Sparty Off

This post is rather delayed in terms of the actual events taking place.  But the experience has been so traumatic that blocking it out has been the best possible method. 

I was born and raised in a split family.  My grandfather – a Wolverine.  My great uncle – a Spartan.  As you can imagine, family feuds were common.  I was a forced U of M fan from the start.  And growing up, I was truly indifferent – you mean you want me to watch sports and cheer for someone?

Now I love football.  And my husband has somehow converted me to be an Iowa Hawkeyes fan.  Hey – they've been getting REAL lucky this year.  The majority of my close girlfriends are all State fans so they’ve been teaching Lily a thing or two about the Sparty life.  She’s gotten really good at cheering for them and she loves to sit and watch football with Daddy.

When we bought the new house, we thought it was hilarious that the main bathroom was floor to ceiling decked out in Spartan green and white.  It was even more comical once we learned from the neighbors that the bathroom was decorated by the original owners – the family we purchased the home from had left it that way for nearly eight years!  Our short-term plan for this bathroom was to leave it untouched, long-term taking out a hall closet to add a full bath tub.  We could certainly live with the wallpaper and Lily seemed to love Sparty.

Then the second day we inhabited our house, we discovered the toilet was leaking water into the basement and the water shutoff valve was busted.  So Mike found himself with a small project.  Once he was finally able to shut the water off, we were left with one toilet on our main floor and what seemed to be huge inconvenience running Lily into our room in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.  My mom graciously volunteered to take Lily so Mike and I could spend Saturday finishing up some projects.  Our plan was to rip out the toilet, take down the wallpaper, paint the small space, replace the toilet, and PRESTO! New bathroom!

I mean - who doesn't need a sawzall to remove their toilet? This should have been sign one this bathroom was cursed. 

Funny.  We are so funny.  Here we are three weeks later throwing in the towel and calling a drywall guy to come replace all of the walls.  We really should have known the project was going down hill from the time we brought home the first new toilet.  Upon opening the box, we discovered the bowl was broken.  So we loaded the box back up and waited in line at Home Depot to exchange it.  When we got out to the parking lot, I suggested we double check the toilet and couldn't stop giggling when we discovered another shattered toilet bowl.  We turned around and headed back inside to find four more broken toilets on the shelf.  And of course I couldn't just pick another brand, it had to be THAT toilet.  So two very nice Home Depot employees went in search of a forklift since the toilet I wanted was three shelves up on a pallet.  Once every patron in the two neighboring aisles and cleared out - on their own - 40 minutes later - we had a new toilet.  At that point, our DIY Saturday just kept going further downhill.

Trip 1 

Trip 2

There she is!

After two hours of scraping wallpaper adhesive off the bathrooms walls, I only had a 12x12 square to show for it.  I'd tried DIF, hot water and fabric softener, hot water and vinegar, not even my salty tears would get it to come loose.  So Mike unplugged my only source of light and I turned back to Google and read that you could use an oil based primer over wallpaper adhesive as long as there was no actual glue exposed.  It just so happened that we had a can of Kilz in our basement so I went to town priming over the paper.  There were no immediate signs of bubbling (per Google this was good) so I went to bed a happy camper.  Later in the week when I had a chance to really check out the bathroom again, I discovered the Google article was full of crap and my walls were peeling off almost better than they had with hot water.  I started peeling off large strip after large strip and then the drywall behind it started crumbling.  I backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door, called Mike at work and told him to get us on someone's drywall schedule because I quit.  

So long story short, I'm disappointed to say I am yet to be able to post an after picture of Lily's bathroom.  Sparty wasn't so bad after all.       

We have a 2.5 year old!

I think I start out every milestone post with "I cannot believe".  And I truly cannot believe how fast the past two and half years have flown by.  We are preparing for our upcoming trip to Hawaii and two years ago we had a little baby girl who still wasn't crawling.  

This trip we'll be toting along a 2.5 year old who now has a mind of her own.  It will definitely be an adventure so stay tuned!

