Projects!

Aaron and I had a goal to have our house ready to be put on the market by the end of February. However, before our house can be put on the market, there are several house projects that need to be completed. CALL IN THE REINFORCEMENTS! :)

We are so blessed to have family that is so willing to help! Aaron's parents came down for the weekend to help us get a few things checked off of our massive to do list, and we are so grateful!

Project #1 - kitchen. We decided to just put another coat of paint on the walls, rather than try to cover up all the places where we had had things on the walls, so taping, patching the holes, priming and painting took up a large part of Saturday. Thankfully, Micah took a great nap Saturday afternoon, which freed everyone up to help out. I did a lot of the taping, Aaron patched the holes and sanded the walls, and Debbie took over the painting. While all of that was going on, Bill was hard at work leveling out the cabinet doors that Aaron had made and hung a few months ago. They looked amazing before but now that they all close completely, the kitchen feels even more finished! Once the painting is finished, and dried, Aaron and his dad will hang crown molding up, which will pull everything together... not to mention have made the painting project that much easier, not having to worry about a perfect line of paint at the top of the walls! :)

Project #2 - touch ups. The living room walls had a few decorations hung on them, so we patched some more holes in that room and touched up those spots, and the master bathroom needed a few areas touched up as well. Both fairly easy projects, that can be accomplished pretty quickly. :)

Project #3 - powder room. After I accidentally flushed a mechanical pencil down the toilet in our powder room, Aaron needed to pull the toilet up to fix the plumbing problem that resulted from that. Unfortunately, when he pulled the toilet up, some of the tile came up with it. So... we re-tiled the downstairs bathroom and decided to give it a fresh coat of paint before putting the vanity back in place. It's not a large room, so putting another coat of paint on the walls wasn't too daunting a task.

Project #4 - "fixings". Ever since Christmas, we've had a bowl full of ornaments that have needed to be glued back together. (ah... the joys of a curious 1-year old!) So, a few glue purchases later, those were fixed and we moved on to other fixing projects. Included on this list was the desk drawer; which just needed a dab of super glue to keep the front of the drawer in place, the coffee table; which needed the legs and the trim on one side re-attached, the front door; which blew off of the closer part during one of our insanely windy days earlier this winter, re-hanging the curtain rod in the master bedroom; which is pretty self-explanatory, :) our dresser; which is completely missing the bottom of one drawer, and about to lose the bottom of another, and the entryway; which needs a new transition strip between the tile and carpet, as well as the trim to be put back in place. More projects that won't take long, but need to be done. :)

Project #5 - cleaning and organizing! - This is going to be my main contribution to our house projects list. :) As anyone who has tried to sell a house knows, the house needs to be pretty pristine in order to show well. So on my list of things to clean/organize is the pantry... we don't have a huge pantry, but it does manage to look cluttered rather quickly. I need to clean it out, get rid of the stuff that isn't good anymore, and re-organize it... and try to keep Micah out of the bottom few shelves so it stays organized! :) I need to scrub the kitchen counters... our next house will NOT have white counter tops! We need to clean the carpets, and dust the shelves around the house. The bathrooms need to be cleaned, and we need to clean out our garage... which will probably also include getting a small storage unit to keep a few things in so our garage doesn't look like it does right now when potential buyers come to look at our house. :)

I suppose when all the projects are lumped together in categories like that, the list doesn't seem so massive.... but believe me, it FEELS massive! But we are making progress. Actually, as of right now (two weeks after Aaron's parents were here helping) the only things that still need to be accomplished are touching up the master bathroom, finishing the entryway, packing, and cleaning. And once those things are done, the project of MAINTAINING our house begins. By "maintaining", I mean keeping it clean and ready to be shown at a moments notice... which I know will never happen, especially with "hurricane Micah" tearing around. :) So, pray for me... as I try to keep my sanity through all of this. And pray for our family, as we entrust the selling of our house and the purchase of a new one to the Lord. We know all of this will happen in His time, so pray for patience as we wait for that. :)

In conclusion, a BIG thank you to our parents who were of GREAT assistance a few weekends ago... and continue to be a tremendous source of help in various ways as we go through life... and here are a few pictures from our "work weekend" so you can see the progress we've made... as well as some of the progress we still need to make. :)

Taping in the kitchen ~

Leveling out the cabinet doors ~

Debbie painting the kitchen ~

The "workshop" (yes, that's an intended double-meaning there... "workshop" as in the place where boards were cut and other work was done, as well as "workshop" as in work definitely needs to be done here!) :)

Cleaning ~

Hanging crown molding ~ (NOT an easy task!! Thanks for all your hard work on this, everyone!)

Even Micah helped with the cleanup! :) Let's hope this continues into his teenage years! ;)

As you can see, the main focus of the work weekend was the kitchen. Since that weekend, Aaron and I have worked on the other projects that needed completing, but I don't have pictures of those. Don't worry though... I'll definitely post pictures of the finished product, once our to-do list is history! :) And seeing as how it's the last day of February and we're not completely done with our to-do list, our goal, sadly, was not met. However, we are "alarmingly close" (as my dad likes to say just before he pulls dinner off of the grill)... so stay tuned! :)