Paint, Paint, and more Paint!

The drapes from Overstock.com arrived late last week. They are really pretty and the color goes great in the room. I only ordered three valances but realized after Brad hung the curtan rod that we really needed four. Oops! So I ordered another one, fortunately they were still in stock when I realized my error. The last valance should be here later this week! Once we get stuff hung on the walls, I'll take another photo and share the study in all of its painted, organized, peaceful glory!

Brad's step-mom came over last Thursday and painted our downstairs bathroom. The color is a little darker than I thought it was going to be, but it's still really nice. Now I just need to hang the stuff on the walls, and pick out some Cheri Blum prints and frames and hang those, too. I also need a shower curtain, a soap dish, a few hand towels, and maybe a tumbler and then I can call it finished. Oh, I also need to print a few things out on some nice paper and frame those as well, but will do that later on. It is sounding like it'll be a while yet before I'm ready to share photos of that bathroom! :-)

Finally, after eight or nine different containers holding almost two pints of paint in various colors, I have selected a paint color for the entry, kitchen, breakfast area, living room, hallway to the laundry and master bedroom, and the upstairs hallway. The color we're going with is Sherwin Williams Nomadic Desert.

Here are a few random photos!



The bigger square on the top right close to the light switch is the color we're going with.







See all of the paint colors? There are actually a few more containers in the bathroom under the sink. YIKES! Anyone want some paint?!


And for grins, here's a looooooooooooooooong overdue photo of our house with snow on it. I'm longing for the cooler weather!

Covered in Whole Wheat

I was, on Saturday...and now the study is! Brad's step-mom came over Saturday morning and the two of us painted the room with Sherwin Williams' whole wheat super paint in a satin/eggshell finish. It took two coats and 2.5 gallons of paint. I've since ordered draperies in the sapphire color from Overstock.com:



I need to find a curtain rod that's 104 inches in length. Then I have to hang all of that, and we are going to move the furniture (two bookcases and Brad's desk) into the room this weekend. And poof, one room in our house will FINALLY be decorated and finished. WOO HOO! One down, too many more to go.

An Ounce of Prevention

In my haste to discover whether I liked the paint color I selected for our home office/Brad's study, I failed to bother to put down any kind of drop cloth.

Big mistake. Yep, I managed to drip a very small spot of "Open Seas" paint on our "Pale Clay" carpet. I panicked, and ran to the bookcase to grab two home improvement books. I turned quickly to the indexes (indeces?!) of both books and looked up "Paint." Would you believe that neither book contained any information on how to remove paint from carpet? Hello, these books are written for weekend warriors, and should include such things! Maybe a "Dummies Guide to Painting" book would have such a section.

So I went to my trusty search engine (aka Google) and typed in "remove latex paint from carpet." Aha, there was an ehow article just for that.

Here was its guidance:

Instructions
Difficulty: Easy

That "oops" you heard during that painting project in the other room is bad news - latex paint can ruin a carpet. [oh, crap!] Act fast or you may have to permanently place a potted plant in that stained spot.

Step 1 Remove as much wet paint as you can by blotting with a clean, white, absorbent cloth; work from the outside in to avoid spreading the stain.

**Translation: run around the house looking for a clean, white, absorbent cloth. Discover all kitchen towels are in the washing machine, completely soaked. Rummage through closet looking for a neutral-colored towel. Exhale a sigh of relief when you spot your old Chili's white beach towel lying on the floor of the closet, somewhat folded (so assumably clean, other than some dust). Run back to the flawed carpet and start blotting.

Curse in your head (because you have a toddler on your back who currently repeats EVERYTHING you say) when you discover you are managing to smear the dot around. Working from the outside in is very hard when the dot is really small, and you are working with a beach towel.


Step 2 Sponge with cool water and blot again (still from the outside in) until you've removed as much paint as you can.

**Translation: be thankful you just bought brand-new sponges for the kitchen. Grab the package, open it, and hope that even though they're blue in color, that they are colorfast and won't make a bigger mess than the one already in progress. Fill a Snack Trap bowl (sans lid) with cool water and return to the flawed carpet. Dip the sponge in water and begin to blot the spot. Curse in your head again when you realize that while the spot is getting lighter in color, it is starting to spread.

Step 3
Mix one teaspoon mild dishwashing detergent in a cup of lukewarm water.

** Tell the computer screen, "Thanks, but I'm going with OxyClean on this one!" Head to master bathroom and run the hot water. Add the OxyClean and stir.

Step 4 Blot with detergent solution solution, using a clean, white cloth, working from the outside in.

** Return to spot and dump water onto flawed carpet. Breathe another sigh of relief when you see that the spot is now gone, and you are left with wet carpet.

Step 5 Let the area dry completely and vacuum.

