NILL FAMILY news

It’s really happening! OMG! As I type this there are several men in my house taking out my kitchen!  eeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Yesterday:

Right now:

Sorry it’s a little unreal considering we started the process before Christmas. Renovations take a long time to plan! There are so many moving parts in terms of scheduling the contractors/workers, picking things out, placing special orders and whatnot. Countless hours reading reviews, shopping, learning just how much things cost (haha), and worrying about doing it right. We’d stand in the kitchen, walk around, pretend to do things like open the fridge or throw something in the trash – it had to function or we would die trying.

In the meantime, it turns out that not furnishing the foyer was the best thing I ever did, because now we had a whole separate space to create our temporary kitchen. Geographically, this is the pass-through room to get upstairs:

Temporary kitchen:

Jason took down some of the cabinets this weekend for us to use in here before they (and the old fridge) go in the basement. Overall it took me 4.5 hours to move everything out of the kitchen and into either this room or downstairs. I was getting flashbacks of our move here in the first place!

So we have the old microwave, our toaster, coffee maker, and the grill outside. I will still probably be using 5 Guys and Comellas takeout 😀
On Wednesday I’m taking the boys to FL for 5 days and hopefully when we get back, a lot of the stuff will be done. All signs so far point to survival (plus, just got good news that we are actually able to vent our hood to the outside, something we did not think possible). Yay!

Speaking of stuff, here’s the mood board I created (or, attempted to create) based on the final choices!

We totally know we are going to the “safe and classic” route with the white and gray, but I think it’s going to look so pretty. I’m obsessed with our backsplash tile although it won’t be in for 10 weeks
Refer to my comment above that everything takes soooo long!

The appliances came today, the electrician comes tomorrow and then the cabinets arrive on Wednesday, pretty much at the exact same time I’ll be boarding a plane (solo, did I mention?) with the boys.

So that’s all I have for you today unfortunately. Promise to get a good post in before FL!

But as you can tell, phonetically he is kind of a mess. “No” is pretty clear, but his speech is not coming along great. Ashton at age 2 had 20-25 words and we thought that was bad. Alex consistently has about 4: “Up”, “No”, “Mama” and “Daddy”. He can sign “all done”, “more”, “my turn” or “me please”, “milk”, “eat”, and “help”, but a lot of the time it’s unintelligible noise. Like the other day he lost his shoe on the playground, but as I scooped him up I didn’t notice, and he squawked like a little bird for a full minute before Ashton and I realized what he was trying to “say”. It’s a lot of stories like that. We of course have him in EI and I just pushed for the addition of a SLP because I really think he needs more help. He had his evaluation last week so that is in the works. Overall I’m hoping things will pop for him soon.

Alex doesn’t let the speech really get him down though. He definitely has ways of communicating and it’s easy to tell his mood/what he wants/what he doesn’t want for the most part. When you’re Alex and things are good, they’re really good. When they’re bad, the whole day is shot and you can try again tomorrow. I think I’ve mentioned this before about Alex: he’s either super happy or super cranky with not much in between.

What else about Alex. Well he loves the junk drawer. He’ll push his little chair right up to the counter, climb on and stick his face right in to all the pens, tape, stamps, paper clips, rubber bands, bottle openers, business cards and whatever else ends up in junk drawers. He is also just getting into trains, putting the tracks together and lining up the magnets to create long strings of cars to guide along. He also LOVES all the tiny pieces from Ashton’s lego bin, which is very distressing for Ashton and he has taken to hiding little stashes of things so that Alex can’t find them.

One time Alex managed to hide a Lego guy in his fist long enough to get it into his crib with him for his nap. I laid him down and after five minutes checked the monitor. What was he doing? I went in, he had laid the Lego guy next to him on the sheet, was patting it and trying to kiss it. One of the odder moments.

Speaking of his crib, his new trick is climbing out. Which, as most parents of toddlers can attest, is basically the end of days. Horrible. We took the whole bottom off so now his mattress is on the floor, but all he has to do is grow a couple inches and he’ll be back at it. I give it another 6 months and we are toast.

