Mar
2019

How To Rescue A Hamster From A Glue Trap

categories: Blog

Two words – Olive Oil. We had this unfortunate experience when my youngest daughter had her first play date with a friend from school at our house. My daughter has two little dwarf hamsters which weren’t the best pet pick for a 6 year old. They are super fast and don’t even come close to ever sitting still.

The only way she can hold them is by squeezing them in her fist with only their bulging eyes showing. So, needless to say, they frequently escape and “Catch the Hamster” is the game they end up playing. Well, it was no different when she had this play date. The Catch the Hamster game started. But this time they were having a whole lot of trouble finding her.

So, I called my husband to come down and help. He ended up reclining all the recliners so we could see better under the couches. I laid down on the floor in front of the recliners just to see if I could see her running back and forth. That’s when I see this white box vibrating. The recliners have these white boxes underneath them that hold some of the mechanics of the chairs.

But this box looked different than the other white boxes so I mentioned it to my husband. He reached under the couch and pulled the box out and said yep she’s in here. It was a glue trap! Apparently, our pest control company put this there to catch spiders but they never told us they put it there and really they should’ve known better than to put that there b/c we have hamsters. 🙁  They could’ve easily put that up higher on the window sills or something.  Oh well – too late now.

Immediately, my daughter starts screaming and freaking out. Nooooo, not Marshmalloooow!!!! Aaaaaaah!!!! And it looks like she melts into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West did in the Wizard of Oz.  I try to tell her we have to stay calm to be able to help her. And her friend tries to calm her down too. My husband asks me to get the scissors so I grab the heavy duty kitchen shears. He gets to work trying to cut the box apart so we can have better access to her.

We move to the bathroom and are all watching him cutting the box apart. Meanwhile, I’m thinking the girls shouldn’t be watching this but how do I get them out of here since they were so concerned.  Marshmallow had gotten stuck to the bottom and the side of the box so when he opened the box up she was literally splayed out on the box on her side/back and totally helplessly stuck. At this point, I tell the girls to run up to the bedroom and play in there while we give Marshmallow a bath. I told them she was going to be fine. But I was pretty sure she was going to die. She was so stretched out and not moving AT ALL.  That glue is strong!

My husband struggles to cut the box apart b/c the scissors are sticking to the glue so he asks me to help him. But I was kind of freaking out b/c I was worried that he was going to try to pull this little hamster off the box and she was going to rip in two. As soon as he asking me to get some of his tools from the toolbox, I had visions of him trying to saw her off the box or something. So I thought, “Nope!” and I took off running upstairs.

I run to the computer and google, “How To Rescue A Hamster From A Glue Trap” and multiple articles pop up surprisingly enough. Basically, they said Baby Oil, Olive Oil, many different types of oils. The first thing I could find was Olive Oil so I ran downstairs and doused the hamster in Olive Oil being careful to avoid her eyes, which was hard because as I mentioned they are the bulging type. Then ran back up to see if I can find any other types of oil in case that didn’t work. But I hear Bryon yelling for me to help him again.

So, I run back downstairs and see little Marshmallow sitting in the sink and cleaning herself. I think – it’s a miracle!!!! I did not think she was going to come out of that unscathed – like I thought maybe she’d be missing a hand or something. At that point, the girls come back down and I tell them they can see Marshmallow now. They were so relieved that she was alive. And I was relieved that this play date didn’t end with an animal dying or needing a prosthetic hand – talk about traumatic. They run off to go play again.  All is well.

Bryon told me that all he had to do was massage the oil in a bit and he was able to pretty easily release her – it’s like the oil dissolved the sticking properties of the glue. We then decide we need to wash some of this oil off of her. So, we got the water coming out of the tap to be luke warm and put some baby shampoo on her. She was sitting in Bryon’s hands so still under the running water and moving her head back and forth like she was Stevie Wonder.

It was the cutest thing but at the same time it was alarming to me because she normally doesn’t sit that still. I was starting to wonder if that glue trap had poison in it or something because she wasn’t acting right. But turns out she just liked the warm water because she was fine after that.

She was greasy for about a week and we joked that we were going to now have to call her Smore because much of her white fur got ripped off and she was now more black than white. She eventually got her color back. All’s well that ends well.


Feb
2019

DIY Charm Bracelet

categories: Kids

I am soooo excited! We finally discovered Shrinky Dinks. Apparently these existed even when I was little but back then we just drank out of the hose and played with sticks and rocks so I’m just discovering them now. Today, we made our own charm bracelets!

At first, the idea for making charm bracelets came as I was searching the web for simple (these always turn into more complex the more and more I overthink about them :-p) ideas on a craft to do with the girls at the Girl Scout meeting that I was supposed to lead. Since I’m the cookie mom for one of my girl’s, I led a meeting in which we made cookie charm bracelets which I’ll have some pictures of here.

The original posting that I found was to use yarn as the bracelet, but we found these endless chains at Wal-mart for cheap and since my husband is handy, I enlisted his help to make the bracelet chains. 🙂 He’s the best! :-p Somehow, whenever we do a craft, he ends up being the craft adviser and then eventually a full-time helper b/c I need it and so I don’t end up giving up and spending all our money on Etsy for pre-made stuff. :-p  In that sense, I guess there’s something in it for him too.  

Here’s a picture of the bracelet we made at the girl scout meeting:

That was before we discovered Shrinky Dinks.  Heres one of the shrinky dink bracelets.

Here’s a step by step on how we made our own charm bracelet after discovering Shrinky Dinks.  It also applies to how we made the Girl Scout cookie bracelet as well.

Step 1: Make several trips to Wal-mart over a period of several months.  In fact, just camp out there.  Kidding.  I’m hoping to save you some trips there if I can.  But sometimes I feel like my entire life is a series of Wal-mart trips so if anyone can relate – I feel you.

Here’s what you’ll need:

-Chain (You can find this in the jewelry section at Wal-mart)

-Lobster claws

-Small rings to attach the charms to the lobster claws

-For the girl scout bracelet, I bought those key chain labels that you see above and I printed out pictures of girl scout cookies that I found on the internet.  I pasted the pictures in Word and shrunk them down to the size I needed to fit on the key chain label.  I actually printed them on full-size sticker sheets that I found on Amazon (or you could just glue them on).  I had the girls write the names of the cookies on the back and attach them to the bracelet.  

-For Shrinky Dinks, I bought Shrinky Dinks plastic on Amazon – it’s the Frosted Ruff N’ Ready Creative pack.   

-I also bought a variety pack of different colored fine point permanent markers from Amazon.  

-Standard sized hole punch to punch a hole in the charms

-I also used the tools that you’ll see in the following pictures from my husband’s toolbox.  I don’t know what they are called though so I’ll just leave it at that.  

Step 2: Measure your child’s wrist and make the bracelet bigger than that.  You can’t make it too big b/c you will be able to adjust it later if you need to.  Use the tools below in order to pry open the link in the chain and remove the portion of the chain that you want to use for the bracelet.  

Step 3: Put the lobster claw on the end of the bracelet (the link that you pried open)

Step 4: Close the link back together by pinching it with the following tool

 

Woolah!  Your bracelet is now ready and all you need to do is make the charms to put on it!  Or if you are already kaput by this time, they have a nice shiny silver bracelet and you can call it a day. :-p  Just kidding – now comes the fun part – don’t give up before the fun part!

Step 5: Time to make the charms – this is where the kids get to have some fun!  I printed some pictures off the internet for them to trace to begin with.  We put them under the plastic sheets and they traced and colored in with the permanent markers.  Then once they started to get the hang of it, they began to draw pictures from scratch.  They all turned out sooo cute! 

Remember to have the kids draw pictures three times the size they want the charm – they will shrink down to 1/3 the original size.  Then pop them in the oven.  We used a toaster oven at 325 for 1 to 3 minutes.  As soon as they laid mostly flat, we took them out.  If they were still slightly curled, we flattened them with a spatula but they were mostly flat.

Step 6: Make sure to put a hole in each picture using a standard size hole punch – these will shrink to the perfect size for a charm bracelet charm.

This is the alarming part – they start to curl up and the kids start to freak out and think they are getting destroyed but just wait for the magic to happen..

Step 7: Use these little silver rings to put on the charms.  You can pry them open with a screw driver instead of using your thumb nail like I did – that isn’t fun.

Now for more pictures:

Three Peas in a Pod


Jan
2019

Bike Training 101

categories: Blog

We are now bike training experts.  Two kids down and one to go.  I’ve got the expert tutorial on how to train your kids to ride their bike right here.  And I do hope you know that I am joking.

#1: Make sure you have a proper, functioning bike. The first bike we tried with on the first kid, someone gave to her as a gift and they got it from the secondhand store. Turned out, it wasn’t functioning properly. My husband spent a year using that to teach our child until he realized the bike was the problem. Talk about frustrating for both kid and parent.  I’m sure our kid probably thought – bikes suck.  So, don’t try with second hand bikes is my recommendation.  And also try to make sure that the bike is a proper fit – if the bike is too big then that will intimidate them as well.

#2: Have Fun. This is the hardest part b/c bike training will break you, especially if you have multiple kids. I remember when I was a kid and my dad was bike training me. I didn’t realize it then, but now I know he had the patience of a saint.  He just stayed silent instead of saying what he was really thinking – I never knew how hard that was until I had kids.

I remember being so proud of myself that I was riding a bike without training wheels that I wanted to show my mom. I rode around the front yard in the grass, my head swollen with pride, and promptly ran smack into a low lying tree branch with my forehead.  I was lucky it was my forehead b/c that’s made of steel and pretty expansive. :-p I landed flat on my back.  My mom just turned around slowly and went back inside – I could tell my Dad was going to get it.

My roller blading experience wasn’t any better..  My husband broke his wrist b/c of my roller blading skills or lack thereof.  I have a strategy of throwing myself in the grass instead of using that rubber knob that doesn’t stop anyone. I’m convinced people stop by magic on roller blades.  My husband didn’t realize my strategy of drop and roll instead of using magic and tried to catch me – thereby breaking his wrist. Good thing the kids only get half their athletic genes from me. :-p   

#3: Demonstrate. Don’t be afraid to get on that kid’s bike and show them how it’s done with lots of horsing around. This helps break up some of the tension. If you can fake a fall without hurting yourself, you get extra credit points. :-p

#4: Try, try again.  If they don’t get it this year, they’ll get it next year.  Don’t be afraid to stop for the year and try again next year if things aren’t going well.  Sometimes, they just aren’t ready yet or you just aren’t ready yet ;-).

How you know you are winning? You do so well with the first child that the second child asks you not to bike train her.  She wants her older sister to do it or anybody but you. That’s a win win.  Below is a small video clip of my husband demonstrating to my daughter how not to ride a bike.  For some reason, she kept throwing herself off the bike to stop instead of using the brakes.  It was really scary, I thought she was going to break a bone – good thing kids are made of rubber.  So, of course, my husband had to give a demonstration of what not to do.

Here’s a video of my daughter dive bombing off her bike for no reason (this was about the 20th time she did it):

And here’s a video of my husband (I think he’d lost his mind by this point in the day) and trying to demonstrate what not to do.  I couldn’t look at him without laughing for the rest of the weekend:

Here’s a video of my oldest daughter becoming the newest instructor to her sister:

And now, years later, we have our final bike rider in the family and we were able to achieve our dream of biking the Katy trail as a family last summer. It started out rough because although our daughter had learned to ride in a parking lot, riding on a trail was a different experience. It was a two-way trail which she hadn’t experienced before, so every time bike riders were coming toward her, she threw herself into a ditch – hmmm, wonder where she got that from?

My husband was a bit frazzled so I had to step in here. Sometimes you have to save the other parent. Eventually, we were able to talk to her and figured out why she was throwing herself off the trail and I had her follow directly behind me and focus on me and not the people coming towards her. She was so brave and didn’t give up. Knees all scraped up and frazzled, she made it all the way to the restaurants in downtown St Charles and we had a nice lunch at a Mexican restaurant and some ice cream at an ice cream shop. Super proud that day, but best of all I could see my daughter was beaming with pride herself. So, it was all worth it. This gravel trail does instill some grit in you.

on her way
the group – we made it
open road

Dec
2018

Freaky Friday moments..

categories: Blog

Ever get reminded of adult problems when your kids are having kid problems? Ever get that feeling while you are lecturing your child about something that you are actually lecturing yourself? This blog post is starting to sound like an ad for a prescription.  :-p  But it’s not, unfortunately.  I’ll call these Freaky Friday moments, like the movie.  I get that feeling quite often as well as my children frequently turn the tables on me mid-lecture or even lecture me themselves now.  In this way, we keep each other in check. I can’t get away with anything anymore and neither can they – not without a good lecture, that is. I even have a little box I like to stand on – just kidding. Here are some of our Freaky Friday moments:

Getting injured:
One morning my daughter got hurt while monkeying around with her sister. She hurt her bum. So, I unwisely, decide to lecture her after her other sisters head to school. She was complaining about her bum hurting and I told her she has to be careful when monkeying around because that’s when she usually gets hurt (not my best logic, I know, b/c monkeying around implies not being careful, but whatever – details..). Her response: ya, well you need to be careful in the shower because you could be hurt in there – I saw a commercial about it. Really?!? Was it one of those fallen and can’t get up commercials? B/c that’s not funny.. Touche.. Don’t mess with that one – she’s got ammo.

Words of wisdom:
Words of wisdom from my child one morning when I was particularly grouchy: “You just have to be like Frosty the Snowman!”. She begins singing in a cute, chipper, and loud 4 year old voice before I’d had my coffee: “Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul…” I had to keep myself from explaining, “but he was a fairy tale they say..” and even if he wasn’t he probably had an entire pot of coffee or something else before he was that jolly. I mean, why’d he have a pipe? Now that song is back in my head – thumpetty, thump, thump, thumpetty, thump, thump is the sound of kids upstairs..

Shopping:
I was feeling very low energy one day so I decided we would just take a field trip to Wal-Mart and kill two birds with one stone.  I get some groceries and play it off like it’s a fun outing to “Wally-mart”.  Turns out Wal-Mart shopping with the kids takes the most energy.

I spent most of my time asking them if they are in someone’s way. I feel like I should pay someone to run them over with a shopping cart one day so that they will have an impactful moment in their life that will help them to remember to check if they are in someone’s way. Ok, that’s a little harsh – maybe just bump into them with a shopping cart and give them a dirty look or something. I’m surprised that hasn’t happened already – what usually happens is the inconvenienced customer gives me a dirty look. And I want to tell people, you don’t know how I’ve tried – trust me I feel your pain. :-p I feel like me reminding them constantly to get out of people’s way saves them from the consequences that would actually help them think for themselves. 

But I digress – as I was saying – then we pass by the toy aisle and of course they NEED to spend some of their allowance money. One child was seriously considering this poop emoji stuffed pillow for her room.. Well, technically, it would match b/c her room colors are pink and brown.. I had this thought that maybe I could find some more poop themed decor for her room and make it look real put together.

This definitely parallels to adult hood. When I feel like spending some money, I spend a whole lot of time in the colored box aisle looking for the perfectly colored storage boxes or decorative pillows. I will stand there for hours staring at the pillows – it’s kind of crazy-making like shopping for toys is. And do I really need them? – no. The girls remind me of that everytime we go shopping for home decor just like I remind them of that everytime we go near a toy aisle.  They are like, ugh – Mommy, you aren’t even going to put anything in the boxes!  Which is true, in fact, I like the way the boxes look but I never actually get around to organizing.  :-p  I just like to stage the house like I’m organized but really everything is hidden in closets inside Wal-mart bags and completely unlabeled.

Making the Bed:
One night, my child’s idea of making the bed is covering it in 4 blankets and 5 strategically placed stuffed animals-and by strategically placed I mean they looked like they were set up to have a tea party. When I ask her to get in the bed she says, “How do I get in?”. Um I don’t know – very carefully.. Then, everytime a stuffed animal got knocked over she proceeded to have what appeared to be a seizure or some kind of possession for which I might need to call an exorcist.. Poor toddlers- why do they have to make life so hard for themselves? It was actually painful to watch..

But then I got to thinking that this is why I don’t actually make my bed because I sort of feel the same way with all the decorative pillows, throws,etc..😛 Now, how do I get in? I don’t want to mess this up. Maybe I’ll go sleep on the couch. We do the same thing to ourselves as adults, eh?


May
2018

Being a Parent is 90% about being roasted

categories: Blog, Kids

That was a tweet on Twitter.  I wish I could remember who so I could give them credit.  I totally agree with this tweet.  And since I have a few budding comediennes in the family, I get roasted quite a bit.  But it’s OK, I actually find it pretty hilarious – most of the time.  There are also those times though that are just plain embarrassing.  These are a few of my roasts:

Dinner with family visiting

My sister came in town for a visit with her family for a weekend and she had never seen our house before.  They were going to stay the weekend at our house.  Now, you know if you have kids that it’s scary to have people stay over night b/c you don’t really know what all is lurking in your kid’s rooms.  I knew we had to do a thorough deep clean.  I cleaned all the bathrooms – even the showers!  We finally cleaned the kid’s rooms and this wasn’t me just telling them to clean and them shoving everything under the bed and in the closet.  I knew that wasn’t going to fly with adults staying in their rooms.  I actually put on my hazmat suit and went into each of their closets – the horror.

