Currently: Whiteness

Want to know how WE spent Independence Day weekend? The boys and I did all the things we normally do when John is gone, and John - well. He transformed the upstairs at The Projects into massive, wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-ceiling fresh clean white. ME SO HAPPY!!!! Pretty much everything you look at now is white, excepting only the fireplace, and the places the over-spray missed on the floors. But everything else, trim and cabinets included, has been primed with shellac-based primer, and assuming this most expensive stuff does what it's lauded to do, the stink shall be NO MORE. ALL you smell when you walk in is wonderful, fresh PAINT!!!

I haven't taken any pictures yet of the aftermath so for this post you get to see everything ELSE we accomplished leading up to this point.

First of all, remember the kitchen? We didn't think those tiny upper cabinets over the pass-through were really worth the closed-off feeling it gave the kitchen.

 Don't you just love the dropped ceiling with fluorescent lights??

 So yeah, we took the whole thing OUT.

We (that would be John actually) added a support frame so we can hang a pot rack over the peninsula.

MUCH better!

Also...notice that upper end cabinet? I want that one and the one on the other side of the window to be open front.

So Johnboy fixed it for me. =D

He also added a door way between the Front Room and the hallway. It used to look like this:

He cut a nice hole and framed it up good (it's a load-bearing wall). Here's from the hallway:

And here's looking looking at the hallway and beyond, to the kitchen. It makes it so much more open, it's hard to imagine why the builders didn't do this in the first place!

He also changed the existing archway to match the new one, giving it a nice up-to-date look.

Before:

After:

And with his amazing drywall skillz, finished off both quite beautifully. What handy kind of guy!

Meanwhile, I was still removing wall paper. I also helped the boys turn this area behind the backyard shed, into their own little garden. This is the Before picture.

This lilac bush/tree is pretty overgrown, so I cut it back by a third. BTW, a sawzall is totally the way to go for such a task. Now the boys' garden gets more sun. I'll cut it back by another third for the next two years, so it can be revived. And yes, the tire is going ASAP. Ew.

Rhubarb!!!!