Today was picture day at daycare.  I had a super cute pink striped tunic and sparkly navy leggings picked out for Lily to wear.  She took one look at the outfit, told me "Maybe tomorrow", and marched into her closet and picked out a one piece floral jumper.  Then she demanded her purple Minnie Mouse socks and sparkly silver mary janes.  When I dropped her off, every other girl in her class had on a fancy dress, tights, and sweater.  Ah, my child.  Clearly she's nothing like me…..

  

Project: Lily's Room

From the moment we decided to move, I was worried about Lily's transition to our new house.  Thankfully, she's been a trooper and wants nothing to do with the old house.  If you ask her if she'd like to go home, she says no.  She wants to go to the new house.  So we're still working on reprogramming her brain - if you ask her what street she lives on she'll tell you Burton Woods.  Minor details.

I was adamant that the day we moved, Lily's new room had to be completely put together.  So with the help of my father-in-law and BFF Erin, we got to work repainting Lily's new room the same color as her room in the old house.  I'm still not completely done with the transformation but I decided that it could be awhile before we got to the last few items on my list.

Before
We said good-bye to the floral drapes, the chair rail made into faux crown molding, and removed the grates in the window panes.

After

In addition to painting the walls, we painted the ceiling white, changed out the outlets, added a ceiling fan/light fixture combo, and added a shelf in the closet.

Still on my list

Finding curtains or a valance, purchasing a bed frame to match her dressers, replacing the trim and painting the doors white, and replacing the carpet.

Project: Undarken

I'm sure my regular blog followers cannot believe their luck - I have posted SO many new things!  You're in luck - my fabulous husband has allowed me to park my amazing computer right in the center of our kitchen until we figure out what to do with the basement.

As I mentioned earlier, the first project we ended up tackling was repainting the ceilings.  I'm not sure why one would ever decide to paint their ceilings tan but it was driving us crazy - not to mention making the house seem small and dreary.

So with the help of Mike and my mom, we were able to accomplish so much in just a week.  I cannot believe how much of a difference it makes in terms of lighting.

First strip rolled on - can you see the difference yet?

Did I mention we found two layers of wallpaper?

He's so good at helping….

World's best supervisor

First Day of Adabelle

The first day of school for most kids was Lily's first day in a new room at daycare.  I couldn't resist the urge to do a first day photo with our chalkboard that has yet to find a place in our new home.

Goodbye Summer

I feel like I was just sitting here posting about how excited we were to be putting in the boats and playing by the pool.  And now the boats are out and the pool will soon be closed.  Although Labor Day weekend tried to rain on our parade, we got in some quality time by the water.  

Empty Promises….Fufilled

I got an email from my girlfriend in Denver this week with the following subject line:

Your last blog was full of empty promises.

In the body of the email the following demand:

I want pics of the new house!

She’s right.  I definitely promised pictures of the new house to be posted last weekend.  And then the weekend got away from me.  And then the 9/15 tax deadline blew up and I found myself running around with my head cut off trying to find someone to translate financial statements into English.  For a foreign entity we didn’t even know existed.  For a client that wasn’t supposed to use BDO until after 9/15.  #tax problems.

We've bitten off a lot more than we can chew in some aspects of our new home.  I thought for sure we'd have nearly every room painted by now but when we spent some time in the house, we discovered the ceilings had all been painted tan.  So our first paint purchase was a five gallon bucket of contractor grade ceiling paint - THANK YOU TODD PENA - for getting us the family discount.  We have since painted the ceilings in the dining room, kitchen, family room, and Lily's room.  My hope was to do a post on each room as it was fully complete but I'm sorry to say I don't have one room complete!  Mostly because I'm indecisive.  But here is a whole slug of the before pictures - welcome to our new home!

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Sunroom

Sunroom

Living room and kitchen view from sunroom

Living room looking into dining room and master hallway - check out that wallpaper!

Living room

Kitchen from dining room

Kitchen

Kitchen from garage hallway

Lily's room

Lily's room

Guest bedroom

Guest bedroom

Sparty.  Main floor bathroom

My nemesis - the laundry room

Basement family room

Basement kitchen

Basement space - full of untapped potential

Basement bathroom

Ah.  The reason we fell in love.