The Pink Sink Project

As I write this I'm waiting for another coat of paint to dry in the Man Cave.  Despite no posts in the past week, we have actually been making progress on the room.  The walls have actual paint on them now!  I'm hoping that by this weekend all of the painting will be done and all that will be left is the flooring. I have to admit that I went through a week without any motivation to work on the room because I didn't think it was coming out how I wanted it to.  It's been so much prep time that I was getting frustrated that it wasn't coming out as I envisioned it would.  Specifically, I wasn't happy that after hours of prep works, I could still see paneling peeking out from behind the walls. When I last posted about the Man Cave I feared that I would never be able to cover up the paneling.  Here's a picture from the last time I posted: Despite spending hours filling in the crevices with joint compound, the walls still didn't look flat.  Particular

My in-laws came by for lunch today.  My father-in-law decided that he needed an afternoon project and grabbed the ladder and chain saw. I won't lie - I thought it was a bad idea.  A very bad idea.  I was pleading with M not to let his father do it.  M agreed it was a bad idea.  So, M decided to do the chopping himself.  Um, what?!  After the last, smaller tree bounced off of the electrical wires, I thought we had agreed to wait for professionals! So, I did what any good wife would do.  I took pictures and said some prayers. M had previously taken off the big limbs, so all that was left was the top.  Still, it towered over the house and was nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, it totally freaked me out to see him with one foot on a 25-foot ladder and the other on the roof. Timber!  This one did not hit anything!  I have to say, I was quite impressed that they knew exactly how to cut it to make it fall into the middle of the front yard, away from ei

(I am totally ignoring the fact that I haven't posted an update about the Man Cave.  Let's just say we've been a bit, um, lazy, this past week.) It's another gorgeous day here and M is out doing the yard again.  I couldn't resist taking some pictures of our jungle, I mean our back yard.  M has been doing a great job clearing more space each time he goes out there.  I can't remember if I mentioned this, but prior to us buying this house it had been abandoned for at least 18 months, possibly longer.  The bank had kept up the front yard for buyers, but the back yard was pretty much overrun with weeds. I wish we had taken some "before" pictures when we moved it, but you can see from these pictures how overgrown it is.   Our land goes back quite a ways, but we haven't been able to get back there to see it! In this last picture, just above where the large branch is laying (kind of looks like it's on top of the kids' climber) the

Still plugging away on the Man Cave. I have now put a couple of coats of joint compound on the paneling, but I have to say that I'm not loving the results.  It seems to be filling in the crevices just fine, but I think you'll still be able to see the paneling when all is said and done. The worst case scenario is that we resort to Plan B, which is covering up the paneling with some decorative baseboard molding.  It's not the worst thing in the world, but I was trying to avoid that.  I still have some tricks up my sleeve to minimize the look of the paneling, but more on that later. What I am happy about is the initial results of cleaning the brick wall around the fireplace.  Here's the "before" shot of the wall. It doesn't look all that bad from afar, but I wanted to start the entire room with a clean slate.  I did a search for "how to clean brick" and this site was one of the first ones I found.  After doing a little research I di

We're on a roll now with the Man Cave!  Of course, nothing is easy about this reno, though.  Our first hurdle with the room is the wood paneling that is trying to peek out from under the walls.  We didn't notice until we were living in the house a while, but what we thought were solid walls are actually wood paneling covered by some kind of thin layer.  It's not wallpaper.  It's definitely not Sheetrock.  We think it's some kind of skim coat that was done.  Someone suggested to us that it might also be a type of paper panel that is used specifically to cover paneling. Whatever it is, it is peeling in places, revealing the paneling underneath.  Also, we removed the wide, brown, plastic baseboard trim, shown here: Under the trim is the bare paneling, as you can see here: In the picture above you can even see the faint outlines of the paneling through the skim coat/overlay.  So, we have sort-of solid walls with some paneling that needs to be covered. The

We had a super productive day today, but it was not at all what we thought we'd be doing with our day.  I had been planning to spend some time on the Man Cave, which I did a bit, but the husband, M, took advantage of the beautiful weather to get some outdoor projects done. When he came home from grocery shopping this morning (he goes out every Sunday morning for groceries - yes, I am the luckiest woman in the world ) he announced that he was going to take down "that ugly bush-like thing in the front." Honestly, I wasn't really sure which bush-like thing he was talking about.  They're all kind of ugly.  He was talking about this one:   He has been trying to cut it back, away from the front door, but it is still this funny shape and kind of spindly and not at all attractive. A couple of whacks with the chainsaw, and bam! the ugly shrub is gone. I didn't realize exactly how ugly that thing was until it was gone.  Our front entryway now se

I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that more than 5 weeks post-move we still have boxes to unpack. This bad boy has been sitting in the master bedroom since move-in day.  I finally opened it up to discover extra shoes, winter coats, and umbrellas.  Those have now been put away in their "homes," although the empty box is still sitting in the bedroom. Sigh. Notice the phone behind the box, just lying on the floor by itself?  Classy, right?  Someday we will have the master bedroom of our dreams...