Still Busy with Remodeling

It's been a crazy few weeks with painting and working and trying to get everything done. We finished the downstairs bathroom the other day and now we have the family room and sunroom to paint, then we have to go back and paint all of the trim in all of the rooms. I plan on posting pictures when we are all done, hopefully that will be in the near future.

Until then I need to go vacuum because as you can see below my little Miss Haystack likes to chew apart her box and spit out the remnants all over the place, lol.

Oh and we bought my 16 year old son a car! Very exciting!

I wanted his first car to be a big car, something safe. We found this beautiful 1994 Chrysler LHS in Ohio, an older man that had just passed away this year had treated this car like a baby and it shows. It's in beautiful condition and it was very well taken care of. There are only 71,000 miles on it and the body has NO rust. He is happy with it too. We didn't want to go out buying him an expensive car for his first one. It has so much room and is SO comfortable. I already said we should stop renting cars for our weekend trips and take this one :)

Things are looking better now in the Painting world :)

A week ago today I had discovered that all the hard work I did had to be started over, but this past week we have a lot of progress and things came out very well. Sometimes you just have to bite your tounge and start over and hope for better results. As I get older I am realizing, getting so upset, and stressed out over everything and letting it really ruin my day doesn't do anything but harm, so I just tell myself let's fix this and we did.

We sanded the whole wall down, 1 long wall, Tom and I together for a few hours, sanded and sanded. There was black dust everywhere, we used a pole sander, little rubber hand sander thingy and I found that just holding a piece of sandpaper in my bare hand worked the best for me. I had the paint dust in my eyes, nose, mouth. I was stupid and didn't wear a mask. The next day I still had the dust taste in my mouth, and coming out of my eyes and nose, not good. It took a long time to get everything clean and I am still wiping up the black dust in spots I didn't realize it go to. Thankfully my furniture was already covered from painting.

 Before we started sanding, Tom put the first coat of the medium gray color which is Cobblestone Path by Bejamin Moore on, this went on perfectly with no problems.

See my kitty Coffy on that box, that's one of the boxes my chairs came in and I don't know how I am going to get rid of it, he loves that box.

We went to Home Depot and bought the new paint and primer for the Dark Gray wall. The paint color I picked was Behr's Pencil Point. For the primer we used Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer Sealer that someone from Home Depot recommended. When stirring Tom this glob of stuff, we called Home Depot they said if we want to bring it back, they had no idea what we were talking about. I wish Department Paint stores would put experienced painters in there, there are a few, but all of them should be. Luckily the guy who is doing the work for us here happened to be here and told us it's completely normal and to just take it out.

 This primer goes on very runny compared to the paint. Some spots wouldn't even hold the primer and we started to panic, but then just rolled over it again. We let it dry overnight and it was ready to paint.

Here is a quick picture of the wall with my table and chairs. I LOVE IT! I can't wait to get art on the wall and some decor around it. I ordered 1 more green chair to even them out. I love having so much more room at the table. We finally sold our other table after posting it online a few times.

Behr paint was on sale last week at Home Depot so I picked my colors for the downstairs family room. Behr's Sunny Summer (the brightest yellow I have ever seen) and Behr's Espresso Beans, a very dark brown. I wanted to go with dark gray and yellow so much but even though I do have a gray couch in the sunroom, I have the dark brown couch in the family room, I am regretting this as I type it, I wish I could have just bought the dark gray and moved my couches. In the sunroom I have a burnt orange color that we are going to go with a bright orange and I thought my dark gray couch would look good with that. Dark Gray is my favorite paint color. If I have any yellow left, I will do one yellow wall in my bedroom and the rest dark gray.

My office at work is painted bright yellow, one shade lighter than Sunny Summer which I thought was the brightest yellow ever lol till I picked this one. The one in my office is Behr Bright Star.

