white paint

If we were to sum up this past weekend in two words, those words would be: white paint.

Nick and I decided to extend this weekend into a 4 day fun-filled kitchen extravaganza. We literally wiped our calendars clean and said "no" to all the fun stuff we wanted to do and worked on the kitchen. Well, we did all that starting on Sunday. Nick had to work from 5am-6pm on Saturday, so I had breakfast with my sister and cleaned the house. But on Sunday? Watch out kitchen, we're coming for you.

First task? Coerce family members to join us. Nick's mom and sister headed out to Boston for a girl's weekend, which left Nick's dad and bro-in-law as weekend bachelors. They called and were all "hey, wanna do dinner or something?" And we were all "Sure! We'd love to have you paint our cabinets!"

So I'm not actually sure how that conversation went, but one way or another we ended up with 2 extra sets of helping hands on Sunday afternoon. These three guys painted every single cabinet door (primed both sides, plus 2 coats on the back). We had doors all over the backyard and they just barely got every door safely into the basement before it started pouring. Nice work, gentlemen. We would still be painting doors if it wasn't for all your help!

 While they slaved away outside, I emptied all of our lower cabinets and gave them all a good sanding.

Early Monday morning I started painting lower cabinets. And painting, and painting.....and painting. I'm amazed by how many coats of paint these cabinets take.

By Tuesday Nick started hanging doors while I kept applying extraneous coats of "Swiss Coffee" to our lower cabinets. We ran into quite a bit of trouble with the new hinges and we're actually still ironing out some of those issues. All of our doors are wacky sizes (even the matched pairs that you'd expect to, well, match) and the new hinges are causing some trouble. Anybody have experience with this??

By the time we washed our brushes Tuesday night things were starting to look bright and shiny! All the doors are still open to give everything time to cure. I know it's necessary, but I'm a little too Type A to leave cabinet doors hanging open. It's taking everything in me to leave them like this!

So to satisfy all my fellow Type-A friends, here's a sneak peek of what things will look like once the doors are shut.

Can't wait to see the whole kitchen looking like this!

lately

Hi friends. I've missed you. There's nothing terribly exciting to report over here, we're just living life, painting everything we see and trying to wear our dogs out so they'll sleep at night.

And it's great. Life is really, really great. It's just full, too, and I'm struggling with balancing priorities. So when I haven't been here sharing our life, this is (some of) what we've been up to!

We've celebrated birthdays and Mother's Day (times 2!), and found as many excuses as we can to hang out with our families.

We rescued two baby ducks! The full story is coming up (someday), but that was a fun little adventure.

Nick raced his first duathalon in 40* temps with buckets of rain and crazy wind. It was a 2 mile run, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run. He did really well, especially considering the weather conditions. He's hooked and counting down the days until his next race. (I'm counting down the days until I learn how to use my camera.)

I finished painting the kitchen (yay!) at midnight last Saturday night. Midnight + paint + Cindy is not a great mix, but fortunately you can't tell that from the paint job.

I've also been painting our window screens before we swap out the storms. The clean, bright white is an amazing contrast from the old chipped, dirty windows.

Nick finished tiling the backsplash!! We still need to do the sealer (so they look "wet" like the tiles in the lower left corner) and then grout, but all the tiles are in place.

Nick also finished tiling the kitchen floor and is almost done with some finish carpentry in the kitchen. I'm working on painting cabinet doors and prepping the lower cabinets for their coat(s) of paint.

So there's the highlight reel from life recently. We're really looking forward to an extended weekend of house projects this weekend. What do you guys have on the schedule for the weekend??

splash of color

We've been mudding and taping our little hearts out for the past two weeks. 

And by "we" I mostly mean Nick. I did some sanding (and sanding and sanding and sanding) but in reality I'm on of the least patient people to walk the earth, and it turns out you need a good dose of patience to be good at sanding. So I left most of the sanding up to Nick.

But then finally the tape/mud/sand song and dance was done! And then Nick had to work this past weekend. So if color was going to get on those freshly sanded walls, I was going to be the one doing it.

(I asked Shalai but she just kept chewing on her bone.)

I spent Friday night priming, and managed to get the last of the priming done just as Nick pulled up at 11pm.

Saturday I whipped out the paint and then had a moment of total uncertainty. We've been planning all along to use the green that used to be in the dining room, but then I panicked when I was about to start. Was the green too dark? Would it match the backsplash? Would it make the space feel closed in again?

I used a lifeline and called my mom, who reassured me it would be just fine and the white cabinets would balance out the rich green.

And once again, Mom was totally right.

Now that the (first coat of) green is on the wall I absolutely love it!

It's Witch Hazel by Behr and it's an absolutely delicious color.

