Renovations

You may remember from our initial house tour that the inside of our home was painted all sorts of bright colors, like orange and red and mustard yellow. I didn’t mention much about the outside of the house but it, too, has a rather festive feel. Now that we’ve toned down the living room, bathroom and other spaces where we tend to hang out a lot, I figured it was high time we start choosing a paint color for the outside of the house. We’re working with BEHR to finally bring all the details together.

I really don’t know how some people run blogs dedicated full-time to home improvement. We do our fair share of DIY stuff, but every single day? No thanks. It would be like, "I managed to paint half a wall and then my kids scribbled on it with Sharpie!" or "This afternoon, I screwed a wobbly leg back onto one of the kitchen chairs."

This is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down.

Most men grew up avoiding chores. Especially when it involved chores around the house. I, however, was a bit of an odd duck. One of my favorite activities was vacuuming. I think it had to do with the fact that it had a motor, made noise and ran on electricity. And that is probably why I loved mowing the lawn so much. I was the master of my own little universe.

Before we dig into this, the lawyers say we have to remind you: just because we do something does not mean you should. It’s a good idea to consult with a pro before tackling DIY demolition. This stuff is dangerous. Make sure that children stay away from tools, no living creatures are in the way of falling debris, proper safety equipment is worn, etc, etc.

The tub needs to be immaculately clean for this project. Yes, immaculate. As in the conception of Jesus. Chelsea has me do the tub cleaning because she says I’m "stronger" and can get all the grime off better. Really, I just use better products than she does.

We’ve been unable to find a knowledgeable, regularly-available pool guy where we live out in the boonies, so our treasured oasis reverts to a swampy green pool every time we go on any sort of extended trip.

Nate and I used to have the joy of living right around the corner from one of the largest Home Depots on the West coast. The Genesee Home Depot location was our happy place. Living in a crappy little apartment at the time, we visited this spot frequently for everything from curtain rods to DIY planter boxes in our efforts to spruce things up. We’ve since moved to a nice big house in the country with a whole NEW caliber of renovations.

was cleaning out the shed today, cursing "past me" in my head while weighing down "future me." You know the inner dialogue. We all struggle with it at one time or another.

This is what the outside of our house currently looks like, as we’re STILL in the middle of painting it with BEHR Marquee. This is one project that feels like it will never end. Mama may have gone a little overboard with the sledgehammer, knocking out an obnoxious-looking arch in the entryway. I also yanked out our dysfunctional doorbell. When I get into renovations, guys, I go ALL out.

I’ve learned that I’m very good at demolition. Putting things back together is the big challenge for me.

We’re in the middle of the longest kitchen remodel in history, and our old food-nuker conveniently decided to give out right before Minion was born. When we got a new counter top model, I was inclined to leave the broken one hanging where it was. We could create a nifty collection of electromagnetic radiation boxes! But according to Chelsea that’s "tacky." So I had the pleasure of learning to remove a microwave.

That’s right, people. DIY faucet replacement. Translation: we messed with our home’s plumbing system without a plumber. I was a little nervous about doing our kitchen’s faucet replacement on our own, but our previous faucet was getting really out of control. And to be honest, our plumber seems eternally stoned…I figured if he could do it, how hard can it really be?