7 trips to the home depot during a 3 day renovation marathon of the kitchen.

This is a long blog. Lots of pictures. And one of the only things that got Preston and I through this weekend was Merle Haggard, a little Whiskey, and a whole lot of laughter. Enjoy and feel free to comment. 


Kitchen days 1 and 2        
   Preston and I decided it was time to finish the kitchen. So about a month ago we bought new appliances because we really needed them and Home Depot was having a sale. We had to finance them mostly because we're poor, but our oven wouldn't open sometimes which made cooking a real drag and burney (spell check is saying that isn't a word but I don't care). Also, our dishwasher made our dishes smell like fish....and we don't eat fish at home often.....So we picked them out and waited for them to be delivered. Unfortunately there was an ice storm and the delivery guys thought they would get away with the old excuse "your driveway is too icy we'll have to reschedule for after Christmas.  NOT ON MY WATCH! And to make things worse my College Graduation had been scheduled that weekend as well and had been cancelled!!!!!!!! So I was in NO MOOD to play around with this baby talk of a little bit of ice. Grow a pair of balls and deliver the appliances already! So I made it happen. They delivered all the appliances on time (to the garage, and then Preston and his brothers and dad came to help move them inside). Then after moving in the fridge, Preston and I decided the paint job we had previously done (you might remember the red and cream kitchen) would just not do for our beautiful new appliances. So I picked out a beautiful turquoise/Tiffany Blue for the walls and repainted the cabinets (on one half) white. We then did a penny top counter top and exactly HALF the kitchen looked like upstanding citizens lived here the other half? Well, let's just say it looked like an old lady could have lived here-that is of-the welfare class in addition to social security. So then, on our New Years’ time off we decided to do the craziest thing so far on our old home. 

      We decided at around 1PM to tackle the crazy gnarly bit of the kitchen we ignored until this point.  Preston said is the second scariest thing in the house. It was a Friday afternoon and we decided to take on painting the counter-top black, and then finishing out the under sink area and storage space that had previously been home to a colony of rats. We started out Saturday morning making the Rat Nest better, we made cuts and finished off the inside part of the under-sink area and the place where we might put our trashcan but we're not sure. During the 'excavation' bit I found some more rat bodies (mostly decomposed) that made Preston squeam from the other side of the room.  Luckily Preston can handle any LIVE creature that crosses our path, and I can handle the dead things. We really complement each other at the others weak points.....any dead thing I'll take care of it no problem; the moment it comes alive? That's alllllllllllll Preston.

We continued finishing out and supporting the sink area using bits of wood that we had reclaimed from our wood piles. There was also a really weird long thick piece of Cedar wood that neither of us could think of where it came from. When we discovered it I said "Where did that cedar thing come from? I'm just going to go with it, not question it.......weird little cedar bundle......"  we were truly amazed  by how smooth everything was going....WE DIDN'T EVEN MAKE ONE SINGLE TRIP TO HOME DEPOT FOR THE WHOLE DAY!!!!! That really is a record for us. As we continued our good fortune also continued and we got everything looking really really really good.............................................UNTIL............The tile. 


Well, Preston and I decided at 7:40PM it would be the best time to tile the back splash and so we did....It started off good, we mixed the mortar got the right consistency on the first try!! Go us! Then we got inside and began placing the tiles. We then realized that tiling a back splash is harder than we had anticipated and learned fast that we should invest in a wet tile cutter. But since we are poor we just had to make due with our little dinky tile cutter from the Floor and Decor. Once we were finished placing the tiles we stood back to admire our hard work and realized that some parts of it looked like crap. The spacing was off, there was going to be a lot of grout and it would look really stupid. We started laughing and I said, we’ll just put the tall things (like the blender) in front of the ugly bits so people won’t notice them!

After completing one whole side of the kitchen, we went for the other side “while we were at it” and things went a lot better. Until I got to this one part, the only wall outlet on that side…it was just weird enough of a space that a whole tile wouldn’t fit, but a half one was too small and looked crazy. So Preston being the cutting master he is started to cut a piece specially for this hole. After breaking about 20 pieces of tile he threw a man sized temper tantrum like an emotionally distraught child, throwing tile down on the ground and I was like “okay let’s take a break.” He wouldn’t give up, and finally got a piece cut and it worked. Once we got all that done he looked at it and got mad all over again because the piece he had cut for the outlet part looked crazy once it was on the wall...but by this time the mortar was set and there was nothing to do about it. So I just said, that’s where we’ll put the Keureg machine! No problems!  So we went to bed and decided tomorrow is another day filled with renovating craziness.



