Nursery Room - Window Intallers

If I took the time to write everything we did on the nursery this weekend in this post, I'd be here for an hour, and you'd never pay attention long enough to get to the end of the post!

Friday night we had a typical date night at Home Depot to get everything ready for a buzillion projects.  Saturday morning, bright and early, we got to work on the nursery.  Here's what it looked like when we walked in:

During the week, I had primed all of the trim and lower part of the walls, and Chris primed the upper part of the walls, and for extra credit, he primed the closet too.  You can see a swatch of my tester color on the wall.

Saturday morning, I got up and primed all the way up to the ceiling (initially we were going to do crown molding in here, but after project after project cost wise kept adding up at Home Depot, we nixed that idea), and then got to work on painting the ceiling white.  While I was doing that, Chris was busy doing this:

Chisel, chisel, chisel, bang, bang, bang.  After the ceiling had one coat of paint on it, we actually made another run to Home Depot to grab a larger chisel, and then I painted the second coat of white paint on the ceiling while Chris chiseled away at the window with his larger chisel.

And after about another hour or two of chiseling and trying to minimize the amount of stucco work that he was going to have to repair on the outside, Chris got impatient.

And he got the window out.  Can you see the missing glass?!  Wonder where it went?!

Here's a better shot.  Ahhh, yes...all over the floor next to the closet that I was just getting ready to paint.  Nix that idea!  We went ahead and cleaned up the bedroom and removed the carpet instead of vacuuming up a million glass pieces, and then went on our way of installing the new window.

And...tada!!!

Yep, we can add window installers to our expanding resume list of home improvement things we can do if this whole Engineering gig doesn't work out for us in the long run.

And here's a picture of my pretty while ceiling:

Yes, I know it's not as exciting as the new window, but my arms and shoulders still hurt from it, so I have to show it off.

Just as a reminder, here's where we started off Saturday morning:

And here's what we went to bed with it looking like Saturday night:

All in a days work!

Primed, painted ceiling, goodbye old carpet, goodbye old window, HELLO new window!!  Oh yes, and if you look closely, you'll see the tiny bit of closet paint I got on the wall.  I was determined to at least some color there before the day was over.  I tried to convince Chris to let me go ahead and paint the closet after dinner, but he made me take a shower and get in bed instead.  I was fast asleep before 8 p.m., and I didn't wake up (cept to do the normal pregnancy pee thing) until after 8 a.m. on Sunday morning.  It was a long, but very productive, day!!

All day on Saturday, we sang "That's the sound of Chris and Kara working on the nursery, uursery, oh don't you know, that's the sound of Chris and Kara working on the nursery".  You've got to sing it fast to make it sound right.  Good times!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!  Stay tuned to see the more 'fun' update to the nursery progress.  Things like primer, painted ceilings, removing carpet, and replacing windows are more of the necessities, not the fun part.  But the fun parts coming soon, I promise!

Happy Monday!

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Winner of CSN $35 gift card!

The winner is...

Comment #20 was : Aphrodite's Mortal Friend (ME) , who said...

I am a firm believer in having the master bedroom look and feel awesome- makes the day nicer to end and start if you like your surroundings- Stopping in from Trendy Treehouse New Friend Friday- and so YEA I'm following you now. Hope you stop by my place soon ;-)

Congratulations!!!  You'll receive an email from Caitlin with the CSN promo team shortly!

Thanks everyone for participating, and for showing me my list really isn't THAT abnormal!!  Hope everyone has a great weekend!  Off to the nursery I go...

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My To-Do List 2011

Whew, you guys sure are exhausting!!  Looking at your to-do lists from last Friday's giveaway post (the giveaway is open until 8 p.m. EST tonight...so enter HERE if you haven't yet!!) is making my list feel more and more normal.  So thanks for that!

In the spirit of sharing, and because it's been floating in my head all January, I thought I'd share my to-do list with you guys.  I'm trying to limit this to just house projects, so the whole child bearing and being a good Mom thing isn't on here...but those are most definitely my top priorities!