** It dried and there is no blue on my nice tan carpet. I have yet to vacuum and I don't have to resort to putting a potted plant behind the door.

You better believe I will ALWAYS use a drop cloth from now on! Thank goodness for Stainmaster carpet. And I'm not totally sure I love the blue color. It's REALLY BLUE.

Downstairs Bathroom

I have a theme or whatever, finally! I found a bunch of cute cottage-type stuff at Michael's last night for 60% off, so I got it. I selected a couple of paint colors, and went to the paint store today to get samples. I'm quite amused by the fact that they're on the same green-based paint strip, one is just a darker shade, I guess...but when I put them on the walls, one looked very blue and the other looked very green. I'm leaning toward the blue one. The green is darker and I just like the blue better! Hopefully soon we'll get the whole bathroom painted.

Here's an album with the fun stuff I got, as well as bad representations of the paint colors. The lighting in the bathroom is all goofy. There are also some photos of the only thing I've managed to actually decorate so far!

House Update

I haven't really updated because there hasn't been much to talk about. But today, Brad, his dad, and two of his brothers accomplished a HUGE task - they put down flooring in our walk-in attic! We have probably 300 square feet of storage space in our attic now. Remember way back when our house was being built and we wanted them to move the furnace over to the right of the attic instead of in the dead center of it? It was quite a battle, but we won and they moved it. It's a good thing, because otherwise we would not have a third of the great storage space we now have. Woo hoo! The guys started early (before 8 am), worked through lunch, and finished up around 3 or so. It looks amazing! And no one fell through the ceiling, and no one had to go to the emergency room, so it was definitely a successful project!

In other news, I found bar stools yesterday! Nothing I ever do is easy, though. I was at Target yesterday afternoon when I ran across these bar stools on clearance.



The store only had the 25" seat height, which is too short, so I got online after dinner last night and discovered that there was a 31" seat height. I didn't check while online to see what stores had them. No, I drove to a different Target, the one closer to our house, and they didn't have any of the 31" stools. So when I got back home, I looked up the stool again and clicked on the option to locate the product in a store. The Target way down by where I used to work had them listed as, "Available," where the closer Targets either said, "Out of Stock," or "Limited Availability."

SOOOOOOOOOO...after I picked N up from Grandma Coni's this morning, we headed down to that Target. I was actually heading that way to pick up some clothing for a friend of mine, expecting that N would fall asleep in the car, but since I was going right by that Target, and since N was wide awake at that point, I opted to stop in and see if they had them. I had had the foresight to take Brad's car, but really should have taken his brother's rental truck instead.

I was delighted to see that they had the 31" stools, that they were both on clearance, and that one of them was even marked at $49.98 instead of the $69.98 price tag that was on the other three stools in the store. I made sure I grabbed the $49.98 stool, after locating a Target team member to get one of their heavy cargo carts for me. The cashier was really confused about the price tags and charged me $69.98 for both, so I just went over to guest services after checking out and they did a price adjustment and refunded me $43! I got the two bar stools for what one would have cost me, so I am pretty excited. I wasn't really looking forward to dropping $200+ on two bar stools.

SOOOOOOOOO...a Target team member, N, and I all head back out to the car where we start trying to put the bar stools into Brad's trunk. His car is SO fired for carrying things like this! :-) The round foot rest part of the stool was too big to fit into the trunk all the way. After MUCH fanagling, which included me having to move the car seat base over to the other side of the car (thank goodness the seat fold down is a 67/33 split!) we finally got the stools wedged into the car safely enough for me to get them home. BUT...one stool was hanging out a little bit so I couldn't close the trunk. And there was no rope in Brad's car. I was going to just leave it and drive home REALLY slowly, but as I was getting into the car I spotted my pink Petunia Pickle Bottom Boxy Backpack diaper bag. I realized that the shoulder strap would make an excellent tie-down for the trunk, since it's actually made out of seat belt material and has heavy duty clips on either end. I attached it to the trunk and it worked beautifully - I was quite proud of my innovation!

I took a lesser-traveled road to get home, and what would have been a 20-minute trip on a highway took me over 45 minutes, but that's ok. We got home safely and now our new bar stools are standing proud at our bar just outside the kitchen.

I'll get photos of all of this new stuff in the next day or so! Stay tuned!

Couch Photo

See why I almost didn't sit on it? The color is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO not my style!



I failed to get a photo of the nice pecan swatch. Oh, well...hopefully sooner than later I will have our actual sofas in our living room to show you instead!

Sneak Peek

We've been saying we aren't going to do any painting or decorating until we're all unpacked, but I cheated while at Hobby Lobby today and bought the following stuff:



For one of the rooms in our house. Stay tuned (for a long time!) to find out where it ends up!