Farm House Love Episode 5

As promised, I'm back with more pictures of the progress on our new old house. The bathroom is limping along, and Peanut Head has started building the shower walls.

It got put off for so long because we had to tackle the plumbing first and, honestly, nobody likes that part.

Originally the shower head was not mounted like you would expect but instead was connected to the bath tap via a sprayer hose. Peanut Head had to run new plumbing up from the bath tap to install the new shower head.

Then before he could hook it up, he had to turn off all the water to the house, then hold his breathe and cross his fingers when he turned it back on. And what a relief, it worked!

He has all the plywood up now, and will start adding HardieBacker cement board this week. I could potentially start tiling next weekend. I'm going to have to psyche myself up by watching You Tube tutorials. There are so many ways I can screw this up.

Believe it or not, we haven't been laying around eating Bon Bons while we've been procrastinating on the bathroom. Back in January I started painting the girls' rooms. My plan is to paint the entire house, of course, but I started with their rooms because they refused to unpack until we painted.

I started with the ceilings because gravity. The nice thing was that I didn't have to be super careful with my paint because I knew we were going to be replacing the carpet once the painting was done. 

This lovely carpet is probably forty years old. It's from the Starkey and Hutch years, I'm sure.

I love the light fixtures in the girls' bedrooms, and I have no plans to replace them.

Before I started painting, of course I was all over Pinterest looking for inspiration. I knew I wanted to replace the trim work because it was pretty cheap, and I looooove farm house trim.

I had to plan it all out because Peanut Head was going to implement my vision and he is not a wing it kind of guy. He always wants drawings with actual measurements.

He's always harshing my mellow like that.

Can I tell you what a nightmare it was pulling all the old trim off? Night. Mare. It was January and I was sweating like a pig trying to get it all out. It was not good for my manicure either.

The window and door moulding came off a little faster because it wasn't trapped under carpet, but it was still a lot of work.

This is what the finished window trim looks like. I'm pretty happy with it.

And here's the finished door trim. The only difference is that the sides of the door trim are narrower because we had to accommodate light switches that were too ding dang close to the door.

Like this. Gah!

Oh yeah, Peanut Head replaced all the outlets and switches too. He's such a handy guy.

This is a shot of our baseboards and the new carpet. Peanut Head taught me how to use his router to make the baseboards. Routing our own baseboards saved us a lot of money and allowed us to get the exact height we needed. The height tended to vary a bit depending on obstacles we had to go around.

Like heater vents. If you look closely you can see how the baseboard curves around the corner of the heater vent.

And excuse me while I take a little side rant, but I had to replace all the heater vents because some fool painted over every vent multiple times, and they were cemented to the wall. I understand if a person wants their vents to match their walls, but why oh why can't you take them off the wall first and do it right? And really, spray paint is a better way to paint a vent than a paint roller.

That's my public service announcement for today.

The doors were painted my new favorite color for doors, Sherwin Williams' Urbane Bronze.

We also replaced the door knobs with handles. The door knobs were in pretty bad shape and needed to be replaced anyway, so we thought these would be nice in the older part of the house.

And check out these awesome door stops. They're magnetic, and oh so cool. They would be very handy on exterior doors for when you want them to stay open.

Now I'm ready to show you the final room pictures, but I have to make a disclaimer. I did not go in and stage the rooms. I instructed my girls to clean up their rooms and they are not how I would have done it myself. They like clutter. I abhor it. Although I'm a control freak, thus far I have been extremely unsuccessful in controlling the people I live with.

Therefore, I give you real life. 😬

Zoe Bug's room.

This is Zoe's horse wall, which Stinkerbell calls the PJ Wall of Worship. PJ is Zoe's favorite horse, but all the horses are pictured here, except Rey because she didn't come to live with us until February.

Now let's see some pictures of Stinkerbell's room. Brace yourselves.

I don't know about you, but all I see in this picture is a Hunter Orange bed.

