The Kitchen

Well, it's been silent here on the blog for a while, but it's not because we haven't been up to anything. We've been doing a lot of unpacking, learning the ways around the city, making friends, and the biggest thing keeping us busy has been house renovations. 

I knew when I first saw pictures of this house that I would have to do a lot of things to make it feel like a place I wanted to live. It wasn't my style, I didn't like the colors....or the wallpaper, but I was convinced by others that the house had good structure and I'd be able to make good changes to the house to make it our own. And it was selling for really cheap, so we'd be able to put some money in and update the house and later sell it for more. 

One of the biggest projects has been the kitchen. I'm pretty sure this room will never be done. Initially, I thought we'd have it done in a couple of weeks, but we've learned that house projects will always take longer than you think. So, the kitchen is not close to done, but I thought I'd do a quick post of the progress made thus far. 

In the beginning: the first two shots are the walk-through of the house before we bought it. The current owners were working between Florida and Kentucky and as far as I can understand, using this house as a middle stopping point/storage area for things as they were working on moving to Kentucky. When we first saw the house, it was a huge mess and not really being lived in- no couch, only one blow up mattress, no semblance of a home, which made it really hard for me to be at all interested in living there or trying to visualize people living there. 

The first thing I needed to do in this kitchen was to take down the wall paper. It was a small floral print with a top border of baskets. The day we did the paper work and the house was ours, I came home and started pulling that off. If you look carefully in the below picture, you can see small helper Ezra. 

The wallpaper came off pretty easily, only to reveal layer number two of wallpaper, a larger floral pattern, no border. I almost liked the second layer. If it was brighter and just used as an accent wall, I think it could totally work. But as an entire kitchen, not so much. So, down it came as well. To get the wallpaper off, we: first, used a tool that made little holes in the wallpaper; second, sprayed the walls with a mixture of vinegar, water and lemon juice and let it sit for 5-10 minutes; third, used a putty knife to help scrape off all the wallpaper. 

Once all the wallpaper was off, we were left with bare drywall. They didn't paint before they put the wallpaper in. Peter was super bummed when he woke up to see the walls like this. He told me, "I don't like that brown color for the walls." Well, neither do I buddy.

The next step at this point was to scrub all of the wallpaper glue off the walls. Even though the wallpaper was off, the drywall was really rough due to the dried on glue and we knew it wouldn't work to paint over it. Taking the glue off was not super hard to do, but it did take a decent amount of time and was fairly tedious. We used the same mix of vinegar, water and lemon juice and sprayed the walls again. Then Jonathan ran the scraper along the wall from the ceiling to the wood paneling, kind of like a squeegee, to get as much of the glue off as we could. Then he'd wipe the scraper, and run it along the wall a few more times before moving along and continuing the same way along the entire wall. I went behind Jonathan with a rag and a new clean mix of vinegar and water and scrubbed the wall, rinsing the rag frequently. Eventually we were done with that part and we were left with brown drywall and brown wood panel.

Next step, painting! Here is where things finally started looking up. The first step was to prime the wood panel. I wasn't sure exactly what color I was going to have on that part, but I knew it wasn't going to stay brown. Jonathan and Peter went to work and primed that, and it made a world of difference just having that part lightened up. 

In the middle of painting, Jonathan pulled this wood piece off from above the sink and took out the florescent light. I'm still deciding on a light to go over the sink, but having the scallops gone and a straight line in it's place is great.

Somewhere along the line of painting, I also took the popcorn off the kitchen ceiling. I figured if the place was already a disaster area, might as well take a bit of time and update the ceiling. I borrowed a tool from a friend that is a scraper with a frame underneath it that allows for a bag to be attached, so when you scrape the popcorn off it falls right into the bag! I had to change bags frequently, because it gets heavy quick, but overall, the cleanup afterwards was minimal. So, I scraped and Jonathan and I sanded and wiped it down for painting.

The ceiling is still a work in progress. I primed it this week, but the paint started peeling off in some places?! Jonathan scraped the peeling parts off and sanded down the edges and wiped it down again so I could paint it the next day. The next day, the edges of where he sanded were peeling more! AHHH! So, we will try scraping and sanding once more and see if the peeling stops of if we have to do something more intense. 

Also, during this time I decided to go with my gut and do white wood paneling and grey drywall. I went back and forth quite a bit, but I love the result thus far! It looks soooooo much simpler and clean. Everything still needs another coat of paint, but it's getting there!

So, that's where the kitchen is at present. Hopefully we'll get the ceiling figured out this week, and get it painted. Once it's painted Jonathan will put in a new light and we'll move the table back in the kitchen. I still need to paint all the doors in the kitchen, and do second coats of paint on all the walls. Then, at some point, I'll tackle all of the cupboards- they are also going white, potentially dark blue on the bottom cupboards?? Still very unsure of that, but I saw a picture of someone's cupboards that did it and it looked awesome. We'll see how adventurous/worn out I get. 

