So here’s how we got there. First I have a little “materials shot” for ya:

1. Bucket of clean water
2. Putty knife & another bucket to mix grout in
3. Paper towels because, well, grout is messy
4. Sanded grout (from The Tile Shop, $19 with discount) – ours is the Mobe Pearl color
5. Rubber float (from Home Depot, $2)
6. Flexible Grout Admixture (from The Tile Shop, $17 with discount) – this reduces grout shrinking and cracking
7. Sponge. Woot!

Oh and we used leftover rosin paper from Home Depot to prep the room, since it was again helpful in keeping the mess off of our counters.

Grout, like thinset, is another mixture that you only want to make in small batches – since it’ll dry out after about 20-30 minutes. So according to the instructions, I started by pouring a bit of admixture into my bucket and then adding the grout powder second.

Just like with my thinset, I used my putty knife to mix everything together until I got a that toothpaste-y consistency that I found easiest to work with.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy grouting. That may be an overstatement, but after the focus it took to actually install the tile it was fun to do something that took very little thinking. It was basically just using the float to smoosh the grout onto the tile and, more importantly, into the cracks. Sherry helped too. She was less into it than I was. Ha.

Once we made sure we didn’t miss any spaces, we held the float at an angle and scraped off some of the excess from the front of the tiles. Then it was time for some sponge-and-water action. This not only cleans grout off the front of the tiles, but also kinda smooths the grout between the tiles. It’s kinda weirdly amazing to me how simple but helpful this step is.

If you want to see these steps in actions, we managed to film this little one-take video of it. Clara’s need for a cream-cheese refill cut it a smidge short, but you get the point:

Admittedly the task is a bit tedious – and more than bit taxing on your wrist – but we managed to get it all done in one afternoon.

The difference between an ungrouted and grouted tile job still amazes us. Just when we thought we couldn’t love our penny rounds more. You can see the difference below – the left side has dried grout in it, the right side is ungrouted. You can also see how much lighter the grout gets once it dries. Of course there’s still a haze on the grouted tiles on the left, so they don’t look as gleamy as they do once you buff that off with a cloth after it has fully dried.

Oh, and since people had asked before – here’s a picture of the corner seam after it was filled with caulk that matches our grout. We also caulked the seam where the tile meets the counter (that’s still drying in this pic, so it looks darker along that bottom edge). This was taken before we buffed the tile with a cloth though, so it’s kinda chalky. But you get the idea.

Here’s the whole room completely done, though it’s kinda hard to make sense of it at this picture size – since it sort of just looks like a gray wall. Haha. But in person it’s approximately 50 times bigger than this photo on your monitor. And those gleaming penny rounds look pretty darn lip-smacking. Yes, I just used that adjective. The penny tile does that to me.

So here are some close ups so you can get a better idea of what it looks like in real life. Thankfully even when you enter the room from the frame hallway on the far side of the kitchen you can easily make out each individual penny tile. Which is nice because it would have been a colossal bummer to spend 14 hours tiling the room only to have it look like gray paint from afar. Even from the front door it clearly looks like little round penny tile on the part under the microwave that you can see from there. Whew.

This shot is probably best at depicting all the varying tones in the tile. It’s awesomely random. Some tiles are a bit darker and some have a dark ring (or semi-ring) around them – we think it looks really charming and adds to the dimension. And you can see the polished shine on the top right corner of this shot (they look hazy in this pic for some reason, but up at the corner you can see that they gleam in real life). It’s actually a really “marble-ish” look without having to dish out the money for marble.

Here’s another close up to show how some tiles have darker rings and varied coloring. And you can really see how the grout cleans things up and adds some nice tone-on-tone action where dark holes and mesh once were:

We were a little nervous about the grouting step because we had heard that it can accentuate any seams or inconsistencies in the way that you laid the sheets. But our experience was the opposite: it actually seemed to disguise those little mistakes. It’s probably because our tile / grout color combo is low contrast, but if it was dark it could highlight those flaws instead of bridging the gap and making things look more finished and even. So this isn’t to say that grout solves a bad tile job when it’s low contrast (unfortunately nothing solves a bad tile job) but if there are tiny inconsistencies, similarly toned grout might be your best friend. And thanks to using a good sealer, it shouldn’t be a bear to keep clean (we used something awesome on our first house’s tiled shower and didn’t have to scrub it ever again – even while hosting Open Houses a year later it looked as good as it did the day we grouted).

Here’s a better shot that shows the shine- although it’s only on that portion of tile on either side of the range hood. I blame our terrible kitchen lighting, but it’s next on our to-do list! Yes, we have an appointment with our electrician and everything.

Speaking of other still-to-be-completed projects, we also still have to add a range hood and some open shelves. We think our tile will be a pretty darn sexy backdrop for our dishware and such (knowing Sherry, there will be a whole lot of “and such” up there with our dishes – the girl has plans).

Even though grout is done, our job with the tile isn’t 100% complete. We still have to seal it. And before that we have to do a bit more clean up (aka: more buffing to remove small traces of haze in some areas). It’s pretty common for grout jobs and The Tile Shop actually sells haze remover, but we’ve found that just good ol’ fashioned elbow grease (and a dry dishtowel) can also do the trick. Buff, buff, buff. So we may try that first. That is, once our wrists recover.

You know we’ll be back to share all the goods as we go (applying our sealer, planning/replacing the lighting, range hood happenings, open shelves, new cork floors, etc). In the meantime, have you guys ever grouted? Did you kind of like it (me) or kind of hate it (Sherry). The good news is that we both admitted that it was totally worth the hassle when we were done, so that’s unanimous. Glad to have it checked off.

