Fly on the Wall-June 2016...I'm Back!

Welcome to a Fly on the Wall group post. Today 9 bloggers are inviting you to catch a glimpse of what you’d see if you were a fly on the wall in our homes. Come on in and buzz around my house.

I've been on hiatus for the last few months. I've been busy going back to school and homeschooling the kids and such. The Spring semester of college was a stressful one for me. I finished that a month ago, but has taken some time for my ambition to return.

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Back in December, Bob did some work to the kids' bathroom. Remember the whole "It Started With a Coat" post? Yeah, it went something like that again. Bob had to use the bathroom one Saturday morning, but he wanted to let me sleep in. So, he decided to use the kids' bathroom. While sitting there, he was looking around at the lack of counter space and the lack of storage and next thing I knew, we were remodeling the bathroom. 

Not a full remodel, but the counter top is bigger, he built some very pretty shelves, we painted and replaced the mirror. Replacing the mirror was not in the plan, actually, but I wanted to take it down so that I could paint the whole wall, not around the mirror. It turns out that they had glued that thing to the wall using caulk or something and the only way it was coming down was in pieces. That was fun. NOT. However, I DO love the new mirror. Sorry, the pics aren't the greatest...

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We bought Boo an antique Art Deco Highboy dresser back in December. Due to weather, it sat in the shed until last month, when we finally decided to work on it. I really wish I had taken pictures along the way. If you could see the before pictures... Anyway, it had water damage and a lot of age on it. It was still a very solid piece of furniture, though; that's why she wanted it. I wanted to strip and stain it, but after testing a spot and realizing it wasn't going to take stain well, I ended up painting most of it. We had to remove the veneer coating since 75% of it was peeling off or water damaged. Paint really was the only way to go with it. 

To break up the black, we bought these great stickers from Amazon and bought new hardware for it, and it looks 100 times better than before. 

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Last month, we started work on the back deck. It was built about 8 years ago, but we never sealed it or waterproofed it the whole time it was out there. Last summer, Bob had to replace a decking board because it had rotted through. 

Last fall, Bob got his hands on a bunch of free, rough-cut cypress. It's really pretty wood (he used it for the shelves in the bathroom). We had to plane it down and seal it, but used it for the deck after we tore up the old stuff. We put a lot of sweat (and sunburns) into the deck and we still aren't finished. We also bought that "Rescue It" paint for the railings and such. That was a job, painting all of that, let me say. We still have to paint under the deck, rebuild a set of stairs, cut new tread boards and stain them, and cut and stain new top rail. I sure hope this lasts, because it has been a lot of work (and money, despite the free wood).

I also painted my favorite bench. We paid $50 for it (original price $215) because the box had been crushed and they didn't know if it had been damaged. It turned out that there was a small chip in it, and that was it. A great deal, right? Well, the color faded within months of buying it. Since we were doing the deck, I decided to paint the bench. The blue, I picked, but Clone of Bob suggested the silver and black to set the box apart from the rest of the  bench and I have to say that I like his idea.

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We went on a trip for the first time in about two years. We went to Tennessee to see friends. We flew into Atlanta because it was half the price and our friends picked us up. Let me just say that the airport in Atlanta, GA is HUGE and they really should make it clear to people that the train is the best way to get your luggage from baggage claim. I swear we walked a mile trying to get our bags and out of that crazy airport.

We took them to Skyzone (a place where they literally bounced off the walls), the Nashville Zoo, and on the day we flew home from Atlanta, to The World of Coca-Cola. I had enough Coke Rewards to get six of the seven of us into it for free! It wasn't a lot, but it was a nice getaway.

In the meerkat habitat at the Nashville Zoo.

World of Coca-Cola with the Polar Bear.

Skyzone in the foam pit.

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We actually did a lot of stuff over the past few months, but I didn't have my "blog brain" going and didn't think to make any tutorials. Maybe I'll get better at it in the future.

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Buzz around, see what you think, then click on these links for a peek into some other homes:

Baking In A Tornado    

JuiceboxConfession                                            

MenopausalMother                                             

Spatulas onParade                                           

Searching forSanity                                                                

Dinosaur SuperheroMommy                                      

Southern BelleCharm