Trip to Boise, More Home Improvement Updates and Giles Christmas visit

Time to catch up again on the blog.  Darvin had 5 days in a row off, so we headed to visit the Giles family in Boise on December 14th.  It was so nice to get away and not worry about doing work on the house for a few days.

 It also gave me the opportunity to work on Grandpa Clement's Christmas presents.  I finished making a memory book on snapfish.com and got it ordered.  I didn't think there'd be any way it would arrive in time for Christmas but it got here Christmas eve!  And then I worked on a family birthday calendar for him as well.

 Lindsey and I also made a trip to Michaels where I bought some canvases and used some of my scrapbook paper and mod podged the scrapbook paper onto them to make some wall art for our house staging.  I also got my primary class's Christmas presents finished.

We made time to visit the Idaho Botanical Garden which is on the grounds of an old prison.  They have a yearly event: Winter Garden aGlow.  What a beautiful display of lights!

We had a short but very fun visit!  Brooklyn enjoyed the beautiful lights

and meeting her friend Santa for the first time!

Tired and ready to go home!

Darvin had removed the kitchen sink for me before we left and I was able to get the small counters spray painted with the Krylon 'Make it Stone'.

 Once we returned I painted the long counter and started putting a clear finish on top.

 Unfortunately on the small counters I used a spray finish that we had here at the house and didn't realize it was an acrylic until after it was on.  I'd hoped that it would be all right, but it's since been 'tested' and it doesn't hold up to the water test, so once the kids have gone home I'll have to do some touching up with the 'Make it Stone' and then will apply the correct Varathane spray product which I used on the long counter and it's held up like a champ!

After the counters were sprayed Darvin installed the new cast iron sink and new faucet.  When I returned from my visiting teaching temple trip on Thursday the 20th as I walked in the door he said I was going to kill him because he'd dinged up the sink.  I thought he was talking about the actual cast iron sink, but fortunately it was just the edge of the new spray painted counter that got dinged up as he was trying to place the sink in the hole.  That doggone sink weighs more than 75 pounds!  That will be part of my patch job once the kids have left too!

Anyway, he got the sink and faucet installed but when he tried to reconnect the water lines and drain on Friday night he had problems because the new sink drains were set back closer to the wall.  I was a wreck worrying about trying to have meal prep including Christmas dinner without a kitchen sink.  I texted my usual handyman, Barney Zauss, who never responded.  So Saturday morning I called Alan Afualo, but he was in Seattle bringing his mom home from the hospital.  In a panic I called Arnold McBean who has rental property, and asked if he could come help, but he was busy getting ready to go to Hawaii.  He suggested that I call his handyman Gregory Ramirez who I've used in the past, but nowadays he's usual too busy!  Arnold indicated that Gregory was doing some work for him that day but it wasn't anything that he couldn't stop and then restart again.  So I called Gregory and told him that Arnold had told me to call him.  He came with his son early in the afternoon and he was just finishing up and leaving when Lindsey, Thomas and Brooklyn arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon.  Whew, barely dodged the bullet!  I wasn't expecting them until early evening as they'd planned on stopping at Thomas's Grandma Golladay's house on the way.  Brooklyn and Lindsey were sleeping at the time so he just kept on driving.  Instead they stopped at Grandma and Grandpa Giles', but Grandma was just leaving for work and I think Grandpa was sleeping.

It has been so fun to have Lindsey, Thomas and Brooklyn here.  Christmas just isn't the same if there are no little people around!  We have enjoyed each other's company.  Lindsey and Brooklyn made some sugar cookies which got me in the mood to do some Christmas baking as well.

Brooklyn likes helping Mommy bake!

I can use the mixer too Mommy!

Worked up an appetite

and a thirst!

 I made gingerbread cookies, thumb print cookies and Aunt Eva's banana cake.  We made up some goody plates and went caroling on Christmas eve to our neighbors Joe and Ann Hall (none of our other neighbors were home), the Middletons and Jessica Melton Hunter.  Jessica's reaction to us coming was priceless, she was speechless and didn't know what to do or say.  She gave each one of us a hug and acknowledged that we were her first ever carolers.  Jessica even posted a facebook message later saying: "Oh my gosh overwhelmed with the love of caroling and a plate of goodies.  The love brought tears to my eyes, thank you Lindsey and family for sharing your warmth and kindness.  In my response Lindsey had me post a quote from Buddy the Elf from the movie Elf "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is by singing loud for all to hear!"  Boy is he right on there!  As much as my kids grumbled and complained over the years, I believe we all enjoyed spreading a little Christmas cheer with our goodies and carols!