It took days maybe weeks to get the house into decent shape for company.  I even cut the glitter glue out of my daughter’s bedroom carpet.  She managed to spill half a bottle of glitter glue on her carpet.  Don’t ask me how because they aren’t allowed to have any glue in their rooms.  But this glue had dried into a hazardous shape.  I mean it basically dried into a knife and like it would tear your foot off if you stepped on it.  Luckily, it was in a corner of a room and I had placed a book on top of it so it wouldn’t tear my daughter’s foot off.  However, company was coming and what if they picked up the book unknowingly and ended up losing a toe.  I couldn’t have that.  So, I got the good scissors and hacked away at the carpet.

My daughters were watching me do all this and apparently taking notes.  My sister and her family arrived and we pretended that our house is always this clean even though inside we were feeling like visitors in our own home – lol.  The only thing amiss was that there were gnats circling our heads occasionally.  We must’ve thrown so much junk in the trash cans that gnats flocked to our house from around the globe.  We probably had Costa Rican gnats here.

Anyway, all was well until the last night we had dinner at a nice restaurant and I made the mistake of mentioning cleaning.  My daughter’s eyes lit up and she was like now that you mention cleaning my Mom went crazy cleaning the house before you came!  She spent weeks!  She was running around like a chicken with her head cut off.  I really wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth at this point but that would’ve been rude.  She continued.  She even cut stuff out of our carpet and tossed everything out of our closets!   She kept telling us why do we have to be such big pigs..  Yada Yada Yada..  Ya, I definitely got roasted like a pig that night.  But I was laughing pretty hard in an insane put me in a straight jacket sort of way.  :-p

Craft time

The one time I made the signs for the Girl Scout cookie booth but they turned out awful and I told everyone my daughters worked really hard on them.  My daughter was in the background with a shocked look on her face like she didn’t know what I was talking about.  lol.  Ya, totally called me out.

Mother’s day

All the moms got invited up to the school for Mother’s day tea at my daughter’s preschool and the kids had prepared an All About My Mom worksheet for all their moms.  So sweet, right?  The teacher read them out loud that day for fun.

Just to give you some background: I was very pregnant with my third daughter at the time.  And my mom had been in town visiting for a couple of weeks to help out.  So, the question on the sheet of paper was – what is your Mom’s favorite thing to do?  So many cute answers – my mom loves quilting, my mom loves cooking, my mom loves reading to me, my mom loves … well, me.  All the moms are oohing and aahing – oh, how sweet.  Isn’t that precious!  Then, we get to me and my daughter had written – my mom’s favorite thing to do is…  Watch TV.

Really?  You couldn’t have put laundry, or dishes, or all the other things I do – maybe b/c I complain too much about those? – lol.  I admit I was watching alot of TV at the time because I was trying to entertain my mom without talking since I was a hormonal very pregnant person.  As soon as my mom started talking about how I should take Livatox (liver cleanser – you’d have to know my mom), I would discreetly turn up the volume.  But usually I don’t have a whole lot of time to watch TV.  Needless to say, everyone in the room was laughing – some a little too hard. :-p  Ya, definitely roasted that day.  :-p  Or as my daughter likes to put it: Roasted, Toasted, ….   And Grilled.

Homework

Then, there’s the time my daughter’s teacher roasted me.  Whenever I would help my daughter with her homework in Kindergarten or First Grade – can’t remember which.  I stopped helping with homework early on!  My daughter’s papers would come home with, “Read the Directions..” or “Needs work!”.  Whenever my husband would help her with homework, the papers would come home with, “Great Job!!!” and a sticker.  Or, “Your daughter’s really progressing!” and a sticker.

It was kind of demoralizing and a running joke in our house.  I still occasionally put in my two cents with homework though but I’m not really sure if I’m helping or hindering.  :-p  Common core is not my forte.  Like, why should we have to explain in words why 2+2=4?  I loved my daughter’s answer for one of these math questions.  It was an addition word problem question and she answered it: 3+2=5.  Then, the follow up question was: How do you know this answer?  And she wrote: Because I read the words or (becs I red the wrds in her first grade spelling).  I was like Yes, Exactly!!!  Self explanatory!

What do you want to be when you grow up?

My one daughter roasted herself at her preschool graduation, then me.  Her preschool put on a big celebration where all the kids were supposed to think about what they wanted to be when they grow up.  The teacher took pictures of them with their chosen dream occupation and they played a slide show at the graduation.  The kids all were holding signs like, “Engineer”, “Doctor”, “Astronaut”, “Scientist”, and there’s my daughter with her sign that says, “Checkout Lady”.  And she even had this exhausted, miserable expression on her face as if she’s been dealing with difficult people all day – lol.

The room erupted in laughter and I could tell she felt bad but she played it off.  Later, she asked me why everyone was laughing at her and I told her, “well there’s nothing wrong with being a checkout lady but it’s just that people don’t usually think of that as their dream profession, it’s more like a necessary profession.”  She said, Mom aren’t you going to have to be a check out lady?  B/c at this point, I had been staying at home with the kids for 10 years.  I was like well I don’t know  – I felt bad but I played it off as well.  :-p

I know there are a million other times I’ve been roasted.  Those are just the ones that I can think of in the moment.  Marshmallows do taste better roasted though don’t they?  I think so.  Though I do kind of fantasize about the day when my kids are older and they have kids of their own and I get my chance to roast them.  I imagine being kind of a Betty White (as opposed to Betty Crocker) grandmother.  Though I’ll use some of Betty Crocker’s products to make the grandkids some yummy treats.  But I do tell the kids to please invite me to their family dinners on occasion so I can do an impression of each one of them when they were little at the dinner table.  It would just make my life to be able to come full circle with that.  :-p  Although, I may not get invited back.  Whatever – It’d be worth it.  :-p

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Feb
2018

Pet Cemetery

categories: Blog, Kids

Having animals is a great way to teach your kids about death.  So begins our foray into having pets with kids.  When the kids were little, I would think there is no way I’m adding to my workload by having pets and small kids.  Having small kids is so. much. work.  Besides our own house looked like a hamster habitat with tunnels and slides everywhere, shredded toilet paper all over the floor, etc.  Don’t ask how the toilet paper got shredded all over the floor but small kids like to shred stuff – like whatever they can get their hands on.  Styrofoam is definitely a favorite.  Kids: “Mommy we are having so much fun!  We made snow in the living room!”.  Me: “Oh for the love of …  “.  That stuff is so hard to vacuum up – you feel like you are in a snow globe with all those pieces flying around – an angry mom snow globe.  But now that they are getting older and able to take care of things a little more (in theory), I figure let’s try it.

It has definitely increased my workload or my wordload because I’m constantly having to tell the girls to feed them and water them and clean up after them but the little furry animals are so worth it.  It’s hard to have a bad day when you see a little furry animal nibbling on a piece of apple – too cute.  And I get to hold a little furry animal while watching a movie – instant stress reliever.

One of my daughters is pretty allergic to cats and dogs so we needed to get something non-allergy inducing.  Therefore, our first foray into having pets was fish.  We thought my daughter definitely can’t be allergic to fish and we were right.  So, we got 5 of them and in about a month we were down to only one.  I remember my daughter coming downstairs one day laughing hysterically and saying that Flashy, her favorite fish, was swimming upside down and waving Hi to the rest of her fishy friends.  She was having so much fun!  I was like uh oh.  She was devastated when I informed her that Flashy was in fact dead.  I mean, it was a full on telenovela.  With three girls, there’s alot of emotions in this house.

I don’t remember being that sad when my pets died when I was little but maybe that was because we had so many.  Everytime one died, it was like – eh – I have 20 others (we lived in the country).  Maybe we developed that toughness over time though because, it seemed like every morning one of the cats got killed when we turned the car on because they crawled up inside the car to keep warm.  It was pretty traumatic.  Also, we did things differently back then.  If they got sick, then my dad put them out of their misery.  He was the executioner.  :-/  My poor dad.

Fish were so much work though and they weren’t cute and cuddly so I thought we have to get something furry next. We decided to go with hamsters.  We went to the pet store and I had my daughter take a big whiff of the hamsters to see if she was allergic.  I had her inhaler and benadryl ready.  All went well.  No hives and no asthma.

But we did have a Saturday night live skit going on at the pet store.  The sales lady really did not like hamsters and said everything she could to dissuade us.  We learned from her that:

1.) Hamsters stink – like, really stink. It’s not just the cage- the rodent itself really stinks.

2.) We were worried about allergies- lo and behold, everyone in the store she used to work at was allergic to them..

3.) Hamsters bite- she wouldn’t let the kids touch them unless they are wearing heavy duty gloves.  Their teeth are big.

4.) She says-how about a big rat? Those are better and more friendly too.  Or a hedgehog.  Or a sugar glider- we don’t sell them but they are supposedly really fun.  Or a ferret.  Or a guinea pig.  Or anything but a hamster.

5.) I asked if they sell alot of hamsters because I was concerned it would be gone by Christmas.  My daughter had a specific one she liked and it wasn’t possible to put it on layaway (😛).  She said yes they sell alot but people usually bring them back after a couple of weeks.😬

So, needless to say, we bought the hamster anyway with lots of trepidation.  It never bit us. It was the sweetest hamster ever.  I was expecting it to turn into Godzilla any day but it never did.  We named her Flynn.  It did however end up dying a week later.

We kept it in the basement just in case my daughter ended up being allergic to it.  And one of us left the cage open.  It got out and one of my girls discovered it was missing in the morning.  They were searching all over the basement for it.  I was getting ready and told them I’d be down in a second.  I  just said in passing that it might have gone in the pipes down there or something.  My daughter was like hmmm pipes and then it looked like a light bulb went off in her head.

She runs back downstairs and then after a couple of minutes I hear alot of screaming.  Oh great, why’d I have to say pipes.  Well, they followed all the pipes in the basement and decided that it might be in the sump pump then they decided it probably wasn’t.  My other daughter looked in there and said I think it is.  They ran and got their Flashlight Friends (little stuffed animals with flashlights on their bellies) and shined them into the sump pump.  There was Flynn floating on the top of the water – dead.  Ugh.

We gave her a proper burial the next day.  I was not going to fish it out of the sump pump at the time.  Though they wanted me to take her out and give her mouth to mouth – I had to assure them that she was definitely dead.

After a couple of weeks, we thought we’d get another hamster because we felt bad about the first one.  We picked a hamster that looked exactly like Flynn because that’s what our daughter wanted.  But he was nothing like Flynn.  We called him Bryon jr because Bryon never got a namesake – we have all girls.

He absolutely never stopped going, going, going.  He was not at all afraid of heights.  Everytime he encountered a drop off, he just did what we would call, “easy does it”, and slowly lower himself until he dropped about 4 feet and bounced like rubber.  The first time he saw a ceiling fan, he had a little hamster explosion.  If you can imagine this, it’s hard to imagine, but a hamster starring in a horror movie and about to get slaughtered.  That’s what he looked like.  He let out a hamster scream/gurgle and raised his hands up in the air and everything.  We thought he was having a seizure.  He was hilarious.  He ended up dying after about a year.

We also got a mouse who is super sweet and docile.  She doesn’t move much – she likes to just hang out.  Her cage does require more maintenance though.  But she is very timid and scared of heights which is funny because she has the ability to climb more so than Bryon jr did.  She is still alive and happy and sweet as ever.  I highly recommend a mouse except you will have to clean the cage out more frequently.  When we went to buy our mouse, that same lady at the pet store got down to my daughter’s level and looked her right in the face and said, “Are you prepared to clean that cage out twice a day?”.  Lol.  She apparently doesn’t like mice either.  :-p  You really don’t have to clean the cage out that often – maybe twice a week, but sometimes we do just once and it’s fine.

Now, we have ventured into being guinea pig owners.  They are so sweet!  We have 2 girl baby guinea pigs and we love them.  They are pretty docile.  You can just sit and hold them while you watch a movie.  They aren’t as on the go as hamsters (I guess depends on the personality), but the ones we have aren’t.  They get to be about the size of a half loaf of bread is what we are told so you have to have enough space for them.  I imagine they will be sitting at our breakfast counter eating cereal when they get older.  :-p

UPDATE: We’ve already lost a guinea pig – it died.  One tip: don’t get the calm ones at the store – apparently, it means they are half dead.  At least, that’s our experience.  Or maybe the one we have is a a serial killer.  I don’t know – but she’s better off in a cage alone regardless of what the lady at the store said.  She did not like having a roommate.  She kind of bullied the other one.  So, use your judgement on whether to get one or two.

The reason I titled this blog post Pet Cemetery is because animals have a short life so there will be alot of death involved and everytime my kids will be like, “I would give anything to have Flynn [insert every animal name here] back.  ANYTHING.  I would give up EVERYTHING in this house.”  And all I can envision is our poor little hamster coming back from the dead like the movie and dragging itself up the driveway and knocking on the door.  I’m baaaack!  Of course, we wouldn’t even hear it knocking because it’s so small.  It would be waiting out there a loooong time.  Then, one of us would probably just exit the front door one day and smush it so it’s not that scary but whatever.  I guess that’s why they have a scary cat not a hamster in that movie.  I need to watch that movie again or maybe I don’t.  Creepy.  And girls please don’t say you’ll give up EVERYTHING – it freaks me out!  :-p


Dec
2017

IKEA Reno #2

categories: Realty

This was our second full gut job of a rental unit.  It’s been 6 months or so now since we completed it I just haven’t had a chance to post.  We chose many of the same options that we chose in our last gut job because those are still all my favorite options.  That’s one thing that’s hard in renovating real estate is that you want to update to what will appeal to anyone and not make it too custom so I try to pick neutrals.  There’s only so many options and I still have my favorites.

Anyway, even in my own house I try to pick neutrals because you can always add color (or rooster decor j/k) in other ways but it’s expensive to replace more permanent things like a counter top, etc. We had backsplash with a rooster in it before – I’m sure that used to be appealing back in the day.  No, I’m not really sure that used to be appealing back then – were roosters in? Was that a thing? That’s why I don’t do trendy stuff b/c you never know if someone just temporarily lost their mind and everyone followed or if it’s really a good idea. So if I’m feeling like picking out custom rooster tile, I try hard to talk myself down from it.

With this unit we tried to be better at working on all the rooms at the same time since that’s where we got so delayed on the last unit – mainly because we were trying to do all the work ourselves.  This time, we decided to hire out most of the larger items like flooring, kitchen, and bathrooms and we just worked on some of the smaller items which is still time consuming enough.

Flooring:

So, the first thing we had to figure out in this unit was the flooring and not just the flooring but the subfloor as well!  This was an upstairs unit and I literally felt like I had to tiptoe around up there because the floor was so squeaky.  It turns out the people who constructed the building in the 60’s didn’t use 3/4″ plywood for the subfloor as is the standard today.  They actually used 1 inch thick soundproof fiberboard for the subfloor which would’ve been great if they’d put plywood under it.  But the fiberboard flexes and caused a bunch of the nails to come out which was causing it to be super squeaky and flexy.  I literally felt like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh up there bouncing around every time I walked.  It just didn’t feel solid to me.  I wasn’t at all comfortable with it.  The people who have lived below this unit must’ve been super annoyed with all the noise.  We also had a section that was not level by about 2 inches which could’ve just been caused by not having the proper subfloor support – who knows.

First thing we did was hire a contractor to attach sister joists to the joists that were lower to raise them up.  We made sure there was no other damage before doing it and we couldn’t see any.  Then, we had the contractor put 1/2 inch plywood on top of the entire subfloor over the entire unit and secure it through to the joists with 3 inch screws.  He also glued the plywood to the existing subfloor which I was honestly nervous about because I’d rather not use glue since taking it up will be a nightmare, but he insisted it would be better so we just went with it.  We don’t ever plan to take up this new subfloor combo so it’s fine.

It made the biggest difference.  The floor is no longer flexing and moaning.  Then, we put some wood laminate over the top of it with a sound barrier rubber layer underneath it for extra soundproofing.  I think the people downstairs will be much happier now.  We ordered the wood laminate from Lumber Liquidators.  It’s a dark brown wood look color – Farmland Hickory Engineered Vinyl Plank flooring 7mm thick.  But the best thing about it is that it’s water proof.  It was $2.40/sq ft and $2/sq ft installed, which is pricey but we’ve started going with Vinyl Plank in all our units since it lasts so much longer than carpet and people just like it alot better so it’s easier to attract good tenants.

The kitchen flooring had gotten water on it at some point so it was kind of squishy.  We had to pull that up and saw a layer that looked like it could be asbestos.  I sent a piece in to get tested and it turned out not to be – woohooo!!!!!!!!!!!  You have no idea how much of a relief that was.  I had nightmares about that.  So, we were able to get that taken up and we put the same Farmland Hickory EVP down in the kitchen.

Electric:

The building had old electric panels which we had started to upgrade with each renovation since they were Zinsco panels which are no longer up to code.  With this unit though, we needed to upgrade all the panels for the entire building and Ameren was requiring us to move the meters from the garage to the outside of the building.  All we could see was dollar signs on this one.

But AMF electric company really came through for us.  Don Kentch was the manager on the project and he really gave us an excellent price and made quick work of it.  I literally got about 13 companies to come out and bid on this and so many of them just didn’t want to do the work which was shocking to me because we were willing to pay.  They just came and told us not to do it – it’s going to be too expensive and take too long. But, for us, it was important to get it done so that the building is safe and up to code and that’s not what we wanted to hear.  AMF came in with an amazing quote (really fair price) and wasn’t scared of doing hard work. I was very impressed with them.  And this way we were also able to get more lines run to the kitchen we were about to redo because modern day kitchens need more electrical than kitchens did in the 60’s.  Win-win.

