Hi. Long time no see. Nice ant hills.

Hello Dear Friends.


It's been a long time and I profess, that I'm deeply apologetic for not updating sooner. It's been a busy busy few weeks around the Nap-time house and not because we've been busy busy busy doing work, but because Number 3 has decided that he's no longer willing to nap in the Pack'n'Play while his mama bear works her paws off. I learned this last week when I was busying myself around 11pm, assembling a shelf for our playroom and heard a little voice from above saying "Wash-a-hands in the toilet" and then a quick succession of flushes coming from the upstairs bathroom. A certain little person (not mentioning any names or birth place), has become quite the little toddler. Toddling his way up and out of his crib. Up and out of his play pen. Up and out of the rooms we put him in, turning knobs, unfastening diapers, and basically performing magical Houdini acts at the blink of an eye.

So to summarize where we're at with the Nap Time house. 
- The painting is complete, thanks to the Dear Painterman who finished up last week. 

I'll miss our daily visits. I told him that perhaps he should keep the key and just show up on rainy days, visiting us for coffee and light conversation while he works and I follow him around the house with paint chips clutched in my knotted fists.


The play room / den is set up (somewhat)


 Unfortunately, two weekends ago our front porch was broken into and the stools that belong with our play table were stolen. So if you live near and Ikea (which doesn't ship to where we are) and would like to be super duper generous and kind and mail us two more, we'd be forever indebted to you. 

Here is a link to the "before"

The floors in the Master Crack Den have been scraped and sanded. This was a project I had planned on doing myself, however, Dr. Handsome was slightly more than reticent to allow me anywhere near the sander, so we opted to hire a friend of ours who does casual floor refinishing. When I say casual floor refinishing I mean, he charged us next to nothing and we tipped him with a play date for his son and some beer. 

sanded. 

first coat.

and I do have to say, that Dr.Naysayer was wrong. I totally could have done the floors, after having watched carefully to what the Floorguy did, with a rented sander, it really wouldn't have been very difficult whatsoever. However, the cost of renter the sander, buffer, sand paper, edger, and finish, it would likely have cost me about the same as what it cost to hire our friend, which we are very fortunate for having such great hookups. 

So if you plan on doing your floors yourself - these are the things you'll need.

- an industrial floor sander

- appropriate grit of sand paper (you need a few different grits, coarse, fine and then super fine)

-a Shop Vac with a good fine particle filter

-a sharp paint scraper for edging and corners

-a buffer with superfine sand paper

-polyurethane

-a paint pad or very low pile paint roller 

and

-paint brush

-Clean your floors

-Sand your floors going in the direction of the boards, overlapping the last pass slightly (don't do more than two passes or you'll pop the tongue of your boards AND - on this note - it's best to get your floors assessed if they're in very rough shape, they may not be able to be sanded at all)

-Scrape the edges and corners well with a paint scraper

-Vacuum the room very well - let dust settle for 10 mins, and then vacuum again, ensuring that you get all of your dust up

-Buff floors with super fine paper

-Let dust settle for 10 mins

-Vacuum well again

-Apply Polyurethane to perimeter of room in a very light coat with paintbrush

-Then working from the farthest corner, coat the floors with a paint roller and polyurethane, lightly. 

-3 coats, 18 hours of dry time in between. Buff with super fine grit paper in between each coat, cleaning the floor very well each time.

Enjoy your floors.

So that's about it ladies and gents. 

I've also seeded half of the lawn, where there's no grass, but that's far from exciting. 

Tomorrow I'll do a little bit more work and post some more photos, but right now, it's off to dreamland for this nap time renovator. <3

-

With words, I wish I could convey what a beautiful day it was out there, but I can't. It's sunny, warm and absolutely gorgeous. When you live in a climate where the majority of the year the city is either in the midst of a deep freeze or just entering/coming out of one, you learn to take any sunny day for what it's worth, and around here, it's worth a lot. After days and days of rain that flooded our city's sewer system, houses and rivers, the glorious sun is drying up our soaked beds, and making everything feel a little bit greener.


It's 8:30 am. Dr. Handsome is still at work this morning, likely sleeping off a few delirious hours before he makes his way home after a long call shift last night, Number Two went off to school happily and the two  Littles are still sleeping away thanks to blackout blinds and a careful avoidance of creaking floor boards upstairs. We've learned to not open certain doors and to step lightly on the joists. Walking up the stairs is like a circus act. It's a funny thing - the lengths you will go to when you know that with just a little bit of sacrifice (forgot your socks? Too bad!), you will reap the benefits of a.) a 6am two baby wake up or b.) a 9:30 am baby wake up. I prefer the latter. 6 am and 9 am is a three hour difference of when nap times fall, when meals get eaten and the number of melt downs that can be estimated prior to bed time. 9 am, is our favorite time of the day. It also means I have two whole hours of quiet to do luxurious things like drink three day old coffee at my leisure and unload a dishwasher without anyone climbing into it.