Painting Nightmare :(

So we waited for weeks and weeks for the appointment we had made with a professional painter to paint our kitchen, dining area, living room, stairways up stairs and down and then the time came, we were so excited! First he spent a 6 hours on a Saturday doing the ceilings and it looked great, we found a few spots and he went over them, things seemed to be going good. Then the next day he came to start the bright lime green paint in the kitchen. He had said he needed to use a tinted primer to go over the wine color and we would only need 1 coat of the lime green paint. When I saw what he had did when priming that's when I started to worry. He didn't go over all the wine color with the primer as you can see in this picture where my husband is removing the curtain rod, he left it like that and had just lightly went over it missing SO many spots, so then on the next day he gave me the gallon of primer that he had only used a very tiny amount of (not sure why he didn't just buy a quart) we were paying for Benjamin Moore paint so it's not cheap. When he gave it to me saying he was done with the primer, I knew then something isn't right, why would he prime only certain spots and such a light coverage. I let him do his job, the lime green paint, he said he had to use a brush for everything because of the cabinets and stuff, I wondered about the little rollers but didn't say anything. When he was ready to leave after he said he had the first coat on, I told my husband to have him pull out the refrigerator because you could see the wine paint color behind it. Then I started looking where he had not even put primer and missed it with the paint, so many little areas by the cabinets and the side of the cabinet he told my husband he would not be able to get to! I then got so mad after he left and told Tom how can he not get to it, I picked up a small paint brush and showed how easy it would be to paint in that area. I went around taking pictures as you see below of the mistakes and missed areas, I thought about it that night and the next morning and after showing people at work, I decided NO more, he wasn't coming back and I would pay him for the ceiling and paint and we would do the painting ourselves. This guy was very nice, but nice doesn't matter when it comes to doing something right.

See above where there are so many spots of wine color not covered in primer

After he had given me back the primer and said he was done with it, he put on his first coat of green paint and this is what I found :( not good

hard to see but this is the side of the cabinet that he said he couldn't get to so the wine color was visible, all it took was a small brush

this is an example of patch work he did

so many brush strokes, wall looked a mess!

 On Thursday evening I started the primer on the wall that we were making dark gray. The color we picked was Benjamin Moore's Ashland Slate. The painter had already had the tinted primer and paint mixed up for us. I didn't open the paint but when I started the primer I thought this looks darker than the paint swatch so I then opened up the paint and saw it was. I finished the primer since I had it almost done. I thought I did a great job, I was in a great mood goofing off while Tom did the green paint, I kept him entertained by talking and singing and pretending I had my own paint show, it was a great night. It took me 7.5 hours to do one wall in primer! I did the edge work so well with a brush and no tape. I was very proud of myself. I did this between Thursday night and Friday night. I decided to go to the paint store and question the tinted primer before I started the paint. The guy told me that it was a mistake and the primer should not have been that dark. I asked him to please remix a new gallon of Ashland Slate to make sure that the colors weren't mixed, I thought maybe they made the primer the normal paint color and the paint the tinted primer color. He showed me the paint color was correct but offered to darken it more so it went over the primer better. I agreed and the color was great. I went home and started painting. I did all my edge work first and then the rolling, then the nightmares began. I noticed right away the edge work was darker than where I rolled, even going over it again, it was darker. After googling this, I found it's called Hatbanding or Picture Framing. It's where you put a heavy coat on the edge work then the rolled work isn't as heavy. Also I had did about 3 inches of edge work but still took the roller close to it. My husband then started rolling over the still wet paint and caused SO much texture on the wall. We used Wooster rollers and Purdy Brushes. We at first thought it was the roller but then realized when he rolled over the paint that was still not set, he pulled up the first coat causing the texure. The walls are dry wall and supposed to be smooth so this was so upsetting. Not only did we have texture, we had the hatbanding picture framing thing and also streaks all over the wall. Some parts would not even out at all. It looks so bad. After 4 coats of paint the walls are a mess, we have no choice but to sand everything off and start over. I am so upset, SO many hours wasted on 1 wall. Today he is starting the medium gray paint on the other walls. He wanted to put a 5th coat on the wall and I told him NO. Let's wait and go to the paint store and see if they can help us, the streaking makes me think something is wrong with the paint, too much oil or something in it. We have Eggshell finish on all the paints. Tom had ended up putting 2 more coats of the lime green over the 1st coat that the painter had did. The other thing that made me question the painter was he thought he would only need 1 coat of paint on all walls with the tinted primer, I was told at the paint store, 1 coat of primer 2 coats of paint on all colors but sometimes certain colors need more.