1. Transform the junk room into a nursery

• paint the ceilings, walls, trim, and closet
• rip out old carpet and install new flooring
• install a new window
• install a new fan
• build and install bookshelves for the wall
• build and install custom closet
• find and refinish an old dresser for a changing table
• make nursery bedding
• decorate

2.  Finish the pool deck to be able to at least bring in the furniture

3.  Learn to sew (see make nursery bedding!)

4.  Re-do the laundry room

5.  Re-do the entry closet.  Build a storage locker system to go in there.

6.  Re-do our master bedroom

7.  Decorate the living room

8.  Build pottery barn bar thingy to go in kitchen

I actually have more in my head, but I'm starting to get stressed out just thinking about how much I want to get done this year!!  I'm actually REALLY excited about the nursery, which is the only thing on this list that I MUST get done in 2011.  Oh, and 2 and 3 would be super nice...2 because it's been an ongoing project, and 3 because I can't finish the nursery stuff without learning how to sew.  The rest on that list though would just be icing on the cake.  Although with a wee one in tow, I'm guessing the laundry room redo will move up on that list too.

I'm so grateful that I have my husband back to do all of this with too!!  Poor guy...I've completely taken his newfound 'free' time that he had due to being done with his Master's program and filled it all up!  

Happy Friday everyone!  Tune in tonight at 8 p.m. to see if you've won the $35 giftcard!!

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Don't Forget!!

Hey YOU guuysss!!!!

(Do you hear the chubby kid from the Goonies?!...That's who I hear!)

Don't forget to enter the CSN giveaway for your change to win $35!  All you have to do is leave a comment telling me you're a follower on Friday's post ... click here!!  Easy way to win a free $35, right?!?!  Giveaway ends tomorrow!!!

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How NOT to dye curtains

I think I've at least hinted on here before the fact that I'm not patient.  Here's another confession : I rarely follow instructions too.  I skim over them most of the time, and if they won't work for me, I just skip 'em.

Apparently Rit dye products mean it when they say fabrics with 50% or more polyester content don't accept dye.

So these purple curtains from my Master Bathroom Update :

Regardless of how well I stirred and stirred and stirred...

Even if I left them in the bucket for a full week (a little rain never hurt anyone, right?!...that's rain water addition, not hose water addition...oops!) ..

Were never going to turn brown.

Oh wait, there's a tiny sliver of brown in them...do you see it?!

Sigh...trust me on this one, cheapo rit dye products and cheopo polyester curtains do not mix well!  Oh well, better luck on the next project, right?!

Don't forget to enter Friday's giveaway if you haven't already!!  Only two more days!

Happy Wednesday!

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Junk Room to Pre-Nursery Room

For the past, almost two years, I've used our forth bedroom as my junk room.  When it's raining, too hot, too cold, too windy, etc., I build, sand, paint, and nail things together in my junk room.  When we bought the house, the two rooms that were under the most diress and destruction were what they used for their two kid bedrooms.  I've refinished the one bedroom and turned it into the daybed room.  The other bedroom, we've just left the nasty carpet and nasty walls alone, and I've not cared if I spilled.

I'm on this huge kick to try to get the nursery as close to done as possible, before I enter my 3rd trimester...in a mere 6 weeks!!  I've heard from my girlfriends that the 3rd trimester is pretty close to the 1st trimester, and I know there's no way I'll be able to get all of the ideas I have floating in my head done with what little energy level I had the first trimester.

As embarrassing as this is to share, I'm sure there's at least one other reader who's had a room that's looked like this before.  So I'll keep it real, and share.  Here's the before of the junk room :

This is actually slightly worse than it normally is.  My in-laws came down to visit in November and brought furniture for us to have, which is on my to-do list for refinishing...one day.  We temporarily stored it in here until we could make room for it to be put to use in the guest bedroom.  The exercise bike got shoved in here for our BBQ we had last weekend.

And the closet is a complete disaster.  It's one of the areas that we really never unpacked of the house.  It's really not normally THIS bad either, but we were in desperate search of something the other day, and tore apart this closet thinking we'd find it (and we did!!).  Normally all that stuff on the floor is SHOVED into the closet.  And I do mean shoved.

The cardboard and paint stuff is all my normal stuff.  Normally that stuff is the only thing in this room, scattered about.

So, as you can see, we had our work cut out for us to even get this room to anywhere near close to something other than a junk room.  While Chris was catching up on his work from us being in Hawaii, I tackled the room.  I had a trash pile, a pile for the garage, a pile for the attic, a pile for goodwill, and I left everything alone that wasn't in my 20 lb weight limit capacity.