Speaking of growing…here are his stats!

Height: 36″, exactly 3 feet! (91st percentile)
Weight: 32 lbs even (94th percentile)
Head circumference: 48.5 cm (56th percentile)
Shots: Hepatitis A and a blood draw for lead
Shoe size: 8W
Clothes size: Old Navy 3T, and all pajamas 3T, but otherwise 2T (sometimes 3T in tops. As you can see it is not an exact science)
Teeth: All except 2 year molars and loving his spin brush
Diapers: Size 5s
Sleep: Wakeup between 7:30 – 8 am, one nap usually 2-4 pm, bedtime at 8 pm. He is a great sleeper as long as his stuffed monkey is in there with him.

His favorite foods are pretty unoriginal. If you put warm, fresh-out-of-the-pot mac n cheese (the white cheddar shells) on his plate, he will use both hands and shovel it all in his mouth until it’s gone. It’s really something to watch haha. He must swallow it whole. He can also house a hot dog in about 18 seconds. He eats tons of fruit, cucumbers, eggs, yogurt, pasta, etc. All the usual kid things.

Alex does a great job of being a pesky little brother and what interests him the most is whatever Ashton is doing, whatever Ashton has, or wherever Ashton is going. Needless to say, Alex has learned that to keep up, he needs to be on his scooter!

Our little Mr. Alexander is TWO today! Weeeeeeee!! Also, buckets of tears. How?? When?? 

“Get all the paper off! Get it!”

“IT’S A _________________!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Alex! LOOK! IT’S A ____________________ !!!!!!!!!!!”

 I’ll be back next week to post Alex’s stats and the rest of the nitty gritty, but as far as his second birthday goes, that’s a wrap! He had a ball. He smiled, clapped and was sooo happy. I really think he knew it was his birthday! He kept saying “Do!” when we asked him how old he was 🙂

I hinted at the end of my last post (actually, didn’t hint, flat out said) our next big project is our kitchen. I have never been through a kitchen renovation before and while it is pretty major, it is not all-the-way major because we aren’t changing the layout, taking down walls, moving plumbing, etc.

Here is our kitchen today:

Hard to make out, but the whole front piece of the granite wiggles because the cracks come all the way out and all the way through the countertop.

At first we thought, let’s just cut the granite, take out the cooktop and oven and get a slide-in unit. We could probably make that work. And maybe we could modify the cabinets around the refrigerator somehow to fit something more modern and suitable for our needs.

But then we thought, if we’re cutting the granite, and cutting the cabinets, and the kitchen is not to our taste anyway, let’s just re-do the whole thing. We’re going to be in this house for awhile so if we do it now, we will get the maximum enjoyment out of it.

It’s been a long road since then! We got quotes from a couple contractors and talked to a kitchen designer, but ultimately ended up at Home Depot. We knew we didn’t need a full-on new design/layout, just wanted to refresh everything – new cabinets, appliances, and countertops. After several meetings with our now beloved Deirdre, who worked tirelessly with us, we have pressed “Order! Buy! Let’s do this!” and are about a month out from our cabinet delivery. Eeeeeee!!

We decided on the Martha Stewart Ox Hill cabinets in Picket Fence (white). But turns out, when you have a 500 page book of all your cabinet options, it is almost paralyzing! All the different sizes, inserts, etc. kept me up at night. Like instead of a 3 drawer base should I have chosen a 2 door base with one drawer? What about the trash, where should that go? And is there any other spot for the oven besides next to the fridge??

I’m telling you, it’s a lot. We moved things around a ton before ultimately having something that looks like this:

The actual software perspectives are pretty neat.

