Showing posts with label home improvement. Show all posts

Goals Update

1. Lose weight -  I am down 20 pounds since Christmas!  I am not sure if it is noticeable, but I feel better! I have lost 8 lbs since starting my goal after Christmas!
2. Get in the best shape of my life - My elliptical and treadmill is still out of commission, but now we are waiting to move it into the basement when it is finished.  Hopefully that will be done in the next month!  Instead of working out inside, I have been taking more walks and even try jogging some! Unfortunately our exercise equipment is out of commission while the floor in My Purple Palace is waiting to be finished.
3. Eat healthier - I haven't eaten many more vegetables, but there is definitely an improvement in the quality of food I eat!  I hope to eat more green beans and carrots this year! (Small steps for the picky eater)
4. Stay in touch with friends better - I think I have done better.  I try to message or text friends occasionally to see how they are doing.  There is still room for improvement.  Now that we are grown up, my friends are scattered all over the state, country, and world.  Facebook, texting, etc. help, but how often do we not take the time to actually have a conversation?
5. Keep the house ready for company at all times - The house is pretty clean right now.  I might be getting the hang of this housewife thing!  I currently have the house as clean as it can be for having one room completely emptied into the living room!
6. Do one load of laundry - This hasn't been happening, but I try to do just one load a day so I am not overwhelmed.  (Thanks for the idea, Kelly!)
7. Do the dishes every morning - When I am home in the morning, I usually get the dishes cleaned.  It makes the day so much better!  It sure makes the kitchen feel better to have everything clean and put away!
8. Take a picture of something with my camera...EVERY DAY -  This is probably my worst category.  I rarely get my camera out for everyday life when I have my cellphone with me at all times.  I want to have a record of everything that happens this year!
9. Learn a new skill each month - I have started making dishcloths, dish scrubbies, and coasters, as well as learned the ripple stitch.  To practice sewing I converted to sewing my fabric strips together.  Sometime this year I am going to tackle some curtains. :) I am going to learn a new crochet stitch or pattern and maybe pick up sewing!
10. Cook at least one new recipe a month - I don't know if I have tried a new recipe each month, but I have done my best!  I am a picky eater so I tend to cook in my comfort zone. 
11. Write more - I haven't found a pen pal yet.  Anyone want a pen pal? I would like to start writing a letter with a friend, like a pen pal!
12. Finish our house projects - We have the purple room finished!  The basement is about half done and the second bathroom is prepped for a new layer of mud.  The work is being completed slowly.  We have a long list!  It is all written down and ready to have projects checked off the list.
13. Have an open house for friends and family when our house is finished - We still have a long way to go.  I would love to get it all done this year, but I doubt that will happen.  Goal for 2015? I would love to have my family and friends come up to see our house when it is finished!  Be ready for an invite!
14. Get more involved in the community -  I have gotten more involved through church and my barn quilt block classes.  I love meeting new people!  Vacation Bible School at our church this summer is being planned by a friend in the church and me.  Hopefully it will be a success!  We want to get more involved in the community and church this year!

And an obvious goal for life, cherish every day with Redbeard, Scraggly, Andie, and Custer - I have enjoyed every day with the four guys in our house!  I am very lucky to call them my family!  I must enjoy every day this year!

agronomygirl

Plant Some Roots and Some Apple Trees

We got our new anniversary apple trees planted!  One is Yellow Delicious and the other is Red Delicious.  Our orchard consists of two pear trees and two apple trees now! Thank you mom and dad for our trees!

Redbeard did all of the planting for me.  Thanks to him for doing the heavy lifting!  I am so excited to see our orchard grow!  Our orchard will double in the next month again.  We have two Honeycrisp apple trees and two peach trees on their way!  I can't wait to start harvesting fruit in a few years!

Planting apple tree one


Apple tree # 2 is in the ground!
Our pear trees are getting ready to grow a lot this spring and summer, or least I hope so!  We are so excited to have a little orchard!

