What to do with ourselves

After many, many, many weeks of getting ready for the weekend, Ryan and I don't know what to do with ourselves.  It's crazy how after being so busy, we know find ourselves saying... what should we do?!  The bad thing is that a few projects we'd like to do are inside and I just don't feel right about working inside when it's so nice outside... sunny and high 70s - about my favorite temperature.  So we've been watering our tree and watering the garden and taking walks down the lane. 

Not sure how much longer before we start a new project... hmmm... what should we work on?!

Name sign project

So for Colin's birthday I found this cool sign online with a kid's name and decided Ryan and I could totally do that.  So the Colin name sign began. A quick trip to JoAnn's and I got all the supplies, letters, cool sailboats and a boat steering wheel.  I enlisted Ryan to spray paint the letters (he is just better than me at it, go figure I don't have the patience, but I'm working on it). 

The finished project turned out great!  Love it!  First official RAD sign.

The barn gets a face lift

The barn got itself a make over this weekend. I am happy to say that is is now ready for the wedding... well maybe not 100% ready, but I would say about 90% ready.

Saturday morning, we were up and at 'em. I stayed in the house and finished my chores, while Ryan headed to the barn to start moving stuff out of the barn.

Mission 1: cleaned everything out of the barn so we could sweep and clean because everything had concrete dust on it. This task took about an hour just getting everything moved out and swept. Next step, start start cleaning the walls. One word for that - NASTY! And I thought our house had tall ceilings, well I quickly realized that the barn is even taller... about 13 or 14! up and down the ladder, and up and down the ladder.

THE BEFORE PICTURES

 

While I scrubbed the walls, Ryan started working on the wall in the other bay. It needed some serious mudding before we could even paint it. He is one awesome mudder!

Mission 2: Go to Lowes and buy paint. What a process. Buy a color that might match the color already on the walls. Yeah, right! The color I bought that looked like the swatch I took it, only matched that spot, because the rest of the walls were so discolored that it was next to impossible. And then also buy a light gray color to paint the rest of the walls. After a long process, I decided on Gravity (which is a shade lighter than the gray in the basement) and Sawyer White.

Mission 3: Prime and Paint. Paint. Paint. Again with the 14 foot ceilings. So I started priming the blue stripe and the D. J. Wheeler & Son.

And got rid of that and then painted the wall white. I am going to put a custom paint job on it, but that will get revealed later. I also did my first cut in job without painter tape. Figured it was a good chance to do it, since it was only the barn. And I did it! Then 2 more walls I painted gray. The last wall became my nemesis. Pipes, tubes, furnaces, everything that needed to be painted around and between. But we finished it.

THE AFTER PICTURES

After Ryan finished mudding and sanding his wall, he primed it with Kilz and then painted it the same gray color. One coat and it looks awesome!!

Mission 4: Sit on the couch and veg out and try to not think about how sore we are. 2 days of up and down the ladder, reaching, stretching... oh my!

But mission accomplished! Check it out!

Projects Complete

Ryan and I hired a couple contracts to do some projects for us that were just too big for us.  Because normally we like to do the work ourselves, whenever possible.  We hired a contractor recommended by our realtor to do some work at the lake house... more working?  I know what possibly could be left to do?  Well not the lake house has a new roof on if and improved ventilation up there (which was something that last inspectors found).  Also we put a vapor barrier in the crawl space and cleaned it all up.  So next offer we get, if they find one thing wrong, I'm not going to be a very happy girl.  They are literally getting a brand new house, roof, flooring, paint, appliance, on and on. 

We also had a contractor pour some concrete at the house and they finished that project up Easter weekend as well. 

And now we can officially start saving... for the wedding... for future projects... for vacations... for the mortgage payments (LOL).  Hopefully now we can get that lake house sold!

Wood box craft

So I spent Saturday prepping things for the wedding - invitations finished, another 14 wine bottles wrapped in yarn and a new project.  Ryan's mom had given me these bunches of roses that she used for Ian and Jen's weding and one of Ryan's cousin... and at the time I just didn't think they'd work... but low and behold - we RADified them.  When I shopping at JoAnn's, I found these cool wooden boxes which I loved... after putting the flowers in them... presto.  It had simple, classy, country wedding written all over it.

As easy as it would have been to just go back to JoAnn's and buy them... Ryan figured we could make them for cheaper and we could make them customized to the exact shape we wanted.  So to Lowe's we went and only $45 later, we left with the materials to make 14 wooden crates.   Ryan then cut each piece to size - the bottoms and sides were 8 inches by 1.5 inches, the top part of the sides were 8 inches by 1 inch, the ends were 5 inches by 3 inches.

