More Updates To Peggy Sue

I am going to work backwards on this post and try to remember all the things we have done since my last post.

1. Today I got up at 4:30 AM because I couldn't sleep for some reason. I ended up watching YouTube videos for about and hour and a half. What type of videos you might wonder? How to skim coat walls. That's what kind. Our kitchen is ready to be skim coated and I didn't want to have to pay someone or wait for my dad to come over and do it for me. So At 7 AM Bean and I were in the car on the way to Grandpa and Grandma's to pick up some required tools. Grandpa hooked us up with everything we needed to get started and we were home by 8AM. I wanted to practice in an area that wouldn't see much of the light of day- Behind the fridge ( or where the fridge will go when we move it out of the dining room) was the area we settled on.

before wallpaper removal and skim coating

After skim coat completed- needs to be sanded yet

According to YouTube you can coat over wallpaper- WRONG!!! I got about a 1' x 2' area done when it started to bubble- 20 minutes later I had sponged down the rest of the wall and scraped off the offending bubbles along with all the other bits of wallpaper. It went fairly smoothly after that. I completed that area and then I did behind the stove. Both came out very well but I want to sand them down after they are dry to make sure I did it right - prior to completing the rest of the kitchen that people will actually see.

2. Removing drywall 101. Let Jake do it. : ) Jake measured out what parts of the drywall needed to be removed and took it all out yesterday. He scored it with a razor knife and it came off in large hunks. I took the pieces out to our refuse pile (all the things we are removing from the house that can not be re-used.) behind the garage. By the time he was done removing the drywall all we had to do was sweep up and run the vacuum. It really opened up the area only having exposed studs blocking the view- giving us a new perspective of what our house will look like in about 4-6 weeks.

My brother Caleb came by today to look at the wiring as he is going to be our resident electrician here next week. All my other electrically inclined brothers are far to busy to come and take time off work / away from family to re-wire our house. Its pretty impressive what my baby brother can do.

3. Painted a mural. Sort of. I got up early one morning last week and painted a giant tree on our dining room wall. The plan is to place photos of our families in the branches of the tree and it will be our "family tree". I know its bragging to talk up my own skills but even I was impressed at how well the whole thing turned out. it really looks pretty professional. I guess I still have a little artist in me.

4. Painted the "frunch room". We are calling it a frunch room because years ago Jake read me a piece about how you know you are from Chicago if... and one example was if your mom ever told you to go sit down in the "frunch" room (Front room). For some reason that really resonated with us and now we have a front room.  For my birthday I wanted to paint the frunch. We went in to Farm and Fleet and picked out the paint for that and the dining room and we picked Sulpher Green. I like to think of it more as a warm country green. Its very soothing and looks so amazingly nice with our "new" furniture. We inherited some furniture from Jake's mom because she was moving to a smaller place this month. We had to drive to Chicago to get it and help her disassemble all her other furniture but then it was ours. The "new" couch looks so lovely in our green frunch and we finally started hanging some wall art. Jake's favorite paining "The Singing Butler" looks so nice hanging there as well. The eventual plan is to put the TV in the fireplace room but until then we have it in the frunch.

5. Jake assembled my grill. That was my birthday present this year.  I wanted a grill the entire time we were in TX and for my birthday this year Menards had a great sale combined with a rebate so we walked away with a great grill for an even better price. Jake and I agreed that the reason it was so cheap was because it was so dang difficult to put together. But he is amazing and it is so shiny and pretty. My birthday present from my dad was a tank(full) to go with my grill. AWESOME!
We went over to my parents the day after my birthday to celebrate. We had BLTs and Angle Strawberry Dessert ( way better than just cake) for dinner and then just hung out for a while. My bestie Katie came up the following Friday to take me out to the movies. It was a great weekend!

6. We painted the laundry room and decided to see what was under the nasty carpet- tile! Once again, who does that? We ended up tearing up the carpet in both bathrooms as an encore to the laundry room. Same tile under it all. At least I feel like I can get the floors "clean" now and there was so much mold on those rugs. Lots of bleach water was used to kill it all and it looks amazing now. We will be recovering these rooms in the near future but until then this will be an adequate fix.

7. Jake has cut firewood to his heart's content. He chopped down several trees and bushes we didnt' want and took the brush and separated it from the real wood and it is all cut and stacked on the back part of our property ready for a campfire once the weather breaks and we get some rain. We are under a no burn order right now.

8. Jake tore off the ugly facade that was on the fireplace and we are debating whether to keep it or not. I like the idea of a fireplace but the practicality of it as well as the placement are not ideal. We will see on this project.

9. Painted Thor's Orange Stripe around his room. This was a major undertaking and one that I think came out so well due to Jake and my amazing teamwork. He applied the painters tape while I held the level - then while he painted I smoothed out the tape against the wall about 6-10 inches in front of him so that it stuck in all the little textured areas. This way we got the cleanest line possible on a textured surface. My dad who has painted all his life even said we did a really good job. That felt good. : ) It also helped that Thor thinks its awesome.

That is all I can think of right now but we are busy every day from the time we get up until the time we put the kids down for the night. We seem to be getting the earwig situation under control- I only kill about 4-5 a day in the house now and that is a HUGE improvement to the dozens we were killing every day when we moved in.  I realize now why my dad said I had bitten off more than I could chew when I said I wanted to be done with the house in a month. Now my goal is 2 months. I am a firm believer in doing most things myself and when the big part (taking down the walls and leveling the floor) are done I think Jake and I can do the rest ourselves. I am thankful every day for a talented family who is able to assist us in this major undertaking. We couldn't do it without them.