Here is the side he "recommended doing a wider gap between tiles"


Then below that is the side I just did my own thing on. 

 

Our ugly nasty sink

 

Pretty sure that is mold, but we just spray painted over it thinking we'll be okay......

 

How we left it for the night so Willie wouldn't crawl under the house out of the gaping holes under the sink. 

                                                                   Looking better and less creepy!!!

 

This is the new close up of the sink/faucet 

                                                           Pretty new underneath the sink too!!!

 

Also,

I forgot to mention earlier. Willie Nelson the Kitty got out!!! It was the scariest moment of being a Kitty Mommy and after Preston and I looked all over the house for our little kitty bear we opened a wet food knowing he would come running.....NOTHING! We were both so scared and thought Willie might have gotten out through the open-ish door the extension cord was going out of. Preston walked outside and saw our little Willie Kitty just smelling the outside of the house. We got him back inside and decided to never ever to let that happen again!!!





Kitchen Day #3

We woke up feeling great about the job we had done, even with its quirks we love our kitchen, and it’s ours.
We then began grouting the back splash with “Charcoal” colored grout, which Nicole Curtis makes look soooo easy, but let me tell you. It’s a huge flipping mess. It gets everywhere, and it’s so dark you have to change your water every 3 minutes. Needless to say that part wasn’t too much fun. Once that was all completed we decided it was time to work on the garbage disposal. We had bought a brand new one because we really didn’t want to keep anything on the creepy kitchen the same, down to the plumbing for the kitchen sink.
So we thought we would start off changing out the outlet under the sink to one that is water sensitive and will shut off if it gets wet! GREAT! Well, Preston had done this to many of our other outlets so we weren’t worried. He replaced it and when he turned the power back on, nothing. There was no power getting to the outlet all of the sudden. Off the power to the whole house went again. He re-checked the wires and flipped the breaker again; still no power. Thinking we must have gotten a bad outlet mechanism we went back to home depot (second trip for the day) and there must have been some sort of ‘run’ on the GFCI (or whatever they are called) outlets and the only color they had was a weird tan color. So we got the weird tan one, because it’s under the sink, who really cares? Got home, for the 3^rd time we shut off power to the house, replace the outlet; still, no power. So we go back up to the depot thinking surely it’s not us, obviously we got another faulty one. So we got a new tan one, and a regular outlet not the fancy gfci one that has a moister switch thinking maybe it’s just moist under the sink and that’s why it wouldn’t work. Got home, and for the 4^th time we turn off the power to the whole house. When Preston un screwed the outlet one of the wires had come out of the screw place so he was like, duh! Replaced the wire to the correct place and turned on the power…..nothing…..no power. So 5^th time we decide to turn off the power and just put in the regular outlet and if it doesn’t work, we obviously have no clue what we are doing and should call an electrician to come out because we must have royally messed something up. After turning on the power again with no luck from the plug, Preston and I literally just sat on the kitchen floor looking at each other wondering how we could have messed it up so bad.  4 Hours of our lives, 4 trips to home depot, and we were completely stumped. Then after a few minutes, Preston looked at me and said “Bailey. We are the dumbest people in the world…..” I looked at him and at the same time we realized the same thing! TO GET POWER TO THAT PLUG YOU HAVE TO FLIP THE SWITCH!!! DUHHHHHH!!!!! Then we were laughing so hard we were crying for a good 20 minutes about how much of a dumb mistake that was. After that we decided we needed a shot of Vodka and began working on the pipes to connect the sink, dishwasher and disposal. We wrestled with it for a long while, and finally rigged it perfectly! When we went to test for leaks there were two small leaks and we just had it. Enough renovation for the weekend and went for a hot and ready pizza from Little Cesar’s. More on the fixing of the plumbing soon when we get that mess all figured out.



Putting together the disposal was a cinch! We were psyched!  Except it leaked, but now it’s completely fixed.
 

