Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Summer Plans of the NON lazy kind....

Home Projects seem to be what my summers are all about...

My first married summer I spent the whole two months putting together Ikea furniture for our little love nest, and dealing with the plumbing in our bathroom...(that's actually a really good story, remind me to tell it sometime when you're not in the middle of eating something)
The second, I was setting up a nursery and painting over the neon yellow and purple stenciled fluer D' lies on the bathroom walls of our first bought home.

The third I was chasing a crawling baby around that same home while daddy pulled up all the laminate hardwood to fix it, paint all the doors, replace the baseboards and light fixtures and draw up house plans, truss orders and hire contractors for breaking ground on our new house.

The next three summers were spent completely immersed in working on that same house. Everything from Exterior rock facing, to drywall to weeping tile to drop ceilings to bobcats and electrical....that's what summer was for. For my extremely capable and talented jack-of-all-trades husband(who has the summers off because he's a teacher) to get up at the crack of dawn every morning put on clothes crusted in drywall mud, and work boots and get down to business. He'd break for lunch....and continue. Almost every single day, he kept that pace for 3 summers, tackling everything from tile to concrete pouring.
I was mighty proud of him...and of the house he worked on...but I liked to fantasize of a summer with nothing to do...no housework other than maintenance and watching all our landscaping and planting grow. We might stain a few fence boards or put up another shelf in the garage...but I longed for the day when holidays would mean relaxation and rest. Trips to the zoo instead of the hardware store.

Well, as it turns out we worked like dogs in the middle of the winter and spring to finish what would have been done this summer, had we stayed in that house. Instead we moved to another new house all over again...only this one was finished.

Sure, there's an unfinished basement but there's no plans to start work on it any time soon and we haven't let the cement floor deter us from hanging out down there at all. We threw some rugs from my mother in law down there, moved all the rubbermaids to one wall and even put our friends down there to sleep when they came to visit.
Do you think I should tell them part of their bed was held up with one of the rubber maids full of Christmas decorations? They're very cool friends... I think they were okay.

So here we were with a laconic summer stretched out before us....and what do we decide to do?

Rent a floor sander, crack open a couple gallons of paint, put up some wall paper and pull out the air nailer ...

I guess it just ain't summer around here till you hear the table saw going...

But by golly, my kitchen looks amazing!

You may remember from previous posts how I have felt about the wood tone combinations of the cabinetry or flooring in my house and some of you were quite passionate in helping me to decide what to do about all of it.
I'm so happy to update all of you and tell you that we've hit on our inspiration and the direction we've taken everything just feels so right. I've got all the country charm I could ask for paired with all the classic and even modern quirky twist I always wanted. It's really my dream kitchen pretty much, which is saying a lot when I had the chance to build my dream kitchen a few years ago...and didn't.

I can't wait to show it all to you when it's finished. In the meantime I've got a few work-in- progress pictures to post here before I head back to my paint roller.

I had a little distracting company while I was cutting in around the cupboards...
My lovely friend B's lovely little "Kilmo" chatted me up while I did my work
Isn't he awesome? Old-man loafers and all?


After all it is summer... and one must make use of the light. 

Got any DIY summer plans on the agenda?

1 comment:

  1. And I love you. You guys are pretty awesome and I think your house is looking great!!

    ReplyDelete

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