Office help and a kitchen in the living room

Whilst I’ve been working away upstairs with my staff all day…

View Full Album

Dustin has been working away downstairs…


No, we are not going for a look of modern decor with the KitchenAid in the floor....

This pic contains 95% of our kitchen cabinet contents. He’s pulled it all out, bleached the cabinets, vacuumed the drawers, and brought me downstairs to pick out the things we don’t need anymore. (This last part has to be monitored. He is notorious for getting rid of things that we use. Daily.)
Did I mention that we’ve only lived here 5 years? Or that we did this a few years ago when I painted the kitchen? Or that we don’t need more cabinet space because we already have empty shelves?
This all started because of a recent conversation we had:
Dustin: I don’t think we need the chocolate fountain that’s in there…
Me: Good, because we don’t have a chocolate fountain.
Dustin: Yes we do.
Me: No we don’t.
Dustin: See? We don’t even know what we have and what we don’t… we need to go through them all
*For the record, we did NOT, in fact have a chocolate fountain.
** We did, however, have a chocolate dipping set, still in the box, with chocolate…. that may or may not be 3+ years old. Who keeps track of what’s in the cabinets above the refrigerator anyway? Well, besides Dustin… :)

I just went to check on the progress, he’s doing good! :) I was just told “you act like this drives you crazy… but you love it”. I agreed with the stipulation that I love it as long as it doesn’t have to involve me. I don’t mind doing things like this, but I’m uber busy this week with work.
Without further ado, here’s an example of his OCD tidiness and organizational skills at work.
This drawer now contains things that cut, peel, slice, chop, and/or are tongs. He also added that this is the drawer where the finger mutilator goes… he had a bad, bad experience with the mandolin cutter. I’ll spare you the details. It’s gorey and gives my goosebumps thinking about it.

And, yes it will stay this way. You should see his toolboxes…

He worked on jets in the Navy and the tools there had painted outlines under where they went. You leave a tool in a jet, it might wreck.

I think I need that system to keep the kitchen this way :)


Posting this at the Kitchen CleanUP Linky Party!

The big 3-0 and a Whoopie Pie

My hubby added another year yesterday. He turned the big 3-0. I'm still a baby of 27 :).

Things have been slow around here. It's been rainy; it's been cold; we've been sleepy. I am having a "routine outpatient surgical procedure" tomorrow morning at 7:30, so we've also been going to doctor appointments and I've been having blood drawn. Today's draw left me requiring a 3 hour nap! oops...

But, we do have a fully operational kitchen again! It isn't finished, but we can cook!

(Please ignore my makeshift office in the oven's reflection:))

Yesterday, I did take some time out of my busy schedule of grading papers and trying to clean the house before tomorrow and made Dustin a birthday dessert. (for some reason, I feel like the house has to be spotless when we get home tomorrow... that's only gonna happen if all 90 followers show up soon and we all clean until we have to leave at 5am!)

Whoopie Pie Cookies

(I can't remember the real/full name for them...)

Cookie Ingredients:

2 c flour
2 tbs unsweetened coco
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c softened butter
1 c packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbs red food coloring (I skipped this)
Oven at 375.
Line baking sheet with parchment paper. I didn't have any so after a quick call to my mom, I used wax paper.

Mix first 4 ingredients and set aside. Beat butter 30 seconds. Beat in sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk. Stir in coloring (if you use it). Spoon better in 1 or 2 inch rounds about 1/2 inch high. Bake 7-9 minutes for 1 inch cookies and 9-11 minutes for 2 inch cookies.
Cool on sheet and remove.  Take 2 cookies and put Whoopie Pie Filling between them.

Whoopie Pie Filling

Heat 1/4 c butter and half an 8 ounce pack of softened cream cheese until smooth. Fold in one 7 ounce jar of marshmallow cream.

I didn't take any pics while I was making it. I wasn't sure it was going to turn out, so here's a blurry pic from today :)

These blurry little cookies are good. I'm not even a huge chocolate cake fan and they're good. We didn't pre-make the little sandwiches with them and their filling. Instead, we're making them as we eat them :) I melted the butter a BIT too much, so our filling was a little runny yesterday. It's in a container in the fridge. I must say.. it's hard to go wrong with butter, cream cheese, and marshmallow cream! I'm glad I bought too big of a jar so I can eat the rest of it :) I have such a bad sweet tooth!

