DIY Sheet Metal Magnet Board

When we were putting the finishing touches on the playroom (after the alphabet wall), one of the things we decided to add was a magnet board at Nora's height. I was inspired by one made out of sheet metal that I saw on Pinterest.

Even after Googling, I could not find one that was made with any kind of existing frame, though! Most of the ones I saw required cutting trim pieces to size and gluing them onto the metal. Easy enough if you have experience cutting trim pieces on angles like that AND have a miter saw--neither of which we do. Also, a lot of the posts I was seeing talked about having to get the sheet metal from specialty suppliers.

But then I got a tip from a friend that the sheet metal was available at Home Depot. And when I went to check it out for myself, I discovered that it came in 24" x 36" size (for $20)--which is perfect, since that's a common frame size. Next, we went on the hunt for a good poster frame. Really cheap ones can be had for like $10, but I wanted the frame to be thicker than those. We ended up finding a good one at Walmart of all places, but there was one catch--it was brown!

Once we had it home, we removed the plexiglass from the frame and I spray painted it white--first with primer, then two coats of semi-gloss white spray paint. Perfect!

Yet there was still another small challenge to overcome. When we put the sheet metal in the frame, then put the backing back on and secured it with the tabs, we held the frame up to the wall and pushed on the metal part to see what would happen when we screwed it into the wall from the front. The metal pushed back against the wall, pulling away from the frame, leaving a big gap between the metal and frame.

Bummer.

We needed something to push the metal forward from the wall. The solution? A few pieces of foam core board. We cut a few pieces to size, fit them into the frame, put the backing of the frame back on, and sure enough--it worked out wonderfully.

Because the sheet metal and frame is pretty heavy, and it would be at Nora's level, we didn't want to hang our new magnet board from the hooks on the back of the frame. Instead, we decided to bolt it into the wall with a few screws, using drywall anchors. We estimated where we wanted the screws to be placed on the board, then made a little paper template to mark the place for the hole in each of the corners. Then, we used a metal drill bit to drill a hole through the sheet metal. We held the board up on the wall, made sure it was level, and then marked the holes with a pencil. Drilled, hammered in the anchors, and then hung the board up with the screws.

DONE!

And the thing is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon. It's definitely secure.

Nora loves it. The magnet board is a big win, and I love how it is something that can grow with her. Right now, she just likes moving the magnets around, taking them all off, putting them back on, etc. but as she gets older, she'll be able to start putting letter sounds and words together.

Oh! We got our letters (Melissa & Doug) at Michaels with a 40% off coupon. I really like that they are wooden, and the entire back of each letter is magnetic--there aren't any small magnet parts that can fall off. Eventually, I want to pick up some other types of magnets to give Nora some variety, but for now, the letters are good.

Cute, right? And despite the number of steps explained above, it's really quite an easy project. When we're cleaning up the playroom every night, I can't just put the stray letters back on the board. I always have to use them to spell as many completely random words as possible. Fun for the whole family, I guess. :)

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Toddler Tornado

For all who were wondering how on Earth a playroom could look this spotless...

...this is an example of what it looks like after Nora has had her way with it.

 

The parental cleaning service comes through at 7:30 p.m. every night, after the toddler is in bed. :) 

 

This is the way all kids "play," right? With an attention span of 0.5 seconds before they move onto the next thing?

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Deployed

It is a day that has been hanging over my family for quite some time now. One that I could not really grasp until today. And although it certainly seems more real now than ever before, I think that in a lot of ways, I am still processing.

My brother, Trevor, will officially be deployed tomorrow morning.

This afternoon, we attended the "yellow ribbon ceremony" to send off his unit.

He will be gone for a year. It's tough to comprehend. Thankfully, he'll remain in the States for a little while, fulfilling the beginning weeks of his deployment in the deep south. Then, we don't know what his destination will be. We have no idea where he's going; and neither does he.

I am sad. I am sad for the hole that will be left in our family until he returns safely home. I am sad that when we have family dinners, there will be a notable absence for a while. I am sad for the birthdays, the holidays, and other important events he will miss. I am sad that we will only get to joke, to laugh, to make fun of our mom (sorry, Mom!) in a long-distance way. (But I do have to give a shout-out for the miracle that is Facetime. Thank you, Steve Jobs.)

I am scared. At the ceremony today, there was a lot of emphasis on coming home safely. That's obviously numero uno, but for me, it's a fear I can delay a bit--because like I said, we don't even know where he's going. So it's actually hard to know if we should be scared. But I guess the fear right now is mainly focused in the unknown. So, we wait--just as he does--to find out what his assignment will be.

I am angry. I'm angry that there is even a need for soldiers. Anywhere. I wish that we could all just get along, sitting around a fire and singing kumbaya and all that shit. I'll go all beauty queen on you and say that I wish for world peace. An impossibility, I know, but hey. I'm just putting it out there.

I am proud. I am proud of Trevor. For the man he is, and for the sacrifices he is making for this country. It may be a "war" that I cannot understand, but it doesn't mean that I do not appreciate and recognize what the men and women in the military do for all of us. I love Trevor and love what he adds to our family. We fought a lot growing up--especially when we were teenagers, wow, there were some doozies--but we're grown-ups now.

That's how Trevor's deployment affects me. But the thing that gets to me the most--the thing that gives me a ball of anxiety in my gut--is not about me. It's about the little family he has made.

{Trevor and Kara's wedding day - May 21, 2011}

When I pray with Nora before putting her to bed each night, it is the three of them that I pray for. For safety, for peace, for strength. That the year may fly by for them so that they can all be together again before they know it.

As we sat at the ceremony today, you could hear the sounds of small children all around. Many of these kids were going to be saying goodbye to their daddies, or their mommies, for an entire year. And that's just... heartbreaking.

Sitting among all of these people, it really hit me: Kara, Hunter, and our family--we're not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of people throughout this country--and millions around the world--who are affected in this very same way.

{Hunter, searching the group of soldiers for his daddy}

It is with great pride that we send Trevor off to serve with the U.S. Army National Guard.

But we will miss him.

And we'll be counting down the days until he's home.

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DIY Alphabet Wall

First, let me say thank you to all who left such kind comments on our playroom reveal post on Monday. It was so fun to finally be able to show you a little part of our house. Dare I say that it motivates me to finish other rooms just to be able to share those, too? :)

Anyway, I promised to follow up the playroom photos with some additional details about a few of the projects we completed for the room. The one that seems to garner the most interest from people--both online and in real life--is the alphabet wall.

Honestly, our ABC wall made the room for us. It's a pretty big wall, and before, it was a blank canvas, staring at us every time we were in there. Since it's a playroom without any real furniture, there was nothing against the wall to "anchor" the whole thing, so it was tough to figure out what we wanted to do with it. We considered some other art--prints, mostly--but all of it seemed too small. And a lot of the art I've spotted and liked (like this) is expensive.

I had pinned a few alphabet walls on Pinterest (like this and this), and I kept coming back to them as a solution for our giant wall. At one point, I showed Michael the photos, and he was sold. That, in turn, sold me.

I immediately began to seek letters. I wanted to find as large a variety as I could, and I knew from experience with other letter projects (Nora's name on her nursery wall, the D-A-D we did for Michael for Father's Day) that Michaels and Joann Fabrics only had a few varieties. But at some point, someone (maybe Niki?) suggested Hobby Lobby.

I don't even remember when Hobby Lobby opened locally, but there is only one here. It's relatively new, at least, and the crafty girl inside me is ashamed to admit that I had never been. Although it's not exactly FAR from where we live, it is somewhat of an inconvenience to get to, and Michaels and Joann's are closer--so I just never really had a reason to go to Hobby Lobby before. My search for letters led me over there, however, and I will say that as soon as I walked in the door, I was blown away.

Why hello, Hobby Lobby. Where have you been all of my life?

Love at first sight, people. And, as it turned out, for good reason--because I hit the freaking jackpot for letters at this store. Every time I thought that I had definitely found every variety they had, I stumbled upon another. That was the only complaint I had: their letters were scattered all over the store, not just in one easy-to-browse section. BUT let's just say that I was not exactly sad about having an excuse to scour every inch of the store.

After initially collecting something like 15 different letters at Hobby Lobby, we made separate trips to Michaels and Joann Fabrics to round out our alphabet collection. Over the course of a week or so, we collected everything we needed.

To decorate each letter, we also picked up a variety of acrylic paint colors (some I already had in my stash, others we picked out new), and some fun scrapbook papers. Then, we got to work. We spent several of Nora's naptimes and evenings decorating our letters. First, we laid them all out in order and I mapped out a plan to utilize a variety of patterns and colors. I made note of the color or scrapbook paper that we planned to use for each letter, and we did our best to envision what the finished product would look like (it was impossible).

Many of the letters were simply painted. With others, we painted the edges (or left them plain) and then I covered the front of the letter with scrapbook paper using Mod Podge. I used a foam brush to spread Mod Podge on the letter, placed it face-down on the back side of the scrapbook paper, and spread out any crinkles the best I could. Then, after letting it dry for several minutes, I used an exacto knife to trace the letter on the paper, cutting away the excess paper. Once I was done cutting, I covered the top of the paper (the front of it, the nice decorative side) with a layer of Mod Podge to seal everything and give it a nice protective finish.

Some of the letters were super easy, because they were already complete when we bought them (such as the C, the G, the N--printed on our computer, the O--a clock!, and the R--left unpainted).

I actually spray painted the J and the Z. The J is just plain white semi-gloss spray paint, so that was simple. With the Z, I first spray painted it all white, let it dry for 24 hours, and then taped stripes on it with painter's tape. Then I used black semi-gloss paint to spray it again. Once dry, I peeled off the tape, and ta-da! Zebra print.

Once the letters were all finished, it was time to figure out how to hang them all. First, we laid them out in a "pattern" on the floor to determine how many letters to put in a row, how much space to put between them, etc. I took photos of our layout on my phone to reference as I did the hanging.

Then, we had to actually attach hanging hardware to each of the letters. You know, the little hooks that are on the back of picture frames? A lot of the letters didn't have those, so we had to add them. We bought a variety of picture hanging hardware at Hobby Lobby, and I used different ones, depending on a lot of factors--the thickness of the letter, the amount of space on the back, etc.

Finally, it was time to hang everything.
I wish it went that quickly in real life. :)

It actually really wasn't that bad, but I did do it over a period of about 3-4 days. As you can kinda-sorta see in the slideshow (and in the photo below), we utilized a laser level for the top row to make sure we were working on a straight line. We also taped a yard stick to the left side to mark the left edge, and used painter's tape to mark the right edge. The goal was to hang all of the letters, fairly evenly, and space them out to span the entire length between the yard stick and the painter's tape.

To hang each letter, we used a variety of methods--picture hanging hooks and finishing nails, mostly. Again, it depended on the letter, the type of hardware we had used on the back, and how much space there was between the hardware and the top of the letter.

And then our alphabet wall was finally DONE! So we stood back and admired it. Every day. We still do. :)

Time consuming, but worth it. And educational, too. We're working on teaching Nora each of the letters already. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a monogrammed MINT cosmo bag from Penguin Personalization! It ends Friday, you know.

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Penguin Personalization Review and Giveaway

This review has been a long time coming, folks. Five months in the making.

Mommy blogger FAIL.

But now, the stars have aligned. Megan over at Penguin Personalization is ready, I've actually remembered to sit down and do this, and all systems are finally a go.

REWINDING... I had so many ideas in my head of what I wanted Nora's birthday party to look like. I settled on an ice cream cone theme pretty early on, and started envisioning the details--the invitations, the food, the cake, a perfect sundae bar with fixings set up straight out of a magazine, the decor... and the birthday girl's outfit, of course.

Because of the timing of our move, I had to let pretty much all of it go (except the outfit!). It was still a nice party and everything was cute--but it was thrown together last-minute and it just did not completely live up to my Martha Stewart-like expectations for myself. But I long ago decided to give myself a break given the circumstances, SO I DIGRESS.

