My Almost Finished Kitchen

I have been working on my kitchen for the last couple of months, It seems like it is taking forever, because all i am doing is repainting. But, i am painting the cupboards, with oil base paint, it seems like a dumb decision now but, oil base paint holds up so much better. It does`nt help that every inch of this kitchen had to be repainted. The ceiling, the walls, the wainscotting, the trim, the doors.

So, here are a couple of my favorite areas in my kitchen. Below is my cooking area, do you see that little brown counter between the stove and fridge? That needs to be painted white yet, inside and out. That is the old color, yuck. What was i thinking? Maybe i was in the throws of menopause and i did`nt realize it would look like crap alone with dark marroon wainscotting, that is my excuse.


See that shelf? That funky little shelf. We have lived here for 23 years, i have been talking to Skip all these years about putting a shelf over the stove. Well, it never became a reality untill, about a month ago or so. I was just rambling one day, and happened to mention, now all i need is a shelf above that stove. Skip looked at me, said ok, went to his garage, and about an hour later, came in with that shelf. I was a little stunned to say the least.


The funky part about this shelf is, we once had an old upright piano, after the kids left, it spent it`s time being moved from room to room, i tried, but i could`nt give it away. It was`nt one of those pretty old ones, this was stained very dark, almost black and very plain. So, one day, i had Skip and the boy tear it apart. Skip saved all the wood, for whatever reason. Part of that old piano is the shelves , the sides were made by something else that once was, and are stained a nice green. I was going to paint the whole thing but the more i looked at it, the more i loved it just as it was. So, i finally have a shelf ! You rock Skip!



We love coffee, he loves Folgers, and i LOVE Folgers Vanilla Biscottie. That little brown jar on the top shelf holds mine. The rule is, whoever gets up first and makes coffe, gets to make their favorite. We gave our bunn coffee maker a place of it`s own. Meet my coffee corner. i just finished that little rug yesterday. Is`nt it cute? I love my coffee corner!

Soon i will be completly done with my kitchen and that will be a huge releif! Then i`ll show you the rest of my kitchen.

Untill then, happy sipping!

The House

This is our Big ole house, And it is sorely in need of paint, or siding. We have been torn as to what to do with it.

This house is about a hundred years old, and not much has been changed in it over all those years, we have tried to keep it as it was. This is our dilema.It makes more sense to side it with vinyl siding and be done with it but, then our house would look like everyone elses in town, not to mention the same color, as siding only has a limited array of colors.

We decided to do the less wiser approach, we`ll spend a couple years scraping, painting and replacing the boards in horrible shape. We`ll keep our house looking, ummmm old.In a little over a week, we have accomplished priming and painting the front porch. Next summer this wonderful porch will get a new floor. next week, we will be moving up, above the porch.

The funny thing was, yesterday morning while sitting on the porch having my favorite Folgers Vanilla Biscottie coffee, we had decided the wiser choice, siding it, when a big new gold cadilac pulled up infront of the house. A man got out of the car came up to skip and said, " I am so happy to see you restoring this house rather than slapping up vinyl siding, so many old homes in town have fallen to the vinyl trend." He has 3 old houses in town that he is restoring. he also offered his help if we run into a big bull work problem. This is what i love about small towns, we had never seen this man before, but he offered to help.

So, anyway, we are going to do the long and grueling task of painting this monstrosity............because we love this house. (when we are hanging from the roof edges with a scraper in our hands, we may not.)