So after a whole summer of preparing to paint, we finally have a painted house!!!
Our friend Craig brought his sprayer over and helped out a ton.
It's crazy how much work goes into prepping and the painting portion lasts only a few hours.
Before:
Old/new:
The finished product:
We love it so much!
This makes our door look orange but it's definitley red.
I just wanted to show you guys our awesome exterior fixture:
(Our fancy new light up doorbell is awesome too but you can barely see it.)
While they were painting, the boys and I went to the zoo with Chris' mom.
Bennett decided that instead of stopping to look at each animal, he'd like to just run past them all.
This was our view the entire time:
Except that he stopped to sit on the animal statues:
and to watch the tractor bring sand into the elephant area:
(Buck wasn't too into it either)
Saturday afternoon we went to Bennett's friend Lucy's 3rd birthday party.
He had never seen one of these cars before and he thought that it was broken because it wouldn't go.
He kept getting out to push it then quickly hopped back in as if he were giving it a push start.
"This car doesn't work guys":
I also did a lot of cooking and baking this weekend!
I feel like I haven't baked in a long time, so it was nice to get back to it.
(I've tested a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipes trying to find the perfect one, this the the one I always go back to.
I love to eat them frozen!)
I tried recreating Portobello's Beet Tartare:
(We agreed that I got pretty close! I made the whole thing in my vitamix...it was fun seeing what it could do. It's a vegan recipe but is so full of flavor. It's cashew cheese on the bottom with chopped beets mixed with a carrot aioli. It's incredibly filling, we both split this for a late dinner.)
I also made
this cashew pesto veggie pizza, which was also SO good:
(I don't think I'll ever make pesto with those expensive pine nuts again!)
and we made lots of smoothies with the vitamix.
Best purchase ever:
mmm smoothies:
Happy Wednesday Friends!
Thursday, Bennett and I had a little playdate with
Lauren and Fern,
Kira and Pearl and
Bonnie and Josiah. B is always the oldest and I think he gets pretty bored of just looking at babies laying there...it's probably a good thing for him to get used to though!
Pearl and B:
(after he serenaded her)
We spent friday playing out on a couples' beautiful property from church.
The weather couldn't have been more perfect!
Some baby goats were born about an hour before we got there.
They were super cute and bigger than you'd expect a newborn goat to be.
B kept calling them puppies.
Bennett finally got to ride on a pow-pow-powerwheel!
Our neighbors have one and he's been totally jealous of them.
Too bad the one he finally got to drive was pink and purple:
(and the battery was dead, so he really just got to "drive " it)
B also got to ride on a "tractor":
(he's such a city boy)
He loved the 2 week old puppies:
Saturday Bennett wanted to wear a party hat for most of the morning:
and while Chris and his brother worked on the nursery,
B and I hung out with my mom:
I made sure to leave the guys with cookies hoping it would motivate them to work efficiently:
I'd say my cookie motivation technique worked pretty well!
We now have a wall!
Chris finished painting last night and the nursery should be ready to be decorated by the end of next weekend!!! We still need to install and paint the trim, install and paint the door and closet, and Chris' dad is going to build some new shelving for the closet.
We are so close!
B and I are off to the library today...I'm so glad this boy loves books!
We usually check out 30 at a time and I give him 15 once we get home and we switch them out for the "new" 15 when he gets bored with the first ones (usually after a week or so).
He will literally sit and read each one cover to cover after we bring them home, which means a little downtime for me...totally a win/win!
Happy Tuesday Friends!
Painting the entire interior of your house bright white is a huge commitment.
(see our all-white inspiration houses here) When we bought the house, each room was a different color, which would work for a bungalow, but ranch houses are supposed to be open and each room flows into the next.
We used Behr Ultra Premium Plus Ultra White which is a paint and primer in one
(ie. its super thick...it's also the base of all the UPP paints).
Eventhough we used the thickest paint out there, it still took us 3 coats everywhere to get decent coverage.
(some spots could have even used 4 coats but we were so tired of painting and we just wanted to be done)
In our 1080 sq ft house, we painted 3 bedrooms, a dining room, hallway, living room, kitchen and mudroom plus the ceiling, trim, doors and some of the closets.
That added up to 11.5 gallons of white paint!
I would be lying if we didn't have moments of regretting ourselves more than a few times, BUT the more progress we made, the more we could see the house coming together and flowing together.
The house feels a lot bigger and more airy since there is no longer a distinct seperation between each room.
(we didn't take the best before pictures, but notice all of the different colors)
Bennett's room before:
Bennett's room after:
(this is the only room with a color on the wall, other than white)
our bedroom before:
our bedroom after:
hallway before:
hallway after:
dining room before:
dining room after:
kitchen before:
kitchen after:
3rd bedroom before:
3rd bedroom after:
(so far this room has been a tv room and now it's a playroom. We are planning on closing off the oepening and putting a door in the hallway next spring when we make improvements to the bathroom.) living room before:
living room after:
(the coffee table is partially covering up the most drastic change, but we tore up the slate covering the hearth, exposed the brick and painted it white along with putting a fresh coat of white on the whole fireplace.)
The only room we didn't paint was the bathroom.
We figured it didn't make much sense since we will be redoing it soon.
Plus that would have been three more coats and we just didn't want to go there.
