Friday, June 21, 2013

Awesome Home Stuff



One of the best things about summer is my mom being out of school. She always comes down to visit and help get things done. Like last summer when she came to help pack the house and then came again to help unpack. And there was spring break this year when she came to help finish unpacking        (7 months after we moved in).  

Last week she came up and instead of sleeping we did worked like crazy. We completely re-organized the playroom, re-finished a desk from a garage sale, painted a bookshelf, painted the kitchen and cleaned up the kids' room. In four days.
There was also playing with the kids, feeding the kids, swimming with the kids, running errands...
Serious worker bees.

A quick little side note on the desk before you get to see pictures.
Around the corner from us there is a house where the people apparently make a living off of garage sale-ing. They have one almost every day. On off days the garage sale items never leave. This is most definitely NOT a legal practice. It's the perpetual garage sale and is not the ideal place to purchase furniture from, BUT they ended up with the MOST ADORABLE desk that I had my eye on for several days. They asked $40. I pointed out that I saw it GET RAINED ON and got it for $30. I must admit, I was still a little worried about spending 30 bucks on it 'cause this thing was in rough shape. But we got home, and starting sanding and scraping and found a label sticker inside one drawer. I googled it and actually found it on an antique website as a Broyhill Premier French something-or-other style from approximately 1960. That kind of made my day.
My day that was filed with us painting and glueing. The desk was completed and moved into the playroom while Mom and I finished up the hutch.
And then night came.
And out of the literal woodwork came bugs. Nasty roach-like bugs. BY THE DOZENS. We fumigated it with the little bit of Raid we had on hand, vacuumed out the ones we could catch, and put it outside. A second can of Raid later and the desk is good to go.
Lesson: If you buy random furniture off the side of the road stop for a can of bug spray.

I am SO annoyed with myself that I didn't take any "actual before" pictures! 

Here is the playroom before we went to work. Also before we moved in, so imagine random furniture, toys piled in the corner, and books strewn across the floor. (I swear I tried to pick this place up everyday but there was just no place to put the thins I was picking up!)





TA-DAAAAAA!


That amazing yellow thing it THE desk and the letters war painted by family and friends at Knox' 2nd birthday party.


There's a wee bit of painting left if anyone is looking to do a good deed.




A close up of the bookshelves we re-painted. They were just solid white with particle board backs. From Wal-Mart when I was in college.


And a formerly wood stained bookshelf I painted a couple weeks ago.



And a little bug checking it all out.


I LOVE it.






Here's the kids' room! I want more for their walls, but it's come together perfectly.






And "before" pictures of the kitchen. Also taken before we moved in. I had been wanting to paint it yellow since we first looked at the house.


And after!




And the number one worker bee still found time to make us pancakes.


No comments:

Post a Comment