Too much furniture. I've tried to talk her out of some of it, but she's having none of it.

This is the white board where Stinky likes to make her lists. I like to add important things to her lists like "Do your LAUNDRY!!!"

I'm helpful like that.

I added the mirror to the closet door, but I don't know what I was thinking. Stinkerbell doesn't primp, so in this room, it's just a prop to give the illusion of a normal teenage room.

I'm glad to have the girls' rooms finished, although we do still need to put up curtains. Peanut Head and I are going to make the curtain rods, and we haven't yet decided if we want to use plumbing pipe or something else. 

I have a painting tip to dispense.

I've been super paranoid about paint clean up because we have a septic system in this house, and it's not good to add paint to it. I'm too cheap to buy paint pan liners, so I came up with the idea of lining my paint pans with Press'n Seal, and clean up has been effortless. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

Best idea ever.

I also use it to protect my watch while I'm painting. I do not, however, worry about my hair. I have paint in my hair all the time.

While we've been working hard on the house, Cecilia has been practicing her Yoga Corpse Pose. She's a pro.

That's all I have for now. I'm in the middle of wrapping up the girls' hallway, so those pictures will be coming soon, and I've started painting the original dining room because why not start another project before the last three are finished?

In the meantime, I leave you with some irresistible horse lips. Who doesn't love horse lips?

How to Decrapify a Kid's Bedroom in Four Short Days

Do you ever get what you think is going to be a great idea and then it turns out to be an epic flop? It happens to me a lot. So much that I've become pretty familiar with failure. We're pretty tight.

Well, a couple weeks ago I got one of those great ideas and I came up with a chore list for my girls to completely clean out their rooms, decrapify and spring clean, all without my supervision and nagging.

We are all kinds of crazy in this house.

I decided I was going to break it down, with very specific, anal instructions that went day by day over the course of a week.

I typed up a list and taped one to each of the girls' bedroom doors. Then I snapped a picture and posted it on Instagram and Facebook. I was so proud of myself. Then the doubt set in. What if my kids laughed at me and refused to comply?

I'm sure my kids are very typical in that they groan and complain whenever I ask them to do chores. Zoe especially. She acts like I'm asking her to give up a kidney when I ask her to do something as simple as water the garden.

Well, much to my surprise my girls complied without any prompting from me. In fact, it probably helped that I was out of the house all week at teacher education classes, and I wasn't able to check in on them. They stepped up and did everything on the list each day, and most days they even got a head start on the next day's list, just so they could get it done.

Here's how it went down.

Day #1 - Bed/Books

1. Take all bedding off bed and dust with a rag.

2. Wash all bedding and make bed.

3. Clean underneath bed: remove EVERYTHING and sweep or vacuum and mop.

4. Organize under bed (plastic containers with lids are in the guest room).

5. Go through books upstairs and downstairs and make a pile to donate. I expect to see your donate pile, so do not dump it in the guest room.

I don't know about you, but in this house the guest room is the dumping grounds, so whenever anyone has something they don't want anymore and they are too lazy to do something about it (myself included) we just dump it in the guest room to worry about another day. That day is usually the day before a guest arrives for a visit, at which point the pile may or may not be dealt with, and is sometimes hidden underneath the tables in my crafting area. 

Denial is my BFF.

Day #2 - Closet-A-Palooza

1. Remove everything from the closet and vacuum or sweep and mop in closet

2. Wash shelves and walls in closet with a rag and 409

3. Make a pile of shoes and clothes that no longer fit for donating.

4. Throw away trash and set aside anything you wish to donate. I expect to see your donate pile, so do not dump it in the guest room.

5. Return things to your closet that you are keeping. Dust them off as you go, and put them away neatly.

As you can see, I'm very sensitive and mistrusting about the dumping of the crap in the guest room.

This is Zoe's closet after decrapification. I realize that it may not look like much, but I feel I should reiterate that this is Zoe's closet. She's my hoarding baby and she will keep gum wrappers because the trash can is so far away.

