When Life Gives You Lemons...

We've all heard the saying: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In our case, it is more like "when life floods your basement, paint while the furniture is already moved out of the room." I had seen an awesome idea on my friend's blog that I had a been wanting to try, and we had plenty of paint from doing the kitchen, so we got to work. Here is how the super-fab wall was created.

We started with a white wall and taped up the squares.

 Then we painted using all four colors from one paint swatch. We already had two from our kitchen, so we just picked up sample bottles of the other colors.

And then we removed the tape, and Presto! Super-fab squares!

It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times

"We don't have anything going on today- why don't we finish painting the kitchen?" The words that started quite the eventful weekend. And so we painted- we had already started the living room/great room area, and we decided to finish off. The paint adds so much, and together with our newly tiled backsplash, it makes the whole room awesome. We were working hard on the painting and Josh and Abby were amusing themselves with watching TV (I know- what outstanding parenting, right?). We discussed how great our house looks with all the painting we have done. Anywho- we finished up the painting (here is a sort-of-lame snapshot from my phone)

and I proceeded to work on final touch ups on the grout from our backsplash project. Steve took the kids downstairs to play in the toy room, and I heard the words "Umm... honey..."

And that is where the "worst of times" part comes in. The basement was flooded. Now, it wasn't a foot or more of water in the whole basement, but there was a couple inches of water on the bathroom floor, and some mighty squishy, soggy carpet throughout the family room and toy room. The cause? Josh + several handfuls of toilet paper in the toilet. Fortunately it was clean water. So after scrambling to find a shop vac, several fans, and a babysitter, we got to work pulling up carpet and sucking up gallons and GALLONS of water. Not exactly how we planned on spending the remainder of our Saturday. Thanks to some fantastic neighbors we hefted the soaking wet carpet out the window to the yard, where we spread it out on some totes and chairs to dry. After having 6 or 7 fans blowing until Tuesday morning, things finally dried out inside. And thankfully it didn't rain while the carpet was outside. Another neighbor (who happens to be a carpet installation guy) came and stretched our carpet back out and got everything put back together. Thank heavens that is over! And, since all the furniture was moved out of the room, we decided we may as well paint the family room with the extra paint from upstairs.

So more pictures may be coming up. And hopefully this painting project goes much more smoothly.

Weekend Warriors

Since we weren't going anywhere for General Conference weekend, we decided to take on a DIY project we've been wanting to do for a while- tile the kitchen backsplash.
Here are some before shots:

There is a new product out there called the SimpleMat. It replaces the thinset or mortar. You just peel off the back, then stick it right to the wall. Peel off the front cover and stick the tile straight to it. Easy breezy.
Well, easier than handling the mess. Makes the tile application part very quick.
Here's a few in-progress pictures- before the grouting.

And here are the after shots- we still have a bit of finishing work to do, but not bad for a day's work. (We stayed up till 3:00 am doing the grouting so we could do it while the kids were asleep.)

Bathtime Fun

Sometimes getting Josh to take a bath is a bit of a battle. I found this great idea online and decided to give it a try- shaving cream bath paint. Just take some cheap shaving cream, add a couple drops of food coloring, mix together, and put it in a muffin tin. Presto! Washable bath paint. 

 

I gave him a basting brush and he went to work.

 It was a great success. He liked helping wash it off just as much as he liked painting, so it was a double bonus. Note- the red paint did leave a little behind- but just one squirt of bathroom cleaner and a swipe with a washcloth took care of it.