I've been crazy-busy!

My mom just left yesterday after a week-long stay. I'm sure she just dropped on the floor from sheer exhaustion when she got home! We were decorating maniacs while she was here!

I haven't taken pictures yet, but we did the following:

Scraped the rest of the wallpaper off of the kitchen walls
Finished painting the kitchen cabinets
Painted the kitchen walls
Finished installing the paneling on the backsplash in kitchen
Fixed the outlets so that they fit over the paneling (my stepdad did that)
Rearranged the tall shelf/hutch in the kitchen to look neat and uniform
Finished putting the handles on the cupboards (Arlin did this)
Made curtains to put on the laundryroom door (it's right in the kitchen and always messy because we have to put so many things in there like recycling, canned and packaged goods, dirty laundry baskets etc.). We bought fabric for $1.00/yd., so it was cheap! We used the same fabric to make curtains for the entryway window.
Made curtains for the dining room out of clearance tablecloths (they match the tablecloth we put on the dining room table, too)
Painted the entryway
Painted the downstairs bathroom (it's finally cozy and nice to go in there!)
Removed an old mirrored medicine cabinet from the main floor bathroom
Installed a new mirror that I got at a garage sale last summer (my stepdad did this)
My stepdad installed a shelf that covers the whole width of the dining room. I just have to stain it. I love it!

And last, but definitely NOT least......

We painted the refrigerator black and it looks 100% better! I have advice for anyone who decides they want to paint their refrigerator or other big appliance:

Do it outside!!!

We did it inside, opened the doors and windows (It was a beautiful 73 degree day that day, luckily!). We layed newspaper on the floor to protect it....HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

We ended up with black mist all over everything within 15 feet of the room!!!! It was all over the linoleum (which isn't so bad because we're going to put in wood floors in that room soon), on the new wood floors, all over counters (1/4 of the way through, we decided we had better cover the counters to protect the new paint on the cupboards), all over my phone, appliances, washer and dryer etc. etc. EVERYTHING had a gray tint to it when we were finished!

Our clothes were sticky, the bottoms of our shoes were sticky and it really didn't matter that we put newspaper down because it stuck to the bottoms of our shoes and moved anyways! We had mist in our hair and up our noses....our nostrils were black and we looked like coal miners!! I was washing my face afterwards and realized that there was mist all over my face as well! SO.....WEAR A MASK if you do this!

I do need to do another coat on the front doors in a week, but I will be removing them and doing it outside. Live and learn....

I haven't taken pictures of the room all finished yet, but here are some before pictures of the kitchen:








Here are some pictures of J helping Nana with the removal of wallpaper:






OH, and here are some pictures of the "help" we got with our painting!





I'll post the "after" pictures once I take some. I have to recharge my batteries, first.