Psst- Take a wild guess who is the most excited indoor train rider in our family. Might not be who you think. More on that here.

As for the top seam where the tile meets the ceiling, there’s crown molding that runs around the entire room (although we removed some of it on the window wall) so we’ll be adding that back around the whole room so the top of the tile will look nice and finished once we get to that step.

The black box next to the range hood is an outlet for our range hood, so that’ll be hidden once we install ours. We tiled a few inches behind the range hood duct, but didn’t remove it since once we install our industrial hood that area won’t be visible.

Once we add our floating shelves (which will be 12″ deep) along the oven wall, the space on either side of the window will be 14″ – so it’ll finally look balanced again! I mention this in every kitchen post because I. Can’t. Wait. For. That. Moment.

This entire backsplash process took us around 14 hours total. We tackled it mostly in 2-3 hour chunks in the evening after Clara went to bed or on weekends while she napped (so it’s a good indication of what anyone with a day job might be able to follow). That includes a few hours of figuring out how to cut the tile, which we summarized in this video for you (read a lot more on that process here).

We also shared an in-progress post about prepping the room for tiling, mixing and spreading thinset, and placing the penny tiles here. So that might come in handy if you’re at that stage of the project and could use some reassuring.

It’s really important to place penny tiles in a way that makes the line where each sheet meets less obvious, so we found that a staggered pattern was the best method for us to achieve a seamless result:

That way your eye doesn’t catch one seam and follow it all the way across the room (more on that here). We also played around with each sheet of tile after squishing them into the thinset, scooching them a bit to the left or the right or higher (since they were on a sheet of mesh it was pretty easy to manipulate them) until they looked evenly placed so the seams weren’t obvious.

Just wanted to recap that stuff for a second so anyone looking for an exhaustive post about installing penny tile would have those pics and links all in one place. Anyway, when we last left you, we were just beginning the back wall, which we knew would be tedious (but hoped wouldn’t make us rue the day that we picked penny tile). The good news: it didn’t. We made it all the way across that wall, baby! Without wanting to poke our eyes out with penny tile once (well, maybe once…).

Thankfully, there weren’t many cuts since we could slap a ton of full sheets up in that giant expanse of wall, so although we took our time placing them to keep seams from showing up, we did move faster than having to cut a bunch of tiles. It probably took us three days of 2-3 hour sessions each time. We found it helpful to use little glass dishes to divide full tiles, half tiles, more than half tiles, and less than half tiles. That way if we needed to quickly back-fill an area, like the edge of the wall, with half-tiles or slivers or almost full tiles we already had a little dish of them separated out that we could dig into quickly.

Here’s a video about spreading the thinset and placing the tiles, complete with how to back-fill any tiles that you need to add and how we slid them around and adjusted them to look more seamless. Oh and in the video when I describe it as a brick-layers pattern, I create a horizontal one with my hands, but it’s really a vertical one (two tiles on top of each other and one staggered in the middle of that next to it). Oops. Hope that makes sense when you see it!

And here are some pics of us making our way across the wall. John applied the thinset with a putty knife (and sometimes a trowel). We mixed enough thinset to set about four to six tiles at a time (so it didn’t dry out before we could set the tile). You can see John applying the thinset in the video above.

Then John scraped it with his trowel to make little ridges to help the thinset grab the tile and stick for good. Our trowel was a 3/16th notched trowel since penny tile is small, so we heard that smaller ridges were recommended (you can also see this in the video above).

Here I am placing the top tile on the left side of the wall. John got a kick out of the fact that I could comfortably stand on the counter without having to crouch (oh the perks of Team 5’2″). You can see how we worked from the bottom left corner and went up and out to create a staggered staircase effect. This allowed us to build things slowly without having much of a problem with keeping things level since each tile interlocked down the staircase on two ends to keep it from skewing.

Day by day, we inched our way across…

Here we are in the very last corner, finishing things up. You can see that we scooted the oven out while we were working (to gain more access to the wall and keep from getting thinset on it).

Since a few of you have asked for a shot of the corner to see how the tile meets, here ya go:

Let’s get a little closer…

Basically whatever would be placed next to the last tile on the wall where the wall ends just wraps around and gets placed on the new wall. It’s not 100% perfect but once it’s caulked/grouted we think it’ll look pretty darn good (we’ll snap another pic for you then).

Oh and some other folks asked how we’d be “capping” the 14″ of tile that will be exposed on each side of the window wall, so here’s a detail shot for ya:

We actually got some thin glass tiles that we thought we’d like, but they just looked too brown and sort of competed with the penny tile, so we decided some thin thin thin pieces of craft wood will make great simple and clean little borders that don’t compete for attention. They’re not hammered in completely yet, since we’ll be pulling them out and painting them white like the rest of the trim in the room after grouting (just to avoid getting paint on the grout).

Grellow note: the picture above is probably the most true to life shot of our wall color (in some of the far shots it looks darker/greener/brighter than it is). In real life it’s a soft avocado color (although it can read quite differently on different computer monitors). Here’s a link to it on BM’s site if that helps, since the bad lighting in our kitchen hardly does it any favors. We think once we tackle the new lighting and add the open shelving and some pretty colorful accessories up there (and on the counter) it’ll all tie together really sweetly. You know we’ll share those pics as we go!