Chris finished up working, and he moved all of the heavy stuff (love having a strong hubby!!!), and the room was FINALLY emptied out.

Lovely carpet, right?!  Oh, and the walls...their kids colored/left gum, and smeared gross-ness ALL over them.  Here's what we're working with on the trim, and that's nowhere near as bad as the rest of the room!

All of that can easily be covered with a coat of primer paint.  First though, we had to take care of the holes in the room.  The closet, in particular.

Look closely, and you'll see how much spackling work we had to do!  So we headed to Lowe's to buy some more spackling paste, and swung by Goodwill on the way to get rid of donate our items we no longer wanted anymore.

Chris and I always argue disagree on how long to let the spackle dry before you can sand over it and re-coat.  I'm the down and dirty and lets get it over with type, and Chris is the lets never get started because it's going to take 10 years to finish it correctly type.  We found the most perfect spackle past for us.  It goes on pink and dries white.  No more arguments disagreements!

Here's how we spent our Saturday night :

Jealous?!  Yeah, we live the life!!  Oh, and just an FYI, I ran out of the room to get my trusty mask as soon as Chris took that picture.  I try to remember to keep it on with everything I do project wise.

We called it quits after we spackled as much as we could see in the night time, and headed to bed while the spackle magically turned from pink to white.

Sunday, Chris sanded and then spackled more while I finally unpacked and hung up my clothes from our trip to Hawaii.  One more round of sanding, and this room will be ready for primer!!  Woo Hoo!!!

Hey, they say to celebrate the small things, right?!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!!  If you haven't already, don't forget to go leave a comment on Friday's post for your chance to win the CSN gift card!!

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Another Fun Friday Giveaway - CSN Stores

It's that time again...time for another giveaway from CSN Stores!  With so many projects lined up to get done before Little Miss Hart makes her arrival, it was really hard to turn down the product review for myself, but I really love my readers and wanted to show you guys how much I appreciate your support.

One lucky reader of Kara's Korner will receive a $35 gift card.  All for just reading my blog! (Wait?  You're not a follower or email subscriber?  Really?!  Why not?!?!  Go sign up...see the Please Follow Along or Email section right to the right on my sidebar!!)  So tell your Mom, Sisters, Aunts, and all of your friends to get their bootay's over here to try to win.  And then tell them what you'd like for them to buy you with the gift card they won.  Hey, they wouldn't have found it without you!

So what would I have done with the gift card?!?!

Well, there's the obvious choice of something for the nursery.  But I'm much less decided on how I'm decorating in there just yet...so that's a no go for now.

I think I'd have to go with something in our bedroom.  Because we live in Florida, we only have a thin quilt on our bed.  With all this cold weather here lately, and Chris and I sleeping under 5 layers of bedding, I'd really love to get a new modern duvet covers for our bed for the winter.  There's 93 on the site to choose from, but I think my favorites, for our color scheme, are either the blue and yellow or gray and yellow ones.  Hmmm...

Although, I do love the clean lines of this brown one!

If you can't tell, fixing up our bedroom is on the 'list' for 2011!

Onto the details...

• PRIZE: A $35 gift card to any CSN store.
• TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I FOLLOW” and…
• BONUS QUESTION: …since Chris thinks I'm crazy with how long my 2011 to-do list project wise is already, lets help me feel more sane and normal.  Please leave me a comment on what's on your to-do list for 2011 house/project wise.  If you don't have a to-do list for 2011 (oh, so jealous!!!), please leave a comment letting me know what you're excited about seeing on MY blog in 2011!  
• GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Friday, January 28th at 8pm EST
• NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
• PRIZE IS EMAILED TO: US and Canada only.  For Canadian residents, please know that there may be international shipping charges when you use your gift card!
• NOT SO FINE PRINT: One entry per e-mail address is permitted.  You must be a follower (google or email) of Kara's Korner to enter this contest. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Friday. Good luck…

If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed reader to get future posts delivered to your reader.http://www.allmodern.com/Duvets-C365954.html

Master Bathroom Update

Way back in early November, I showed you my freshly glazed white bathroom cabinets.  Believe it or not, my bathroom has been in a state of disarray since that time.  I mainly painted the bathroom, with my handy mask on, but got too tired and pukey to finish.  I literally got about half way done, then put my paintbrush down, and went to bed.  That happened a million times, and I never got around to finishing it prior to leaving for our big trip.

