Okay, so it wasn’t the sink that had issues, but the faucet is connected to the sink so I just went with it. I was filling up Gray’s tub so that I could give him a bath. Yes, we still do it in the kitchen sink. Everything was going just fine until I used the sprayer to fill up the clean water reservoir in his tub. I released the handle on the sprayer and I noticed water was no longer coming out of the faucet even though the water was on. Uh oh.

We tried the tub, the bathroom sink, the washer, even the dishwasher and they all seemed to be working just fine. Strange thing was, when you turned on the water to the faucet water would come out of the sprayer. We had no intentions of replacing the faucet anytime soon, but when tragedy strikes you’ve got to take action.

After church one Sunday we headed over to Home Depot to pick up a new faucet. Since this was somewhat of an urgent matter we didn’t have the luxury of shopping around for the best deal, or finding something cheaper online and waiting for it to be shipped. Boo. That’s how I ended up with this beauty…

Since we were purchasing a new faucet we decided to go ahead and get a purdy one. One with a few choice features we have always wanted in a faucet.

Let’s get to some demo…

First Derek started by assessing the the sitch. So here is what we had going on. When you turned on the hot water only a small trickle appeared.

When the cold was turned on…nothing.

But the sprayer worked. Our nasty, growdy sprayer. Hate. That. Thing.

Not to mention the gaping holes under the fixture. Just imagine how much nasty gets down in there. Wait, I don’t want to think about that.

Once it was confirmed that the faucet fixture was kaput we picked up this ole’ boy at the HD. It’s an American Standard (Fairbury).

First bit of manual labor, turn off the water. No sense in getting an unwanted shower.

Derek then loosened the nuts connecting the water supply lines to the faucet above.

The sprayer nut and washer were super rusted. We wasted a ton of time trying to get this booger off, and not destroying the sink in the mean time.

Next, it was time to loosen and remove the neck.

When you remove the remaining portion of the faucet you may have to pull hard to break the seal. It took both of us to remove ours.

I had to build Derek a booty booster with towels. The poor kid’s back was killing him. I got under there once or twice, and it really helped. I also hit my head on some pipes. Oh the pain!

Look at all the gunk that was living under the faucet. I say living, because I’m quite certain that there were a few “organisms” under there.

Cleaning Time!

Next, he removed the water lines. Since they were copper we thought about trying to sell them, but copper only goes for about $.50 per foot or lb or something like that. Not worth it.

Now that the sink is clean and the water lines removed it’s time to install! We lined the bottom of the faucet with waterproof silicone before we dropped in in place.

Everyone see the dog? Yup, that’s Supervisor Cohen. It never fails. When work is being done around the house Cohen hangs around like a project foreman. For this, we refer to him a Supervisor Cohen. Oh, and watch out because he will deduct your pay for anything you screw up.

All three water lines fed through the main faucet which makes for much shorter water lines than we were expecting.

See ‘em just dangling there taunting us? Stupid water lines.

That meant Derek was off to the HD again for some extensions. (Helpful Hint: be sure to know the size of your water line. Not knowing will only result in ANOTHER trip to the store.)

Derek added a little pumber’s tape to the new lines to prevent any leaks.

The final step is adding the weight to the sprayer line. With the turn of a screw the weight was on.

All that was left was to hide the 4th hole in the sink. You see since the faucet is a combo deal we were left with an exposed hole. Not very pretty. We were expecting this to happen, so when we purchased the faucet we also picked up a sink hole cover. Yes, that is the technical term the packaging used.

I’m not a total OCD freak, but there are certain things that erk me, and matching grain is one of them. I spent probably an extra minute and a half perfectly lining up the grain in the sink hole cover with the grain in the sink. Wow, that is a really weird thing to be OCD about. I think I’m getting stranger by the minute.

That’s the story of how and why our sink went from looking like this…

…to this.

I love the fact that our dining room has built ins, but they are just so blah. Everything just gets lost in all the white. I had been toying around with the idea of painting or wallpapering the back of the bookcase, but never got up the nerve to do so.