Kitchen:

We chose to do another IKEA kitchen.  The thing I like about IKEA for rentals is that if the tenants damage a cabinet door or something then all we have to do is get a replacement door from IKEA which is significantly cheaper than all new cabinets.  This time though we hired IKEA to do the installation instead of doing it ourselves.  That was a great call.  It took them 3 days vs us taking 3 months.  The installation cost about $2,000.  So. Worth. It.  Unless you just want the experience of installing a kitchen yourself which I understand – I find that fun as well but sometimes you don’t have time for that.  For the backsplash tile, we chose a longer subway tile from Home Depot and they installed for us.  We also got a black quartz countertop from Home Depot that they installed.  We opened up the doorway to the kitchen by removing the cowboy doors and door frame.  For information on our DIY IKEA install, see this post: IKEA Kitchen Install

Bathrooms:

We had the same contractor do our bathrooms again and chose similar tile for the wall and floor.   This time we got a combo fan light put in place for extra lighting in the hall bathroom.  This was a bit of a pain this time around because our contractor had a helper this time and he wasn’t as experienced.  The master bathroom kept having leaks so we had to call our plumber out to fix the plumbing work on the shower drain.  Then they didn’t seal the grout so we found that was leaking – once we sealed the grout and resealed the shower surround all the leaks stopped.  Luckily, our tenant that lived downstairs was out of town on vacation during that time so we were able to have unfettered access into her apartment to cut out her bathroom ceiling and continue retesting for leaks after every fix.  Wow, that was alot of work thinking back on it and kind of stressful.  Water leaks in a building are the worst.

Before and After Pictures:

Dining Room/Living Room – Before

Dining Room/Living Room – Before

Dining Room/Living Room – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Master Bedroom – Before

Master Bedroom – After

Second Bedroom – Before

Second Bedroom – After

Third Bedroom – Before

Third Bedroom – After

Hall Bathroom – Before

Hall Bathroom – After

Hall Bathroom – After

Master Bathroom – Before

Master Bathroom – After

Common Area – Downstairs Front

I have another post on how to make these wall hangings in Home Decor.  They cost me like $6 each but I like the color added.

Common Area – Upstairs Front

There’s posts on how to make these wall hangings in Home Decor.


Jul
2017

Yarn Wreaths

categories: Home Decor, Kids

 As I was looking up how to make a pine cone wreath, I saw this cute idea for a yarn wreath. I like to do crafts with my girls. Well, scratch that. I like to do crafts and my girls like to do crafts so I try to find stuff we can do together. There’s usually some drama but more fun than drama. But so it goes with any family together time. :-p It’s fun with a tinge of drama – as long as none of us takes the cake with the drama then we are good.

What you will need:
Styrofoam wreath (we bought ours at Joann’s) – Or you can duct tape 2 pool noodles together..
Felt to coordinate with the yarn colors (for the rosettes – we bought ours at Joann’s)
Yarn (assorted colors – we chose a max of 2 colors per wreath because it can get tangly – one would be even easier)
Pins (for the rosettes)
Spray glue
Good scissors
Stapler

To make the wreath:

1.) To start, we stapled the yarn to the wreath with three staples, then used the spray glue and sprayed the wreath in that beginning spot (just a little section) and wrapped around a few times – this made it extra secure.

2.) Every time you wrap around, you have to put the balls of yarn through the wreath which ended up being hard with my little one’s wreath because she picked such a small wreath but she insisted the smallest kid has to have the smallest wreath – lol.

3.) Then just keep wrapping the yarn around and spraying the spray glue every once in a while to make it extra secure.

4.) I wrapped the yarn around the wreath twice to make sure all the white was covered.  One of my daughters wrapped once and the other wrapped haphazardly so who knows how many times she went around. They all turned out fine. Once you get to the end tie a knot in the yarn and you are done with the wrapping of the wreath.

Time to make the rosettes or whatever you want to call them.  I tried to find pre-made felt creations at the store that I could just glue on, but I didn’t find anything that I liked and the girls kept wanting to buy poop emoji  and other ridiculous (sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) stuff which I thought would ruin their wreath so I abandoned that idea and told them we were just going to make our own things to glue on.  Luckily, I found this site that taught me how to make rosettes and also luckily the girls didn’t have any ideas to make poop emojis out of felt – dodged a bullet there.  I like to roll the R when I say rosettes – try it it’s fun.  I nicknamed my little one Rosa for the day because she was a rosette making beast.

To make the rosettes:

1.) Trace a circle onto the felt using whatever you can find.  I used a peanut butter jar that had about a 4 inch diameter, a coaster with a 3 inch diameter and also a circle from our Twister game which was the largest – about 6 inch diameter.  We traced all of these on the different colored felt then cut them out.

2.) Next, cut a spiral out of the circle (make a snake).  That’s not confusing at all, right?  Here’s a picture (as you can tell, you don’t even have to be great at cutting):

3.) Then, roll up the snake into a rosette starting with the tail of the snake.  Here’s a picture (I always wanted to be a hand model):

4.) Last, put a pin through the rosette to hold it together, then hot glue it to the wreath wherever you want it.

One thing to be careful of when making the wreath is to make sure that you don’t have too much line of yarn because it will get tangled very easily. I did have to get out quite a few tangles, but it wasn’t so bad because we were doing all of this while watching TV so we were sufficiently entertained/distracted. I prefer to be distracted when doing crafts because it calms me – music or TV. I also like to have something called Sleepytime Tea which also calms the nerves or at least that’s what the package says – that’s enough to convince me. The stocker at Wal-mart got a real good laugh when I asked him what aisle the sleepytime tea was in (he asked me what kind of tea I was looking for – should’ve made something else up)..

My 9 and 8 year old did theirs all by themselves. They used different strategies to get them done but both look great. My 5 year old couldn’t do the wreath but she did make all her rosettes by herself which completely blew my mind b/c cutting the felt is rather tedious. My 8 year old agreed to make my 5 year old’s wreath for her as long as I promised to let her use the glue gun. I was really nervous that she was going to burn half her face off but it worked out fine. You just have to keep your expectations low like I do. :-p My 8 year old actually glued most of the rosettes on all the wreaths except mine (because I didn’t want to freak out if she messed mine up). And she did better than I probably would’ve done.

We all did ours our own way. My oldest wrapped the yarn haphazardly. She wasn’t able to cover all the white of the styrofoam wreath this way, but it still looks great I think and she got done way quicker than the rest of us. My 8 year old meticulously did hers to cover all the white on the first wrap around because she did NOT want to have to wrap it around again. I wrapped mine around twice in order to cover all the white and I didn’t worry too much about having mine twisted I didn’t mind it being a bit messy or mummy-like.

Cara (my 8 year old) made up this saying we used whenever anyone critiqued any of our wreaths while we were working: “I tried and I tried and all you want to do is blame me.” But you have to say it in kind of a drawn out Minnie Mouse accent type of voice and really drag every syllable out. Here’s a link to Cara’s voice: Voice_170713_1[1]  This had us cracking up the whole time. Once, I got annoyed with Cara because she really tangled up her yarn (and I was of course the designated detangler) and she said this and had us cracking up so the rest of us used it too. This came in handy to break up the intensity of crafting.  So, I say to Sydney after an hour of her making her wreath that I’m not so sure about her strategy because the white will still be showing, etc.  She says, “I tried and I tried…”  LOL.

I used this website as my guide for the wreath: http://millionmoments.net/2013/01/how-to-make-yarn-wreath.html

And this website as my guide for the rosettes: http://millionmoments.net/2013/09/make-felt-flowers-rosettes.html

Here’s a pic of the kids all hard at work:


Feb
2017

Our First Real Estate Baby

categories: Renovation

We did so much on this unit that it’s broken down into several posts.  Since it took us 9 months to complete, we are calling it our first real estate baby.  Hope no one drops it on it’s head!  :-p

We decided to DIY an IKEA kitchen:
See post on IKEA kitchen (4 part post):IKEA Kitchen Planning Design

Ceiling Fans:
We had an electrician put ceiling fans in all the rooms.  See this post on Ceiling Fans:Ceiling Fans

Patched Holes from Ceiling Fans:
See post on patching the holes: Patching Holes

Repainted all walls, ceilings, window trims, & closet doors.
For the paint colors, see this post: Lighter Shade Of Gray

Doors:
Installed all new 6-panel doors throughout.

Opened up the doorway from the dining room to the kitchen:
See this link: Opening a Doorway

Duct Work:
We had to fix the duct work in the garage that was dented in pretty badly. We hired Morgner Heating & A/C to come out and put new duct work in.

Flooring:
We put new flooring throughout.  See this post on the flooring: Trying out Pergo XP in the Rental.  We actually used Allure Ultra in the kitchen because it is even more resistant to water.  They look so similar in color, don’t they?  You can hardly tell they are two different types of flooring.  We actually lucked out there because we didn’t even have a sample of the kitchen flooring – I ordered it online.  It’s called Sawcut Dakota.  We had Home Depot install it.

Bathrooms:
See this post on the bathroom gut: From Potty To Powder Room 03/2016

Repaired bathroom ceiling:
We had an issue while renovating where we had to repair the bathroom ceiling (after it had already been renovated.):Repairing Ceiling Water Leak

Shelf Liners:
I like to put shelf liners in the drawers and cabinets to protect them.  For some of the shelves (like the ones that are already damaged), I do permanent liners.  But for the new shelves, I do temporary, removable liners with no adhesive.

Here’s the before and after pictures of the unit:

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Kitchen – Befoe

Kitchen – After

Kitchen Entry

Living Room – Before

Dining Room – Before

Dining Room/Living Room – After

Master Bedroom – Before

Master Bedroom – After

Second Bedroom – Before

Second Bedroom – After

No Before Picture for the Third Bedroom

Third Bedroom – After

Hall Bathroom – After

Master Bathroom – After


Jan
2017

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches

categories: Renovation

If you are interested in reading part 3, it is here: IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres – Cabinet Install

Now, it’s time for the finishing touches – filler pieces, cover panels, doors (can we just do without those? :-p), drawers, handles, toe kicks, crown molding, oh my.

Fillers
First, the filler pieces.  Originally, we were going to do a little less than 2 inches of filler on each side of the cabinets on the long wall until we realized the vent for the microwave (vents to the outside) needed to be within the 30 inch cabinet that is above the microwave.  Uh oh – you will say that often during this process.  So, we left no gap on one side of the cabinets (pantry side).  Luckily, the wall was very level on that side – miracles do exist and the pantry fit snug against the wall with no gap.  Hallelujah!  And the clouds did part then.

We then had to leave about a 3 1/2 inch gap on the other side, however, which wasn’t ideal but it was what it worked out to be.  It did help to keep the drawers on that side from hitting the window sill but we probably only really need a 2 inch gap for that.  Oh well, it looks fine, I think.  Nothing a little caulk won’t fix.  Just kidding – that’s been my answer to everything on this project.  You can use it too if it helps you sleep at night.

That side of the wall is very not level though so we read about this thing called scribing.  It’s some nonsense you do with a compass.  But, of course, we bought the jankiest compass because it was the only one Home Depot sold.  I do not recommend using a janky compass – get a good one that locks in place.  The one we got, kept moving as I was trying to draw the line.

This is how scribing works:  You cut the filler panel down to be about an inch wider than the gap between the cabinet and wall.  Then, you clamp (if you can, otherwise hold in place) this filler panel to the cabinet and make sure that the overlap of the filler panel and cabinet is the same at the top and the bottom (this will create a gap on the side that is against the wall on one end or the other).  Finally, open the compass to the same width as the overlap.  Keeping one side of the compass against the wall, you then draw a line onto the filler panel.  Use a table saw to cut along the line.  When you have a janky compass like ours, this line is not very reliable. Though it did work out ok for us – I just had to draw and redraw that line and we picked the darkest line because that meant I drew it more than once in that spot.  :-p

This scribing thing is a blast guys – especially when the other person is breaking their back trying to hold the panel in place while you look completely incompetent with a janky compass.  Note: explaining that the compass is janky doesn’t make you look any less incompetent – more like an incompetent person making excuses.  We couldn’t clamp our panel in place because of the position of the cabinet to the wall.  So, trying to hold the panel in place such that neither side moves (like when you breathe, for example) and you have to re-measure the overlap again and again is pretty comedic in an insane laughing out loud to yourself sort of way.  The last thing the compass scriber wants to hear is, “Doh!  It moved again!”.  You both will look like a bunch of incompetent, grouchy, nut cases – save yourself.

Here’s what I would recommend doing instead of scribing if your wall is pretty straight.  Find out the distance of the gap between the wall and cabinet at the top and the distance of the gap at the bottom and mark those two distances on the filler piece then get a straight edge and draw a line between them.  Be sure to tape this area that you are about to cut – helps to keep the wood from splintering.  Use a table saw to cut along that line.  Use the precision blade if you have it (helps reduce splintering as well).  It’s better to cut it wider than you need and then use a belt sander where needed to get it perfectly to size.  This belt sander thing works wonders.  Definitely buy a belt sander – do not try to sand by hand – trust me on this.  Caulk will fill in any gaps if it’s not perfect.  This is what we did on the other side instead of scribing and it worked out fine.  Friends don’t let friends scribe.  BTW, there’s no pictures of the scribing for a reason.  :-p

Just a side note:  I’ve never seen my husband look hotter than when he’s using a table saw.  Wind blowing back his hair.  Sand (i.e. particle board dust) blowing in his eyes.  It’s almost like we are at the beach, but not quite.  Something about a guy and his tools, right?

Next, we bought some 2×2’s to install the filler to.  First, we screwed the 2×2’s to side of the cabinet, then we screwed the filler piece to the 2×2 (from behind so you can’t see the screws from the front). We used 2 inch screws for this.  Drill pilot holes first, of course.

What it looks like from the top once the cabinet is installed (counter top will go on top of this):

This is what the final product looks like.  It’s not caulked yet so it’s not perfect yet.  :-p  Pretty uneven wall, right?  :-/

Here’s the filler on the upper cabinet (which we had to do TWICE because we got them mixed up and tried to use this one for the base cabinet – big woops!). It still needs to be caulked though:


On the short wall, we left only about an inch of space between the cabinet and the wall. We tried to put the cabinets directly against the wall so we could get out of making filler pieces, but the wall was not level so we scooted them over an inch.  The filler pieces were so skinny that we had to cut down the 2×2 into .75x.75 and then, we actually screwed the filler panel to the .75x.75 first, then screwed the .75x.75 to the cabinet (because otherwise, there wouldn’t have been space to drill if we did the other way around).  We used 1 inch screws.

The one problem we did have was that the .75 x.75 and the 2×2 weren’t completely straight so we did have to use shims in some spaces where we screwed, otherwise the filler piece would’ve been misshapen trying to conform to the misshapen 2×2.

Here’s a picture of the 1 inch filler with a shim in between the wood and the filler:

Cover Panels

First, cut the cover panel to size.  Make sure to use tape when you are cutting any of the IKEA products to reduce splintering.  Then, use clamps to clamp the cover panel in place.  Drill pilot holes and screw it to the side of the cabinet as per the instruction manual.

This picture is to demonstrate clamping – it’s obviously not the same cover panel cut above.

Doors

For the doors, first put the handles on.  We purchased IKEA’s handle measuring tool (orange rectangle in picture).  This is a must have.  Decide about where you want your handles and mark the holes accordingly.  Then, just put a level at the bottom and make sure the tool butts up to the level to insure it’s a the same spot for every door.  Then, drill pilot holes and screws and pop the doors in place as per the instructions.


Toe Kicks

These are easy and self-explanatory.  Just cut them down with a hack saw and clip them into place – this was the easiest thing we had to do.  However, once we get the flooring in place, we might have to trim them again length-wise.

Drawers

These took for-ever.  Give yourself enough time to do these.  It’s simple but placement can be tricky (bottom drawer gets placed differently than top so the manual can throw you off if you look at the wrong pages at the wrong times) and just time-consuming to put together and install.  Again, recommend getting the handles on those before installing.

Microwave Duct Work

To install the microwave was a bit of extra work because the IKEA cabinets are 15 inches deep and we bought a standard over the range microwave from Home Depot since they were having a sale around July 4th (weren’t we optimistic? we thought we were going to need it soon!).  We had to buy a special attachment from IKEA for the microwave which we forgot to get in the original order.  I don’t mind making extra trips to IKEA though – love that place.  😉  And my husband had to build around it with some wood which we cut to size in order to make a frame to attach the frame of the microwave to.  You can see it in the picture below.  The white horizontal piece on the bottom is the piece that IKEA gives you, but we added the wood on the sides on top in order attach the microwave frame.

Here’s the duct work my husband created because the microwave vents to the outside.  I suppose we could’ve also just had it vent out the front of the microwave, but this venting to outside was already there for the oven hood that was here and we didn’t want to waste that functionality.

Crown Molding (TBD)

We still have to put our little extra skinny strip of crown molding at the top of the cabinets. I’m sure that’ll be another adventure.  Will update when we get that done.  UPDATE: we decided not to do the crown molding on top.  We did add a strip above the sink because the under cabinet light was blinding.  Above the cabinets, there’s just a little gap between the cabinets and the ceiling.  We determined it actually looks fine..  You can judge for yourself in the final pictures below.

Counter Top
We went with Quartz in a light gray color. Luckily, we didn’t pick granite because the Home Depot countertop installers said they won’t do granite on IKEA cabinets since granite is heavier.

