Kitchen Progress

We are in house-project mode.  The great room saw a slight makeover because remember how it used to be home to the bowling alley and had burgundy and mustard walls?  

No more of that, my friends.  After much deliberating and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, we finally picked our paint colors.  We went with a color called Ivory Lace for the living room side and Almost Aqua for the kitchen/dining side.

Here's one tentative before/after of the dining area so you can see the paint change:

We're still working on painting trim a brighter white, we took down that awkward television that was hanging over the table, and we're also refinishing our table and chairs! In other words, we'll be eating on the floor for the next 5 months.  We got a good start on the table today though.

We started with this:

It's your typical light-wood table, but don't let this picture fool you, this table was not in good shape.  At all.  There were scratches and the finish was totally wearing off all over the place.  That's what you get when you spend $25 on KSL.

So we sanded.

And applied a wood conditioner.

And stained with a red mahogany stain!

And we ended up with this (although we're doing another coat in a few hours so it will be a little darker and a little redder):

What a change!  The plan is to paint everything except the top (which is now stained) white, so we're going for the farmhouse table look, which I first saw here.  It is a lot of work, but we had a fun day working on this together.  Now I need about 6 otter pops and a back massage.

A New Member of the Family

Meet the newest member of the family.  (There I go with the deceptively exciting post titles again, sorry.)

Scott spotted this little guy for one dollar at Lowes and thought we "needed" him.  I didn't really want to care for yet another plant even for free, but lo and behold, the plant was purchased and now sits next to our bathtub. 

We sometimes argue over how to best raise this plant.  I think it's kind of flimsy and needs a good shaking and Scott thinks it's dainty and just needs some love.  So, while my back is turned he feeds it more water, and while Scott is away I torture the plant by forcing it into the sunlight and shaking its branches.

If plants are any indication, this is probably how we'll raise our children.  Me: torture them for their own dang good, and Scott: love them and feed them treats behind my back. 

I think we might make a really good team.

Oh yeah remember how we have a new house and I've refused to post decent photos?  We're still working on projects everywhere, but today I can show you our little front room since we've run out of decorations and furniture to put in there!

We just got our carpets cleaned and therefore refuse to walk in this room to preserve the beauty of cleaned carpets.  As you can imagine, getting that piano bench back in there without touching the carpet was a challenge! 

So, if you come to our house I hope you can jump from the wood floor to the couches.  Not that I'd make you do that or anything...

Goodbye Speed Queen

I need to document some special details about my old washing machine.  We got it for like twenty dollars from a random person who we were buying a TV stand from.  They happened to have a washing machine that they were also getting rid of, and Scott didn't have one at the house.  Perfect!

 

Well, the washing machine (model name: Speed Queen) was not the best.  It typically got stuck on the rinse cycle and it kind of leaked out the bottom.  And  yet, we were very capable of switching it to the spin cycle, and there was a drain right next to the leak, so we decided it was good enough. 

 

3 years went by, and we moved to the new house.  The new house had everything we ever wanted.  Except for a drain right next to our leaky washer.  So, that was a problem.  Why all houses don't have built in leaky-washer drains, I don't know.  So that was the end of the Speed Queen right there.  It never even got hooked up. 

 

Now let me tell you about the new washer.  It is fancy.  Actually it is not fancy, but compared to the Speed Queen, it's SUPER fancy.  It tells me exactly how many minutes are left in the cycle.  It has a bedding cycle.  The knob can turn clockwise or counterclockwise (blew my mind).  It sings a little song when it's done.  I can read all of the settings on the dial.  It doesn't leak.  It can complete a cycle all on its own.  What I'm saying is, my quality of life drastically increased with this new washing machine.