Yes, that wall is holding up my magnet marker.

 Sorry for the horrible quality. I clearly was not very steady while taking this.

Yes, that wall is holding up my magnet marker.

Because I have a magnetic chalk board wall. And I think it's pretty cool. To the average eye it may just look like a black wall. Do not be deceived! This wall is a wall you can write on and hang things on... if you have chalk and the things have magnets, let's not get carried away.

In other news, our bedroom is half painted with one coat of paint. I ran out of tape to tape along the ceiling seam (I have a mennonite husband who insisted we had enough. We did not.)... but I did what I could. "Viking" if you recall. It's blue. I'm pretty sure Josh would have agreed to the color if it was fuchsia, as long as it was named "Viking." He has a thing for vikings. He has a toque that makes him look like a viking. Oh! And soon after our reunited friendship*, he saw me writing a paper on vikings and Polynesians... this may have struck him as pretty awesome and thus, thought of me as pretty awesome. I'm not going to say conclusively, but it may have been this first impression of awesomeness that made him take a second look at this girl and think "hey... maybe she's the girl." That or the blonde and pink hair. For me it was obviously seeing him without a shirt. But we'll just leave that at that.**

Viking. This is the best picture of the actual color... it was getting dark by the time I was done.

Hmm, we also did a little bit more flooring. I was busy painting at first though (see above), and although The Josh is very talented, it's straight up faster if someone is laying out the flooring for you to nail in. He also does all the cuts, because tools with blades scare me. Also, he had to do around the chimney, which takes time. 

And then we came home, because we were tired and making silly mistakes. 

Oh, anyone want a couple boxes of bamboo flooring? I'm about 98% sure we have too much. As in quite a bit too much. I'll confirm once we finish, but if I have any spacial capacity at all, and obviously barring any crazy, wild and unforseeable mess-ups, we are going to have some left over. Not just a box... boxES. So think about it.

So. Much. Flooring.

I don't think I ever showed you a picture of the painted living room. You can see the grey walls above or below.

And here is a picture of my boys playing Mario on the Wii. Well one of them is playing Mario. The other one is using the remote as a phone. 

*We went on Outtatown together. He then went to school in Ontario and I stayed in my Manitoba. He decided Manitoba was way more awesome than Ontario... or at the very least the people in it were (oh fine, maybe he just thought God had better plans and came to CMU to study BTS... but we can pretend), and came to the same school as all his Outtatown friends.

**Ok, maybe we won't. I want you all to still like me. I am a little bit shallow (but who doesn't appreciate the tall, blue eyed, curly haired, blonde boy?) but not quite that shallow. I mean, he is pretty easy on the eyes, but he's also a sweetie and so, so  many other things. And I saw him without a shirt because sometimes, while we were traveling the world, we went swimming... nothing weird, mkay. He's a boy! It's ok to see boys without shirts!

Asparagus

You may recall, way back when I still thought renovating was fun and picking out paint was exciting (because you're so far away from actually having to do the painting that you forget that it does involve many coats, painting the ceiling and discovering muscles you didn't know you had), that I picked out Asparagus for Caed's room. Green. And so I have painted the ceiling and did the primer and last night coat 1 of asparagus went up. I think it's nice. 

Also, I really liked getting to paint his room. Renting is lovely, but we never got to pick out a color to paint our new babies room. And that was fine, I wasn't overly sad about it. But it really is exciting when you actually get to do it. Yay. 

Coat 2 here we come....

Follow-through

Here's the post about the rest of the weekend. 

So two coats of mud done. One to go! Yay! In the back two rooms anyway. I'm slowly finishing the first coat of the front room... ssslllooowwwlllyyy. It's kind of the sort of thing that I'm doing while waiting for Josh to finish getting something else ready so I can do that instead. (Third coat almost got completed last night... so close.)

Know what's sad? I used to think I was all independent. If I really had to do something I could get it done. Feminism rules! I've been proven wrong lots. Like sometimes I can't even get the drywall pail open. And I tried to mix mortar. The mixer is really strong. Long story short, it's all making me even just a little bit more thankful for my Josh. Not only is he strong, but he also knows what he's doing. Unless I've seen Brian or Holmes do it, I just don't know.

So I hope by now you've realized that I have a great family. Dad has done all the electrical up to this point, and he'll probably finish. Curtis, Josh and Dad do all sorts of other chores for us, like demo, or helping put cupboards up and moving appliances, putting in insulation, sub-floors and many, many other miscellaneous jobs that need to get done. I don't even know where we would be without them... a lot less far than we are and lets face it, despite all that we're still much further behind than we would have liked. Also, mom and dad babysit. Which is awesome. Cause then I can not be a slacker. Ridiculously helpful. Oh and also the whole giving us a place to live that's not a disaster and dust filled and which has functional toilets... that's pretty huge.

So on Monday, Josh (brother) made 1950 size door ways into 2012 size door ways. I've already mentioned he helped tile. Curtis put corner bead on a bunch of corners and then painted a lot of wainscoting (like a lot of painting).  So when we're done tiling, that will pretty much be ready to put up.  Yay! Wonderful family.

