Goodbye Beautiful 70's Laundry Room Linoleum

We have a new washer and dryer being delivered Thursday and have thankfully taken the plunge to rid the house of this awful linoleum flooring.  Amazingly, this was the floor throughout the whole kitchen before the sellers put the wood floors down.  To make it quick, we just chose a different vinyl tile and Paul and his Dad installed it on Sunday.  It looks SO MUCH BETTER!  My Mom also painted the lower half of the walls the same beige we have everywhere else in the house and we'll do the upper half of the wall later on since there are so many pantry shelves in the way for now.

Garage Updates

Ok, so it's been a little more than a weekend project!  In fact, it's still dragging on now after starting the project at the end of July.  But after taping everything and sanding three times, Paul was finally satisfied that it was ready for paint on Labor Day.  So he put the first coat of primer on.  It really does look a lot better, but now we need to clear out everything and figure out how we want to organize it all.

Weekend Project

I'm pretty sure we have a mouse problem. While they are adorable and I don't mind giving them a nice place to live, it's probably not sanitary, so we have to solve the problem.  I'm going to order some havahart traps for the garage and basement and take them miles away to release them if we ever catch any.  But first, we needed to remove all food sources from the garage (says our nice pest control guy) where we think they might be entering the house.  So.... since we were pulling everything out of the garage to clean up all the bird seed and thistle that has spilled all over the place out there, we decided to wallboard the walls and also put insulation in.  Here's the progress from Day 1:

BEFORE

AFTER

Next we have to tape and mud the joints and do the whole other side of the garage.  It's turned out to be a big job - not all that surprisingly. But hopefully it will be worth it in the end since we enter our house all the time through the garage....

Day 2:

Grouted Guest Bathroom Tub Surround

Not crazy about it with the shower curtain and yellow paint, but it's staying for now.  Can't face re-painting at this point...  we knew it wouldn't be great when we chose the glass border tile, but figured we wouldn't avoid a tile combo we liked just because of our paint color and shower curtain.  We can, fairly easily, change the paint and shower curtain down the road. 

Just Need Grout

And we need to paint and clean the tub, obviously....

Shower Tile

Camera Settings

I watched part of the dvd about my new camera from Christmas today and learned about some new "Creative" settings I could use.  Here are some of the pics I took when I practiced afterwards...

Cool Aerial View

Birds

Because there is no seed in the feeder, and just suet, the squirrels don't bother anymore.  And we are back to attracting some really pretty birds, like these guys.   I took these pictures through the kitchen window.  A friend from Nantucket who happens to be a bit of a bird expert has now told me what each of these birds are, so I am labeling each one...

Starlings

Cardinals (male and female)

Here are the birds that have laid eggs in a potted plant in our garage.  First there were two eggs, now we're up to 6 eggs!  They don't seem to mind our coming and going in the evening with the loud garage door going up and down.  Guess they figure it's the price they pay for a warm safe garage nest!

Carolina Wrens

Carolina Wren's nest

Common Grackle

Male Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Female Downy Woodpecker

Black Capped Chickadee and Male Cardinal

Blue Jay

Incoming Grackle, Outgoing Blue Jay

Insulation Behind the Fireplace

A few weeks ago, we realized there was a HUGE draft coming from the molding by the side of the fireplace.  When we removed the molding, there is a really big gap, and cold air from the garage is definitely coming into the family room.  Paul went and bought a huge roll of insulation and stuffed it in to try to fill in the gap.  Seems better now.  Too bad we didn't realize all winter long!

Painting the Kitchen

On Saturday we tackled painting the kitchen.  We've been slow to get motivated in this space because there is so much we want to do, and it's painful to spend time on it the way it is.  We really would like to just gut it and start over, and certainly get rid of these cabinets, but that process is both expensive and daunting because we don't really know exactly what we want to do yet.  Paul's parents were kind enough to babysit and even help with painting!  We got all of this done in one day.  Next up - painting the kitchen cabinets.  We can't decide whether to go with bold black or more of a lighter color.  I don't think I would like the lighter color (like off-white) mostly because of how it would look with the currently black appliances, AND now that I look at these pictures, I really don't think I'd like off-white next to the bright white trim color.  The laundry room door obviously needs to be painted now.  All the trim used to be the same color as the laundry room door. 


First, the "Befores"

Afters: