Laundry Room Progress

We have completed the painting of the ceilings in all the rooms that we required to be done before moving in.  We wanted certain rooms done in which to be able to store all of our furniture while we work on painting the walls and laying floors throughout the house.  We’re trying to make it as organized as possible.

The prepping of the laundry room walls was all completed as well.  Finally, we are feeling a little bit of accomplishment.

Laundry room, paint is still wet.

We spent an afternoon painting the walls in the laundry room with Behr paint from Home Depot.  The color is called Haze.  This is the third home that we have painted the walls with Haze and the trim will be Swiss Coffee.

The color Haze dries to this nice soft taupe like color.

We found something that we like and we decided to stick with it, time after time.

Let me show you a little of how we are camping out in our new home.

A card table and chairs are our dining room table, and a bunk bed from our guest suite in our old home is where we are sleeping.  That’s about the extent of furniture that we have so far brought down here.

I have all kinds of books, pictures, dishes, linens, and assorted items stuck away in all of the cabinets.  We were trying to bring a little down each time we came.  Then our house sold in one day and we were totally unprepared for that.  We have been staying in our new home since, prepping it for moving day as fast as we can.  Our moving day is scheduled for February 15th.  That is FAST approaching!

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Studio Ideas

Today was another day of cutting in and painting ceilings.  Boring stuff.  Pics look much the same as yesterday.  But, we are almost finished with them.  We have used 9 gallons on the ceilings so far.  They are very thirsty. Enough of this tiring subject.

While we were at IKEA, I saw this lovely office display.  I already have aqua picked out as the color for the walls and this just solidified that decision.  Isn’t it lovely?  My studio won’t be tackled until we get moved in and get the rest of the house livable.

I have a lot of ideas though.  The color scheme will be black, white, and gray with aqua walls. My large desk is black.  My husband and I used to share an office, but now we are going to split them up.  He will have his own room to work in.  He works better without my chatter.  You can see our black desks in this post My New Daybed Redo.

Black is such a heavy color for such a large desk in my studio, so I have decided to add white to it in the way of zebra stripes.  The idea came to me the other day while day dreaming about what to do with the desk.  The desk is not the only piece of furniture that will need painting.  I have a Pinterest Board with quite a few ideas to spark my creativity.

Stay tuned to my posts for the adventure as it unfolds!

Thanks for stopping by.  You can also chat with me on Facebook or follow me on Pinterest.

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Ceiling Drudgery

We spent all day cutting in and painting ceilings.  The ceilings are acoustic.  I know, most people hate that and make the time and trouble to remove the ‘popcorn’.  I happen to like acoustic ceilings.  I have lived in homes with and without it.  Since we are installing wood floors throughout the house, we felt the acoustic ceilings would help keep noise down.  So, we are painting them pretty, clean, white.

Painting ceilings is neck breaking.  Plus, my husband and I both wear bifocals which makes it hard to see when looking up! I have been taking my glasses off while I paint.  We have vaulted ceilings, so I have to climb up three ladder steps to reach them.  Up and down the ladder all day is good exercise!

We ran out of paint at noon and had to run to Home Depot for more.  While out we made a return at Lowe’s and picked up another box of tiles for the floors that will receive vinyl flooring.  We looked at ceiling fans in both stores and were disappointed in their selection.  Guess we’ll be looking elsewhere.  We are in a new city for us and are unfamiliar with the area.  We don’t have a phone book nor the internet!  Makes it hard to locate stores.  My smart phone has proved invaluable in some cases.

I am sitting in our community’s clubhouse using their free wifi to write this post.  Thankfully, we live very close to the clubhouse and can enjoy the walk here.  I made frappuccinos for us to enjoy while browsing the internet.  Speaking of internet, ours is supposed to be installed tomorrow.  Yay!

Thanks for stopping by.  You can also chat with me on Facebook or follow me on Pinterest.

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About the ads that follow: They are not placed by me  and are not associated with this post.  They are placed by WordPress on blogs that are free.  Thank you for your understanding.

A Trip to IKEA

Once the ceilings were all cleared and prepped, we moved on to our next project.  We thought completing the laundry room first would be a wise choice.  With escrow closing in four weeks, we thought being able to wash clothes easily at our new place was a must.

We tore out the old vinyl flooring and the cabinets.

There was vinyl beneath the wood looking vinyl.  And below that is the original floor, which you can see below where the cabinet was removed.

My husband did a few repairs with drywall and mudded all of that.

Then we headed out to one of my favorite stores.

IKEA.  Have you ever been there?  I just LOVE that store.  Ours is in Tempe, Arizona.

We got there when they opened at 10 AM.  We walked through looking at all of the kitchens.  Because we want the laundry room to match the kitchen, we had to choose the kitchen cabinets we wanted.

It was a tough decision and we got hungry, so we discussed it over lunch in their restaurant.

After Fish and Chips and a cookie we could think more clearly and decided on “Lidingo”.  They have design stations set up with computers in the cabinet department.  It took my husband about 10 minutes to figure out what he wanted.  Placing the order was easy.  Then we wound our way on through the store to the check out.  The clerk handed us our receipt and said, “It will be about 30 minutes in customer pick up.”  Well, haha, as with all places it was really an hour wait.

We enjoyed ice cream while we waited. 🙂

But, finally we had our cabinets and headed home.  Uh, and let’s see, I think it was 4 PM when we left IKEA.  That store is vast!

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Where to Begin

My husband is the silent thinker type.  He looks at a job silently and thinks through his plan.  He always knows where to begin.  I just look at a job and begin anywhere.  He thinks through the process backwards until he gets to the beginning steps.

In this case, he began by removing all of this funky electrical wiring that was installed all throughout the house.  Why did they install it?  We don’t know.  The room plugs all work properly, so we don’t know why they installed the extra conduit and plugs and switches.

Here you can see a few.  Sorry the photos are blurry, but you get the idea.

He also removed all of the ceiling fans.  The ceiling fans are fine, but they are antique brass and we prefer brushed nickel.  They will all be changed out.

The fans were not very securely attached to the ceilings, so he also redid all of wiring boxes for each one.  This home was built in 1985 and as with most manufactured homes of that day, things were built a little cheaply.  The old homeowners even put a small fan in the master bathroom.  AND a light in the shower.  These were both done through conduit along the walls and ceiling.  The fans in the dining room and kitchen were done the same way.  All those are gone.

Check out this kitchen fan.  This is what we removed from the kitchen. It was attached to a white board that was screwed into the ceiling.  You can see part of the box lights on the ceiling, also.  The lighting in the kitchen was two large wooden boxes built to cover shop lights.  They practically fell off the ceiling when he removed them.  We plan to replace them with track lighting and my husband has wired for that.

With the ceiling fans down and all ceiling lighting removed, it is pretty dark at night.  We have a couple of lamps for light.  Once the ceilings are painted, we can buy fans and lights to install.  That will all be documented in future posts.

Thanks for stopping by.  You can also chat with me on Facebook or follow me on Pinterest.

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On the Move

The story begins in April 2013, when my husband and I thought perhaps we would like to move to the Phoenix area.  Our son and his family live there.  The drive is too long to just drop by or even to just go over for dinner.  The grandchildren are growing up too fast and we are missing out on hugs and kisses.  Our daughter and her family live 1600 miles away.  We see them about twice a year.  We really would like to see our grandchildren more often.

So, we decided that we could at least move closer to one family.  Since our daughter’s family is a military family, we don’t really want to move around the country with them.  Plus, we prefer a warm, dry climate.  That’s the Southwest, y’all.

Last April, we began looking online for senior communities in the Phoenix area.  We looked at townhomes, condos, houses, and mobile home parks.  Common walls were the big deterrent  to condos and townhouses and price was the limiting factor for site built homes.  We decided to look at 55+ manufactured home and mobile home parks.  We found quite a few and spent several week ends over several months, driving around and looking at them.

In December 2013, we drove around the park we are now in.  We liked what we saw and the HOA is very small.  You own your own lot, so there is no space rent.  We toured a home that we both loved, a lot.  After lots of discussion, two days later we called the realtor and made an offer on it.  They accepted, end of story.  No, wait, that’s not the end of the story.  I say this with exhaustion, “it’s only the beginning!”

It takes lots of work to make a house a home and this will be no exception.

Here is what our new home looks like from the front.

And this is the screened porch.

As each project happens, I will be blogging about it. Currently, we have no internet.  That should be remedied in about a week.  I am already behind, but will try to get some blogging done and uploaded each day.  To do so, I have to walk over to the clubhouse to use the FREE wifi!  Actually, I can get signal from the far corner of my front yard.  I feel that sitting out there, at a little table, practically in the street, might look a little tacky.  I guess I should be more dignified and walk to the clubhouse.  The work begins!

Thanks for stopping by.  You can also chat with me on Facebook or follow me on Pinterest.

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About the ads that follow: They are not placed by me  and are not associated with this post.  They are placed by WordPress on blogs that are free.  Thank you for your understanding.