Fixing Up the House

Last week I was off of work for spring break and my mom came to visit to help us get various projects completed around the house.  We have a huge list of home improvement projects that we need to get accomplished soon, and we were so thankful to have my mom's help. 

One of the things we worked on was painting the kitchen yellow.  We previously had a leak in the ceiling above the breakfast area, and we had to patch it; therefore, we needed to repaint.  In order to make the room cheerful and bright, we chose this pale, buttery yellow which turned out wonderful.
The previous color is in the photo below from Thanksgiving.  We had a small Thanksgiving this past year because all of our family lives 2,000+ miles away.:(

We always liked the green, but it was time for a change.  When we started started painting the yellow over the green, it was obvious how much darker the green really was than the yellow with a lot of gray built in.  We also painted the bench area white to make it pop out more, so it doesn't disappear into the wall as much as it did previously.

This is how the kitchen looked when we did our walk through previous to buying the house 6 years ago now.  I can't believe it has been that long ago.  It wasn't bad, but the appliances were definitely on their last leg, and the cream was really dirty looking.  I like it so much better now.

We also painted our front door!  I was tentative to trying this, but it turned out great.  I love the bold orange red color instead of the white it was previously.

 

We also accomplished a lot of spring cleaning type items including:

-cleaning eleven sets of blinds

-repainting the bead board on the lower half of the main bathroom walls

-repainting the interior windows in the kitchen, entryway, and the main bathroom

-painting all the baseboards and trim in the laundry room and half-bath

-donated four garbage bag loads of clothing, old sheets, and mix-matched linens to good will.  I kept everything I could or would use in future quilts.

We accomplished all of this four days my mom was here along with a visit to the zoo and daily walks to the playground at our local park.  We also celebrated my birthday with the trip to the zoo and yummy cupcakes!

Look at the beautiful tablerunner my mom brought for us to use for Easter!  It works beautifully in our new sunny kitchen!

Since my mom left, we are still hard at work.  My husband added new mulch to all the garden beds in the front of the house, and he sanded down the windows on the exterior of the front of the house. I have been painting them white.  They were in really bad shape, and I like the contrast of the white more than the green that was there previously.  I have painted two coats of primer and two coats of exterior semigloss on all of these since Saturday.

We are putting in 3/4 round molding in front of the baseboards in the entryway and in the kitchen.  Most of these are cut, some are nailed in, and some are ready for me to paint which will happen later this week.

We fixed the fence in the side yard that has been broken for the past several years, and I have also cleaned out two cabinets in the kitchen of old food and random items.

We celebrated my husband's birthday, too, with a trip to the Children's Museum and lemon cake-yum!

Later this week,  we need to add mulch to the backyard, paint the 3/4 round molding in the entryway and kitchen, clean out my closet, go through Zerah's toys and edit them down.  I need to go through the bathroom again to reorganize the storage area and complete various other projects.

I did find some time to sew late at night while everyone else was sleeping, and I finished the quilt top I was working on.  I need a sunny day to take pictures of it and then I will share!