Too Many Projects, Not Enough Summer!

I don't know about you, but it seems that every summer I have such ambitious intentions of accomplishing many things while the weather is good. Like, re-doing several rooms in the house! For the past few years I've wanted to totally re-do a wall in our living room. A past owner---not really sure which one---had the brilliant idea of putting those square mirrors in vertical rows in-between real wood panels on the entry wall of our living room. I think they wanted to accomplish making the room look larger...which it probably does.....but it's certainly dated....and the mirrors are getting dinghy.....time to take that all down and re-do the wall. I say that every year since we've been here. So, this makes the 12th.....but who's counting? ;-)

We live in a 70's tri-level. Our house is what I refer to as "a work in progress". We do a little updating at a time. However, during the past couple of years, the project we worked on and completed was a rather amazingly huge one! We had a massive brick fireplace and hearth in the middle of our main living area that needed to come out! Thankfully, we had men in our church who knew how to go about this. It required dismantling the whole thing from the chimney to down below the house. That was A LOT of brick and mortar, let me tell you!

Once that feat was accomplished, then the roof had to be patched, as well as the ceiling. Our son-in-law, Travis, framed in the wall that would house our propane fireplace. It took about two years for this all to be accomplished. We had to tile in the hearth area as well as around the fireplace insert. And, I papered above the tile work with Paper Illusions! This is the neatest wallpaper ever! You can go to to see other projects that people have done with this remarkable faux finish! The next project I want to do with this paper is re-do my kitchen countertops---yep---that's right! It can be done---and the finished result is awesome! I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to do that this summer...the past two summers whizzed by before I could tackle it!

So far this summer I've repainted the guest room. Took me all day. Dummy me! I should have painted primer on the walls and ceiling first---I know better--really!! But, no.....I skipped that part...and paid for it, believe me! Three coats of paint and an icepack later, I was finally finished!

This weekend, we will go to my mother's house to pick up some furniture. We'll be putting my folks' old bedroom set in our guest room. And, I'll be rearranging and organizing the furniture in our living room and family room....getting rid of some and adding the pieces from my folks' house. It'll be a nice change!

The other project I want to tackle this summer is to insulate the cinder block bottom half of the wall in our family room. I plan on doing that with foam insulation boards. Then, I'll prime them and paper them with Paper Illusions too! It'll help keep that room warmer....it's downstairs in the "basement" part of the house-----stays nice and cool in the summer.....and too cool in the winter! The grandsons love to play down there.....they can really spread out the GI Joes!

Here it is the middle of July---I really need to get with it if I'm going to get all this done and go on our Alaskan Cruise in September! That'll be for another blog!