Interim pictures of cabinets:

Final pictures of the finished kitchen (woohoo – finally!):

For some before and after pictures, see this post:

Our First Real Estate Baby

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres – Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches


Jan
2017

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres – Cabinet Install

categories: Renovation

If you are interested in reading Part 2, it is here: IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

And here is the part we’ve all been waiting for – the Install!  Because what good are kitchen cabinets if they are not installed, right?  We’ve been holding on to these suckers for quite some time now – it’s time to get them in place.

Measure twice install once (or whatever the saying is)

The first thing we did was measure everything again and draw all the cabinets and filler spaces on the wall.  This is important to do before you hang the rails.  You want to make double sure of the measurements.

Preparing to hang the metal suspension rails from IKEA

If you’re like us, then you’ll spend alot of time thinking about this before you do it.  The first thing you’ll need to do is locate and mark up where the studs are in your wall.  The rails are only about 84 inches long and one of our walls was 161.5 inches so we had to use 2 rails.  One rail we had to cut down a bit (using a hack saw).  Actually, we ended trimming a bit off of both of them so that the holes in the rail would line up with the studs in the wall, for the most part.

We did on occasion drill through the metal rail for a couple of the studs because we figured it’s better to get the rail attached to the stud than not and we couldn’t get all the holes to line up with the studs perfectly.  And we didn’t really care if the rail could move up or down (which is I guess what you can do when you drill through the holes – you have more room to adjust if it’s not level, etc.  We did have about a 2 inch gap between the two rails but it’s in the middle of the very center cabinet which is not going to be a big deal.  You just have to make sure that the two rails are level with each other.

It was actually hard to find the studs on one of the walls because there was soundproofing between the units so we ended up using magnets which would locate where the dry wall screws are (they usually screw the drywall in at the studs).  This worked.  We noticed that the studs were placed pretty far apart in some cases though (24 inches) – it was very non-standard. If you are having trouble finding studs, you can also just drill some test holes because you can tell if you hit a stud or not when you drill the pilot hole though this is not ideal because you could hit a pipe or water line (eeek!!).

So, on one wall, the base cabinet railing ended at dry wall and there was about 16 inches to the next stud which was bothersome so Bryon put some dry wall anchors at the end and since it is a base cabinet – most of the weight will be supported by the legs so it shouldn’t be a big deal, but we were concerned about the wall cabinets on that side.  Turns out when we went to hang the wall cabinets, there was a supporting structure going horizontal across the top so we didn’t have to worry – everywhere we drilled, we hit a stud/supporting structure.  Nice and secure.

These are the screws we used.  It actually took us a while to decide on screws.  We wanted the screws to go about an inch and a half into the studs and we had several layers of drywall and soundproofing to get through.  So, we picked these 3 inchers:

Now, on one side, we have a little 12 inch cabinet between the cabinet and oven which doesn’t bode well with the metal hanging rail because the metal hanging rail was only barely going to reach one stud at the end of it and that would not be much support. The metal hanging rail also won’t fit behind the bottom of the pantry in order to reach another stud. The pantry is actually hung on the top rail but it doesn’t have that big of a gap all the way down. So, Bryon got an upper body workout with his hack saw and hacked off the lip of the metal rail so that we could get it into at least 2 studs to support that 12 inch cabinet. Here’s an example of this:
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Honestly, I don’t know how he did that. I couldn’t even be in the same room while he was using the hacksaw on the metal – the sound of it was like nails on a chalkboard times a thousand. Even upstairs, I could hear it and my hair was standing on end and my teeth were clenched together. It just made all my fillings hurt for some reason. Much respect to him for doing that.

Hanging the metal suspension rail

So, next, you want to get the metal suspension rail actually hung. The top of the rail should be at least 6/8 inches from the ceiling. We wanted our cabinets to go all the way to the ceiling so we contemplated ignoring that rule and hanging the metal suspension rail all the way at the ceiling but then we thought that the cabinet doors might not open. We seriously debated this and tested this for hours – this is part of our problem – indecision.

Ultimately, you need that 6/8 inches in order to have room to hang the cabinets on the rail itself, but there’s a way you could forgo that if you want to do the extra work of first hanging the metal cabinet clips onto the rail and then someone holds the cabinet up while you screw the cabinet clip into the cabinet. This would probably work if your ceilings were level but our ceilings weren’t even level so we didn’t bother trying – the doors probably wouldn’t open and since that’s important for cabinets we decided not to go that route.

We also figured one of us would break our back trying to do this so let’s just do it the easy way and if we need to add some crown molding to the top later, we can.  We hung them exactly 6/8 inches down which isn’t going to leave much space for crown molding, but we got something really skinny and we’ll have to sand it down in places.  Maybe leave a little more space if you can.  We left about 17 inches of space between the wall cabinets and the counter top which is on the lower end of space so we didn’t want to eat into that space anymore than we had to.  Ideally, you want at least 18 inches of space there, but I think more than 15 is considered acceptable.

UPDATE: Looking back, we should’ve used the IKEA crown molding and left space for that.  The crown molding that comes with the GRIMSLOV cabinets is only about .5 inch thick, but they gave us the wrong molding – the one we got was 1.5 inch thick on the skinny side and we thought that would be too thick since we already had limited space above the countertop.  If we had gotten the right molding, we totally would’ve used that.  🙁  But we did find something that would work at Home Depot that is equally skinny if not skinnier and if at some later date we choose to, we can always add that.  I can have the paint matched at Home Depot by bringing in a cabinet door and paint it.  It’s just extra work that we wouldn’t have had to do if we had gotten the right molding in the first place.

You’ll want to draw marks along the wall using a square 6/8 inches down (or whatever distance you choose) and hang the railing at the lowest mark – get it level. Then, draw a line on the wall along the bottom of the metal suspension rail. Drill pilot holes into the studs in the center of the hole on the metal suspension rail. Put your screws in most of the way but not all the way. Make sure your rail is perfectly in place and level. Place the IKEA “washers” on the screws and then drill the screws all the way in to tighten. Boom! You’re done! With the rail, that is.. So, we put screws in each of the studs and then put some dry wall anchors in between those because IKEA recommends having a screw every 12 inches.

For the bottom rail, we followed the standard IKEA gave in the manual as far as the height.  I can’t remember what that height is right now but I’ll try to add it here later.  We debated going lower to have more space between the wall cabinet and base cabinet but ultimately decided to just use the standard because we wanted to make sure to have space for the legs (though we did saw the legs down to fit them underneath the pantry, it would be extra work to do that to every leg) and also to make sure the counter wasn’t too low.

Here’s some pictures of our rails (please ignore the mess):

On the short wall (base cabinets):

On the short wall (wall cabinets):

On the long wall (on this rail hangs the base sink cabinet and the 36 incher next to it):

On the long wall (this is the rail for the 12 inch cabinet – the only thing that hangs on it):

On the long wall – here’s the 2 wall cabinet rails side by side with a tiny gap in between (couldn’t get the whole rail on the other side in the same pic):

Hanging the cabinets

Boom! We thought we were done.  We went home on Cloud 9 thinking we accomplished ALOT.  But once we went back and started hanging the cabinets on the rail on the long wall, there was a gap between 2 of the cabinets that we couldn’t get rid of. And this is where we seriously contemplated quitting, y’all. It’s really hard to go from thinking you are done with the rails to having to start over. This was our lowest point where we had to muster all our emotional strength and spirit. If you are installing an IKEA kitchen yourself, you are guaranteed to have one of these moments at some point. Don’t give up!!! Maybe take a break and have a glass of wine or a cookie, but don’t give up! I kept thinking of all the people I could call and even dreamed of selling the building altogether.  The thought of taking the pantry down was enough to defeat us. That sucker is heavy and there is very little wiggle room to get it off in that space.  And we had already leveled it and put some extra supporting structure underneath it – 2×4’s (which we ended up not doing later – it doesn’t really need it).

Turns out, the wall was uneven and the metal rail wasn’t exactly flush on the long wall. We needed to add shims to the left side of the wall and pretty significant ones at that to get it to be flush with the right side of the wall. We basically shimmed the entire left side of the wall up to the halfway point. Starting from the mid point, we put smaller shims and they got progressively thicker as we reached the end of the wall. We also had to take the pantry out which we were trying to avoid and we ended up putting that in last after we got everything else to line up without gaps.

The pantry is hanging on the rail but we also have it supported by 4 legs. It’s just so hard to get it off and on the rail that we were really trying to avoid that so putting it in last after we made sure there were no gaps was the smartest option.   The pantry would not fit in the space we had with the legs on it so my husband sawed down the legs so that we would be able to get them underneath the pantry.  Instead of being 4 inches, the legs are about 2 1/2 inches underneath the pantry.

Here’s our pantry – be sure to install the cover panel on there (as shown here) before hanging the other cabinets since it’s full length.  You’ll have to cut a notch out of the cover panel so that the metal rail can run behind it, but make sure you make this notch deep enough (length-wise) or you will have a hard time getting the pantry off of the metal rail like we did.  :-p  This notch will be hidden by the cabinet next to it so it really doesn’t matter too much how it looks.

Panel between dishwasher and oven

We had to add a panel between the dishwasher and oven because they are right next to each other – deciding where this went was tricky because after we measured our oven, we found out that it was actually 30 1/8 inch wide which is more than the standard 30 inches. It was 29 7/8 at the top, but 30 1/8 inch at the bottom in the back. This is something to beware of when you are doing your measurements. So, we left a gap of 30 1/4 inches for the oven and exactly 24 inches for the dishwasher since these are usually a bit smaller than 24. I read up on this before we actually made this permanent because I wanted to make double sure and found that many contractors have been burned (not literally) by the oven spacing –  so leave 30 1/4 inches just in case.  We did and we are very happy with it.

IKEA sells a special panel that is used specifically to support the counter between the dishwasher and the oven. It’s a 26×36 cover panel. We thought it was 1/2 inch thick but turns out it’s 5/8 inch thick so then we needed 1/4 more inches for the oven so this left an extra 3/8 inches that we weren’t accounting for on the wall cabinets (trying to keep everything symmetrical).

This is how we secured the panel to the wall:

This is how we secured the panel to the floor on the dishwasher side:

Adjusting the cabinets to make sure symmetric

We decided to buy another cover panel to put on the other side of the 30 inch cabinet that goes above the oven which would make that space 31 inches wide and then the space below for the oven and panel would be 30 7/8 (30 1/4 for the oven + 5/8 for the panel) – very close – no one will notice 1/8 inch off. And we figured it looks better anyway for the cabinet above the oven to have cover panels on both sides (as opposed to just one side) – not that it mattered though.

Well, this shifting around and adding more space for the oven caused us to have to remove the bottom rail and move it over a bit – about a half an inch. I had the countertop people coming to measure so we needed to have this panel done between the dishwasher and oven. We didn’t end up getting the bottom cabinets scooted over half an inch but I signed off on a paper, in blood, that said we were responsible for moving the cabinets over half an inch. Normally, they don’t do this but I offered to sign in blood.  :-p

Holes for plumbing and electrical

My husband had to cut out the holes for the plumbing a little wider to accommodate the half-inch which he was super bummed about because the holes were miraculously perfect the first time (when things are miraculously perfect it’s usually a sign that something else is wrong – immediately start looking for the something else :-p). Now, the holes for the plumbing look more like tiny butts – perfect butts though so can’t complain.  This is why you want to dry fit everything before cutting the holes out.  We bought outlet boxes that have a lead screw on them so that they adjust in and out – since the cabinets have a gap between the wall and cabinet (due to the metal hanging rails).

We had to cut a hole out of the cabinet that’s above the microwave to allow for the vent which vents to the outside.  Here’s a picture of that (we just narrowly avoided that cam – this is one of the reasons we left no filler on that side of the pantry):

Leveling the cabinets and putting on the legs

You’ll want to put a level on the base cabinets and adjust the legs to make sure they are level.  We discovered that with the drywall around the pipes, the wall stuck out too much at the bottom and made it impossible to level the base cabinets around the sink area.  So, we had to cut the dry wall out and use aluminum (won’t rust) sheet metal around the pipes because it’s thinner and more flexible and wouldn’t cause our cabinets to stick out and not be level. We had to also cut out some of the drywall further down (behind the 36 inch cabinet) and use the sheet metal because the pipes were causing it to stick out too far there also and causing our cabinets to not be level.

You’ll want to have all the cut outs for plumbing and electrical done before securing the cabinets to each other, as well.

Undercabinet lighting

Another tip, if you are using IKEA undercabinet lighting – be sure to put the cables in place behind the cabinets before you start securing them together, etc. You will have to pull them out a bit to get cables in there and sometimes they have to go on either side of the pads on the back of the cabinet – you’ll want to make sure you have that figured out and get them in place. You don’t need to have the lighting in place necessarily but the cables, for sure.

NOTE: we decided not to go with IKEA undercabinet lighting because of reviews and backsplash unknowns with the wires coming down from behind the cabinets (there’d have to be gaps in the backsplash or the backsplash would have to be tiled up to the light, etc – too non standard to find any information about it and the electrician wasn’t familiar with IKEA products).  So, we are just going to hard wire some undercabinet LED lights we got from Home Depot.

Screw cabinets together

Now, it’s time to screw the cabinets to each other. First, you want to clamp the 2 cabinets together. Then, you drill the pilot holes and use the screws given to attach the cabinets together. Then, you want to use the gray clippy things to lock the cabinet in place on the rail – this prevents it from moving around.

I just ordered a quartz countertop and backsplash from Home Depot so we are getting so close I can taste the first dish we will make in this kitchen! We will have to test out our work, eh? Heck, I’m thinking about moving in! Too bad it’s a rental and not our house! :-p  Flooring company isn’t coming until Jan. 19th so have a while to wait yet.

More pics:

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres- Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches


Dec
2016

9 Things That Will Turn Your Child from a Gizmo Into a Gremlin

categories: Blog, Kids

Whoever created the movie, Gremlins, must’ve been a parent. It’s the perfect analogy for children. Ever look at your child one minute and they are sweet and cute (Gizmo), then the next they are foaming at the mouth and having the biggest tantrum ever (Gremlin)?  I call this the Gizmo to Gremlin transition.  It happens in the blink of an eye.  I’m compiling a list of the things that cause it so I and others can be more aware..

9 Things that will turn your gizmo into a gremlin:

1.) Go on a playdate without a snack/drink or go anywhere without a snack/drink. They will claim to be dying of thirst the second they realize you have nothing for them to drink. You will end up buying a $3 water somewhere.  If you are on a playdate at a friend’s house, they will eat everything in your friend’s kitchen or complain the entire time about being hungry.  You may end up clamping a hand down over their mouth and making a bad impression with said friend.  :-p

2.) Let them stay up past midnight.  In the Gremlins movie, you aren’t supposed to feed them after midnight, but in real life – it’s don’t let the kids stay up past midnight – you’ll regret it.  We frequently let our girls sleep together on the weekend and next thing you know, they are each breaking down in turns and your whole weekend is consumed by tears.

3.) Wake them up from a nap. The phrase never wake a sleeping baby applies to everyone: never wake a sleeping baby, never wake a sleeping toddler, never wake a sleeping preschooler, never wake a sleeping husband.

4.) The witching hour: anytime between 4pm and 6pm.

5.) Serve them anything homemade.  I no longer answer my kids when they ask me what’s for dinner.  I tell them that’s a loaded question!  Or I’ll tell them it’s something frozen that I warmed up b/c they trust that stuff more than they trust my cooking skills..

6.) Tell them you are going to Home Depot.  They hate Home Depot, mostly because they will usually end up getting barked at by some old, grouchy person that thinks kids shouldn’t exist in this world.  But some are nice and give them lollipops so it just depends.

7.) Tell them it’s time to clean.  Although, now that they are older, I find that I tell them all to clean just to get them to play quietly together.  Somehow telling them to clean, causes them to play nicely.  Not exactly the desired response, but close.  Sometimes, as a parent, you have to improvise and be flexible to get what you want.  :-p

8.) Tell them no at the store.  I like to say, we’ll add that to the Christmas list.  If they push further, I pretend to add it to a list on my phone.. This applies more when they are little – now, for my older children I say no incessantly at the store – it’s like I’m making up for all the times I couldn’t say it when they were little.

9.) Tell them to share.  This evicts the worst response.  It’s like you are asking them to set their toy on fire or something.  Telling them to take turns isn’t much better – they will watch the clock like a hawk and nag you incessantly to see if it’s time yet.

Anyone else have any other things?  My kids are 4,  7, & 9 so the list might’ve been different when they were younger.. No, wait, it was definitely different and more exhaustive when they were younger. I used to say – it’s so hard being little – all the time because it seemed like EVERYTHING upset them.  Seriously, you could say, “We are going to the park!” and they’d get upset.

And gremlin kid after they’ve eaten all the snacks out of your friend’s pantry:

And now I’m going to flip the script down here and write about times when Mom turns from Gizmo to Gremlin:

Here’s Mom “happily” at the computer paying bills:

These are the things that turn Mom into a gremlin:

1.) Talking to me after bedtime.

2.) Scream mommy from another room over and over again and expecting me to come running like I’m some kind of butler.

3.) Leaving the house without shoes on or with only dress up shoes on and not finding out until we are at the destination.

4.) Incessant fighting.

5.) The sound of the bead bucket hitting the floor.

6.) Bouncing around so much upstairs that it sounds like a Jumanji style stampede is going to come through your ceiling.

7.) Having to repeat myself for the 5th or 6th time.

