house.   We talked over a few things and she's having 2 of the doors replaced.  

I can't say enough how important it is to work with someone you like for this kind of project.  I had a few really glowing recommendations about our cabinet place and my whole experience working with these folks has been fantastic.  They want their customers to be thrilled with their results - and I am!  They are making things right, they asked a lot of great questions so that by the time I handed over large sums of money I was confident in my choices and excited.  So my best advice on a big renovation is to pick a good cabinet place (do you think a big box store would bend over backwards to make sure I was happy???)

OK so here's the big reveal - 

And just a reminder of what we started with - 

Hardware to come!

Kitchen Reno - Granite!

Since this is our first kitchen renovation, I don't know how common this is, but we waited on putting doors on the cabinets until the granite counter top was installed.  We wanted to reduce the risk of any dings from people moving big things around.  Last week was Granite Day.  It was quite exciting as it meant a return to a true kitchen-like space for us.

The template guy came and was in and out in about 30 minutes.  He basically used what looked like thin plywood and shims and hot glue to create the exact shape of our kitchen counter.  He marked out where the sink and faucet would go, ,as well as noting any other special instructions (rounded corners, etc.).  Then about a week and a half later it was time for installation.  

Our kitchen was in 4 pieces of stone - two small ones and then 2 larger ones that were epoxied together.  To seal that seam, the installers used a pretty cool device that used vacuum pressure to push the two separate slab pieces together.  The resulting seam is so tiny, you really can't see it. 

Here's a photo from the installation - the white things on the counter grab the slabs and use a vacuum (hot a hoover - but a strong suction force powered by an air compressor) to pull the two pieces together.

The installers also put the sink in place. We opted not to have them attach the dishwasher as it would have needed to be leveled before the granite installers arrived.  We will attach it directly to the cabinets when it's ready.

So where are we?  Done?  Nope, but we are now back to having a usable kitchen space :)  

The Longest Week Ever...

Just a few thoughts to express here... It's Monday - and 2 weekends ago was a crazy kitchen renovation marathon with the cabinets being put up.  They look great and I'm so excited.   Then on Friday of last week, the granite guy came out to do the template for the counters.  I was planning on blogging about it, but since it's not a DIY thing and because it was so fast, I'll spare you a thousand words with photos and say that they used wood & hot glue to make the template and it only took 30 minutes.
So now it's the waiting game.  We were told 7-9 days for the granite.  I was told that the granite people would call early this week to schedule the installation, and it would be about a week after that. 
So they'll call tomorrow maybe and then a week?  The longest week of my life!  I am beyond excited.  I can't wait to reclaim my dining room!
FYI - went appliance shopping on Saturday evening and it was mostly a bust.  Nobody carries counter-depth fridges in showrooms, so shop at home if you need something less common/popular than what's standard.

Kitchen Reno - Cabinet Craziness

Well, we've had some fun around here in the last few days.  
Friday morning the cabinets were delivered.  I should have taken a picture because it was a really impressive stack of boxes in the garage.  See that word "was" in that last sentence.  Yeah, the stack of boxes is gone.  I know what you're thinking, "boy that was fast!"  and it totally was because Saturday morning Jason's brother, Kevin came!  
Cabinet weekend was 2 long days of cabinet hanging excitement here.  Kevin, who is a carpenter and has done this stuff before many times, was able to lend his expertise.  We'd have been up a creek without his help.  
At the end of the first day they had all the wall cabs and half the lower cabinets hung on one wall, including the crown molding.  One thing to note (that I didn't know before) is that if you're doing crown on your cabinets, you probably need to add a nailer to the top of the cabinet boxes so you have something to attach the crown molding to.  Once the moldings are in place, you won't see the nailer at all.

Here's a progress pic from early on Day 1:

And at the end of the second day they were done!  The days were long (Sunday night ended at 10:30 PM - sorry neighbors!) but in just 2 days, the two of them completed work that would have taken WEEKS with just Jason and I to work on stuff on Saturdays and Sundays.
Before I show you how it's looking now, let's take a look at what it looked like when we bought the house...

And here it is now...

Note that none of the doors are on right now - we decided to leave them off until after the counter tops are done.  I don't want to risk a ding/scratch in a door during that whole process.


I'll have more pics once things are more done (counters & doors & drawers and whatnot).

Side note - if you do find yourself with a lot of boxes like we did - you may want to also get a big roll of tape and let/help your kids to build a cardboard castle.

Kitchen Reno - Getting our Tile on!

***this post has been waiting to be finished for over a week, but with the start of the school year fo both kids plus my own grad school class starting up, blog stuff got shifted to the back burner...progress is happening though and that's the important thing!***

 WOOT WOOT!  Floor time!

I may have mentioned this before, but in case you don't recall, when we pulled out the floor in the kitchen, we found no fewer than four layers of flooring piled one on top of another.  Sometimes with a layer of luan in there for good measure.  I guess if you're just doing vinyl flooring then slapping it down over the existing floor is the quick & easy way to go, but since we wanted something else and because the existing floor had gotten higher than the hardwoods in the adjacent rooms, the old stuff had to go.

There were a few options to choose from when considering kitchen flooring.  One thing we thought about was doing hardwood to match the rest of the house.  The only big concern we had with that was how to work it from the kitchen to the dining room, it would have involved pulling some planks up and putting new ones down.  Color matching would have also been an issue.  We also considered some sort of cork flooring.  I had seen it a few places and thought it looked fantastic, but the process was about as involved as hard-wood would have been, so we decided to look at the third option - tile.  Tile is something Jason has done before (2 bathrooms) so it's something we KNOW we could handle.  

