Between Two Pheasants...

After the devaststing news that our bathroom plumbing would be a cool 10 Gs, we put our bathroom goals on pause to save a few extra bucks. We finally launched on January 9th which means we are already 10 days in! Here are a few photos of our progress: End of Day 1

I have so much to write but not much to write at all. Home repairs and upgrades have really stalled these past few months. Two kids, busy jobs, daycare, travel, and unexpected expenses have all put a damper on our home improvement project timeline and budget. I do have a few things to update you on in future posts like my closet re-do and raised garden bed awesomeness. For now, I leave you with this picture. A compilation of all the wall paper we've removed over the past (almost) two years that I found in a storage tote last night. Clockwise from the top left: Entryway/Stairs/2nd Floor, Living Room, Spare Room/Office, Cinderella's Room Border, Bathroom, Cinderella's Room Walls, Kitchen (yellow and white flowers), Bathroom Ceiling. I'm missing the Baby's Room in this picture, but I know I kept some. Also, we are in the planning stages of a BIG project, like HUGE, and really exciting. More to come after the first of year.

I don't even remember how many areas of wallpaper we've removed by this point--it all just runs together. I do know that after the old office's paper is removed, we just have one more to go! Hooray! After we moved the office to the guestroom (which used to be Cinderella's room, btw), we started to remove the wallpaper. It actually came off fairly easy but there were a few issues. Like the stairway and 2nd floor landing, the plaster was in bad shape in a few places. It was crumbly in a few spots. We also found evidence that the thick, striped paper was actually the second wallpaper in this room. We found some beige paper with tiny red flowers on it. There was a considerable amount of glue behind the wallpaper (joy). It's the yellowish-brown stuff in the picture below: And the windows were in bad, bad shape. This room, located on the South-side of the house, gets full sun so one of the windows takes a beating. The glazing had pretty much disintegrated t...

I took a few pictures of the progress made at the house over the past few days. Check it out! Goodbye wallpaper, goodbye yellow walls, hello white primer!  

It's Thanksgiving week and we have a lot to be thankful for. Right now, I'm thankful for Jesus. Not the man of 2,000 years ago, Jesus the Painter we hired. Yep, our DIY capabilities have run out in the entryway/stairway/second floor and we are asking  paying Jesus for help. One thing we have been extremely thankful for since moving to this house, are our wonderful neighbors. They all love their old homes so much and many have called this neighborhood home for 30+ years. They have so much pride in taking care of their properties which has provided endless inspiration for us. They also aren't afraid to share their opinions about good and bad contractors. During a discussion in the 'hood with our lovely neighbor, Carole, owner of the Italinate-style house below, she recommended using the painter she has worked with for 18 years. An experienced old home pro. She let us know they would both be over on the weekend. Alrighty then! They came over to discuss our "un...

Big news here at the Pheasants' house. We have been busy removing the wallpaper in the entryway, stairway, and the second floor common area. For those of you keeping track, we've now taken down wallpaper in seven areas and only have two more to go! Woohoo! I have to give a shout out to Big Ken (my dad) for starting the process of removing the wallpaper back in October. He removed about half of it and I took down the rest. Remember this print? There was a lot of it!

Wow! I can't believe it's already been over one month since my last blog post. We've had a lot going on in our world and the energy to blog about it has been at a minimum. I do want to share with you our awesome guest bedroom makeover! We actually finished it right before our friends, B&J, came to town at the end of July. When we moved in, you'll recall the room looked like this: In mid-June, my sister came in and took all the wall paper down but the glue decided to hang out a little longer. The tedious process of spraying, scraping, and sanding was left up to my Handy Man and he made great progress on the glue: Before spraying/scraping and sanding and after: Realizing this was as good as it was going to get, we started priming with TWO coats of Kilz. We chose the Kilz Max because it was supposed to cover up foul odors and this glue has a serious chlorine smell. In all honesty, I can still smell a faint whiff of glue. Here's the room "primed...

While we were away in Sonoma last weekend, a magic elf  my sister lent us a hand and removed the wallpaper in Cinderella's bedroom and the guest room. Woohoo! This was definitely a much needed boost to home improvement plans and it feels great to cross off a few more items on the To Do List. If you remember, here's what the guest room/sleeping porch looked like when we moved in.  And, here it is, minus wallpaper and lacy curtains + messy guest bed:

After a short hiatus from blogging due to attending a family wedding in Sonoma County over the weekend, I am excited to share with you the most amazing thing to happen to our 99 year old house. We installed a house fan!!! It is awesome!  

What's out, you ask? Another wallpapered room. Hooray! Nate and I got busy (Heehee) over Mother's Day Weekend while Cinderella was at my parents' house and took down the full bath's hideous, HIDEOUS, wallpaper. We were feeling so ambitious we even went to Sherwin Williams, bought some paint, and painted the sucker. Happy Mothers Day to Meeeeee! Check out the before:

Another quick project we did the minute after getting keys to the house was take down the wallpaper in the kitchen. We both kind of liked the bright yellow/brown/white flowers, but it was either falling off the wall or being held to the wall with duct-paper. Super classy. It had to go!

Every time one of my real-life-friends deletes one of her Facebook friends, she posts "And, you're outta here." I've adopted this saying while removing the ugly vintage wallpaper throughout the house. When I say throughout, I mean THROUGHOUT. This stuff is everywhere. Even. On. The. Ceilings. EVERYWHERE! Once we closed on the house (note to self: write up the crazy home loan/closing process in a separate post), we mapped out a few projects that we could accomplish before moving in. Nate and I went back and forth and finally concluded that having one room, completely finished, would keep us motivated and inspired to keep working. We also jokingly refer to it as "our safe place." It's away from all the other improvement projects. So, we tackled the living room in two weekends and a Monday night. With our daughter sleeping in a pack-n-play upstairs/entertained by Yo Gabba Gabba on the iPad/with a babysitter/trying to help us paint, Nate and I st...