Happier Things

For future reference, let me say that I refer to my mother-in-law as DT. I don't call her this in person, it's just a nickname I use to reference her, and it's just her initials, but I think it's amusing because it's also the nickname for my vehicle. Tomorrow I will give a full update on DT's progress. Today I'm going to talk about something fun.

Things that are fun to me are not necessarily fun to my poor husband. I don't think he realized this when he married me. In fact, I know he didn't realize it. I told him once when we were engaged "I really like to do stuff...you know, crafts, flower arrangements, home improvements, and just Suzy-homemaker-style stuff". He has told me since that time that he didn't realize what that really meant. Or that when I get a notion in my head about what I want to do, that's all my mind gets set on. I see it as stress relief mainly. Poor hubby sees most of this as work, because most of my notions involve him doing something to make me happy and not something he particularly enjoys.

So this weekend, in light of our un-fun week, I decided to tackle our next project--the utility room--because I thought it would be fun. Let me first say, we have an awesome utility room, and I call it a utility room because it holds more than just our washer and dryer. For a house the age and size of ours, the utility room is amazing. I'm fairly certain it's larger than our guest bedroom. However, it's also become the black hole of our house. With all of the other rooms receiving some TLC, the utility room became the place where everything that didn't have a place went. Luckily, when I made the suggestion to hubby Saturday about starting the great utility room painting project, he agreed, but that's only because he's been wanting to tackle the black hole for at least 2 months. We made the agreement that as long as he organized all the stuff I would do the painting, because he hates to paint, and I'd rather live in clutter than tackle a pile of junk. Here's a few before pictures, clutter included:


This is the view from the door:


If you look closely on the left side of this, you'll see hubby's handiwork where he removed a door (and you can see me painting down in the bottom). Yeah, he's gotten pretty handy. I think I'll keep him:


My husband was also in charge of picture taking and somehow managed to forget taking a picture of the main point of this room, the washer and dryer...oh well, those will just be saved for after pictures. Now, the room is nowhere close to being done, but it looks SO much better:


Ok, not so much. It looks more like a teenage girl with bad highlights, but it's coming along. This is the one room we decided to keep the paneling in. In order to paint the paneling, you of course have to prime it first. I choose Kilz 2 (always...this stuff works miracles people).


In order to cover up these dark stripes, you have to use primer on them separately before you prime the whole room. It's what they say to do, so I do it. (They primarily consists of my mother and grandmother).

That's the stage we're currently in. Trust me, when you're the only one doing the painting it can take awhile. I'll update as soon as I make more progress.