So you're probably wondering to yourself "Why is she writing about her kids and not her DIY reno's? Get on with it, mom..." Well here's the deal. Yesterday - for the first time in two weeks, I didn't go to the house. I felt like an addict cutting myself off cold turkey and a number of times had my keys looped around my finger to head out the door with the Littles to go and see the progression of the paint work, but rather than go, yesterday - I committed myself to helping someone else go - on the potty that is. Little Number 3 will be turning two in just a few weeks and yesterday morning we made the decision to make an attempt with some potty learning, and well, it went really really well. I don't have incredibly high expectations - for one, he's a boy and as a mother of a number of boys, I know that boys can take considerably longer to potty train, and secondly, he's still pretty little, as a Little. But he did great. I loaded him up with a full sippy of ice cold water and set the timer to beep at 20 minute intervals, and each time, on command, Little Number Three went over to his seat and happily produced a quarter teaspoon of pee for me. Brings a tear to my eye, i'm so proud.

So alas, with that being our focus of the day yesterday, I avoided the House. The painters are still working away, the house has painterthings everywhere and it's just too hard to manage the Littles when there is much much much messy painting fun to get into, plus, Little Number Four is one of those types who prefers to be in arms all of the time, which just adds to the juggling. If you have four kids, it's best to have more than one set of arms. Dr. Handsome and I will head over tonight to take a peek at the progress and perhaps i'll steal a moment or two to fire off a few shots of the work that's been done.


To keep you entertained, here are a few new things i'm in love with.

The Decorated House Blog

a gorgeous blog with many DIY projects, decorating ideas and tips on how to make your beautiful house, even more beautiful. Go and read it and become a fan!

Old House Web

-This is a fantastic resource for all things related to old houses - from architectural details, refinishing and restoring, decorating, DIY projects, major renovations and how-to's. Check it out!

Lula Honey

okay, I admit that I am biased towards Lula Honey. This is my long time girlfriend Ang's site of fabulous finds for children. She is a brilliant designer and I have a shared appreciation for her aesthetic. <3 her stuff. Please check her out! Plus her own clothing line for little girls is absolute perfection.

So that is that. I'm off to go and trapeze my way up the stairs, hop into the shower and get on with my day. Hope you all enjoy the weather you're having, rain or shine - indoors and out. <3 D.

Think, pink.

Is it possible to love your wall colour?
I mean love love. Not just strongly like, but looooooove. LURVE love.


Love love love.


After the pain suffered earlier on this week from the epic wall colour failure, today I was able to look my walls in the eye and make amends. We're friends again.


Hello walls. It's good to see you. My you're looking beautiful today. Your colour really brings out the grain in your window frames. Let's have dinner soon. Kissy kissy smoochy smooch.....



Thanks to Dear Painterman, yesterday we spent 4+hrs working on the walls. I nearly had a stroke when I walked into the house, only to see that the walls which had been repainted for the second time, in a shade browner than I'd ever care to admit to liking, saw that they were Mother Freakin' Lavender again. AGAIN!


I threw up my hands in disgust with whatever I could find around me to blame the purple hue on. The floors, it must be the oak floors. The sunlight - maybe it was the UV rays coming in that were throwing our eye off - the colour was EXACTLY the same colour that I have in my current house which reads almost charcoal grey - so double you tee eff? I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on and said to Dear Painterman, whatever, we'll live with it - just go ahead and finish the work. Grumpy as all get out.


About an hour later, he says to me "Do you want me to patch the hole in the ceiling" (in the dining room) which meant that we were going to be paying even more, on top of our screw up, we'd be dealing with having to have the ceiling painted, but Dr. Handsome and I conceded that if we were going to paint the ceiling, now was the time to do it before the final coat of paint went on to the walls.


So there we were, Dear Painterman and I in the kitchen, sorting through the 1500 or so white paint samples to find one that would work with the walls. Why? Why not just find "white" and paint it that colour? Well I'll tell you why - white, isn't white. White is green. White is blue. White is d*uchebag beige. White is pink.


What? What did I just say?
White is pink?


Back up a second there Chico - and back your butt back all the way into the dining room.


There we were, Dear Painterman and I, staring gobsmacked at our five white paint chips that were all staring up at us, mocking us. Pink. WTF?


In a simultaneous motion, both of our heads travelled upwards as we collectively had a Eureka moment. With Dear Painterman clambering up the ladder as fast as his little legs could take him, he pressed the paint chip against the ceiling - the white ceiling and there - there the ugly truth came out. The G*d damned ceiling was painted mother-effing pink.
I kid you not Dear Friends, I kid you not. White paint chip. Pink ceiling. Pink ceiling + grey walls = LAVENDER.


Easy peasy - we paint the ceiling. We paint the freaking ceiling, and the walls are magically transformed to the colour we picked out on the chip. Brilliant.


(click on all photos to enlarge image)

dining room.

dining room before

living room.

living room before

stairway to heaven.

stairway before

master.

(check out the ceiling) 

and click here for the before.

master br. ceiling paper(ed).

ceiling before

Now Dear Readers, here's what I have to tell you. #1. If you want to paint your ceiling, don't buy cheap crappy crap ceiling paint - the kind that rolls on pink and then dries white? Yeah, guess what? It dries pink. I don't care what the fancy pants paint companies will tell you, that paint, will dry white. #2. Pick a paint colour for your ceiling that will compliment your walls. It's not hard, it's not painful, and in the end, it will save you money and time and endless frustration when you stare at your walls and hate them, wondering why they look so terrible. Terrible and pink.

But now my walls are beautiful and grey, and my ceilings are perfectly, white.

and #3. Keep reading <3

D.