Basement painted

Last week I painted the basement. Not just the trim and the doors but the walls as well (the same color they were already). I had intended to paint some of the furniture from the TV room down there but did not have time. At least the painting is done. Now I only have to put a clear coat on the stair railing.

(I can’t find a before pic of this view right now)

Yes the tree is gone. I never did finish it after Edward Jr. decided to mess it up while I was cleaning my brushes one afternoon. It took 5 coats of primer to cover it up but I finally did it. :) I have not decided what I will put on the walls yet. Nothing for now. I just love the way it turned out. It makes the basement feel much less gloomy and closed in.

I did finally get most of the entertainment center primed on Monday. I have to flip the doors and shelves and prime the other side now. Yesterday we had storms so I could not paint but I will get out there today and get the priming done. Friday I plan to paint then hopefully get it back into the basement this weekend. I decided against painting the cube shelf so we just need to put it back together now but I have to decide where I want it first. :)

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Chris

We have been GHOSTED

I have heard about this game on other blogs and thought it would be fun but since we don't know anyone here wasn't sure WHO I would GHOST. Well tonight while I was on the computer Jessica was headed upstairs and told me that there were "little people looking at our house" so I got up to see and there were 3 or 4 little ones running across the street and up our driveway. I had no idea what they were doing so I sat back at my desk and waited. The door bell rang, I got up, turned the porch lights on and opened the door. There sat on the porch a cute little Halloween basket with candy and goodies but no kids. I was kinda confused so I picked it up and read the note inside. The kids are so excited about this new game, even the teenagers!!! I love that someone in our neighborhood chose to GHOST us. :) Now we will make up 2 treat bags of our own and GHOST others. :) I love this game!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Grandma Bowen, Chewy (our dog who is 9 now) and Marisa’s boyfriend Damon.

Powder room

So the powder room is not nearly finished but I thought I would share with you what I did to the cabinets. I TRIED to glaze them but that is not a skill I have acquired just yet and it was horrible so I tried to distress them which I really loved. The problem with that was once I put 2 coats of wipe on poly it was more yellow than I had wanted. I was not pleased at all. I knew it would yellow but I was not aware how much. After a week of watching to see how yellow it would become I decided to start over again and paint them the same white I was using for the trim and the door. It’s just Sherwin-Williams semi gloss right out of the can. I am much happier with this than with the yellowed color. Oddly enough I could only find this pic of what it looked like before I painted it. Oh well.

Before:

After:

I wish I had the talent and patience it takes to get the aged, distressed look but I don’t. As far as the kitchen cabinets we have decided that they are not in good enough shape to paint and we will just replace them in a few years. The previous owner was not very careful about wet dishes being put away, spills/drips being wiped up or leaky plumbing so I think replacing them is best. I will get exactly what I want that way. We will order the cabinets and install them ourselves to cut down on the cost but I think that will be easier and faster than me trying to redo them anyway. :)

Now I have to paint the bathroom a darker color and replace that outdated countertop and sink and it will be done (until we change the tile and replace the toilet that is).

Have a great day!

Chris

Painting the basement day 1

Well so much for my schedule. I spent 7 hours priming yesterday and all I got done was the floor trim, window trim, 5 door ways and 6 doors. Okay, so that is everything in the basement I wanted to prime but I didn't even begin to prime the furniture that has taken over most of my garage. Time for a new plan. Today I will paint the first coat of paint in the basement and in my experience priming takes longer so it shouldn't take 7 hours. Tomorrow I will paint the second coat in the basement and hopefully be done with it. Thursday I am taking the day off from painting (my back is already in knots from 1 day!) so I can catch up on cleaning and do some shopping then Friday I will prime the furniture that is in the garage. I doubt I will do any painting over the weekend but start again on the furniture on Monday. I am hoping to have the furniture done Tuesday or Wednesday. And sometime next week I also need to find time to paint the walls in the basement.

Lessons learned: Only paint one room at a time and doors will always take 3 times longer than you think they will.

I still have an entire house to paint. It is going to take FOREVER! lol

I hope everyone is having a good week so far!
Chris

Ghost lights

The other day while I was looking through blog posts Marisa spotted this guest tutorial from Dana at Saturday Mornings on Tatertots and Jello, she said “We have those!” so I told her to grab a couple from the garage and we headed up to the craft room. It’s really simple but fun. I was working on something else while Marisa painted faces on these globes. We had taken them off the chandelier we used to make the Halloween Candelabra. I think they turned out really cute and is something even younger kids can do!

The only flameless tea lights I have right now glow orange but I still think they are too cute!

Have a great day!

Chris

Check out this and other holiday projects here.

Wish me luck and a silhouette addition

This week I will be painting all of the stained trim and doors in our basement plus the entertainment center and cube shelf for the TV room down there. I have prepped the basement and taken the furniture to the garage to be painted. Tomorrow I prime.

