Nice kitchen. If your a DUCK!

We're doing some remodeling of our house. Little things like fresh paint, carpeting and fixing up stuff. Our house is OLD and my father in law didn't take great care of if before we lived here. So we're constantly fixing little things. And sadly these little things could have been avoided had they had a little TLC by him. He's shocked that $2.50 could have saved him $300 o.O

In the spring we have to redo the outside steps because winter took a nasty toll on them, then my son and his friends broke the railing. Which is pretty simple since it's metal it can be welded back together. However the cement steps have to wait until we're over the snow in the spring.

Two days ago we got a nasty clog in the bathtub, suddenly we sprung a leak!!! I originally thought one of Nick's extremely thin wash rags had sucked down the drain. I was relieved to find out that it was not a rag, or if it was the snake pushed it down the drain. Either way it's draining and we're not taking a bath while showering!!! And those baby rags have been throw away! The second time IS NOT a charm in this case!

The worst part of the clog? It was raining in my kitchen! Would have made life easier had the water been an actual water pipe, but no it had to be a drain pipe that was leaking, well throwing water all over my kitchen! We called a plumber that night, and they wanted $350 just to show up! Forget that and we set up buckets and trash cans to collect the water. Not even thinking that the heavy water would cause the ceiling to buckle. We lost about 6 of the 14 tiles in the ceiling. Oh it gets better (probably thinking how?). When the plumber came to snake my drain, he had to go into the ceiling to find the leak, which meant cutting through the floor boards!!!! So now there is a lovely hole about the size of a teenager! But the leak is stopped and we no longer shower in the kitchen ha! Luckily we can easily fix it and replace the ceiling tiles. We made a trip to Lowe's to check out prices on the tiles. We'll try one more home improvement store before we buy them. We need to allow the ceiling to dry before we hang them, so we have a little time to shop around. I climbed up there today and felt around and it feels nice and dry, which is a huge relief, because I was terrified of mold!


For the past month or so I have been picking up little paint sample cards of colors I might like. I brought them home, tape them to the wall and look at it every time I walk into the room. I hung 5. I like to see it in different lighting. Wither it be sun light, sun set, haven't seen it during a sun rise, and night. So far I haven't really fallen in love with any of the colors I have hung up. Today I brought home a couple new ones, I'm starting to fall in love with one of them! So it's definitely on the yes list. Then again in my opinion neon yellow is better than the boring, cold feeling white wall we have now! I hate white walls, so impersonal and cold feeling. Hopefully within the next few weeks that will change! I invited my cousin (other mum) to a painting party, just the two of us, maybe dad too. I'm sure we can paint the entire room in one day.

The one thing that I have been really racking my brain about is deciding on carpet or fake hard wood flooring. I really like the look of hard wood, the easy clean up. I have two young boys, a dog and a father in law that drops just about everything on the carpet.. I'm starting to get tired of scrubbing. My carpet scrubber used to live in the basement and make an appearance every few months for a regular cleaning. Once Nicholas started crawling around we started scrubbing more often, especially when I saw him lick the carpet once! Yuck! Sure it's been cleaned, but people walk on it! Anyhow, the scrubber is usually sitting in the corner of my dining room because I use it constantly! Thank goodness for the small attachment! So that being said I'd love the convenience of using a paper towel and cleaner and being done in 2 minutes. But once again I wonder how well it will hold the heat since it gets rather chilly in our living room (very large room). Plus, I fear will it be too hard on Nicholas? Researching the prices it will cost around the same, so money really doesn't play a factor in our decision. I need to save money because we are doing all this on a budget.

And lastly I'd really like to re-grout my bathtub tiles. Which seems super easy! And pretty cheap. I'm sure I can do it myself after doing some research online and talking to both my dad and other dad (cousin).

Thanks for reading! Hopefully we can do this all on a small budget. And I'm really excited about making my home more personal. I saw some great art today that would look great in the living room. Yes, I get excited over the little things :)