One of our pear trees from last year.
What other fruit trees should we add to our orchard?

agronomygirl

Transformation Tuesday: Basement Wall Painting

So far the wood paneling in the basement has been transformed into primed walls.  Now we finally get to put color on the wall!  We decided to use Sawyer Ace Hardware's new Valspar paint line.  They are low odor and no VOCs.  There are two choices, Optimus and Aspire.  Optimus is more expensive due to a higher quality paint.  (I believe it is more pigment molecules?)  I figured Aspire would be good enough for our basement, so that is what we decided.

The color we chose was Almond Sugar for the walls.  As I have said on my recent post, How to Renovate Your House Without Going Crazy (Housewives of Rural America),  the first brush stroke is always a shock.  Our first impression of our new wall color was peach...far from what we wanted. 


Redbeard painted some of the valleys of the wood paneling

White walls ready to be painted!  Excited!



I love the wall color!

Just have to wait a couple hours to add the next coat of paint!

After this half of the room dries, I can work on the other side!  There are so many things to think about when painting a room with existing furniture.  What do you think so far?

agronomygirl

The Wallpaper Must GO!!!!

Today as I was herding cats out of the "other bathroom" I decided the outdated wallpaper had its last night and it would be gone by tonight.  Redbeard thought this was a hefty task to complete by myself in an afternoon, but I set out to prove him wrong!

Don't mind the cat trying to steal wallpaper!
Redbeard did the first tear right before he left.  This is when we realized there were two layers of wallpaper.  Ugh!!!!

It was a good run, Mr. and Mrs. Wallpaper
Luckily it came off easily!  In less than an hour, all the wallpaper was gone.

This isn't so bad!
And now our bare walls!  We will use joint compound, like we did in our kitchen, to start with a fresh wall.  Then to paint our new walls!  I can't wait to get this room finished!  It will need some new flooring eventually, also.

Ahh, fresh walls to add our own touch!

I want to get to work tonight!
Any guesses for the new theme for our bathroom?

agronomygirl

We Have a New Office Space!

The last seven days few months have been extremely busy for us.  We have been working hard on house projects, preparing for the upcoming crop cycle, taking care of cattle, and added restoring our office space to the list.

The office renovation started before I could get a before shot.  The change is pretty dramatic.  Of course it had to include my favorite color, purple.  :)  Redbeard insisted on having grey walls, which worked well to brighten up the space and would work with purple trim!.  This is quite a difference from the dark wood paneling walls and dark colored carpet.  In order to get the paint to stick to the paneling, we used Zinnser 123 primer.  Two coats of primer and two coats of paint later, we have a beautiful, new office space!



On the floor we painted on an epoxy "garage floor."  This gave us a fast, easy floor covering.


We can't wait to get our bookshelf and desks situated!  What do you think of our office space?

agronomygirl

Red, Brown, and Orange....Floor Update!


We have been working hard on the floor.  The frustrating part is summed up in the words, "hurry up and wait."  We rush to get the next step done and then we have to wait hours, a day, or even days to start the next step.  We finally got the floor stripped completely and ready to stain.

We had to fill in a few areas with wood filler before staining.  A piece of advice, don't use wood filler unless absolutely necessary, even stainable products.  The wood filler doesn't stain to the same color and now since we know the spots are there...they stick out like a sore thumb.  We have to remember we are not professionals, but with a floor as beautiful as we started with, why not strive for perfection?

Here is what the wood filler looked like and a good before picture of the floor.

Redbeard got right to work vacuuming and preparing the floor for stain!
While he prepared the floor to stain, I spontaneously decided to paint the closet.  My color of choice? Bright orange!  This is where my mom cringes.  (For those of you who know her, she would say I am crazy.)  I wanted something bright since this closet is not lit with natural or artificial light.  The closet looks so much more inviting when it doesn't look dark.  

Here is the result!  Can you tell I love bright colors?
Redbeard helped me finish painting the closet and he was ready to stain the floor!  We used Minwax Red Oak stain.

Redbeard putting away the vacuum.  What a good husband!

Redbeard doing the hard work for me!

This is what the floor looked like after the first coat of stain
After the first coat dried, Redbeard added a second coat and the floor was ready to have polyurethane applied!  He applied the polyurethane with a wide, natural bristle paint brush.  I would say he did a great job!

