PHD room/Nursery and Our Anniversary

I am convinced that everyone has a PHD room/closet/garage/car you name it everyone has one of these somewhere. PHD is the piled higher and deeper space. For the past three years this has been ours. Note this picture looks better than what the room originally looked like. I tried cleaning it as often as I could and then would get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we had and I would give up. So this is what our PHD room looked like awhile ago. I know we took more pictures than this one, but I can't find them anywhere on our computers, so this will just have to do. So basically we have this spare bedroom and when we first got married we moved all of my stuff into this room and slowly went through it and put stuff away. Whenever we had guests coming over on short notice all of our junk that was downstairs would get thrown into this room and then the door would be closed, so our downstairs generally looked pretty good. This also made cleaning this room that much harder as we were always piling more junk into it. Well the time has come and it's amazing how fast I got it clean when I was motivated to turn it into a nursery.

Look at all that floor space! An empty wall!

The longer it took me to clean the more willing I was to put stuff in a DI (goodwill) box. We made several trips to the DI trailer near our church. I filled a ton of trash bags, took a lot of stuff to work, gave stuff to friends and family and in the end I'm so glad it's all gone! So with the room finally clean it was time to paint and make it look more like a nursery...the more like a nursery is still a work in progress...but the painting is done. I painted the cubby holes of my shelves. My mom took Friday off of work and painted all the walls and then Peter painted the hallway and the closets on Saturday. I helped a tiny bit with one of the closets...then I got tired. Then last night I unpacked all of my bears (7 trash bags full) and placed them back on their shelves. There's a few pictures missing from the bottom two cubbies and then this will be complete.

We love the color. It's called Mother Nature from Behr.

Along the empty wall will be a crib, changing table and a rocking chair. The bedding set is Winnie the Pooh (yeah I know a real shocker). My mom is sewing a valance for the window. The fabric I found so far is yellow with bees on it. Peter wants to paint the bathroom too. He opted for a Sponge Bob theme, I suggested Winnie the Pooh so the whole room would flow. The next morning I found him online looking at different Pooh bathroom essentials. Gosh I love my man! So more posts to follow as the room nears completion....we have 3 months left.

Which brings me to today...August 3, 2010 we celebrate our 3rd anniversary! It's crazy how time flies. I remember the day well. I woke up (after not sleeping much the night before) ran to get my hair done and nearly passed out as my hairdresser made me beautiful. I drove home ate breakfast and flopped down on my mom's bed convinced that I was going to hurl. Kira walks in and sees me flopped on the bed and starts laughing....she had been with me the previous days watching me get all the butterflies and such so she was expecting this. She did my makeup because I hardly ever wear makeup so I really don't know how to do it myself. Plus it was nice having my best friend with me. Then Peter picked us up and drove us to the temple. Where Kira helped me with everything that I could possibly need help with. From there things were a bit of a blur until we came outside and saw all our friends and family waiting for us. Tons of pictures were taken. Here are a few. For even more wedding photos, click on Our Wedding Photos under Other fun links on the right side of our blog.

Girls just wanna have fun!

Kira, Laurel, Me and AbbieChris, Scott, Peter and Sean

As tradition we will be enjoying some Bavarian Cream and Raspberry cake tonight.

The Results Are In

Alright I know you've all been anxiously awaiting the results....and well the bathroom was finally put back together tonight and then pictures were taken. Followed by a few more touch ups.

Here is the Before picture-all the walls in our house are the same color.

We bought the primer and had it tinted to nearly the same color. The wall on the left has the primer on it. The wall on the right has one coat of plaster on top of the primer.Wall on left has one coat of plaster, wall on the right has two coats of plaster.

TADA! The bathroom is complete! So you want to know if we would recommend venetian plaster to anyone??? Well Peter did all the work and though he has a few blisters...he said, "If you just want a new color, don't bother, but if you want the look, it's worth it." He plans on doing a venetian plaster in our guest bathroom (the one we were originally going to do) next month. He said he learned from this experience a few things he would do differently next time.

1-When applying the first coat of plaster, make sure you completely cover the whole wall (don't leave spaces as the instructions suggest).
2- When taping-cover everything and leave some slack in the tarps-so you don't have to paint the baseboards too :)
3-Make sure you really love the room that you are painting...at a minimum there's four coats to apply with a trowel, not a brush.
4-Keep the plaster thin or else it cracks as it dries, thus creating more touch up work.
5-Remember this is supposed to be a relatively smooth surface when you're done...though ours didn't turn out that way...but we like it anyway.

The Painting Has Begun!

Woohooo the painting has begun and it looks so cool! We ended up deciding to start with our upstairs master bathroom in our bedroom (we have two small master bedrooms upstairs). We decided to start with our bathroom so if we didn't like the outcome, we would be the only ones to really see it. If we started with the downstairs bathroom then everyone who comes to visit would see it.

Through the week we gathered items that we would need. We decided to go with a Venetian Plaster-it's light blue, called Roman Bath. In order to do the plaster we needed a rounded trowel, sand the walls down, and put on some primer. We got the primer tinted to nearly the same color as the plaster. We also picked up the topcoat for the plaster as well (since it's a bathroom, we use a topcoat instead of some other steps on the instruction manual-the topcoat is supposed to give the same effect as a couple of other steps while keeping the moisture out.)

On Thursday night we dismantled all the hardware in the bathroom, and Peter took the tank off of the toilet. (Peter hates touching toilets, but he figured it would be easier to plaster behind if the tank wasn't there....so he grinned and bore the burden of touching a toilet...he washed thoroughly afterward.)

On Friday Peter had the day off of work, so he prepped the room-taped and hung plastic, sanded the walls and put the primer on. He also made another trip to Home Depot for drywall patch (we keep finding really crummy craftmanship in the way this place was built...so he fixed a gigantic hole behind our light fixture.) Friday night he put the first coat of plaster on. It looked pretty cool.

Saturday he put a second coat of plaster on and then a touch-up in a few areas. Then we had to wait. The top coat can't be put on until the plaster has dried for 24 hours...so the painting adventure will conclude Monday after work. In the meantime we keep going and staring at the bathroom....it looks great!

Before, during and after pictures will be posted as soon as the bathroom is complete!

Too Many Choices!

How do the guys on HGTV do this? Peter wants to paint...he thinks starting with our downstairs guest bathroom will be first. Here are the paint samples that we picked up, what do you think?
The above samples are from Frazee, the ones below are from Behr.
These are the Venetian Plaster and Bellagio Faux samples. We're seriously thinking about trying a Venetian plaster in a neutral color...but we're keeping our options open.

So what do you think?