Crossing My Ts and Dotting My...Lamp

Let me tell you a little story about a lamp.  I found this one at Goodwill last week:

I went in to hunt for a lamp and came out with one.  Huzzah!  While that probably sounds incredibly lucky; a first-time find, it took me three strolls through different Goodwills to find the perfect one.  Patience and perserverance here kids.

However, the lamp itself 'twas far from perfect, even though it seemed unused.  

That inner layer of cream paint was cracking and peeling, bubbling and shuffling.  But the shape of the lamp is what caught my eye and I knew I could remedy that poor paint situation.  (After all, this wouldn't be my first time taking care of peeling paint inside a lamp.)

Painting Trim - Tips and Tricks

Painting trim is the absolute worst.  I think I've said that about ceilings but now that I'm past the ceilings and onto the trim, I can whole-heartedly shift my opinion.  It's tedious and time-consuming and...the worst.

But, I've picked up a few tips along the way (this is my second time painting alllll the trim in the house after all) that I'll pass on to you in case you're ever staring down the miles of *insert ugly color* trim.

First, a picture of the current sitch in our entry.

Feast your eyes on that painted trim!!  The crown molding is hard to spot in pictures but in real life, it shines against the matte ceiling.  I can't tell you how happy I am to be done with trim in here and moving on to painting the walls!  It's like the icing on the cake!

Back to those tips and tricks though...

Prepping Walls for Paint, Post-Wallpaper

The entry way is September's #letsroomtogether space!  Did I already mention that?  Who knows but I know I haven't mentioned the progress I've made in here.  What looked like this before we touched it:

Now looks like this:

Current Events

We are in the middle of a whole lot of rooms and projects and progress has been slow over here thanks to life.  You probably know exactly what I'm talking about.  School starts and all of a sudden, things get crazy.  You would think that shuttling half of our kids to school each day would free up a ton of time to create and get busy but nope.

So, since I don't have anything substantial to sink into a blog post, here are a few current events I might be able to distract you with while we scramble to find time to finish up some things.

1)  Our kitchen.  Le sigh.  Remember when I laid out all of the big plans for it in this blog post?  Well, it pretty much looks exactly like what it does in that post...still.

Why?  Well, we found out we have to wait to put the beam in the ceiling until the soaring temps turn it down a notch.  Welcome to the Southern United States.  It's something we totally didn't anticipate when we brought the wall down to the studs that one weekend long ago but something we understand.  (But would we have held off on taking that drywall/paneling off, no way.)  The beam work has to be done in the attic and right now, it's a lofty 120+ degrees up there.  I sure wouldn't want to be up there working away either.  So, we're shooting for the beam to go in in October.  Until then, we hope to start on the window side of the kitchen (painting, new countertop, backsplash, etc...) while we wait for the cooler temps.

2)  Along with one side of the kitchen, I've set a (v v ambitious) goal to transform the entry way next week.  September 1st, it's on.  Here's what it looks like right now:

Four Kids, One Bedroom

I get asked often enough how well our kids do sharing one bedroom and if there are any tricks we have up our sleeves to make that transition to bedroom sharing.

Well, we're not pros on the subject (or anything else regarding parenthood for that matter, ha!), but with a year and a half under our belts of successful sibling sleepery, we'll tell you the whys, whens, and hows we've found to make it work for us.