I am very, very proud of the work she did especially because organizing and cleaning has never been her thing.

It is such an incredibly painful process to clean out her room because we have very different standards and she thinks that I'm an OCD freak and completely unrealistic about the way her room should look.

Maybe, but I'm the boss and she has to listen to me because I'm bigger. And meaner. And her mom, dang it.

I know we clean her room at least once a year, but I don't have an explanation for this shirt that clearly has not fit her for years.

Day #3 - Dresser

1. Put everything in your hamper in the washing machine and start a load.

2. Take everything out of your dresser and place it on your neatly made bed.

3. Vacuum out dresser drawers and dust outside of dresser with furniture polish.

4. Carefully fold clothes and return those that still fit and you intend to wear to your dresser. Follow the Kon Marie Method of folding (look it up if you weren't paying attention).

5. Carefully fold clothes to donate and make a separate pile. Leave it on your bed.

6. Move clothes in the washer to the dryer and make sure all of your laundry is folded and put away.

So I've been reading that book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and I was sort of joking about #4. Although the book has some great advice, like most self help books do, I feel like the author could have said what she needed to say with a whole lot fewer words.

And the whole idea of thanking the stuff that I'm purging for its service and the joy it has brought me just makes me roll my eyes. Ain't nobody got time for that.

If I'm going to be talking to my clothes as I kick them to the curb it's going to be a whole lot more satisfying than that mess. I might say "I never liked the way you made my butt look you sorry excuse for a pair of jeans!"

I could maybe get behind that, but still, unnecessary waste of time in my world.

Day #4 - Everything Else

1. Move all furniture and clean behind and underneath.

2. Clean all furniture with furniture polish.

3. Wipe down lower walls, baseboards, and chair rails with a rag and soapy water (use a bucket of warm water with a drop of dish soap in it). Use 409 on hard to clean spots.

4. Wipe down window casing and clean inside of window.

5. Declutter!!!! By this, I mean make a pile of things to donate and throw away things that are junk. I want to see your donate pile, so don't just dump it in the guest room.

6. Organize your stuff. Everything should have a place and everything should be in its place. Surfaces should be clear. Nothing should be on the floor if it is not a piece of furniture.

7. Ask your sister to look over your room and give you constructive, polite criticism.

Notice the guest room/crap disclaimer is there again. I'm very, very twitchy about it.

I will tell you right now that #7 is a potential mine field. I knew this when I typed it but I did it anyway because I wanted to see if they could handle it. That, and I like cheap entertainment.

However, to my surprise, again, they handled themselves beautifully and even worked together at times.

This is Zoe's room at the end of decrapification. Zoe's room never looks like this. Never. This was a big deal for her to do with zero help from me. And Hallelujah, because I loathe participating in this particular aspect of parenting my children.

And this is Stinkerbell's room. To be honest, this whole purge, clean, organize thing was just a typical day in the life of Stinkerbell. She has always been obviously my child as far as cleaning, organizing, and all things domestic go.

Except for that brief period of time in her preschool years when she curated some very disturbing collections of fingernail clippings and crumbs from each day's preschool snack hidden in her closet.

Now, I'm sure many of you are wondering how I encouraged my kids to do this without some sort of threat or motivation, so I'm going to fess up right now and tell you that I used both.

In fact, at the bottom of their lists was the following statement.

There will be a military-like inspection every day at 5:00 p.m. I expect you to be in your room and ready for inspection. If I am happy with the result, you will receive a REWARD. If I am not happy, you will receive a CONSEQUENCE. Do not disappoint me. J

I didn't think this part through very well and most days I couldn't tell you what that day's reward was going to be. The girls would ask me and I would fake them out and tell them "It's a surprise. You'll have to wait and see."

I didn't have to come up with any consequences because they met the deadline to my satisfaction every day. And thank goodness, because I could see myself raising my arms over my head threateningly and yelling "RAWR!" at them or something ridiculous like that. In reality I'm sure I could deliver, if pressed.