Anyway, a week or so before the party, I realized that I hadn't yet figured out what I was going to do for Nora's outfit. I had found a cute jean skirt I wanted her to wear, but I was at a loss for the t-shirt. I had been searching for something that would tie into our ice cream theme, but hadn't had much luck in stores. Online, I had pinned a number of options, but... I certainly hadn't left myself very much time.

And then I remembered Megan, who started up her own little business, Penguin Personalization. Megan and I "met" 4+ years ago when we were both planning our June 2008 weddings--hers in Louisiana, mine in New York. I shot her a quick e-mail asking if she would be able to do a custom embroidered t-shirt for me, and she not only agreed to get it to me in time for Nora's birthday (only about a week away), but also offered to give the shirt to me for a review AND sponsor a giveaway on my blog. That Megan; gotta love her. Seriously, though, at that time in my life I was possibly more stressed than I had ever been, so Megan was honestly a lifesaver. I almost cried. :)

So, point #1: Megan is flexible, friendly, and a doll to work with.

Once I described to Megan what I was looking for--a colorful shirt with an ice cream cone, perhaps Nora's name, and I liked the idea of a cherry on top--she went to work, creating several custom designs for me. She e-mailed me the concepts, and I was really impressed with her creativity. For one of them, instead of just a plain ol' cherry on top of the ice cream, she had made the "cherry" a #1! How cute is that? Of course, we picked that design.

Megan was also really helpful in determining the best size t-shirt to order for Nora. With inconsistent sizing among clothing brands, it can be really difficult to order things sight unseen, but Megan did her best to relay the brands and sizes to me in ways I could relate to (i.e. I was somewhat familiar with Walmart's sizing, and Carter's).

When the t-shirt arrived in the mail just a few days later, I was thrilled with the result. The applique/embroidery is of great quality, and done in a way that doesn't cause any "puckering" or other unsightly problems with the t-shirt fabric. We couldn't wait for Nora to wear it at her party.

As you might know by now, Nora's party was a success, and we received many compliments on her t-shirt. She wore it several more times throughout September, and the embroidery held up just fine in the washing machine.

If you're looking for custom t-shirts for your babes, I highly recommend Megan and Penguin Personalization.

And, she doesn't JUST do t-shirts; Megan has a variety of personalized products available, such as hats, towels, blankets, bags, handkerchiefs, and more. Peruse her website and Facebook pages to see some of her work. If there's something you'd like but don't see, or it's listed as out of stock, be sure to contact Megan directly at penguinpersonalization@gmail.com. One of the biggest advantages to working with her is that she can do pretty much anything (after all, it's personalized, y'all). Here is just a selection of the things she can do:

THE GIVEAWAY
Now... Megan/Penguin Personalization has offered to give away a MINT (brand) Cosmo Bag with an embroidered initial to one lucky Heather Drive reader! These bags (shown below) are really versatile, as they can be used as a makeup bag, wipe case, purse organizer, a case for pens and pencils, etc. Surely you could find a use for it, or give it away as a gift!

Giveaway Prize:
(1) MINT Cosmo Bag, embroidered with an initial from Penguin Personalization

Please make sure to follow the entry instructions carefully. They're not difficult, but you must follow the instructions in order to be eligible to win.

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite item/design from Penguin Personalization's website or Facebook page. Also, please leave an e-mail address where you can be contacted if you win.

Limitations:
Only one comment/entry per person. Giveaway open only to residents of the United States. (Sorry to all of my international readers!)

Deadline:
This giveaway will end at 8 p.m. EST on Friday, January 27. Entries left after the deadline will be ineligible to win.

Winner:
One winner will be chosen using random.org. The winner will be announced on my blog and will be e-mailed notification of the win. Winner has 72 hours to respond to my initial contact, or a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck!

Disclaimer: Penguin Personalization provided Nora's custom birthday t-shirt at no cost to me, in exchange for my review of the product. However, opinions expressed within the review are my own. (I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I wouldn't positively review a product that I wouldn't back anyway, whether I paid for it or not!). Penguin Personalization is also sponsoring the MINT Cosmo Bag giveaway.