And gremlin Mom (angrily stuffing face with cookies while offering the kids none):

 

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Dec
2016

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

categories: Renovation

If you are interested in reading part 1, it is here: IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

Next, we assemble the cabinets.  This takes time.  I do recommend using a drill with it set to low torque.  You will need a drill, rubber mallet, Phillips head screw driver, hammer.

One place where we messed up is we never compared our final purchase receipt with the online planning tool item list.  The guy that was helping us purchase accidentally deleted our order and had to manually enter it and there were many errors, which meant we ended up returning a few cabinets after we’d already assembled them.  :-/  IKEA was great though – they took them back no questions asked and gave us new ones which was a relief.  So make sure you double check everything before you start – this set us back a bit.

You’ll need a large clear space for assembly.  And you will want to assemble everything on a drop cloth or the cardboard boxes that they came in so that you don’t scratch up the finish of the cabinets during assembly.  The instructions are mostly picture instructions with no words.  So, just follow along with the pictures and lay everything out as shown.  I highly recommend following along with the instruction manual – if you don’t and try on your own you might regret it and have to redo because things need to be done in a certain progression.  Here’s some pictures of the assembly.  It was so easy we even had our daughters helping us.  But it does take time.

Lay the stuff out as pictured in the instructions:

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We used a drill to put these in or it would take for-ever.  Set it to low torque so that you don’t do any damage.blog_ikeacabs2

Little tip on this one – don’t twist these cams too hard – they break easily.  I broke one and then we got an extra one luckily in a different package.  I took this as God’s intervention because I did pray for help after that.  And the next box had an extra (exactly what we needed – there were no extras in any of the other boxes – so awesome).
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Hammer in the little teeny tiny nails in the back to keep the back of the cabinet in place.  Do make sure you have the white side facing the right way (inside the cabinet) because I imagine it would be impossible to get these nails out.  blog_ikeacabskids blog_ikeacabskids2

Now, we had the cabinets assembled and we started getting stressed about actually installing them because life got busy and we’d been working on renovating this unit for longer than I care to admit.

So, I went back to IKEA to see about paying for installation and they don’t do the installation if you’ve already assembled the cabinets because they charge for assembly and installation per cabinet. It’s one price and they don’t reduce the price if you’ve already assembled the cabinets.

We thought it wouldn’t be worth it then to pay the huge price for installation when we’d already done so much of the work. We also figured it would be hard to find a contractor that is familiar with installing an IKEA kitchen since they are so new to the area so we realized we are completely on our own. Duh duh duh. No, literally we said, “Duh!” because we had no idea what we were doing (I should edit that to say I have no idea what I’m doing – Bryon is pretty handy). Time to google some stuff.

And there’s not much information on Google either. I’m not sure why – IKEA has been around for a while. Maybe we don’t even know how to Google right. :-p Saw some stuff in a different language but that wasn’t going to help.  So, our next post will be the Installation post. It’ll feel like a miracle when that is done. Praying heavily at this point.  We have to have it mostly done by December 12th because that’s when the flooring guys are coming to measure. We are making good progress.  Stay tuned. :-/

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres- Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches


Aug
2016

Opening a Doorway

categories: Renovation

We decided to get rid of a doorway to make the space more open between the kitchen and the dining room.  There used to be swinging cowboy doors here and we obviously removed those.  Then, we were left with an unnecessary door frame which we decided to remove and make the space more open.  You gain a couple of inches in each direction – I love it!!!!  See how the old frame was so yellow?  Yuck!  This saved me from having to paint it but now we actually have some work with drywalling but it’s so worth it!  Well, we’ll see after we drywall it if I’m still saying that!  :-p  We are planning to redo all the flooring here so it’s ok that there’s a gap there in the floor.

Broad_KitchenDoorwayBefore

This is the mud we bought – save yourself some pain and buy the 90 minute dry stuff (not 45 minute) – it takes some time and you don’t want to have to throw a bunch away because it thickens or hardens while you work.

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Step 1: Pry off the doorway trim. You’ll want to score the sides so that the paint doesn’t get pulled off with it.
Broad_KitchenDoorway
Step 2: Measure the distance of each section of the doorway to cut the dry wall out. You’ll want the drywall to reach the end on each side so that you can put the corners on properly. Screw these pieces of drywall in place.
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Step 3: Trim off the edges of the drywall with a box cutter where they are sticking out too far – this is so the corners will fit properly.
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This is what it should look like with the drywall properly secured.
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Step 4: Put on the corners. We chose metal straight edged corners with dry wall tape on them. We thought about rounded corners but I like the sharp lined look. You’ll want to thin out the mud more than we did here. We bought 45 minute dry mud but we should’ve bought the 90 minute dry mud so it wouldn’t get so thick so fast. You put a thin layer of mud on the wall first and then attach the corner to the mud, then put more mud over the corner. You can staple the corner into place at the top so that it doesn’t slide down.
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I didn’t take a picture of it, but at the top corners, you put a piece of drywall tape and fold it into the corner and mud it into place to cover the crack there. Then, after that you’ll have to do several layers of mud all over to make sure all the areas are flat and not concave and smooth (that’s the hard part). Then, comes the sanding to ensure it’s extra smooth because there’s really no way to get it extra smooth without sanding unless you are a professional which we are not. :-p I kept joking with Bryon that this was actually my sculpting project because I am not so good at mudding. I’m not a perfectionist.  Several times, I made a stegasaurus on the wall that had to be sanded off. This requires lots of patience.  Final product below:

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Jul
2016

Best Flooring For Rental Houses (Our Experience)

categories: Renovation

Isn’t it hard to choose flooring for houses, let alone rental houses?  All you can imagine is how they are going to take a key to it, let their dog pee on it, or burn a cigarette into it (no, they aren’t supposed to smoke). Sometimes, after seeing a house upon tenant move out, I like to try to reconstruct how certain things happened like in a crime scene. How on Earth does something like this happen is all I can think sometimes?

Though most tenants are good – you tend to keep the worst-case scenarios at the forefront of your mind when updating a unit. And it makes you wish they made everything out of stainless steel or concrete though nothing is truly indestructible for some people.

On one hand, you don’t want to spend too much because you will not get it back for years to come.  On the other hand, you don’t want to have to keep replacing the flooring every couple of years or even every year.  What to do?!

We’ve been experimenting with different flooring for some time and we’ve had some luck with vinyl plank flooring, wood laminate flooring, and even carpeting (on stairs).  Our favorite pick: Allure Ultra or similar vinyl plank flooring.  But here’s our review of all the options that we’ve tried.

Stairs:
Stairs are tricky b/c it’s expensive to put laminate on stairs and even Allure on stairs is expensive so we feel like carpet is the best bet b/c it’s cheap and if you need to you can replace it pretty easily and inexpensively. If you really have a high traffic stairwell like we do in the back our four-plex building, then sheet vinyl plus rubber treads has worked well for us – it’s a nice look and easy to clean. You can see pictures of that in a post under Rentals.

Allure peel and stick (the planks stick to each other not the floor so it’s still a floating floor):
We are not great fans of this though it’s less expensive. We used this in a living room and in a basement area. The cracks between the planks can tend to separate and get dirt stuck in there in places and it’s not truly waterproof due to this (they don’t advertise that it’s waterproof though). Maybe it was just because it was my husband’s first time installing it or maybe that’s just the way it is. I’m not sure – but I’m not a fan. It held up through one tenant with no scratches or anything, but I just get annoyed about the cracks between the planks in some places are more visible than they should be in my opinion.

Vinyl plank click-lock flooring – Allure Ultra brand (winner):
The interlocking Allure Ultra is truly waterproof and we haven’t seen any separating after years of use in a high traffic hallway. The only downside to it is that it’s tricky to install and quite the learning curve b/c it’s flexible vinyl planks that interlock which as you can imagine can be tricky vs rigid planks that interlock. The plus side is that you can cut it easily with a box cutter so you don’t have to have any special equipment or make a whole lot of extra noise. We have more recently had this installed in a kitchen and the installer said that it is way easier to install now – they’ve made improvements in the design.  They’ve also made improvements in the look.  Even more recently than that, we’ve installed a brand from Lumber Liquidators that was even thicker – Farmland Hickory Engineered Vinyl Plank flooring 7mm thick.  For a more upscale look, buy the thicker vinyl plank.  It makes a big difference and looks more wood like.  They now sell the thicker vinyl plank flooring at Home Depot as well.  It’s still waterproof and scratch-resistant, etc.

Wood laminate (comes in second and looks nicer):
Another thing we tried in bedrooms is wood laminate floating floor. We used some relatively cheap laminate we got off the shelves at Home Depot for some bedrooms and that held up really well through one tenant’s use – no scratches, stains, or separating between the planks or anything wrong. But it didn’t look as wood like as the more expensive stuff.  After that, we have tried a more upgraded laminate for a different unit – Pergo XP – and that has held up well as well but looks alot more upscale than the more inexpensive stuff. See this post: Trying out Pergo XP in the Rental

As you can see, carpet isn’t listed – well, except for stairs.  We haven’t had the best luck with carpet – it always seems to need to be replaced and even if we keep it, we have to spend so much time cleaning it that I’m not sure it’s worth it.  Anybody else want to share their experiences on what has worked for them?  I’m always looking out for cheaper alternatives that are still durable.


Jul
2016

Lighter Shade of Gray

categories: Renovation

Gray or grey?  I’m on the hunt to find an amazing lighter shade of gray.  I kind of experimented with paint colors in this rental unit b/c I’m still searching for the perfect color and I figure the tenants won’t mind if the rooms are slightly different colors, right? They may assume it’s just the lighting b/c they are so subtle-y different.  Or maybe they’ll go crazy walking from room to room tilting their heads and whipping their heads around suddenly like I do trying to catch the color changing or something..

The colors I used are all along the lines of Fixer Upper – like a grayish white. I read an article that the up and coming colors trending in the home decor world are closer to white so that’s the kind of colors that I picked. I’m learning that lighting and the placement of the man on the moon drastically affect what paint colors look like. Actually, I have no idea why paint colors look so drastically different in different places – to me, it’s like one of the mysteries of the universe that I just have to accept and remain permanently confused about.

I used some of the colors that I used in the other unit we updated in this same building and they look completely different – go figure. I thought I’d found THE color and it looks totally different in this unit. Whatever. I suppose it’s still acceptable just not exactly what I thought it would be. I need to quit being so picky about colors for a rental unit. Most landlords just use antique white and call it a day.

I actually have this problem with everything – I’m constantly searching for the best thing that’s going to top all other things (when picking books, trying recipes, etc – always on the hunt for the magical unicorn that doesn’t exist – or maybe it does but I just haven’t captured it yet (see! it’s a problem)).  This should be a disorder – we could name it Magical Unicorn Disorder – I’m sure the drug companies would be all over it if they ever read this post.  We’ll start seeing infomercials about a new drug that will quash Magical Unicorn Disorder.  Are you constantly searching for the magical unicorn?  Take this drug 3 times/day with koolaid and you will no longer believe unicorns exist – you will be dead on the inside.  Side effects may include adult diapers, the shakes, a severe addiction that you can’t kick, etc – you know the standard list.  :-p  I digress.

Here’s the colors that I tried:

Glidden’s Silver Birch @ Home Depot:  I LOVE this color.  It’s my favorite!  It’s light, bright and neutral gray with not much hint of other colors.  I like that.  I hate to look at a gray and think that it looks blue or purple.  I wish I would’ve used this one everywhere I like it so much.

Gracious Greige HGTV by Sherwin Williams (HGSW2456): I’ve already reviewed this one in another post: 5 shades of gray on this website.  But it happens to look completely different in this unit.  🙁  I still like it but it’s not my favorite in the lighter shades of gray category.  It’s still neutral, but when compared with the other shades it’s not my favorite anymore.  It seems like it has a hint of purple when it’s in this unit which kind of throws me off – again probably the lighting.  There’s LED lighting everywhere. In the other unit, there was no hint of purple. UPDATE: Found out why this color was looking purplish – we bought cheap blinds from Menard’s that were slightly blueish in tint – once we replaced these the purple tint was gone. Love this color much more now! Very neutral yet still retaining some warmth.

Basalt Powder HGTV by Sherwin Williams (HGSW2457): I like this color.  It’s very modern looking and nice and bright.  It really brightens up the room.  It does seem like it has a hint of purple but it’s not overpowering – it’s very neutral.  Maybe the hint of purple keeps the gray from looking too cold – not sure.  It’s just a hint though – still very neutral.  I give it a thumbs up.  We used this color for the living room and dining room area of the rental.

Benjamin Moore’s Halo: This color is really nice too.  It has a hint of green to it but it’s very neutral.  I used it in the master bedroom and the kitchen.  I actually got this at Home Depot!  Did you know that you could get different brands of paint at Home Depot?  I just found out and I’m so excited about this!!!!  I never used to get other brands b/c I didn’t want to have to go to special paint stores and make a separate trip – my kids can only handle one stop when it comes to “boring” stores.  But now that I found out that Home Depot will make other brands of paint as long as they are in the system – I can broaden my horizons!  This particular paint color was recommended on some web sites by design pros so I decided to try it out and it’s very classy, classic and safe – nice color.  I would use this all over too b/c it’s pretty safe and nice.

Sherwin William’s White Duck SW7010:  This is not actually a gray color but it is an off white type of color so I thought I’d include it.  We used this in a bathroom instead of antique white and it looks really nice.  It’s more of a yellowy cream color that is slightly darker than antique white and therefore a little warmer.  It gets a thumbs up also.  It would be another good allover color if you were looking for a white-ish color but not white.

Anyone else have lighter shades of gray that they like – please comment below.  Help me find my unicorn..  I won’t stop – can’t stop..

See my other post on other shades of gray:
5 shades of gray

Here’s some pictures below.  I tried to post several so you could see it in different lighting – I know, the lighting isn’t great:

Benjamin Moore’s Halo:

Gracious Greige:

Basalt Powder (in the Dining Room):

Basalt Powder (on the left) & Silver Birch (on the right):

Silver Birch:

White Duck:


May
2016

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

categories: Renovation

We just got an IKEA in St Louis – yay!!!!  I’m from Texas and we had an IKEA in Houston so I know how wonderful it is and I’m over the moon excited about this.  There are so many cool organization items there and affordable furniture – I just love it.

We have a tenant moving out end of May and their apartment hasn’t been updated since 1969 so the whole thing needs to be overhauled.  Since we are on a budget, we are going to attempt to do the kitchen ourselves with IKEA cabinets.  I’ve heard they are easy to install with the rails that are leveled on the wall for both the top and bottom cabinets and the adjustable feet so you don’t have to deal with shimming.  I loathe anything that involves shimming.  We shall see.  I’m going to document it here.

First, we designed the kitchen in the IKEA kitchen planner online tool.  This online tool can be glitchy so be prepared for a little frustration but over all I LOVE having access to a design tool online – LOVE diy stuff in general so this is great.

We have already renovated a kitchen in a similar unit so we had a head start on that but the cabinet sizes are slightly different for IKEA so that made it a little tricky.  For example, they don’t have a 33 inch wide cabinet. The upper cabinets are also 3 inches deeper than standard cabinets which I like – more space..  So, here’s our design from the online IKEA 3D planning tool:

3D Line View in IKEA software:

KitchenUpdateAptA

KitchenUpdateAptAfridgeSide

Floor View in IKEA software:

KitchenUpdateAptAFloorDiagram

On the left side of this kitchen is a window and a door leading out to the deck and on the right side is the entry from the dining room.  The details of the cabinets from Left to Right, Top to Bottom (spacing may not be perfect in the tool, but that’s ok):

36 inch wide cabinets (top & bottom),  Bottom cabinet has 2 drawers on top and doors on the bottom.  We did this because there is a window sill there and the drawers can’t pull out all the way so we figured if the drawers were smaller in height, they could at least pull out the top drawer all the way.

30 inch wide cabinets (top is 20 inch in height – slightly shorter so you can have breathing room while washing dishes and bottom has a 1 bowl sink),

24 inch wide cabinet on the top and dishwasher on the bottom.  The dishwasher is only going to be 24 inches wide but we need to put a panel between the dishwasher and oven in order to support the counter which would be about a half inch and we’ll add a cover panel on top as well so they are symmetrical. UPDATE: the dishwasher panel is actually more like 5/8 inches.

30 inch wide cabinets on top (15 inches in height so that we can put a built in microwave underneath – because their cabinets are slightly deeper than the regular cabinets they have special tools we can use for the built in microwave to make it level with the cabinets as far as depth goes) and oven on the bottom. The oven is about 30 1/8 inches so we left a space of 30 1/4 inches for the oven. UPDATE: this extra space was unexpected because ovens are normally 30 inches or less so we added a full cover panel to the side of the 12 inch wide wall cabinet mentioned below in order to make up for the extra space in the base cabinets.

12 inch wide cabinet on top and 12 inch wide cabinet with a door on the bottom (they didn’t have one that was 12 inches with drawers. UPDATE: we added a full cover panel to the side of this 12 inch wide cabinet to add 1/2 inch of space to match up with the base cabinets.

Next, is a pantry 24 inch x 80. But there will be a cover panel on the side of the pantry which will add an extra half-inch.

We have about 4 inches of extra space that we are going to put fillers on each end to fill. We’ll probably do 1 inch on one side and 3 inches on the other side because we realized we need to keep the existing venting duct work within the cabinet that is over the microwave (there was an oven range hood that vents outside and we want to reuse this for the over the range microwave) and that is cutting it REALLY close. :-0 UPDATE: we ended up putting 0 inches of filler on one side and 3.5 inches on the other side.