And then he dug

So, in kitchen news...
I don't have much interesting to update. We  Dustin are is still working on it, but it isn't fun, photogenic types of things.

Luckily for us, Dustin has been an electrician. Unfortunately for Dustin, he's been an electrician.For reasons I don't fully understand (beyond the "if we run the power from the house, we'll have to cut holes every 5 feet in the kitchen ceiling to drill through floor joists...") we Dustin had to do this tonight...

The electricity that will power the oven has to come from the blue building in the picture. He's still out there working on it. But, he has all the conduit laid and buried and I keep having to go out and help him pull the wire. He's made it to the building and is just getting as far up the wall as he can before it is too dark.

In the 7 minutes I was just out there, I think 75 mosquitoes bit me.... I am SO ready for those chickens to get here! They've taken a backseat to the whole 'we don't have a stove' problem we had going for two weeks :)

On a HUGE positive note- We got to take back a bunch of electrical stuff since we aren't having to completely redo our breaker box. We did that today and bought everything we needed to finish the project.. including a roll of beadboard wallpaper for the oven's cabinet (and two half dead blueberry bushes that were half price and will come out of it anyway...) And, we are $7 under budget! WOOHOO!

Of course, we spend almost that in Starbuck's when we left Lowe's... that electrical aisle just takes it out of me. It might be the most boring aisle in the place :).

I think I'll try to do the beadboard on the cabinet tomorrow so I can get it painted and the trim up on it. It has been primed since this pic and has the oven in place. It is just made out of plywood. We didn't want anything expensive fancy.

So, hopefully tomorrow night I'll have an ALMOST finished cabinet to show off! fingerscrossed

We are finally cookin'

I realized that when I titled my last post, I labeled it "day one". That's an understatement! Tomorrow will be Day 14.

But, tonight, folks, we had breakfast burritos with eggs and sausage that were cooked on OUR NEW STOVE! (Dustin decided that we had to have breakfast foods for 'the first meal')

Not a fantastic pic, but it's night and it's as good as I can do :). The room isn't 100%.... we're more like 89% done. The trim still needs to be cut and painted for the above pic, I need to paint the kickplate black. And, we need to finish this cabinet....

It still needs the recycled doors and a coat of paint. The sides are still just Kilz. And, ignore the yellow haze... and my office chair... my office is temporarily on the wall opposite our NEW OVEN!

I gotta take a minute to praise Dustin. We went to a scratch and dent place. He talked them down and we saved over a thousand dollars on them. We looked up their values online and they are each in the $1200 range. We almost got a 2 for 1 deal on them. The oven has a bitty scratch on the handle (we scratch things anyway... I'll take a $500 discount for that!) And, the stove has a cracked burner.. .nothing a little JB Weld didn't fix!

Unfortunately, the oven's electricity can't come from the house and has to be ran to our building... long story that I don't understand... :) so, we are still without an oven. I can deal with that for a while though.

We already love it. We LOVE the stove and LOVE the extra space we already have... and that's not even counting the huge, empty oven cabinet!

A few things we're going to do before this is 'done':
-finish the cabinet
-beadboard wallpaper the sides and front of the oven cabinet (I just thought of this 20 minutes ago in the shower)
-finish the trim work
-paint the old countertop... it is "off yellow" and doesn't match the new counter. We bought countertop sealer and are already holding our breath!
-I would like to also beadboard wallpaper the fridge so it isn't yellow compared to the rest... this is still TBD
-put drawer pulls on under stove
-paint fake hinges on the cabinet fronts under the stove so they'll match the rest... it's my only option...
-...oh, and that whole run electricity to the oven thing.... details...

Kitchen stove day 1

Just when you want to sleep in and stay in bed all day, you remember that you don't have a cook stove or oven... and that the guy is coming Tuesday to hook the gas cook top up... and that you have a ton of work to do before then...and, that you have grades due tomorrow and two classes starting Monday. So, today, while it rained on and off all day and while most of the country watched the Derby, I watched paint dry while Dustin and mom's hubby, Mike built us a cabinet.

That's ok.. I typically boycott the Derby anyway... I have a hard time enjoying something where I hold my breath waiting to see the horse fall and have to be euthanize on the track. I know... I'm such a bad southern Hoosier.