This is the wall on Thursday night that I primed

Friday night all the primer was on the wall, very dark chalkboard color which I love

This is the difference, I had painted the paint on the wall on the left side, this is the swatch held up beside it, but you can see the difference in tinted primer vs. paint how dark the primer is.

I thought my 111 Navy Chair looks great against the green and better with the darker wall

this is the texture now that is all over the walls from rolling it when the 1st coat was not set :( We have no choice but to sand it down

Haystack came into the kitchen when Tom was painting and must have rubbed against the wall

such a pretty girl :)

this is the wall last night with the streaking, uneven paint and tons of texture, I am so unhappy about this :(

So I don't know what we are going to do. The guy who fixed all of our dry wall problems is coming tomorrow night to finish the shower install and I am going to have him give us advice. I know we have to sand the wall to get it smooth again and this will take DAYS and DAYS. It's only 1 wall but it's very long. Any advice on painting and painting dark colors would be great. I did my son's room in dark gray, medium gray and light gray and never had a problem. I even went over purple with 1 coat and no primer and it turned out awesome, that's what makes me think it's the paint when it comes to the streaks and uneven coverage.

Busy Busy Busy

It's been a crazy few weeks with the house remodel and going to Washington DC last weekend, and so much running around. Things at work are slowing down a little bit, I think we have all the football tickets shipped out, now on to Hockey and Basketball.

The Sunroom and downstairs Family room are all done with the dry wall being fixed. We also had the ceiling redone in a texture because the previous owner must have used a spray on texture and only did it in a few spots, the amount of things he only did half way or didn't do really makes me mad. He didn't even tape the dry wall, that's why we slowly started getting cracks on the walls. Everything is fixed and ready to be painted, I just need to pick out the paint colors.

Tomorrow the paint guy comes to start the kitchen, dining area and living room along with the upstairs hallway and downstairs. He is going to do all the trim and doors also. After all this is done, then we will have the downstairs painted. Next part of the remodel is the downstairs bathroom, he is pulling out the shower on Monday and seeing what we can fit in the small space for replacement. The shower unit in there now is one from Lowe's or Home Depot that has a plastic base and it's very hard to keep clean. My bathroom has plastic hard tile so that's all being ripped out and replaced with ceramic. I just need to pick the stuff out. One room at a time.

I keep going online looking for accessories to decorate with. I think I will stick to using my vacation pictures for the art. I always get them printed off in black and white with a matching photo mat. For 4 years now I have had the San Francisco Pier 39 Sea Lions in my kitchen and have had many compliments, people have thought I bought the pictures but I took them myself :) and the memories I have when I look at them.

I had my farm table delivered last week and I love it! I have it covered up right now since the painting starts tomorrow and I am trying to sell my old table. Here is a picture of it that the guy sent me.

When I went to DC, I met him at the Eastern Market where he is vendor and I paid him, he had one of  his friends deliver it to my house from Pittsburgh, I can't wait to get everything put in place.


I splurged a little and bought myself these jeans from Anthropologie

AG Stevie Polka Dot Ankle in Grey

AG Stevie Polka Dot Ankle in Coral

I love the way they look and feel, I wear a size 2 or 4 and I bought the size 27 which is a US 4, I even I called a few stores and asked how they fit since I was ordering them online. They told me they fit true to size and they do, I just should have bought the 2, I can wear a belt, I just hope they don't stretch like a  lot of people say they do because then they will be alittle big.

I also had to have this dress, it's ME all the way because I LOVE cats, obsessed with cats :) I bought the size 2, this does run big, if I lose any weight it will be too big, I read the reviews that it runs big in the top and it does. It's very short though so my husband says if I wear it to work I have to wear leggings and I agree. If I wear it out on vacation though, it will still look good without leggings.

My next post will be about my weekend in Washington DC, we took my youngest brother who turned 20. We had a great time!