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Double Trouble

We went into the pediatrician's office this morning for Nora's ear "recheck" appointment from her latest ear infection diagnosis two weeks ago. I had an inkling that things were not going to go well.

Sadly, we've gotten pretty good at diagnosing Nora's ear infections on our own, just by observing her behavior and her general demeanor. She's usually not miserable, but she's just not herself. A little moody. With a short fuse. Occasional rubbing of the ears. Interrupted sleep.

That last one has always been a tell-tale sign. On Saturday night, she was up--wide awake--for three hours in the middle of the night. Fun times, I tell you.

Anyway, the doctor took a look at one ear and sighed, "That one is a mess." And then she looked in the other one, "That one's not good either."

Let's back up here. December 22: Left ear. January 9: Right ear. January 23: Both ears. The last two were diagnosed at appointments that were supposed to be "rechecks"--in other words, appointments to confirm that infections had cleared. Our poor girl has not been ear infection free since well before Christmas.

The kicker this time was that she had been on Omnicef, which is considered a broad spectrum (a.k.a. strong) antibiotic--because amoxicillin hadn't been doing the job. Now, it appears Omnicef isn't working, either. So, the doctor opted to give Nora injectable antibiotics.

INJECTABLE. Antibiotics.

They're the big guns, y'all. Not cool.

We have to go back tomorrow to have her ears reevaluated, because apparently, these antibiotics are so good that we should see marked improvement in just 24 hours. At that point, the doctor will decide if she needs another round. Rinse and repeat for Wednesday. Poor little Nora is going to be traumatized, I fear. Needless to say, she was not thrilled with the two needles that were stuck into her chubby little thighs this morning.

We also walked out with an ENT referral. We're at the end of our rope with this stuff. We want our baby to get better. We've looked into chiropractors, and it is just not a feasible solution for us right now. We've considered the dairy sensitivity, and will be talking to our doctors about that a bit more, but overall, we're just happy to have the appointment with the ENT (next week) to get a formal evaluation of her condition, and go from there. This isn't the way we wanted this to turn out, but we just want to put an end to this endless sea of ear infections, trips to the doctor, and antibiotics.

Baby steps.

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Playroom Reveal

AKA the post in which I show you how we turned a formal living room into a playroom.

Our new house was built in the 1970s, so of course, we have a smaller, cozier family room AND a formal living room. When we first looked at the house, then bought it and moved in, we figured the living room would be kept quite empty for a while. Buying furniture for a room that we didn't plan to spend much time in was pretty low on the list of priorities when it came to spending our money.

At first, the room was an "overflow" room. And when we were ripping down drywall and the family room was under construction, we had all of our family room furniture in the living room. It was a mess. But once we had things under control, we moved everything into its rightful place and the living room was left with... a toybox. So it became a makeshift playroom for Nora.

Over time, we began to embrace the idea of a first floor playroom. And finally, we decided that if we were going to make it a playroom, we should put the effort into "decorating" it as such. We started collecting pieces for the formal living room playroom, and now, we are finally done.

It's funny, because when you walk through our front door, this is actually the first room you see. I suppose it is a testament to the current state of our lives. Hi, we are parents to a young child. :)

The color on the walls is Sherwin Williams Sea Salt. We actually chose it (and painted it on the walls!) before we even really knew what we were going to do with the room. Looking back, that probably wasn't the right approach, but I think it turned out to be the perfect color. I love it. It's a lovely blue-gray color and really makes this room light and airy.

This is a DIY magnet board we made out of sheet metal for Nora (thanks to Pinterest for the inspiration).

Curtain rod and curtains are from JCPenney.

Table by Tot Tutors, purchased at Toys 'R' Us from Santa's workshop. :) We have really been impressed with the little table so far. The pieces are nice and sturdy, the colors are great, and Nora loves it. Win-win-win.

Playmat by Tadpoles, purchased at Amazon.com. We bought three of them to make a mat of this size. This has been great for us, too. For a few months, we sat right on the hardwoods to play with Nora in the then-empty "playroom," and it was really rough on the tailbone (especially one that I swear is permanently damaged by childbirth). This makes things a bit more comfy!