On the other wall from Left to Right is:

15 inch cabinets (top is the extra tall 40 inch height and bottom cabinet has 6 drawers- I love this idea of having several skinny drawers for utensils, hand towels, junk drawer, etc – feels very organized).

36 inch wide cabinets (top cabinet is the extra tall 40 inch height (because there is no soffit on this side of the wall – hopefully this doesn’t look funny to have taller cabinets on one side than the other – we shall see) and the bottom cabinet is 36 inch wide and has two drawers on top and then doors on bottom.

36x24x20 over the fridge cabinets with doors.  We also bought panels to cover the sides of the fridge (not pictured here).  These were the ones we weren’t originally going to get. UPDATE: We decided to return the over-the-fridge cabinets and get a dishwasher instead to stay above the $4,000 mark.

We left 1 inch of space between the cabinets and the walls at the ends and on the one side where the counter will be sticking out we left 3 inches for the overhang of the counter.  We knew to do this b/c this is what we did for the other kitchen we updated and it worked out just fine.  You want to leave some space in case the walls aren’t level, etc and you don’t want anyone bumping themselves on the edge of the counter if it’s sticking out.

The lady that worked at IKEA told us that we don’t need to put the fillers in the picture, fillers are just cover panels which you cut to size so you can order whatever you need in whatever size later.  These cabinets are shaker style in off-white (GRIMSLOV).  I figure you can’t go wrong in white for a rental and shaker style is my favorite.   Another great thing about IKEA is that it’s relatively easy to replace parts when they break because everything comes in pieces that you assemble yourself and you can buy several components individually if you need to.

We did have a hard time getting to the $4,000 mark for the IKEA sale because we got our appliances at Home Depot (for their July 4th sale) and we didn’t want to buy the counter tops at IKEA since they were a little pricier than Home Depot for stone.  You have to reach $4,000 before taxes in order to get the 15% off gift card.  Also, they were out of sinks or in transition on sinks so we couldn’t get a sink there.  We already had a faucet.  I’d heard about people buying kitchen cabinets for the bathroom but we just had our bathrooms renovated and didn’t need it there.  Well, we did need over the toilet cabinets, but 15 inches deep would probably be too deep and look funny.

So, we ended up buying over the fridge cabinets which we weren’t originally going to do – we were just going to have a stand alone fridge, but it’ll look nicer so we’ll see.  UPDATE: we returned these and got a dishwasher instead – we were going to keep the existing dishwasher but it was going to look like an eyesore with everything else being updated.

Definitely make sure you allow enough time for the ordering of the cabinets – it takes a LOOONG time – like several hours.  We decided to pick them up ourselves instead of choosing the delivery option.  The delivery option was only $60 – should’ve done that.  Everything fit in our mini-van with all the seats taken out (except passenger and driver seat, of course), so that worked out (even the pantry – which was VERY close – we got the 80 inch tall pantry), but we were there until 11pm waiting for them to bring down all the furniture pieces.  The building closed at 9pm so we were just sitting around with stir-crazy kids – not good.

One thing we didn’t have in the 3D planning tool b/c we didn’t know about was cover panels for the exposed areas of the cabinets.  You have to add those on so that the gap in the back of the cabinet is covered – adds a little bit more to the price.  Every little bit counts to get to the $4000 mark.  We also added some molding at the top and bottom. UPDATE: we are going to have to return the molding – it is too thick (1.5 inches on the thin side) and reduces the space too much between the upper and lower cabinets – we are already a little bit less than 18 inches – about 17.5.  We bought the wrong molding and didn’t realize it.  They had a thinner one we could’ve used.  Oh well – we just did without – it looks fine.

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres- Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches


Apr
2016

From Potty To Powder Room 03/2016

categories: Renovation

Don’t you love having to update bathrooms?!?!  It’s my least favorite thing b/c after all it’s just where you go to poop – how fancy does it have to be?  Well, we aren’t always rational beings, right?

Everything in these bathrooms was purchased at Home Depot so that makes it nice and easy.  I’ve been told that Moen is the best brand to buy when selecting faucets/shower heads, etc so I try to stick with that brand where it’s available.  And also to never put ceramic tile on the floors (it’s cheaper but more likely to crack) so I selected porcelain tile.

We did have some unknowns come up – we had to replace most of the sub-floor in both bathrooms due to water damage (not surprising considering these bathrooms haven’t been updated since 1969 – we think) and we discovered some pipes needed to be updated once we opened the walls.  You always have to expect the unexpected.

Isn’t that what they say on Survivor? Renovating can be a little like Survivor. Mentally, you are stressed b/c you aren’t sure if you picked the right contractor. Physically, you may not be showering – in the case of a bathroom update. Or you may not be eating right – in the case of a kitchen update. There’s dust everywhere and loud noises – as if you are in the wild.

Anyway, I digress..  When renovating – something always comes up, doesn’t it?!?!  It does for us and I don’t think we are alone. Or that would be more like Naked and Afraid – anybody watch that show?  I used to be against it b/c hello they are naked and in what world are you going to be naked and lost. You should at least have a pair of initial clothes, right?  You’re not going to be like – Hey! I’m lost!  And then proceed to rip off your clothes.  But now I’m a fan of the show b/c it’s so interesting minus all the butt shots.  Again, I digress.  My ADD gets me EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

We had a contractor do the bathrooms.  In case you are interested, here are the selections we made regarding tile, etc:

Wall Tile Selection:
Grout: Polyblend #115 Platinum
Store SKU# 1001256662
Tile: MARAZZI VitaElegante Bianco 6 in. x 24 in. Porcelain Floor and Wall Tile (14.53 sq. ft. / case)
Store SKU# 1000047587

Floor Tile Selection:
Grout: Polyblend #165 Delorean Gray
Store SKU# 656844
Tile: MARAZZI Studio Life Central Park 12 in. x 24 in. Glazed Porcelain Floor and Wall Tile (15.60 sq. ft. / case)
Store SKU# 1001292431

HallBathroom1
Hall Bathroom

HallBathroom2
Hall Bathroom

Master bathroom:

MasterBathroom
Master Bathroom

MasterBathroom3
Master Bathroom

The paint color we chose for the walls is Antique White.  They are small bathrooms and it’s a rental so I figure you can’t go wrong with that.  It also brightens them up and makes them feel bigger.

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Oct
2015

5 shades of gray

categories: Home Decor, Renovation

Gray is the IN color right now or so it seems, but I have such a hard time liking it!  It all stems back to when I first met my husband.  Gray is his favorite color (I guess b/c it’s manly [insert man grunt here]).  So, when I first met him and went to his house – it was a bachelor pad with actual flannel sheets hanging as curtains instead of curtains – getting the visual now?  And I found that he painted the entire house a light shade of gray and the baseboards were a darker shade of gray.  I’m not going to lie, it kind of made me think of a prison.  I called that shade of gray “prison gray” from then on.  And, after that, I couldn’t bring myself to paint any rooms of the house gray – I developed an aversion.

Before I moved in, I repainted every single wall to a non gray color.  But then what happens – gray is now IN.  So, I’m forced to reconsider.  I have tried out a few shades of the HGTV Sherwin Williams line at Lowe’s.  And I fell in LOVE!  Gracious Greige and Stone Isle are my favorite.  It seems the lighter shades of gray remind me of prisons or mental patient facilities (not that I’ve ever been in one, yet – there’s still time! :-p) because they can come across as cold. Though, I did do another post on Lighter Shades of Gray in which I found some that aren’t cold – here’s the link: Lighter Shade of Gray   But here’s my current review of these shades:

5 shades of gray.  I didn’t quite have the finances or energy to try 50. :-p And no I’ve never seen that movie and don’t plan on it.  That’s just not something I’m into.  I’d rather men be good old-fashioned nice, you know?  Nice is sexy.  I’m not so much into crazies or encouraging crazies:

1.) Icy Avalanche (lighter shade on same paint card as Stone isle): I think this was the exact color of prison gray that my husband used on his first house.  I don’t recommend this one.  Though I used it in a bathroom where the tile was grayish so it might have just been a little overwhelming – still don’t recommend.  I’ve found that the trim, tile, etc in the room really effects the way the paint color comes across.

2.) Stone Isle (slghtly blue-ish gray but more on the gray side – still very neutral): I LOVE this color.  It kind of reminds me of like a beachy kind of gray – my brother called it cape cod.  It’s still on the neutral side.  It looks very modern and classic.  I wouldn’t paint an entire house in this color, but one or 2 rooms would be good.  I actually painted the common area of our four-plex building in this color b/c I’m using some artwork that has red in it and it will go really nice with red.  It’s also very neutral but still modern and stylish.  I’ve gotten alot of comments on this color from the tenants – they really like it.  It comes across as warm even when paired with red/brown brick.  LOVE this color.

3.) Repose Gray (little darker than what I was looking for): This was a little darker than what I was looking for in a rental house.  I needed more neutral and light.

4.) Basalt Powder (HGSW2457 – lighter shade on same paint card as Gracious Griege): I painted the other bathroom with this color and it’s not bad – not great either but not bad – just kind of meh neutral.  It looks very close to white though so it depends what kind of look you’re going for.  If you want an almost white color, then this might be for you.  It might come across as a little cold though in a living room – I think for a bathroom it was alright.  UPDATE:  I tried this in the living room in a different unit and I really like it!  It looks very modern.  See other post Lighter Shade of Gray

5.) Gracious Greige (HGSW2456): LOVE this color.  I would paint an entire house in this color and not think twice.  We painted the kitchen of our rental unit with this color and it looks great.  This is a very neutral color and it’s also light enough – not too dark.  Plus, it’s got a little beige in it so it’s not all gray – more like grayish.  Good for those of us who are still walking the line on whether to like gray or not.  This is my new favorite neutral.

Here’s the gracious greige in the kitchen:

BroadmoorKitchenBest
Gracious Griege Kitchen

Here’s the Stone Isle in a bedroom:

BroadmoorThirdBed
Stone Isle Bedroom

Here’s the Icy Avalanche in the bathroom (don’t recommend – I just felt like it was kind of blah and seemed very masculine to me – think garage.  Maybe b/c of the colors it’s up against – that makes a huge difference):

Broadmoor_HallBath
Icy Avalanche Bathroom

Here’s the Basalt Powder in the other bathroom (again not my favorite – very close to white – but it is neutral).  Sorry you can’t really see the wall that much in this picture – the door is in the way and the lighting’s not great.  It’s such a small bathroom – hard to get good pics:.  This one kind of made me think of a dentist office or a pharmacy :-/:

BroadmoorMasterBath
Basalt Powder Bathroom

See this next post on lighter shades of gray: Lighter Shade of Gray


Apr
2024

Restoring Peeling Thermofoil Kitchen Cabinets

categories: Renovation

Anyone else have peeling kitchen cabinets? I used to love our white cabinets and how easy they were to wipe off, but now that they are peeling they are the bane of my existence. One thing with house renovations is that once you think about updating one thing it cascades into a bunch of other things and before you know it you’ve spent a gazillion dollars. Because of our peeling kitchen cabinets, we haven’t been able to replace our flooring, countertops, backsplash since we didn’t know if we would have to fully replace the cabinets and that might change the kitchen footprint. It has basically held up all of our house renovations, so now we have decided we are going to completely peel the thermofoil off and paint them.

Our main goal for our house is to not have any eye sores and these peeling cabinets were eye sores. We aren’t trying to necessarily have an HGTV house just functional house with no eye sores because we have three kids and they are about to go to college. :-p Now, when we have a rental house that generates income that is a different story and HGTV is the goal so that’s fun to get to play around there, but for myself I don’t feel like I need all of that. If by doing our little hacks, our house looks a little more HGTV, well then I’m not going to complain or anything.

So as a quick and potential long term fix if it goes well, we took off and painted the 2 cabinet doors that were peeling. We don’t have much time, in general, with 3 kids. so we figure we’ll fix them as they peel 🙂 Here are the steps we followed:

1.) Buy the paint and supplies (see supply list section). We took an existing door to Home Depot to get a color match. We bought special cabinet paint in this color. I think it’s important to buy cabinet paint because it’s somewhat self-leveling. You could even splurge and get the Benjamin Moore – Advance for cabinets. or Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel. I read those are the best but then got in a rush and forgot about it because I was already at Home Depot and I got Behr Cabinet paint which worked out fine.

2.) Prep work: We took both cabinet doors off as well as the handles. We covered our ping pong table in the garage with a paint cloth and setup all our supplies. This was the perfect place to do the painting (height and everything).

3.) Remove the thermofoil completely with a heat gun. I highly recommend buying a heat gun for this because the thermofoil comes off much better so you can avoid messing up the wood underneath. We set the heat gun at 500 degrees and the thermofoil removed very easily and cleanly. I wore some gloves because I was scared to get burned. We even used the heat gun to speed up the paint drying process, but we set it at a lower temp and held it further away. This allowed us to finish the job quicker.

4.) Sand and prep the cabinet doors. After removing the thermofoil fully, you can use denatured alcohol to remove the glue residue. We didn’t do that part, we just sanded the doors with 120-grit sandpaper (wear goggles, and mask b/c you don’t want this stuff to get in your eyes and nose), then 220-grit sandpaper. If you have any indentations in the wood, you can use wood putty to fill those in before painting. We didn’t have any because the heat gun at the right setting and some patience (don’t drink coffee before this process :-p) allowed us to remove the thermofoil very cleanly. Use a tack cloth or vacuum to remove the debris after sanding.

5.) Prime the doors with the Kils3 primer (2 coats). Put your first coat, then let it dry and sand again. Do this twice (total of 2 coats of primer) – sanding after each time. The sanding is important – it really gives it that smooth feel you want for your kitchen cabinets. You don’t have to sand after the final coat. We used a paint brush for the intricate parts of the door and a roller for the flat parts.

6.) After thoroughly priming, you are ready to apply the paint color (3 coats). The paint we got had a satin finish because it will be easier to clean than eggshell and that is what our current finish is so we wanted the best match for that as well. Some people prefer semi-glass for kitchens – that’s probably what I would’ve gotten if I wasn’t trying to match our existing doors. We did 3 coats of the color – sanding after each one, except the final one. For the final coat, we did it with the paintbrush only because we felt that had a better finish. I guess if you got the right roller, maybe that would give you the right finish. We had a foam roller and it was leaving an impression – don’t use a foam roller – use a short nap one.

7.) Once dried – you may have to wait several days depending on the type of paint you purchased (check the cure time), you are ready to put the handles back on and put the doors in place!

We are very happy with the final product. The paint match we got from Home Depot wasn’t perfect but it was close enough – for white kitchen cabinet doors it’s hard to tell the difference. I don’t think any of our company will be looking close enough to tell the difference (if they are, then they won’t be invited back j/k) and it looks so much better than having white cabinets with the brown underneath showing in chunks. I feel confident enough now that we can one day get new backsplash and countertops with this fix (once we get over the price shock of those things – as I mentioned our 3 kids are heading to college one after another :-p). We will just continue to do the rest of the doors and drawers as they start peeling as well – in my opinion it’s so much easier to do it as they peel rather than all at once. We were able to save ourselves like $15,000 – not sure how much kitchen cabinets run these days with inflation. I didn’t even bother to get a quote because I didn’t want to faint or waste anyone’s time.

Supply List:

  • Face Mask
  • Work gloves
  • Cabinet paint
  • Kilz 3 primer
  • Paint brush
  • Paint roller – short nap mini roller
  • Tack cloth to wipe off the sanding debris
  • Heat gun
  • Goggles

Pictures of the process:


Dec
2023

Bike Vacation Itinerary: 30A, Florida (near Destin)

categories: Travel

Another Biking Vacation for those who enjoy biking – 30A is a great biking destination! We stayed essentially in a mobile home in the Blue Mountain Beach area. I didn’t realize it was a mobile home because from the pictures it looked just like a house, but once we got there we realized it was the one small house in a sea of mansions – no wonder it was a good price! 🙂

Anyway, it suited us just fine – good thing there weren’t any strong winds or hurricanes while we were there. It had two bedrooms and one bathroom which was all we really needed. Turns out they also had an outdoor shower which came in really handy so none of us would have to remain salty after coming home from the beach.

We loved Blue Mountain beach – it’s a nice central location to access all of 30A and it’s a beautiful beach, relatively laid back, and family friendly. 30A has a unique phenomenon called Dune Lakes which are actually pretty rare – we passed over many on our bike rides.

Here’s our itinerary with kids.

Day 1: Explored the Blue Mountain Beach area. Loaded up our beach wagon (the place we rented provided one of these) and headed down to the Blue Mountain Beach. We got an awesome new beach tent that looks like a blue starfish which really made our trip nice. It’s very portable by bike as well. After some boogie board riding, we headed to eat at Redfish Taco which had a great band most nights and amazing tacos, then had ice cream at Blue Mountain Creamery.

Day 2: Rode our bikes to Seaside (about 4 miles away – where the Truman show was filmed) from our house in Blue Mountain beach. We ate lunch at the food trucks in Seaside. Had some barbeque at Barefoot BBQ and grilled cheese at the Meltdown – nice shade and cool breeze under their canopies. Then, we headed down to the public access point to the beach and set up our tent. The beach was very similar to Blue Mountain beach – no difference. Except the public part is very small – mostly you have to pay to get in. The town of Seaside was pretty neat with the pastel architecture so that was a sight to see. We went to a few of the shops but were priced out of them for the most part. Saw a dress for $179 and did a U-Turn out of there.