Now that the first trimester woes are over, and I've got some of my energy back, I was ready to move back into our Master Bathroom.  Which meant Sunday, instead of unpacking from our trip, we finished this up.

Here's a before picture of where this all started :

Not bad, just not our style.  Too dark and royal.  I really like the painted wallpaper (shocker for me...I'm anti wallpaper most of the time, but I think of old wallpaper, not trendy wallpaper), so I decided just to paint over it. I wanted to emphasize the dimensions of the wallpaper, so I attempted to glaze over it after I painted it.

I don't know if this picture shows it quite well enough, but I couldn't get the glaze to go on evenly enough, and with all the vaulted ceilings in that bathroom...I decided emphasizing the dimensions, for right now, was overkill.  I'll probably go back later and try something else, but we've got a nursery to plan!!!

I took all of the old light covers and vanity lights outside and gave them a fresh coat of white spray paint.  We painted the trim around the doors white (my Step Dad had sprayed the doors white back in July), and repainted over where I had glazed with the new aqua color (Tide Pools by Behr).  This is the same color we used on the ceiling of our pool deck makeover.  We had an extra two gallons left after the pool deck ceiling project, so we opted to use it in here.

Which means, so far, this redo has set us back a total of $0 (I had everything on hand, leftover from other projects).

Here she is!!

There still are some accessories that I need to finish up or buy (the empty curtain rod won't be like that for forever).  Overall though, I'm pretty happy with how much we've brightened up the space.

My color inspiration for this redo were these towels :

Here's a before and after of the other side of the bathroom :

So what do you think?  Did you like the more royal look before, or do you like the open and airy vibe we've got going on right now?  I'll post more pictures when I get new curtains and a few accessories for this bathroom, but I'm so excited that we can actually USE it now!!  Yay for the small things in life!


Hope everyone's having a great week so far.  Stay tuned for Friday's post...nothing like another giveaway for Kara's Korner readers to kick off the weekend right!!  Hint, hint...

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I'm linking up to the parties on my sidebar...go check out what else people are transforming!

It's a ...

We went in at 830 on Saturday morning to find out if Baby H is a he or a she.  The doctor did a million ultra sound pictures, and then typed up some notes and just said that everything so far looked good.  I felt like 10 years had passed, so I finally said "so what's the sex?!?!" and he said he hadn't looked yet.

And then he put another magic wand on my belly and turned on the 4D ultra sound pictures.  Wow.  That's the coolest thing I've ever seen, and totally unexpected.  I had no idea that his office was equipped with the 4D ultra sound machine.

So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to our daughter.

That's right, it's a girl!!

I know, she's a little alien looking right now, but even if she comes out looking that way still, we'll love her nonetheless.

We're excited, anxious, nervous, and overwhelmed at the thought of a little girl running around here.  As long as we don't get too far ahead of ourselves and think about her teenage years, we stay super excited!  All things in due time though...right?

And for those of you that think I've given up on house projects, we've got quite a few loose ends we're tying up on old projects, and we actually made really good progress on Sunday, so stay tuned for posts on some of that this week!

Happy Monday everyone!

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Biggest Project Reveal Yet!

Hi guys!!

After three weeks of a blogging break, I'm back.  Before I get to the big project reveal, I have a few things to share...

First up - the real reason I went on a bloggy break is because we went on vacation.  For four weeks.  Yep, that's right, an entire month of vacation.  Since we weren't going to be home for that long, I opted to keep it a secret just in case I have any crazy stalkers.  I'm pretty sure the only person who stalks me is my handsome hubby, and that's completely fine by me, but still...ya never know!  (I pre-posted my last three posts prior to leaving.)

So, where'd we go for a month?!  Hawaii!!!

Kauai, HI

One of my best friends lives out there, and is awesomely amazing and offered to let us stay with her for an entire month!!  Our timing was impeccable...my friend closed on her home the morning we left, and is moving back to the mainland on Friday.  Because she was leaving the island, she only had a few of the essentials, and kept saying she couldn't wait to read a blog post on her 'amenities'...

So here goes ...