Here is an "after" picture from the last kitchen project... the floor. There's the stove that died (and is finally off the porch and at a recycling place!). Unfortunately, you can't see the cabinets above very well.

The cabinets came down today. He plans to use them in his chicken coop and we will reuse the doors for what Dustin and Mike worked on today. The unfinished cabinet on the floor also got painted today too. 

It may not look like much... but painting this paneling is not fun. I love to paint... and I HATE painting this kitchen. (That may stem from the seven 12 hour days that I put in when it originally got painted "Starry Night".)

Most of the afternoon later, the wall and cabinet are primed and painted. With the walls getting two coats of color, of course. 

Since I took these, we put the base cabinet in place and set the countertop on it just to see what it looks like. Tomorrow, they will cut a hole in the counter for the cook top, cut a hole in the back of the cabinet for the gas line, and it all will be fastened down nice and tight. 

Meanwhile.... in the garage, Dustin and Mike started to build this cabinet for the oven. I think they are working on it tomorrow too.

(The white doors are from the cabinet we took down today)

So, for a few more days (hopefully only a few more days) we are stoveless. And, our living room looks like the kitchen exploded... which, I guess it kinda did.

The bottom of the counter is blocking the view of the worst of the wreck from the cabinets. If you look closely, you can see the new stove on the table (and the puppy pouting because her daddy went outside without her).

So, now that we have time to sit down, I'm glad that we had a lot of work to do today. We got a lot accomplished and we're exhausted!

Some things around here

We have a whole lot going on around here this week... but it seems like a whole lot of 'not much'.

Dustin is working on the coop today. It's been too rainy as of late, so it has had a week's vacation.

Yes, we realize this won't hold much quite yet.... slowly but surely...

This is from the beginning

This weekend, we also cleaned out a little flower garden that the previous owners put together. It is nice, but it is a big leaf trap and it more of a pain than a pleasure. I'm slowly moving the lilies and irises out of it and putting them around the yard.  It looked rough... and even had some random trees starting to grow in it :)

I saved as much as I could from the walkway. There were stray dianthus and green hostas that had all planted themselves. I'm a sucker for anything living. Even though we have more hostas than I'll ever want, I had to save as many as I could!

And here it is today. It is still full of green hostas that planted themselves, but at least you can SEE the pathway through it. It is free of stray trees and the bushes in it got a trim. It is a cute little area, it is just hard to enjoy. Soon, it will be filled with purple, yellow, and pink flowers along the back. 

Some of the dianthus that I saved from the cracks in the walkway. Yeah, they were that big growing between the pavers. We didn't do much in the way of outside work last summer...

The hostas are getting huge. 

And the stove is still on the porch :)

The plumber came yesterday to check it out and is coming Friday to install the gas lines. We have a dr appointment tomorrow and plan to hit up the scratch and dent places in Louisville in search of a gas cooktop and a separate electric oven. 

This little cutie learned how to "talk" this week too. We've worked on it for a week or so and she's finally mastered it. We fear that we may regret this new trick though. Our once silent Ellie just sat and "talked" to us while we ate our ham sandwiches in hopes of scoring some herself. 

Luckily, it won't take long for her and Soph to take up their daily residence and full time jobs of holding down the loveseat.

I also started some fruit rollups in the food dehydrator this morning, I'll blog about them tomorrow when I see how they've turned out!

RIP stove

Earlier this week, the stove/oven/range was pronounced dead. Technically it still works. But not in this house. We are so cheap that you have to realize that it must be an odd story if we are choosing not to use a working stove any longer.

It's a gross story and one I probably shouldn't share. Ah well.... :)

You see, a mouse has taken up residence in it. Dustin took it apart. As in, all.the.way.apart. Under the stove and on top of the oven, in all that insulation, a mouse has built quite a mansion.... and left lots and lots... and lots of... damage.

I'll spare the nitty gritty details, but there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that this stove will ever be rid of this mouse's "evidence". It has been living there for quite some time. I'm grossed out just thinking about it. We were aware when we used the stove that there was something 'off'. We didn't expect what we found though. It seemed to come and go so we ignored it for longer than I care to admit.

So, we currently have a stove in pieces on the back porch..... see above pic :)

A hole in the kitchen where a stove belongs.....

