Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tada!

Here is the foyer and....

here's the kitchen!

I LOVE IT! It finally feels like my kitchen. We still need a few things up on the walls but that's an easy fix. Enjoy the pictures. See the before kitchen in my previous post http://bowmanlot31.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-to-our-lot.html.


Saturday, July 18, 2009

Everything All at Once

So I have yet to master the concept of changing just one thing at a time (that's probably why I find myself often overwhelmed)! Here are my recent changes and projects.

Painting the kitchen and foyer--in progress and should be on deadline for company arriving tomorrow after church.
Dealing with a few nagging excess pounds--due the current disarray in the kitchen I have not been as careful about what I've eaten the last 3 days and nor have we taken a walk once this week. We will have to recalibrate on Monday.
Starting a blog--I've wanted to do this for a long time! Why now when I should be at the grocery store or painting the kitchen and cleaning the house, I don't know.
Getting organized--I've written down a daily schedule with some basic for everyday. Also need to recalibrate on this one-since I've been mostly missing rather than hitting the target.

That's the update for today. Now seriously I've got some bargains to nab, painting to finish and cleaning to do! As usual I get no help from these two!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Crazy Project Timelines

I'm crazy, but my hubby still married me. He probably didn't realize what he was getting himself into though when he signed on for the job of 'til death do we part. Not my fault that he didn't require a full disclosure right? He saved some for me too, so I think that we're even. He said that I might have to get a new hubby when I decide to paint the kitchen cabinets, but I told him maybe my new hubby can just buy me new cabinets and that I was just trying to make the most of what I had and I wouldn't be doing that for a long time anyway.

There is nothing like having company as a motivator to make the next step on that project that is nagging to be finished! It's only been dropped in a pile in the corner of the room under the dust, cat hair and the mail that needs sorting for a few weeks or months as the case may be. (Side note we actually have been pretty good about the mail making it to it's designated location and sorting out the majority of the junk straight to the recylce pile--what a stress reliever.) The project at hand was/is to finish the painting from my inital move-in inspirations. Living room was the first one checked off the list and the guest bath followed shortly behind, but still needs some touch-up. We'll get to that eventually. After a few weeks off for camping and visiting with family we're back in the part-time paint business and the hallway got done quickly. We needed a good confidence builder and easy-to-get-back-into-project if you know what I mean. Back to the reality of peeling wallpaper, patching holes, sanding spackle, vaccuming dust and priming!!! We were up until the wee hours just to get the first coat of primer done and cleaned up. Can I say I love and hate oil based primers and paints. Good quality coverage and nasty messy cleanup. Thankfully Rennie took over the cleanup and I got to heat up some food. Why I didn't fix food before we started I don't know, bad call on my part.

So the timeline for kitchen and foyer painting project to be completed and not mention have a functional and clean kitchen for company on Sunday. Yes I said Sunday and today is Friday. My friends it is going to be a late night or couple of nights. Whatever it takes, I want it done. Wish us luck that we'll get it done, get a little bit of sleep and not be too cranky with each other in the process.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Welcome to our lot!

Well Rennie doesn't know it but the Bowman household is hitting the blog roll. I love reading blogs and often feel inspired so I thought that I might give the blogging thing a try. No guarantees on which direction this might take. Stay tuned...

Why Bowman Lot 31? Well it's our name and our house lot number where we live. I imagine that where we live physically, mentally and spiritually will be the starting point for most of my blogging.

So what is going on at Bowman Lot 31? Well we're still moving in and around. It seems like it might still be going on for a while, but my goal is that we'll be done unpacking boxes by Labor Day. That means my MIL is moved downstairs and all our stuff is upstairs and unpacked. We're already mostly upstairs it's getting my MIL's stuff downstairs into the mother-in-law suite. The holdup is that we need to clean up all the construction dust down there. This is probably worst part (IMO) about the whole renovation process. There is dust absolutely everywhere in the downstairs.

We are having friends over on Sunday so the goal is to finish painting the kitchen and get it back in working order. From there this is the plan:

1. Clean the downstairs of the layer of dust.
2. Move MIL's boxes and remaining furniture down.
3. Put out kitchen essentials, bedding & bathroom for MIL (since we packed her stuff she won't even know where to start so I feel like the very least we should do is get her a little start).
4. Take before pictures in the guest bedroom and then remove the border and paint.
5. Furnish the guest bedroom.

Order to be determined
6. Tackle the office/craft room (currently the junk/box room).
7. Paint the master bedroom
8. Paint the master bathroom.

Now that's just the big stuff! There's lots of little stuff that I hope we can get done too.

Here is a before pic of the kitchen (sorry for the stuff) so that you can enjoy some after pictures when we're done.