Paint and texture and stain, oh my!

I finally got pictures off of my camera. I think there were like 400 of them or something ridiculous. So I wanted to show you my handy work. I stripped the wallpaper off of our walls in the breakfast nook. Then I textured, painted and rubbed brown glaze over it. Then we pulled up the carpet and acid-stained the concrete. Now that was a huge job! But it turned out totally cool. Then I had to fix the baseboards. Once you pull up carpet, the baseboards are up too high, so I had to buy quarter-round, paint it, cut it (at the correct angles-that was hard) and stick it down. Thanks to my dad for helping us with the carpet edge. We put wood trim across that. But all in all, I think it looks good. So do the people buying the house. It was a lot of work, but worth it if it helped to sell our house.

This is how it used to look.

Wallpaper and border torn off.

My mother-in-law helped me pull all of this stuff off. Thanks Inez!!

I spray textured the wall where the wallpaper was.

First coat of paint.

But a problem. You can see a line where the chair rail was. So I had to take my sander, sand down the wall, re-texture and repaint. ugh.

Brown glaze.

I painted the whole kitchen. It was not easy getting above the cabinets.

This is what the floor looked like when we first pulled up the carpet. There was paint and stain all over it. So I had to use paint stripper and a scraper to get up all of the gunk.

After doing like 3 other things to it, it was ready for stain.

This is what it looked like right after I sprayed the stain on. I had to use chemical gloves because it actually eats into the concrete.

Cool, huh?

We then had to mop up all of the excess stain and suck it up with our wet/dry vac. I was a little worried at this point because now it just looked so dull and not as cool looking.

But then we put the sealer on it and it shined right up. Doing this actually makes the breakfast nook feel bigger.

This is my quarter-round addition. I got a little paint on the floor that I still need to clean up, but it looks pretty good in my opinion!! :)

Out of the mouths of babes....

Driving in the car yesterday, Russ was giving Maddie a spelling test. He was saying random words and having her spell them. She was doing great. house- H-O-U-S-E, store- S-T-O-R-E, station-S-T-A-T-I-O-N, and then he says Doctor. Maddie answers with "D-R-period". Then she started laughing. Maddie is not our "funny kid". So it kind of took us off guard, but cracked us all up.

Now Becca... oh Becca. First of all, I really need to watch what I say when I'm driving. Yes, I'm an angry driver. I've told you all before how I hate it when people won't turn right on red, or if we sit at a green light too long. Well, that happened today. And before I could even say (or really think) something, out of the back is Becca: "Go people, the light is green!! Gas is on the right!!"

I'm going to try to stop being angry when I drive, you just never know who's listening.

Can't live without

So in buying a new/bigger house, we had to redo our budget. Mortgage going up=not eating out, ever. (ok, maybe a few times) and a few other things.

But there are certain things in my life that I will not give up and I will not buy the generic version of. Here's my top 3:

1. Heinz ketchup. I refuse to buy any other brand. I don't like Hunt's and anything else is just gross.

2. Cheerios. I can buy all kinds of generic cereal. Most of it tastes just fine. But when it comes to Cheerios, I have got to have the real thing baby.

3. Charmin. Yep. I don't like anything else. That thin stuff is not fun.

So even though we will be buying more generic things, those three will not be going anywhere. Russ would probably add Diet Coke. Sam's brand is just not the same no matter what anyone says.

So what are your top three?

New house

I know it's been a month since I've blogged. Until last week, nothing really exciting has been happening. I stripped wallpaper and painted my walls. I pulled up carpet, stripped paint and acid-stained my concrete. (It's still not totally done) But it looks cool. Pictures will come eventually. It's just getting them off the camera on to the computer.


But the biggest news came today, when we found out that our offer was accepted on the house we were wanting!! Woo hoo!! We sold our house, contract was signed Tuesday night and we put an offer in on Tuesday night also. It took a day and a half (of lots of stress) for them to get back to us, but at 1:30, we found out it is going to be ours!!


We are so excited! We've lived in this house for 10 years. It will be almost exactly 10 years. We moved in May 28, 1999, and we will be moving out on May 23rd. We love our house, we just feel a little squished. So we are moving up! From the front it looks like "Grandma's house". But it has an addition on it, so it gives it a bunch more space. Here are a few pictures of our new 5 bedroom house:


The front.


The back. That is a balcony that goes all around the top. Lots of French doors to lead outside. That just means lots of locks I'll be buying. :)


The kitchen had been totally gutted and redone. Beautiful tile floors, granite counter tops. Not necessarily a huge kitchen, but bigger than I have now.


The movie theatre room. Yes, a movie theatre. Cool, huh? Guess we'll be having a lot of game watching parties at our house!! And those are tvs on either side of the screen. So Russ can watch three games at the same time!


This is the sun room. The french doors on the left go to the master bedroom.


This is Becca's bedroom. Between her and Maddie is a Jack and Jill bathroom. Each of the girl's bedrooms has these beautiful white built-ins. They all just look like "girl" rooms.

So those are the highlights anyway. I have a scrapbook area, Russ gets his own office and the girls also get a playroom. I am so excited just to have lots of storage!! We should be signing the papers tomorrow, so until then, I'm still a little uneasy about it all, but I have just been trusting that God will lead us to the right house. So as soon as we get all moved in and school is out, we are having a pool party. Hope you all can make it!!