Obviously we still have to spread all that grout, but we’re giving our arms a day of rest before picking up the trowel again (well, I guess in this case it’ll be the grout float). As for the specifics, we picked a soft creamy-gray grout that’s a smidge lighter than the tile. You can see it in this sample shot snapped at the store back when we chose our tile (more on that here):

Oh and see how you can kind of see the seam in the picture above (there’s a horizontal line of grout in the middle of the photo that seems a bit thicker/bolder). That’s why scooching things around and stepping back to see how it all looks before moving onto the next tile is so important! We were sticklers about it, but we’re so glad we took the time to keep everything as evenly placed as possible.

Now we just need to grout, get new lighting (and kill that haven’t-used-it-in-13-months fan), add crown molding and some sort of decorative treatment and baseboard to the back of the peninsula, lay our cork floors, install our new dishwasher, and add shoe molding around the room. And probably some other stuff that our tile-drunk minds are forgetting. So we’ll be back with grouting progress in the next few days or so- probably on Wednesday. We’re hoping we can knock it out pretty quickly, but you never know until you’re knee deep in grout… we’ll keep you posted!

What did you guys do this weekend? Do you all have off today in honor of MLK?

Psst- Oh yes there is a Clara vs. Santa wrestling match going on over on Young House Life…

• how did you guys meet?
• are you real friends or just blog friends?
• how long have you been friends?
• what were your first impressions of each other?
• what surprised you about each other?
• what do you like to do together?
• how are your styles similar? how are they different?
• do your husbands really get along?

So we thought we’d answer them all on film for ya. Warning: you’re about to lose 12 minutes of your life to two giggly girls who incessantly say the word “like” and perform incredibly terrible impersonations of each other).

When it came to the stuff that we did together this time, here we go:

• filled our bellies with a ton of favorite local food (Bottom’s Up, Q BBQ, Carytown Burger & Fries) along with enjoying a few home cooked meals together in our torn apart kitchen courtesy of chef John
• did fun stuff with the kiddos like going for a walk near the river (where Katie snapped some family photos for us), hanging at the playground (where Clara & Will had some quality sandbox time), and even attending Clara’s weekly music class with Will in tow (he fit right in)
• checked out a few Saturday morning yard sales and even found a Goodwill Outlet (where they sell things by the pound in giant bins – it was like nothing Katie or I had ever seen)
• strolled around Carytown (where we did some browsing at a few thrift shops and consignment stores) and shopped at Stonypoint mall (where Jeremy got the same jeans as John, I’m telling you our men are hilarious together)
• hung around the house while our kids napped (Clara slept from around one to two thirty, and Will would sleep from two to five… so we were house-bound for a good chunk of time each day- which we used to do some synchronized blogging, talk about future projects, debate the merits of certain paint colors, take naps on the sofa, etc)
• rented a few movies after the kids went to bed for the night (X-Men: First Class for the boys and Bridesmaids for the girls) – we also watched a lot of Bang For Your Buck on HGTV since we liked betting which room got the most bang

In summary: good times. Katie even used her photog skillz to take some sweet pics:

So thankful for good friends, good weather, and sweet babies. Er, I guess they’re technically toddlers now. Sniffle. Did any of you guys hang with friends this weekend? Or have a weird feeling that KB and I were together? One commenter totally guessed that we were visiting each other while it was happening and we had no idea how they knew about it (maybe they’re psychic? or they saw us around town together?).

Psst- Check out Katie’s sweet post about everything. She even dug up our first email exchange. Love that lady.

• Our favorite and least favorite qualities in each other
• What our neighbors think about the blog
• If the former owners of our house read the blog
• Our weirdest fan interaction
• Who Clara looks more like
• How we deal with negative criticism
• What we wanted to be when we grew up
• What will happen to our blog name when we’re not young anymore
• If we ever fight or spend time apart
• And most importantly: John’s thoughts on the new Twilight movie

And of course there are a bunch of other questions, a Burger cameo, and John cycles through soda shirts just to keep things spicy. Oh but if you’re at work you can still watch it on mute and try to guess what I’m gesturing wildly about (or wait until tonight and watch it with some popcorn and take a swig of soda every time John changes shirts). Our only video-recording rule is that we’re not allowed to re-answer anything so it’s completely unscripted and sort of an all-one-take kind of thing (that we later edit down just to shorten things/take out the “ummmms” so we can squeeze more answers in). We don’t even read the questions until we’re rolling, so we don’t overthink or overplan – but sometimes we over-share. Haha. Who’s surprised.

And just because we’re chatterboxes, this year we tossed in three bonus business-related answers:

Q: How did you get sponsors? Do you solicit advertising? What’s the secret? First we wrote about 200 posts and had been blogging for a while without even thinking about sponsors, just because it was something we loved to do. We actually had no idea there were even people or companies who sponsored blogs, we just thought of it as a fun creative outlet/diary. Then it slowly dawned on us that because we were gaining more traffic and posting every day, maybe some local folks or small online businesses would like to get a button on our sidebar in exchange for a tiny fee. So we tossed up a “wanna advertise with us?” button just to see what would happen. We thought it would be awesome to make a few extra dollars to put towards projects, but definitely didn’t have high hopes. Much to our surprise and amazement, a few small companies and Etsy vendors emailed us to say that they were happy to give it a try. So we just shared our stats and offered people a flat fee for the month and a slightly discounted fee for the quarter.

