Did More Cleaning

I cleaned the stairwell and upstairs hallway today. It's pretty small so it didn't take too long. I have a stair basket that always needs cleaning out so that's done. I just have the 3 bedrooms left to clean. I started a new donate box. It's filling up more slowly than the ones before so I think it's good that I have less and less stuff that I want to get rid of. I threw a pair of shoes in that were in the mud room when I cleaned yesterday. There will probably be a few things from the bedrooms to throw in. I put a few Easter decorations in because I scored a few things from my Mom and I'm trying to keep the decorations under control. It seems that no matter how many decorations I get rid of, I still have way too many. I used my fancy new camera to take pictures of the Forsythia branches the other day and I ordered a blown up canvas of one of the pictures to go over the couch. I can't wait to see how it comes out. If it's nice, I'll do one for Fall too.

Happy Rudolph Day!

I can't believe it's March Rudolph Day already. The birthday gift buying strategy just doesn't work for me because everyone's birthday is right around Christmas anyway. I do have a supply of cards in my card organizing book and I don't think I need any more right now. My Christmas dishes are all together under my hutch. I'm not sure I will need them again anytime soon. I'm considering donating them and just using the China for special dinners, we'll have to wait and see on that. I just ordered a couple of gifts for Hubby from my Amazon cart. Of course, a pan that I had in there got cheaper today so I ordered that too. I recently went through my Christmas notebook and wrote down some more ideas. I think that's about all the Christmas-y things I'll be doing today. I've been a little under the weather for the past few days, but I've been pushing through it. I cleaned the mud room this morning and put away the last of the Winter decor from the house. I just have to change out the wreath on the garage and the shed doors. It's rainy today, so that will have to wait a little longer.

I Can See Clearly Now

I finished cleaning the windows this morning. I have the last of the curtains in the dryer now. I would love to be able to line dry stuff, but the pollen would kill me. I can't even open the windows in our bedroom and I really want to because it's so stuffy in there with the very warm temps this week. I'm going to inspect the forsythia today to see if it's ready for pictures yet. I don't know if I said on here, but I'm going to take pictures of it with my fancy new camera to have blown up and put over the couch for the Summer. If that works, I'm going to do a Fall picture for me and my Mom because we can't find Fall pictures big enough.

Dining Room "Beadboard"

I love this product! It's fairly cheap (under $20 a roll) and it's super easy to put up. The only thing harder than regular wallpaper is trimming, you need a very sharp knife or it snags and tears the edge. I used a break off knife and kept breaking it off and it came out pretty good. I caulked the seams and a couple of edges that snagged and you can't even tell. After it's painted it looks and feels like real beadboard.


This is the wall with the bottom of the wallpaper scraped off. It took 3 days just to do 30 inches in here, but worth it.



This is the wall with the "beadboard" up.



This is what the room looks like finished. My Mom has some Winter curtains that are perfect for the new Honey Beige color on the bottom so if she gets new curtains I will take them for the Winter in here. It will look so warm and cozy.

Back To Cleaning

I finished my dining room project Saturday. There will be pictures soon. I washed all the first floor windows and curtains and I'm drying the curtains right now. I decorated for Easter this morning and after lunch I'll iron the curtains and put them up and take pictures. I have to go around the room to make sure no more touch ups are needed in the paint and then get rid of the painting stuff so it's not in my pictures. I plan on Spring cleaning the downstairs bathroom today and then the whole first floor will be done.

Update: I cleaned the downstairs bath/laundry room. The washing machine is running cleaner right now. The first floor is done and it's only March! I just have the 3 bedrooms upstairs and the mud room to do. I have to do the mud room soon because it still has Winter decorations out. I'm sitting on the porch and I can't believe how warm it is. I'm going to read for a while and then watch some TV out here. Perfect afternoon!

Spring Cleaning On Hold

So another project has interrupted my Spring cleaning. I wanted to put a chair rail in the dining room this Spring (waiting until warm enough to stain it outside because of the stink) ever since my Aunt redid her kitchen/dining nook and she put beadboard on the bottom and it looked so cute. I wanted to do beadboard, but gave up on that because I'd have to take the baseboards out and then all the floor trim which I can't do because the laminate floor goes down the hall into the computer room and all of it has trim. I decided I'd just strip the bottom of the wallpaper and paint under the chair rail for a similar look. Then last friday I saw some wood patterned wallpaper in a magazine so I started looking for beadboard patterned ones but couldn't find it in white. Then on one of my searches beadboard textured wallpaper popped up and people love it and it's paintable. So needless to say, we went to Lowes Friday night and I picked some up with some paint chips. The wallpaper stripping isn't going very quickly though and it might be my own fault. My Mom and I started using paste on already prepasted wallpaper because it's way less messy than dunking in water and the glue squishing out the ends. I've been scraping for 3 days now and they are only 30" pieces. I think someday when I do the top of the walls I'll have to get one of those things that poke holes in it and use gel remover because I will never be able to take it all off like this. Anyway, I bought paste for prepasted wallpaper to put the bead board stuff up. I think we just used regular paste on the paper so hopefully this will work.

The weather will be gorgeous this week, especially today so I'm hoping to finish scraping in time to sit on the porch for a while. I cleaned the living room the other day so I only have the downstairs bathroom left on the first floor. I want to do windows and curtains, but now the project has to be finished first so I will be waiting a little longer. I'm pretty dumb for starting it right after cleaning, so I'll have to do touch ups in there too. I think it will be worth it though.

And Then What

I'm getting my hair done today. What will I do after? I have 3 choices. I can deep clean the living room. It wouldn't take too long since I did regular downstairs cleaning yesterday along with upstairs since I had hair this morning. I can do windows and curtains on the first floor since I changed out the computer room and living room curtains yesterday because they didn't need ironing. I can just sit out on the porch and not get anything done since the weather will be balmy for this time of year, but really windy. The porch is calling me, but I could take my laptop out there later and watch TV in the nice weather and still get something else done. I think I will try for deep cleaning the living room because it should be quick and it's supposed to rain a lot next week and I hate washing the windows and having them get spotted up soon after. That's the plan for today then.

Cleaned Again

Over the weekend I scrubbed the upstairs bathroom. I even changed out the Winter curtains for the Summer ones. Everything is clean and bright. Since we took the VCR out of the TV stand we went through all of the VHS tapes and I got rid of a bunch and the rest we packed into a box, labeled it and put it on a shelf in the basement. Then, I took the rest of the DVD's that were under the couch (not in albums) and put them into the TV stand cabinets. I will get another album and put some into that soon. Still haven't looked for a new couch, but now it's empty under the couch in case we do.