The one where I make a mess of my kitchen tiles.

I’d been putting off grouting the kitchen tiles, because I knew that it was a messy job.  But last week, I decided that it would be the perfect project to keep my busy while Jeff was away for work.  As if being at home on my own with my two boys wasn’t enough… duh.  Here’s how the day went:   

9:00 – Started as soon as the boys headed out to school… mixed up the grout and started smearing it into all of the joints.

9:30 – Jack’s teacher calls me to pick him up because he is coughing up a lung.

10:00 – Back at it… start sponging… since I’m using dark grey grout, it makes a huge mess, and I have a mini panic attack.

11:00 – Time to pick up Beckett and make lunch.

12:00 – Start sponging again… uh oh… this grout is already pretty dry… resume sponging double time to try keep the grout damp.

12:30 – Have to take boys to piano lessons.

2:30 – Shit!!!  grout is completely dry, but I manage to sponge one small section SUPER AGGRESSIVELY and it turns out fine.  The rest of the wall still has grout glommed on to every joint and smeared over every tile. 

3:00 – Time to pick up the cousins from school and take all 4 boys to swimming lessons… leave the house feeling pretty much defeated.  Am I ever going to finish this job???

5:30 – Stop at my Mom & Dad’s to whine and complain get advice on how to fix the mess I’ve made of this wall.

6:00 – Longstringofswearwords!!!  The grout is DRY.  Like cement.  The only solution is to scrape every joint with this tool, and sponge the heck out of the tiles as I go.  Blurg.

10:30 – Clean up is a bitch because of the fine dust that accumulated from all of my scraping… but at least I’m FINISHED!

… and I don’t think anyone will be able to tell what a disaster this was! 

Tiling: The tricky cuts.

If you’ve ever tried to cut small pieces out of a tile, you’ll know how amazing this is:

My Dad was able to fit those tricky pieces perfectly!  Crazy, right?  I didn’t even think it would be possible.  Here’s another one:

I SWEAR I’m going to get the grouting finished this week.  Promise. 

Back at it

A little bit of kitchen progress to report today… my Dad wired up my new light!  I love it!  (Jeff says he will ‘probably get used to it.’)

Now we can get the tiling finished!

OK… so here’s what happened…

I intended to take a few days off of blogging to finish up my kitchen cabinets and get ready for our family vacation.  That was at the end of March!  A week turned into two weeks, and now it’s been almost a whole month!  Some kind of weird inertia took over, and I just couldn’t get started again.  (On anything.  You should see the state of my house.  Yikes.)  Anyways… hello blog friends!  I’ll be around to visit soon!

Here’s what I’ve been up to over the past month…

Family Vacation:

Our whole family went to Disney World!  That’s Jeff, my Mom & Dad, and my sister and her husband, and our 4 boys.  And yes, we wore matching shirts the whole time so that we could find each other in the crowds.  (In spite of the nerd factor, I’d totally recommend it!)  See how easy it is to spot us in the ‘flash mob’???  Bahahaha!

Anyways, the vacation was fabulous!  We all loved it. 

As for kitchen progress, well, this happened:

I drilled holes in the wrong spot for two of the pantry doors.  Grrrrr.  THAT totally sucked my energy.  So I have to fill holes, and do paint touch ups.  But it is great to have the doors back up!  Here’s the pantry.  I love the gold knobs. 

More on this another day.  It’s beautiful outside, and my little one is ready to go for a bicycle ride!

Hope you are having a great Monday!

Shit my kids drew on: The White Sofa

Yep, they’ve been at it again:

… a closer look…

For the record, the pen actually washed right out!  Thank goodness for slipcovers I guess. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

More Painting… and a Color Change

My kitchen faces south, and is SUPER bright.  (Not that I’m complaining.)  The problem with all of the light is that it is like a spotlight on all of the imperfections in my cabinet paint job!  Ugh.  As soon as I hung the first door, it was clear that they were going to need another coat. 

So, I decided that I might as well fix the white situation if I was painting everything again anyways.  I went with Benjamin Moore Simply White.  It’s still a warm white, but is ‘whiter’ and has less of a gray look to it than Moonlight White.  It’s close enough that it still looks great with the Moonlight White wall colour, but it is a lot better against my super white subway tiles.   

Let’s hope this is it!  I’m so sick of painting!!!

Casa Carissa: My New Plant!

Remember in January, when I decided that I needed a big crazy tree for the corner of my living room?  Well the coolest thing happened.  Not long after I blogged about it, a friend sent me a note saying that she had a big plant that was outgrowing it’s space in her house, and if I wanted it I could adopt it!  Um… YES!!! 

I patiently waited for the weather to warm up… and it finally did (for a few days).  So I loaded it into my van, which was hilarious because Beckett’s head was completely surrounded by leaves (should have had a photo), and now here it is!

Isn’t it great!?!  I love how it adds some life to that corner of the room. 

A before / after: