Farm House Love Episode 5

As promised, I'm back with more pictures of the progress on our new old house. The bathroom is limping along, and Peanut Head has started building the shower walls.

It got put off for so long because we had to tackle the plumbing first and, honestly, nobody likes that part.

Originally the shower head was not mounted like you would expect but instead was connected to the bath tap via a sprayer hose. Peanut Head had to run new plumbing up from the bath tap to install the new shower head.

Then before he could hook it up, he had to turn off all the water to the house, then hold his breathe and cross his fingers when he turned it back on. And what a relief, it worked!

He has all the plywood up now, and will start adding HardieBacker cement board this week. I could potentially start tiling next weekend. I'm going to have to psyche myself up by watching You Tube tutorials. There are so many ways I can screw this up.

Believe it or not, we haven't been laying around eating Bon Bons while we've been procrastinating on the bathroom. Back in January I started painting the girls' rooms. My plan is to paint the entire house, of course, but I started with their rooms because they refused to unpack until we painted.

I started with the ceilings because gravity. The nice thing was that I didn't have to be super careful with my paint because I knew we were going to be replacing the carpet once the painting was done. 

This lovely carpet is probably forty years old. It's from the Starkey and Hutch years, I'm sure.

I love the light fixtures in the girls' bedrooms, and I have no plans to replace them.

Before I started painting, of course I was all over Pinterest looking for inspiration. I knew I wanted to replace the trim work because it was pretty cheap, and I looooove farm house trim.

I had to plan it all out because Peanut Head was going to implement my vision and he is not a wing it kind of guy. He always wants drawings with actual measurements.

He's always harshing my mellow like that.

Can I tell you what a nightmare it was pulling all the old trim off? Night. Mare. It was January and I was sweating like a pig trying to get it all out. It was not good for my manicure either.

The window and door moulding came off a little faster because it wasn't trapped under carpet, but it was still a lot of work.

This is what the finished window trim looks like. I'm pretty happy with it.

And here's the finished door trim. The only difference is that the sides of the door trim are narrower because we had to accommodate light switches that were too ding dang close to the door.

Like this. Gah!

Oh yeah, Peanut Head replaced all the outlets and switches too. He's such a handy guy.

This is a shot of our baseboards and the new carpet. Peanut Head taught me how to use his router to make the baseboards. Routing our own baseboards saved us a lot of money and allowed us to get the exact height we needed. The height tended to vary a bit depending on obstacles we had to go around.

Like heater vents. If you look closely you can see how the baseboard curves around the corner of the heater vent.

And excuse me while I take a little side rant, but I had to replace all the heater vents because some fool painted over every vent multiple times, and they were cemented to the wall. I understand if a person wants their vents to match their walls, but why oh why can't you take them off the wall first and do it right? And really, spray paint is a better way to paint a vent than a paint roller.

That's my public service announcement for today.

The doors were painted my new favorite color for doors, Sherwin Williams' Urbane Bronze.

We also replaced the door knobs with handles. The door knobs were in pretty bad shape and needed to be replaced anyway, so we thought these would be nice in the older part of the house.

And check out these awesome door stops. They're magnetic, and oh so cool. They would be very handy on exterior doors for when you want them to stay open.

Now I'm ready to show you the final room pictures, but I have to make a disclaimer. I did not go in and stage the rooms. I instructed my girls to clean up their rooms and they are not how I would have done it myself. They like clutter. I abhor it. Although I'm a control freak, thus far I have been extremely unsuccessful in controlling the people I live with.

Therefore, I give you real life. 😬

Zoe Bug's room.

This is Zoe's horse wall, which Stinkerbell calls the PJ Wall of Worship. PJ is Zoe's favorite horse, but all the horses are pictured here, except Rey because she didn't come to live with us until February.

Now let's see some pictures of Stinkerbell's room. Brace yourselves.

I don't know about you, but all I see in this picture is a Hunter Orange bed.

Too much furniture. I've tried to talk her out of some of it, but she's having none of it.

This is the white board where Stinky likes to make her lists. I like to add important things to her lists like "Do your LAUNDRY!!!"

I'm helpful like that.

I added the mirror to the closet door, but I don't know what I was thinking. Stinkerbell doesn't primp, so in this room, it's just a prop to give the illusion of a normal teenage room.

I'm glad to have the girls' rooms finished, although we do still need to put up curtains. Peanut Head and I are going to make the curtain rods, and we haven't yet decided if we want to use plumbing pipe or something else. 

I have a painting tip to dispense.

I've been super paranoid about paint clean up because we have a septic system in this house, and it's not good to add paint to it. I'm too cheap to buy paint pan liners, so I came up with the idea of lining my paint pans with Press'n Seal, and clean up has been effortless. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

Best idea ever.

I also use it to protect my watch while I'm painting. I do not, however, worry about my hair. I have paint in my hair all the time.

While we've been working hard on the house, Cecilia has been practicing her Yoga Corpse Pose. She's a pro.

That's all I have for now. I'm in the middle of wrapping up the girls' hallway, so those pictures will be coming soon, and I've started painting the original dining room because why not start another project before the last three are finished?

In the meantime, I leave you with some irresistible horse lips. Who doesn't love horse lips?