A spoonful of…..

Eggs in a nest! 

It seems like everyone in home decor blog world has heard of The Nester. So when she came up with the idea for Nesting Spoons and decided to sell them on EBay, I jumped on it! I started bidding on two of them, but only won one. I decided to put it in J.D.’s room because she needs some more of something in there.

I love it! And if loving it makes me a Nest-head, I don’t care!

J.D.’s Bathroom Reveal

Okay, this is seven weeks late, but here is the grand reveal.  I think we spent a total of about $160 on the bathroom. It was worth every penny.
Before:
 
In these picture to the left you can see the dirty white cabinets with the dirty white knobs. Sanding and painting those cabinets felt GOOD.
In the picture to the right you see the UGLY BRASS FAUCET and you just may notice the reflection of the ductwork in the linen closet because there are NO DOORS on the closet. We have lived in this house for nearly 15 months without those doors. Shame on me!
I realize it may not look that bad, but it felt horrendous to me. These pictures don’t capture the funk properly.
On to the good stuff….
Look at those black cabinets! I love them. I love them even though it took something like four coats of paint to make them perfect.

Because you clearly needed a closer shot….

more black cabinets!
And a view from the doorway….

Look at that faucet….

And we have doors on the linen closet!

We primed the cabinetry, the bathroom doors, the linen closet doors, the trim and the window. The cabinetry was painted with Satin Black Rustoleum OIL BASED paint. I hated the clean up, but the finish is so durable.  Never soak your paint brushes in a styrofoam cup with gasoline. Gasoline eats through styrofoam. I am assuming that everyone else knows this and I am the only idiot who did not. I still need to coat the cabinets with polyurethane, but that is going to have to wait. The white trim and doors were painted with Semi-gloss latex paint from Sherwin Williams that we used on the rest of the house. I’m not sure of the exact color name.
It wasn’t that much work. The hardest thing was the faucet installation and that was a combination of the fact that we had never installed one before and the fact that the instructions that came with the faucet were seriously lacking. The most time consuming thing had to be the prep and painting of the cabinets, but that is the key to the best looking finish. We puttied and sanded and sanded and painted and sanded but I couldn’t be more pleased with our results.
Now for the million dollar question: what should we tackle next? Finishing up my bathroom? The hallway and the millions of doors? The foyer? The kitchen? The basement? Let me know what you think in the comments!
Be blessed.

It's been awhile

Hello Everyone. I know it has been over a month since I have posted anything on my blog. I've been having issues trying to define the purpose of my blog and I haven't had a clue what to write about. It has also been difficult trying to make time to post. I work ten to eleven hour days and by the time I come home and fix dinner and try to keep a tidy house, I have very little time for home improvement and blogging.

J.D. and I had a great time on our cruise at the beginning of this month. We ate and slept. Seriously, I think we were in bed by 10pm every night! We met some great people and really enjoyed ourselves. If you are ever in Cozumel you have to eat at this great restaurant called Pancho's Backyard. It's a little hard to find because it is behind a store called Los Cinco Soles, but it is completely worth the effort. The restaurant is in a courtyard and they have the best atmosphere and guacamole! I will have to post pictures soon.

I am very involved at church. I wrote previously about my involvement with Women of Faith and trying to bring women from my church to the Atlanta conference in September. In the past week I have had 35 women sign up! That is amazing! J.D. and I have been taking a class called Disciple at church since August. Disciple runs from August to May and you read over 70% of the Bible during that time. It is amazing how much I have learned and how much it has grown my faith. I never thought I would see J.D. wake up early in the morning so that she would have time to read the Bible, but nothing is impossible with God!

J.D.'s bathroom is 95% done, I really need to post pictures. I'm amazed at what we can do when set our minds to it. We had our first 70 degree day last Saturday and we spent the afternoon cleaning the outside of the windows and cleaning and installing the screens. I don't know how long it had been since those windows were last cleaned; I know my grandparents hadn't done it for several years before they passed away, so they were really dirty. We used the finest grade of steel wool we could find at Lowe's and an ammonia and water mixture and just scrubbed in circles and wiped with a dry cloth. It worked like a charm and our windows look amazing! We did the nine windows on the front of the house and this weekend we are going to work on the windows on the side and rear of the house.

I'm really itching to paint our kitchen cabinets, but I know that is going to be a giant undertaking. I can't decide if we should clean out the basement and begin painting it or do the kitchen first. If we do the basement first then the dogs will have a place to stay during the day instead of our sunroom and then I can begin fixing up the sunroom, which I really want to do. My dad advised me last summer to do the basement last because we don't really use it, but I think if it was in better shape than it is now, we would use it more. I've never posted pictures of the basement, but it is horrendous. I'll definitely have to post some pictures before we start work because that will make some great before and after pictures!

Take care and be blessed.