A Fan to Keep Us Cool

There were a lot of things we did when we moved into this house to make it nicer. One of the things on the list of 'things to fix', but not high on the list, was to replace the ceiling fan in the main room. It needed to be replaced mostly because it didn't work. And it was super gross, you can't really tell in the pictures, but it was old and nasty. If it worked we might have just cleaned it really good, but since it didn't work, it was out with the old and in with the new. 

The old fan

Anyway, it was lower on the to do list because the ceilings in this room are really high and we knew it would not be simple to switch out fans. But then, it started getting warmer and we learned that the AC doesn't work in the house. And none of the windows in the main room open. No chance for the room to cool down at night, just hot, humid air. It gets really hot and really unpleasant. We borrowed some box fans from my parents, and that helps, but we decided a ceiling fan would help the most. We went to the store, and after a much too long of a time there trying to decide what I wanted (thank you patient children of mine), we chose a fan. There were a couple that we were going back and forth between. Jonathan liked one of them more and I liked the other one more, but we both liked both of them. But, we finally picked one, and brought it home. Then came the fun part, trying to install the fan up high.

We recruited my brother, Ian, to come help. We fed him dinner; he helped install a fan...win win (it was definitely a bigger win for us). The first thing they had to figure out was how to get up high. None of the ladders at the house were tall enough to be much help. But, luckily, Lanny (Dad's barn guy) still had his scaffolding in the barn. So, Ian and Jonathan headed out to the barn and after a few trips, reassembled the scaffolding in our living room. That was a fun sight to see.

Scaffolding in the living room. Fan assembly.

While Jonathan and Ian went up and down and figured everything out, I watched the movie Inside Out with Peter. We drew the better stick that night.Anyway, Jonathan took apart the old fan and got it down, then they put the new rod in and started getting everything else in place. The fan we chose has a remote and sensor so there isn't a long pull chain. That was a great choice- good job genius husband. But because of that, it did take a couple extra steps to install it.

Jonathan and Ian, almost done.

It took a lot longer than we were expecting due to the high ceiling. The scaffolding came in handy. I can't imagine what they would have done without it. Ian got to spend some quality time with the Nelsons and he was a huge help to Jonathan. They only left out one part of the fan- the little ring for where the rod meets the ceiling cover, but you can't really tell, and even if you could, Jonathan wasn't going up there to fix it. But, we have a working fan! It's a wonderful thing. Now two out of the three rooms in this house have ceiling fans and they are much better for it. Thank you for the invention of ceiling fans, scaffolding and little brothers! It was a fun night, and everyone is in a much better mood everyday because we are so cool. 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

When we moved to the little house in NC, there was a side yard that was more of a jungle than anything else. Some of the weeds were four feet tall, most of them were at least knee high, the entire thing was super overgrown. We found an entire set of closet shelving, random scraps of metal, and a rusty saw blade in this area. Exciting. So, one day, I mentioned to Jonathan that something needed to be done about this area. Next thing I knew, he was out there with the lawn mower, taking care of business. 

Half cut, half wild. Wire shelves that were in there.

Jonathan "Lawn Mowering" (Peter's words)

All cleared out

Once it was all mowed, we both raked it out and got the giant stalks out of the dirt patch. There were low weeds that were growing across the entire area that were pulled out. We debated on what to do about this area. Just let grass grow and have extra yard space, garden, or get some outdoor play things- little plastic slides and such. 

We decided on garden. Jonathan loves to garden, and I love to have produce that I can grab from my yard. He is more of a gardener than I am, but if he starts one, I'll help maintain it. One Saturday, he grabbed a bunch of scrap wood and made a simple planter box in the dirt patch. Peter was in love with the building process and excited to have a garden. The garden box was built quickly, but it stayed void of plants for a while. So, Peter planted some rocks. And by planted I mean he threw big rocks into the box with no rhyme or reason. It stayed like that for a while.

Rock garden

Then, a friend from church posted on Facebook that she had 3 extra zucchini plants free for the taking. I told her we would love to take them off her hands. The boys and I went over, played at her house for a bit and came home 3 plants richer. Then after 2 different stops by the store, we now have a pretty good garden. We got a late start this year because we were still going by Utah planting season to avoid frost....which was unnecessary here. So we didn't start anything from seeds, but at least we've got something, and it's pretty good.

Current garden state!

We have (from bottom left going clockwise) cilantro, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, and corn in the center. Peter really wanted to plant corn, so we're giving it a go. We've also never done eggplant, but Jonathan thought it would be fun, so that is another experimental one. The other plants are ones we eat all the time, so it will be great to have them. The kids help water them, and so far they are growing great! I'll try to do some updates on the garden as summer progresses and we'll see how much success we have.