Paint Expectations (like Great Expectations…get it?)

This is a story about deciding what you want, and getting it.

Just kidding, this is a story about getting piss ass drunk, getting a wild idea, following through, and having a great outcome.

I know kids, it’s the feel good story of 20 friggin’ 14!

Most people associate “wild” ideas with getting tattoos, or getting married, or getting a car. What was my wild idea?

Re-painting the cabinets! I know, I hope you were all sitting down when you read that. It all started one Friday night, when the lady and I had a main entree of wine and a side of actual food, and of course were watching HGTV.

“You know what?!” I stuttered, reaching for the now sippy cup my wine was in (I had previously lost my privileges for drinking wine out of glass objects). I couldn’t tell if the lady couldn’t stop staring at my red stained teeth, or was just waiting for the synapses in my brain to piece together my next sentence.

“We should re- do the cabinets!” I declared ….and cue gesturing grandly, knocking over everything on the coffee table. I also lost the right to drink on the couch that night.

It wasn’t a horrible idea, in fact it was something I had always meant to do, but in the war of renovation, you have to pick your battles.

Previously, the cabinets were standard white, and stained with cooking disasters from the previous residents. I’ll put that hot mess here:

 

Here are my steps for successfully re-painting your cabinets:

1. Decide what color you actually want to paint them. I suggest doing this sober, as our drunken color ideas were probably not too solid. In the end, we decided to do an off white on the top, and a gray on bottom. I know, crazy right?

2. Go to Lowes, and try to resist the urge to not gauge your eyes out with a paint stirrer when you see that there are indeed one MILLION shades of white, and two BILLION shades of gray. Insert Fifty Shades of Gray joke here. Actually, more like Fifty Shades of WHAT THE FRIGGITY FRACK IS THE DIFFERENCE?!

3. After successfully leaving your eyeballs in tact, laugh at all the ridiculous names of the paint samples. Seriously, the white we chose was called Quail Egg.

I know, just let that sink in. I would love to know what poor Lowes Employee had to crawl their ass up a tree to see what color a Quail Egg is?!

4. Sit for a week pondering about how in the actual hell you are going to paint the entire kitchen. Doubt yourself. Doubt your existence.

5. Finally, come to your senses and wait till your one day Father-in-Law visits, and just so happens to be a cabinet maker. Make sad eyes. Conveniently have to go to work so that girlfriend and father can bond, and paint cabinets.

6. Come home and obsess over beautiful cabinets.

I know, I know, I totally opted out of that one. But would they really have been that beautiful if I had helped? Probably not. The reason this has taken so long to post (other than the fact I’ve been too busy drooling over cabinets) is that we also go a kitchen full of brand new appliances!! And a big reveal wouldn’t be the same without them. So here it is!!

 

My two favorite things: coffee and non leaking fridges.

 

After having to listen to a dishwasher that sounds like cannon fire every time it runs, this is a dream come true. If anyone needs me, I’ll be drinking wine and staring at the kitchen.

I’m still drinking it out of a sippy cup.

-C

If anyone is interested in learning more about kitchen painting, drinking a ton of wine, or both, please feel free to comment!

The Turkey-pacolypse: Thanksgiving 2014

Hello campers,

I’m sorry for the amount of time it took for me to write this all, but I just woke up from my wine and leftover food coma that I’ve been in for the week. I hope everyone’s Thanksgivings were great! In case you were interested, this is how my first Thanksgiving away from home went:

Actually, everything turned out awesome! Surprising, because usually everything I touch breaks or bursts into flames, but thankfully I have found a lady who is pretty much Martha Freaking Stewart. We started prepping everything the Monday before Thanksgiving, and we found this to be incredibly helpful. As I found, you will have way more things to do on the actual Thanksgiving day, so anything you can prep before hand helps. Here’s what we prepped in advance:

Place settings- I was informed that Chinet and China were not the same thing.

Finally got to use my Fancy place mats!

 

We also decided to put the food out onto the bar of our kitchen, because our kitchen is tiny, and there was no way we are all going to get in there to stuff our faces. We used a chalkboard runner, which is AWESOME because you get to draw and write all over it! It made for a really easy and creative way to display all the food. Doesn’t hurt that it was also 10 bucks!

Because wine is important, and should always be clearly marked

My AMAZING sangria!

 

The chalkboard paper ended up working great, and was ridiculously easy to do. For anyone who isn’t very crafty (me) it is an easy way to spice up the table!

Yeah, yeah, yeah….but how did the turkey look?

Well, after about five hours of worrying and googling everything turkey related, I would say it turned out pretty awesome. The reason is probably because I had nothing to do with the turkey, except making it dance on the counter top. The lady was not impressed. But here it is!

