There are so many of them! For starters, my last post was entitled "A Day of Rest." HA! I'm struggling to remember what a day like that must feel like. It's been a wild and crazy week around here. There's no way I can remember all the details and, really, I'm sure there are several I'd just as soon forget anyway! Ha! We've worked soooooo hard and I'm sooooo tired. It's past midnight and I feel like I'm dozing off every minute or two, but my 52 year old mother is sitting across the room from me, fiddling on her computer. I can't be outdone by her, so I'd might as well blog while I'm waiting for her to give up and go to bed first. ;-)

Monday... all I know for sure is that the floor guys were back and I now have brand new, gorgeous floors and I'm soooooooooo happy!!! We've been working too hard to get everything all cleaned up so I can get a good picture, but hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to pull it off. :-)

We worked around the floor guys while they were here, although I can't remember what all we did. I don't remember any details from yesterday either, just that we worked, worked, worked. Right, Mom?! ;-) We've had an ongoing list of things to do each day and we check them off as we go. It's strange how lists like that work. Every time you check something off you think of at least two new things to add to the list! But we've accomplished SO MUCH--more than I really thought possible. At this point, we're very close to "done," except that I'm going to be polyurethaning for the rest of my life. Ha! There are so many things that need "finished" with the sealer and some of them will require several coats over several days' time.

I still don't have a whole lot of before and after pictures, but we're ALMOST done with the bathroom (James has yet to finish building the new toothpaste cabinet (we don't have any medicine, so it seems dumb to call it a medicine cabinet! Ha!) and I need to poly the countertop at least three or four more times, then caulk around the sink. Anyway, here are some before and almost after shots of that room. The "before" pictures don't even BEGIN to capture the true nastiness of that room--the floor was DISGUSTING and... well, everything was just gross!!! Just ask Jamey or Emilee! Ha! Anyway, here we go!!!

Entering the bathroom!!! Before...

After!



Before...



After!



Before...



After!



Before...



After!



We did a whole lot of "custom" things in this bathroom. That's our way of saying that we did things ourselves and saved some money here an there! The vanity was really nasty, but to save some $$$ we decided to refinish it instead of replace it. We got rid of the old sink/countertop, Mom scrubbed down the nasty wood on the cabinet, then I painted it this terrific blue color. After it was good and dry (several days later) I sanded off the edges here and there (and Mom came and sanded where the handles and knobs will eventually go--I was too chicken for that part!), put a coat of poly on it and voila! OH! And, of course, James installed the new countertop and surround and we stained and poly-ed it, too. It'll need more, but it's good enough for now!



The other really, really big project was the dining room chairs. WOW, what a job!!! I didn't think to take a picture of them before we started, but this pic of Joe sort of shows them...



They were a blonde sort of color, really blah, and didn't really go with anything. I bought them because they were good and sturdy and they were the right price. And because I had visions of what they'd look like all painted up to match my kitchen cabinets!

Monday afternoon at about 3:00 we pulled out Maurice. That's my airless paint sprayer. I have wasted away so much of my life with a paint brush or roller in hand that we finally invested in Maurice a couple of years ago when we lived in Andrews. He was worth the investment on the very first job!!! WOW, what a machine! It cuts the painting time down to a tenth of what it would otherwise take and it's so nice and smooth. I was in love the very first day. That's how "it" became a "he" and got a name all of his own. I wanted to find a place of honor to keep in him in the house, but James thought that was going a bit too far. ;-) Anyway, it's been a year or two since I've used Maurice, but I knew he was the only way to go when it was time to paint the chairs. So we drug him and and, lo and behold, he was NOT in the working groove the rest of us have been in for the past week and a half! I read the instructions over and over again, hooked and unhooked and rehooked everything up, had Mom look at it, then James, tried cleaning things again (it's very delicate--has to be cleaned thoroughly or will be ruined), talked to him, begged and pleaded and coaxed and finally laid hands on him and prayed for him! At long last, after I had poured boiling soapy water down him, he started putting forth some effort. We poured the paint into him and had to work a while longer before he was fully awakened from his two year nap and ready for work. By that time it was getting cold outside and the sun was slipping down behind the mountains. HURRY!!! We sprayed away and got a good, thick coat of paint on the chairs. Really thick! We were in such a hurry to get it done before it got too dark--then we had to get them into the house where it would be warm enough for them to dry. That meant transporting really, really wet chairs without smearing the paint. HA! Try that! Lets just say that Mom's and my fingerprints are forever preserved on the under side of each seat. We thought about painting over them, but decided to keep 'em that way as a momento to our work. :-) Since that time, there has been a whole lot of painting going on around here, all of it on the same six little chairs! Ha!

Mom painted...

And painted...

And painted some more...

I take that back. She spent the first 2 hours taping off the "hoops" on the chairs. She then painted two chairs and realized that the tape was worthless and was creating MORE work and that it would be faster to just take her time and paint carefully without the tape. So I spent an hour removing all of the tape she'd worked so hard to get on, then I helped her paint the yellow "hoops" on the chairs. Actually, on a chair. My chair. My one and only. Mom painted 5 chairs, I painted one. I'm a little slow. ;-) We were determined that the yellow had to be done last night, so we stayed up until nearly 3:00 in the morning last night painting chairs!!! James put on some good, happy music for us and it was fun, for the most part. After about 2:00 we were getting a little loopy and we laughed ourselves to tears a couple of times over nothing all that funny. That's always the best. :-)

Then today, Mom touched up on all the red paint that we'd missed with Maurice or that the yellow had oozed on to...

And tonight she was finally able to get the the green paint and finish everything up! Wa-Hoo!!! Ain't they CUTE?!?!?


Of course, nobody is allowed to sit on them or anything. Ha! Not until I get a chance to put several good coats of polyurethane on them to preserve their cuteness. That can't happen until next week at this point, so the kids will just have to keep using the stools for now. But we had to put the chairs around the table to see what they look like and to take a picture! :-)

~whew~ Mom finally just gave up and is headed to bed. Guess that means I can go, too. I'll try to blog tomorrow night because we'll be gone to LADIES' RETREAT for the weekend!!! WA-HOOOOOO!!!!! I am sooooooooo excited! I've been thinking about it and praying for it while we've been painting and sanding and staining our lives away this week. We went shopping tonight for all of the ingredients we'll need for the goodies we'll be taking with us. :-) Tomorrow we're going to try real hard to stay away from any tools, paintbrushes, or sandpaper. We're going to just clean things up a bit, do some cooking and baking, and get ready for the Retreat. ~sigh~ That will be so nice! :-)

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