Will I get it done this week? If all goes as planned I will but as we all know things don’t always go as planned.

I had a suggestion from Edward that there should be a cat with the mice silhouettes on the stairs so here are 2 cats and an additional mouse. :) I love this!

I used felt for these because the foam would be too small and I am out of black anyway. :)

You can find the original mouse silhouette post here and the post for the SPOOKY pumpkins here.

Check out more of my Holiday projects here.

This week I am posting some ghost lights Marisa made and the powder room cabinet. So stay tuned!

I hope everyone has a great week!

This is what happens when I get bored…

I spent today quite busy but by 3:30 I had run out of things to do. I don’t have to cook tonight because we are having pizza and the laundry is all folded and put away and kitchen is clean. I couldn’t find anything to do on the computer so I went to the craft room to see what I could find. I found some sticky backed foam and decided to make some mouse and rat silhouettes to go along the stairs. I know next year since the stairs will be wood and not carpet I will put vinyl silhouettes on the stairs but I had not thought about doing something on the wall above the trim. Less than an hour of printing and cutting and this is what I came up with. I put the big rat on the glass door with the spiders we picked up at Target last night. That might catch someone off guard! lol

You can find the post about the SPOOKY pumpkins here.

You can see the cats I added by going here.

Have a great weekend!

Chris

Check out this and other holiday projects here.

Upcoming plans

So far today I have been cleaning and cleaning. I also taped the carpet on the basement stairs prepping for paint next week. My goal is to get the house cleaned up and organized this weekend so next week it will be easier on me while I am painting the trim and doors in the basement as well as 2 pieces of furniture that are also in the basement. I had planned to do the basement last but right now there is not much I can do any place else due to all of my holiday decor and I really need something to keep me busy while Ed is traveling so much. Plus the basement is so dark and I think painting the doors and trim bright white will help lighten it up down there. I know we need better lighting as well but that just isn't in the budget right now. The thing about the basement that bothers me most is the spiders but the exterminator was here yesterday so maybe it won't be too bad. I have gotten better at squashing the darn things but I still can't squash the big ones. Ugh. I can't stand those creepy crawlers! I am hoping that once I paint the trim and Ed caulks it they won't be such a problem. Ick.

Here is the basement in it's current condition, mess and all.





































I need to decide what color to paint the basement walls because the current color just isn't working. I am going to stop by Lowe's this weekend and get a couple sample colors and paint them in different areas of the basement so I can hopefully make a decision soon. I also plan to work on a Halloween countdown, a Christmas countdown and a PB knockoff next week. Yep. I will be a busy bee!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Chris

Spooky

Yesterday I was finally able to get into the new craft room and get it cleaned up. It looks so much better now and is better organized! I decided it was time to work on some crafts because I have not really done anything in a couple weeks, since I started painting the powder room cabinets (more to come on that in a later post). I had spray painted some Dollar Tree pumpkins white back in September so I grabbed those from the garage and headed to the craft room. First thing I did was painted the stems brown and let them dry. I had already printed out the letters to spell SPOOKY so I cut them out and mod podged them to the pumpkins. The funny thing is that I got to letter K and realized I was short 1 pumpkin. Apparently I can spell but I can’t count! So I went to my Fall buckets, which you can see in the background, and found another pumpkin, painted it white, painted the stem brown and mod podged the letter Y on it. Here is where I put them. Please don’t judge by the icky carpet on the stairs. It WILL be removed after the first of the year and we will be putting down wood treads and painting them along with the railing and spindles. We were not lucky enough to have nice wood treads and risers under the carpet or I would have already ripped that carpet OUT! Also, Marisa and I carved that craft pumpkin at the top. Ed and I had a couple left over from last year that we never carved but had already drawn the design for and this was one of them. Of course we made a mess in the craft room doing this but that’s what the dust buster is for! (And if anyone is interested I would like a new one for Christmas-Jr. dropped mine twice now and it is taped together).

The font I used for the letters was Blackwood Castle. I downloaded it from here.

I hope everyone has a great day!

Chris

Check out this and other holiday projects here.

Our trip to Michigan

We decided Friday that we would go to IKEA in Michigan and pick up the desk and shelf unit that I wanted for the craft room. It’s a 3 hour drive for us. The drive was beautiful. The leaves are changing and the sun was bright. It was a bit warmer than I would have liked but I was in a air conditioned van all day so what do I care?

We stopped at On the Border for lunch then headed back to Indiana. I had been telling Ed for a while I wanted to go to the Outlets shops an hour north of us and today I finally got to. The boys were in a mood so I only got to go into one store but I picked up a new purse for a good price!

Here are some pics from today.

 

Here are pics of the craft room from before and after. I am not anywhere near finished but it looks better already!

    

I hope everyone had a great weekend!