The Master

Imagine white walls...unfinished, dated, brown wooden closet doors. Soooo boring it made my eyes hurt. Hmmmm…blank slate.  This seems like a dare.  

I was feeling bold when I picked out the colors...and when I splashed it onto the walls for the first time, I was scared. It was SO dark!! I thought maybe I made a mistake.  But, now that it's finished, I love how it turned out. It's pretty and dark, kind of like a cave.  Not too feminine, after all it's his room too. It's Artsy and Comfy... love!

And no room make over is complete without a little DIY...

Da Floors

So I obviously couldn't wait the whole 5 days to post some after pics...frankly I'm surprised I lasted 3.

Can you believe it started out as this?!?!

Read the whole before post here.

And.... here they are!

I'm very eager to walk around on them...2 days and a waxing to go, then they'll be aaaaaaaaaall mine :)

I have to give whatahusband most of the credit - this project would not have been possible without him. He did all of the prep work himself - a huge job - and he did it with a smile on his face. I am amazed at the things he can accomplish. The love muscle rocks!

I was the lead worker for spraying the stain and laying down the epoxy. I was incredibly nervous about it...would I be able to do it right, and what if I do it wrong and it looks awful...but it all worked out, and I really like it. I also get credit for getting stain all over the walls. And the cabinets. Oops. I'm going to paint them anyway, so no biggie. We'll just be sporting the sprayed wall and no base board look for a while. The floors are SUPER shiny, which is kinda fun, but I'm worried about shoe/footprints showing. Wait - I guess when I think about it, who really cares. Why would I want to live in a house that appears as if no one lives there? I like a good lived-in space.

It's starting to look like home :)

Lord beer me strength

Here I am staining.  In my orange striped shirt and gas mask. hot hot hot.

I should mention that it is around 11pm when this picture was taken. I was thinking we would be staining around 5 that evening...wrong.  It took us all day friday to get the floors ready to stain.  And when they were done, we were committed to coming back in 6 hours to neutralize the staining chemicals....

That's right, people...we had to be back at 5am the next morning.  And it's a 30 minute drive out to the ranch from our current home.  I tried not to complain, but when the alarm clock went off that morning, I offered whatahusband $1,000 to finish the job himself.  Just my luck it's a 2 person job.

Here's whatahusband around 6am.  After we neutralized, we had to mop the floor 3 times to pick up the residue. (The dark wet spots are a close to what it will look like when it's finished. It's much darker than we were expecting, but we both really like how it turned out.)

After the mopping, we had to wait for the floors to dry out again in order to lay down the 1st layer of epoxy.  We GROSSLY underestimated the epoxy step and how hard it would be.  We opted for industrial grade commercial epoxy that will last up to 20 years without needing to be stripped or re-sealed. You might be thinking...maybe that's a little bit overboard for a residence?  Yes, you'd be right...and let me tell you why...because my hubby likes things to "to stand the test of time" which means this: if we were to buy a new piece of furniture...say a bookshelf...he has to be able to bang it, wiggle it, press on it, and generally imagine any type of situation where it might be bumped or knocked over, and if he thinks it will pass these tests without breaking,  he thinks it is a good piece of furniture for our house.  Solid wood entertainment center, oil field pipe end tables, welded steel garage shelves, these are the ugly  practical things he likes.  He doesn't care if it's pretty. If it weighs 1,000 lbs and  is super bulky and not stylish or dainty in any way, I bet he would love it.  Bless his heart - he comes by it honestly. His dad likes things even more sturdy. If you were in a hurricane in Texas, you'd want to be at my in-laws house.  It's a steel frame house, walls made of concrete, with rock layered on top of that. We could be sipping margarita's and the world would be ending outside and you'd never know it.  

Anyway, I digress. We opted for commercial grade epoxy.  This is the stuff you find on grocery store and warehouse floors. Once you start the process, you can't stop and you're bound by the drying times of each layer. The first layer goes on - it took both of us working together about 5 hours to do this layer - then we waited 14 hours.  If it is not fully cured (which was the case with us) you come back at 24 hours and the clock starts again with a 2nd layer of epoxy. It was rough.  I epoxied my hair to the pole attached to the roller. We couldn't walk on it with shoes or socks because it was tacky, so we taped plastic bags over our feet.  On the morning we did the second layer, I forgot to bring shoes.  I criticized whatahusband for "sub-par paint brush technique".  He criticized me for having a bad attitude and being cranky.  Guilty as charged. I tried to keep it upbeat, I really did. But, I had bags for shoes, I ripped out my hair, and I was SO ready to be done.

Well, we survived and we are one step away from being completely finished.  We wait 5 days for the epoxy to fully cure, then we wax it. After the wax layer dries, we can FINALLY walk on it and move our stuff into the house...and LIVE there. Can't wait! :) 

Pics to come in 5 days...

The Big Stain

Today is a special day! We are finally ready to stain the floors. Whatahusband has been working his tail off, on hands and knees, getting all that nasty tile up. For the next 4 days, we'll be mopping, scrubbing, rolling, spraying, epoxying...and then waiting for almost a week for it to cure.  Man, will it feel good to be done with this project. I love DIY, don't get me wrong, but this project was not for sissies. I can't believe how much work it turned out to be. But - on the flip side, we'll have these for the rest of our lives  - - and we made each other swear on a stack of bibles decided that we'll never do anything floor related again.

This is pure happiness

Can you tell he's been at the ranch??

Easter: Two

I can remember fighting hunting for eggs with my sisters in the back yard in our matching dresses and crimped hair hoping we'd get the egg with the dollar bill in it. Ok, ok hoping to get the egg with the chocolate in it, who and I kidding. Easter is one of our biggest holidays as Christians, but almost all of the activities that we do are geared for kids. And adults who love sugar. (Side note - why won't the cadbury mini-chocolate egg makers just offer them year round? I'm sure my sister C and I could keep them in business. just saying.)

Anyway, since we are adults only at my casa, we decided to try a Christian seder meal this year. I looked at a bunch of helpful blog posts (here, and here) and came up with our own little dinner. The meal is based on the traditional Jewish passover meal  - which was to remember when God passed over the Jews during the plagues and their freedom from Egypt. The passover celebration would have occurred the last day of Jesus's life, so that means what we call "The Last Supper" was actually the passover seder that He had with his disciples. The meal consists of different foods that represent parts of the passover story, and some readings and verses.  It was very eye opening to think that just a few days before His death, He would have been remembering God's faithfulness to deliver His people and provide for them. Many times in the readings "freedom" was mentioned - how He freed the Jews from Egypt, how His death freed us from the bonds of sin. Such a cool way to see Easter in a new way.

And then we had chocolate pie :)

Pile O' Bricks

My boy, he loves his bed. And I mean Loves with a capitol L. When I took him out to the new property for the first time....he immediately ran off sniffing every inch of the place. When he was pooped, he looked for his bed. When he couldn't find that, he found the next best thing...