Homely Updates

We bought a washer!

Just kidding. Well, we did buy a washer, but I won't drag you through another thrilling appliance post. I'm not cruel.

(...but just know that it's awesome.) 

Instead, I'll show you a few other, awesomer things that have been happening around here! To begin, a few small "crafty" things, most of which you may have seen in my other social media:

My rosette topiary!

Which I loved so much, I decided to try for another one that was less...seasonal? I love this one too (of course. It involves burlap, after all.), but the rosette one is just awesome and can't be topped.

And we found this delightful shelf at D.I. and painted it white, then used it above the washer and dryer for laundry things! ... as you can see. 

p.s. there's a corner of my awesome new washer! yay!

Our dryer vent was just hanging out on top of the dryer. Classy. So it's nice to have it up and out of the way now :)

But the real project was one we didn't actually plan for. At all. I was painting the trim in the laundry room (I didn't take pictures of that. But you can see it on the window frame in the picture above) and Joe was looking at our kitchen wall. He hates those walls. They're covered in this thick, swirly white textured paint that was clearly put on there to cover up wallpaper lines, or something. I assume it was wallpaper lines because they are in every other room of our house.

So he said, "I really hate this wall. We should try taking off the texture and make it into something cool, like a chalkboard wall." And because I didn't know what I was getting into I shrugged and said, "Mmkay. Go for it."

So he did. Oh, he did.

Just the beginning...

As he began the first incision, we determined that not only was there a thick layer of texturey-paste-paint, there were also several layers of just-average-paint and at least three layers of....wait for it....wallpaper. Agh!

(So you see, I was right about the wallpaper lines.)

Joe spent the next several hours slowly chipping away at the arch part of the wall with a screwdriver and a plastic putty knife. After finishing, he wisely decided that we should probably get some better tools/materials for the process. Luckily we have some awesome friends/family close by who had pretty much everything we needed, so we were able to borrow almost everything. We did, however, buy some wallpaper remover and paint for when the wall was finished. I finished painting in the laundry room and came over to help. That's when the destruction began in earnest!

If there was an easier way to do this, please, no one tell us.

Handsome worker. Ow ow!

Inside of the arch all sanded and done. Getting ready
to start the big stuff. Last glimpse of the old wall!

Note the sunshine in the picture in the first photo compared to the dark pictures below. We were brilliant and started the main work around 6 at night. 

Slowly...slowly...chipping away the
paint on top of the wallpaper with a chisel. 

 We had almost everything off the top part of that wall when Joe chiseled his pinkie! Yay!

But he is a manly man, and so we were able to push through it and finish the top part. Oh, did I mention the bottom half was not wallpapered? So weird. And oddly enough, that made it way harder to get the texture off. Hm. 

The next morning, Magnus decided to be adorable and snooze, thusly:

...So I decided to surprise Joe by getting the rest of the textured paint off the wall. It was all good, because I got to watch A Knight's Tale, and that is always awesome. 

All off! Note Count Adhemar's herald being
inspired by Sir William Thatcher's bravery
and dedication in the background.

Patient pup. He only ate some of the paint chips.

 That night, we scraped away all the beautiful splashy wallpaper and covered all the (numerous, whoops) holes with spackley paste. 

Yeah.... we pretty much covered the entire wall
in spackle. Chisels are intense, man!  

But then! Oh Frabjous Day! We were able to paint our wall. With chalkboard paint!

Harry Potter helped us through most of this process.
Isn't that just like him? 

 And here it is....THE FINISHED PRODUCT. TAH DAH! 

I got a bit excited and decided to put something up for March using my artistic skillz, even though poor February, short enough as it is, still had a week to go. 

And because I'm a nerd....

And because I'm totes trendy...

If you made it through all of that, then I commend you! You are a true and loyal reader. :) And we love the new wall. We still have some changes to make to the paint colors involved... in the kitchen, on the other side of the chalkboard wall... we'll see. Right now I'm good for a little while....or am I?