Then Ryan let me man the staple gun and he held each piece in place for me.  And thankfully, no trips to the emergency were had!

And tada, 14 custom wooden boxes!

Check 'em out!  Love them.  Now I am just going to so some stenciling on them with either Est. 2012 or Ryan and Abbey or something else cool. 

Compressor… done!

Ryan has been talking about getting this compressor out of the lake house garage attic for quite a while now... and this weekend he finally did it (with the help of 3 other guys).  First he had to disassemble it, and then take it down piece by piece.  The thing weighed over 400 pounds!  Crazy!  And now it sits in our shop.  But I’m pretty excited because it will run my sand blaster (that dad says he has and we can borrow).  Look out now!

And the yard work begins

So March is usually filled with some snow, dreary days and the hope of spring.  But so far March has been filled with summer.  70 - 80s and sunny skies.  So much so that our yard is almost green, our magnolia tree has started to flower, our apple trees have little buds on them, and all our "green" plants in the front are up. 

So we took our 80 degree day on Sunday to do some yard work.  Mainly trim things.  I trimmed a few trees that are my nemesis when mowing the lawn (they have stolen my hat many of times). I also picked up my piles of sticks and leaves. But Ryan took home the prize.  He trimmed the long row of our hedge.  (Not sure what to call it).  But it was about 8 feet tall when we started and now is about 4 feet.  He chainsawed it off and I was again on clean up.  He cut so much down that it took about 6 truck loads to the burn pile and now our burn pile for the first time is full.  I mean totally full!  But it looks good.  Now if it could only be green!

Next up, we need to clean up all the rest of the leaves that accumulated under the hedge and along the burm.  Also need to finish rolling the yard and do some more tree trimming, or maybe more like tree removal.  Then its on to come house things... washing windows, scrapping paint and repainting, pressure washing, and attacking some hives of all sorts.  Hopefully this warm weather is here to stay.  Lots to get done before our wedding in 10 weeks!

Lake House Garage Roof

After, the last offer on the lake house fell through, Ryan decided it would be a smart idea to redo the garage roof as that was one of the main things the first buyers said needed to be fixed (and we kind of already knew that).  And what more would we like to do on a vacation day :-)

So Ryan took Friday off and I took a half day.  It turned out to be the nastiest day of the weekend.  Snow flakes, wind, cold - just lovely.  But we toughed it out.  And we stripped the whole roof  from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm - taking a little lunch break and a trip to the dump.  Go us!

Then Saturday, Ryan recruited some help - 2 great friends who helped save the day.  Because by 6:00 pm, the garage was finished!

Ryan only had to go back on Sunday to finish up a few things.  Not too bad for a weekend project!

Filing cabinet make over

I got crafty again! This time I gave our old black metal filing cabinet a face lift... Without painting it. I could this great stuff at Joann's that is like contact paper but can be easy removed or adjusted. So check it out....

Before

And after

Spring Cleaning in February

So we started spring cleaning in February because it was over 50 degrees out!  So nice... the sun was shining, very little wind.  Perfect day in February.  I even joked that if we would have know it would have been so nice we could have gotten married outside today. 

Cleaning mission #1... the garage.  Our poor garage has taken a hit since we've moved in.  If we didn't know where to put it, and it didn't really belong in the house, it ended up in the garage... and as a result we had a disaster on our hands.  Ryan couldn't even got out of his truck on the one side because there was so much stuff in there.  But after a day of cleaning and organizing.. the end result is awesome!  What a different a 6 foot shelf and some sweeping and vacuuming can do.  There is virtually nothing on the floor and if we didn't know what it was from or what to do with it, we pitched it. 

Cleaning mission #2... the workshop.  Although not nearly as bad as the garage, the workshop could use some cleaning and organizing too (especially after our last crafty project).  Ryan built the second big shelf and then started organizing and cleaning.  What a huge difference!!

The before pictures...

And after (we still need to paint over that sign and get our RAD Farms sign up)...

A very successful day!

Wall Art Complete

So I found this really cool art project on pinterest (my obsession).  It involved plywood, scrapbook paper, and mod podge.  And I'm so happy to say that it turned out awesome!

We started with a sheet of birch plywood that my handy man cut up into 12 by 12 squares (which is all I asked him to do).  But since he loves woodworking, he took that up a notch and used a router to make the edges rounded.... fancy!  And perfect!  He then added a recess in the back, which is like a cut out area so that it lays flush on the wall.  Then I sanded them so they were nice and smooth.  (Luckily for me he is sitting next to me as I write this and giving me the technical term... my wording would have been, he cut the wood... really fancy!)