To this day we actually still use the same system. There are definitely more intricate ways of charging sponsors (like per click, per view, etc) and even more complex ways of calculating rates. But we decided to keep it simple and start with a flat rate that we felt was fair (based on what we saw other sites charging with comparable traffic) and just let the sponsors tell us if it was too high (and if they did, we’d adjust). If it was too low, well, we love a deal – so we figured why not offer one ourselves (after all, we were satisfied with that rate since we were the ones who came up with it). That system seems to be working for everyone, so much so that we haven’t raised our rates in almost two years (despite a great increase in traffic since then).

When it comes to managing sponsorships, we use Google Ad Manager to organize everything. It not only serves the ads to our site, but also helps us keep track of expirations so John can send renewal emails / invoices. So it’s a bit of paperwork on our end, but completely worth the effort since our sponsors are a big part of what makes this blog possible. There’s definitely not a get rich quick aspect to blogging (at least not in our experience), but we’ve seen that by focusing on content first and readers second, the sponsors will gradually fall into place.

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Q: Do you have to post a certain amount of times each month for sponsors? Nope, as we mentioned above, they pay a flat fee per month so no traffic or amount of posts are expected or promised. We’ve just posted 1-2 times a day about the same range of stuff for the past few years, so it’s a pace that works for us. Some juicy stuff + some light stuff + some personal stuff = a comfortable mix. Posting in some sort of regular rhythm provides structure and helps keep our creative juices flowing. If we stopped blogging every time we were in a rut or ran into a snafu we worry we might never start again. Gotta keep that momentum up! <– picture me in a bodysuit and legwarmers saying this in a sing-song-y voice a la workout videos from the eighties

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Q: Aren’t you scared to have so little job security when your whole family’s income relies on this blog? We’re not gonna lie, it can freak us out if we think about it too much. But we’ve squirreled away the recommended amount of “safety net savings” to fall back on if this ol’ blog suddenly grinds to a halt (which we built up before John came on full time as some sort of “insurance” to quell the nerves). We also have side gigs (like our column for BabyCenter and Do It Yourself magazine along with the book that we’re writing), so that helps us feel semi-diversified.

We also both left advertising on very good terms with former employers/clients, so that’s another road we could explore if we ever needed to (and John still takes on the occasional advertising consulting job on the side, just to keep his toe in the water). In the end I always say that five years ago we had no idea we’d be here doing this, so trying to figure out what we’ll be doing in five more years is probably an exercise in futility. We just do our best to keep chugging along and try not to let the neurotic thoughts creep in!

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So there it is, twenty minutes of video evidence confirming that we’re dorks and three bonus bidness questions. What surprised you guys most? Was it the fact that I make up sayings that aren’t really sayings and then collapse into a ball of giggles? Or that John is so into Twilight movies? Will anyone else help me make “I took that baby to the market and carried it home” a real saying? Come on, it’s kind of catchy…

Psst- John’s over on BabyCenter answering one more question about being a stay/work at home dad. It’s actually a post that even surprised me. Check it out here.

Things to note:

• I taped this before ORBing the daylights out of the hardware on the front door and the sliding doors, which is why it’s still brassy (it always takes me a few days to remember to upload videos)
• I’m terrible at walking around, talking, and holding a camera (it’s too much multitasking, so pardon the Blair Witch Project-ness)
• I’ve listened to this five times trying to hear Natalie Portman or Mila Kunis (since you guys say you hear it) and I can’t. I really tried though.
• I have no idea why I take time to point out that we have a Ruby Tuesday’s coupon on our desk. It’s so weird what you think is noteworthy.
• I should have paused to turn the ironing board so it points up during the video, thereby resnagging the win in Ironing Board Wars on camera (more on that here).
• Burger is so cute. I love how he’s just chilling under the covers. Life’s good when you’re a nine pound chihuahua.
• Sorry I’m almost completely inaudible for the second half of the video. Sleeping baby = paranoid whispering mom (which is ironic because we hammer while she naps – just not right outside her door).
• You can see that I still have yet to rehang the ribbon chandelier from Clara’s closet that I took down to paint and stencil the closet (it’s in a pile in our disaster of a playroom).
• Yes, it sounds like there’s a waterfall in Clara’s room. It’s her sound machine (mentioned here) which drowns out things like DIY projects and our barky dog.
• I like how I completely forgot an entire room (the sunroom) and galloped back through the house to show you things like squished pillows and a blow-up whale pool.
• The rocker in the sunroom really is trying to kill me (remember when I talked about it waaay back here in November – um yeah, not much progress)
• My dramatic ending on Clara’s stuffed animal is beyond weird (yes, we named her Georgia because she’s from there). What is wrong with me?

What about you guys. What would people see if you randomly made a shaky nausea-inducing video of your house before picking up a single thing? Anything embarrassing out there like a Carebear night light in the bedroom or an NKOTB poster in the closet? John actually had a Britney Spears calendar when I met him in 2004. Not lying. And she was wearing things like red leather bodysuits and braided pigtails. What can I say, my man has good taste.

Speaking of which, I was just going through old folders on my laptop and I found a bunch of funny old pics that I thought I’d share in the spirit of “any given day.” Here’s me and Alicia Keys back in 2005. We’re old friends. Just kidding, but I did get to meet a bunch of celebs when I used to work in advertising back in NYC (and they were all super nice except for one “star” who is rumored to be not nice – and let me tell you the rumor is true).

Here’s John’s passport pic from when he was 16 next to the one snapped when he was 24. Aw, Johnny’s all grown up.

