Paint and Mold and Leaks, oh my!

As soon as we took possession of the house we got started! Sample colors when on the wall, holes were puttied and windows panes were taped.  Prepping to paint takes just about as much time as painting!

I have to say one of the biggest changes that updated the house was painting the windows and trim white.  Most of them were unpainted wood and some were a yellow/beige color.  

Before...

After one coat of white paint.  See what I mean?

 Bobby taped the windows, thank goodness, in the living room and dining room.  once I realized how easily the dried paint scraped off with a razor, we left the other untaped and I just went back in with the razor for touch ups.

Something else that made picking paint colors tricky was the way the colors changed with the different times day and the lighting!  The colors looked totally different in the daylight! 

The color we picked for the living room is the middle one on the bottom! It looks grey in the morning, blue in the afternoon and a little minty at night.

 We took possession of the house on Wednesday afternoon.  By Friday we were completely pooped.  I had to take Thursday and Friday off from work to get everything done on time.  I would have rather been at school!  Friday afternoon we took a break for lunch at our favorite spot in Hendersonville, The Rudder.  It's a little tucked away at the local marina on Old Hickory Lake.  The restaurant is actually floating, you walk across the bridge to the front door.  It's an open air, casual atmosphere with one heck of a grouper sandwich!

 And on Friday afternoon a wonderful thing happened!

 This lovely father team came to clear out the house and purchase all of the furniture and knick knacks from Bill.  It was so much easier to work with everything out of the way! They were AWESOME and incredibly quick!

 

One thing about this house that we will have to change soon is that there are no overhead lights in the living room.  I had gone through and done the cutting in by the windows, floor and ceiling earlier in the day when I had good natural lighting. When it was quite a bit darker I rolled the rest of the walls.....the wrong color! I was so mad at myself when I turned on the lamps I had found! What a waste of paint, time and effort! Never paint in the dark! Common sense, right?!

They look THE SAME don't they?! One is Blue Hubbard and one is Rainwashed.

Then things got really fun!  When Bobby pulled off the baseboards by the bathroom, we noticed the black drywall underneath. Not a good sign.

  Especially when all of the others looked like this! We also noticed the floor in that part of the hallway seemed really soft!  At this point we knew we might be in a serious bind if we were going to have to rip up the existing floor and replace the subfloor.  We already had to replace the subfloor in the kitchen where the dishwasher leaked and have some serious dehumidfying machines brought in for an area of the wall that leaked by the laundry room... When it rains, it pours, and then it leaks!

The new subfloor in the kitchen. Luckily, the contractors were on top of it and the day they found the issues they were able to fix and replace the problem. 

That's all for now! I can't wait to tell you about the plan for our new floors! Tomorrow!

Our New Home - "The Before Tour"

I had intentions of blogging the process with the house as we went along but, my goodness, we have been SO BUSY with the house there was absolutely no time for blogging if we were going to get this done on time!  To get ready for the flooring guys we had to paint ALL the trim and windows, paint ALL of the walls, take up the baseboards, clear our the furniture, do a little demo and attempt to do a little cleaning.  We thought we could easily get it all done in the four days we had until the floor guys were coming for demo, and if everything had gone smoothly, it wouldn't have been a problem.  But when does anything ever go smoothly!?  I will tell you all about it over the next few days and show you the "after" pictures!

So here's the "before" tour-

This is the living room.  All of the trim and windows need to be painted, walls painted, hardware painted, carpet pulled up and baseboards taken off.

Bill left most of his furniture.  He put it in the living room to make it easier to get out.

The living room leads to the kitchen/dining area.

Don't you just LOVE the green counter tops? I know I do! ;)  I know that this kitchen holds a lot of potential.  We will eventually fix it the way we like....eventually!

This house doesn't have a formal dining room, but that's okay because this dining space is so much bigger than the space in our last house.  I'm excited to have it! The dining area opens up to the hallway with the bedrooms, bathroom and office.

Painting this trim was a nightmare!  A requirement for our next house will be that it has to have white trim and windows!

Don't be too jealous!  Not every house can rock this 70's style.

This is another room that we will eventually tackle.  For now some minor changes will have to do.

Master Bedroom

Spacious master bath

This will be the office.  They used it as a den.

Guest Bedroom

Here's a sneak peek at the colors I was looking at for the walls...decisions, decisions, decisions!

We're moving!

