Guest Blogger: Elle The Heiress

I have been following Lillian on Twitter and reading her blog for a LONG time now. She is one of the funniest people on my Twitter stream! She is a wife and momma to Sebastian, who is 2 and Miss Genevieve (Gigi) who is 5 months old. They are total cuties by the way! She also has an Etsy shop and sells the prettiest cards and jewelry! She is SO crafty, it makes me jealous, so here she is showing us a project that they just completed in their home!

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When we were house shopping, it took us forever to find one that we agreed on. Husby wanted something modern, bland, dull, ugh. I wanted something charming with lots of history and great vintage details. He insisted on a garage, I insisted on a craft room. He wanted a small yard, I wanted a large one. The list goes on and on of things that we each wanted, mostly conflicting. Because our wishes were so different (and our budget was pretty small) it took us a very long time to find our house. Like…4 months and over 100 viewings. While I was pregnant. In the summer. Looking at houses that had been shut up and had no AC. It. Was. Miserable.

But then, one glorious day our realtor called and said, “Hey, there’s an open house going on that I think you should go to.” So we did, and it was love at first sight for me. I’m not even kidding when I say that we I looked at two rooms in the gorgeous 1937 home, then told husby that I wanted him to call our realtor NOW to put in an offer. I did not want this house getting away from me us. Husby eventually gave in (even though the house met virtually none of his needs or wants) and less than a month after Sebastian was born we were first time homeowners!

The details in our house are really charming - from the intricate baseboards & crown molding to the lovely fireplace mantle (which would look better if husby would let me paint it white…but that’s another story) and the absolutely wonderful storm windows with a pulley system to open & close them. LOVE.

Buuuut…with the good comes the bad. In this case, the bad was our bathroom cabinet. I bring into evidence, Photos 1-4. (Please pardon the low quality – lighting isn’t the greatest in the bathroom.) I apologize if you’re scarred for life from the horror that you are about to witness.

Those stains and spots were left by previous owners, and no matter how hard I tried scrubbing at them with every cleaning product imaginable, they would. not. come. off. Ugh! It finally got the best of me last week and I couldn’t stand looking at the ugly inside of the cabinet any longer. Well, actually, I have to stand on the toilet to see the inside of the cabinet, but just knowing that the gunk is in there is enough to drive me crazy.

So, like any impatient good wife, I woke husby up from his Sunday nap with the kids and asked him to help me paint it. He was a pretty good sport for someone who had been bombarded mid-nap and generally hates doing housework anyway. I added two gold stars to his reward chart.

We  He started by touching up some of more unsightly stains with some leftover white paint that we had. I’m not really sure why, but he’s a perfectionist so I just let him do it.

Then he used his magical Frog Tape to tape off the cabinet while I snapped away with my camera, assuring him that I wouldn’t use any bad photos of him (which I don’t, so I get two gold stars for my reward chart, too).

Oh, here’s the really awesome vintage light switch in this bathroom.

After taping off everything, husby got to work on priming the cabinet with gray Krylon stuff. This is when things started to go wrong. You see, the window in our bathroom was painted shut by previous owners so it doesn’t open. Spraypainting + no ventilation = disaster.

While he was priming, I snuck off for some “fresh air” to our bedroom to snap some quick pics of cute little Gigi napping away. Baaaaaby tootsies!

When I ventured back to the bathroom, I could barely see through the gray haze of paint. In this picture husby is fanning the air saying, “What haze?” after I commented on it.

After he finished priming, the entire house started to stink and we ended up having to leave with the kids so that the house could air out and not kill all of their little brain cells (two more gold stars for each of us for being good parents). And then? The laziness set it. We let the cabinet sit like this for days before finishing.

Husby actually finished the project on Thursday evening while I was out with the kids so I didn’t get any in-action photographs of the final coating, but here it is all nice and Pistachio-y.

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