Day 3: Rode our bikes to Topsail Hill State Park (about 5.6 miles – the opposite direction from Seaside). I liked the scenery at this park – it was nice and shaded from the tall trees. We got some snacks at the general store and ice water/Gatorade then rode the Campbell trail to the dune lake – there was nice breeze the whole way. Then, we rode to the beach and saw some sea snails and sat on the sandbars which were protected from the waves. The beach was pristine.

Day 4: Rode our bikes to Grayton Beach State Park (about 3 miles away). This was a must do. We first hiked the Dune Trail which was an experience hiking in the sand but the ground hardened out shortly into it so it wasn’t heavy sand the whole way. After this hike we were kind of hot and ready to get in the ocean. The beach here was really nice and we caught and released some sea creatures. We ate dinner at Beach Camp Brewing Company which was yummy. It actually started pouring down rain at this point and it was getting dark so the ride back was a bit scary traversing the rain by headlight. We were extra careful though and made it back with no injuries.

Day 5: Drove our bikes to Point Washington Forest and biked some of the trails there. Afterwards, we drove our bikes to Rosemary Beach, parked at Shades Bar & Grill, rode the trail to Seacrest and got some pizza at Pizza By The Sea. We ate in the town square where there was some live music then headed back to Rosemary Beach to watch the sunset.

Day 6: Destin for a boat snorkeling tour. I was really surprised how clear the water was – we could actually see fish when we went snorkeling and we even spotted someone with a pet monkey on a surfboard. Afterwards, we ate at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville on the ocean.

Day 7: Shipwreck Island Waterpark and then checked out the Panama City Beach.

Day 1: Blue Mountain Beach

There was some seaweed in the water, but not much on the beach.

Red Fish Taco Band – they had a band most nights and great food – awesome way to end the day of biking:

Blue Mountain Creamery for dessert most nights:

Day 2: Rode our bikes to Seaside

Crossing over Alligator Lake:

Red Fish Dune Lake:

We can see the beach but the tricky part will be getting there. For most of it you have to pay to get in – we walked quite a bit to find the tiny public access point.

Day 3: Rode our bikes to Topsail Hill State Park

We loved our little starfish tent – it was easy to transport by bike and all we had to do is fill the legs up with sand. I kept wondering if the pole was going to snap in half but it held up with all the wind.

Day 4: Grayton Beach State Park

We hiked the Dune Lake Trail. I highly recommend this – it’s a nice change of pace and a different kind of hiking on the sand.

Now, to the beach:

Day 5: Point Washington State Park (my favorite ride this trip). There were some heavy sand patches in some spots that you have to be wary of but very fun trail.

Day 6: Destin

We took a boat snorkel tour which was amazing and saw some dolphins along the way.

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Dec
2023

Bike Vacation Itinerary: Clearwater, Florida

categories: Travel

Since we love biking so much, we were looking for a vacation where we could explore mostly by bike. Clearwater, Florida is what we landed on since we had read about the Pinellas Trail. We went over Christmas a couple of years ago. Here’s our itinerary with kids.

We rented a house in Palm Harbor which is more of a suburb so it was a bit less expensive than being on the beach. Turns out there are a lot of bike trails in the area as well so if you are an avid biker, you may not even need to drive. We have kids so we drove to the Pinellas trail most days.

Day 1: We rode our bikes to the neighborhood park in Palm Harbor (John Chestnut Sr Park) and saw lots of nature. There were alligators, lots of birds, and several playgrounds.

Day 2: Rode from Crystal Beach to Tarpon Springs. There was a zoo along the way! We ate some Greek food and dessert at the Sponge Docks.

Day 3: Rode from Crystal Beach to Honeymoon Island State Park. This ride included miles on the DunedIn causeway which had the most beautiful ocean views on both sides. It was about 6 miles one way but we beat the car traffic which was bumper to bumper. Honeymoon Island State Park is a very natural park and the beaches are beautiful and pristine. We got snow cones on the way back and watched the sunset at High & Dry Grill.

Day 4: Just me and my husband rode from Palm Harbor to Tarpon Springs and we ate at a nice Greek Restaurant. It was a little too long of a ride to include the kids.

Day 5: Rode from DunedIn to Clearwater Beach. Clearwater beach is amazing – it’s a very busy city beach with plenty to do and loads of shops, but the traffic getting there was pretty bad – luckily we didn’t have to deal with it because we were on bike. We ate at DunedIn Brewery at the end of the ride and it was yummy.

Day 6: My absolute favorite place was Pass-A-Grille beach. We didn’t actually bike here but I think you can. The atmosphere was amazing – there was a great band playing and we got to sit right on the beach to eat at Paradise Grille. A fog had rolled in over the ocean which gave it an eerie, magical feeling. The beach was absolutely stunning.

I do feel like the best way (and most fun, IMO) to get around to the beaches in this area was by bike because you got to beat the traffic and fully immerse yourself in the ocean atmosphere – lots of wildlife and fun things to stop and see along the way as well.

Day 1: Bike to John Chestnut Sr Park

Day 2: Crystal Beach to Tarpon Springs

The Zoo along the trail:

Sponge Docks:

Day 3: Crystal Beach to Honeymoon Island State Park

Ended the day with snow cones at this place and watched the sunset:

Day 5: Rode from DunedIn to Clearwater Beach

Day 6: Pass-A-Grille Beach


Apr
2020

Banana Cake With Cream Cheese Icing

categories: Recipes

During the pandemic, everyday feels like Groundhog Day. We just watched that movie with the kids this past weekend and they loved it.  Well, if everyday is going to be the same then I want it to involve this Banana cake with cream cheese icing. So on top of the standard eggs, bread, and milk from the store, I make sure to have bananas, cream cheese, and powdered sugar. As I tell my husband when he sees me making a cake every 3 days – someone has to be the adult around here! :-p

I found this recipe on AllRecipes.com which is my goto place for recipes. Here is the link:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8333/banana-cake-vi/?internalSource=streams&referringId=15827&referringContentType=Recipe%20Hub&clickId=st_trending_b

I’ll paste my version of it here.  I just tweaked a few things b/c I didn’t have stuff on hand or didn’t want to do the extra stuff.  Otherwise, it’s mostly the same:

Ingredients:

¾ cup butter (use salted butter)
2 cups white sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ cups buttermilk (milk with 1 tbsp of vinegar added – let sit for a few minutes)
2 teaspoons lemon juice (didn’t use)
1 ½ cups mashed bananas (3 bananas)

For the frosting:

½ cup butter, softened
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
3 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Step 1

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F (135 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 inch pan. In a small bowl, mix mashed bananas with lemon juice (didn’t use lemon juice just mashed the bananas), set aside. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda. Set aside.

Step 2

In a large bowl, cream 3/4 cup butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in 2 teaspoons vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Stir in banana mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Step 3

Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place directly into freezer for 45 minutes (did not do this – don’t ever have that much space in the freezer and it turns out fine!). This will make the cake very moist.

Step 4

For the frosting: In a large bowl, cream 1/2 cup butter and cream cheese until smooth. Beat in 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add confectioners sugar and beat on low speed until combined, then on high until frosting is smooth. Spread on cooled cake.

Some people in my family like to sprinkle this cake with cinnamon before eating. Sounds good, but I tend to like it the way it is – can’t mess with perfection.

Update: I did gain 20 lbs over the pandemic so maybe don’t make this every few days like I did. :-p


Apr
2020

Things To Do During the Pandemic

categories: Blog

Definitely don’t try to travel abroad. We did that and almost got stuck in Costa Rica. :-p So, I highly advise against it. Maybe I’ll write about it some day but it’s still too raw in my memory bank. I think next time we try to vacation we will go camping or something simple. This whole pandemic thing has really made me want to go back to basics and I’m probably not alone on that.

These are a couple of things that have kept us busy during the pandemic.

1.) Pandemic Pokemon bracelets. One of my daughters loves Pokemon so we decided to make some Pokemon themed charm bracelets. You can check out how to do that with this blog post: 

DIY Charm Bracelet

Here’s a picture of one of them:

She likes the Evees (not sure if I”m spelling that right)

2.) Cards Against Humanity: Family Edition. They are giving away the beta version of this game online and you can print it and play it for free! Nothing better than that. Aren’t we all trying to save some coins during this time? You can get that here: https://www.cardsagainsthumanityfamilyedition.com/

It’s handy if you have some card stock lying around which we happened to for some other project. I also had to write in a few of my own cards to get some extra laughs from inside jokes our family shares. That went over pretty well! The game is appropriate for kids (the kids said it was until I wrote in my own cards :-p). What can I say – I’ll do anything for a laugh – most people don’t know that about me.

3.) Movies – lots of movies. One of my daughters had her birthday recently and so we let her have an Amazon movie shopping spree for her birthday – she bought alot of super hero movies (Spiderman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Black Panther).  Turns out it was the perfect gift b/c she’s our movie lover.  A few of the movies we recommend:
Big
Abominable
Evan Almighty
It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Leap
Adventures in BabySitting
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Kid Who Would Be King
Groundhog Day
Captain Marvel
Black Panther
Wonder Woman
Cheaper By The Dozen

4.) Taking a walk most nights around the neighborhood. My husband would love to go when the sun is still out but I don’t like to run into too many people. It gets to be like the game Frogger crossing the street everytime someone is walking toward us. So I like to go when it gets dark. We compromise and go at dusk – it’s usually dark by the time we get home.

5.) Cooking – I’ve never cooked so much in my life.  I guess I’m trying to make up for not getting to go out to eat.  I thought I would lose weight during the pandemic but turns out, it’s quite the opposite.  I can’t stay out of the kitchen.  One of my favorite things is Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Icing.  I will post the recipe I use for that soon.  I basically make it again as soon as we run out.  As long as I have that cake in the fridge, I feel like everything is going to be ok.

6.) Learn to make masks.  The kids made their own out of some scrap cloth we had laying around and used rubber bands and staples.  They are probably not going to be the most comfortable masks but so far they haven’t had to use them so we’ll see.  I learned how to make some out of socks and t-shirts but still have yet to make one.  I haven’t gone anywhere so no need yet, but I guess I should prepare.  :-p

7.) Have a stick person dance party using glow sticks:

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This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is StickParty7-Copy-736x1024.jpg

 

What not to do (And I know this from experience :-p):
1.) Watch news 24/7. (I’m about to lose my ever loving mind with this!)
2.) Watch Planet of the Apes with the kids. We thought they could handle it – 1 and 2 were fine but War of the Planet of the Apes was a step too far. All kids were fine but my sensitive kid (and it’s not the youngest) – she was not happy and might’ve had to sleep with her siblings for a couple of days to recover.  Now, she no longer trusts my movie picks and I don’t blame her.
3.) Don’t feel like you have to do it all.  Take some time to relax.


Feb
2020

Kauai – 11 Day Itinerary

categories: Blog, Travel

Here is our 11 day or 10 night itinerary to Kauai.  We packed plenty of stuff in but it still managed to feel relaxing.  Kauai has a way of making people feel that way.  This island holds a special place in my heart.  It’s my favorite of all the Hawaiian islands though I haven’t been to the big island yet.  I feel I have no need to see the big island if it means missing any days on Kauai.  Some say Disney is the most magical place on Earth, but I definitely think they meant Kauai.  

Day One (Saturday): We arrived in Kauai at around 2PM. The first thing we did was pick up our Avis Rental car. We got a minivan of course for convenience sake.

The first thing we noticed is that chickens and roosters were everywhere. We thought that was curious. I was thinking – why are they in the Avis parking lot – what could they possibly be eating for food? Then I realized the amount of food that flies out of our minivan every time we open the doors – ah! they are eating goldfish! Makes sense. Not the healthiest diet, but to each their own.

We saw some baby chicks that the kids fell in love with. From here on out they decided they would count the baby chicks they found. Turns out there were ALOT. And we soon found out that they were testing out their Cock-a-doodle-doos all day long. I thought roosters only did that in the morning as like an alarm clock, but not these roosters. I guess they wanted to make sure they still had it. They screamed so much that their voices were hoarse. They were like – cock-a-doodle-cough-cough. Definitely need ear buds!

We realized we were really hungry. There’s a 5 hour time difference. So, while we arrived at 2pm it was really 7pm back home. We decided to go out to eat in Lihue at Kalapaki Joe’s. The burgers and fries were really good. It’s American bar food, but very good and good service.

Next, we went to Wal-mart to buy groceries. The place we rented is a 2 bedroom/2 bath condo – woohoo! Usually we all stay in one room on vacation which is definitely less fun.. :-p The kids would end up keeping us up all night and at some point I’d end up throwing a pillow at one of their heads to shut it.  But now we had the roosters to keep us up and I couldn’t exactly throw a pillow at their heads. Though, the ear plugs definitely helped. :-p

Day Two (Sunday): Lydgate Beach Park, then Ho-opi Falls.

We felt jet lagged so luckily I didn’t plan anything for this day and we got to sleep in a bit. I actually had planned something for this day, but turns out I got the days wrong luckily on the Excel spreadsheet, so we had an extra spare day – that worked out very well! Eventually, we got around to going snorkeling at Lydgate Beach Park. Our condo is right next to this place so it was within walking distance.

This is a great place to snorkel especially for kids who are just learning. It’s protected by boulders so the kids aren’t exposed to the open ocean. There isn’t a reef there, but there’s fish and some rocks for the fish to hide behind. We did see schools of fish (some yellow and black striped and some big bright blue ones that the kids called Dori fish), but it takes some time to find them – you have to be patient. I was hoping to see a turtle, but didn’t find one. We ate our packed lunch at the beach.

Next, we went to Ho’opi falls. This was a beautiful hike! I highly recommend it. Though we got off to a late start – 4pm. I wish we would’ve started sooner because we would’ve had more time to explore. There are some obstacles that you will have to maneuver around depending on which paths you take but this is what makes it fun – nature’s jungle gym. The paths sometimes branch off and then converge so there’s different ways to get to the falls. But I would say it’s a moderate hike – not too strenuous.

We passed the first waterfall and went to the second waterfall which is what people recommended. However, the path (remember how I mentioned multiple paths) we took landed us at the top of the waterfall and we wanted to be at the bottom so we could swim. We saw these 2 ladies go up this cliff wall – up and over to get to another section of the path but I thought it would be too dangerous coming down that wall with the kids and we decided against it. Turns out, we could’ve gone up and that would’ve converged with a different path and taken us down to the bottom of the falls for swimming. So, we could’ve done it, but we were also low on daylight and the mosquitoes were eating us alive!

You need good bug spray for this hike. The girls got no less than 30 bites each even though we sprayed them with bug spray. The spray we used was family spray though with not so many chemicals and it just didn’t cut it. Me and my husband didn’t get bit as much because I think they wanted young blood. I had a ton of them land on me but they didn’t end up biting – I think they took a sample and then spread the word that my blood was rotten. :-p

We decided to start our trek back to the car when we all heard a man scream and then a thud. To my horror, I realized it was my husband. He was trying to climb over a fallen tree and all we saw was him do a drop and roll onto his shoulder and then his back and he was grimacing in pain and holding his hand. Turns out, as he was climbing over the tree, his camera bag got stuck and caused him to roll over awkwardly. He tried to catch himself with his hand and all 4 of his fingers bent backward all the way to touch the back of his arm. Youch!!

The only thing you can expect when you’re out in nature is the unexpected. That’s the fun of it but also the danger of it. Luckily, he could still move all of his fingers so we didn’t think they were broken. We kept on trekking.

Day Three (Monday): Napali coast boat tour with Capt. Andy, swam in the pool at the condo, then we went to a Luaua at the Smith’s family farm.

The boat tour was amazing. It was a sailing catamaran that felt very luxurious. We did the 7AM tour. We arrived at Port Allen around 6:45AM. They provided muffins and coffee which were REALLY good – almond poppy seed (my favorite). Then, we boarded the vessel and they had more snacks – fresh fruit and some homemade oatmeal cereal bar type treat and a quiche type of treat.

They also provided wine and beer on the trip though we did not partake – just way too early for that plus I battle sea sickness and that’s not a good mix. I did take some dramamine before boarding the vessel, but I didn’t give any to my kids because I wasn’t sure if they got sea sick or not. Turns out 2 of them do. I gave them some dramamine a bit after I saw they were getting seasick and it helped but of course they were already somewhat sick so they ended up missing some of the views.

The views of the Napali coast were AMAZING! And Captain Andy’s narration was amazing. We saw several pods of dolphins up close (even an albino dolphin) and some sea turtles. Then, we got in to snorkel on the way back which was nice – there was plenty of fish – even a yellow one which we called the Pokemon fish because my girls are really into Pokemon right now. I told my youngest if she could find that fish while snorkeling I’d get her a special Pokemon treat just to encourage her b/c the snorkeling was a bit of a challenge for my two youngest.

To be honest it was a bit of a challenge for me this time as well because I had to use one of the snorkels they provided instead of my own and one of their life jackets which wasn’t quite what I’m used to – has the buckle that goes between the legs. I felt like it was either riding up my bottom or it was choking me so I spent most of my snorkel time wrestling with that vest and also trying to coax my daughter to put her head in the water. :-p But I still had a blast – any chance I get to snorkel is a good time because you never know what you are going to find and it’s such a neat sensory experience. My oldest daughter was swimming around like a fish which was neat to see.

They called us in for lunch after a while – that’s how they got us out of the water and lunch was GOOD! Gourmet deli sandwiches which I sometimes don’t like deli sandwiches because of ligaments, but these were amazing! They also had some yummy homemade rice with it and white chocolate macadamian nut cookies and drinks. YUM! We didn’t not go hungry.