Here’s John as a life-sized doll back in 2005 when we worked together (we met at an ad agency named Lowe where I was a copywriter and John was an account guy – aka: a suck up). The entire office cracked up about this project (it was for a certain deodorant client of ours). I definitely prefer John The Doll to the smarmy Ken doll that I had growing up.

Aw, here’s our engagement announcement photo (that we emailed to a bunch of friends and family, hence the photoshopped writing) from 2006. It was snapped about a minute after John got down on one knee at the top of a mountain (more on that here). Best day ever. Well, top five at least.

And here’s me and John the last time I chopped off my hair (right after our wedding in 2007). That’s Thomas Jefferson with us in case you’re wondering.

So how’s that for Friday randomness? What odd old photos are sitting around on your computer? Would you ever have guessed where you’d be today five years ago? We had no idea we wouldn’t both still be working in advertising (we really liked it and miss it all the time!) and after six years of calling NYC home, I never thought I’d leave. So funny how things work out.

Psst- Check out our first ever messy house tour here (it’s fun to see how many rooms have changed since April when we filmed it).

We thought it was hilarious that this random footage of the burgmeister actually included a decent amount of our house (and some great get-oriented flow thanks to him running around like a maniac). So without further ado, here’s Burger’s poor man’s (poor dog’s?) version of a house tour video (you can even catch some peeks at new yellow flowers in the kitchen and a big Clara mess on the office floor). Oh but to those who get motion sick, you might not want to push play…

Although it kept Clara plenty entertained (she was in my non-video-taping arm the whole time, hence the giggling/squealing sounds throughout), here’s why we won’t be asking Burger to lead a tour of our home again anytime soon:

1. He was a bit rushed. Okay, a lot rushed.
2. His narration was less than descriptive. Care to tell us what we’re looking at buddy?
3. Could use a little less kitchen, a little more dining room, living room, bedrooms, sunroom… and a little less floor.
4. The camera work was crazy shaky. Technically that was my fault, but I blame him for making me run.

Okay, so clearly Burger wasn’t really giving a house tour. But we figured you guys would enjoy a peek into life with our little nutcase roaming scurrying the halls. Do you have any random videos of someone in your family (animal or human) that happens to catch a bunch of rooms in the background?

Anyway, since this impromptu video reminded me of Sherry’s messy house tour from back in April, I figured I’d toss that in too, just for the memories:

Come to think of it, we should probably do another official house tour video for you guys since so much has changed since then. Maybe we should do one before cleaning up and one after, just so you can compare everyday vs. trying a little harder so you can see how rooms look at their best.

The hardest part about the clean-house video tours? All rooms have to be clean at once (so you can’t shove kitchen junk into the office, since the office ends up in the tour too). Boo. But maybe that’s a good thing because it forces us to get rid of piles of junk that accumulate and start fresh.

In other news, with a little walker on our hands, it was time to baby-proof the walls. So we pulled a little gallery frame wall switcheroo with the bean in mind. First we swapped out the glass in those bottom frames for plexi glass (or whatever the proper term for frames with plastic-y fake glass “panes” are called). As for how we did that, we were actually given some cheap-o 5 x 7″ and 8 x 10″ frames with not-real-glass for various birthday and holiday occasions as gag gifts. You know, those inexpensive ones from places like Target or Walmart or the dollar store that don’t necessarily match all the frames you have and might be filled with photoshopped pics of you and a celebrity you’ve never met or a printed application to the Dexter Fan Club (or is that just our quirky family?).

For a while they sat in the yard sale/donate pile (which overlaps with the gag-regift pile) but then we realized we could repurpose the not-glass-panes. So we just removed the glass from our Ikea frames and slipped in the plexi from the cheaper frames. It’s the best of both worlds – no glass but frames that were more well made and didn’t look as cheap and plastic-y.

We also secured them to the wall and added some fun “teaching art” while we were at it. More on that here on BabyCenter.

Update: This week’s giveaway is actually available in all 50 United States and many countries outside of the US too. Check 20×200′s international shipping info page to see if you’re covered and then head back over to our giveaway to enter (if you haven’t already)!

Then we removed the desk and upper cabinet (that will be in the way of our big future doorway to the dining room) and after one coat of not-covering-at-all primer it looked like this:

Then we finally got the primer thing right after dealing with maddening bleed-through issues thanks to two days of applying coat after coat and three different types of primer (more on that here):

And now it looks like this, although it reads a bit more yellow in these photos than in person (it’s a smidge greener in real life).

It’s definitely a warm golden green tone (aka: grellow). Sort of like the color of an artichoke heart.

There’s definitely a lot more to do in there, but we’re so glad to have the whole prime-and-paint-the-paneling thing checked off. Here’s a fun little video that encapsulates the entire process in three short minutes. Which is more than a little ironic because it took us just a wee bit longer in real life (you know, just a smidge). Just convert those minutes to days. See it below on YouTube or here on Vimeo.

As for the paint color, after a decent amount of debate (and some pretty thorough consideration of the adjoining rooms that will be seen along with the kitchen) we opted for our new favorite color, which turned out to be Sesame 381 by Benjamin Moore (color matched to Olympic No-VOC paint in semi-gloss).