Monday night we also stopped at the amazing house off Ahtanum and 62nd Avenue (I think it is) to show Brooklyn their wonderful Christmas light display.

Brooklyn LOVED the bear on the ladder. The ladder would move back and forth making the bear play peak a boo with us!

 The whole property is lit up and they have Christmas carols playing.  Brooklyn WAS an appreciative audience!

House Update

It's been a little while since I've posted, so...got the tile on the kitchen backsplash grouted. I hope to seal the grout tomorrow so I can move the microwave onto the counter top and take the microwave stand out of the kitchen, then build the little bistro table and chairs and put them in the kitchen. Then all I need to do is pack some more cupboards, hang the shelf, place the E-A-T letters on it and caulk the gaps between the upper cupboards and the ceiling.

The massage room downstairs is almost complete, just need to decide on location for wall decor and whether or not I want to paint the microwave stand and repurpose it for the oils, towels, candles, etc in the massage room.

The bathroom downstairs is finished other than caulking around the toilet. And maybe a tiny touch up painting on the walls where some white paint has dripped.

The downstairs bedroom is another story. We had an unfortunate 'accident' recently. The flashing on one side of the fireplace where it meets the roof needed to be redone and the downspout on the rain gutter was disconnected. So, apparently water from the melting snow was pouring directly down the left side of the fireplace causing a small flood in the basement.

I pulled up the almost new carpet and removed any pad that had gotten wet. Then used a room heater and fans to dry the carpet out and am now waiting for Darvin to box up all his 'STUFF' that he moved from his closet to spread out all over the room to dry. I'm worried because now it smells a little 'musty' down there. Need to find something to get rid of that smell. Fortunately I have extra pad that we can use to patch back in and then get the carpet re-installed. Then I need to decide how I'm going to stage that room. I borrowed a blow up bed from the Zauss's and I have a bed frame out in the garage. So we'll set that up. I bought some art including a piece that I can use as a 'headboard', and bought some new bedding that I'll use on my own bed after we move. I'm planning on moving all the furniture from our upstairs bedroom, except our bed, downstairs because it's a lot bigger room. It'll be kind of a hassle and quite a bit of work, but I think it'll look much nicer. Then I'll paint the old chest of drawers that's out in the garage, along with the two extra night stands and will use those in our bedroom upstairs. That way it'll seem more roomy upstairs. I'll probably keep my clothes downstairs and Darvin can keep his in the chest of drawers in our bedroom upstairs. I have a couple of lights that I can use on the night stands as well.

I plan on removing a chair from the living room and the love seat from the family room and setting those up with an end table in the downstairs bedroom around the fireplace to make a cozy reading area, etc. I'll also move the file cabinet from the family room into the closet under the stairs.

The dining room is essentially done and the man cave just needs a bunch of dejunking and a little decorating on one wall. The living room needs a couch removed as well as hiding my tax boxes (I need to start working on taxes as soon as I'm done with the house, so they need to be accessible but out of the way).

I have a self-imposed deadline of January 4th to get this place listed. If I stick to that date then we'll be able to get in the monthly Real Estate shopping guide, we'll be able to have the realtors' open house a couple of times and hopefully will have the place shown a number of times while we're out of town to Texas for Darvin's birthday.

I'm having a hard time choosing a realtor. I'm down to two choices, Joanne Melton (a family friend) and Meg Irwin. My neighbor Joe who is an appraiser highly recommends Meg (hands down in his words) he says she has all kinds of connections, so if we want to get it sold and fast, he'd go with her. The realtor's market analysis came in from $219,000-$250,000 with Joanne's on the high end. Joe said he'd print me off some comparables. I'll be interested to see what he comes up with as none of the realtors used the same properties for their analysis's. One advantage of Joanne is that she'd only charge 6% commission, Meg charges 7%, so on $200,000 that a $2,000 difference! I may ask Meg if she'd charge 6% each if we list our place and then Grandpa Clement's when we are ready to list his. Meg works for Prudential Almon Real Estate who have about 1/3rd of the market share of real estate transactions in the area. They have a separate marketing department and Meg is a top producer. I like Joanne a bunch, but I think Meg will get the house sold quicker. Oh decisions, decisions...

Well I'd better get to bed, it's now about 12:30 in the morning and I've got to head over to Alan Afualo's around 9 a.m. to cut some wood and put a beveled edge on it for a plaque to make a family birthday calendar for Grandpa Clement for Christmas.

