new shoes.

It's been several days since I've made an update on our mudroom & laundry room progress.   We finished everything up in the mudroom last week but I just haven't had a chance to take any pictures.  It's a shame that I waited to take pictures because there was a tragic accident with my camera today so it might be out of commission for a while.  By "tragic" I mean "got caught up while taking the stroller out of the trunk which led to the camera going flying which led to the camera smashing on the ground which led to my lens shattering.  Just thinking about it makes me ill.  Yeh, I know it's just a thing and it can be replaced...but it's a pretty damn expensive thing.  I have another lens but it isn't as versatile and will limit the types of pics I can take for a while.

Aaaaaanyways...that's the reason for the poor photos below.

Our mudroom started out like this...

We added a board and batten treatment to the walls and painted the top portion a chocolate brown.  (Side note:  the chocolate brown paint was an "ooops paint" find at Lowes for a whopping $2.50.  Yeh, $2.50 for an entire can of paint.)

We still have to hang some coat hooks and paint the doors but that will be a quick project one of these days.

As for the laundry room, it started out looking like this...

We painted the walls, stacked the washer/dryer, added some storage and built a tabletop for the long wall opposite the window.  The paint from this room was another "ooops paint" find for $5.00.  I guess I'll put my dollars saved on paint towards a new camera lens.

 The table top is just made out of a few tongue and groove boards.  We used liquid nails along with our nailer to secure them together and they are resting on top of some ugly storage cabinets.  To hide those cabinets, I used some discount fabric I bought a few weeks ago and made a skirt.  The skirt is secured to the underside of the table top with velcro so I can remove it easily if it ever needs to be washed or switched out.  (This is another shining example of the fact that I don't iron.  As the wrinkles are flattening themselves out, it has also come to my attention that I need to hem the skirt an inch or so.)  Oh, and we also need to re-hang the clothes rod as well as a few shelves in this room.  I'm not sure why this picture makes the skirt look mustard-y but it totally isn't in real life.  It's more of a lively, lime green.

 I also used some more of that discount fabric to make some curtains.  Again, horrible camera = horrible lighting = horrible picture but you get the idea...

So there's our mudroom and laundry room....approximately 83% done.

On a personal note, James got his first pair of sneakers today.  It's amazing how such a minor thing can make him look so much older.  Sigh....

prime time.

I wanted to throw together a quick post to show stage 2 of our mudroom-board-and-batten extravaganza - if only to limit the number of pics I would post to show the finished project (whenever that may be!).

We got all of the pieces of our board and batten up on the walls.  It was a fairly easy project.  You can find a zillion sites with step-by-step instructions all over the interweb so I won't attempt to share our own version.  We kind of just winged it!  The only issue we had was due to the fact that one wall of our mudroom is textured - like, majorly textured.  Instead of tearing down the wallboard or attempting to sand it flat, we opted to cover the lower portion of the wall with white wall board.  (It's basically the same thing that they use to make dry erase boards.)  We then used 1x4's for the top and base and 1x2's for the vertical pieces.  (Note: we used primed MDF board from Lowes for these pieces so those are rough measurements.)
Everything is primed (hence the spotty "paint" job) and ready to be painted with the real stuff - hopefully this weekend.

Ladies and gentleman, Liz and Joe's board and batten...

Oooh, wait, first a "before" pic...

...and how it looks today....

Remember, so far it has only been primed so everything will be clean, solid white once we are finished.  Everything that is above the top board will be painted - our tentative plan is to go with a chocolate brown but that could change.

For anyone wanting to do this on your own, it really shouldn't take you 2 weeks like it has us.  We've only had a few spare hours here and there to work on this but I would definitely call this a weekend project - that is, if you don't have a rambunctious little man demanding all of your attention!

Oh, and if you want more examples of board and batten treatments, visit http://ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com/.  Amanda and her hubby have done a similar (yet more intricate) treatment on several rooms in their home and it looks ridiculously awesome - plus they have more detailed instructions - and double plus, she is super sweet and has tons of other fun DIY ideas!

Well, my computer is at 5% and I don't want to go searching for it's power cord so, g'night!

laundry room update and cows.

Yep, that pretty much sums up our Saturday.  Since the last update, I finished painting the laundry room.  We stacked the washer/dryer and put a few shelving/drawer units in the room.  There's still a bunch of little things to get done in there but, for now, the major updates are done.  The taller drawers are great for us tall-folk and are the perfect height for folding clothes, ironing, etc.  I'm not too cool with them partially covering the window but I hope to mask that a bit with some curtains.

We still have to build a table-top to go on top of these...

I grabbed this fabric this morning for super cheap.  (Joann's fabric was having a 50% off sale if anyone needs that sort of stuff.)  I plan on making some curtains as well as a skirt to go around the table on the long wall of the laundry room - to cover those three wire drawers in the pic above.  Joe put on his best "I love it!" face when I showed him the fabric I chose.  He's a horrible liar.  I still don't know what he was hoping for...probably something with the Reds or Aston Martin logo plastered all over it.

We also started to get the board and batten up in the mudroom.  We're about halfway done with that project so I'll post some more pics when it's done.  For now, here's the last pic I took before the sun started to set...