On our way back home, we stopped for coffee and shaved ice at Fresh Shave.  Both soooo good.  Both located in the same area.  The coffee was right inside the building.

Day was not over yet – we still had a Luau planned.  We went to the Smith Luau and it was great!  They had lots of animals to play with for the kids.  My oldest daughter finally got to play with a chickie – she’d been waiting to get her hands on one.

Day Four (Tuesday): Swimming at the hotel pool to cool off our burnt selves, then Waimea Canyon. We had originally wanted to do Pihea trail which is 8 miles and takes all day, but we got off to a late start and decided to do Canyon Trail instead. We arrived at our destination about 4pm.

It was really overcast and drizzling on our way up the drive so I was thinking we weren’t going to be able to do the hike. I had read that if it’s been raining it can be really dangerous because the trails will be slick. But it started to clear up once we got there. We stopped at the overlook where the Canyon trail started and we saw some helicopters which was really neat. The helicopter landed on a trail. We found out from some people that a lady slipped while at the end of the Canyon trail and broke her ankle – 90 degree break or something. They got her out by helicopter. :-/

We decided to do the hike anyway with lots of trepidation. I kept wanting to turn back multiple times. But other hikers kept encouraging us on. We found out not to go all the way to the falls but just to go to the lookout and we would be fine. The trail has lots of ups and downs and I would say strenuous at times but we made it through without falling. Everyone just had to listen to me freaking out the whole time. :-p My youngest was really tired and I was scared she wasn’t going to make it all the way to the end or she was going to get hurt because she was dragging her feet and there were so many tree roots everywhere. Me and my husband alternated holding her hand at times.

But we all made it unscathed and then we headed up to the Pu u lookout which is the head of the Pihea trail. This was amazing. You get a view of the Kalalau valley. The clouds roll in and over at times but when they part and you see the view it is pure heaven. We couldn’t see the sunset there because of all the clouds, but that’s ok the view was more than enough.

Next we headed down the mountain about 7:15PM and it was dark and now rainy which was kind of dangerous. We were happy to be down and found a place to eat called Chicken in a Barrel BBQ – it was sooooo good! I highly recommend it.

Day Five (Wednesday): Wailua River Kayak and Hike to the Secret Falls tour. We took this tour with Duke’s Kayak Adventures. It started at 7AM, but we met up at 6:45AM in Lihue – only 5 min from our condo. We had no idea what we were in for. I did not realize how rigorous this tour would be beforehand – thank goodness! We really enjoyed it, but we probably wouldn’t have done it if we’d known. :-p Or at least I wouldn’t have. :-p With my husband’s sprained hand, I was definitely nervous, but he said he’d be ok so we went ahead. The tour was over at around 12:30PM.

The kayaking was intense. Maybe because I was saddled with a 55 lb bag of potatoes – my daughter. :-p She was doing her best to paddle, but most of the time she was too tired to paddle. So, I never once stopped paddling and we were always pulling up the rear, but it was good exercise. The thought of kayaking back the way we came though was a little daunting. It seemed like both ways we were going against the wind.

Once we arrived at the hiking destination, we started the hike. There wasn’t a whole lot of resting on this tour – it was pretty go, go go. The hike was a bit strenuous because you were basically hiking along the river most of the way to get to the waterfall. You need river hiking shoes. We wore our tennis shoes and that worked out fine but our feet got all pruned by the end and the kids didn’t like that feeling.

The rocks were wet and the trail was muddy so plenty of chances to slip and hurt yourself but we all made it out ok this time. I was definitely gun shy after the first hike and kept lecturing the kids to stay positive and practice good team work. That’s hard for kids even in Kauai. :-p

The waterfall was really nice and you can swim in the pool beneath. Highly recommend. We brought our own lunch and ate it there at the waterfall. We got about 45 minutes to eat and play, which I felt was a little rushed, but most of the tour I felt rushed – that’s the only thing I would change if I could. Otherwise, I loved the tour.

Back to the hotel for swimming. Bubba’s for dinner. Several places we sat down and left before we landed on Bubba’s. It was just eh ok. It filled us up and didn’t break the bank was the main point.  We didn’t want to spend over $100 on a meal and eat fancy stuff that we don’t like anyway.

Day 6 (Thursday): Snorkeling at Poipu beach, then Allerton Botanical Garden.

Poipu beach was my favorite place to snorkel. We saw a bunch of fish and the water was really clear. We went to Lawai beach first, but it was too advanced for the kids and us probably – the rocky shore made it hard to enter without scraping yourself up. I saw an adult man with a bleeding hand and asked him what he thought of the place. :-p That was enough to convince me to go somewhere else.

We had our lunch of turkey sandwiches and chips and did some snorkeling. We saw some needle fish and a bunch of other kinds of fish. I was hoping to see a turtle but we didn’t see any in the water, however at night a giant sea turtle came up on land to rest and we got take some pictures.

The girls made a Pokemon sand castle that was cute:

We had an appointment at 3pm for a tour at Allerton Botanical Garden.  This was sooo neat!  We had such an amazing tour guide who really catered to the kids and made them excited.  We got to taste some of the fruits that were on the trees which was an interesting experience and he always made sure the kids were entertained.  It was also a great opportunity for some really cool pictures.  Here are a few:

Then, we went to see the Spouting Horn since it was right outside Allerton Garden:

For dinner, we got some huge burritos from Da Crack and brought them back to Poipu beach to eat while the sunset. Then, we went to Uncle’s shave ice – it was our favorite. We tended to like the Hawaiian shave ice flavor wherever we went. This was pineapple, coconut flavors mixed together with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Day 8 (Friday): We went tubing with the Kauai Backcountry Adventures down the irrigation canals in the center of the island and afterwards went to Hanalei Bay in the North Shore. In between, we ate Wailua Shave ice on the way to North Shore.

The tubing adventure was amazing.  We had a couple of guides that were hilarious – they kept us laughing.  We took a bus ride to the spot where we were going to tube.  One of our guides played the ukelele while we tubed which made it feel surreal like we were in a movie.  I loved all the songs.  

The tubing was relaxing  – nothing too crazy – though you do have to watch your head and feet when you go through the tunnels to make sure you don’t get smacked around.  They fed us a nice lunch with gourmet sandwiches.

Next, we had some shave ice at Wailua Shave Ice.  It was good.  Not our favorite but good.  We didn’t get ice cream in it this time, maybe that’s why it wasn’t our favorite. :-p

Heading up to North Shore now.  I have a special place in my heart for the North Shore because that’s where I stayed last time I was in Kauai although this time much of the North Shore had been blocked off because of flooding so that was kind of sad.  But the North Shore is still so beautiful as I remembered.  The farthest we could go was Hanalei Bay.  Hanalei Bay is such a beautiful town.  The bay is surrounded by cliffs in the distance so it’s a unique setting to swim.

We didn’t snorkel here because the water was definitely rougher and it was a sand bottom so not much to see but fine for swimming and boogie boarding though we didn’t have boogie boards.  The girls just went swimming.  And there was a life guard on duty so that was nice.  I always have my girls wear life jackets in the water though so I can relax – otherwise I think I’d be too stressed.  I once almost drowned in a wave pool when I was about 8 so that fear still lives with me.

Ate dinner at Calypso.  We loved the live music and atmosphere.

Day 9 (Saturday): North Shore again – woohoo!  We went to Anini beach because we had heard that this would be a good place to snorkel as it was supposed to be calmer in the North at this time due to a South swell.  However, I found it to be the same calmness as the South Shore – it was calm everywhere for us – nice Mother Nature.  Then, we went to the light house.

Anini Beach really struck me.  It was such a huge beach with the potential for being so crowded on a Saturday.  I thought it was going to be crazy, but it wasn’t.  The beach is so huge with so many nooks and crannies due to the fact that there are monkey pod trees everywhere providing lots and lots of shade that it felt like it didn’t matter how crowded it was, you could find a place that would make it feel like your own personal spot on the beach.

I really loved this beach also because there was just so much shade.  Me and Bryon went snorkeling – the girls were kind of done with snorkeling at this point.  Bryon decided he would explore the area on his own by snorkel and let me know where the good spots are and what he finds.  So, I was left to snorkel on my own but that kind of freaked me out.

I love snorkeling but I’m used to doing it with a partner.  I kept trying to explore, but would end up looking behind me wondering what was exploring me feeling like I was being watched by something underwater.  :-p  I was essentially snorkeling backward like watching my back at all times.  It wasn’t fun.  I waited for my husband to come back and tell me.

Once he came back, I convinced him to stay with me and we decided to go together out to this fallen tree in the ocean.  And we found a turtle!!!  It was what I’d been waiting for the entire trip.  We got to swim with the turtle.  Then, we explored some more and found another turtle eating moss off the reef and we decided to remember where this turtle is and go back and get the girls so they could see the turtle.

That was a bit exhausting but the kids were excited to see it to.  We found our way back to the turtle and showed them and then we were done.  Time to go eat.  It started to drizzle a bit, but that’s how it is in the North Shore.  It drizzles then clears up quite often throughout the day.  That’s what makes it so lush and maybe what keeps it cooler.  The temps stay in the 70’s and 80’s but thankfully the water is still warm so that’s nice.  Kauai is the perfect place – maybe it’s spoiled us forever – I’m not sure anything else could ever live up to it.

Then, we went to see a lighthouse from afar and got some nice pictures:

For dinner, we ate at Street Burger back on the East side.  We loved it – such unique burgers.  I got the Greek burger and it was amazing.  Next time, I would try the Southern.

Day 10 (Sunday): We decided to hike the Heritage trail, then we went back to Poipu beach on the right hand side this time and saw a monk seal. 

The Heritage trail was nice.  It had great views, but we weren’t prepared for how long it was.  As we were heading to the trail head (which is kind of hidden by the way – you meander through the beach and up to the trail), an older lady walks by and says, “if I can do it, you guys can do it!”.  So, we were feeling pretty confident that ya of course we can do it then – look at her. 

But this trail is looong or we were just tired at this point.  :-p  I am convinced there’s no way this lady did the whole trail – she probably just walked along the beach and turned around – or so that’s what I like to think so I don’t feel bad.  If I did it again, I think I’d turn around right before the Golf course.  

Though right after the Golf course, it turns into Mars looking terrain with red dirt so that’s kind of cool and you can see turtles swimming in the ocean at places.  The views are amazing.  At the end, there was a cave, but we couldn’t figure out for the life of us how to get in.  We just kept hiking around and we were so tired so we decided to head back.

We headed straight for Waikomo Shave Ice, desperately in need of something to cool us down.  Amazing Shave Ice there – they even had a blackberry flavor which was refreshing and our favorite – Hawaiian.  

Next, off to Poipu Beach again.  We were planning to boogie board, but we didn’t make it in time to rent boogie boards so we just played in the water to cool off.  This time we headed to the right side of the beach where the waves were a little rougher.  

We got to see a double rainbow and a monk seal was sleeping on the beach.  So neat!  That’s why I think Kauai is so magical.  It’s like it knew what we wanted and provided like clockwork.  On our last day, it’s like – boom!  Double Rainbow!  boom! Monk Seal!  boom! Sunset!  Cue – unicorn on the beach take 1.  j/k no unicorns there but might as well be.  Almost like fireworks at the end of the trip.  You can’t help but appreciate it.  Kauai – stay magical.

Then, dinner at Thai Food Bowl.  It was nice – they had live music.  And made us our favorite dish – Pad See Ew.  

Day 11 (Monday): Packed. Shopped. Looked for Chipwrecked food truck couldn’t find it. Ate at Paco’s Taco’s instead. Had Jojo’s shave ice. Walked to Kalamani playground. It was raining.  Not the most fun day but it was our last day and we were tired and didn’t want to get wet before flying so basically wondered around the East side.


Feb
2020

Nashville – Opryland Resort Itinerary

categories: Travel

Over Thanksgiving holiday a few years back, we decided to take a roadtrip to Nashville. It was amazing. We were only there for a long weekend but we made the most of it. We stayed at the Opryland Resort and that was the best decision. It’s a little pricey but so worth it if you like no-hassle vacations.

It’s a bit like being at an all-inclusive resort (except it’s not all-inclusive) because there are so many things on sight to do and very kid-friendly to boot. When you have young kids, it’s nice to just go where everything is all in one place and you don’t have to do a bunch of moving around. It was also very festive around this season with lots of lights and got us all in the holiday spirit.

Day (night) 1: The first night we arrived on a Thursday, we just roamed around the hotel checking everything out, played the bear challenge where you have to find all the bears hidden around the hotel, and watched an ice skating show.

Day 2: We went to go see ICE which features figures carved out of ice – the theme was Charlie Brown so we got to see a bunch of Charlie Brown characters as ice sculptures – very neat! Then, the kids went ice tubing and played some ice games. After that, it was cookies with Mrs. Claus while she read them a book and they decorated gingerbread cookies. Always something going on at this hotel to keep the kids busy while the parents chat, have coffee, and laugh occasionally when the kids make themselves a mustache out of icing. 🙂

Next, we had some pizza at one of the many restaurants and then saw a light show set to music. And after all that the day was still not over, the kids went ice skating with their Dad. See pics below.

Day 3: Tour of downtown Nashville. There was live country music in many of the bars and if you go during the day it’s very family friendly and you don’t have to pay cover to get in. The artists were so sweet to the kids – often giving them shout outs. The Parthenon was also a sight.

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Jan
2020

Craft Time by Ikea

categories: Blog

Have I mentioned that Ikea is my favorite? Because it is. The things I wanted for Christmas this year all came from Ikea and I have things there that I want for every Christmas for the rest of my life. :-p A craft nook in the basement was one of them:

We also have bunnies in this room, so this is our bunny/craft room. No one can be sad in a bunnies and crafts room right? It’s our happy place. Unless we mess up on a craft, but then we just feed it to the bunnies.. :-p


Jan
2020

Chicago With The Littles: 4-Day Itinerary

categories: Travel

We went to Chicago when the kids were little right after Christmas back in 2015 and it was actually one of our most fun vacations. Did I mention that I really love Chicago? It has such a special place in my heart. Maybe because I love Chicago style pizza. :-p Something about Chicago. I just really love big cities. They are filled with possibilities, aren’t they?

We ended up buying the CityPass because we wanted to do all the main attractions in the city. And we found a Groupon to stay at a hotel on Michigan Avenue. The hotel was the Hard Rock – which is funny since we have kids, right? Rock on!

The CityPass included entrance to many of the major attractions (Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium, Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, and the Sears Tower). We didn’t make it to Adler’s or the Sears Tower because we ran out of time.

You might be thinking – a trip to museums with little kids? Well, this trip was mostly for the adults. We needed some time in a new city and we figured the kids were so young they probably wouldn’t remember it anyway so why not do what we want and drag them along for the ride. And seriously sometimes we were dragging them around. My husband had them riding on his shoulders. We had three piled in a single stroller all at once at times. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We ended up forgetting my little one’s jacket and that was a bit of a fiasco because she had multiple winter coats at home so we didn’t feel like buying another one on Michigan Avenue of all places. We thought that might cost a tiny fortune. So, my middle child gave up her coat and wore my husband’s coat. That made for more hilarity.

At one point, we were walking around the city with our youngest in the stroller and she wasn’t strapped in. I hit a curb while trying to get back on the sidewalk and she plopped out onto the curb. A stranger was walking by and started laughing, then he spotted my other daughter wearing my husband’s huge coat which made her look like a floating well-dressed man ghost and he busted out laughing even further and so did we. He said, “Holy Cow! That coat will keep you warm!”. That was definitely a moment.

There’s a great transport system of buses and trains so you definitely don’t need a car – just a good phone app to help navigate you around.

Night 1: American Girl Doll Store for dinner

Our first night, we went to the American Girl doll store for dinner which I have another post about called Potty Humor.  That was it’s own event.  My girls used to be really into American Girl dolls until they started making their own money in the form of allowance and now they would rather get cheaper dolls and doll clothes from Target.  Woohooo for learning the value of money!

Day 2: Shedd Aquarium

There was a cool show with dolphins and beluga whales. We also saw the 4D Ice Age movie that shot snot (water) at us anytime any of the characters sneezed – the girls thought that was pretty funny and disgusting. WE loved the jellies exhibit – so cool to watch the jellyfish move and such a variety. The girls got to touch starfish and there were a couple of play areas for the kids to get out their energy.

After Shedd’s, we took the bus to Navy Pier for some Chicago style hot dogs then headed over to Build-A-Bear so the girls could spend some of their Christmas money.



Day 3: Field Museum

The Field Museum had an extensive Native American exhibit which was neat b/c that is what my oldest daughter was learning about at school at the time. We got to meet Sue the T-Rex and saw a movie about her which freaked out the kids. Sue is the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever discovered. Then, we went to the Living Machines exhibit which had many examples of bio-engineering (God’s handiwork on display). After that, to the underground exhibit where they pretend to shrink you and you can act like you are on, Honey, I shrunk the kids.

Afterwards, we took the bus back to the American Girl store so the girls could shop because they didn’t have time to shop on the first night. Then, we walked to Gino’s East for some Chicago style pizza.

Day 4: Museum of Science and Industry

This museum rocked! It was definitely our favorite.  It’s the largest science museum in the Western hemisphere. There were so many cool things to see and so much hands on play for the kids. It was 9 degrees outside so we were really happy to be entertained inside.

After this, we drove home. It was New Year’s Eve and we managed to catch sight of some fireworks as we were arriving home.

Some pictures around the city. Around Christmas time there were lots of lights – made it nice.

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