More backsplash progress!

Barney came back this morning and finished installing the backsplash. BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

I need to wait for a few days and can then grout. I will probably wait until we get back from Boise, because I want to work on the countertops first so the realtors will be able to get a better feel for the final look of the kitchen.

I can't believe the difference!! Beautiful!

WOW!

I was so excited when Barney Zauss showed up this afternoon to start working on the kitchen backsplash! He left without telling me he was leaving, so I'm not sure when he'll be back. He did all of the sink wall backsplash except one row at the top on the right hand side under the cupboard. What a HUGE difference painting the cupboards, adding new door and drawer pulls, painting the hinges and adding a backsplash makes in a kitchen!

I can't wait to get the countertop refinished! I hope he'll finish the one row at least tomorrow so I can start working on that countertop. I'll need to sand and put primer on it. Then spray the Make It Stone on it and then add about 9 coats of polyurethane. I need to review the instructions and check the drying time on all my supplies. I'm hoping to get the countertops done before we head to Boise on Friday so they can 'cure' without us having to worry about forgetting and putting things on them.

I got the wall paint out today and I think I got all the walls touched up. There was quite a bit of touching up to do around the door frames, also I hadn't done a very good job painting the laundry room so had a lot of touching up to do there too. Now I'm getting ready to put the 1st coat of primer on the front side of the last 13 cupboard doors...I hope to get the 2nd coat on and get them painted tomorrow so I can rehang them on Wednesday.

I called two realtors today, Joanne Melton and Meg Irwin and scheduled appointments for them to do walk-throughs on Thursday. Am not sure if I'll call a 3rd realtor or not. There are a number of them who would like the business...Erin Jones referred me to Terry Harrington, but he's a broker at the same RE/Max office that Joanne works at, so don't know if I should call him or not.

Well, I better get back to the primer!

Baby steps of progress

I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked on the house today. It was Darvin's day off. Thankfully he took Grandpa duty taking Grandpa Clement to his doctor's appointment and to get his hair cut. So I was able to get all the painted doors hung.

I think once the backsplash is installed, the counter is 'refinished' and the new sink and faucet installed the kitchen is going to look great!

Also got a final couple of coats of paint on the desk chair and got it put back together.

Darvin and I went running around this afternoon and picked up our Christmas tree and got it decorated tonight. It was nice to have Darvin help me decorate it.

He seemed to enjoy helping. I took a couple of pictures and posted one on facebook as Pops had promised Alex that we'd post a picture of the tree once it was decorated so he could see it. It was funny when Pops was talking to Alex this afternoon he told Alex we'd bought a Son-uva Gravedigger monster truck today for him to play with when he came to our house. I could hear Pops talking about the airplane. Apparently Alex decided if we'd bought a new monster truck it was time for him to hop on the plane to visit so he could play with it! lol That kid is so hilarious, just like his Mommy was when she was his age!

Darvin is off again tomorrow. I need to get the rest of the patch job in the kitchen finished with mud and texture and paint just in case Barney Zauss is able to come start the backsplash on Friday afternoon. He'll be working on installing some tile at the Smith's on Thursday and Friday and if he gets done early enough he'll come start here Friday.

Tomorrow night we're going with Middleton's and Gum's to the Stake Nativity musical. It should be a wonderful night.

Sometimes it seems like 2 steps forward and 3 steps back

It doesn't seem like I've been making much progress on the home projects recently. Life does sometimes get in the way! This past Saturday we had the Middleton's over for dinner to celebrate Wendy's 32nd birthday which was this past Monday.

Darvin said the haze in this picture was caused by the smoke of all those candles being blown out! lol

After dinner we drove together down to Sunnyside for the annual Farm Implement Light Parade. It was so nice to have some little people to go with to the parade!

We all enjoyed it very much and the parade was as awesome as usual!

Pops said this was the Mater float! It was actually decorated by a dentist's office.

Of course the sabbath was a day of rest. On Monday morning I decided to start putting the 23 cupboard doors back on. I got the new hinges out and brought up 2 of the glass doors. This was supposed to be a quick and easy project that would take a few minutes, then I was going to head off to do some shopping and bill paying and then head to Yakima Regional for my Dexascan (a bone density scan). They don't suspect I have osteoporosis, this is just to get a baseline reading.

