I wasn't going to post any pictures of our work until I had some before and after pictures to show you. Unfortunatly, we have yet to get to any "after" pictures! Ha! Mom has already been sharing some pictures with a few of you and I finally figured I should join in the fun. Besides, it feels great to to sit down and blog a bit and get some relief from a paint brush or sand paper for a little while!

Here is a "before" picture of the utility room after we emptied it out. GA-ROSS. You have no idea.
And here's a picture of the "during." Don't be fooled. I did the painting in there, not Mom. ;-) Actually, she did all of the trim work and I did the roller work. She's soooooo much faster than I am with the detailed stuff!

And that's it. No "after" to show you yet. We have all of the paint and wallpaper done and I have the cabinets stained and polyurethaned and ready to install. We're just waiting on the floor dudes to come do their job in there so we can move the appliances back in and we'll be in business!

In all of our excitement over making the really, really nasty utility room into a really cute and clean place that I might enjoy working in, we got a little carried away and decided to take the cuteness into the pantry and hall closet. :-)

We kept losing Mom though--she blended right into the wall. Ha!

Here's what the utility room looks like now that we've got the wallpaper and border up on top of the red paint. :-)

Better yet, here it is with the really great picture I eye-balled at Aunt Sue's store for a few months and finally took home. I never really had a place for it before, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how this room is turning out!!!


I'll get the "after" shot of the whole room once we have a floor, install the cabinets and get the washer and dryer back in place.

I spent most of my day today in the garage inhaling various fumes. It usually doesn't bother me a bit (I like the smell of most of that stuff), but after 8 or 9 hours of working with paint and stain and polyurethane (without thinking to open the window) I got to feeling rather sick. Oh well--I got a lot done before then! I can't remember what all, but I finished up on two or three coats of all three colors of paint on the cabinets that will go under the kitchen window--all they lack now is polyurethane. I stained the countertop for the bathroom and all of the trim that James will install to separate the wallpapers in there. Hhmmm. I can't remember what else. All I know is that I had about 14 things on my personal "to do" list today and I knocked of 8 or 9 of them. That's a whole lot better than Mom. She only had four things and still struggled to knock off two. Ha! Her's were biggie's--like wallpapering the top half of the bathroom. It's always so much more time consuming than you think it should be!

There will be lots more pictures to come, but I'll go ahead and post this one. We put yellow ginham wallpaper on the top half of the bathroom, then some textured wood looking paper on the bottom half... then we "washed" it with blue! I smeared blue paint over it and Mom wiped off the excess, leaving dark blue in the cracks and light blue over the rest. I can't wait to see what this bathroom is going to look like when it's all finished! My last bathroom was SOOOOOO great and I knew I could never recreate it. Besides, I wanted to go more "rustic" here in this house--it's more fitting that way. I think we're going to be able to pull it off and still go blue and yellow, which makes me very happy. (I like blue and yellow together... and we have really nice blue and yellow towels we bought just after we got married so we need to stick with those colors!) Anyway, this will give you some idea of the direction we're headed with this bathroom:

We called it quits early tonight. About 7:00, I think. We've been working until 10 or 11 o'clock each night. I wasn't feeling the greatest tonight anyway, but I also had to scrub down some really cruddy kids and get ready for Sunday School tomorrow. I had thought ahead to get my ideas together last week (can you believe that?!), so all I really had to do tonight was gather my supplies and do a little prep work. :-)

Hhmmm. I had figured on waiting until morning to take my bath, but I think now that Mom's done in there (we're down to one bathroom until we finish the blue and yellow one!) I may go ahead and go get that over with. I know I'll feel better after I soak a while--and it means I'll be able to sleep a little bit longer tomorrow morning! ;-) G'night!