I’m not a turkey expert, but that’s a good looking turkey!

 

To say the least, after a combination of turkey, sangria, and everything else, I was in a catatonic state to say the least. But the day itself was relaxing and full of time to think about what the holiday is really about. It’s about having someone that loves you enough not to kill you for dressing up the turkey. It’s for the Dad who doesn’t mind 40,000 phone calls about what on earth giblets are, or if there are illegal substances smuggled into a sketchy bag inside of the turkey (no worries, they weren’t!). I think that it’s so easy to get wrapped up in work and school, that it’s important to have a day to relax and enjoy each other’s company. I’m so happy I got to spend Thanksgiving with the person I love, and that we’ll have many more to celebrate.

 

What I’m really thankful for (PS, the lady is on the right, if you can’t tell!)

Also thankful for this.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and had a great holiday! On the next episode of The Hot Mess Express…..

THE KITCHEN REDEMPTION, or the kitchen cabinets get re painted.

Stay tuned. It could get ugly.

-C

 

This is the Weekend Report!

Like the Lion King, except I think it was “The Morning Report”. Get it? No? Too obscure? Okay, moving on:

First off, to those Monday-Friday worker bees (like me), congrats! You made it through the work week! If you’re like me, you spend Saturday reveling in the fact that you’re not working but around 4 PM on Sunday will sink into a state of dread knowing you will be back at work the next day.

Anyways, being that this is the weekend before the big Turkey Day, there are a lot of things we have to do. For one, we must actually obtain the Turkey we plan to feast on. This was news to me, seeing that I always had Thanksgiving at home, I was under the impression that the Turkey just appeared. Wrong, as usual Celeste. On top of going frozen turkey-hunting, I’ll also be hunting down the sangria supplies as well, cause that sangria ain’t gonna make itself!

The other big item the lady and I are tackling are doing some upgrades to the kitchen. Since i have severe trust issues after the experience of renovating the condo, we will be doing these ourselves. So, thank God they’re only minor. We’ll be adding back splash to the kitchen, as well as painting the bottom cabinets gray. I’m addicted to HGTV and two tone kitchen cabinets always look good in those giant kitchens! Of course, if the Property Brothers want to stop by and take care of that I wouldn’t mind either. In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, I’ll put some pictures here, as well as pictures of the actual event in the next post. This should be interesting……

Ohhh….Ahhhhh. Except this kitchen is 3 times the size of mine.

Update

So, for my fan base (ha! jokes) here is an update on why I have been so MIA the past week or two. I’m writing this from the seven circles of condo hell. To be it delicately, shit has hit the fan. Or should I say floor in this case? From my last post, you know that only half of my living room/kitchen has flooring on it right now. The remaining part of the kitchen and dining room are a dusty, bare concrete slab.

Yeah, minimalist was not quite what I was going for with that. The other horrible discovery I have made about my kitchen floor is that it is extremely uneven, and therefore unsuitable for laying laminate on top of. Of course, my contractor said: “I can fix that”. But unlike the man from the movie Holes, he could NOT fix it. But he thought he could. Because what we do when we don’t know how to do something? We do it anyways, and hope no one calls us out on it. But floor shouldn’t be included in this rule. So, my contractor laid down what he believed would fix the floor. And Lowes came back out to install the floors. And funny thing, they couldn’t put the laminate down STILL because the floor wasn’t relevant. So my contractor said “I can fix that”. But again, unlike a la Holes, he couldn’t fix that. What he should’ve said was “I can make that even worse”. Because he laid more of the leveling product and Lowes made a third trip. And now, I can’t get a call from Lowes without getting a PTSD flashback, because surprise they still couldn’t put down the laminate.

This was the point where the humanity in me shriveled up and died. This was also when I fired my contractor, threatened to inter him in my bare kitchen floor, and promptly drank a bottle of wine. But, can it get worse?

….Oh yes it can! Because what’s worse than not have a floor? Having your furniture arrive because you assumed you’d have a floor by now. Silly girl. So yes, my furniture showed up, and is now promptly stacked on the section of my condo that has floor. My stove is unhooked and sitting in my living room, and my fridge is beside it. So I have spent most of time crying and having contractor after contractor come and stare at my kitchen and scratch their heads. However, there might be light at the tunnel because my new contractor is supposed to have my floor in by Friday. Which is great, because my washer and dryer are supposed to come in on Saturday. And I’d really like to have a floor to put them on. I’m really not enjoying my only option for clothes washing being Oh Brother, where are thou style in the pond behind the condo. Hopefully the next post I write will be in a happier state of mind, and I will have crawled out of the pits of condo purgatory. Because I’m not happy at the moment, and I’m running out wine and clean clothes.

-Celeste