New Years!!!!!

         Well folks, it's been a while indeed. Since it's the beginning of the new year we wanted to start off right. So we started Juicing (making juice from fruits and veggies, not steroids) and working out. Well, Preston started working out, I bought new work out clothes but haven't actually put them on yet.

         Since we both had a good amount of time off we decided to get some things done. My first thing I wanted to get done was redo a chair I got from a friend. It was gold-ish chair from the 60's and I had a strong desire to try my hand at something that I never have done before. So It began, I got paint. Because after much thought that was the route  I decided to go since Pintrest said it would turn out great. Well, to be honest, Pintrest lied! I was left with a half painted turquoise chair that was hard and crusty. I was not amused. Thank goodness Preston called just then and asked what I was up to. (He often asks me this prior to coming home, I think it is a self defense mechanism because he knows for sure two things in my life to be true, 1) if I have had a "cleaning" day, he will come home to a immaculately clean  house or 2) if I have had a "creative" day he will walk into some sort of crazy ass mess that only the Lord knows what went on because it looks like the whole house exploded.) On this particular day it was a creative day with the chair, and after telling him we might have to throw the chair away he said "why not re-upholster  it with Toile fabric? OF COURSE! So I marched my happy self down to the Joann Fabric and bought up a few yards of black and white Toile fabric and went home to start again. After a few hours I got the seat, arms and front panel complete and looking pretty good I might add. Then Preston got home and the whole project got derailed. It still is looking pitifully half way done in the living room.

                                                                               BEFORE

 

DURING

 When I finally get it done I'll post and you can see it all pretty!

Mothers, porches and goodwill, oh my!

First off I want to wish all Mothers a Happy Mothers Day and all non mothers a just good ol day!

So this weekend Preston and I knew we were going to set aside some time to spend with our mothers, and that meant we would not get our whole weekend for renovation, which is completely fine because without our mothers we wouldn't exist! So we knew we had to work hard if we wanted to accomplish anything renovation style. So Saturday we were in "I don't know land" and that translates into, "we want to work on something on our home, but we knew we don't have too much time to do it but we don't want to not do anything." so we started off walking around talking about what we could do, and decided to go to our local salvage store and look around. After that we went to the Goodwill, because that always makes us feel pretty good about our lives, even though we might be poor we don't have to buy used undies. Then to top it all off we went to Sams and had a bunch of free samples and got some Mikes hard Margaritas.

When we got home we realized that we still didn't have a plan for what we were going to do and it was 3:30 pm so we walked outside to look at the lawn and realized something to do!!! The front porch needed some TLC! So like the crazy loons we are, we decided that's what we wanted to tackle. We set to work, ripped up the horrible patch job the previous folks did, jacked up the foundation that was supporting the porch, and by then it was dark.

The next day (Sunday, Mothers day) we went to get our weekly coupons from our favorite dumpster, and then spent the next few hours enjoying our wonderful mothers companies. I got to spend time with  my mom, and Preston got to spend time with his! After that we got right to work finishing the porch. After an interesting trip to Home Depot (3rd time in 2 days) we realized our "cheap one day weekend project" was more pricy than we had thought but still completely worth it.

Once we finally had everything we needed we installed the 2 support beams, the decorative surroundings, and completed the new wooden porch floor. All that is left it to: caulk everything really well, add the trim to the last beam, and paint it all!

Throughout the weekend we had several people drive by slowly, one lady stopped and told us we were doing such a great job and she hadn't realized how "run down this place was until we started fixing it up right" which just made us BEAM!!! It's just so nice to hear from strangers and friends that they notice what we are doing. It just makes it a little sweeter. :-)

Also, somehow on Saturday I got something in my eye and then I was getting eaten up by misquotes, and Preston said "It's just one of those days for you that you shouldn't have gotten out of bed, huh?"

Pictures:
Porch before the dynamic duo of "Preston the destroyer and Bailey  the bad-ass Ragsdale!"

                                                                       

What a good weekend....I love my life. <3

4/20 getting grass!!!

On Saturday morning we were so excited because we were getting GRASS! It was my early birthday present from my amazing husband! Cool your jets people, I know it was 4/20 but it was the LAWN St.Augustine grass! What kind of people do you take us for?