That is our final design right there. The desk area on the left is coming out and being replaced with floor to ceiling storage units for toys, games, puzzles etc. The new induction cooktop will be in the same spot as the old electric one, but we moved our wall oven/microwave combo unit over next to the fridge. We just couldn’t make it work in any other spot based on our dimensions, functionality, etc. I think it will be ok. We picked the LG Viatera Quartz in Rococo for our countertops – they sold me on its indestructability…we’ll see 😉

Overall look and feel for the new kitchen will be pretty classic – white and gray, which is very in right now and therefore not unique, but we are fine with playing it safe. The dining area, the kitchen, and the living room are all in one big open space so any crazy design elements I think would throw off the balance. I love Ann Sacks tile so I’m hoping to do something awesome right above the cooktop for the backsplash. Those decisions, plus the pendant lights, sink, etc. are still coming down the pike, but for now we’ve nailed down the big stuff. When it’s time for the demo to start, believe me, you’ll know 😉

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! Current mood: doing the happy dance. Thinking about our new mudroom it makes me want to go all Carlton-like from the Fresh Prince. It is that good.

Because we have had a serious problem.

That picture is not even staged. There truly was a random glove on the floor (uh, mine), a broom, and enough shoes to form a small dam. Trying to come in from outside was really annoying. No matter how many times we tried to keep the stuff on the floor to a minimum, it just crept back. And this is what you see from our entire kitchen and family room area – it’s messy and unattractive and we knew from the beginning, from the first moment this house was ours, what the solution would be.

So let me start with some geography. Our house has/had a cute little sunroom. Perhaps obvious, but:

Coming up our driveway a little further you can see the side door, which is an entrance directly into the kitchen (where the shoe pileup is). See the lovely red circle next to it? That is the window I knew would have to become a door.

So this past November, that’s what happened.

Now the sunroom had two doors: one exterior and one interior – the interior one opens into the foyer.

Readers, here comes the critical point. It was now conceivable that someone could come in the new exterior door and find themselves in a proper place to take off their boots, hang up their jacket, and then enter the house. [SHOCK] & [AWE]. The mudroom is just steps to the left from what has been our usual dumping ground.

All Jason had to do was build out this nirvana. We planned for one big L-shaped bench, some lockers, and a row of hooks where the bookshelves used to be. I was obsessed with painting it a fun color (we ended up with Shagreen by Sherwin Williams) and also doing the awesome beamed ceiling that same color (but at 50%, which I detailed in my prior post). Then we needed to pick all the other stuff: the rug, the hooks, the baskets, the fabric for the bench cushions…of course this was all after Jason was done building everything. It was a big project, as it turned out, and there were a few hiccups.

1) Everything was cream. The moldings, mullions (those little wooden bars between the window panes), baseboards, all of it. We initially thought to just keep it that color but I needed that fresh, cheery bright white. I whined a lot about it and Jason was finally like “Are you cah-RAZY? Do you know how long it will take me to paint all that??” I said DUH you are not going to do it with a brush, you are going to do it with a sprayer! (Luckily Jason gets very excited about new toys tools so I played that to my advantage.) After welcoming the Graco TrueCoat Plus II 1300-PSI Electric Handheld Airless Paint Sprayer to our family, we bought stock in painters tape and had at it. The prep work took one hundred times as long as the actual painting because we covered each pane with resin paper and taped all the sides.

He had to do a couple coats but the end result is pretty flawless. No brush lines, even color application, and the room sparkles. A very good decision, that paint sprayer. So now that everything was white…

2) There was not really any heat. Actually, the room was freezing. Who wants to put on a cold jacket and icy mittens? No no no. There is a vent in the ceiling connected to our central air system but this room is on a cement slab with original windows and it just never warmed up. At first we thought about radiant heat in the floors, but I loved the hardwoods, and we eventually realized a wall-mounted electric panel heater was probably the answer. The problem was, they were all at least 24″ wide and we had a close-but-no-cigar 21″ between the bench and the wall. We searched and searched and I finally found this little guy (which, by the way, was so elusive because it is not sold on Amazon. I didn’t think there was anything left in the world that was not sold on Amazon, but apparently, there is and this is it). So we mounted it in the corner and checked that off the list.

3) When you entered the mudroom through the new exterior door, there was no light switch. Often in winter, you come home and it’s dark out. It didn’t seem practical to have to pass through the mudroom and into the foyer to turn on the light! Because Jason is Jason, he found some sort of light remote kit where the original switch becomes the remote and then there is a wall mounted, faux-switch receiver, or something. We tacked this receiver to the mudroom wall just inside the door. Think of the Clapper (in fact, we probably could have installed one of those now that I think about it ha!). But this looks like a real switch without actually having any wiring behind it.

