If You Give a Girl a Paintbrush

About a week ago, I emptied out my front hall closet with the full intention of making it beautiful and functional.  Then I let it sit for a week.  I told Alex that I was going to finish it over the weekend and when Sunday came my sister and I made the sojourn to Home Depot for supplies.  We stopped by his work to say hi and ask him if he needed anything from Target (we were having a bit of a shopping spree).   He didn’t want anything so we headed out on our way.  Leaving him with the false assumption that the closet was all we would be doing.

When we made it home, she grabbed a paint brush and I grabbed a roll of painter’s tape.  I began working in the closet and she began working in the kitchen.  The full details of the closet’s transformation can be found here.  I took breaks throughout my project to put roller to the kitchen walls.  Go big or go home, right?

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The closet is a breath of fresh air.  It also pushed me to get my room and closet upstairs more organized. It was relatively quick and made a huge impact on the living area.  However, what I’m most excited about is what happened in the kitchen.  After painting the cabinets,  all I could think about what getting rid of the terrible yellow I had painted the walls when we first moved in. It was a mistake.  When the cabinets were brown, it was too terrible, but after they were painted white the walls looked unintentionally yellow. It was a gross look and it had to go.  My sister did a great job.  She really did most of the work and for that I’ll always be grateful.  We went with Bedford Gray by Martha Stewart, if you were wondering.  I’m in love with it.

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The kitchen still has a long way to go. I need to change out the outlets for white ones,  repair the soffet above the stove (water damage), install a backsplash, find drawer pulls, put down new tile, and do something about the brick above the fire place.  I used to worry about what to do with the countertops, but with the freshly painted cabinets and walls, I actually love them!

So that’s the story about how one small closet project became painting the closet and the entire kitchen as well.  Have you ever started a project that snowballed into something bigger?  Any big projects last weekend?

 

UPDATE:  I showed Alex’s dad/our landlord the painted kitchen and he asked if we got new counters.  Haha! That’s how much the new color (and probably the freshly painted cabinets) made an impact.

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Baby Steps

I am a fledgling adult. I know this. At 23, I have no expectations for myself than to do my best to be open to learning. Being ambitious is a part of it. I know that some of you are in the same boat and some of you (bravo!) are ahead of me. I’m seriously jealous of you. I posted before about doing some Marathon Cooking, and I was pretty darn ambitious. Then I got sidetracked, and then I got sick. Life happens, I know, but I still got pretty down because not only did I want to share the experience but I wanted to know I could do it. 

So, like I mentioned here, I got to shopping. Problem is that I can’t find tomatillos. Que lastima. Also, for some ungodly reason, the second I walk into a grocery store I completely forget I need potatoes. WHY? Despite my difficulties in having a memory or specialty produce selection, I did a little baby half marathon cooking. One afternoon of cooking got me 3 meals. I’d say pretty good meals too. I went ahead and my the Andouille Sausage/Pinto Bean Stew and the Baked Penne with Chicken and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. The stew was delicious. So delicious in fact that I don’t have a picture because I was preoccupied cooking and it’s all gone now. The Penne was awesome (I used an insane amount of mushrooms in it-heaven) and the recipe is specifically written so you cook one and freeze one for later. Love it.

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So despite my Sunday falling short of the epic proportions (portion pun intended), I still consider it a success. We are still eating and I still get to go home and relax over a bowl of penne.