And, we are eating things that can only be cooked in the microwave or on a camping stove that Dustin has. We made a big batch of tortilla soup tonight. Chicken got cooked on the grill while the soup simmered on the camp stove. This is something we will be eating for about 3 days. And, let me tell ya.. as someone who has to force myself to eat dinner because I'm blessed with morning sickness most of the day, it is a fun challenge to find things that I can eat that meet the criteria of no stove/oven.

The plan is to see how much it will cost to have a gas line ran into the house. Then, we'll head to the scratch and dent and get a gas cook top and a separate electric oven. Oh yeah, and cabinets and a piece of counter. I really, truly believe we are AT LEAST two weeks from having a stove again. Dustin thinks that's a dramatic estimate... I think it's more realistic though. Things just always take longer than we originally think.

So.... there goes our "rip up the living room carpet and lay the farmhouse wood floors" fund. Thanks, Mousey.. Too bad Sophie didn't get retribution for us :) She was so excited that as soon as she smelled mouse, she grabbed a mouthful of insulation and ran through the house growling. She's a good little mouser... just apparently not a super intelligent one.

Dusting/fabric softener/rinse aid solutions

Where have I been, you ask?

Well, I have not been on..oh, shoot... what are they called....

va.....

you know...

when you leave your house/town/state and go lay on a beach for a week and read trashy novels?

Oh, that's right.. vacation. No, I haven't been on vacation (in like 4 years actually).

I have been busy. I've been on the couch most of the time it seems with back aches (yeah, I know... I'm 27 and have pretty intense back pain from time to time--it is a long story.. with a video, actually, of me falling 8 feet or so onto the gym floor with my lower back/left hip catching my fall. I was in high school and a *cough* cheerleader. Then, later that year I had a walking cast on my foot throwing my back/hip even more out of alignment... unrelated injuries and I promise that I'm not accident prone. 15 was a rough year :) ).

When I wasn't on the couch, I was at my desk grading or at my desk doing homework. Today, I had the wonderful pleasure of starting (and completing, thankyouverymuch) a 17 page research paper. Luckily, I L-O-V-E to research. Too bad it wasn't blog research... that is way more fun than the ineffectiveness of administrative observations in the classroom and suggestions for better alternatives. But, I submitted the last assignment in the first course of my doctorate program!! Too bad it isn't the first assignment in my last class... oh well....that post is about 2.5+ years away.

But, I have been collecting a massive amount of homemade cleaner recipes over the past few weeks. I write this guiltily after I just shampooed the bonus room/office/room above the garage (we can't decide what this room is called) with commercial "deep cleaning" shampoo by Hoover. oops. But, hey, it needed to be done and I already owned the bottle of it. My goal is to use up just about all of the cleaners that I have and replace them with homemade ones as I go. I'm a bit impatient though, so some of them may get the boot a little bit sooner.

But, in the meantime, here are a few quick and easy solutions that I've recently discovered....

Dusting- use a dryer sheet. That's all... no cleaner.. just a dryer sheet.

Fabric softener- (I guess this is because you're now using your dryer sheets for dusting cloths....harhar) put some vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser.

Rinse aid in the dishwasher-- you guessed, my new BFF vinegar.

I promise to be back with more recipes soon. I need to organize them a bit. And, I have a few projects around here that need to be painted/glazed/glued/finished.

homemade dishwasher detergent

I jinxed myself.. of course. I've been putting off making my own dish detergent because I have this HUGE bottle of Cascade to get through first.

Not anymore. Did I have lots of dishes suddenly and go through an extra large bottle quickly? No...

Do I suddenly have an extra large bottle that sounds like it is filled with gravel and has to be thrown away? Yes...

I think it MIGHT be because there is no insulation in the wall of our kitchen where the cabinets are. Yes, that's the wall where I just painted the ceramic backspash. So, we're in our "thinking of a cheap solution" mode for that chilly problem. We left the detergent on the counter overnight in hopes that it just needed to thaw out. No dice. (Well, actually it sounds like it is filled with dice...)

I hate throwing away things.... especially big bottles that are still 3/4 full!

So, I gathered my ingredients (which are the same as the laundry detergent I made ) and mixed it up. It really isn't hard. It is even easier than the laundry soap. I have two recipes.....

