Summer house projects

This has been the summer of finishing Mint House projects. First up, I overhauled the attic. It was a big project, but completely worth it.  The before: 

And after:

 

We also redid the master bedroom closet. We've been using a broken shelf system for a year and a half! Credit goes to Ben for thinking of this idea and building it. I don't have a before picture, but just imagine a garage that you could barely walk into and had just a lightbulb for lighting.  I painted and Ben installed the light fixture.  We are planning on getting baskets for the shelves.

I also painted the kids bathroom and basement bathroom.  It's amazing what some paint can do!

House Pictures, part 2

Alison's room

 

 

Pretend that Alison's bed has a tan duvet cover with her white fluffy pillows...

Eli's room:

 

 

 

*Pretend is bed is made all pretty and there's not dishes on the end table

 

 

 

 Colin's room: 

 

 

Kid's bathroom:

House pictures, part 1

Some before and afters, because they're just so satisfying.  Although, I'm confident we'll look back in many years and think "Why in the world did we do that?!?!".  But it feels updated and cozy for this era.

Living Room:

{Taken in the fall to remember what I did for decorations}

 

Dining Room:

 

 

 

Master Bedroom:

(Christmas rug not usually there)

 

 

The story of our kitchen

Oh Mint House kitchen...

When Ben first showed me Mint House, my first reaction was "nope" and the biggest reason was the kitchen.  We use our kitchen A LOT; we like to cook, people are always eating, there are 5 of us and Maya is always trying to be a part of the party!  This dinky kitchen was not going to work.  When our realtor walked through with Ben, I asked where they kept their food.  There was a family living there and she could not figure out where their food was!  Storage was definitely an issue, but I had no idea it would be our smallest issue.

We bought Mint House and embraced the simple life of a small kitchen.  This house is 100 years old and clearly people have been just fine for centuries before us, so we can also figure it out.

This was the kitchen when we moved in:

 

 

What you can't see in the picture is the layer of curry grimy goop that covered every surface and the fact that only one burner on the stove worked.  Also, those curtains that look beautifully vintage?  Yeah, they were yellow from the curry grossness.

Our stuff being delayed ended up being a blessing and it gave me time to SCRUB and scrape the kitchen down.  I have never deep cleaned so much in my entire life.  It was so extreme that I smashed my wedding ring while attempting to scrub out the freezer.  It looked like a crime scene for a few days.

 

 

The cabinets grossed me out so much that I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I watched YouTube while cleaning and taught myself how to paint them.

 

 

 

Within a few weeks, we had the cabinets completely painted with new hardware AND we got a new stove.  We also replaced the window treatments, installed under cabinet lighting and painted the walls.  That alone made the space feel so much better.  

  

Pretty much as soon as I was done, Ben commented that for how small the space it, it probably wouldn't be too much to replace the countertops and backsplash.  I still love what I picked, but I did chose the cabinet color to try and make the existing backsplash make sense.  We decided that we'd like to enjoy new countertops for as long as can and took a gamble on what we thought would look good.  But NY is weird  and we were told that it was our responsibility to remove the existing countertops and backsplash.  So, while the kids and I were in Kansas, Ben demoed the kitchen!

  

As with everything in an old home, nothing is easy and the backsplash decided to take the sheet rock with it, so Ben had to also replace that.

 

 

We had to "camp" for just a few days when we got back in town while we waited for the new countertops, but it was very worth it.

We decided to save some money and install the backsplash ourselves.  I say we, as I fully intended to help, but the space is so small that it just didn't work for both of us in there, so Ben did the whole thing himself.

Not pictured, Ben also had to rewire the dishwasher, rework the plumbing and install the faucet and I'm pretty sure several other things I didn't even know about.  He put so much work into this kitchen and it turned out great!

 

And just when you thought we were done...house projects tend to snowball and as soon as we finished the kitchen, the floor just stuck out like a huge sore thumb.  I have always hated the floor, but tried to look past it.  But now it was SHOUTING at me and it needed to be silenced.  So, while Ben was fishing in Canada with my dad, I painted the tile!  Well, first I had to scrub...7 hours of scrubbing got the tile from this:

 

To this: 

This is what living through the project looked like:

  

And it's painted!

It was maybe one of the most stressful projects.  Once I made the first paint stroke, it was done...there's no going back from a painted floor!  I was so nervous about anything and everything scratching the paint.  It will need some touch-ups over time, but I think it was very worth the effort.

The final kitchen!  I'm thankful every day that we put the work in to make this space something we love and feel comfortable in.

Living in an empty house

Our California house was packed up on January 24th and our nomad life began.  We originally thought we would be in Mint house on February 14th, but that turned into the 28th.  After a full month of living displaced, we were ready to be in our new home!  

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as rosy as we needed.  Mint house needed a lot of love.  It needed love and elbow grease and a lot of repairs.  It was overwhelming.  AND our truck still hadn't left California.  We lived in an empty house for 8 days and we spent every minute of those 8 days cleaning and repairing and painting.  We found Walmart and bought some cheap chairs, bedding and dishes.  We had just enough to function, but we were basically camping.  While we were thankful to not be in and out of places, it was still kinda creepy living in an empty, old house. 

 

Ben bought a Lego set along our travels and this was the perfect time to work on it.

You don't realize how important furniture is, until you don't have it.  Every morning was a debate over who got the 2 comfy bean bags.

Master bedroom:

Colin did NOT like his bedroom while the house was empty, so he ended up camping out with us or with Eli.

There wasn't a whole lot for the kids to do during this time.  Colin resorted to playing with boxes and then Maya would claim it as her house.

We did find some perks.  7-11 is right across the street and we can walk to get slushies.  There is also really good food here and lots of good choices close to our house.

The day our truck finally showed up, was just like Christmas!  We had been without our belongings for 6 weeks!

This sums up our trucks journey:

They told us that first the truck's transmission broke and they had to wait for a new one (COVID has messed up the supply chain) and then 2 drivers quit.  I wanted to hug the driver that didn't quit and got our stuff here.  And while we were excited to see our belongings, it also was quickly apparent that the packers were terrible.  We had lots of things broken or damaged or missing.  This was our first PCS that they didn't have a checklist and by this point, we just had to roll with it and pray that most of our stuff was there.  Funny things from the day: they unloaded several things that weren't ours.  Somehow, someone else's decorative pillow was packed in my china cabinet.  Also, our basement has very low beams and the movers kept smacking their heads on them.