I finally said enough is enough, and bit the bullet.  I couldn’t decide on or get up the courage to pick a graphic paper to hang in the bookcases, and in an effort to save some money I went with what I had. Paint.

When we were deciding on a color for Grayson’s room we picked up three sample cans of gray paint from Sherwin Williams. They had plenty of pain in each can so I slapped a little of each color on the wall and made a decision. I decided to go with Uncertain Gray.

I taped off the sides and tested the color out on one shelf.

I didn’t want to dive straight in, because our kitchen is gray as well and I wanted be sure our abode wasn’t overrun with gray. I let it sit over night and stood in the kitchen a lot checking this angle out, comparing the grays.

Once I was sure that they didn’t clash I went for it. I figured, if I didn’t like it I could always paint it back. I mean it’s just paint, right? Not that I would be painting it back anytime soon considering it took me a good week to get this project done. I was squeezing all the work in during nap time. And as luck would have it, the stinker didn’t want to nap much that week.

This is what I ended up with…

The left side…

The right side…

I decluttered the bookcase quite a bit. There are still things about the decor that I am not happy with, but over time I intend to replace and improve it.

Once I was done painting, it took a few days for the final color to grow on me. I still wasn’t totally happy with how it looked, but one day it just hit me….BAAAAM!!!! Like a right hook to the jaw. I loved the color and the clean, contrasting depth it added to the built ins.

I still haven’t decided on what I want to do up top, so I spared you the eye sore and left it out of the photo. Your welcome.

Well, it’s been like a bazillion years, but we are finally done with the kitchen ceiling remodel. I’m so glad that we hired an electrician to move, add, and replace the light fixtures, because even he had ISSUES.

So, let’s see. Where did we leave off?

When we bought the house the kitchen came with this lovely 1970′s drop ceiling. Classy!

We painted the cabinet and walls, but left the ceiling as is. Just in time for Gray’s arrival, the lighting fixtures began to go out. Super. This meant we HAD to do something. Since we would be all up in the cockroach graveyard anyway, replacing the light fixture, we decided to bite the bullet and rip down that terrible eye sore. One little issue with just ripping it down. NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING was finished up there.

This meant a ton of patch work for the hubs. I was on baby duty, and annoying picture taking duty.

Our electrician, Bruce…love him, removed the existing three florescent fixtures that were all burnt out, and moved the power source to the center of the room. But before Bruce could install the light Derek had to finish the ceiling. We were left with this lovely designer fixture for a week or two. And yes, it just hung there.

He patched, primed, and painted.

Then Bruce came back and installed the light. Our house was at it’s limit for electrical “stuff”. Putting in can lighting would require a $3000.00 upgrade to our electrical system. No thank you. So, we said adieu to our dream of pretty, flush lighting and moved on to something that we could afford. We settled on a four bulb florescent unit with with molding around the edges. Since we had plans to add molding to the room we thought this fixture would fit right in. As much as one of those tacky momma’s can fit in. Not too bad for a stupid florescent light, right?

Here is where the issues came in. The light lasted maybe 1/2 a day before it wouldn’t turn on anymore. Sheesh! Bruce came back, and told us the ballast in the new fixture went bad. This news sent us back to Lowe’s for another fixture. Bruce used the ballast from the new-new fixture to replace the one that was burnt out. This way he wouldn’t have to charge us for replacing an entire fixture. Thanks Bruce. This is why I love Bruce.

Low and behold, the next day the new-new ballast went bad. We just couldn’t figure it out. Bruce consulted with another electrician, and determined that our motion sensor light switch was burning the ballast out.

(FYI – Motion sensor light switches do not work well with electrical ballast only the old school fluid ballast. It basically puts the ballast in a state of suspension with a current constantly running through it and causes the ballast to FRY!!!!)

Poor Bruce came back a third time to replace the ballast, and this time the light switch. We are still adjusting to turning on the lights when we walk into the room. A five year habit is a hard thing to break.