Next step, prime the wood with spray paint primer.  After that we used Rustolium textured spray paint in brown.  My handy man gave it two coats just to be sure.  Then we let that dry overnight - it might have been longer just because I didn't have time to start the next steps. 

But once I did, I put a coat a modge pog on both the scrapbook paper and one the wood.  Then once I set it in place, started smoothing it out.  Be sure you have enough mod podge on both so that it sticks.  Once you have smoothed it out for about 5 minutes, put a coat on the top of the paper, lighter coats work lots better than thicker ones.  And do not be alarmed when it starts to bubble up.  It will do that and yes I promise it will smooth out.  I put five coats on about 20-30 minutes apart.  And then let it sit over night and by morning, everything had smoothed out.

Ryan then hung them over our bed, spaced out 1.5 inches.  And ta-da!  The masterpiece is complete and we love it!!

Channeling my Crafty-side

So this weekend, I decided to channel my inner craftiness... and let me tell you, I found it!  I even got Ryan involved (in the wood working portion of course).  After a successful trip to Joann's and several hours left, I got all my supplies to make all these cool things I had seen on Pinterest (my new addition). 

So I wrapped wine bottles with yarn - only after I cleaned the bottles, which isn't that bad.  If you bake the wine bottles at about 400 degrees for about 15 minutes and then use a razor blade, you can peel the label right off.  Any way, I degress.  Wine bottles wrapped in yarn.... my process 1) pick your yarn of course.  I bought the cheapest stuff from Joann's - for about $2.50 and I got a lot of yarn... more than I will ever use.  Then I got out my Tacky glue and using my finger (because I was too lazy to get something else to use) I put a ring of glue around the bottom of the bottle.  Then I put stripes of glue about 2 inches up and starts wrapping.  The hardest part is just getting it started, but once you're started, it's just a matter of wrapping it around and making sure you can't see the bottle behind.  I did 4 of them - will deifnitely do more as these are for wedding decorations.  (PS - the flowers on top of the wine bottles, I did not make).

Next up... tissue paper flowers!  So pretty and so easy... I just searched youtube for a video on how to do it and after a few of them they started looking awesome.  The bigger the sheet of tissue paper you start with, the more you need.  The smaller ones in the picture were 8 sheets.  The bigger ones need at least 10 or more.

Other project updates to come... wine bottles spray painted with chalkboard paint - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!  I am on a spray painting kick!  Cool pictures - that Ryan got to do some woodworking with.  And metal desk and filing cabinet makeover!

Addiction

So I have a new addiction... and it's call Pinterest.  It's the crazy online "pinning" site where you can find anything and everything - fashion, recipes, crafts, DIY projects - you name it.  I just can't get enough of it and want to try everything, especially all the craft projects.  So cool!  This means fun ahead for Ryan - all my projects eventually involve him :-)

Operation Put the House Back Together

After another busy weekend, we are sooooo close to being completely finished.  We are having the Ewald Christmas at our house this Saturday so there is motivation to finish everything.  Really the only things left are so small finish work.

Weekend Wrap up:
Thursday night - finished sealing the tile!  Finally! 

Friday - We took the day off to give ourselves an extra day.  "Operation Put the House Back Together" had begun!  Ryan started by measuring for the trim in the closet, I started cleaning the tile and a little bit around the house, and then after making our list, we were off to Home Depot to get the supplies. While there we also get the towel bars, toilet paper holder and other bathroom hardware, a few paint samples for the kitchen (which I didn't like) and who knows what else. 

Also while out, we discovered the most awesome little deli that is only a few miles from the house - Bread Basket.  It should totally be featured on Man vs. Food for their enomous sandwiches - so yummy!!

Things completed

-Trim painted

-Stove back in place

-Closet doors hung

-Drywall work in the bathroom

Saturday - I started with painting the bathroom - a bright blue - looks awesome.  Ryan cut the trim and put that into place - all the closets done.  We put the frig back into the kitchen and get the water hooked back up.  (I love that water thing on the frig).  Mary stopped over aftter her shopping trip to AA and was the first person to see the finished tile job - and gave it the thumbs up.  More cleaning and organizing. 

Then around 2:00 pm, I decided that we should paint the kitchen... red!  Well roasted pepper to be exact and it turned out to the great choice! 

Sunday - a day of rest - yeah right!!  I went to church and Ryan started working on the bathroom.  Our goal was to get everything back in so that this week he could hook the new faucet up.  And mission accomplished.  All the trim and shoe molding is up.  The vanity back in place with the new countertop.  Toilet is set.  And the shower curtain is back up.  Go Team RAD!

A before and after of the kitchen

Before

After

Before

After