Cube shelf and fabric drawers from Target. This was one of our latest additions within the last several weeks, and it has really helped to complete the room. To have additional, smaller storage to supplement the toy box has been great. Books, smaller toys--they're all easily accessible to Nora, but they now have a place.

Lamp and lampshade from Target. Art from Etsy. There are dozens of variations of the "playroom rules" floating around Pinterest and Etsy, so there are certainly options. And, subway art is fairly easy to DIY, too. However, this PDF file was only $10 and I figured it was more than worth it for the time I would've spent to try to design something I liked equally as much. I had it printed at Staples for like $2, and bought the frame at Michaels.

More toys organized, but easily accessible to Nora. We also decided to hang her cake smash collage (want a better look? check out this post) in here.

Ah, the alphabet wall. This thing was a labor of love, and totally deserves its own post--so be on the lookout for more details on this project within the next few days. In short, we had a huge wall to contend with, and debated going in a few different directions. But in the end, we fell in love with an alphabet wall I had pinned on Pinterest... the rest is history.

Toy box is by my dad. :)

I know this type of thing probably isn't everyone's cup of tea. Like I said, this is one of the first things people see as they come into the front door of our house! A lot of people would prefer to have playrooms that can be hidden behind closed doors, and toys that can be tucked away. But for us, it was about creating something functional. Instead of furnishing and decorating a room that would be rarely used, we went with something that is utilized on a daily basis.

In this room, Nora can play with all of her toys just a few steps away from us while we're making dinner. When we have company over (almost all of whom have children of their own), our kids can play together in the next room while we enjoy some adult conversation. We envision that this room will get a lot of use during our years with young kids. At some point, when they're a little older, we'll move the playing into the finished part of our basement, and this room will transform into something else. Until then, our little girl enjoys it every day. See?

Making sure to come full circle--here are the "before" pics. First, with the sellers things:

And then on the day we moved in:

And one more time, here's our after:

Overall, this was a really fun room to work on. It took some time, but mostly because we just collected items little by little. Once we decided to truly "finish" it, everything came together very quickly. I wish the kitchen could be this easy!

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Gated Community

You'd think that with the (seemingly) hundreds of baby gates on the market, it would be easier to find one that actually works and fits in the spot you want to put it. But we're not having much luck, and we have an increasingly mobile and curious toddler who thinks that climbing the stairs is the most.fun.activity.EVER.

Our biggest problem lies in our banisters. The one at the bottom of the stairs is pretty tall, so we can't find a gate tall enough to be able to line up the tension rods with the flat parts of it. So we figured we'd have to get one of those banister kits to adapt the best/tallest gate we could find--a Dream Baby Extra Tall security gate--but then we noticed that when we use the tension rod against our sorta-loose banister, the tension was actually forcing the banister over to the side a bit, causing some of the molding surround the banister to rip apart. NOT GOOD.

The other issue with the bottom of the stairs is that I guess you're supposed to put the gate on the bottom stair, as opposed to the floor? If that's the case, we've got bigger problems since we have a pretty thick and cushy carpet as a runner, making the surface area unlevel when you go from left to right.

For the top of the stairs, we have the same type of banister, but it's a bit shorter. We bought a Summer Infant Sure and Secure Extra Tall gate, because it was one of the only ones I found that was (hopefully) the right height AND could be hardware mounted (a safety requirement for top-of-the-stairs placement). We don't have it in our hands yet, because our local Babies 'R' Us and Toys 'R' Us stores were out of stock, so we had to have my sister-in-law pick it up for us in the city where she goes to college, and we won't see her again until Saturday. But since the banister is a little loose upstairs, too, I'm nervous that this won't work, either. When you hardware mount, does it still require tension against the surfaces you're mounting on?

Our trim molding is not the easiest thing to deal with either, as it also semi-interferes with mounting--both tension and hardware styles. Fun.