Here is the finished product. Two coats of stain and three coats of polyurethane.

And my bright closet with red oak stained floors!
Now we have to wait for one whole week before putting everything back in the room!  I am so ready!  Everything from this room is in the living room!  The cats love the new places to sit, but I am tired of weaving through a dresser and rocking chair to get to our room!  A big thank you to Redbeard for doing all the hard work and Bobbi at Ace Hardware in Phillipsburg for helping us get all the necessary items to finish our floors!

agronomygirl

How To Use Citristrip

As I mentioned in Working Through the Layers, one product out performed the other three I used.  The product was Citristrip!  I thought I would share what worked best for us when we were using the product.

The wonderful product!


1. Wash and dry the floor

2. The directions call for a light sanding before applying Citristrip.  I didn't do any sanding and it worked great!

3. You are ready to spread Citristrip! I didn't have to apply the product thick for it to work.  I used a paint brush to spread the orange goo out on the floor evenly.  It is important to work with the correct area size.  You have to be able to reach every inch of the treated area.

4. I sprayed the area applied with water right away and 20-30 minutes later.

5. After spraying the area for a second time, use a plastic scraping tool if working with wood surfaces.  Since Citristrip works so well, there shouldn't be a need for anything other than plastic.

6. Wash the area off and you are ready to refinish the surface as you would like.

I hope your finished product looks at nice as ours ended up!

I will share the next step in our floor restoring project as soon as we get to it!

Good luck to any brave people attempting restoring wood floors!

agronomygirl

Working Through the Layers

I am about halfway through the first step of restoring and refinishing our hardwood floors from 1950 and have already learned a lot!  The product used to take the polyurethane/varnish off the floor matters. Not all stripping agents are alike.  In fact, I have found they are EXTREMELY different in how effective they are.

We used 3M Safest Stripper, Back to Nature Ready Strip, Citristrip Stripping Gel, and Zinsser StripFast.  I set up a side by side comparison, but the results were so disappointing I am not going to share it.  Two of these products didn't even begin to loosen the finish and one didn't work very well.  The fourth product is amazing.  It works the quickest and by far most effective.

Here are the products we used

This is after the first product we used
After using the Zinsser StripFast, the finish started to loosen.  It worked okay, but it was not worth the time putting it on.  Also, the goo (look and felt like snot) had to be applied extremely thick to get results.  The fumes from this product is why it took so long for us to start the project.  We had to have the windows open and it was still too much.  I didn't feel that it was safe to use, especially since it didn't work very well.

This is what the wood looks like underneath!

Bye bye yellow, old polyurethane!!!
With our health on my mind, I went looking for a better product.  Back to Nature Ready Strip and 3M Safest Stripper claimed to have zero harmful fumes and work well.  I knew I would need two containers of either product and there was only one of the shelf, so I bought both.  After a few trys and 24 hours, we determined that the products weren't doing anything.  ZERO!!!!  I happened to see another option as I was choosing between products.  It was called Citristrip.  To be honest I thought it wouldn't work at all and was a waste of money, but I decided anything was worth a try.  We applied it to the floor and surprisingly the finish scrapped right off.

The next picture shows the difference between the first product and the winner.  On the left is where we started with the Zinsser and then used 3M Safest Stripper and when that didn't work we finished up with Citristrip.  In the middle where the wood looks healthiest is where we used just Citristrip.  I love the results!

Hello pretty wood underneath (left) and goodbye to the yellow finish. (right)


When we get the whole floor stripped I will wash the floor up and post about the progress to then.  After the floor is washed and prepped, we will put a product called Restor-a-Finish to recolor the wood.  Then it will be time to add Polycrylic which will not yellow over time.  (Woohoo!)

To see previous posts about this room:
My purple palace
Wood Floors Prepared

agronomygirl

14 Goals to Accomplish in 2014

It is a new year!  Time to put goals on paper to forget or fail at, right?  This year is different.  (I hope!) I have goals and I intend to keep up with it!  Will you join my challenge?  Use my goals or edit them to fit you!  I plan to give updates along the way.

