Between Two Pheasants...

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!

Twin baby Olive Trees, that is! During a beautiful weekend in May, I took Cinderella to the Flower Farm Garden Inn and Nursery for some special mother/daughter time. We planned to have lunch and return home, but these rascals came home with us. Two fruitless olive trees for the backyard at a great price, $35/each! They've added some much needed symmetry to our backyard.

Hooray! Hooray! The dishwasher is installed and has been used...a lot! It's a beautiful thing, and I can't believe we lasted this long without one. The contractor was great! He removed the old drawers to make space, installed and leveled the dishwasher, rebuilt a portion of a very narrow corner cabinet so it is more functional, and hooked everything up. He even installed a garbage disposal, which has also made a huge difference--though I'm a little nervous about how this will work, long-term, with our old pipes. Fingers crossed! It took a few weekends to accomplish but it's finally in! Here's a picture of the kitchen when we moved in. Making space for the dishwasher:

To say that Nate and I are tired of hand-washing dishes is a major understatement. So, we took advantage of the Lowe's Labor Day Appliance Sale and bought a dishwasher for the kitchen! Hooray! 20% off plus $75 gift cards was too good to pass up. We scored this baby for $600 instead of $800. GE 48-Decibel Built-In Dishwasher EXCEPT, that we don't actually have a place to install it yet so we have a meeting with a contractor/handyman today to review our options. I would like to remove the drawers next to the kitchen sink to put the dishwasher in the most logical place. Someone else, who shall not be named, would like to install it where the current portable dishwasher (that doesn't work) resides. Of course, that seems like the easiest fix, but it's a little further from the sink than I would like. Regardless of the solution, we are hopeful that by October 1st, we will have this baby installed and crankin'! Wish us luck!

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...