Can we just take a moment for one big happy dance? There is paint on our walls!!!! Maybe a finished kitchen really is in our future.

wallpaper's gotta go

We're back!! Not from anywhere exciting, just from the depths of our house project. May and June are two crazy months around here, thanks to Nick's insane marching band schedule (he's on staff with a local high school marching band on top of his regular day job). So we buckled down over the past two weeks and knocked out some projects.

But first, thanks for continuing to check in on Shalai! She is doing really well. Her stitches are out, her energy is back and she's completely healthy again. We're relieved, thankful and happy to be spending hours playing fetch. But we do need to break her nasty little habit of sneaking into bed with us. We got a little lax when things were touch-and-go so now the little stinker is convinced there's an open invitation to spend every night curled up in bed with us. But hey, if that's the worst of the aftermath I'll take it!

Now, on to our house projects!

One night last week Nick was gone all evening at marching band. We had just talked about this hallway a couple days prior, and Nick thought the wallpaper wasn't that big of a deal/not worth dealing with right now.

(This is the hall we use to let the dogs in the backyard, get to the garage, etc. so we're in and out of here constantly)

I, however, decided I'd had enough of the lovely flowery wallpaper.

And since Nick had been foolish enough to leave me unattended for the evening, down it came.

Now, I think it's worth noting that I changed our wallpaper removal philosophy here. In the past (aka in our dining room) we simply removed the entire wall when removing wallpaper. I tried something slightly less disruptive to normal life this time.

Wednesday night I put the last coat of paint on the walls and ceiling. Honestly? I had no idea a coat of paint would make such a difference in this space!

I used Ralph Lauren Creamstone paint, which was leftover from the living room ceiling. It was perfect! A little bit of color but still really light and bright. The new bright white ceiling and trim definitely help too.

Fortunately, both Nick and the dogs approve!

Bright, white and shiny clean. I have no idea why I put this off for so long! I think I was afraid of the wallpaper, but once I listened to Nick and used some water to soften it up it came right off. Totally worth the effort.

Add this one to the long list of projects I put off forever that ended up not being that big of a deal and having a huge pay-off! Anybody else have an ever-growing list like that?

parents to the rescue!

8:15am on Friday I got a text from my mom. "Do you guys need help with any projects this weekend?"

Do we ever!

So, my parents gave up the better part of their Saturday to work on our kitchen. (Parents are great.)

We put Mom to work filling in all the nail holes on the ceiling. I don't think she realized quite how many nail holes there were when she agreed to do that. But she was a trooper and every single nail hole has been filled and sanded!

Dad started off the morning helping Nick measure and cut backsplash tiles, and then he mudded the little bump-out. Dad loves mudding.

Unfortunately, (for him) he's really good at it so Nick likes to save mudding jobs for him. Sorry Dad.  But it looks great!

Nick worked on the backsplash until we ran out of tile. Yeah, you read that right. We need to scrounge up about 20 more tiles to finish this thing off. I'm not quite sure how our math was so far off, so I'm wondering if there's more tile hiding in our basement somewhere.

Meanwhile, Mom kept filling and sanding. There were a lot of nail holes! Mom, you're the best!

Eventually Mom and Dad had to head out and Nick and I turned our attention to some under-cabinet lighting Mom and I picked up that morning. We installed rope light a couple years ago, but decided that didn't give off enough light.

This time we went with halogens and we're loving the extra light!

We still have a mess of chords that need to be dealt with, but we'll get to that someday.

We also caulked the seams in the ceiling beadboard and sanded down mud that had dried already. All in all it was an incredibly productive Saturday. The kind where we start to think that we might actually finish this kitchen. Someday.

Thanks again, Mom and Dad! Some extra energy and motivation was exactly what we needed.

How about the rest of you? Productive weekend? Relaxing weekend? The ever-elusive blend of both?

pupdate

Thanks for all your sweet comments and well wishes from last week’s post. Shalai is doing much better and is definitely well on her way to a full recovery. I think Tuesday night (3 days after surgery) was when I finally quit holding my breath and started believing Nick when he told me she was going to be ok. 

Our biggest task now is to keep her calm (ha!) and make sure she doesn’t remove her own stitches like she did last time. We have one more week with the stitches and then they’ll come out on the 24th! Until then she’s not allowed to go up or down stairs, and since stairs are required to get to our backyard and up to the bedroom there’s a lot of puppy-carrying going on. She’s gotten really good at sitting nicely and waiting to be carried, so I don’t think she minds too much. Although, she’s still hopping up on the bed when we turn our back/in the middle of the night to cuddle, so we need to have a little heart-to-heart about that.

The emergency clinic sent us home with a soft cone which has been a life (and sanity!!) saver. It’s much more comfortable for her, she doesn’t run into ev.ery.thing and it’s so much quieter. We don’t trust her with it when we’re gone, so anytime we’re out of the house (and often at night) we put on the hard plastic cone. If your little one needs a cone and you can get your hands on a soft cone I HIGHLY recommend it. We also have Beemer’s thundershirt on her to keep her from scratching at the incision with her hind legs. It’s worked like a charm (although it’s a little big, so occasionally she’ll sneak one of her front legs out. We call it her toga.) and so far all stiches as still intact.

