It Is FINISHED!

 After two/three weeks of chaos, I am happy to say that our room is re-taped, re-mudded, and newly painted!  I'm sure it's very busy for anyone going through a room redo, but add in 3 busy kids, 4 babysat boys (is that how you say that?), and one rambunctious dog and the crazy gets a little bigger.  Here are a few BEFORE pictures...

The walls are covered in the primer that was put on them when we bought the house.  We bought it new from a contractor who was building all the homes in this area.

There were marks on everything, because primer is not forgiving when something brushes up against it.  We painted the 2 lower walls, but they were pretty beat up too after housing all these kids and pets.

You can see the dry wall tape that was peeling above the shelves.  It was like that everywhere.

Another before picture...

Here is the empty, painted room.  She ripped out all the dry wall tape and put new in.  She re-mudded it with 3 coats, so it would really look clean and nice.  She painted the ceiling - which just shows me how crappy the rest of my ceilings look now. ;-)  Then, finally, she painted the walls.  I can't even tell you how new and clean it looks now.  It's fabulous!  Now, here are the AFTER shots...

We rearranged the room and it's much more open now.  I painted the back of the bookshelves to bring in that soft turquoise (or muted turquoise, like I like to call it).

I bought new curtains in that same turquoise color.

Then highlighted it with this turquoise cabinet.  I saw this in one of my preschoolers' homes when I went on home visits last August and fell in love with it!  This cabinet and the curtains are the only new things in the room.  Everything else is stuff we already had. :-)

We moved the pictures around.

And, that is the finished product!  We're going to take the week off and tackle the kitchen next.  I had/have high hopes for that room, but some of my ideas might have to wait.  So, onward we go with home improvement projects!

Making Progress

Things are moving along in the living room.  Today she came in and sanded everything.  It created a huge mess, of course, but the walls are prepped now and ready for paint!

She put up this big plastic sheet to help keep the dust from spreading too much, but dry wall dust still finds its way into everything around it, regardless of plastic walls.

At least it only left a fine coating and not a heavy one.  But, you can see by the smiley face here, that it's all over the place.  I vacuumed as much of it as I could and will keep vacuuming each day to keep getting more up.  My wood floors will need a thorough mopping when everything is said and done!

Over the weekend, Pete and I did a little painting of our own to get things moving.  We worked on getting the hallway painted and it looks so fantastic already, that it makes us really excited to see the paint on the walls!  That hallway (as well as the whole living room) is so covered in marks and stuff from things hitting those primered walls, that it makes a huge difference seeing those marks disappear under the paint.

I decided to try a little something fun too, so we'll see how it turns out once it's actually in the room, but I decided to paint the backs of my bookcases.  We're doing that tan color on the walls, so I thought this muted turquoise would look neat as an accent color.  I've even ordered a new little table in that color and am getting some new pillows to use to continue that accent color throughout the room.  I'm really hoping it comes together when all is said and done.  

So, that is our latest update on the progress in the living room.  She has a bit of sanding to do tomorrow, because she added one more layer of mud to the top of the ceiling, and then the painting begins.  She will do 2 layers of paint on the ceiling and then 2 layers of colored paint on the walls.  So far, I am thrilled with what she's done!  She was recommended to me and she's definitely living up to the recommendation. :-)  I'm definitely anxious to get things back in place however, because this house needs a THOROUGH cleaning once it is.  I'm not used to living in such chaos.  I almost had a breakdown about it yesterday, because I'm not used to living with all that mess and clutter, but I cleaned my whole bedroom today and it was quite cathartic, so I think I can make it the rest of the week until I get things back in their rightful place.  

Once this is done, we'll take a week off and start the kitchen!  Never a dull moment around here! :-)

Living Room Redo

After many LONG years of waiting, we finally are getting our living room redone.  This room hasn't really been touched since we moved in.  I painted the two short walls green about 2 years after we moved in, but I wasn't able to paint the cathedral walls, because they were just too tall.  All that is on there is primer and, after living here for 12 years, that primer is beat the heck up!  Not to mention how all the drywall tape, along all of the seams, has been peeling and I mean peeling really badly!  So, we worked last weekend to get everything out of the room to be ready for Janee to start working on it this past Tuesday.

Noah wanted to help his dad climb the ladder and get things off the plant shelf, once we moved all the furniture out of there.  He's braver than I am!

We moved all the furniture into every available room - mostly on the main level, with just a couple chairs in the basement.  This is our kitchen right now.  Not really easy to maneuver around, but we're making it work.  It's only a couple weeks, right?  The tv is in Noah's room, which he is loving.  It's not hooked up to anything, but the Wii U, but they are all having a great time hanging out on Noah's bed and playing. :-)

I don't know if you can see the tape peeling in the picture above.  It's almost completely loose and it was like that on every seam.  It looked AWFUL!

I finally saved enough money to get it done.  I asked a friend of mine if she could recommend someone and she did.  I found out later, once I met her, that it was my former ZUMBA coach. :-) She's so nice and I've been so comfortable having her here working.  And, so far, I am really, really pleased with her work!  You'll see on the first day she was able to rip out all of the old tape.  It was peeling so badly that it was pretty easy to take down.  She just grabbed an end and it would come off in long strips.  This is the top of our ceiling.

You can kind of see it better here.  They had 2 layers of tape up there, so once it was taken out, it left big treads.  She will probably mud it one more time on Monday, because it left such a thick gap there.

Each night, after she finished that day's work, we would vacuum up all the crumbling pieces and get the floor cleaned up again.  Noah worked on Tuesday night taking down an old Uppercase Living Expression, and helped me take off all the outlets and light switch covers.

For the past three days, she's worked on putting up new tape and mudding it all.  She likes to do three layers of mud to make sure it's really secure and lasts longer.

