happy-time weekend

what a lovely weekend!! peters family came up (everyone except his little sister and her hubby who are teaching a missionary school in england... they were super-duper missed though... check out their blog here) and it was an amazing, much needed, happy-time weekend... we went to the georgia aquarium on friday... peter's sister harmony already posted a lovely recap here, go take a looksie before i continue!

having his family near seemed to put a new wind in peter's sail... as a matter of fact, he and eric (brother-in-law) managed to get the weird sink space knocked out and then tiled the whole area!! woop woop!!!
they started with the demo (sinks are peter's fav):

and then they layed the concrete backer-board:

 eric cut a hole in the wall, but i don't really know why... i guess peter told him to? i never really got an answer...

wait maybe he was repairing a hole in the wall? no one tells me anything...

now, let me introduce you to the cutest dad-gum helper ever... IZZY!! (when i snapped this photo, he was seriously pondering the hammer, but when the flash went off this was the face i got! what a professional... love that little stinker)

 izzy bee was ready for action, and even took some time to go over things with uncle petey, just to make sure they were being done right:

finally, someone gives me some answers... while the boys worked on the tile, harmony, bee, and i painted the formal living room...

look at that concentration... awesome... and check out this excellent boxer/diaper action:

oh man uncle petey changin' lives... ok back on track, peter finally got to lay the tile...

and everyone else took a lunch break...

no rest for the wicked you know... the tile is reading a bit more orange in the pics than it is in the house... its not what i dreamed of but it was on clearance at lowes and it matches the wall tile...  also, now i can get the fabulous shower curtain from urban outfitters that i have been eying(thats my rule, not peters):

here is the finished product:

this week i have to clean up the walls, paint, and grout the tile and then we can put together our bathroom!!! which will be awesome because this situation is not working for me:

yup that's the toilette (i cleaned it!) and sink in the living room... sweeeeet.

before i go i have a confession to make: i did not want to write this blog... sorry but its true... instead i wanted to sit here and stare at beautiful things on my new pinterest account!!! there is a link on my blog, check it out... it is where i will be storing all my inspiring pics and also just stuff i like... like this little guy i found:

can you handle it because i cannot.

 

bathtub magic

ok, i am just gonna say it; i'm awesome... seriously, after 4 weeks of painting nightmares i did something super sweet and i am excited...

as i have mentioned, the previous owners were totes cray-cray (totally crazy for us you old folks) for 2 things: varnish and mustard yellow... fortunately i have pretty much conquered the varnish dragon and today was a major victory in my war on mustard yellow... first, let me introduce you to my guest bathtub:

snazzy... we were originally going to take out the tub and replace it but that would mean spending the money for the tub, removing and retiling all around the tub, and dealing with who-knows-what when we pull the tub out (since we have started in this old ugly house we have come to realize that there is always something terrible lurking under any "easy" project)... so, after some poking around on the internet we came up with the idea of painting the tub... we figured that if it went badly we would just go back to the original plan...

first, we pulled out all of the old gross caulking and removed the broken tiles:

next i had to clean the tub... the directions said that the cleaning solution was "highly irritating" to skin so i made sure to wear proper gloves and be extra careful... the cleaning process went as follows:
1. scrub with solution

2. rinse, dry, and scrub with steel wool...

3. rinse again and repeat 2 more time for a total of 3 cleanings

that was the cleanest flippin tub you ever saw... next i taped off the tile (sort of... keep reading) and said a prayer... the box said the first coat should be thin and would not cover completely so i was only mildly concerned when it came out like this:

after waiting 15-30 min. (NO more NO less) i started on the next coat... it took a while, i made sure to mist lightly over and over again, but here is the final product:

OH EM GEE ITS BEAUTIFUL!!!! i am so stoked... i seriously went back and looked at it about 5 more times... now it has to sit for 72 hours and hopefully it will stay beautiful... there is just one teensy issue...

apparently i painted the fool out of the tile.. but the box says let it dry and then remove excess with lacquer thinner so i will let you know how that goes!

hodge podge weekend

peter and i struggled a bit this weekend... as a matter of fact sunday afternoon we decided to go home and watch movies (after peter started threatening to put the house on the market)... we did manage to get some stuff accomplished though... well actually peter got stuff accomplished, after looking at the pics i realized that i pretty much floated around doing nothing... i did manage to paint the dining room the most lovely blue-gray...

peter was a champ though... first he built some super sweet shelves for my pots to sit on:

next, he built the walls in the cabinets surrounding the stove (which is waiting in my parents garage for its new home):

because we are putting in a combined stove and oven unit we needed to build a wall to hide the back of it... peter began by studding it out (which, by the way, means something totally different to a construction guy and a farm girl, lol)

then we got some bead board and....

ta da! wall up... now i will paint it and then we will put up a breakfast bar on top of it... yay...

here's a bonus, this is how peter finds a screw:

*sigh*
we also started on the guest bathroom, here is our plan:
     1. rip out the sink and replace it
     2. take out the lanolium and remove whatever weird tile is hiding under it
     3. replace the horrid mustard bathtub
     4. tile the floor in the bathroom and in the hall/laundry

here are the befores of the bath:

first to go is the sink (which, bee tee dubs weighs at least 100 pounds):

then we ripped out the lanolium and the tile... the tile was almost too good to be true:

man-oh-man i wish i could have seen that in its full glory... after removing the tile, we decided we needed to relax for the rest of the afternoon so we rented some movies and put on our sweats.. best day so far i think ;)

there is a dead person in my garden

i am convinced its true... my suspicions began the first weekend we got the house... remember my sweet sanding station:

well, as i was sanding (and sanding, and sanding) i began to notice a foul odor wafting from the hole between the retaining walls

this required some further investigation...

oh, i see the problem, the former homeowners threw all of their garbage in their garden...

 seriously, who does that? but upon closer inspection i see the REAL problem:

there it is, the dead body... it smells terrible... i have no intentions of opening it up... as a matter of fact i fully plan on filling up the hole with dirt and planting flowers in it... hopefully dirt will cover up the stinkiness.