Saturday stuff

For a while now, my mom has been talking about remodeling her kitchen.  I told her we would be happy to come and help her out because it is a big undertaking to do by yourself.  She said ok, and bought supplies.  Mallory and I were starting on the painting bright and early.  Unfortunately, I was a tad bit late, and they had moved a bunch of stuff around, so these are the best "before" pictures we could get.  Just ignore the stuff that is sitting around.  

I texted my sister and told her to pray for us.  I have never painted kitchen cabinets before and, like everything else, I jumped in without much thought on what we were getting ourselves into.  My sister in law has done a ton of this work though, and she had told mom what to buy, and was planning to help with the parts we don't know how to do.  

Mom had decided she liked the lighter cabinets with the distressed look.  Stephanie told us to do a base color that she liked and she would come over later to distress them.  Or to help us distress them.  So that is what we did, jumped in rump deep and started painting (after degreasing and rubbing them down with some stinking stuff she sent over).  When we started painting, mom decided she loved the look with just one coat on the cabinets, and the paint was sort of distressing itself.  Since she liked it, we decided to just paint the cabinets with one coat of the chalk paint, and let the darker wood sort of peek through - you could still see the wood grain.  We all really liked it (I was the last one on board because I am such a visual person I had to see them once they were dry and we rehung one or 2.  But it made such a difference in her kitchen - brightened it right up!
Of course, that could also be in part because Jim got her kitchen light to work again!  He also sold my walnuts, and I am happy to report they are no longer taking up half the garage.  There were 258 pounds and he got a whopping $33!  Then he came over, fixed a couple of drawers and the light and then ran Saige to her friend's house.  I appreciate his help in this! 

Also, my sister did not just pray for us to not screw up mom's kitchen, she showed up bigtime and helped with the destruction!  

Once we got this cabinet done, I was sold on the one coat, distress yourself look.  I actually really like it, and I think it was incredibly brave of mom to let us play in her kitchen!  It was a lot of work, but I like the results!

Of course, we are not done.  We did get the walls all painted a lighter shade of blue/gray, and we still have to fix the lazy susans.  We also still have to paint the undersides, but we ran out of paint.

Preston is coming over his break to put some new cabinets on the top of the existing ones (fill in the soffit area). Mom is getting a new sink, new flooring and new tile backsplash, and she has pulls to put on the doors and drawers, but we have to seal the paint first.  We didn't have to paint all of the walls since they will be covered with cabinets or tiles.

I love the color she picked, and you already know I love to paint. I have a few more projects in mind for little touches to make everything pull together, but we were all pretty exhausted, and they just glared at me for suggesting things like pulling down the ceiling fan and painting it!  :)  

More projects for another day!  Or maybe for when we are completely done with the first "creation,"  

I am glad we got as far as we did.  I think we will keep working on it, and I know it will all come together and be amazing! 

I got so busy at mom's, it was late when I went to do my church cleaning duties.  Aunt Karen had surgery, and I was given very important instruction on how to set  up for the holy day (twice).  I do appreciate her instructions.  I need all the help I can get.  When I came out of the church, I had to take a picture.  I love that view! 

A friend of Amy's is in the Knights of Columbus.  He texted Amy and told her about a candle ceremony that the Knights were doing at the cemeteries.  He asked if our family would like to be there when they did it.  I had no idea what we were getting in to.  I agreed to go, but I will admit going to the cemetery at night is not on my list of things that I feel really excited about.

I am so glad I forced myself to go.  This was pretty neat.  They put candles on all the graves, and they prayed for the souls of the ones buried there.  It was a little bit overwhelming, and a little bit amazing and a little bit beautiful.  I really never knew this was a thing that was even done, and I am glad I was part of it.  My brother and grandparents are buried here, along with a lot of people that I grew up with.  It was a nice ceremony, and seeing all the graves lit up was really neat. They will leave the candles until Monday and then remove them (they are battery operated candles so no chance of burning down the neighborhood).