We were able to install a small can light over the sink. It gives a nice little boost to the lighting situation when you are doing the dishes. Not that I do the dishes. That’s what paper plates are for.

We decided it was time for a change, in paint color that is. I wanted something dramatic. I’ve seen a few pictures on the interwebs of dark gray kitchens with white cabinets, and since I was loving the gray we painted in Grayson’s room I thought why not. We decided on Magnetite by Martha Stewart. I really like it, but since the counter tops and appliances leave much to be desired I am still not 100% happy with the way my kitchen looks. But believe you-me it is WAY better.

And as usual Cohen supervised all the manual labor going on in the house. We like to refer to him as Supervisor Cohen. Seriously, the kid will hit you up with a demerit if you screw any of the work up.

Then came the crown molding. Note to self: never attempt crown molding without a compound miter saw. Our friend Scott came over to help Derek hang the crown molding one Saturday morning. They worked for hours measuring and cutting and mumbling stuff under their breath.

Four hours later they ripped down what little they managed to get up. Since they didn’t have a compound miter saw the double angles you have to cut on crown molding weren’t matching up right. Guess what Scott got for Christmas. Yup, that’s right…a compound miter saw. Too late.

Deciding that he no longer wanted to pull his hair out over crown molding Derek decided to go with traditional molding. And you know what? It looks just as good.

Since our home is old and not a single surface seems to be flat Derek used white caulk to fill in the holes between the molding and the ceiling, and the molding and the wall.

Then he gave the molding a once over with some white paint, and here we are…

So. Much. Better!

Hi, my name is Jennifer, and I have a drop ceiling.  I admit it.  I’m guilty, but of only owning the ceiling.  Not installing it.  We purchased the house this way.  The drop ceiling is the product of a 1970′s remodel of the house.  See, I told you I didn’t do it.  I wasn’t even alive in the 70′s.  Swear!

We’ve always hated the drop ceiling.  I mean, it was a cockroach graveyard.  Nasty.  It was one of those many projects on our long To Do list for this house.

We were hoping to get this done before the bambino arrived, but there are so many hours in a day.  Now that the kiddo is here, and we are getting caught up on sleep and getting the hang of this baby wrangling thing we decided to “Get ‘er done!”.

Here’s what we were thinking.  We were hoping to install 6-8 can lights in the main part of the kitchen, and one just over the sink.  Unfortunately, our circuit boards are already at full capacity, and to add the can lighting we would have to do an upgrade to our circuity. That would cost around $3,000.  Ouch!  We were hoping for something under a grand.  The neighborhood we live in and the size of our house wouldn’t give us the return needed to recoup the cost of that kind of an upgrade when we sell in a few years.  We decided to go with a single florescent fixture, but in a dressy housing.

Derek was able to remove the framework himself.

Once removed, he found all this loveliness.

Since major electrical work is something we like to leave to the pros we called in an electrician to handle all those sparky little wires.  Nobody likes fried husband.

The electrician removed the old fixtures and moved the source to the center of the kitchen, just above the island.  Once that was done, Derek started patching all of the many imperfections in the ceiling.  And believe me, there were tons of them. Since the electrician was going to have to work on our kitchen in stages he was generous enough to leave us with some light in the kitchen.  Due to the kindness of our handyman we now have a single bulb dangling from the ceiling.  Chic, don’t ya think?

While patching, Derek noticed mold.  So freakin’ nasty.  I was freaked out by the green fuzzy stuff every time I walked into the kitchen.  Nobody wants that around their food.  Can you see it in this picture?  It’s just past the light.

Here’s a better look…

Luckily, it was green mold and not the bad black kind.  I think the mold started up there when moisture would become trapped in the paneling and had no place to go.  That makes sense since the mold area was just above the island/stove.  The mold was wipeable….thank goodness.

