Laundry Room Floor

Today I am preparing the laundry room floor for painting. As you can see, we have a basement laundry room.  Goodness what a job!  The floor is so filthy from the work we've done so far. 

Knocking out stairs ... Building new stairs
Tearing out the old furnace ... Installing a new furnace
Ripping out old duct work ... Installing new duct work.
Ripping out old windows ... Installing new windows.
Jack hammering the floor to fix the drain ... THIS made the most mess!

I painted the walls several months ago.  

The color is Valspar's Gravity.

The color I chose for the floor is Valspar's Fountain Mist. 

Fingers crossed it will look nice.....YOIKS!

We are hoping to start demolition to the main part of our house soon.  But we need somewhere to house things like couches, chairs and bookshelves before we start.  Knocking out walls is messy business.  Our utility shelves need to be moved into the laundry room to make more space to store all the big stuff from upstairs.

We debated painting the floor in the laundry room.  I mean, why paint a floor only to make more mess?  But we decided, in the end, to just do it so we could move our big shelves in and BE DONE.  I really didn't want to have to paint under and around those big things.

Remember these?  These shelves house all the bins that contain holiday decorations and a bunch of other crap stuff. 

I've come to the conclusion that our house is very much like the "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" book.  If you want to start demolition, you need to clear the space, if you want to clear the space, you need to make room for all the stuff ....... 

Feeling Moody With Mood Boards

I see all sorts of mood boards floating around Pinterest.  I wanted to have a try but I thought I needed Photoshop.  Thanks to this post from Home Made Modern Blog,  I found out how to do it in MS Word!  

WORD! 

WORD to your mother! (Vanilla Ice anyone?)

WORD UP! (for all you WordGirl fans)

If you type the word "word" enough times it starts to look funny.

Anywho.......

Work on the inside of our house has been non-existent.  The exterior sure is looking swell, but I'm getting antsy, fidgity and sometimes downright grumpy about the state of the interior of The Windmill Cottage.  

Remember last Christmas?

All of the interior windows still look like this!

Don't get me wrong!  I am so very thankful for this little cottage every single day.  I am in love with the place.  I just can't wait to get started on the gutting and remodel!  But I have to be patient. 

So to keep myself from going crazy, I dream about the interior and resort to Pinterest on a daily basis (if any of you follow me on Pinterest, sorry for the 18 billion pictures of white kitchens).

Back to mood boards and MS Word.  I started to play a little last night.  This is what I came up with for the small entryway from the back porch.

Turquoise and orange.

I would really like to use a turquoise damask wallpaper somewhere in our house. 

Mr. Windmill made a shoe cubby just like this one several years ago.   I love it!  The boys actually use it.  It makes shoe storage and organization a snap for all of us.  

 Black, white and grey.

I am usually attracted to rooms with a lot of color. But the black, white and grey often catches my attention.  

Oh well, Just playing around.  I have a LONG way to go before I can actually put rooms together.  

I'm hoping to get some pictures of the front porch to you soon.  We are waiting for some hardware to be delivered so we can finish the railing.  

Happy Monday everyone!  

I do not own any of the photos used in the mood boards.  

These boards were created for personal use to help me decide how to decorate our home.

Front Porch Progress

Hello friends and family!

I am over the moon to get a front porch roof and railing!  I can't wait for our house to finally look "finished".  

I should be painting, but I decided to sit down and do a blog post (now there's some time management ....).  With a rain-free forecast, I've been finishing up painting the last side of the foundation.  

Anyway.......

Mr. Windmill got started on Monday.  

I'm sure all the neighbors were wondering why we never completed the siding in the front gable. 

A sheet of OSB to protect the door glass.

Smart move, Mr. Windmill!

And here it is!  A perfect shed roof.  

Mr. Windmill is A M A Z I N G !

I show him or tell him my ideas and he brings them to life!

He's patient too.  'Cause that roof design changed about 26 times before I settled.  Just ask my mom, she was the one who had to scrutinize a Pinterest board full of pictures and listen to me flip flop on all the pros and cons of each design.  

Thanks mom!

Back Porch Railing

Mr. Windmill finished the railing on the back porch.  
And I couldn't be more in love!

Just a photo dump today. 

( I can't wait to paint that back door! )

The Front Walkway

I haven't had a chance to show you the pictures of our finished paver walkway. 
Without further delay....... 

We still have to fill in around the walkway with topsoil and plant new grass.  
I'm not sure if we are going to leave the section between the retaining wall and the sidewalk with grass or fill it in with black mulch and some hostas.  I have to think on that for a while.

 Here you can see how it leads out to our gravel driveway. 

The polymeric sand set this time unlike our back patio which you can see here.

Things around the Windmill Cottage are slowly becoming less dirt and mud!  Yay!

Ground Breaking! To the Front, to the front..............

There seems to be just enough pause in the rain to do some ground breaking.  It's been raining every single day for nearly two weeks.  Hubs headed outside to layout the path for the front walkway.

 It's amazing what a tape measure, a roll of string and some stakes can do!  

Mr. Windmill (my hubs) had lots of help from Little A and Big C!

Mr. Windmill makes short work of digging.  He seriously is the digging master!  

He grew up on a farm...go figure!

Some landscape fabric and the first layer of gravel shown here.

 Little A taking his turn with the tamper.  I think that tool weighs as much as he does! 

And there's the stack of pavers waiting to transform into a front walkway!

 You can see the Knock-Out roses and the Stella lilies on the side of the house.  

They seem to be doing okay.  They could use a little more sun and little less rain!

A Little Patio

Hubby and I knew when we built the back porch that the gas grill would never be housed there. We've seen first hand the grease mess that splatters all over the place.  The deck at our old house had grease spots and stains all over.  And a friend of ours melted their vinyl siding from the extreme heat of their gas grill.  We purchased these pavers and set to work preparing to make a little patio.  We've never had any experience with installing pavers but thanks to the great internet, there are hundreds of tutorials out there.  I settled with this one from Better Homes and Gardens.  

 Here's a before.  I know your diggin' the 5 gallon bucket on the porch.  And the crammed up furniture.  I keep moving it back where it belongs but two little boys I know keep rearranging.  

A view from the top of the stairs.

Nearly ready for the pavers.  

We used cap blocks for the border.  

And the finished project.  We used a polymeric sand to fill the cracks.  This sand combines with polymers to make a solid but flexible filler.  It's supposed to keep the insects out and keep the pavers intact.  But it rained for a week straight after we installed this patio.  I've noticed that the sand didn't set properly. We may have to scrape and vacuum out what we can and redo later this summer.  We'll have to see. 

 See the baby grass starting to sprout around?  

Don't be jealous of my gorgeous flowers in those pots! 

 Just use your imagination!  That's what I do!  ;-)