2013 was a great year, let's make this one even better!

1. Lose weight - I have lost 8 lbs since starting my goal after Christmas!
2. Get in the best shape of my life - Unfortunately our exercise equipment is out of commission while the floor in My Purple Palace is waiting to be finished.
3. Eat healthier - I hope to eat more green beans and carrots this year! (Small steps for the picky eater)
4. Stay in touch with friends better - Now that we are grown up, my friends are scattered all over the state, country, and world.  Facebook, texting, etc. help, but how often do we not take the time to actually have a conversation.
5. Keep the house ready for company at all times - I currently have the house as clean as it can be for having one room completely emptied into the living room!
6. Do one load of laundry - (Thanks for the idea, Kelly!)
7. Do the dishes every morning - It sure makes the kitchen feel better to have everything clean and put away!
8. Take a picture of something with my camera...EVERY DAY - I want to have a record of everything that happens this year!
9. Learn a new skill each month - I am going to learn a new crochet stitch or pattern and maybe pick up sewing!
10. Cook at least one new recipe a month - I am a picky eater so I tend to cook in my comfort zone. 
11. Write more - I would like to start writing a letter with a friend, like a pen pal!
12. Finish our house projects - We have a long list!  It is all written down and ready to have projects checked off the list.
13. Have an open house for friends and family when our house is finished - I would love to have my family and friends come up to see our house when it is finished!  Be ready for an invite!
14. Get more involved in the community - We want to get more involved in the community and church this year!
And an obvious goal for life, cherish every day with Redbeard, Scraggly, Andie, and Custer - I am very lucky to call them my family!  I must enjoy every day this year!

Join me on my year long journey to be a better me by January 1, 2015!

agronomygirl

We Are THOSE Pet Owners


Redbeard and I have two handsome cats and an adorable puppy.  It is no secret that we love our pets a lot.  They bring quite a bit of joy to our lives, so when someone mentioned making a barn quilt block of a cat, I jumped on the idea!  I thought about making them myself, but I knew there was someone who would make them perfect...MY MOTHER!  She finally agreed and did a wonderful job.

Andie Cats (left) and Scraggly (right)
The day I brought our cat barn quilt blocks home is the day we picked up our new puppy, Custer.  I told her that she needed to paint a Custer block now.  She made me think that she couldn't figure out how to paint Custer.  To our surprise Mom had it painted and wrapped up for Christmas!



We finally had a chance to hang them up on New Year's Eve.  I was so excited to see what they would look like on our garage!

Our pet portraits ready to hang up!

Custer was first!

Andie came next!

Thank you for your handwork, Redbeard!


Scraggly's turn!

Finished product!  This is my view when I wash dishes!
Thank you to my mom for painting perfect portraits and to Redbeard for hanging them up for me!

Interested in having a barn quilt block hanging at your house?  Contact me if you are in the Phillips county area!

agronomygirl

Wood Floors Prepared

The room is cleared and the floors are washed!  It is time to refinish the wood floors in my Purple Palace!  Here is a peek of what the room looks like today.  I am anxious to get to work, but cleaning up after Christmas comes first!  I will settle for sharing the before pictures!

Floors vacuumed and supplies out and ready!
I am excited for all the scratches and imperfections to be history!  Hopefully we know what we are doing!

My mom found grey curtains that work perfectly with the purple walls!  Redbeard put them up for me and I love them!
My new curtains are finally up!  Woohoo!
 Next up I will share the products we are using to make my dream room complete!

For a look at the process, check out My Purple Palace.

agronomygirl

Snapshot #1- Introduction

It is November already! Where has time gone?  It seems like I just started this blog, it has already been two months!  What better way to celebrate our two month blogiversary, than with a new blog series?  I will be posting a new photo (or two, maybe more) each day with a story to go along with the picture.  My plan is to have most pictures be taken the day they are posted.  I have no plans for the future, just that you will see a snapshot of our lives everyday!  Today's picture is an introduction to our lives for any new readers!