We were so fortunate to have one pot and one skillet to cook with.  While this might seem scarce to some, it was a perfect way to plan our meals, and it was so much easier to clean just one pot and just one skillet.

We were so fortunate to have 4 knives, 4 spoons, and 4 forks to eat with, even if they were dollar store bendy silverware.  They provided great entertainment for mixing stuff, much laughter when we bent our silverware back in place, and made us appreciate the next item all that much more!

We were so fortunate to have one good butter knife.  Those things are amazingly strong.  They can cut fruit and chicken and potatoes without flinching.  Well, a good butter knife and a strong hubby.  The strong hubby might be key to that equation, but I will never again under-estimate the power of my butter knives.

We were so fortunate to have paper plates to eat off of.  It was so nice being able to throw our plates in the garbage, and made cleaning up after dinner every night that much easier.

We were so fortunate to have a bed, even if it was made of air, to sleep on.  It was one of the most comfortable air mattresses ever, and we slept like babies.  I'll get more into why this was so comfortable in a bit.

We were so fortunate to have a friend that we can hold great conversations with, days on end, hours at a time and only stop chatting because it's way past our bedtime.  The conversations we enjoyed without the interruption of TV and internet (she has no cable) were great, in-depth, intelligent, fun, and heart warming conversations that bonded all three of us that much closer.  We will forever cherish that time we all had together.

Here's a few pics from the millions that I took :

Hawaiian Monk Seal on Waikiki Beach, Oahu, HI

Sea turtle off of the Ho'okipa Beach Rocks in Maui, HI

Chris and I at the falls at the end of the Pipiwai Trail in Maui, HI

Poipu Beach Area in Kauai, HI

Seven Sacred Pools in Maui, HI

Red Sands Beach in Maui, HI

Haleakala Crater in Maui, HI

Hanauma Bay in Oahu, HI

So now that I've filled you in on our wonderful vacation, which included wonderful and amazing trips over to the islands of Maui and Kauai, both of which we could afford to do because of our generous friend that we're so fortunate to have on the island of Oahu, I'll get onto the next item of business.

Chris is DONE.  D.O.N.E. DONE with school.  WOO HOO!!!!  He worked so hard for his Master's, put in so much blood, sweat, and tears (okay, maybe not blood...but I bled for the both of us on some of these solo home improvement projects, so that counts for him too), and I couldn't be more proud.  He didn't walk with his class, he decided he'd rather be walking in Hawaii than in Gainesville, FL ... but the sense of accomplishment and pride and joy and relief is all there!!

And finally ... the big project reveal.

A pictures worth a thousand words, so here it is :

Yep, that's me at 20 weeks pregnant (and Chris being a goof)!  This was taken on our last full night in Hawaii.  We couldn't be more excited, elated, scared, and happy all at the same time!  If you go back to September, you'll notice that my posts start dwindling down quite a bit.  Morning sickness and the pure tiredness of the first trimester hit me pretty hard.  I had a few 'do over' days where I didn't get out of bed at all and decided that I'd just try again tomorrow because today wasn't a good day.

That's all over though...I'm feeling amazing, overwhelmed, and big!!!  The amazing part might have something to do with being gone for a month in Hawaii, but nonetheless!  Oh, and the air mattress that we slept on was amazingly comfortable because it absorbed some of my new found belly so I could enjoy sleeping semi on my stomach for a few extra weeks.  I'm still trying to figure out this side sleeping thing!

Sorry I waited so long to tell you bloggy world!!  I actually just officially made the announcement today at work, and I have no idea who reads this blog, so I waited to say anything until I let the cat out of the bag.

The main deets that everyone will want to know...my due date is May 30th, 2011, and we find out Saturday morning if it's a boy or a girl!  Do you have any guesses of boy or girl based on the way I'm carrying?!  I have no idea...this whole first time Mommy / pregnant thing is all new to me, so I'm not guessing!  We'll find out soon enough!!

Oh, and... HAPPY 1 year bloggy anniversary to Kara's Korner!!!  I can't believe how much this has grown over the past year, and I hope to continue and build on how far I've come thus far.  We've got so many projects on our to-do list, that we can accomplish TOGETHER now that Chris is done with school.  And yes, that includes a nursery!!  So make sure you stay tuned to see what this year's fun projects have in store!

Hope everyone's 2011 is going well!  Our's so far is awesome!

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