We were inspired by this kitchen (found here via Pinterest) since our cabinets will eventually go white, possibly along with our backsplash:

We chose this warm yellow-green color because we want the kitchen to be bright and happy (there aren’t any windows to the outside world – just one that looks into our sunroom) and it was suuuuuuper dark before we painted that paneling. We also knew the room could take a decent amount of color because:

• it won’t have any big long walls remaining when we add the extra-wide doorway to the dining room across from the fireplace (just slivers of wall here or there will remain, so the color won’t be overwhelming)
• we’ll be painting the cabinets glossy white later in this phase of our little kitchen makeover along with un-busying the backsplash (which will further temper the color on the walls)
• we’ll be adding an island in the place of our too-small table someday (with a different countertop and most likely a non-white base color to keep things interesting and layered)
• this room is surrounded by the dining room, the hallway, and the living room, which all have soft gray walls (so we wanted this space in the middle of them all to have some cheerful color going on)

When it came to our swatch-selecting technique we just hung up a ton of them and looked at them at all times of day to see which one we preferred. As for why we chose this swatch specifically, we decided:

• this golden-green tone will tie into the chartreuse curtain tones in the dining room and the cheerful green tone in our shaggy living room rug without being too matchy-matchy across the board (we didn’t want the exact same tone of green everywhere for fear that it would look a bit too “orchestrated”)
• a warm yellow kitchen is always a classic choice, but this color feels modern and crisp with the green undertones (and it’s not completely terrible with the oak cabinetry, which will stay for a little while)
• this tone is in Sue the Napkin – albeit a bit darker (a sure sign it’ll work with our whole house palette really well)
• unlike some of the other softer greens and greeny-gold tones that we considered, it really makes the white trim pop (lighter swatches didn’t have the same crisp effect next to the fireplace or the trim)

Here’s how it looked with the first coat going up around the fireplace (thanks to all that primer prep- we had really awesome coverage). Again, it’s looking more yellow and less green than it does in person in these photos, but you can really see how the white pops and how it turned a dark and brown-everywhere space into a sunny and bright room in the middle of the house.

We also decided that it was high time we switched out all of the “bisque” colored vents, outlets, and light switches.

So we grabbed a bunch of crisp white ones from Lowe’s, turned off the power, removed the old ones, connected the new wires the same way they were connected to the previous switches, added the outer switchplates, and turned the power back on. The whole switch swap took about twenty minutes. So much better:

Some people opt to paint their vent covers so they blend in more, but for now we’re happy to leave ours crisp and new since we’re so used to old drippy painted-over covers (clean paint-free ones kind of feel like a luxury). Who knows if we’ll decide to add a few thin and not-drippy coats of paint to blend those vents in later though. We’ll keep you posted.

Oh and it’s really fun to go back and look at our fireplace, which originally looked like this:

Then we removed the old unused wood stove and painted the brick, and it looked like this:

It’s amazing how much painted paneling can freshen things up even more:

And we love how things like the white frames and the round mirror above the fireplace layer right in with the glossy white trim and beams:

Burger likey (he knows how to work that runway):

Oh yeah and see those pink hydrangeas? I wish I could say that we grew those, but they’re from the store. We figured to celebrate all that priming and painting we could spring for something soft and sweet, so these little pink snowball-looking-guys had me at hello (that’s an old vase from Target btw):

As for the opening to the dining room, here’s where it’ll be (it will line up exactly with the dining room window on the other side for balance):

We learned that we’ll need a permit to knock out so much of that load bearing wall, so it sadly won’t be anything we can do very quickly (and we’ll definitely be leaning on some pros for help). But we can’t wait to tackle it as soon as we can get through all the permit business and hunt down the right expert for the job.

Now for some before & after bid-ness. Just because that’s my favorite part. Here’s the kitchen as it looked on moving day about six months ago:

And here it is now (still can’t wait to add that island, paint those cabinets, and upgrade the floor & appliances someday though):

Moving day again (yes, one of those lights was out):

And now:

The crazy thing is that these photos were taken around the same time of day so it definitely demonstrates how much lighter and more cheerful the space feels now that the dark paneling is a thing of the past. Oh and here’s the budget breakdown:

• Olympic Premium No-VOC primer from Lowe’s: $12
• Behr 2-in-1 Primer + Paint (in semi-gloss white): already owned
• Kilz Clean Start No-VOC Primer from Home Depot: $20
• Olympic No-VOC paint (in Sesame by Benjamin Moore) from Lowe’s: $22
• New vent and outlet covers from Lowe’s: $43
• Brushes/rollers/tape/paint tray: already owned
• Total: $97
  

So there you have it. The kitchen madness has officially begun. As we mentioned here, we’re definitely going to do this in phases (gotta save our pennies and just take things on as we can afford them). But it should be a whole lot of fun. As in, more fun than a barrel of monkeys. And definitely more fun than priming that paneling five hundred times. Do any of you guys have long term kitchen plans like painting the cabinets or adding an island or upgrading the flooring or making some overhead lighting switches (we’re definitely in need of some of that too)? Oh the possibilities…

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.

Oh man Sunday was fun. In that nontraditional I’m-sure-some-other-moms-might-not-get-it way. The whole weekend was sort of an extended Mother’s Day extravaganza since we made time for visits to the farmer’s market and a Bon Air parade/festival with Clara and John on Saturday (Burger’s afraid of firetrucks and loud noises, so he skipped the parade). Then on Sunday, I was awakened by the bean who was holding a handmade card (she scribbled all over it with crayons- so cute) along with an equally sweet card from John and Burger. I was also given a printout that was entitled “The Tale Of Sherry’s First Mother’s Day” which explained that John tried to hunt down the gold Calypso for Target dangly earrings that he knew I had been drooling over, but they were sold out in two stores that he drove to as well as online. So he snuck onto my Pinterest boards and saw that I was also obsessed with these lovelies (found here on Etsy)…

… so he ordered them for me instead. Yes there was excited arm flapping. I love them so much. They kind of remind me of lemons which take me back to our wedding day. And I love that John thought to check Pinterest to find something I was obsessing over. Smart man.

