December House Update

Good grief, the holidays flew by!  B was off of work for 2 weeks and it was heavenly to have some adult interaction :D  While it still feels like we have a ridiculous amount of things to do around the house (which we totally do), at least we accomplished some big ones:

I finally painted the playroom bathroom.  You know, the poop cave?  Project Depoopification is completed!!

This was the hole where the towel bar was attached.  Inside is  one of those large wing anchor things :/  B patched it up for me.

Yes, I'm aware that the right corner of all my pictures is black - that's my old phone cover/wallet.  Obviously, I need a new one ;P

Original wall color to the left.  Our color on the right.  What the previous owners painted (i.e. poop brown) everywhere else.

Yeah - I wasn't about to mess with wires, so I just painted around the light ;P

The Kitchen:

This by FAR took the most time out of our projects.  I painted all the walls and stained the cabinets with General Finishes gel stain, a la this tutorial.  B added the handles, I need to go back and paint the screws black ;P  I'll get pictures of the cabinets with the doors back on soon - sorry, still trying to catch up after the holidays.

Yeah, while taping, I managed to bang the crap out of my head on the doorknob.  B went to Home Depot soon after for some other things and returned with this.  Punk...

Before...ewwww..

Ahhh, all clean :)  We didn't tape off any of the baseboards because we will be replacing them anyway and it saved a bunch of time not having to do that.

Left - original color.  Right - one coat of java gel stain.  Center - two coats of gel stain

When the tutorial says to use hardcore kitchen gloves, it means it.  This is what happens when you get cheap and try to use just regular old throw away latex gloves.  And then your husband calls you "zombie fingers" for the next three days while it wears off.  Spare yourself and just use the stinkin' kitchen gloves.

When walking on countertops to stain your cabinets, perilously perched high above the ceramic tile floor and desperately grasping for a corner to hold on to, make sure that your stain-covered sock hand doesn't accidentally smack into the ceiling.  Otherwise, your house will also look like the ceiling pooped itself.

We pulled out the oven to stain these cabinets, and were greeted with this mass of burnt up chips...or something.  Mmmm, yummy :/

This is the detritus (or bird's nest - not sure which) that my husband found in the exhaust fan above the stove.  No wonder it didn't work!

The Staircase:

B painted the 18 foot staircase, giving me several heart attacks in the process.  But it's done!  Pictures to come soon.

Now that we've talked about what we accomplished successfully, let's just talk a second about how I screwed up the master bath.  Not only is the color wrong (like the color glows it's so bold), but the cabinets look like I stained them in the dark...while drunk.  Probably gonna have to redo that, too :/  AND, apparently the screws were made of a softer metal than the handles I was putting on, so the heads just screwed off of about 4 of them.  Did I know how to get them out?  No.  Did I want to ask anyone for help?  No.  Because I'm a loser.  So I moved the handles slightly to the side and drilled new holes, praying that the handles would cover the holes I made.  Boo.  So much for DIY awesomeness.  When we actually have any real money, I'm paying someone else to fix this junk.

Anyhoo, enough about that.  Here's some cuteness to end the post with, because who doesn't love cute little chubby-cheeked babies??

I just died of the cuteness.  For reals, yo.