The old interior switch kind of looks like a button now.

There is a little delay in the light turning on when you hit both this one and the faux one, but honestly, who cares! So now we have the remote switch and the receiver that both turn on the same light, and both in convenient spots. Woo!

Without further ado…

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

Before

After

I might be guilty of overposting at this point. But I love it – the room is so sunny and cheerful, honestly the boys love to hang out in there! They race along the benches and squeeze their little bodies into the lockers (Ashton calls his his “closet”). One last glamour shot:

There are lots of things I didn’t go into detail about i.e. the front bench opens on a hinge for more storage, the light fixture is new (no thanks to the old ornate gold one), and Jason made the Six Craft board out of one of the original bookshelves by staining and sanding it down. I just love love love everything about this new space 🙂

Sooo, what’s next? Oh! I know…it looks a little something like…

Cabinets are ordered, countertops are picked, appliances are just waiting for their delivery date…we are a month out from the demo and this will definitely be our biggest project ever!

Ski lessons have been big on “the list” this year. I grew up in Vermont racing at Sugarbush, but I don’t even have a memory of learning how to ski in the first place, so it must have been early! Almost positive I was dangled from the end of a rope at Mad River with my dad holding me back.

Anyway, Ashton is more than half way to being 5, and so far he can’t ski, bike, or swim. Yikes. (He does ride with training wheels and loves to swim with a float, but on his own – not yet.) We need to get on this stuff. Skiing is a hard one to tackle because the lessons are 45 minutes away and kept getting pushed off (by the mountain, not us) due to school vacation, cold weather, etc. Also Alex really can’t come so it has to work with our schedule. Jason stayed home this time.

Finally, last Sunday at 1:30 pm, he was Nashoba’s newest mighty mite! It was a gorgeous day – I was basking in the sun watching Ashton in his mini group. It was an hour lesson. Overall review: it was kind of a zoo but somehow, not much happened. At all. A few times the kids were moved 3 degrees uphill by holding on to a hula hoop so they could “ski” back “down”, but mostly it was just them getting used to having these funny boards on their feet. Ashton fell over a lot and crossed his skis several times, but by the end he seemed to think that was it because he said, “Great Mommy! Can I go on the big hill now?” and pointed to the chairlift.

Uh, no, you can’t. Sorry sweetie. And then he got legitimately mad and threw a fit! I was shocked, he got super whiny and almost cried he was so upset. We talked about how he had more lessons and he seemed to perk up, but sheesh.

I’d post one of the thousand videos I took, but the truth is a snail could ski faster and you’d fall asleep instantly.

Nashoba called yesterday and said this weekend would be the last of the lessons. There is simply not going to continue to be enough snow! So that really stinks. Ashton doesn’t know yet.

By DIY in this case I mean paint. Here is what happened.

The other night Jason and I were sitting on the couch going over the last pieces of the mudroom project. He said, “And then on Monday when you get home I’ll paint the ceiling.” I said, “You know what, I don’t think so. I’LL paint the ceiling – YOU can take the boys around the block on their bikes, feed them dinner, do the dishes, pick up all the toys, put the laundry in and give them their bath and I’LL peacefully paint away in the next room, listening to music and thinking about all the compliments I am going to get.”

Because that’s how our projects typically go. Jason has all the fun with the tools and I get stuck with all the regular chores plus the boys. It’s just not fair and I was taking action. I could paint a ceiling, right? How hard could it be? Yep I was doing it. I believe Jason’s exact words were “I can’t WAIT to see you paint the ceiling. Oh, this is going to be so great. I guarantee this makes more work for me in the end, but I totally can’t WAIT to see this.”

He thought I was going to quit, or royally mess it up, or both, which of course made me more determined than ever. I told him there hasn’t been a ceiling like this since the Sistine Chapel, you just wait!