Alas, my new lovely lemon earrings didn’t arrive in time to be handed over in the flesh, so a picture of them was sweetly included in my little First Mother’s Day printout along with news that John was also getting me a Mother’s Day massage to continue the tradition that he started last year when I was hugely pregnant and desperate for some prenatal massage relief. Wahoooooo. He intentionally didn’t book the massage for Mother’s Day (he told me to pick a later date because he knew I wanted to spend the whole day with Clara). Sweet, huh? Thanks hubs. For the Mother’s day rubs and the beautiful baubles.

Anyway, after my little wake-up slash card & gift fest, Clara and John and I went to Einstein Bagels (one of my favorite breakfast spots) where I got an asparagus and mushroom flatbread sammy (for two bucks with a coupon- haha). It was so delicious I can’t even say. John and Clara shared a muffin and a coffee cake in case you’re wondering (suddenly this play by play got very specific). Then we headed home for Clara to catch a nap and John parked me on Karl The Sectional to watch some delicious reality TV (Pregnant in Heels) while he went outside and got back to work on the patio. The plan was for him to work for two hours while Clara napped and then come in and shower and play with us for the rest of Mother’s Day.

Here’s where Mother’s Day veers of into the nontraditional realm. By about two hours into Project Patio it was apparent that John needed waaaaaaay more time to make progress, so I decided the best possible way to spend the day would be to play with Clara while daddy kept working on the pavers (what mom doesn’t want a finished patio for Mother’s Day?). So Clara and I played with blocks and puzzles and crayons and had some lunch and brought daddy some granola bars and even practiced walking a little bit (don’t worry, it was all assisted so John didn’t miss any true first steps). We even got outside for some fresh air and had fun on the patio while John worked away in the background.

Burger was especially excited to have some fun out there too, and it was cute to see both of “the kids” enjoying our new space- even before it was completely finished.

And about eight hours of hard hubby handiwork later, I had my Mother’s Day patio! John had completely cut all the edge pavers – he just needed to add sand between the cracks, which he planned to do on Monday (final “after” pics should be up tomorrow morning for ya, btw). And we had just enough time to enjoy a nice family dinner (burgers from Five Guys – mmmm) and then it was time to put the bean to bed and enjoy some sofa chillaxing (John wrote Monday morning’s post while we watched a criminally long episode of The Apprentice – seriously three hours is about two hours too many). But it was the best Mother’s Day ever.

Part Two of This Post: Proof I’m Crazy-

I always tell you that I’m neurotic and loud and crazy but for some reason you guys don’t buy it (instead I get pinned as perfect and prissy, which are both hilariously untrue). But behold, this video pretty much proves my insanity. We were asked to chat about radon by our local news station (it was recorded a few weeks back but aired last night at 11pm on NBC12). And while John’s quotes make total sense, I shout things like “We’re gonna die tonight!” and “It sounds like aliens. Invasion!” while waving my arms around wildly. Here’s our Flip video of the TV screen (yeah, we’re high tech):

Now do you believe me? I’m nuts. We cracked up the entire time it aired (and then rewound the DVR to watch it again while cry-laughing). And for those of you at work, you can read a breakdown of the segment here (complete with some nutso Sherry quotes worked in of course). Oh and there’s some cute footage of the bean in the video too, so it might be worth a watch on “mute” if you’re trying to keep your video-viewing on the down low at work.

Possibly the funniest thing that happened during the interview was that Clara started clapping for the first time. On camera. And we sort of lost it. They even sent us this “outtake” of the big moment:

If the clip above doesn’t work, here’s a direct link for ya. And yes. I’m flapping my arms and generally acting insane again. I guess that’s to be expected at this point.

The better news: it was pretty easy to do. It was sort of a one-two punch of distressing + staining that really did the trick. So let’s start with the first punch – courtesy of my fists. Well, at least my agression. The starting point, as you probably recall, was a pristine pile of freshly bought 1 x 4″s that I cut into 2 foot lengths.

Knowing that I had some extras, I tried a bunch of things on a spare plank before really landing on a process (well, “process” is too strong of a word in this case, since it was pretty much a random exercise in let’s-see-what-happens). Basically, I winged it by trying a handful-ish of techniques that looked cool and then used them sporadically throughout my pile. That way I’d end up with a mix of weathered looks, almost as if the boards had been scavenged from a few different sources after lots of character-creating trials and tribulations.

Oh and if you’re someone who likes all the details, I managed to capture a lot of my weathering “process” on video (so watch this if you want the “bonus stuff” that’s not all outlined below):

For those who can’t watch the vid (perhaps you’re at work and trying to keep things on the down low), here’s a quick rundown of the various tricks that I used. For starters, I picked out as many pieces of wood from Home Depot that already had flaws or interesting details to them – knots, chips, dark stripes, whatever.

But before I got to beat any of them up, my first step was sanding the four edges on the top of each board using my palm sander. This wore down the crisp edge into a rounder and smoother one, so they looked older right off the bat.

Then I smacked it with a bag of screws. I actually did this to each piece (besides sanding, it’s the only thing I did on all of them). It gave each board some very subtle dings that I thought wouldn’t hurt across the board (literally, har har). I must admit that throwing a bag of screws against the wood was kinda cathartic. Oh and I’ve heard that some people do this with chains, which sounds equally fun.

