Hallway Finished!

Hallway painting is finished! The walls are supposed to be light gray, but they still look white. At least they're not patchy...

I'm glad that Jeremy helped. The cats tried. We only ended up with one painted kitty. Jonas likes to help with crafts.

It took about 4 hours total, but it was spread over the day. We did the real painting in the afternoon and I finished up the trim this evening. Katie was a much better model in that she settled for being the model.

Remember when it looked like this?

Tile All-Star

Hopefully I'm done cutting tile for a while. Jen G. made me feel accountable, so I tiled tonight. Otherwise I would've copped out and sat on the couch. Good call Jen--I'm happy I got it done.

Tiled the backsplash edges of the sink and the edge of the vanity near the toilet side.I really dislike mortaring. Grouting? Fine. Mortaring? No.

The lines look a little squirrely because for some reason the older tiles refused to fit together purposely. It'll look more even with tan grout than black gaps.

Fruits of my Weekend Labor

I started work on the hallway earlier this week/last weekend. I'll probably finish it up next weekend. This was a solo project, so it's taking longer than it otherwise would.

Here's me prepping the walls for painting. I'm putting a line of caulk along the molding make it look seamless with the wall. I also spackled lots of nail pops--obviously.

I also primed the ceiling and walls today. I ran out of primer after finishing the ceiling, so I had to run out and get more. It'll look better when it has real paint on it. Right now the primer looks patchy. I'm painting it very light gray next weekend (Full Moon, to be exact) so that it plays nicely with the living room. We toyed with the idea of something vibrant like teal, but decided it's better to go vibrant in the rooms than the hallway, since it connects to all the other rooms.

That was my work for the weekend!


Oh yeah,  we also have water running in our bathroom sinks.... All we need now is the drains underneath of them.

Blogger and I are not getting along today. Here's the gist of what I wrote.

We were busy this weekend at the labor day picnic. I was disappointed with the lack of work that when on at the house. I decided to start on the next room because I can't proceed on the bathroom until my expert laborers finish their parts. The hallway is next, so I stripped the ceilingpaper this evening when we got home.

Before: Dirty, dingy smoker paper.

During:

You strip wallpaper with a fabric softner and hot water mix. Tip: Don't use a scent that you like because everytime you do laundry you'll think about renovating. The ceilingpaper came off pretty well. It must've been professionally installed because only one of the four strips had lots of adhesive on it. I like that because that's less scraping for me!

After:

Clean-ish ceiling. Uncovered some old water damage and the accompanying mold. Nothing a little bleach and spackle can't fix. Onwards and upwards! Literally. My goal for the week? Finish the ceiling? Tall order with school going on. We'll see.

A Place to Set my Toothbrush

They're here! We can set stuff on them now!

We picked up the bathroom counter/sinks at the store today. We were pleased as punch that they fit in the Fit. At 61" inches we thought it might not happen, but we even had room for both of us to have seats with seatbelts!

"Stop taking my picture and help me get this out of the car."

The counters are a marble hybrid. They've got a combo of marble dust and limestone in them. They feel much nicer than the plastic-y composite that was the other option.

There isn't running water yet. The hole that my strong husband punched in the wall has to be repaired first (okay, so he accidentally kicked it in while pushing the tub in...) Tomorrow we set to work on the shower handles. Again. It's kind of the neverending story there...