We ended up getting two pallets and we need about 1 to 2 more, it's a blessing and a curse to have a large yard. *sigh* but it is looking AMAZING!!! <3 So after that only taking one not even full day, we knew we had to find another project to do this weekend because that is our favorite time of week. We bust our asses on the weekend but that's when we are the most happy, when we work ourselves to the point of hunger exhaustion and we literally have to feed ourselves to have any kind of energy. That is the best.

After putting in our grass, we went for a bike ride to the square, we just had the best time on our ride passing by houses and talking about the good, bad and the ugly things people do to their houses.

Sunday morning we woke up, went to seek out coupons, jumped into a few dumpsters, and had some success! Then we got home, I made some amazing omelets (not trying to sound full of my self, but they were really good) and we sat out on the front porch and were bored. BORED for the first time on the weekend in almost a year! Since we are too poor to buy more grass right now, and too poor to re do the two bathrooms we are on a limited home improvement budget. After a few minutes I asked Preston "do you know the story of if you give a mouse a cookie?" his response was...yea? I said "we are like the home renovation version, if you till up the yard, you'll want to put in some grass. If you put in some grass, you'll want to paint the picket fence. If you paint the fence, the house will look drab so you'll want to paint that too!" and his response this time was laughter and saying "it prolly wouldn't take much!" and we we set off to get some paint for the house.

Keep in mind, that we have never painted the exterior of a home before, and after getting a 5 gallon of what we thought was the perfect yellow, and a gallon each of the complimentary colors (for the detailed work) we got home ready to paint and realized that perfect yellow had turned out a funky TAN! Not what we wanted, so we went for a bike ride, and looked at the other yellow houses in the area. After finding "our yellow" we knocked on the door and simply asked what color their house was, they said it was "Butter Up" from Sherwin Williams! That ended up to be awesome because thats where we had gotten the 5 gallon tan and thought we could fix it.

After looking at so many different shades of yellow at Sherwin Williams we couldn't take anymore. We were feeling upset, let down, depressed, yellowed out, and without whiskey because we were running errands. We left Sherwin, and the nice manager said to think about it because it's a huge decision and he would take care of us. We went to home depot to get some sample colors and paint them on the house. We have narrowed it down to 3 colors and we are completely torn. We had always figured on paining the house a newer color of it's original color of yellow, but we found an amazing blue. WE NEED YOUR IMPUT!

Below are a few pictures, 1 before, 2 with the Blue siding, red, white, and darker blue trim. and 3 being bicycle yellow (it's a semi gloss paint but we would use a satin or flat so it's not going to be that shiny) dark blue, white, and blue grey trim. And lastly is Butter Up yellow, with dark blue, grey blue and white trim.

Let us know what you think because we are torn!!!!!

Taking back the lawn from hell

So today Preston and I needed to get the yard back in some kind of normal people land. After spending a weekend on it already we decided this needed to happen. After continuing pulling out trees (some we tore out roots and all, so whiskey involved there)

 
So we went to the Home Depot and rented a tiller, which = the best $51.30 we have ever spent. We went C-R-A-Z-Y!!! we tilled up (in 4 hours straight) our whole front yard, it went through most likely more than that tiller had ever been through in it's life. We sent it through everything, vines, rocks, bricks, weeds, broken clay pots, dirt, and the layer of plastic she put over the whole yard (and then covered it up with an inch of tiny pebbles and dirt), shit, and everything else the crazy lady who lived here before us planted.

To give you a picture of what kind of landscaping this crazy woman did is just picture this: if you went to the local home depot and just bought everything you saw and got home and dug a bunch of holes and said yea! This looks so flipping awesome! And everything was placed in the yard as if someone on crack or some other kind of illegal drug had said "YES THAT LOOKS FABULOUS!" that is what the yard looked like prior to the tiller and the incredible duo of Preston and Bailey.

After cleaning the tiller up and returning it to the depot, we got home and raked up the debris, it looked like a massive war zone of plants and plant life. But like our favorite lady on HGTV says she just wants brick, we were saying "we just want grass!" Well to get grass we had some more work getting the yard ready. So we got about 2 loads of dirt, spread it around the whole yard and called it a weekend. Until we looked at our cute white picket fence. It was falling down at one part and we knew we had to fix it. So after working our butts off all weekend and being to the point of exhaustion we were like "oh that won't take long!" We fixed it in a few hours and then after being completely delirious we called it a day.

