You've Got To Move It, Move It

I referred to the stack that used to be in the center of our bathroom the other day as a stripper pole. Blake chuckled and said "that's exactly what it was."

Maybe that could have been used as a selling point if we decided that we wanted to move. 

"Nice house in nice neighborhood with downstairs bathroom stripper pole."

Too bad that we moved the pole.

It went from this--

to this--

to this--

to this--

Can I get an amen?!

Blake keeps joking that everything that you think is going to take you an hour or two takes you a couple of days.

Word.

Blake was hoping to be done soffiting in the ceiling and shower by last Friday and have it sheet rocked by Saturday. Uh...

He got the soffiting done, and it looks awesome!

But, what he thought was going to be a couple of hours ended up being 2 days.

On Monday night he rewired the lights that are going to be in the bathroom and put a light in the ceiling in the shower. Blake is pretty excited about that.

Word at the Unguren house is that sheet rock should have gone up by Tuesday night.
Turns out Tuesday night we had this much sheet rocked. 

Just goes to show you that what you think you can accomplish in a couple of hours, and what you actually do accomplish, are two very different things.
Family is coming in a week.

Nothing like cutting it close. Good thing we work well under pressure.

Oh What A Feeling, We're Painting On The Ceiling

My Mom and I were talking about our house today. During the course of the conversation I mentioned that people have complimented my "skills". 

(Thank you all, by the way, you are all very very sweet and make great cheerleaders!)

 I told her that it wasn't necessarily that I had "skills" but that when you start with something old and ugly the only way to go is up.

Speaking of up...

Bad segway? Maybe. But I am still going to roll with it.

I painted another ceiling.

Technically this one was painted before the toy room ceiling, I just forgot to mention it. Actually....if we are being honest, all of the ceilings have been painted in the house now, the only difference is that I painted this one a color.

Yeah!

 Before it was just a regular ceiling. It has some spots on it that were a brownish yellow color. (Where do those come from, by the way? Is it like air born dirt from taking a shower? Gross.)

Anywho...

I had read somewhere that in small rooms it is good to paint the ceiling the same color as the walls because it makes the room appear bigger because your eyes don't stop at the line between ceiling and walls. Make sense?

I figured why not give it a try. The ceiling was due for a coat of paint, and I had some left from painting the walls.

I put it off for a while. No one likes to paint ceilings. Ain't nobody got time for that. But I finally did it. And...it wasn't that bad.

Before:

After:

The interesting thing is that it isn't that noticeable. But I guess that is kind of the point, huh? But the brown spots are gone so I am calling it a win.

Blake has been busy working on the bathroom (don't worry, another bathroom post is coming....That sounds odd. Correction. Another post about remodeling the bathroom is coming.) So I have been busying myself with odd jobs.

One of them was painting the laundry room cabinets.

Our free cabinets from KSL have been lovely. I always knew I was going to paint them it just took me a month to do it.

From brown:

To white:

You may also notice that our water shut offs and tube got moved.

It is nice to have them all in one box.

Only problem is now we have to patch the giant holes that were left in the wall.

I suppose it is a small price to pay.

Two Ladies, One Small Room

The last time we talked about the girls room it was...well...an empty shell. 

Since we don't make our kids sleep on the floor in an empty room, I figured it was time for a little update.

The rooms in our house are not the biggest. I suppose that is the cons of having an old house. We could, technically, split up our kids and have some of them downstairs, but they like sharing a room and I like having them on the same floor as me. The problem is, there is only one way the beds will fit into the rooms.

I wanted the girls to have their desk in their room, but with the desk and dresser it just wouldn't fit. So, we put the dresser in the closet to make room for the desk.

In all of my hurry to work on other things, the girls room ended up with bare walls for a few months.

Finally, I got around to hanging things up. Although it doesn't make a huge difference it does make it seem more like we actually live here, instead of being in transition. Plus, I was able to find them two matching white quilts for their beds. The yellow ones on them before were ones that came with the bed and although you can't tell, were quite worn.

Just because it is fun, and I can..

Before:

 After: 

Also, if anyone follows me on instagram then you may remember their desk before from here.

Another Room Bites the Dust

Our downstairs has two family rooms. The one that I have already painted and fixed, and another one down the hallway. For along time we just referred to it as the second family room, sometimes we still do. But more often then not we refer to it as the "toy room". 

Sadly this is the only true "before" picture that I have of it. 

But...I do have a couple other from after we moved in, and...as long as you can disregard the mess, then we can be friends.

The closets in this room are great. They hold A LOT of stuff. The left closet holds all of my Etsy things,

the one on the right holds all of the kids toys. Well,...when they aren't strewed across the floor. I have found that keeping the toys all in one place makes for only one messy room instead of the whole house. That isn't saying that the house doesn't get messy....because...Oh, it does.

This room has had a lot of different furniture configurations since we moved in. We just couldn't figure out what we wanted.

One thing we did know? That we didn't want to have the room be all wood paneling. 

Surprise, surprise.

I decided to start with the closet doors first.

They both got primed...

and then two coats of paint, and then the room sat.

Just like this. For a long time.

The wall across from the closet doors is only half of a wall and it was originally covered with wallpaper.

One day I decided that I had had enough. 

So I started priming all of the wood paneling and the wall that had wallpaper.

Then, I painted it the same light grey color that is on our other walls.

Painting the wood and the trim around the doors was surprisingly time consuming. Painting one wall took me all day.

It probably didn't help that I accidentally had a little...er...big spill.

Thank goodness for a shopvac. 

Once all the walls were painted it seemed to amplify how ugly the ceiling was. I don't know if it was because the new grey color made it look really dirty, or if the old brown paneling had distracted you enough from actually looking at the ceiling.
So the natural next step was to paint the acoustic tile ceiling. I am not really sure why I got such a wild hair, maybe it was because the whole room was grey and it was supposed to be a fun toy room, but it was decided. 
The ceiling was going to be painted blue.

Why not add a little bit of character to a room?! It's just paint, right?
So I went to Home Depot and picked out a few colors and lined them up on the ceiling. 
(the picture below shows the best of how truly ugly the ceiling was)
I like to look at paint colors on the wall in the morning, afternoon and evening to make sure that I have the best color for the space.
I ended up settling on the third from the left.

I wanted something that was clean looking but not neon at night with the lights on. 
Its interesting, I thought that a blue ceiling would stand out more. You know...you walk into a room and it is like "Hey! Look at me! I am a blue ceiling."
But it doesn't. It more of a cool kid, "What's up. Yeah, I'm blue. So what?"

I hung up big pictures of the kids and put little frames beside them to hold quote bubbles that they can write in.

 To the right of the kids pictures is a little hallway of sorts that leads to their "Laboratory." (More on that another time.)

I painted the side of the wall with chalkboard paint. The kids love it. So much so, that I always have a thin coat of chalk dust on all of the furniture in the room. 

I tried a lot of curtains in this room but finally found some sheer panels at Home Goods for $6.99 for two. Best deal ever.

I feel like the room itself could use more personality. But if nothing else, it is better then when it started. 

Before:

After:

Kind of Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

The big piano was given to us by the previous owner. At some point I plan on painting it.

Still on the list:

change out outlets to white.

Paint piano

Find something to hang above the piano

buy a rug