We visited our favorite tile shop (if you're in southeast PA, check out Orlandini Tile in Marcus Hook) and saw tons of gorgeous options.  We fell in love with these wood look tiles and brought home a few samples to choose from.  I highly encourage you to bring home samples to lay down on your floor before making a final decision.  See how it looks in the room - does the light make it look lighter/darker?  does the paint make it look bluer or greenish?  I changed my mind at least twice by looking at different samples at different times of day.

Finally we went with one called "Newport Charcoal" -- it's got sort of a gray-ish tan thing going on.  It reminds me a bit of driftwood.  It's porcelain tile, so it'll be durable and easy to clean.  Both good features.   

Up until this point we had been able to get by in the renovation process without totally emptying the room.  We still had our stove & fridge in place, but when you're working on the floor, empty is best.  So the fridge moved to the dining room and the stove moved to the back porch.  If you have to do these sorts of things, don't underestimate the time it takes.  For the fridge we had to take the doors off and and put them back on and for the stove we had to deconstruct part of the back deck so we could take out the sliding glass doors.  

Finally, we got down to actually starting on the floor.  The first step was to lay down some concrete backer board.  This board had to be put down with thinset AND screws.  It was a pretty straightforward process but it took a while (and the drill is very tired).  This took the better part of two weekends.

After that we determined the tile layout.  There's two big options:  pattern or random.  I liked a simple offset pattern for this tile, so we went with an 8" offset, so with 24" tiles, the pattern repeats every 3 rows.  We also spent some time figuring out the starting point of the pattern - we looked at how the tiles would line up with the doors and the other end of the room.  We didn't want a seam right in the middle of the doorway and we didn't want to be finishing courses of tile with skinny slivers.   It's not a huge deal, but we just wanted things to look right.

.  
Once the layout was decided, Jason cut tiles for a few rows.  It's a good idea to "dry fit" your tiles to make sure you're not stuck with a bunch of wet thinset and tiles that don't fit right.  We already had a wet saw, but they're not terribly expensive (about $100) and they are also available to rent at Home Depot or Lowes.   Layout was a pretty straightforward process.  The little white "X"s are spacers.  They're used to maintain an even grout line between the tiles.  We went with 1/8" spacers.  It's a pretty small grout line, but we liked the look. Tiling took 2 weekends.  The first weekend we were able to lay about 1/2 of the tile.  Midweek, Jason put down a bit more and the last of it was laid on the second Saturday morning.  

Grouting started the same afternoon.  Grouting is a bit of a process - you put the grout down and really work it into the joints and then you have to come back and wipe the excess with water.  We ended up spending most of Saturday night wiping grout and there are a few places where there's set up grout in the textured "grain" of the tile, but overall I'm super happy with the floor.  It's exactly what we hoped for!
Let's take a quick look at what we started with in the kitchen:

And here's how things are now:

Next up:  CABINETS!!!  

Kitchen Reno - Let there be PAINT!

Ok, so one of my personal issues seems to be the inability to come up with funny/punny blog post titles.  I'm not even sure why I think this is an important thing, but there it is.

In case you might not have guessed, the kitchen has been PAINTED.

I can't even explain how excited I am by most kitchen related stuff.  This project has been LOOOOONG and somewhat painful/inconvenient so now that we're starting to do stuff that's part of the final product (like paint, tile, etc), I feel like we're finally seeing the light at the end of this tunnel.  It's so awesome.

Painting falls into my realm of responsibility and that's totally fine by me.  Jason handled bedtime with the kids for a few nights while I got it done.  

For the ceiling, we went with "Whisper White" from Home Depot (this is our standard white here for ceilings & trim) and on the walls I used "Gentle Rain" from Home Depot.  It's a warm-ish gray color.  I had considered a lot of options for paint colors including blues (which I loved) and various shades of gray.  The gray won out in the long run because of 2 things - I am in love with a colored back splash tile and because I was worried that I'd be "over" a bold wall color really fast.  So I went with a neutral and am very happy with the result.

So here's the "before" 

And here's the "after" 

I really like the color.  I was a bit nervous that the color would be too dark (since we don't get a TON of natural light), but it's really just right.

Check out the floor!  We've got cement backer board down to get ready for the next step in this project - FLOORING!!!  Yeah, I'm excited!

Kitchen Reno - Primed & Ready to Go!

So we're back!  After some time at the beach (and away from the house) we were ready to roll and really make some progress when we came back.  As always, even small tasks seem overwhelming when you just don't want to do them.
Case in point - sanding drywall.  It's a simple thing.  Put sanding sponge in hand and rub on wall until smooth.  But as simple as it is, it is also unpleasant.  The person doing it gets incredibly dirty.  It's exhausting work.  And it's a pain to clean up.  Jason was the sole sander this time (we've done it together on other projects) and it's finally DONE (can't tell you how glad we are that it's behind us!). 

After sanding the drywall comes priming.  Priming fresh drywall can be pretty time consuming.  The walls seem to really soak up the primer, so it really seems like you're only getting about 2 square feet of coverage with each load of the roller.  It's a lot of up & down the ladder (especially when doing the ceiling), but it's a super important step that you really shouldn't skip.  I've seen places where I've accidentally missed the primer and the paint doesn't even stick.  BIG mess!

After priming, I spent a day or so in different lights looking for places I missed or that have a drip.  Sometimes that can be tough to see when it's all white-on-white.  So after a little work with a brush, the priming was DONE and we were ready for PAINT!!

Here's a quick before & after:  

OK, I know it's not that exciting, but it is a step in the right direction.  I like this phase of the project because the work becomes a little more visible.  We're finally getting to parts of the project that we'll see when we're done!