Throughout the week  I had kind of a Huckleberry Finn kinda week, I painted the almost whole picket fence and it just looks soooooo much better! (see picture below)

When did we put a brick walkway in? I don't remember but it happened.

Living in the Living room!

I found this on my computer, I think the Whiskey set in before this was posted!

If you have ever seen the show “Renovation Realities” on DIY network you might be familiar with DIY. Preston and I love to watch that show and laugh because we have experienced many of the same battles (although, none of them have experienced anything like shit-mageddon. That would have been an amazing episode, or flea ridden home for months, or well-read some of the blogs.) Well, this weekend we decided on a whim to overhaul our living room. It had been a source of anger for months but we had just not quite gotten to it. Our first night at our home we spent the night on boyscout cots to wake up covered in fleas. At 5 am in the morning we ripped out the carpet, under the carpet we found an odd sight: a floor covered in splattered white paint (we thought) about 200 staples with carpet fuzz still attached, and a large section right in the middle of the floor that looked as if whoever had stained the floor had not bothered to move the rug in the center of the room and just stained around it; beautiful, just wonderful. We just put this room off and tried to just live.  A few months went by and one nice evening, Preston and I were having a lovely time watching the newlywed game and of course playing along, and all of the sudden while Preston walked across the room he started shouting and grabbing his foot! Blood started gushing out from his foot and we found that one of the carpet staples had punctured his foot deeply. After that it wasn’t long before we had to get revenge on this living room. 

Well, the time had come and we decided to finally get revenge on this room. Without any real plan of action we began to empty the room, as we went we decided the popcorn ceiling HAD TO GO! Seriously, I would like to find the inventor of popcorn ceilings and punch him in the face.  Once we had decided on ripping out the whole ceiling and painting the walls our attention was drawn to the horrible fireplace, it was like something straight out of 1975 threw up all over it, and as a bonus we found the 102 year old mantle was literally falling off the wall and taking some of the floor trim, and wall paneling with it. After several trips around Floor and Décor we decided on new tile for the fireplace; a beautiful marble tile that looked like it had been sort of distressed. Since neither of us had ever tiled anything before we figured why the heck not just go for it! We are pleasantly pleased with the results. *pictures below*

Once we got to work on the living room we showed it no mercy, it took us 2 days to completely re do this room and we are pooped. During those 2 days we spent many hours demoing the ceiling and painting it with two coats of white paint, repaired the 1970s paneling (yes we repaired it, we don’t have the money to replace it all with drywall and since our house is still on knob and tube we’ll probably have to rip it all out someday anyways. As a side note, to cut paneling the best way is a razor blade, but any way you do it it’s still a pain in the ass) painted the walls a beautiful grey color, repaired 102 year old baseboards, painted the ceiling fan, ripped out and re-tiled the fireplace, and oh! That was all in one day. The next day (Sunday) we decided to take things a little slower, so we grouted the tile work we had finished at 1am, cleaned the floors twice; which ended up not to have paint splattered on it. Nope, it was the droppings from the popcorn ceiling that had been installed; thank goodness they had put carpet over it instead of actually cleaning it like non lazy people. Stained the floor a dark color and we are now just waiting for it to dry so we can polyurethane it. There is a little bit of trim work still to do, but this weekend is almost over and it’s whiskey time.

Oh, PS. Preston’s new nick names are: Preston-the Grout Master-Ragsdale and Preston-demolition-Ragsdale, and mine is: Bailey-the bad ass- Ragsdale and Bailey-the plant killer-Ragsdale. 

P.S.S John Wayne is still the best in my book. Second to Preston of course. 

                                                     

                                             Before: Please note they stained around the rug in the center of the room, there was horrible pop corn ceiling, and the fireplace was just plain terrible. 

 

                                                              After: Yes, thats much better. No trim around the top of the wall, we're going to have a trim party. Blog on that one to come. Also, the walls are the most beautiful grey but the camera phone didn't capture that and the ceiling is white.