This is a picture from today.  All the mudding is done, with the exception of the very top of the ceiling that might take another coat on Monday.  Next week, she'll start sanding it all and then painting.  I can't wait!

It's coming together so nicely and looks so new and clean, just like it was when we moved in.  And, look!  Tater is back home!  He spent the week at the Walkers, aka our babysitters, so he wouldn't be in the way with all the mess.  He seems to enjoy the big, open room - unlike Olive who is terrified of the ladders and will claw her way out of your arms if you even attempt to bring her upstairs. :-)

So, that is the update of our room so far.  Really looking forward to sharing our "Before" and "After" pictures next week.  We won't have any Property Brothers makeovers or anything, but it'll look really nice, I'm sure.  At least it will to those of us that have stared at the grossness of it for a decade!

Changes Are Coming

This month we're about to see some pretty fun changes around here!  We're getting our living room painted next week, which is a HUGE deal after living with primer for the past 12 years!  And, we're going to be painting the kitchen and making some minor changes in there too.

We started with a small change today to our laundry room.  I know it's not exciting to pretty much anyone but me, but since it's the start of everything, I figured I'd post about it too. :-)  As you can see, our laundry room is teeny-tiny.  We had to take the door off the hinges to get the washer and dryer in there, when we first moved in.  It's small.  We haven't done a single thing to it in all the years we've lived here.  That little shelf at the bottom is all I had for storage, so it was usually packed with clothes and baskets of misc. items.  Well, today, we bought two large shelves and these baskets to store things and what a difference it makes!  I know it's not all that interesting, but I'm thrilled with it and so glad to have a little extra upstairs storage!  

Special Days

For the past couple of days, we've had some fun classes with our 2s.  Yesterday was our "Bring-a-Friend Day" - the first we've ever tried - in our night class.  We told our parents that they could bring another parent, a grandparent, a sibling, or a friend with their 2 and we had such an amazing response!  We had 31 people show up, and that's not including me or Katie (my co-teacher)!

You can kind of tell in this picture how full our classroom was last night.  Try reading a story to 16 little ones.  It's not easy and I'm not sure how much they actually listened, but I gave it my best shot! ;-)

We read "Glad Monster, Sad Monster" and let the kids try out 6 different centers, between 2 different rooms.  They got to paint the letter "M" for "Monster" and then make this monster pictures.  I was totally covered with paint and glue by the time the night ended and most of it I collected from this center above.

They could also make felt monster faces, play a monster matching game, and play in noodles in our Science Center.  Here they made monster stick puppets.

Today, we had one of the other classes join us.  The 4s class from downstairs came up and paired off with our 2s to hear the story and make their projects.  We did this last year and it was lots of fun!  It was a little more chaotic this year, but they all seemed to have a really fun time together.  We did the same story and the same projects as the night before.  You can see how crowded the class was today! :-)

I loved this center, because everyone made a totally unique monster.  Look at all the eyeballs one of our 2s ended up using on his monster.  Hilarious!

It's fun to see how much bigger the 4s are compared to the 2s.  Yet, they work so nicely together.  Our little ones are growing up and soon we'll be at the end of the school year and they will be preschool-ready!  What a joy and a blessing it is to teach them. :-)

Lord of the Rings Party

Back in January, I mentioned that Pete and I were invited to one of his co-workers' house to play games and that we played a board game of Dungeons and Dragons - yes, the Satan game of the '80s. ;-)   Well, I told a friend of ours one night when we were driving over to church together and he was so excited!  He wanted to know if we would ever be interested in playing a Lord of the Rings role-playing game.  Since we're huge fans of LOTR, both Pete and I agreed!  He was able to get a few other friends of ours from church to join - our Pastor, his son, and our friend Dave.  After nearly 2 months of planning, we got together last night for our first ever LOTR game.  

We started about 4pm and it lasted until some of them had to leave at 7:30.  The game wasn't over, but we all agreed to get back together again and play some more, so the story's just started!  The picture above shows us about half-way through our game last night.  It started off slowly, because none of us have ever played a role-playing game.  James, our narrator/"master", has, so he led us last night.  It took us probably an hour to really understand how to move our characters and move the story forward.  It probably took me 2.  I was a little slow going, though the first to venture out and roll my dice. :-)  It got really fun when we started battling some undead creature named Barowhite and went into the tomb of King Adufel, which is where we ended it.

Never one to shy away from a good theme party, I got to have lots of fun making LOTR food for the party!  I had the "Fires of Mordor", which was a spicy buffalo chicken dip - complete with Gollum, holding the ring and sinking into the lava. ;-)  We had Lembas Bread and bagel pizzas called the "Eye of Sauron".  The kids and Pete helped me make those look like his eye, with black olives going down the center like his pupil. ;-)

I had the fabulous cookies on top made by the same gal who made Noah's nerf cookies the week before.  The bottom cookies were Keebler Elf cookies called "Council of Elrond". :-)  I had lots of different rings, like onion rings, pineapple rings, funyuns, and pretzels.  Then "Po-Tay-Toe Chips", from the movie, of course.  I also put on the front door - Speak Friend and Enter - all in Hobbit font.  Can you tell I like theme parties?!!  It was lots of fun!

These are the sheets that James filled out for each of our characters.  It was our sheet to know how to roll the dice and use our skills to ask questions, sneak, battle, etc...  I was Tinnien, an elf.  Her name means "Spark", because she is quite impulsive at times.  I picked an elf, so I could be tall.  Likewise, Pete picked a dwarf, so he would be short. ;-)  He named his character Faracos.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun, I think (and hope) that everyone wants to do it again.  Because, I know Pete and I are ready for more battling!