And then there's part of me that is thinking we should just save our money and buy a cheap, removable-on-a-daily-basis gate that we can somehow rig at the bottom of the stairs, and just very carefully supervise (like we have been) whenever we're upstairs. At what age do kids generally learn how to go down stairs safely? When are they old enough to start teaching them to scootch down on their bellies, backwards?

For downstairs, if we can't figure out a bottom-of-the-stairs solution, our only other option is to put a gate in the doorway to our kitchen, then put a (very wide, and probably very expensive) gate across the opening into the playroom, effectively blocking off our entire foyer. This is less appealing to me because I feel like the gates will be more "in your face" this way, as opposed to being relatively inconspicuous in our stairway.

What do you think? Any suggestions for us based on our photos? Do you live in a "gated community," or do you let your kids roam free? If you do the former, what is the system you've found works best for you? If the latter, how on earth do you keep your kids away from stairs and/or watch them every second?

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A Bitch of a Kitchen

We moved into our new house in August. Five months later, and I've shown you very little of it. You've probably caught glimpses here or there, but I haven't openly documented how much this place has changed.

It sort of makes me feel unaccomplished, like we haven't truly finished anything. But we're actually working on putting the final touches on a few rooms right now, so I hope to be sharing some official before and after pics soon.

But first, I thought I'd start by showing you the room in our house that is next up on our list of projects. It's arguably the most important room in the house. And, oddly enough, it's the room I currently hate the most. It's received very little cosmetic love and attention thus far.

That room? It's the kitchen.

Behold: Photos of our ugly-ass kitchen, from the day after we closed on the house.

Yes, that is an ungodly amount of z-brick. Yes, those are parquet floors.

Yes, that is shoe molding being used as crown molding.

Yes, the z-brick even goes behind the refrigerator. Lucky us.

Oh, and YES, that is rosebud wallpaper, with a heart border, all of which was just installed in--wait for it--2009.

And let's not pass up the opportunity to admire the wooden heart valance/shelf thingy up above the sliding glass door.

*sigh* We have our work cut out for us, don't we?

A few things have changed. We couldn't rip down that wallpaper fast enough, and the heart shelf/valance thing was an early casualty. We also tore out the z-brick that surrounded the dishwasher. We moved our laundry from the basement to that gigantic oversized pantry (there were already laundry hookups in there). But then we got overwhelmed and distracted with other things, so the kitchen is just in a state of... ugly. Unfinished ugly.

In September/October, we ripped our family room ceiling and walls down to the studs and put up new drywall (with help from my dad, and our friends Emily and Pete). After that monster of a project, we were beaten down. So, we took a break from big projects, choosing instead to tackle things like painting and window treatments and replacing all of our hollow wooden interior doors with six-panel slab doors. And then we got through the busy holidays.

Now? Now, it's January, it's a new year, and we are ready for a project. A BIG project.

We are preparing to tackle that beast of a kitchen. To rid ourselves of z-brick forever, we have to (temporarily) remove all of the upper cabinets, the countertops, and a couple of the base cabinets in order to rip the upper portion of the walls down to the studs. Then, we'll put up new drywall, and tape/mud/sand it all. We also have plans to paint the cabinets, install a tile backsplash, replace some of the fixtures, and... replace the floors.

I'm not going to lie to myself this time; this is going to take a while. But instead of dropping off the face of the earth and stopping in to blog only occasionally with "OMG WE'RE SO BUSY, MY HOUSE IS A HELLISH MESS, I'M GOING TO DIE" posts, I figure that I'll try to keep you all updated on where we are in the process. You know, so you can live in kitchen renovation hell right along with us. :)

Right now, we're finishing up the research/planning stages, but we hope to start to buy materials in the next few weeks, and finally begin making progress (DEMO!!) in early February. We're somewhat intimidated and are still in search of a little help (Bueller?) but it has to be done! Living without a kitchen is never fun, and living without a kitchen with a toddler is like... have I used the word hell yet?

And so the countdown begins...

Have any of you tackled a big DIY kitchen renovation? Anyone have any experience with removing z-brick? How about (safely, temporarily) removing countertops without damaging them? Anyone just want to sympathize/empathize with my ugly kitchen woes? :)

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