Josh in his newly renovated, higher doorway.

Josh putting safety first. (I laughed too. He insisted that the ear part was attached to the helmet so he had to wear it all while cutting tile. I found that explanation did not make him look any less silly.)

Curtis painting.

And painting.

Josh holding up a piece of drywall that has glue on it. I was supposed to be grabbing the drywall gun so he could screw it up. I decided to take a picture instead.

Josh measuring.

Josh dry walling.

Mudddddding! Yay! How fun.

To conclude this post I shall show you a picture of my shower head (and faucet any everything) because I think it is beautiful and I am as excited about it as my sink faucet.

A good reason to get clean.

Oh and did I mention how much I appreciate my family? I really, really do.

"And wwee'rre back in the game!"

After lots of working hard and away from home (Josh, not me), a little holidaying (pick me, pick me!) and some more working away (Josh again...) the house has finally received some much needed company. We went for a few hours today. Josh got a bunch of dry walling done and I... wait for it... painted!! The bathroom walls are complete. The ceiling it awaiting its second coat (a job for tomorrow) but the dark blue is done. Fini! And I know you're curious. So here is a picture.

Now you're all thinking, "Ashley, it's not that dark..." Don't be fooled my friends, camera's can do tricky things.

Advice: If you have a plan that is awesome, impressive, "diabolical" even, don't post it on your blog. Even if the subject never, ever reads your blog, if you post your most wonderful, maybe a little bit evil, and absolutely brilliant plan on your blog, the the subject you were planning to outwit will decide that tonight is the night they will read your blog. Thus, your spectacular, well thought out, and dazzling plan will be discovered. You will no longer be able to use it and you will end up having, in my case, to do what you set out not to do. If we recall, this is task was to mud...  or not to mud.

Also I have a guilty conscience and a compassionate personality*. So when Josh is at the house always and I am, ah hem, not, I feel like anything I AM capable of doing I should probably help do. 

Further more, my hideous living room ceiling was dry walled over, and in appreciation of the effort, as it isn't an easy task to dry wall a ceiling, particularly alone, my resolve was weakened.

Long story short, my plan was found out, I am compassionate*, and my husband works exceptionally hard (I am extremely thankful and proud of him), so I did some mudding.

And took a picture so you could all be proud of me*.

 And maybe a little but in awe*.

Because I'm a good person*.

Not for my skills, do not be confused.

Sha bam drywall, consider the first coat of mud done. What what.

Pretty ceiling!!!

Tomorrow I'm going to try to be helpful again (I know, right, what's wrong with me? Twice in two days? Explanation: we are on a time limit, this has nothing to do with my good person. All the insulating needs to be done by the end of March, and because we need to finish the main floor before we do the basement (since the basement is storing all of our stuff which would be in the way of any work that needs to be done) I thought I should start being a little more helpful. Also, we have a bunch of money waiting for us, which we are paying interest on, but we don't actually get until the work is done and the house is reappraised). I'm going to try to do the bathroom floor. We're doing in-floor heating and tile. I'm sure it will be interesting. I have done neither in floor heating, nor tile before. Neither has Josh. Or my dad. Stay tuned.

*I really can be humble...

Bathroom

I have one coat of paint in the bathroom. It's really dark. I know it's going to look good with the wainscoting and the white shelving and probably a white cupboard of some sort, but right now it's just... dark. It looks almost black, maybe I should use a flash when I take a picture. But I'm scared to put it up, because I don't want you to not like it. Mostly I really want it to look ok so I don't have to repaint, and I keep telling myself it's fine. I've only painted one wall and the bathroom and I'm already tired of it... bleh. If I just left the drywall and mud unpainted could we call it modern??

Maybe I'll post a picture tomorrow.

(Josh has also been hard at work, doing lots. Like lots lots. Both bedrooms have been demoed and uninsulated and re-insulated. Drywall has been replaced. My island is framed and the living room is in the process of getting demoed, uninsulated and re-insulated. And I suppose I could post pictures of it, but they're not fun. In the pictures defense I would rather look at drywall then be anywhere near it. The same goes for insulation. I liked mudding for about 5 minutes. That was it. Now it's tedious and awful and messy and I don't really know what I'm doing. Also sanding it down was not a job meant for wimps... which I might be... you can decide for yourself, but after sanding two bathroom walls (it is not a big bathroom) my arms felt like noodles. I sat on the unfinished kitchen floor and watched Josh work for the rest of that evening. He finished it for me... it probably didn't take him long.)

Oh because pictures make blogs cool, here is the tap I think is neat for the bathroom. The one I actually got isn't quite as neat, but I'm thinking about taking it back so I can order this one... it's a little cheaper too. There isn't much to think about it seems.

The bathroom tap I'm going to order.

Paint

The kitchen is painted... next step- cupboards.

Cliffside is my kitchen. I think it will look nice with my white cupboards and back splash.

 What my cupboards look like...

What my backslash will hopefully look like.

I'm choosing between global waters and black sable for my bathroom. White wainscoting on the bottom. I'm leaning towards black sable... thoughts?

While we're into colors here is our room (blue) and Caed's room (green) colors.