Kitchen redo: before

Good gravy I think I've lost my mind! I have decided to paint my kitchen, top to bottom and will probably be starting next week! I'm really excited for this one, but I know it's going to be a tremendous amount of work and halfway through I'm going to think I have made a huge mistake, but the outcome I know will be glorious!
Why do I think I've lost my mind?  Well, Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, and we've got a certain boy's birthday party between then and Christmas. Plus, you know life. Feel free to send the men in white coats to take me away!

Here's what I'm working with.

These pictures are almost two years old, (I can't believe that!) and the faucet has been replaced but other than that it's the same. 

The cabinets are so dark! They also match the floor. I don't get it but hey, that's how life goes. The ceiling is the same... baby yellow as the walls (again, why?!)

Cleaning the years of grease and grossness off the cabinets, walls and ceiling is going to be the worst and probably most time consuming part. I don't even know how I'm going to get the ceiling clean enough. Thanks textured ceilings.

First up,  cleaning all the gunk from the ceiling. That will take, 3 days, I'm guessing. 3 days. On the ceiling before priming and paint. That alone makes me not want to do it!

I'm putting it out there, so now I have to do it! After reading and watching every video on the subject I'm confident that I can do it. Have you painted cabinetry before? Any tips?

Getting back to normal

I've been home for a week, our guests left this morning and the water is gone from the yard. There is still a bit of the lake in the field but that's in the ghost river. I'm not worrying about it. We're starting to get back to normal after the week that would cause some to throw a toaster in the bath tub. We're all still sick, various antibiotics are running their course but it's exhausting.
I accomplished nothing in the last two weeks, I had big plans but then life happened. No painting, no finishing the garden. It was underwater after all. Our hose exploded - trying to find a 100 plus hose in November isn't working, Amazon to the rescue.

I haven't been keeping good of track of the egg count for the past two months, we've decided not to force light into the coop to keep up the girls laying and most are having a hard molt. I think we're lucky if we're getting 5 eggs a day, thats down from almost a dozen. The costs have been about the same 2 bags of feed and shavings a month.

The other day, in an attempt to return to the normal routine of things, I emptied the fridge and made turkey soup. It took all day but it was delicious. And bread, I made bread. That's obviously all gone now. I could bake bread all day, everyday, and eat it all resulting in me weighing 7000 lbs.

This week I'm working on a mountain of laundry, dirty house and deck that looks like a hoarder lives here. And it's raining. Hopefully the rain will wash away some of the 4 foot high water line, but I'm not counting on it. Or counting on it not coming back.

This week at A.'s school, they're having a mitten tree. There is a tree in the class room and I assume they kids are going to fill it with mittens that will be donated to kids without. I would have loved to have knit a pair or seven but realistically I won't get them done in time. So again, Amazon to the rescue.

So that's most of what's going on around here.

Monday Motivation

How was your weekend? Can you believe it's August, already?! Where did the time go? I'm pretty sure I say that every month. This weekend was hot as hotness.  Scribs bought the kids a pool and they've barely left it since.

What's with the dishwasher you ask? I spend my morning taking apart and deep cleaning this beast. Why? My dishes weren't coming out clean. I ran a cycle with a empty cup on each rack and nothing else, both came out full of gunk. I cleaned the dishwasher last year when we moved in so it needed to be done again. See that grey thing at the bottom of the door? That was literally full of gunk, a squishy mass of gunk. It was disgusting. There was a bunch of broken glass in filter and near the chopping arm. I'm not sure where it came from (not me!) but now it's sparkley and clean. When was the last time you cleaned your dishwasher? If can't remember or never is your answer, I highly recommend doing it. Just google how to take it apart and clean it. Depending how dirty it is, this could take half and hour to a few hours.

I've got a jam packed week. I've started getting too over-whelmed with my to-do list, so I've started planning me week with what I'm going to do each day before the kids get up and at nap time. Everyday I do a load of laundry and hang it first thing, so that's a given. Today my A.M. chore was clean the dishwasher, that alone was a huge project and took almost 3 hours while doing other things too.
Tomorrow, I'm cleaning my camera and canning salsa
Wednesday, making waffles and watering the garden
Thursday sort recycling and put the trash out, wash sheets
Friday water the garden
Saturday clean the bathroom
Sunday water the garden

We're on a voluntary water restriction so watering is only Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

What are you working on this week?

Clean up my messy house February project

Cleaning my kitchen was a big project! I expect that cleaning and organizing my tiny bathroom filled with junk will be easy in comparison. We have a lot of stuff that we don't need or use shoved into not a lot of cabinet space. 

I just put everything in there when we moved and called it a day. There are still things in ziplock bags that we haven't used since August or earlier. Here's our messy truth. 

Not terrible, not great but could be better. Yes, there is always a sink full of bath toys! I think I need to start putting them back in the tub after everyone was bathed. My goal for this month is to deep clean the bathroom, everything out of the vanity, clean and adjust the shelves, clean the drawers, and under the sink. The floor and grout needs a good scrubbing and the tub, toilet and sinks could use new caulking. I'm glad I picked the smallest room in the house for the shortest month of the year. I still need to finish the baseboards for the dining room and put them back on. And paint N's dresser. 

I really want to replace the vanity but I'll settle for fresh paint, but that's a project for another day!

January 2015 goal A cleaner house (a little late!)

Time for a new calendar! Do people still have calendars on their walls with appointments and birthdays written on them? Or is it just me? Technology is great but I prefer being able to flip through and see whats coming up instead of scrolling and clicking. Anywhoo, thats not what I came to write about.

Let's be honest. My house isn't as clean as I'd like it to be. I don't think it ever will be and thats mostly ok. Mostly. I already have a system for cleaning but unless its clean the kitchen day the counters end up our dumping ground for everything. Mail, keys, Someone likes to leave their hats, gloves, phones, etc on the counter. Like I said it's a dumping ground.

The kitchen drives me nuts more than anything else. My goal for January was to deep clean that sucker and keep it clean. Organize the crap thats there and get someone to stop dumping everything on the counter and put their diet coke cans in the recycling!

Here's the messy truth!

In order to get this mess clean this is what I did. We started slow, weeks 1 and 2 we focuded on cleaning the counters and table before bed. Easy enough. Weeks 3 and 4 we made sure all the dishes were done and the floor was swept along with clean counters and table. It was pretty doable. I'll admit there was a few nights where I left dishes soaking in the sink. I did them first thing in the morning but thats not quite the same.

As for my deep cleaning goal, I took everything out of each cabinet, went through each item (toss, donate, keep), cleaned inside and out, moved shelves that needed moving and hopefully everything will stay mostly clean. Sorry Scribs, the rice cooker we haven't used in 4 years is getting donated! Aside from orangizing the kitchen needed a good washing. The ceiling, walls, baseboards, floor, outlets and light switches, trash can. Every surface is now clean! All the appliances needed a good scrubbing too! I hate cleaning ovens and mine was BAD! I didn't clean it when we moved in and oh boy, that was a project! It took 3 days! Here's the after, still not spotless but at least there is less crap everywhere! Oh yeah and I no longer have a red dining room (still not done painting the windows, ugh!).

February will be another room until this house is clean but with two kids under 4, a dog and a husband who knows how long it will last! I think the bathroom will be next, we have tons of junk in there that nobody uses or needs. I can't believe it's almost February already!