Recipe 1:

1 cup Borax

1 cup washing soda

Recipe 2:

1 cup Borax

1 cup baking soda

Since I have all three ingredients, I made a combo. I only used 1/2 cup Borax, 1/2 cup washing soda, and threw in some baking soda for good measure.

I mixed it up, put the lid on it, and shook it up. My Borax is getting a little clumpy, so I mixed it all up with a fork so I could sift through it and mash the clumps (I'm sure there is a technical term for that, but I don't know it...).

You only need 2 TBS per load. I have the first batch in the dishwasher right now. Yeah, I know, I should probably wait until I see the end results before I post... ah well :)  My mom recently made some with baking soda and Borax and it happy with her results. I'll let you know about mine.

I wasn't sure what to store it in. I remembered that I have these lids for canning jars and happened to recently have emptied this jar.

Dave Ramsey will be proud. (well, minus having to throw away a good deal)

Check out the link parties to the right. I shared this post with We Are That Family. (I still love that name :))

WOW- Paint is amazing....

Here are some before and afters of the kitchen. Please ignore the unhappy look on my face in one... I'm not sure why I was glaring at the camera, haha.

(move your mouse back and forth over the pictures to see the change) ((THANKS SETH!!!))

Painted back splash completion!

This is one of those projects I have been putting off for...well.....three years now. When I originally thought to paint the back splash in the kitchen my research revealed a process of sanding, sanding, and more sanding of the tile to get a finish so paint would stick. This didn't sound all too enjoyable. Good thing because it made me put this project off and an easier way emerged in the process. Some of our friends who just recently got married and purchased a home painted theirs first. Megan discovered THIS...

The can on the right is Multi-Purpose Primer-- which means NO sanding of tile. It is made for painting tile.  So, I put on two coats of the primer and then two coats of my green. And VOILA, I had a new kitchen for about $12.

You can't really tell from the above pic, but the tile was creamy in color.When I painted the cabinets, they became White Ivy which is very, very, very white with an itty bitty touch of blue. The cream tiles had to go! (much like the cream counter top in the photo below :))

The primed tile

The all-but-caulked finished back spash-- with a CrockPot filled with dinner.

I considered taking a white paint pen and tracing the actual grout lines to make the individual tiles show up. But, I think I like this for a while. I'm on the market for some fun fabric with my blue and green in it to make a valance for the window. Then, the kitchen gets a bit of a break.

Next, when I get the courage, I want to paint the counter top. Until then, we'll deal with the cream :) My husband is a bit of a "scrubber". I joke that he is going to scrub the cream off the counter, so I'm a bit nervous about how painted counters would stand the Navy OCD that takes over when he's scrubbing in the kitchen. (This is NOT a complaint, haha... I just know I'll need some strong stuff!!) 

I am SOOOOOO happy with the results of this. I really liked the blue and white only, but adding the green to the tile really made a big difference. And, it was cheap and easy!

SNEAK PEEK--Mom and I made paper infused with seeds last weekend. I plan to post about that tomorrow. It was surprising quick and fairly easy!!

 

backsplash update

That's a big negative on ANY coats of paint on the backspash. I DID  go and buy the paint and the paint pen I plan to go over the grout with so it actually looks like tile still. But, I had internet trouble which lead to me being way behind with work (and I still am) and found other ways to procrastinate work AND painting.... maybe next week...

The flood(s) of 2009--Inside and out

In honor of good projects gone bad, here are some of ours. (Although, to be honest, I think that EVERY project we have ever done has some major kink along the way...)

We decided that we needed a new washer and dryer.((Please note that this story begins in March/April)) Ours was about to die and I thought I wanted to do cloth diapers and wanted that "antibacterial" option if our clothes were going to be washed with baby poo. Since we were redoing, we thought it was a good time to redo the entire laundry room. I had wonderful dreams of washboards hanging about the room with cute signs that said things like "Laundry" and "suds". The first step involved removing the shower stall from the area. We never used it. It was placed beneath the air vents so the entire time you showered, you froze. And, the water heater wasn't good enough to support two showers at once. So this one was getting the boot.

All smiles at this point, haha!