Because I know it’s a bit tough to see the damage being done, I thought I’d show you what these distressing techniques looked like once the boards were stained (aka: punch #2) so you can see them more clearly. Since stain catches and collects in all of these dents and dings, it tends to accentuate them (which is a good thing, in this case). So here’s a board that I hit with the ol’ bag of screws a bunch of times so you can see the final effect:

On some boards, I also hit them with my hammer. Whitewood is relatively soft, so it’s easy to leave some dents with just a few light bangs. I liked to concentrate my hits in one spot because it looked more organic than having a few evenly spaced out hammerhead impressions. I was all about the cluster.

Once stained, they looked a little something like this:

In the shot above you can also see some of the fake nail holes that I made using an improvised nail punch (check out the video for more clarification on that method, which I couldn’t photograph since it took two hands). I also used the same tool to make some line impressions across the boards. I just laid it down and hammered on top of it to create a nice long ridge. I though it created the effect that some hard edge had bumped into it over the years.

I especially loved this effect once it was stained because it was so distinct. Why hello character, nice to meet you.

Using a big screw that I found in the basement, I dragged the thread across the board which roughed up the grain. After sanding it down again it really started to look like the wood was slightly rotted, just like some of the spots on the pallets that we couldn’t use (more on that here).

On a couple of boards I did this all the way up and down the length of the board, giving them a really cool and distinct look. Definitely far from the store-bought feel that they started with:

If you watched the video, you can also catch a couple of techniques that I forgot to photograph: namely dragging a paint can opener to make long smooth scrapes down the length of the board (another effect that I really liked after stain was applied) and making those nail punch holes that I mentioned earlier.

I’ll be the first to admit that I probably overdid it when it came to trying so many different tricks – not to the detriment of the final result, just my own time. But since this kind of thing is my idea of fun, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. And after I had taken out all of my aggression worked my new-to-old magic and had given everything one last light sanding (to ensure a smooth and not splintery finish), it was time for Sherry to take over for the staining portion of The Console Table Show.

Our materials included rubber gloves (because stain is messy), a cheap $1 paint brush (because stain is messy and tends to ruin good brushes) and spare rags to wipe up excess stain (because stain is… well, you know). And for more of that varied and timeworn feeling, Sherry tag-teamed the boards with two different stain colors – Ebony (which we picked up for $4 in a tiny can at Home Depot) and Dark Walnut (which we already owned and had used for staining the bottom of the console). After it all dried, we sealed it with with an eco water-based non-toxic poly alternative that we had on hand (Safecoat Acrylacq).

We made a video of this process too, in case you’d prefer to save yourself all of this pesky reading (and want all the deets instead of just the highlights). Plus Sherry’s gloves make a fart sound, which is always a crowd pleaser.

But if you can’t watch the video (or you prefer words to moving images), here’s a quick rundown. Keeping in mind that we wanted a fair amount of variation from board to board, Sherry did a few tests first to see what each of the stains looked like with a light coat of stain (wiped off quickly) and a heavy coat (which was allowed to penetrate for a bit longer). Here are the test boards with the light coats on the left and the heavy coats still soaking in on the right:

We actually ended up liking both stain colors. We thought the dark walnut would help it relate to the bottom of the console (as well as some of the other dark woods in the room) while the ebony would be a closer match the the gray pallet boards that originally inspired us. In reality, on a lot of the boards Sherry actually ended up using a layer of each color to achieve a tone somewhere in the middle so nothing looked too jarring.

The only thing we didn’t like was that we wanted to get some boards even lighter than the stain seen on the above left (which was applied thinly and then wiped away immediately). So Sherry pulled some weird technique out of her you-know-what and it ended up working perfectly. Basically she pre-washed the board with a light coat of plain water, let it soak in for a couple of seconds, and then went over the still-damp board with a light coat of stain (that way it soaked up less color thanks to the water that it absorbed first). For those who’d like more info, you can see this entire technique in action on the staining video.

It was by far the closest that we got to replicating the look of the pallets (you can see a random pallet board on the left in the picture above for reference). But we’re glad that it wasn’t a perfect match, because we realized that the pallets were too blue-gray for our living room (since it’s already dominated by a huge gray sectional with gray walls and gray beams we wanted to add some warmth and balance). So we were thrilled with the colors and the variations that we landed on, thanks to staining some and allowing the stain to penetrate a while, wiping it down right away on other boards, and using the water technique above to get some lighter variations. In the end, those brandspankin boards were all looking nice and old.

Do you guys have other staining and distressing techniques to share? We’ve heard of some pretty cool aging methods with household items like vinegar and baking soda. Anyone try those?

Psst- Sherry wants me to tell you that we’re going lamp hunting this weekend. So we’ll hopefully have pics of the fully styled console by early next week (and by styled I mean full of stuff that we actually use like coasters for Sherry’s tea and a box for remotes along with those aforementioned lamps – and maybe a ceramic animal because my wife is crazy for flair).

Don’t say I didn’t warn you about losing seven minutes of your life watching something so painfully uneventful that it even bores the people it stars. Haha. But for anyone wondering how we spend our evenings, sometimes this is it.

Psst- My girl Amy tipped me off that Michael’s has a “25% off your entire purchase” coupon that’s good thru Saturday the 2nd. We scored a few giant canvases that were already 50% off for an extra 25% off. Just wanted to toss that out there before the coupon and the canvas sale expires.