"While You Were Out"

OK so most of you know that I was on vacation last week and I was going to redo my Dad's house a little. Many of you thought I was crazy and at times while we were doing it, I thought I was to. Everyone wanted before and after pictures so here is the story and the pictures. Sorry the story is so long but to really understand how it went down I had to tell the whole thing..... Enjoy.

A few months ago Kelly and I decided to play "While You Were Out" at my Dad's house. My Dad does so much for the both of us and he hasn't redecorated his house in a very long time so we thought we would do it for him. First we came up with a plan. The plan was to use the week that we usually go camping with him to do the work. We would be giving up our yearly camping trip with him but thought he would understand once he got home. So, when he gave us his camping schedule for the year (he goes several times for a week at a time during the summer) we both told him that there would be no way we could get the time off this year. Sorry Gary, Sandy and Shauna. So, for the past few months Kelly and I have been shopping trying to find the perfect "theme" that he would love. We found a wallpaper border for the kitchen that was a "fishing" theme. PERFECT!!! The colors were right and it fit him just right.

A couple of weeks ago Kelly and I went to Lowes and got the paint and all of the other things we needed. We had purchased the wallpaper boarder months ago but when we went to Lowes we couldn't find a color that matched the boarder. We asked the guys working there and they said the color swatch on the paper was to small. So, we went and found another boarder that we thought he would like with a "coffee" them. The hardest part of the whole project was going to be taking the wallpaper down that my Mom put up back in 1991! Kelly and I have never taken wallpaper down so we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into.

The only thing that could go wrong now, is Dad not going camping. Well.... last week we had a slight scare. Dad has a friend that is very ill that he has been friends with for years and years. His friend needed to go into the hospital to have a procedure done that was very risky so he decided that he wasn't going camping. OH NO!! Kelly and I tried to figure out what to do now. Then he called a couple days later and said that the procedure wasn't going to be done until the middle of week and he would go camping and call home to see how his friend was doing. Camping trip back on! Then Monday afternoon Kelly got a call from him saying Perla (one of his employees) had just quit and he wasn't sure that the camping trip would work after all (thanks a lot Perla!). Then I got a phone call from him saying he had worked out the schedule but he would have to come home early on Saturday instead of Sunday evening. Project While You Were Out is back on but we would have to be quick. So here is how it went down....

Tuesday: Dad goes to work and leaves to go camping at noon. Kelly and I move in once he leaves, well that was the plan. Kelly has had an eye infection for a couple of weeks now and Tuesday morning when she woke up her eye was pretty bad. She didn't know if she would be able to drive safely from Escalon. I got my stuff together and went to Dad's to get started. Kelly took a shower and rinsed her eye really good and got on the road. Kelly got there around 11:30am. We fed the kids lunch and start to tear down the wallpaper. Thomas didn't think that tearing the wallpaper down was such a great idea and was sure that Grandpa was going to be mad there was a mess in his kitchen. His plan was to hide in the closet when Grandpa got home from camping. I never knew that taking wallpaper down was so difficult. Kelly and I couldn't get the wallpaper down for anything!! The first layer came off but the glue portion would not come off. So we got the wallpaper remover tool out and went to town.


Here's Kelly hard at work!


And then we ran into a slight problem. We took a portion of the wallpaper off and the wall was missing. There was this "white grainy" stuff on the floor and didn't know where it came from but we found out. There must have been some water damage done at some time and all of the drywall was missing.

So... that's a problem. Kelly and I have no idea how to fix a wall and have no idea what to do from here. So we keep taking the wallpaper off and wait for Dave to come to see what to do about the wall. At this point we are thinking project While You Were Out wasn't such a good idea.

When Dave arrived I went to sand down the pink hutch and Kelly and Dave finished with the wallpaper.

I went ahead and put the first coat of navy blue paint on the hutch. Once that was done Kelly and I went in and redid the bathrooms. I forgot to take the before picture in the first bathroom but here is the finished project.

Kelly was very excited about the mural. This was her favorite part of the whole project.

