Pictures!

This is called knock-down, and it's how our ceilings look now. Good-bye tobacco stained popcorn! John and his brother Paul scraped it all off - this was at least a month ago now - and then sprayed all the upstairs ceilings and "knocked" it down. It was a HUGE help to have Paul there! It's a big, messy job. They've both had years and years of experience doing ceilings and it looks SO so much better. 

Here's what it looked like after we (John actually, all by his lonesome) painted July 4th weekend. Our friend Troy, a painter by trade, loaned us a sprayer and gave all kinds of tips. He does houses with smoke damage a lot and recommended a shellac-based primer to seal out (in?) the smell. He said Kilz sometimes just doesn't cut it and while the Zinzer BIN shellac primer is 2x as expensive - we weren't taking any chances!

As you can see, he painted pretty much everything but the floors! Which will get their turn later next month. As I said in my last post, the difference is amazing. Happy sigh. =D

Here's what we worked on last weekend....

Putting cabinet doors back on

(Usually what the boys do is....Connor plays with neighbor kids outside until he or they have to come in. Joseph is Daddy's shadow but sometimes plays outside too. When they come in, they "work", or play with whatever toys they brought. Sometimes they color or watch a movie on the laptop or iPod).

Now for - THE DOOR! Drum roll please...

It took me one evening just to tape everything off for the screen door. And as you can see (but hopefully didn't notice right away) I didn't think to cover the porch floor at all... I'm SO happy with the color of spray paint I picked. I guess we'll have to deal with the floor later.

On Friday night (a week ago) John and I had our first real date in months. We ate at home alone and then went to Lowe's to price out tile. Here's what we'll be putting on the bathroom floors! After Lowe's we sipped cold drinks at the Barnes & Noble cafe while browsing books on home decor and renovation. =D

On Saturday (Day 2 of a looong stretch of hot and muggy to the max here in MN) I finished painting the front door...but ran out of blue paint with 3 of those squares to go. And by then I was ready to call it a day.

John and his youngest brother Philip got a lot done though. They got the bathroom completely torn apart, removed the vinyl floor, and put up tile backer around the tub! Thanks for the help Philip!