Hallway is Done!

So I took on the task of re-painting the downstairs hallways/staircase/upstairs hallway.  I finished a few days ago and I'm pretty happy with the results.  I painted the ceiling too - I hate painting textured paint.  But what can you do?

View from the kids' room.  Next project - work on the floors.

The pictures are up!

I still have to paint some mouldings and the doors - but that shall come later.

James' backsplash project turned into a "new countertops & backsplash" project.  We bought really pretty glass mosaic tiles for the backsplash and will be picking out beige marble tiles for the countertops.  This better "complete" the kitchen...only took us 3 years, 1 month to do.  We're on day 5 now with no kitchen sink and I've been in really good spirits about it.  We went 6 days with no kitchen sink on our first "kitchen re-do" 2 1/2 years ago and I went nuts.  I must have better hormones flowing through my body now than I did back then.  I don't want James to rush - if this is "it" - then I want him to take his time to make sure everything is good.  Hopefully we'll have some completed pictures of this soon! 

We're Back At It!

Winter sucks.  It's cold, it's snowy and it's not even almost over.  I'm also in that stircrazy mode.  I like change.  I like to move.  We've been here for over 3 years now and I need some excitement!  So I finally got off my lazy butt and decided to do something about it:  Paint the hallway/stairway/upstairs hallway. 

We painted this about 2 1/2 years ago.  Unfortunately, the color I picked out then, which seemed nice on the card, came out "old lady pink".  This time around, we went with some "oat gold" color.  Tan/Beige if you will.  This is so far (my battery died when I took this so it didn't come out too good). 

So far, much better than "old lady pink". 

James took on a project too - but I will wait until he's all done to post the pictures...I like leaving people in suspense.  

Recent Updates!

Even though I have been bad at posting, we've still be hard at work. Here are a few things we've accomplished over the past few weeks!

James finished the patio! He had to cut bricks for the side and back. He did that then filled the cracks with sand. It is done. Also! This is our bargain patio! James "acquired" all the bricks and cobblestones from a job site last fall. And really - it looks better in real life. BARGAINTASTIC!

I did paint the faces of the stairs. I still have to figure out how I'm going to refinish the tops, paint the things that hold the banister up and a few other things. It just seems so hard and I'm not motivated these days.

This is the back, spare room. I painted it Sunbeam (same color as the downstairs bathroom). I did the mouldings too and the bed and computer are back in place. I'll take a picture of the finished product here soon.

I also painted the upstairs hallway. It's the same color as the downstairs hallway and staircase. You can't really tell in this picture. I did half the mouldings and have to knock out the rest of the mouldings here soon.

We're still waiting on getting our electrical system upgraded. Now that the nice weather is here, it should happen soon (hopefully!). James has finished up some other outlets and wiring for things like the garbage disposal and outside outlets. If all goes well, almost everything will be good to go once the master is updated. I think he still has to wire up the microwave that's above the stove.

We got a quote to remove the tree in the front yard. It's not too bad. Unfortunately, the same day I got the tree quote, I was informed by our gutter cleaning people that our gutters are just too rough for them to clean - they want us to replace them. So we'll be getting quotes on that here in the next few weeks and see what that brings. Hopefully we can still swing the tree removal with the gutters. I know James really hates that tree in front of our house.

Upstairs Lights & Getting Our Bedroom Done!

James got to work yesterday to put lights in our upstairs hallway!  We are suppose to get our new service the next "good weather" Sunday.  Our electrician friend came by last week to see what was up and was surprised at how much we had done - but he didn't go upstairs since Tom was sleeping.  He probably thought every thing was done upstairs too - but oops.   It's not.  So now it's crunch time...

James running the electrical wire - he's such an expert at it now!

Voila!  Lights!  Nothing fancy but we ain't fancy people.

I'm getting to our bedroom!!!  I have to just wash off the rest of the wallpaper goo on the walls.  I primed the ceiling last night and we're going to paint it with *sigh* textured paint!  If you saw it, you would know why!  If you want to see extreme ceiling action - click on the picture and it will become all big - and you can see why we can't just paint it!  All the other bedrooms have textured paint to their ceilings so we figured "why not!"  

I bought the paint for our bedroom too.  Once again, James got sick of talking to me about different shades of this and that.  So he told me to just go to Lowe's and pick a color.  I respond "Are you sure?  Are you really sure??"  His answer, "yes."  So I went out on a limb and picked Carolina Inn Crossroads Gold.  Whoa!  That's a mouthful.  It's kind of a deep goldish yellow.  I thought it would be good to match virtually any bedding we may throw on the bed (because every knows how interior decorating is my specialty!).  I guess a more practical person would say "Becky, if you want something that will match everything, why don't you just paint it white?"  Well for some odd reason, we have a fear of white.