House Remodeling In Progress

Right now my house is a mess, we have had a guy here fixing the drywall problems that the previous owner caused (he didn't tape the drywall together) in our sunroom and family room. He has been working on it for 2 weeks and will be next week also. We are leaving for DC next weekend just for a night. I promised my youngest brother we would go for his 20th birthday next Saturday. The Painter will start painting in 2 weeks. First we are having the Kitchen, dining room and living room upstairs and hallway stairs going up and down all painted. That will take a few weeks because it's his side job so he won't be able to do it everyday. After that we will have our family room and sunroom painted, I haven't decided on the colors yet for downstairs. I want to change it all around and make everything nice and new looking. I don't know how many more years I plan to live here, at least until the boys are done with school which would be 4 more years since Graham starts 9th grade and Gage starts 11th. Wow time flew by :(

I received the rest of my chairs yesterday from Allmodern.com I am a little disappointed in some of the finishing on them, I am not sure if they are spray painted, but the Charcoal Gray one I received that came straight From Emeco had a very noticeable flaw in the finish so they are sending a replacement. The green chairs match my paint choice almost perfectly, they also had a small amount of discoloration but not so much, they gave me 10% back. As much as the chairs cost ($260 each) I expected perfection. I love the fact they are made with 111 recycled Coca Cola plastic bottles, that to me makes me feel like I am heading in the Going Green direction that I am aimed for. I have so many things on my mind about what I want to change, my future,etc. I have to take one step at a time. I have everything I want right now but I long to take care of animals, mainly rescue farm animals. I am going to start out by volunteering at Happy Trails, a Farm Santucary in Ohio, it's about 45 minutes away. This will give me time to really think about what I want for my future. I am willing to give up the fancy clothes and numerous vacations we take every year to stay home and care for animals that will love me and that need my love. I am realizing what is really important in life and I don't want to let these thoughts go away without doing something about it. We only live once and I want to make a difference.

When I was on Fab.com looking around I found this skincare line called Sprout Skincare and everything is made with natural products, you could eat it if you wanted to, no chemicals or anything. I took the time last night and made the Face and Body Scrub. It actually came out very well!

 For the Body Scrub, the ingredients said Shredded Coconut, Coconut Oil and Sugar, I put these in a food processor and just added a little more of the sugar and oil until I got the consistency of body scrub, it smells amazing and works very well, I tried it this morning.

 For the facial exfoliant it said Almonds, Sea Salt and Oatmeal. This one I ended up putting some coconut oil in it and still couldn't get the consistency right until I put alittle in my hand with water and then rubbed my hands together and rubbed in all over my face and it was perfect! My skin felt so soft and my make up went on so perfectly.

I stand by my Pure Coconut Oil, this works wonders for blemishes, cuts and dry skin. There is no build up either. One day I went back to using one of my other body lotions that was Bath and Body works and it left a build up on my skin, you would think the coconut oil would break you out because it's an oil but if I don't break out from it, no-one will, it's amazing stuff and you can get a jar of it at Trader Joes or Amazon and many other places for less than $8 and it will last forever if you use it just for your skin/body/hair.


This morning Tom and I went out to my mom's house to pick some fresh vegetables. We came home with Green Tomatoes, Red and Yellow onions, Peppers, Corn and Eggplants.  Her garden is amazing! It's So big and beautiful and has so many different kinds of flowers and vegetables. A lot of hard work has gone into this, pretty much day and night everyday so far this summer.

My mom volunteers her time to helping Club Pet in Transfer, PA, a non kill shelter. She spends her weekends cleaning the pens for the dogs and helping out. This weekend she took a dog from the Trumbull County Pound so the rescue could make room for him and that way he wasn't put to sleep. He is such a sweet dog, his name is Mooney, heartworm positive and starting treatment tomorrow. I hope he finds a good home. We think he may have been abused because he gets scared when you first try to pet him then he loves the attention. I really hope someone adopts him!

Last Days of my Vacation

I haven't time to update my blog with the rest of my vacation, so I hope to summarize the rest in this post.

On July 5th before we left Boston, we drove over to Cambridge, MA for breakfast at the Veggie Galaxy for the BEST pancakes I have ever had and they were Vegan!

Chocolate Chip Pancakes made with Tazo Chocolate- SO SO SO SO SO GOOD! The carmelized banana butter that is on top was So incredible!