Joe promised me that, if I behaved myself, we could go to Peaceful Meadows for dinner.  They have the most delicious ice cream around - and they are right down the street from us.  (I swear, that only played a minor role in our decision to buy this house.)  James has gotten pretty good at his cow sounds so I figured he'd like to see the real thing.

There was only this calf and one other cow in the barn when we were there.  The others were still out galavanting.  James was pretty psyched.  These cows weren't mooing and they weren't spotted like all the ones in his books so I'm not even sure he knew they were cows.  He might have just assumed they were really big, smelly dogs.  Regardless, he just wanted at 'em!

I'm pretty sure this isn't allowed but it's always been one of James' life long dreams to ride a cow...

The other cow wasn't as friendly as the calf.  She came over to get some hay and then went back to her lonely corner.  I guess I'd be pretty bummed if there were no bulls around on my Saturday night either.  (Not to mention a Saturday night of a holiday weekend.)

After we got a nice coating of cow slobber on our hands, we went to grab some ice cream.  Joe didn't share but I let James have some of mine.  Patiently waiting for another bite...

Oh man...it's coming!

So good...

After the little monster falls asleep, we'll try to get everything assembled in the mudroom - so we'll just have painting left to do.

Oh, and I should also mention that Joe spent a few hours this morning cleaning up the yard.  It was a mess from the storm that blew through here last weekend but luckily there was no real damage.  We still have a lot of branches/trees that need to be chopped down before the next storm rolls through and one of them decides to fall on the house - so if anyone is insured, bored, and loves cutting down trees, come on by!

Well, that's all for now!  TTFN!

motivation

We haven't been home much at all this summer so all of the projects on our to-do list have been majorly neglected.  The yard looks like a jungle and there's nothing going on inside of the house either.  It's gotten to feel pretty overwhelming - so much to do, so little time to do it.  I know, we aren't leaving this house anytime soon but it's still hard to have a million project ideas running around your head when you also have the feeling like you'll never actually accomplish anything.  To motivate myself to do some work around the house, I finally initiated a few smaller projects. Sorry, patio, new roof, and dormer, you'll have to wait a bit longer.

One of my favorite things about our new house is that it has a mudroom and separate laundry room.  Yeh, I spend the least amount of time in these two areas but that doesn't mean I love them any less.  The mudroom/side entryway is rather icky and drab.  I ripped out the makeshift cabinet thingy that was hanging on the wall by about 183 screws.  Even though that uncovered an equally as ugly bare wall, it was a relief to see it go.  We're planning on pepping up the mudroom with some board and batten on the walls - probably with a chocolate brown paint on the top portion.  Fingers crossed that project is checked off our list in the next week or two!  Until we get around to that, here's a quick look at the entryway before and after I ripped down the cabinet...

I also got two new lights today to replace these beauties. (Surprise, Joe!  You have your own project waiting for when you get home from work tonight!)

A few weeks ago, my brother and his fiance grabbed this bench for me - at only $12, it was a craigslist steal!  I cleaned up the rusty parts, sprayed them with a hammered-black spray paint, and painted the rest of the bench white.  This bench will probably go in the entryway with a few storage baskets underneath.  Here are some before and afters of that find...

Now onto the laundry room.  If you go back and look at the pics of the entryway, one of those doors leads to the laundry area.  (The other doors are to the garage, a huge storage closet that the previous owners used as an office, and the door leading into our kitchen.)  I didn't get to take any official "before pics" of this room because I have a 10-month old little rugrat who thinks naps are for losers so I had to take full advantage of him finally passing out in his crib this afternoon.  Before I took these pics, I took a few shelves off the wall, removed a couple metal filing cabinets and a horrific pinkish countertop they had resting on top of the cabinets. It still looks so dumpy in there but I wanted to get started on painting while I had a chance.  A few weeks ago I found a $5 gallon of paint during one of our many trips to Lowes.  Suggestion: if you need to paint anything and you happen to be going by your local hardware store, check out the "oops paint".  They always have an array of different colors and different types of paint and stains for next to nothing. As you can see, this was a darn good deal.  It was the exact color I was planning on painting this room and it was a kitchen/bath paint so it's mildew resistant - perfect for a damp laundry room.

I didn't want to press my baby-napping-luck and break out the roller and other painting supplies so I just started to paint around the trim.  Yes, I know that it's best to paint the entire space while everything is still wet so you don't see lines/seams but let's get real...I'm lucky I got this much done!  Here's a fairly realistic shot of the paint color.  Oh, and I'm not a horrible painter - the walls are just textured...

We're planning on stacking the washer and dryer to open up the space some more as well as to hide those pipes in the corner.  We're also planning on creating a storage/shelving/desk space along the open wall.  I'd like to add some trim to hide the imperfections along the floor, ceiling, and doorway to the mudroom as well as paint the back door white.  The floor would eventually have to go but we're more about the cheap/free projects right now.

One of these days we might even convince ourselves that an old deck post and a generator are better suited for the basement, not the laundry room...

Like I said earlier, I hope to have these two areas finished within the next couple of weeks.  There's still a lot to do in these to small spaces but getting things started has definitely given me the motivation to git 'er done!

P.S.  I'd like to thank the sleep gawds for making James sleep for 90+ minutes right now.