So there I was. The ceiling is 6 big squares and then a few small ones, all separated off by the beams. We had put sample color blocks in a few spots to try and figure out if we should do it at 25% or 50% of the wall color (50% was the winner – the color is Shagreen by SW) but other than that, it was a blank slate. I started by trying to cut in using just the brush and my impeccable skill, but after roughly 45 seconds I realized I needed the painters tape and I needed it bad. Is that cheating? Oh well. I took a break to tape the moldings and beams off. (And yes, I absolutely made Jason take my picture! This was history happening.)

Whoops, heh heh. Wrong one 😉

Notice I did not title this post “How To“. I presume there are a lot of different ways to do this but this is how I happened to accomplish it and thought you might want to know.

Step 1. Figure out where you want to put it. Quite an obvious Step 1 and for me, this was easy. We have a big long wall that separates the old part of the house from the new part of the house. It goes under the stairs and it is just dead space. Frame wall, here I come!

Step 2. Get your frames together. I’ve made one of these before, so I basically was all set in this area to start. But if you haven’t, ask yourself: Are you eclectic and/or artsy? I’m not, so all my frames needed to match. Lots of people make walls with all kinds of mediums and do not limit themselves to photos only, but let’s be serious, I need the limits. So I had previously chose some different white Pottery Barn frames, those Target Room Essentials frames, and a couple of sets of these to make my wall. The whites all match and the frames are varying thicknesses so it looks good. But I have no idea how to tell you how many frames you’ll need – depends on how many bigs and smalls you’ve got

Step 3a. Using your trusty tinfoil, make molds of each frame that you have.

Step 3b. Use Post-it’s to number them as you go. I didn’t have any so I just improvised, but make sure to come up with some kind of tracking system so you know which frame goes with which “mold”.

 * Helpful hint: Use your sharpie to draw a rough estimate of the photo opening on the foil. Some of my frames have large mats, some small, some have 2 or 3 pictures per frame, so it’s good to know how to distribute those elements evenly as you go along. I forgot to do this until the end.

Step 4. Put your frames in a safe place, and try not to pile them on top of each other because they’ll chip or get dinged somehow. Been there.

Step 5. The design part. Gather all your foil squares and some painter’s tape and start sticking.

Not quite sure why I look so fat in that picture. Unless it’s true that art imitates life in which case…lol.

Anyway, it’s a lot of trial and error, I’m not going to lie. You want to have all your shapes evenly distributed, with not too much space variance between all the frames. The painters tape really comes in handy here. I knew there was no way I was going to get all of these in a perfect block, so I decided that some jagged edges in the overall design were ok in the end.

Step 6. Finally tell your husband it’s time to hang the frames. Make sure it is 5 pm on Superbowl Sunday. Assure him there is a hard 6:30 pm stop time and he’s allowed to drink beer while he does it. Work down the line and replace each foil square according to the matching frame number. Rocket science, this is not.

See that posture? It says, “I’m not thrilled right now.” When picture-hangers display this kind of negative attitude, send in children to slow things down. Heh heh.

This is accomplished by:
* having to explain what he is doing
* having to explain why he is doing it
* children then wanting their own tools and belts
* using said tools to bang obnoxiously on the walls and the floors
* leading imaginary repairs on the step stool.

We got about half way through before kick off. The next set of installations went similarly, and in fact, if you want to know why things take 150% longer when you have kids, watch this video. “Your drill is going there, brotha!” I was dying laughing.

Step 7. All my frames were pre-filled from my last photo wall, but I do have some new ones to switch out and a big 11×14 print coming for the middle. So get yourself some 4×6’s, 5×7’s, and 8×10’s  (I use mpix.com – not the cheapest out there but the quality is awesome, in my opinion) and get yourself one of these picture hanging tools from Home Depot. It will help immensely.

Step 8. Admire your before and after!

It’s not perfect but it’s perfect enough. That blue dotted tape line marks the top of the chair rail/board and batten/wainscoting/whatever I eventually decide on for the bottom section of the wall. It’s going to go around the whole room and up the stairs. Someday! Jason’s sort of busy 😉