transformed

In addition to giving our ceilings a facelift this weekend, we also finished up the progression of our ugly wall of pipes. We've gone from here:

To here:

This little box is all that's left of the big ol' bump out that used to cover our pipes. By the time this wall is done, I don't think it'll be very noticeable at all. And it definitely won't be as noticeable as the old solution.

One step closer to done!

distraction technique

Since our dogs like to be in the middle of whatever's happening around here, sometimes we need to get creative to let us get our work done.

And since our dogs are extremely motivated by food, our distraction techniques typically involve something tasty.

But bones/chews last less than 3 minutes in this house, so we have to a little more creative.

Problem solved.

Saturday night the dogs got nearly-empty peanut butter jars so we could install beadboard.

Worked like a charm!

And yes, we save empty jars until we have enough for both dogs. We don't actually go through two jars of PB at a time. Usually.

new ceilings

Our kitchen ceiling had some issues. The remnants of old soffits (and previous closets) left some scars on the ceiling. And as much fun as it sounded to drywall the whole thing, we decided to take a different route.

Step 1 - coerce Dad to come spend another Saturday working on our kitchen.

(check) The man's a glutton for punishment. And we're really glad he is.

(Even when it's snowing)

We're covering a multitude of ceiling scars with beadboard.

It turns out beadboard is incredibly flimsy, which made it tricky to hoist up to the ceiling. For some extra support we smeared Liquid Nails on the ceiling before using the finish nailer to secure the boards.

Normal people would put the Liquid Nails on the beadboard itself, but because of this commonplace situation we decided not to use Liquid Nails in doggie territory. I like to call it modern art.

With the three of us we got one full sheet up on the ceiling and I did a little happy dance. We love the look and absolutely love how simple it was.

Dad had to head out, so we spent the rest of the evening on smaller sections that the two of us could install on our own. We started off using the jig saw to minimize the mess, but quickly switched to the circular saw because it was so much more effective.

Nick used painters tape to tape off the bottom of the saws (to prevent scratching the beadboard). He clamped a level onto the board to make sure the lines were super straight. Worked like a charm!

And before long, we had this!

We're loving it! Hopefully only a couple more hours (and a third set of hands) and we'll have the rest of the beadboard up which would mean.....time to install the new lights!

We had a fantastic weekend and we hope you guys did too! Any fun projects started? (Or better yet, finished??)

cover up

This post is old. It was supposed to go up last week, but my computer and camera haven't been seeing eye-to-eye recently. But don't worry! We held hands and sang kumbaya last night and everything's fine again. So here's last week's post today. 

Long long ago (you know, when we started this project 13 months ago), I resigned myself to the fact that we’d have to build another (albeit much smaller) bump-out to cover our collection of pipes running up our kitchen wall.

These were originally housed in a broom closet that we tore out to make room for a full-size fridge. (Picky, I know, but I had just graduated from college and kinda wanted to move past the dorm-size fridge stage).

Original broom closet. Photo from 2008!

So then we (and by we I mean my dad and Nick) built a sweet new home for the pipes.

 And then we tore that out as part of our second kitchen demolition.

So naturally we made Dad come back to build another bump out. Except my dad is always thinking and had a better solution. Get those babies hidden in the wall.

Dad, I love you.

While I was doing yoga and planning baby showers with my sister and mom, Dad was at our house brainstorming and making things happen. When I got home Saturday night the pipes were hidden. Gone. No longer an eyesore.

We’ll have to build a very minor cover at the top of the wall, but it’s nothing compared to what we had planned on running up the entire wall.

Plus? Dad came over with his own list of things to do while at our house for the day, which included cleaning our kitchen window.

We’ve actually had a strip of duct tape stuck to the window since our demo-days….last year. And we hadn’t actually cleaned the window in over a year. Compared the disaster that was our entire house, I guess a dirty window and fragmented duct tape didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me anymore.

Until he cleaned it.

I’ve literally been doing double takes every single time I look out the window. It’s so…..clean! And you can see out the whole thing! No duct tape right smack dab at eye level. I think what I learned from it is that a) I should clean all of our windows (or bribe my dad to do it) and b) sometimes the little things can make a huge difference. Even when the rest of the house is a disaster.

Thanks, Dad.

secret's out

Nick and my dad spent all of Saturday working on our kitchen. They made AWESOME progress, which we'll get to later.

Dad also gained some insight into why our timeline for everything is times two.

Dad: So this is why you never get anything done around here.


Nick: Pretty much.

thrifting

Remember that time I spent an entire weekend with two of my favorite bloggy buddies (Kim and Michelle) and we went thrifting?