We gutted the room and got to work. Then, while I was off getting a haircut one Saturday morning, I arrive home to the cat running down the driveway to greet me, yelling and panicking. She was a bit of a "drama" cat who talked a lot anyway so I didn't think much of it. Then, I see Dustin in knee high wading boots. I knew he was going to be removing pipes to get started and I thought "there's no way there was that much water in those pipes". I was greeted at the car with a "Hi, Honey. Your hair looks awesome...." and then "...promise me you won't be mad?!" I rarely get mad, so I thought this was a bizarre question. I walked into the house to find inches of water in the entryway. I walked to the kitchen (which was carpeted) and "SQUISHED" as I walked. The cat followed along, telling me all about it along the way. While working in that room, his elbow slipped and shattered the main water line into the house-- above the valve to shut it off in the house. He called the water company. The man they sent didn't know where the outside shut off was; unfortunately, we didn't either at the time. For over 30 minutes, water was pumped at full blast into our home. The downstairs is built into the ground, so our "basement" is the laundry, a bathroom, the kitchen and living/dining room. All carpeted, all saturated. (And I still believe "saturated" is an understatement!) We shop vac'ed gallons and gallons and gallons and gallons of water out of the house. I joked "I wanted an indoor pool, just not in the kitchen".

That disaster was under control.....

Then the rain began.

 

The outside soon began to look like this; the inside followed shortly thereafter.

We realized that the way the laundry had been, it was covering up (not intentionally we don't believe) some pretty big leaks. Once we had removed the shower stall pictured above and the closets that were on each side of it, we were able to see the water enter. And enter. And enter. There was a drain located under the washer, where the shower used to be. We never knew the water was coming in because it was draining towards the drain under the tub. Plus, the room was carpeted at the time and that managed to mask it even more since the room was only used for laundry.

 

(pretend this isn't sideways, haha) This is the "almost finished" room. Note the fan, towels around the washer and the puddle that makes up 95% of the floor.

Another day, another flood--inside our home...

Before we could do anything, we had to find the source of the problem. We knew it was water, obviously, but where was it coming from? We thought that perhaps it was originating from the bathroom next door to the laundry. We hoped, anyway. We thought there was an old window there and hoped it was leaking. Easy fix and insurance would maybe pay. So, we started there. And discovered this...

We decided that we didn't want to die from some strange mold. (Seriously though, some molds can be deadly. We didn't want to take any chances) So, project was put on hold and the bathroom was sealed up until we headed out to buy great big masks......

At least we keep our sense of humor =)

We gutted the gross bathroom and discovered a window! A perfectly sealed up window! =(. I soaked the room in bleach and we shut the door; we needed a break. A few days later, another rainstorm. I hung out in the bathroom all day waiting to see where the water was coming from.

 

Jackpot! 

The main source was to the right of the toilet-- closest to the laundry room. And, it was coming from the wall/floor joint.

So, this meant that we had a foundation leak rather than a window leak. Since we always try to save money, we decided to DIY and rented a backhoe...

And then began digging up our back yard. Please remember the initial goal: a new washer and dryer, haha.

We dug a 50' trench along the back side of our house. Eight feet of it had to be dug by hand because we weren't sure where the water line was exactly. (luckily, we still don't know! It isn't at 4' apparently!) Then we put in gravel and black drainage pipe that had "socks" on it to keep out the dirt. More gravel and then soil. The good news: We fixed the leak! And then it rained again. We need to put another drain pipe in between the AC unit and the landscaping wall (you can see it in the backhoe photo). And, we discovered that we have a slight leak in the ceiling from where the toilet vent goes to the outside. I'm STILL waiting on the roof guy to fix that.

This is the place where I would post a "finished" photo of the laundry room and bathroom. However, until we get 100% of the water stopped, they are on hold!

We did go ahead and rip up the kitchen carpet and put down (shhh) sticky tile. I didn't want to do it, but I have seen it places and it looks great. We didn't want to put a lot of money into it right now, so it is the perfect fix for the next few years.

(Ignore the messy counter, please) Now, I just need to touch up some of my White Ivy (like behind the trash can) and paint the lime-ish green on the backsplash. (I need to dig out the before photo of the kitchen. It was all 100% wood when we moved in. I spent 7 12-hour days painting to get to this. (I've planned on painting the green for 3 years now... but I recently discovered primer that primes glossy tile!)

As I typed all this, it has been POURING outside. Let's hope for no water in the house :) This journey is not done quite yet, but we are THISCLOSE! I'm so over wanting an indoor pool now!