Summer Time!

My goodness, it's been so long.  It is way too hot here right now.  According to our local channel Wave3, it is currently 92 degrees with a heat index of 103.   Too hot to hot tub! as James Brown used to say. 

Here are a few photos of what the back yard looks like right now with its wonderful shade trees.  I always imagined us sitting out here having a lovely icy cocktail in the shade.  But we haven't done it yet!

Notice the 'garden' over in the corner.  The only thing growing there right now is weeds, but they are doing very well.

I guess you can see your yard man sitting there resting up.  He does such a fine job with the mower and weed eater!

And then, when we were in the house checking it over Terry noticed some dirt on the window sill, so we couldn't leave til he cleaned it off.

I thought you might also enjoy the picture of the vacuum cleaner.  I hear it's pretty good!

Then, it occurred to me that there aren't any updated photos of the more-or-less finished project.  So here are a few more pics of the house as it appears today.

This is the kitchen island that Chris built.  The thrift-store bar stools worked out great with it.   The stuff is still sitting there exactly how you left it.  I thought about saving ALL the junk mail but decided that might not be necessary. But  here is some of it.

 Terry waters this plant every few days.  It also seems to be doing really well!

And just in case you don't remember the living room, it still looks like this.

And last of all, your pretty bedroom!

Welp! I guess that's all the news from here in the Beautiful Ohio Valley!

Love, Vicki

A While Back

Time just flies.  I am going to catch up again.  This is from a couple of weeks ago. 

After we got all the painting of the upper cabinets finished and cleaned up a little, the kitchen looked like this.  It's so bright!  I love it!

Then we found out there were going to be visitors.  The new owner was going to come see the house in person, for the first time!!  We got all excited and had to stop and think about what would be important if you were actually going to spend the night here.  We thought curtains might be a good idea. 

This is Terry hanging the giant curtain rod over the ten-feet-wide living room window.  And in case you want to know, it's also ten feet from the top of the windows to the floor.  We're only going to hang curtains over the bottom windows.

I love the way he looks when he's working.

I wonder if I like it too much?

Nope, I don't think so.

Princie and I went over to make the bed and put something over the windows in the bedrooms.  Here's me doing my impersonation of a floor lamp that looks like a statue.  Because, I'm never too busy to be an idiot.

Here's Princie doing her thing with a flat sheet, which we thought would make an easy, fast, temporary window cover in the master bedroom.  I wonder how many years it will take for us to replace it with a real curtain?  She does such a good job with a project like this.

One very important project was finishing the pantry door with a decal.  Yet another idea taken straight from Pinterest.

And then I hauled some assorted doodads and thingies from my house to put in this cabinet.  What you can't see here, that just amazes the heck out of me, is how over at my house I can't tell that anything is missing.  I still have too much.  Anyway, this turned out kind of nice.  And yes, it's also an idea taken right off Pinterest. 

Finally, the new furniture was delivered.  There's a recliner, and the television is sitting there behind it.  We'll set that up later. 

And a sofa.  I was over there a few days ago, and the sofa is great!  I'm pretty sure I could sleep there if I were to accidentally enjoy too many cocktails and had to spend the night. 

That's about all there is from that time period.  The next day Janice and I took off for our week-long vacation in beautiful Bakersfield, California.  More about that later.

Love, Vicki

Caught Up

Warning: This is a long post because I'm getting caught up.

Today in just a little while, I will be going back over to do some more painting on the upper kitchen cabinets.  They are coming right along.  We decided to leave the doors off one stretch of upper cabinets and treat it as a display shelf.  After the usual sand a little and apply some Kilz, it looks like this:

And last weekend, Terry and I bought the mattress for the antique bed.  Here is the best man ever,  doing his mattress delivery show:

I think he loves this kind of thing because each time he gets to haul something, he also gets to point out how much we use this pickup that I thought was unnecessary.  He was right!  We use it all the time.  How do you get along without a pickup?

And we were quite thrilled when it just slipped right into the place where it belonged.  We were afraid the new mattress might not fit in the old bed.  

Also, last weekend, we finally got a great start on painting the kitchen.  And when I say we, I mean that Janice painted the kitchen.  All of it.  Two coats of paint and ceiling too.  And while she did that, I painted The One open cabinet.  I think one of us is faster than the other.

