May Projects Part II

We have the curbs all in. The next step was to get some good dirt in the beds so that new little plants and trees would not struggle in the hard Texas clay. We had looked at buying topsoil in big bags from places like Lowe's or Home Depot. Logistically, this was looking cumbersome as we have such a large area to fill. We had seen some neighbors that had these huge yellow bags of topsoil sitting in their yards or driveways. After sending the kids on a reconnaissance trip to get the phone number off of one of these big yellow bags, we called to order one of our own.

This is a cool product if you need LOTS of good dirt. They brought the soil right to our house from a turf farm, and left it on a palette in the spot we indicated. Next came the loads and loads of wheelbarrowing. We convinced (read: paid) Corbin, Bowen, and Rex to work on this task.

Yes, that is Corbin standing inside the bag. It is HUGE!

Fill 'er Up

Now, let me tell you, I am giddy, GIDDY, with excitement. A blank canvas, all ready and waiting to go. Beautiful black dirt just begging to be planted. It is almost more than I can bear to leave the house and go to work instead of the nursery!

While the boys were busy on that part of the yard project, I was working on one of my own interior jobs. Our house is a great house. It has room for all of us. It is warm in the winter, cool in the summer. It is in a great location.

I HATE all the wood trim and cabinetry.

Our kitchen has some nice sturdy honey oak cabinets, as do the bathrooms. The entire house is trimmed in the same honey hue. I thought staining the cabinets might be the ticket, so I started with a project in the laundry room, a nice out of the way spot to experiment. I used gel stain, and worked on it mostly in our garage. Did I mention this started way back in March? The gel stain is nice in that it doesn't drip, but it takes LOTS of coats to get a nice even finish. Once I had on three coats (which all require at least 8 hours of drying time in between), I kind of left the cabinet doors sitting in the garage to languish.

Before

In progress

Enter Theo's extended visit to Page. While he was away (as mentioned in Part I), I decided I needed to finally get those cupboard doors finished and re-hung. One more good coat of stain and a few turns of the drill later, they were back in place. I think they turned out pretty good. However, I learned that I do NOT want to have a kitchen with no cupboard doors for two months. I am still working on a plan B.

After

In the same family as this cabinet project lurked a cousin. Several months ago, Corbin's bedroom door was broken, and we knew we would have to replace it. It was just one of those minor projects that got pushed to the back burner. When I shopped for doors, I really didn't want to put in a flat door like he used to have, and I also knew that matching the stain would be tricky at best. (Besides, didn't we just establish that I don't want to stain again for at least the next 10 years.) This was just the motivation I needed to start the long and arduous process of changing out all the interior doors in the house AND painting all that lovely brown trim.

This is a before door with said trim

Corbin's new door with old knob painted silver

Door and shiny painted white trim

As I prepared to paint the trim, I decided that it was a little skimpy looking. I like the big wide stuff. I saw a really cool idea on Pinterest where you add a skinny strip of trim above the existing trim and paint the whole shebang white. Voila, it looks like the big wide stuff. It's a whole optical illusion thing. I need to get better pictures, but I think you get the idea. So far, I have done just this hallway and Corbin's door. There is some more painting in my future.