Hey Y'all!

Hellloooooooo blogosphere!

It's only been a gazillion years, one baby, and Covid-19 later, but I think I'm going to try my hand at this...again! I can't promise much, but my New Year's resolution for 2021 is to try to turn my life around, in a positive way! I feel like there are a million and one thoughts buzzing around my head and I never write any of them down anymore, so I'm going to send them out into the universe with hopes of having them returned to me ten-fold. 

I've been busy! My son is 18 months old and my husband and I are trying for another kid! He keeps me endlessly busy, so don't have high hopes for frequent posts, but I find myself with more and more to say lately...about him, about my crafty side projects, about life! So here's my repetitive post saying that I'm back...again...;)

I'll keep it short and sweet today. I have commissioned crochet projects and my timer is ticking for a sleeping human, so I'm going to go work on that. But I'm making pies!

Oh My

Guys guys guys.

I'm okay.

It looked terrible to leave you with that last post, didn't it? I didn't even realize I had done it. I decided a while ago I was going to be done blogging for a while, until I could find my passion to write again. I just never realized that I left with such a yucky post.

So I'm good, I promise!

I vowed to myself not to take anything down, so I'm leaving the previous post. Just know that I'm on my way to healing from a lot of stuff going on in my life and in my head. One day at a time, but they're mostly good days lately.

I'll update something more substantial at some point. ;)

Pain

Every single skin cell

Every nerve ending

Every beat of my heart 

Is screaming for me to curl into a ball and disappear

I know it will pass

It always does

Fencing, Carpeting, Furnace-ing...oh my!

Hey all,

Sorry for the lack of blogging yet again. If I had a dollar for every time I started a post that way, gosh, I wouldn't have to be working at all.

We've been constantly busy lately, just trying to get things done, being with each other, working, and the like. It doesn't help that my mood isn't always consistent and I more often feel like sleeping than blogging.

Despite no posting, we have been getting stuff done! Lately we've been spending money on the big projects.

Fencing was wrapped up last weekend after having to order a few extra parts. Advice to anyone willing to put in some hard work; special ordering fencing from Menard's is just as easy as getting it through a fencing company. If you're willing to put in the time and energy, I imagine it would be way cheaper too. While I was a little hesitant about physical fencing when everyone around us has underground, gosh it looks nice. We went two months of leashing Charley in the backyard; I really don't want to do that ever again.

Last week, we got new carpet in the entire upstairs. You know you're a grown up when new carpet is like...the best thing ever... The yucky pee smell is gone, the nasty stains are gone, and in its place is beeeeautiful new carpet that's soft and clean and smells like new carpet.

As I type, the new furnace is being installed. We had all kinds of things that were a little weird with the old one: stuff wasn't working, things needed replacing, parts weren't safe. So time for a new one!

As much as this stuff is costing us, we see it as an investment; we aren't going anywhere!



Fencing - Menards
Carpet - Gregg Estreen Flooring
Furnace - Modern Sheet Metal

De-Wallpapering and Orbital Sanding

I learned a couple tricks today from the best local DIY-er I know, my mother-in-law.

She showed me how to use the humidifier tool to remove wallpaper. It looks a little something like this...

Works pretty slick! At least for the wallpaper we took off tonight.

Now, when the wallpaper came off, there was this lovely thick layer of paint between the wallpaper, the chair rail that was lining the wallpaper, and the wall. She also had the idea to use Luke's (my *cough cough*) orbital sander to buff that ridge out so when we paint, the line won't show up.

Let me tell you, that worked like a charm. I was prepared to hand scrape the whole thing. This worked significantly better, and faster.

Those are my tips and tricks for today. Sorry I don't have better pictures for you...more soon. The house flip is never-ending!

Laundry Room Flip

Yesterday, I toyed with the idea of quitting this blog. To be honest, I'm still toying with it. I don't write nearly as much as I'd like, I have so much going on in my life right now with the move, I feel like I constantly have things to do, and hell, no one reads it.

But there are so many flips happening in my house right now, it's actually kind of fun, so we'll see if I can get a few of them posted.

Starting with the laundry room!

It was our first room that we needed to flip because the previous owners didn't leave their washer and dryer behind. We ordered new ones from Hoersch Appliances (I recommend, they were reasonably priced and family owned; they'll come out and fix anything if it breaks), but wanted to have the room done before they put them in so we wouldn't have to move them!

So the old laundry room had those stick on tiles, a few of which were peeling up. I knew pretty quick that I wanted new floors but didn't know exactly what kind. I thought maybe new stick on tiles, or something similar. We found some super nice slat fitting vinyl flooring at Menards that my husband and father-in-law worked their butts off to install.

Obviously we painted, got the floors installed, brought in the new washer and dryer, hung a few signs, repainted the door, hung some curtains, and voila! A brand new laundry room!

As you'll see through the projects, I'm eternally grateful for my mother-in-law. I have a rough idea of what I want in each room, but she's so much better at matching paint colors than I am. I've had the Gimbel's newspaper ad (antique shop in Scandinavia, $?) for a few years and wanted it to be the centerpiece of my "someday" laundry room. She picked a color in it, matched it, and suddenly I had a nicely coordinated laundry. She also found the curtains (Shopko, $12), which are adorable. The sign is from Hobby Lobby ($13), the rug from Kohls ($10ish). Oh and the magnetic valence rod, which I didn't know existed, Menards ($14).

Mind you, I might like to switch out the hardware eventually (ick, gold), but small potatoes for right now.

A New Beginning

Well it took us 3 weeks, but we're finally moved in! We close on the old house on Wednesday.

It's a bittersweet time. We're both bone-deep exhausted, hardly able to keep our eyes open at night (or in the morning if you're the vampire in the family...) We have endless projects, thoughts, ideas, questions. We're so excited, but sad to see our first home and Luke's only home, go to new owners.

I'm exhausted tonight too after working on moving the last of our things out all weekend, so it's time for a night on the couch and the season finale of GoT. I'll begin to post projects and other shenanigans soon...I hope. We've got the laundry room mostly done, the mailbox replaced, and some other small projects started. I also took one of my good friends' engagement photos today and I'll share a few of those.

Things are good...just really really busy!