It's Been A While.....I've been busy doing......
Okay Guys,
It's been two months since my last post. I know, FAIL! Life has been throwing me curve balls. I have been planning my youngest son's graduation party and his move to live on campus for seminary this fall. Plus, I have been working a bit outside the home to make a little extra money. My garden is beginning to look really fabulous, but it does take work to keep it that way you know. Enough of the excuses...
I guess I should start my update with the home projects portion of this post. There are so many, lol. Okay, I am still working on the makeover for my bedroom furniture. It's driving me crazy that I haven't enough time to do it all at once, or the space necessary for that matter. The problem is that everything requires disassembly, sanding, prepping and of course, the milk paint must be done within a few short days so that the mixture does not ruin before you use it all. In the midst of all the fun, I have been sick with allergies and allergy induced asthma. Getting out of the house in the air right now is a serious trigger leaving me to suffer with difficult breathing between treatments. Urgh. So, I have to find inside projects to work on. Well, my bathroom cabinets have been a part of the house renovation plans since before we even closed on the property. They have been staring me down, waiting to be refinished every time I enter the room. I had an idea of what I wanted in mind, but I decided to try a sample door to see a few different finishes before proceeding. I keep discovering that I am just a plain white kind of gal. Not just any ole white will do, but white. I decided to go with the Valspar Du Jour. I have used it throughout the rest of our house. It is a very soft, neutral white that works with our lighting perfectly. I prefer to purchase the Valspar 4000 because it does not contain a primer and the coverage is a bit thinner and leaves less brush strokes if you want to brush it on as I do. I prefer a bit of the hand painted look without the thick streaks you see when using some paints containing primer. Plus, it has very little VOCs and that goes a long way with someone who has allergies. Seriously, the primer odor gives me headaches. And the bonus is that it is CHEAP!
This week I have been trapped at home again going stir crazy to do something outside. No luck. So, while Kevin was taking a day trip to check on his stores in the east Texas area for work, I decided to take off the cabinet doors and sand down the base cabinet. (I have to do this while he is gone so that he cannot talk me out of it).
Our cabinets are in good shape, but are a little over 10 years old. The color and style are your standard builder grade. Not particularly flattering in my opinion. However, this is nothing a little paint won't fix. Paint is a cheap way to update almost anything in good repair.
Here are a few pictures of the messy, in-progress project. I have now put on a second coat of paint to the base cabinets and the doors are being sanded. Hopefully, I will make enough notable progress to share something with you very soon, so check back to follow me on this project.
The first two photos are from when we first moved in and painted the bathroom. The next photo shows the wainscotting we added. The last three show just after we started to paint the gray, sanded the cabinets and applied the first two coats of paint.
We have much more to do and plan to move the light fixture higher up on the wall, add wood and trim to the extra cabinets to help blend them with the style of the room. We will also be adding shiplap boards to the wall behind the mirror area and running crown molding around the entire room. You will notice the mystery picture at the beginning of this post. It is a peek at the only splurge I am going to use in the room. This is the top of the frame for the two mirrors I purchased at Hobby Lobby. We considered cutting our existing mirror down and framing it. Then I saw these mirrors... The last step of this whole project will be the faux concrete countertop. We will be using concrete to layer multiple coats onto our cultured marble, sanding in between and finally sealing it. This is the one wild card in the project. We have an old countertop we plan to try this process on first. When I decided this may be a possibility, I searched the internet for others who may have posted about their project. Surprisingly, there were quite a few who had great success and still love their counters months after they were completed.