The second bathroom was Kelly's bathroom when she lived there and was never changed. So, we changed it to be a little more "manly".

Finished project... we didn't do a whole lot. Just changed the towels and shower curtain and took down the "girly" things.

That night Kelly and I were still feeling pretty overwhelmed with the problem with the wall and we still didn't have a plan. So we decided to take the kids swimming and have a picnic dinner. We picked up some Subway sandwiches and went to the community pool. We checked into the pool at 6:30. We started playing with Thomas in the pool and started looking around and everyone was getting out. We thought the pool closed at 8:00 but it closed at 6:45. So that wasn't such a good idea. Thomas couldn't understand why we couldn't go swimming and eat our dinner on the grass. So we went back to the house at dinner, gave the kids a bath and put them to bed. Then Kelly and I got this grand idea to start painting the kitchen and living room. Our thought was it would be easier to paint while the kids were sleeping and the paint needed to be dry in order to get the wallpaper up. Also, if we needed to fix the wall that was going to take time. So we turned on "Flipping Out" and started painting. We got the kitchen painted and started the family room. I went in the kitchen to get a drink and noticed that the paint was splotchy and was streaked. Another bad thing goes wrong. Kelly and I just looked at each other and decided to go to bed and hopefully tomorrow would be a better day.

Day 2: Wednesday--Kelly and I didn't get much sleep that night. Sleeping wasn't on Indy and Putter's agenda. They were playing, barking at each other and chasing each other around the house. Then early in the morning Kelly heard something and went downstairs. Putter had tore open all of the garbage bags with the torn down wallpaper in them and the wallpaper was everywhere. Kelly cleaned it all up and went back to bed. The kids got up at 8:00 and so did we. Kelly's eye was worse than it had been and she was in a lot of pain. So, she decided to call and make a doctors appointment. Her appointment was at 11:00. We didn't get anything accomplished before the doctors appointment. I dropped her off at the doctors office and took the kids to Lowes to see what to do about the paint. The guys at Lowes weren't so helpful. I picked Kelly up at the doctor's office. Turns out she doesn't have pink eye but a bad situation going on with her eye. She had an appointment with the specialist in Lodi at 1:30 that afternoon. I'm starting to stress because we hadn't done any work yet and Kelly being gone wasn't going to help. Dave came and picked her up to take her to Lodi and stayed at home with the kids. I got them down for naps and finished painting the hutch. It actually turned out very nice and I was pretty proud of myself.

Kelly was told at the doctor that she has 2 ulcers on her cornea. She was given drops to put in her eye every hour and needed to go back on Friday morning.

When Kelly and Dave got home Dave started to put a second coat of paint on. It was starting to look really nice. Thomas even started to paint at some point.

So, by that evening we had the family room and kitchen painted and the furniture all put back. We were finally on a role and project "While You Were Out" was starting to be fun. We all relaxed that evening and went to bed feeling pretty good. All we would need to do on Thursday is put the wallpaper up, rearrange the furniture, and put all of the new stuff out.

Day 3- Thursday Kelly's eye was still hurting pretty bad. We were all tired and starting to bug each other. We decided that we weren't going to fix the wall but paint over it and let Dad know when he got home about the situation. So, we started to hang the wallpaper. That was a challenge. Kelly and I had never done that before and I am pretty short so reaching the ceiling was kind of difficult but we did it.

We finished rearranging the furniture and put all of the stuff in its place. We were very happy with the way things turned out and we finished a day early. Everything was done by Thursday night. It was really amazing to us all the work that got done and how good it looked. Now we just worried how Dad was going to react when he got home.

Kelly went to the doctor Friday morning and was told that her eye wasn 't getting any better and had actually got a little worse. She was given new drops and was told to come back on Monday afternoon. So, we went home relaxed for awhile and then went to Dads and did all of the finishing touches.

Here are the before......

And after.....

These pictures don't show all the work very well. In the end my Dad was very happy and really liked what we had accomplished!!! I'm glad that we did it and end in the end we really had fun and will always have stories to tell about the project.