I tried to hang the doors only to have them 'stick'. I was worried that maybe the double coats of primer and paint was causing the problem, but when I took the doors off the hinges and just did a 'dry fit' into the opening they were fine! So then I watched as I tightened the hinge screws and decided that maybe I needed to use some shims under the hinge. I cut out some cardboard. Tried one piece, nope...tried two pieces, nope. I decided maybe I should try a piece of wood, nope! Well of course by this time I'd wasted the whole morning and barely made it in time to check in for my 12:30 appointment. I was SO frustrated!

After the appointment I had lunch with Darvin in the cafeteria and then decided to do my shopping. On my stop at Home Depot I ran into Barney Zauss (one of my handymen), so I chatted with him about my problem. We concluded that I should try to use a set of the old hinges, to see if that would fix the problem. When I got home I looked for the old hinges. I looked and looked and had this sinking feeling that somehow they had been dropped off at the Restore on Friday evening with the rest of my extra building supplies. I was SICK about it. I did still have 2 old hinges on the cupboard in the hallway. So I took those off and put them on one of the dining room cupboard doors and voila! No problems whatsoever! So then I was stewing about whether I'd be able to get my old hinges back from the Restore or if they'd already been sold.

I called the Restore first thing this morning (they're closed on Mondays). Gladys indicated that Saturday is a super busy day for donations so there was no chance my hinges were in the store yet, phew! She said she'd look into it. After a while I became worried as she hadn't called me, so I called back and offered to come bring one of the two hinges I still had so they could see what they looked like and I offered to help look. Unfortunately, they don't let non-employees back in the yard, so I was left to wait. She said it would help if they knew what the hinges were brought in (a box, bag, etc). So I called Lindsey and left a message for her to see if maybe Thomas could remember. After I left her a message again in my mind I questioned whether or not those hinges had really been taken to the Restore because I still had all the screws for them. But I'd scoured the kitchen (the current home improvement staging area) earlier and couldn't find them. I wandered back into the kitchen and noticed a Home Depot shopping bag on the floor next to the pantry door and low and behold (or what to my wondering eyes did appear?!) when I opened it, there were all 50 of my missing hinges along with all the old door and drawer pulls! Boy was I embarrassed to call Gladys back to tell her to call off the search! Oh well, at least I found them.

Happy dance! Now it was on to painting the old hinges and screws. I'd patched the hole in the kitchen wall earlier today so I used a piece of leftover drywall as a board to screw the hinge screws in so I could more easily paint them.

After I got done visiting teaching Erin Jones I finished screwing the screws into the board and placed the hinges on a piece of cardboard on the dining room table

and went to work painting them with the aluminum colored Rustoleum I'd used on our big door hinges. I've since put a second coat on some of them and am waiting for them to dry.

Tomorrow I'll put the 23 painted doors up with the newly painted old cupboard hinges!

Also today I painted the dining room desk chair black. I never liked the color of the wood, it always looked like that phony fiberboard covered in wood plastic even though it was real wood.

I had two partial cans of black flat spray paint here, so I took the seat off and took the chair out to the garage. I got through the can of Rustoleum and it needed some touching up. The cheapo spray paint was clogged and I couldn't unclog it for the life of me. I just this second remembered a trick I'd heard in the past to use hairspray on the sprayer, but I didn't remember in time, so ended up heading down to Walmart to get another can of Rustoleum. I thought I got it all covered, but when I brought the chair in tonight I saw some spots that I'd missed (not enough light in the garage apparently). Anyway, the chair will stay in the house to dry tonight and then I'll take it back outside tomorrow for the final coat.

What a HUGE difference a coat of spray paint makes! Now this chair 'pops'! lol

Again, I don't feel like I made much progress today, but hopefully tomorrow after I take Grandpa for his doctor's appointment and his haircut I can get back home and get moving! I plan on getting all 23 cupboard doors hung, putting at least a first coat of primer on the remaining 19 cupboard doors and hopefully will get the living room door, bedroom closet doors and basement bathroom vanity painted as well, along with a second paint coat on the laundry room cupboard and the upper kitchen cupboards.

I also finally got the Pascual's studded snow tires posted on Craig's List along with the couch I'd still like to sell (although I'm hesitant about selling it in case we DO need it in Texas-I actually really like it!). I had taken pictures of the tires long ago and kept looking and looking for them on my computer. Today I finally just decided to take new pictures!

And on a final update note, I'm hoping that Sharon and Ray Smith will 'waffle' long enough about their home improvement projects that they won't have Barney Zauss start them this week and instead he'll put my kitchen backsplash up! Otherwise he won't be able to get over here until the end of next week and I want the backsplash up before I refinish the kitchen countertop. Keep your fingers crossed for me!