Mostly done projects

Millie told you I was coming, so here I am. 

We have been working! It doesn't seem like anything is really done yet, but that's ok. Looking through these photos has given me encouragement that we are accomplishing things. 

You may remember this photo from before, I just wanted to show you the hallway before I finished painting it. You can't really see the walls, but they needed loving. It took me a few weeks to get the prep done, and I finally realized that it may never be finished if I didn't bring in reinforcements. So I called Tess and she came. Bless her! 

She was here for a few days playing with my kids, and I got the hallway done! I can do the prep in little blocks of time between wrastlin' kids, but painting takes time! As in, one long stretch of time. Those are hard to come by around here. 

Thank you, Tim!

I really like the buttery yellow color. It's not like YELLOW. It's just... you know, cute yellow. 

Here is Emmy and Amelia's room with some furniture in it. We haven't decorated yet, as you can see, because there are so many other BIG things we're working on. I might not get curtains up until winter. Let's just be honest. And yes, that is Amelia halfway under the bed. Don't be alarmed. 

But we did paint a headboard for her! We went to the thrift store to look for one, waited in line for it to open (because that's how you get stuff at our thrift store. Silliness) and got a great one! $10. Okay. 

Commence headboard refreshening.

These two needed a watermelon refreshening. And do you like that they set up their camp chairs to watch me? 

Sanding completed!

While all of this headboard stuff was going on, some worker guys were repaving our cul-de-sac! They had ripped up the pavement 4 weeks before (right after we moved in) and today was the day for lovely smooth new road.

We had fun watching.

 Finished! I had to call my painting-furniture-expert-cousin halfway through to make sure I was doing it right. Thanks, Kenzie!

 There has also been a lot of chocolate ice cream going on around here. Daily chocolate ice cream.

 Here we have worker man deciding what to do with the mooshed parts of the drywall. These are the worst spots.

 Cut it out.

Clean it up.

..........

And apparently I didn't take any photos of the patch. Hmmm. We'll get back to that.

Next project:

Painting doors. This was another big one that we've been putting off for a while. It's always easier to jump into projects when you know what you're doing. This one, we definitely didn't. But saturday afternoon came, we had finished our other jobs, the weather was perfect... so we dove in. 

Jonah was the photographer. He was standing up when he took this photo.

We had to wipe them down first, but that's not why I'm scowling. Caleb and I had just finished a water fight to end all water fights, and I was on the lookout for guerilla warfare.  

Also, let the record show that I won the water fight. For the first time in our ten years of impromptu water fights, he conceded that this time I won. I wish you had been there! I was ruthless! Plus my squirt gun worked way better than his. But still.

                                                                     

Claire had my back. And the back of the door! She got it sparkly clean!

Time to paint! This was the part that we were hesitant about, neither one of us had ever used a big spray gun before. Caleb did awesome, though! 

When ever we're about to start a project I always go through a moment of "Do we really need to do this? Are they really that bad? Can we just skip this part and get by ok?" and then we go ahead and get it done and then I always think "WOW! What a difference! I'm so glad we did it!" 

The psychology of the home renovator.

As I said earlier, the weather was perfect. Naturally, as we were spraying, a slight breeze picked up. Nothing to be worried about. But then, as the doors were drying, a gust blustered up. We were inside, but we heard it whistle through the trees. "Ahhhg!" we both said, then we heard the crash! One of the rows of doors blew over. And that was it! No more gusts! Weird. 

I didn't get a photo of it, because we were both somewhat frantically unscrewing doors and hauling them inside, worried that another gust would come. 

Very fortunately, only one door was damaged.

It's kind of a mess, but hopefully fixable. Very fortunately, this is one of two sliding doors that cover Emmy's closet, and this crack is on the inside. It will only be visible from inside the closet, where hopefully no one will be visiting:) 

Also fortunately, the doors were dry enough that the paint stayed where it was supposed to. They were a little tacky, so we couldn't stack them on each other, so my living room is full of doors. Beautiful clean white lovely doors! The kids ran up and down the hallway lots of times, just because things like this are fun, for some reason. 

Amelia has been working hard, too!

 She finally learned how to crawl with her tummy up off the floor. Suddenly she went from sweet little quiet and content to sit and play with toys Amelia, and turned into sweet little fearless conquerer Amelia. It's a side of her we didn't know she had!

You're almost there, Millie! Keep going!

That seems to be the theme around here, lately:)