Tom's -Memorial Drive Omelet-Housemade Seitan Chorizo, Baby Arugula, Vermont Sharp Cheddar Cheese, Pickled Jalapeno and Leek with toast and homefries

Pancakes for the boys

Next we drove up to the Nubble Light also known as Cape Neddick Light Station in York, Maine.

We met some people that told us to go to the Portland Lights another lighthouse on the way to Portland.

In Portland, we stopped at Silly's to eat, I found it by searching online for a Vegan place to eat in Portland.

Fabuffel Burger-Vegan) locally made fried falafel topped with hot sauce on a toasted bun with lettuce, tomato, onion & pickle.

• Zombie Burger 
  (Clears the sinuses!) (vegan) Silly's house made (gluten free) veggie burger with spicy sauce, vegan mozzarella, spinach, onion, tomato, hot sauce, pineapple & jalapenos on griddled garlic bread.
  
  
  
  As I have said before my boys don't eat the Vegan foods with us, not yet anyways, we found Buffalo Wings and Things in Portland, Maine. Great service and there is one guy that runs the whole place, the boys enjoyed the food.

After we checked into the hotel we went down to walk around Portland to the local shops.

We found a pizza place that had vegan dough and it was very good pizza, Portland Pie Company.

The next day we got up and left Portland and drove through New Hampshire on our way to Vermont. We stopped at Wildcat Mountain and we all ziplined. For $20 per person, it was fun, but not as long as I was expecting and it was over and done before I knew it. It was nice for doing it for the first time, but I wouldn't go there again if I had a chance. I would love to zip-line again!

On our way to Vermont we had a small drive through the White Mountain National Forest

I saw signs everywhere but no Moose :(

On the way to Burlington, Vermont where our hotel was, we had planned our visit in Waterbury, VT at Ben & Jerry's Factory Tour. It was a fun experience, we weren't allowed to take pictures during most of the tour. I had called that morning to see if they were making ice cream because the tour is much better to actually watch them make it, and they had said they were, but when we got there and went to buy our tickets, the lady said they weren't, so she gave us the tickets for free, we saved $16, it's $4 per person. I didn't try the ice cream but the boys enjoyed it. They also had a Fire Oven Pizza set up outside selling pizza, so Tom and I had a slice with sauce and spinach on it.

When we got to Burlington, Vermont I had searched for a Vegan place to eat and Zabby's and Elf's Stone Soup came up and Tom and I ordered a few sandwiches that were very good.

Roasted Tofu Sandwich

Seitan Rueben

Right next door we found My Little Cupcake that had Vegan Maple and Peanut Butter cupcakes, they were SO Good!

Next we found The Skinny Pancake that had Vegan Crepes. Honestly they were dry and not as good as I thought they were going to be. Graham had a Nutella one, Gage had a regular one, I had one with fruit and Tom had a supreme vegetable one. All of us weren't satisfied with them at all, not sure if it was the Vegan Crepe it's self.

I wanted Maple Syrup from Vermont to bring home, I use it in a lot of Vegan dessert recipes as the sweetner, I called the front desk at the hotel and they told me about Dakin Farm close by that had a store. Tom and I drove over and tasted different grades of syrup, of course I spilled syrup on my shirt, did I mention that everyday on my trip, I somehow seemed to spill something or end up with a stain, and I try so hard to keep my stuff perfect, lol. We ended up buying Grade A Dark Amber that had the sweetest taste.

We actually decided to leave 1 day early and drive straight home which was a 10 hour drive. Our half way point was Syracuse, New York where Tom had found Strong Hearts Cafe online and I am SO happy that he did. This place was awesome. It was a very small little cafe that had the most beautiful cupcakes and oh they tasted so yummy!!!

Strong Hearts Cafe Chipotle Potato Salad

My Chicken Salad Sandwich and Tom's BBQ Tempeh Sandwich

Vanilla Cupcakes for Gage & Graham

Raspberry Almond Cupcake for Tom

Best milkshakes ever!-Peanut Butter & Chocolate, Peach Cobbler, Vanilla Maple Oreo and Peanut Butter Oreo.

We had a wonderful trip, it went by way too fast! We ate some of the best food ever and it was all Vegan!