Hanging In There

Hey all - I have been avoiding even OPENING blogger because I was scared to look at the "last post" date...Nov 5th. Sigh. Well I'm (we're) here and hanging in there.

Here is how things are looking:

Dissertation defense scheduled for December 8th at 3pm (WHOA!)

One interview scheduled at Children's Mercy in Kansas City for internship

December 15th is the general notification deadline for sites to contact about interviews (I applied to 15 and most wait until the deadline.)

Hopefully lots of interviews and traveling in January! I applied to 15 sites in 13 states!!

We've also been making slow but steady progress on the kitchen! We're hoping to knock out some big things over the Thanksgiving break! Here is the before and after for my pot/pan cabinet under the sink:

Before:

Eeewwww - this is NOT my grime and would NOT come off without sanding. Ew.

After:




So clean!! And my awesome hubs built me the pullout drawers for the pots. We're going to put another set above these so I'll have lots of pullouts to store all my awesome cookware!!

I'll post some more over the holiday weekend. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Home Depot Paint Options: Behr Versus Glidden

Behr Wins!

Glidden:
Pro - Cheaper
Pro - Had my color

Neutral - Acceptable coverage

Con - Sticky when dry: BAD for furniture
Con - Funky sweet smell

Behr:
Pro - NO sticking!!
Pro - Acceptable/good coverage

Neutral - Better smell than Glidden, but still stinky

Con - Used color match but color wasn't exactly the same
Con - A little more costly (although not much)

I didn't have any paint allegiances before starting the kitchen. We ended up selecting Glidden because they had the color I wanted for the cabinets, Swiss Mocha. It was cheaper than Behr too, bonus! However, after a few coats of paint on the cabinet doors I began to get run into a major problem - "sticky" paint.

I was painting 15+ cabinet doors and cabinets so I needed lots of room but quickly learned I couldn't lean the doors against ANYTHING (even when dry) without the painted surface sticking to the other surface. This resulted in a TON of touch up painting, cursing, and some more touch up painting. In hindsight we realized that we also used Glidden on the buffet we refinished (Here) and had the same "sticking" problem. We couldn't put anything on it without having it damage the paint even after waiting the suggested 48 hours.

I decided mid project to switch to Behr to see if it would make a difference and boy did it! I'm happy to say that our cabinets and cabinet doors no longer stick to everything! We did a color match and it didn't come out exactly the same, BUT since everything needed a new top coat anyway it wasn't a big deal.

We will be going with Behr (when shopping at Home Depot) from now on.

Planting Vegetables in Biodegradable Pots

In one of our WWL posts all the way back in May (Here) I talked about how planting in the biodegradable pots stunted the growth of my plants compared those taken out of the pots. I cleared out my garden box last weekend and found additional proof to support my theory.


Check out the difference in those roots!!

The tomato plant on the left was planted directly in the dirt and the tomato plant on the right in the biodegradable pot. How crazy is that?! Lesson learned. :)

Hello? Bueller?

Anybody home??

Yes we're still here and surviving, barely. Pretty much everything (renovations, blogging, cooking, sleeping) has been on hold for the past few weeks while I worked towards my dissertation and internship deadlines. I submitted a full draft of my dissertation on Monday at 2:15am and have submitted 7 out of 14 internship applications. So I was able come up for air long enough to say hi!

Micheal was able to make some progress on the kitchen while I was dissertating - we have FOUR cabinet doors hung now! :) Sadly I don't have many pictures to share, any of me would have been pretty scary since I have lived in sweats on the couch for two weeks.

So I will share kitties. :)


They love this chair!

We also have been going to estate sales for fun breaks on the weekends (I know, we're dorks) and have picked up a few cool items. Micheal's keen eye got us one item for $4 and when we got home and looked it up it was listed online for $275! Quite a deal! :)

We're ready to go back to kitchen reno this weekend so hopefully will have some pictures to share!