It is just so great how much brighter this kitchen is getting to be.  Here Janice was painting behind the stove and we had to stop and discuss the black/blue/gold/white dress photo:

While we spent all our time last weekend working on the kitchen, Terry was playing with his camera:

This shot is before Princie painted the second coat on the walls.  Isn't that just wonderful how much light comes in this room?  Of course it's currently enhanced by the boat loads of snow from the Big Snow of 2015, right outside the window:

Here she is cleaning up from her work.  I just liked the way the sunshine looked on her face:

It is hard to imagine that in just a few weeks I plan to be sitting out here wearing a summer dress and enjoying a lovely Margarita.

Now we're up to this current weekend.  Yesterday when I got there, this icicle was hanging outside the front door:

 

There is something about snow and ice that I think is so pretty.  I love it all if I don't have to drive in it.  

Friday evening we went out again and bought a twin mattress set to put in the guest bedroom.  I had previously bought a daybed frame at the thrift store and painted it black.  It is not actually connected to the bed. I just like the way it looks.  We already bought this daybed dust ruffle and spread for this bed along with some fabric for curtains.  Terry hauled in the mattress again and set it all up.  It still needs the rest of the bedding,  but I think it's going to look great when this room is finished:

Meanwhile back in the kitchen, which is our favorite of all the projects, Terry started the cabinets by sanding and painting Kilz on them.

 

 I don't believe I'll ever see sanding without thinking of the Karate Kid.

And as always, while Terry sanded and put Kilz on all the upper cabinets and doors, I painted The One Cabinet.  This is starting to get embarrassing!

While I waited for paint to dry between coats on the ONE cabinet, I threw some turquoise paint on the pantry door, because I don't think this can be the Pinterest house without a turquoise pantry door:
 

The color is left over from our bedroom.  I still love it!

Here is Good ol' Terry putting that Kilz on the cabinets:

And then finally yesterday we started putting the actual paint on the cabinetry.  It is started to get exciting!  It makes me want to paint our entire house white.  I just love all the brightness.

 

Terry thought he was finished for the day and enjoyed his cup of coffee:

Then we found more man-chores for him. He
reinstalled that old radio for us and some curtain
rods.

 Princie was back in the bedroom yesterday.  She repainted this old desk which we're using for a dressing table/night stand in there.  Doesn't it look good?!

And also, yesterday we put all the new bedding on the antique bed.   Janice styled it all up and put those lights I love in there, too.  So currently it all looks like this:

How about that?!!

Okay, time to go!  Today I will be painting another coat of paint on cabinets!!! I'm very excited!! You can tell by !!!!!!!!!

Love Vicki

A While Back

Between snow and one thing after another I am finally getting to this. A couple of weeks ago we went over to take care of a few things. Terry installed the newly painted black knobs in the guest room. I think he was proud of himself.

 

As you can see, I do have fine photography skills, as evidenced by my finger in the upper left corner of that picture.

The main project for a while there was the antique bed.  I guess in the olden days, they had super stain, more powerful than any I've ever seen before.   First Janice sanded and then cleaned it with tsp and painted primer on it.  Then I put on a coat of Behr Ultra Pure White in satin, which is the white we've been using all over the house in various versions.
 

When that dried, the stain was seeping through the primer and paint.   We were surprised.  So then Janice painted on a coat of Kilz.  I followed that with another later of the Behr satin paint.  When I went to check, sure enough it was still coming through in several places:

and also here and other places:

So I put more Kilz over just the places where it was still showing, followed by two more coats of the white paint.  Now it finally looks good.  We're pretty proud of the final product.  I hope it's not too small!  Just think, back in the olden days, couples slept in a full sized bed all the time.  Probably laying there awake, designing a king-sized bed.

Have a great day!

Love Vicki

Snow and Presidents

Happy President's Day!  And also Happy Snow Day!  Today we are snowed in and so decided to throw on some boots and trudge over to Karen's house and feel like we did something.  Before I show you what, here is a nice picture of the view out on your deck today:

So I decided to install the knobs of the cabinet in the hall bath.  They are very exciting and they look like this:

Yesterday, Princie and Chris dropped by for a while and she put a coat of Kilz on your bed.  It's looking about 1,000 times better now.  Doesn't this look great, and it's not even the real paint yet!

And the main thing I wanted to do today was start painting the daybed black.  And then while I had the black paint, I also painted a couple of other things:

Finally, while I was doing such a fabulous job of painting stuff black, Terry cleaned and reinstalled the doors on the bottom kitchen cabinets.  This is just a couple of them. Okay, three:

The plan is to keep the bottom cabinets stained and paint the top ones white.  I think it's going to look fabulous!

Everyone should stay indoors and remain calm!  It's still snowing and very cold out there!

Love, Vicki