This weekend it looked like Dexter took over our kitchen, and made it his clean room.  Once Derek finished patching and wiping down the ceilings, he plasticed off the entire kitchen.  It was 360 degrees of plastic.  This place was so air tight we could have housed a bubble boy in here.

Why look here’s Dexter’s 1st victim now…

Since my man was dealing with a ton of dust and mold I made him wear a protective face mask and goggles, and thank God for that.  When he was finished sanding it looked like that boy got caught in a freak flour storm.

So that’s where we are currently on our little kitchen project.  I’ve got some ideas of colors for the walls and a cabinet revamp in the works; once this ceiling thing is out of the way.  I figure, hey why not?!  I’m a SAHM.  I’ve got the time for small cosmetic projects like this now.  Or so I think.

Update (November 8th, 2010)

Welcome Spearmint Baby Readers! Feel free to look around, and bookmark me if you like what you see.

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Update (October 22, 2010)

I wrote this post a while back, and figured I would submit this post for the “Show Us Your Life – Children’s Rooms” week on Kelly’s Korner instead of rewriting it.  Enjoy!

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All Done!  The nursery that is.  The baby….well that doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.

But back to the nursery.  Over the past few months, pretty much the past 8 months, I have been working my little tushy off trying to make the perfect resting spot for the bambino, and I have to say I am quite proud of myself.  I love good design, but always feel that I fall short when it comes to bringing a room to it’s full potential.  Although, if I had the money, there are a few things that I would have done different.  I think that this is my favorite room in our house.  Even the dogs like hanging out in here.

This is what the room looked like when Derek 1st purchased the house.  Yowza!  Believe it or not it was a 6 year old little boy’s room.  Yeah….me too.

Then our good friend Amy moved in and the room blossomed into this….

After Amy moved out we converted the room into a guest room/crafting area that I barely have photos of.  This is all I could find.

Guess I forgot to take pics.  Oh well.  Too late now.

Then just before Christmas we found out that we were expecting, and demo (a.k.a. – wallpaper removal) began.

After the demo portion of the room revamp was done we needed to decide on what style we wanted the room to take on.  We really like the bright whites and clean fresh look of the MOD style.  So that’s what we went with.

First we found the bedding.  I am a huge fan of Dwell Studio, and although they have a great selection at Target I fell deeply in luv with another one of their designs that unfortunately is NOT for sale at the bullseye retailer.  So my big splurge on the nursery was the crib bedding.  Hey, you can’t stop true love.

Once the bedding was decided upon I knew exactly what mobile I just had to have.  This mobile is a Flensted mobile that I order from Amazon.  I just couldn’t resist those sweet sheep.

For his changing table we didn’t want to go with the typical changing table for two reasons (1) what do you do with a changing table once the kid grows up?  stick it in the attic?  and (2) we already had a perfectly good piece of furniture that could double as a changing table and provided hidden storage….score!

So in effort to reduce costs and not having to find a new location for the Pottery Barn Channing Buffet we had in the nursery prior to it becoming the nursery; we converted the buffet into a sleek and stylish changing table.  However, we may no longer want to serve food from this buffet after it serving up poop and pee for the next 2 years.

Over the changing table Derek hung some inexpensive floating white shelves we picked up on the cheap at Target.  I spray painted some old frames we had just lying around and filled them with some homemade artwork.  Some of the artwork I created in Photoshop, and the other is just cute craft paper I already owned.

See that owl?  Precious right?  My friend Sarah found it on Etsy.  It matches the room perfectly.  Okay, so there is one piece of art over the changing table that I didn’t make, and that’s the silhouette of the German Shepherd.  I found this awesome piece of art at the Mod Dog Etsy shop.  We love GSD’s around here.  Bet you would have never guessed that.  For that reason, I thought it would only make sense to start the G-man out on the right paw foot.

As for the wooden toys on the shelves, I scored the hippo and fawn natural wood teethers at the Little Alouette Etsy shop and can’t wait for Grayson to sink his gums into them.  And the elephant, giraffe, and sheep … well I picked them up from Oompa.  Stealing an idea from the kiddos at Young House Love I intend to mount the little guys hospital bracelet in the  currently empty frame sporting the bright blue background.