I don't think they should know ahead of time what the reward or consequence will be because they might decide the reward wasn't worth it or the consequence was not a big deal. Anticipation is king.

The first day the reward was the biggest because I wanted them to get excited. I took them to the book store and let each of them pick out a new book. 

The second day we took them out for ice cream after dinner.

The third day I gave each of them $5.

The fourth day I told them that I was going to take them to the museum for the Pirates exhibit they've been wanting to see. And nobody has to know that I was going to take them anyway.

I can honestly say it was worth every penny, and I will be making this a yearly project every summer.

It was such a success in my world, that we have moved onto other areas of the house. In this picture they are cleaning out our coat closet. The possibilities are endless!

Done As It's Gonna Get

Stinkerbell's room is as done as it's going to get. I've done everything on my list except paint the toy box and frankly, that just might not happen. It's just not a priority at the moment, so like Zoe's magnet board, it could be a few years. 

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem right?

So anyway, the curtains are up.

The ones you see have been modified because they started out like this.

I got them at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and they were a hot deal. Ahem . . . except I hate that they're tab top and the way I have the curtain rod hung they hang below the window moulding. I suppose I could move the curtain rod up, but I didn't wanna.

Instead I went the much easier route (not) of taking the tab tops off and putting grommets in. I like the look better, but that created a new problem. You can't see it in this picture because the bed is stealthily hiding it, but the curtains are not exactly the same length.

Give or take an inch, they ain't right. Truth is, I can't bring myself to care that much.

At least not enough to do anything about it. This is what having kids has done to me. It has sucked some of the OCD twitchiness out of me.

Peanut Head would quickly admit that that's a good thing.

I hung these pictures back up, but first I spray painted the frames blue. They were white before and the white was looking pretty dingy, so they needed some sprucing up. In my mind I was going to paint them red, but Stinkerbell suggested the blue and I kind of like it. Never mind that she hates the pictures. They're five years old and she is not that person anymore.

All the more reason that I shall clutch them to my heart and savor their deliciousness.

Torture her, whatever.

Ta DA! The magnet board that did not take three years to paint. Like Zoe's.

One more reason for her to shower me with her teenagery disdain.

We also hung up some road signs and paper lanterns. Because you can never have too much color in my world.

Since I didn't get to paint the frames red, I snagged a red clock.

This is the other thing I framed. It's one of those spotlight posters that teachers sometimes ask parents to do for their kids so they can display them at school for a week.

More parent homework. My favorite.

I've done a few of these things and this was the first time I tackled it digitally. That was the way to go, let me tell you. All the pictures are already on my computer. I just dragged (drug?) them onto my Photoshop canvas and went to town. Then I sent the whole thing to Sam's Club to print as a poster. Easiest spotlight poster I've ever made.

Lastly, I did paint the shelves that were on my list, but they just got a fresh coat of white spray paint. Maybe I should have done blue, but I felt like that would be like painting the trim blue, and the thought of doing that makes me twitchy.

We're having a nice, mostly relaxing summer with a little bit of productivity mixed in. On the days that the girls have horse lessons, they put in a couple hours of barn upkeep. As was pointed out to me when I posted this picture on Facebook, that white horse there looks like he's helping out, doesn't he?

Stinkerbell has been camp crazy this year. She went to Robotics camp for a week of afternoons and she had a lot of fun. She was one of two girls which is pretty typical with her interests.  She's like one of the boys, but not.

While Stinkerbell was at camp, I took Zoe for Mom/Daughter pedicures. She was not excited.

I thought it would be so fun. We could hang out. We could have pretty toes. We could bond.

You would think I had asked her to wear suspenders or something, she was that into it.

It must have made some kind of impact though, because when we got home Gunny Man got a pedicure. He looks as happy as Zoe Bug, doesn't he?

Such pretty, pretty, puppy nails.

He's such a good sport. Even though his look says "Please save me," he would do anything for his girl.