Most of you probably know that Bobby and I sold our home at the end of last year and have been living with family ever since.  We were presented with the opportunity to buy a house that belonged to Bobby's grandparents. It may not be our forever home but it's a good move for us right now.  We made that decision in November and his step-grandpa wouldn't be ready to move out until the beginning of May.  That gave us 6 months to get our house sold.  We listed it with the best real estate agent in Middle Tennessee, my mom, Maggie Smith, at the beginning of December. We had a cash offer and had to be out by December 21! IT WAS CRAZY! But awesome at the same time! In this housing market you just never know what's going to happen! We have some pretty awesome family that's let us crash with them until we can get into our new house!

Sorry for the poor quality picture! I took it as we were driving by one day with my phone!

 Better pictures to come!

This is an older home built in the 70's.  It has great bones and Bobby's step-grandpa took REALLY good care of it.  We are SO EXCITED to get in there with a bucket of paint and some tools! It is a project house that we can make our own and I'm really excited about that! I'll be sure to share the projects and all the DIY mistakes we are BOUND to make as we take on these projects! Only nine more days!

Sesame Ginger Salmon

I really love salmon! Like, A LOT! But I am very picky about my salmon.  I try to stay away from the farm raised stuff, often labeled Atlantic Salmon. Farm raised salmon are often given antibiotics and artificial coloring, which are unwanted and unnecessary chemicals...in my humble opinion!  I have never had any trouble finding wild caught salmon in the frozen food section, and I am okay with frozen salmon :) 

I was cooking for two but you could double the recipe to make more.  

Here's what you need-

12-16 oz of salmon

1 tsp freshly grated ginger

2 cloves of garlic, minced or smashed

4 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 Tbsp Sesame Oil

1 Tbsp Rice Vinegar

1 Tbsp Soy Sauce

1 Tbsp Brown Sugar

Large pinch of salt

A few dashes of pepper

Sesame Seeds 

Green Onions, thinly sliced

Let's talk about ginger while we are here!

Before I knew better, I always used ginger powder, which is great to have on hand, but no where near as tasty as ginger root.  I think I didn't keep fresh ginger on hand because I only use it occasionally and most of it went to waste.  Then one day I realized you could FREEZE ginger! It's really simple.  Just cut your ginger root into 1.5 inch sections and store it in a freezer bag or container.  When you need the ginger, pull it out of the freezer.  And it's actually easier to grate when it's frozen! Problem solved!

If there's a lot of liquid on my salmon I usually dab is dry with a paper towel.

Then throw all of your ingredients in a gallon size baggie or container and let it marinade.  I let mine sit for an hour in the refrigerator. 

I placed my fish on a cooling wrack on top of a foil lined cookie sheet. Then I put it in the oven and let it broil for about 10 minutes.  My salmon wasn't very thick.  If yours is thick you might want to add a few minutes, just keep an eye on it!  Then I topped it with my toasted sesame seeds and my green onions.  You can leave those off if you like, but I don't recommend it! 

 

This is one of my simple, go-to meals when I have nothing else planned.  I love throwing everything into one bag to marinade.  It's easier on me and makes for less clean up! Plus, it's DELICIOUS!  Enjoy!

Mayan Chocolate Truffles

I found this recipe on one of my favorite recipe sites - Tasty Kitchen! It is run by one of my favorite people - Ree Drummond! So you know it can't be bad! You can find the original recipe here!

Here's what you need-

8 oz dark chocolate

1/2 cp heavy cream

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1 Tbsp coffee liquor (or just coffee)

Optional Coatings:

Confectioner Sugar

Cocoa Powder

Sea Salt

Crushed Pistachios

(Crushed nuts of any kind)

Toasted Coconut

Almond or Chocolate Bark

Festive sugar

The chocolate needs to be chopped as fine as possible.  I just threw it in my mini Ninja!  While I was doing this, I had the cream heating on the stove.  Remove the cream from the stove just before it starts to boil. 

Pour the cream into the bowl of chopped chocolate and let it sit for a minute. 

 After sitting for a minute, stir it up until it's well incorporated and then add the vanilla, pepper, coffee and cinnamon and stir.

It should be nice and smooth like this! If it still has chunks, put it in the microwave and heat in 10 second increments.  Then allow the mixture to sit out for an hour.  I let mine sit out for a few hours while I went for a run! 

 Then it looked like this!

  I scooped it out and formed it, as best as I could, into small balls. Then I covered it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

Once it was firm, I formed them into smooth balls with my fingertips.  Then you get to be creative with your coating! (If you decide to use a coating!)

Here's what I used....

 I sprinkled Sea Salt on some of them...

 Cocoa Powder

 Toasted Coconut

and crushed pistachios!

These were a hit with the fam! I am going to attempt to mail some to my lovely aunt and uncle in Knoxville for Easter!  I'll let you know how that goes!