All of the little man’s pacifiers seem to all be beautiful blues, greens, and whites, so I thought it would be fun to make them part of the room’s decor.  I got this idea from my friend Sarah.  She did something like this at a shower she threw for me a few months back.  PLUS!….it provides easy access to a key baby soothing tool.  I used a glass canister that we owned from our wedding.  We used it to hold candy at our sweet (pardon the pun) candy bar.

See that shadow box?  Pottery Barn Outlet…thank you very much.  That’s a pillow case inside.  Clever, I know.  I just printed out a G in one of my favorite fonts….American Typewriter, and added one of our baby shower invites.  Over time I plan to add keepsakes from our little guy’s life.  Maybe a cap from the hospital, foot prints, a picture of him and his puppies?  Who knows.

The robots are my creation.  I know they aren’t anything special, but they help complete the corner.  I didn’t want the walls to be too busy, and I think the simplicity of the white frames and gray robots give the walls that something extra.

For the closet, we have the usual clothes and storage, but on the middle shelf I have a basket for bibs and burp cloths for easy access.  Next to that I placed a few of his swaddling blankets and hats.  Just in case I need something on the fly.  This way I don’t have to go digging through the huge drawer of blankets and other misc items when I have a screaming kid on my hands.  See that blue bucket on the floor of the closet?  That’s his hamper.  I wanted something easily cleanable.  You know baby poop and barf….it gets all over everything.  Yuck!  I also wanted it to have a bit of style too.  BTW…it’s bigger than it looks.

As for the flooring in the room, we went with FLOR tiles.  We hunted around for quite some time trying to find something affordable yet stylish.  We hit up Home Depot, Lowe’s, Pottery Barn Outlet, and a few other places.  Not to mention I dug around on Overstock.com and other online retailers, but alas nothing.  Finally, I took a peek at FLOR.com.  Believe it or not, FLOR has some quite affordable carpets.  We decided to go with the Cream :: Easy As Pie.  I couldn’t love it more.  A great thing about modular flooring is that if one tile gets stained beyond repair you can just order one new tile and forgo the cost of replacing the entire carpet.  And we all know how messy kids, and dogs can be.

So what do ya’ll think?  I’m also hoping that if the next one is a girl I can just modify the design a smidge.  Any suggestions on what we should add to the shadow box?  Did I do okay?

I want to be like the big dogs on the blog block, so I thought I too would add me a little source/cost list of our room makeover.

Crib :: gift from my parents (Walmart.com)
Soy bean mattress :: gift from Derek’s parents (Walmart.com)
Window treatments :: gift from Derek’s parents (Target)
Shadow box :: already owned (Pottery Barn Outlet)
Artwork :: I whipped this up in Photoshop & owned the paper
Changing table :: already owned (Pottery Barn Outlet)
Carpet tiles :: $105 (FLOR.com)
Chest of drawers :: $100 (Target)
Glider :: $75 – (Babies-R-Us) * remainder paid for by gift cards/coupon*
Floor lamp :: $99 (Target.com)
Shelving :: $10 each (Target)
Dog silhouette art :: $20 (Mod Dog Etsy shop)
Crib bedding :: $320 (Fawn & Forrest) * free crib sheet and weekend tote w/ purchase*
Table lamp :: $10 (Target)
Large green bins :: $15 each (Target)
Small green bin :: $10 (Target)
Mobile :: $33 (Amazon.com)
No VOC Paint :: $40 (Sherwin Williams)

If there is something that I didn’t list and you want to know where I got it from just leave me a comment, and I’ll let you know.

Well we are at that point.  We are putting the final touches on Grayson’s nursery.  We originally were going to have a twin bed in the nursery since our house has only two bedrooms.  Derek and I thought that we could still use the nursery as guest room if need be, but it was decided that storage was more important than having a guest bed.  With the bed removed, we had a large space that needed to be filled.