Well. I just so happened to come home with some treasures.

First up, this sweet little canister. I was drawn to every single red item we saw that day (natural side effect of being a redhead), but when I saw this one it was love at first sight. However, since I have commitment issues when it comes to spending money I walked around with it for another hour before biting the bullet and actually buying it. (It was $6. I have issues.)

Anyway, I think it will make a lovely addition to our (yet to be created) open shelves in the kitchen. 

We also hit up the local Salvation Army, where I spotted this soap dispenser for $6.75. And since I'd been using Kim's identical dispensers all weekend and loved them I snatched it right up.

I'm pretty sure it's a step or two up from the plastic Aldi dispenser in our bathroom right now.

Two tangible reminders of a stellar weekend with friends!

That adventure also confirmed that I'm a better group thrifter than I am a solo thrifter. I easily get overwhelmed by all the STUFF, but exploring with friends was the perfect way to enjoy huge antique malls. We got some good laughs out of what we found for sale, but also dug through the piles and found some treasures.

Any good thrifting finds recently? Are you a solo thrifter or do you prefer to thrift in groups?

our steam mop

You guys are great. I love all the random facts from Friday's post! But apparently my love for our steam mop brought up a lot of questions, so I thought I'd tackle them in their own post.

To start things off, I absolutely love our steam mop. We started thinking about getting one last Summer, but I spent way too much time reading reviews online and got really discouraged. There were pretty split reviews for every mop I looked at. One person loved it, one person hated it just as much. Plus, is a $150 mop really that much better than a $40 mop??

But I was intrigued by the idea that a steam mop could actually sanitize the floors, because with our current microfiber mop I felt like I was just pushing dirty water around the floor.

So when everybody slashed prices on their steam mops on Black Friday we decided to pull the trigger. We ended up getting the Shark Steam Pocket Mop for about $60. It was honestly kind of an accident. We had gone in with a different Shark model in mind, but they were sold out (we weren't exactly busting down the doors at midnight), so we scooped up this one instead.

We also bought an extra pack of the covers, which I HIGHLY recommend, especially if your entire house is hard surface floors.

So here's what we love:

• So easy to use. Plug it in, give it 30 seconds, then push it around the floor. BOOM. Instant clean.
• Really long cord, so I can do our entire main level without plugging and unplugging.
• The pads are really easy to clean. Toss them in the washer and you're done. You can't machine dry them, but that hasn't been a big deal for us. They're not snow white anymore (as you can see in the picture above), but they still do the trick.
• The pads are reusable, so we're not constantly buying new ones (like we did with the Swiffer). Shark recommends buying new ones every 6 months or so, but I'm guessing we'll stretch it out quite a bit past that. Plus, if you're the crafty type (I'm clearly not) you could probably even make your own!
• We're not using any chemicals on our floors. With 87 year old hardwood floors I'm always hesitant to douse them in chemicals, so I love having an alternative that works. 
• Our floors are clean. Like, whoa, clean. (Well, until the dogs come in to see what's going on.)
• The floors dry instantly. Since we use it on our hardwood floors, I really like the minimal water left behind and the fact that it's dry almost instantly. 

A couple things we'd change if we could:

• Add an on/off switch. You turn it on by plugging it in, which is fine, but it'd be nice to be able to turn it off from the mop itself.
• I do have some trouble with streaks on the floors, but that's usually because the pad is a little too dirty and I didn't want to switch it out again. If I run over the same spot again with a clean pad that seems to clear it up. Or, I could probably just mop the floors twice a day and that would eliminate the issue. 

Honestly, I think those are my only complaints. We've only been using it since the beginning of December, so it hasn't been long, but we use it a couple times a week. Obviously, I have no way of testing to make sure the floor is actually sanitized, but they're definitely clean. Really clean. In fact, I think our grout lines are actually getting a teeny tiny bit lighter as we keep using the steam mop. 

I guess the caveat to that is that sliding a steam mop across the floor is not the same as getting on your hands and knees with a scrub brush. The deep texture in our kitchen tile traps dirt really easily, so to truly get every last bit of dirt out of them I need to get on my hands and knees. But since we all know that's not going to happen often (ever?) I'm thrilled that we found a way to keep the floors clean with minimal effort.

What am I forgetting?? What questions do you have? We would definitely recommend the mop, but I'd also recommend googling around for a deal. Amazon typically has a pretty good deal on this particular model.

Anybody else have a steam mop? Love it? Hate it?

To be clear, Shark has no idea who we are or that this post exists. We just found a product that makes our life easier so we thought we'd share the love!