First disclaimer:  My husband is Jake, but I call him Redbeard.  It is obvious when you see him.  He has the most beautiful MANLY, bright red beard. (Don't tell him I called his beard beautiful!) Redbeard and I met at K-State in the department of agronomy.  We were engaged April 21, 2012.

He proposed when I was wearing my "I kissed a farmer and I liked it" shirt.
Disclaimer #2: Redbeard also goes by the name of Grumpy from time to time.

We were married April 6, 2013 and he actually smiled!  One day that he wasn't actually grumpy!

Look at that beard and smile!

On September 1, 2013, I started a blog about our lives.  I wanted to give friends, family, and followers a chance to see what was going on in our life since we moved three hours from where I grew up.  We moved to his family's farm and Jake farms full-time.  I help out when I am needed and have many hobbies; crocheting, home improvement, bowhunting, and barn quilt blocks.  I also started some farm photography, hence the name of our blog.  These are a couple of my favorites!

This was taken on a Sunday morning.  What a beautiful sight to see before church. 
Sometimes running around the field like a chicken with its head cut off turns into the perfect picture.  The men didn't think I was quite as weird when they saw the finished product!

And our pride and joys, Andie Catz and Ricky Scraggs.  They are our entertainment throughout the day.  They are ornery and get into everything, but at least they eat all the flies in the house.

Andie (left) and Scraggly (right) love each other!  They are full brothers and the sweetest cats I have ever owned.

I encourage anyone who hasn't been to our blog to look around and enjoy!  For a complete list of my 30 Snapshots of a Kansas Farm posts, check out 30 Snapshots of a Kansas Farm.

What pictures would you like to see over the 30 days?


                                                                                                                     Snapshot #2 - The Best Doggie Ever

agronomygirl

My purple palace

So by now everyone should know I have an unhealthy obsession with purple.  I have always wanted a K-State purple colored room.  When I was a kid, my mom wouldn't let me because she thought I would grow out of crazy ideas. Well, the only thing she accomplished is not having the room in her house.

A few months ago, Jake and I transformed one of the bedrooms into my childhood dream.  It now serves as my workout/crocheting room.

Here are some pictures of the progress.  There are still a couple things left to do, but they will wait for cooler weather.

Before picture of carpet and wallpaper
First, we had to take the blue carpeting out of the room.  Underneath the carpet we found a very pleasant surprise.  The floor underneath was a beautiful, almost perfect wood floor.  We were hoping it would be nice, but were shocked that it was so nice.

Our first look at the wood floor underneath

We were surprised to find only a few issues with the floor.  There were staples everywhere and the finish was not looking so good.  I pulled out the staples and decided the rest of the floor work should happen in cooler weather.  I will post about this process later on when I actually get to the work.


After everything was off the floor

When all of the staples were out of the floor, I moved on to the wallpaper removal.  This was the longest section of the transformation so far.  I tried using DIF (a wallpaper removal product) and finally landed on plain water in a spray bottle.  It seemed to work the best.  My routine was spray the wall down, rub the water into the paper, and wait a few minutes to remove.  It took awhile, but it was well worth the wait.

Blue and white walls underneath the wallpaper
As I said before, I have wanted K-State purple walls in a room for many years.  When I was younger, I wanted my bedroom to be painted dark purple and my mom told me I would not like purple by the time I was in middle school.  When I was in middle school, I still wanted a purple room!  She finally gave in when I was in Europe the summer before my junior year of high school.  Now that I have my own home to improve, the first thing I did was paint three rooms purple.  I feel like I really showed her!  

All finished!  The beautiful purple walls I have dreamed of for years!

 Here is a peek at my exercise equipment next to the BEAUTIFUL purple walls! :)  I remember hearing that Google did a study and found that employees working in purple rooms were most productive out of all the colors.  Let's hope this is a little more true in the future!  I haven't been using my workout equipment as much as I should.  In my defense, I have been using the great outdoors for my exercise!  This winter, the equipment will get used frequently!
My treadmill
My elliptical and crocheting chair
Now if I could just get Jake to get my gray curtains put up!  Look forward to the next post in the home improvement series, Wood Floors Renewed!

agronomygirl

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