Once we decided on storage over sleep space, I knew exactly what type of storage I wanted.  Big white wooden cube shelving.  The owner of The Modern Baby Company recently posted pics of the nursery she designed for her daughter.  I drew tons inspiration from her design.

The hunt for white wooden cube shelving commenced.  Here is what I was looking for…

(photo credit belongs to The Modern Baby Company)

However, Memphis ain’t got no freakin’ IKEA, and all the other stores I tried just didn’t have what I was looking for.   Since Ikea doesn’t ship many of their items I would have to DRIVE to the nearst Ikea to purchase this bad boy.  6 hours to Atlanta sounded like too much work and waaay too much gas money for one bookshelf.

So after many long weeks of searching I decided that maybe i needed to give up on that dream and find another piece of furniture that would both provide storage and match the MOD style of Grayson’s room.

Enter the chest of drawers from Target.

I am now thrilled that we decided to go with this piece of furniture, because I now have so much extra storage space that I am only able to fill up 1/2 of this bad boy.  Room to grow…that’s always nice.

So, this past Saturday was spent building the dresser…

…and hanging curtains.

As a gift, my mother-in-law offered to make curtains for the nursery.  So, off to the fabric store we went.  Unfortunately, they just didn’t have what we were looking for, so off to Target we went!

Target had just what we were looking for.  Doesn’t it always?  If I could marry Target I would.  We would make beautiful children together.  Mind out of the gutter Jennifer.

Where was I?

Curtains.  We found just the curtains we were looking for at Target and the rods at Bed Bath & Beyond.  So, another project that was going on Saturday was Derek hanging curtain rods and my sweet, sweet mother-in-law parked in front of the sewing machine.

We are getting close to D-day people.  Three weeks left!  Gotta get on the ball.  I hope to be totally finished with the nursery withing the next week.  Just a few picture frames left to hang on the wall.  I’m working on the art right now in Photoshop.

Keep tuned for more status updates.

Once the walls were dry Derek moved on to tiling.

Sunday morning Derek started throwing up some tile.  For his first big tiling project he did quite well.  I myself was unable to help due to my “condition”.  I like putting my baby bump into this phrasing because it gets me out of a lot of things I don’t want to do. Tee Hee Hee.  Just kidding.  Well kind of.

I don’t really mind doing jobs like this.  I would prefer to do manual labor rather than doing dishes or cleaning a house.  You see I grew up with a dad that let me help in lots of his at home projects.  As a matter of fact, my dad and I had a tradition on the weekends.  We would watch “This Old House” together in the AM.  I learned lots of what I know today from watching Bob Vila, in all his manual labor glory, and helping my dad around the house.  I use to ask for power tools for Christmas, and sometimes still do.

Back to Derek and his first big tiling project.  Derek has tiled before at our house, but it was just the fireplace and on that project he had the help of his lovely wifey.

Pretty good, eh?

Yes, yes, yes….we did fix the crack in the wall in the image above.  Those cracks are from the interesting repair work the guys did using a combo of tile adhesive and joint compound.  Don’t worry…I went back a few days later and corrected all the cracking and un-sanded and un-painted areas.

Here he is about to get his grout on.

Getting his grout on.

I helped for about 10 minutes just so the poor kid could stop and rest his sweet little arms and back.  Grouting is hard work.  While I did my 3×3 foot area Derek just laid down on the bathroom floor and rested.  Kind of adorable if you ask me.

Grayson even helped out.  He offered his room to store all the supplies.  What a good kiddo.

Little girl helped out too.  She offered her services guarding the front door.  She made sure no mass murderers, thieves, bugs, leaves, or kitty cats made it through that front door.  Or entered our front yard for that matter.

To help spruce up the place we decided to do away with the old and outdated shower kit that currently resided in the tub.

We purchased us a newer, prettier shower kit from overstock.com.  And for quite a bargain…only $78.99.  BAM!!!