On top of her oh-so-stylish accessories, she’s also on a pain killer around the clock and a secondary sedative when we’re gone for long periods of time. Again, our goal is to keep those stiches in place, so we’re working really hard to make that happen! Last week she needed meds every couple hours, so Nick was driving home at lunch time to hand out her antibiotics. Now we’re on a 12 hour schedule which is much easier to work with.

She’s also back on her regular diet after a week of chicken and rice. I think she probably misses the chicken, but I don’t miss the rice mess. Girl had it all up in her ears after every meal and managed to smear it all over the floor, too.

We dumped all the (almost deadly) stuffing out of her bed before we brought her home and filled the bed with old t-shirts and blankets instead. We definitely don’t want a repeat of this little fiasco. We’re also looking into health insurance for these two munchkins because…..yikes. Does anybody have insurance for their pets? Any advice or recommendations??

All that to say, things are heading back to normal around here and we’re all relieved. Now we just need to get our rear in gear and tackle the kitchen again!! Thanks again for all the love. It was a scary experience and one I hope we never have to relive, but we're so thankful for how it's ended - with a healthy pup and lots of extra snuggle time!

thankful

Friday morning Shalai seemed completely normal when she got up and ate breakfast, but when we got back from the gym she clearly wasn't feeling good.  But dogs throw up, you know? They eat weird stuff and then decide that wasn't such a good idea and it comes back up.

But every time one of the dogs is sick there's the debate...do we take her in and fork over the money for x-rays and blood tests or do we wait and see if she's better in the morning?

We opted for the wait-and-see approach, but woke up to her throwing up water at 5am Saturday morning. By 8am I just knew things were really not right and I took her to the emergency clinic.

The vet reviewed the x-rays with me and showed me that there was something in her stomach that shouldn't be. But it wasn't immediately life threatening and there was a chance she'd pass it on her own. I opted for fluids and headed home to monitor things.

Shalai and I snuggled on the couch for about an hour and half until Nick got home and I updated him on what we knew.

 And then the phone rang.

The radiologist had just reviewed her films and he recommended surgery immediately. Without surgery her situation would be life threatening within hours.

I hung up the phone, buried my head in her fur and sobbed. These are the awful decisions you hear about but hope you never have to make for your own furbaby.


We're pretty enamored with our dogs (maybe you've noticed?). There's no way to put a monetary value on what they add to our lives, but suddenly on Saturday we had to. How much were we willing to spend to keep our family whole? We had less than an hour to decide, with our options being an incredibly expensive surgery or getting ready to say goodbye while praying for a miracle. It was heart wrenching, but it was never really a choice either.

I know she's "just a dog." I know other people got phone calls this weekend much worse than ours. I know there are probably a hundred "better" ways to spend the money we spent on our dog.

But on Saturday we had a choice. There will come a point in our dogs lives where there is simply no longer a choice to be made. Someday we won't have the opportunity to say she's worth every penny because no amount of money could keep her here.

But on Saturday we could. So we did.


We opted for surgery. Drove back to the clinic, checked her in and then handed over the leash. The tech told us "you're doing the right thing." And then we waited by the phone, praying we wouldn't get a call until after surgery.

Her surgery was almost 90 minutes long and ended up being much more serious than the vet had anticipated. The blockage (a mixture of stuffing from her bed and woodchips from the backyard) had anchored in her stomach and in her bowels. It had scrunched her bowels up like an accordion, and while there was damage to the bowel lining in 10 places there were no holes. Thank God. They had operated soon enough.

Recovery was scary, too. She was 12 hours behind how they anticipated she would recover. She didn't eat  or drink until Sunday night (they had hoped for Sunday morning). They were continuing to suction a lot of fluid out of her stomach, which meant they had to keep her on IV pain meds, which meant she had to stay in the hospital.

But Sunday night she was really excited about the shredded chicken my mom sent with us and happily lapped up all the water we offered. Finally. Monday morning at 6am we got the call that she could go home.

She's still pretty sick. There's still a lot of significant healing that needs to happen and she hardly seems like herself.

But she's here.

I'm so thankful we had that choice. I'm thankful we had the funds for this to be an option. I'm incredibly thankful for the radiologist whose accurate diagnosis saved her life. I'm thankful we have a 24/7 clinic available to us. I'm thankful for every slobbery kiss I've gotten and every paw in my face at 2am. I know she's just a dog, but she's our dog, and she's part of our family.

I'm so thankful our dog is alive and at home. 

Go squeeze your furbabies, friends. (And then empty all the batting-like stuffing out of their beds so they can't do this to themselves.)