For whatever reason, I’ve become suddenly very interested in the birds that visit our bird feeders. I even asked for (and received!) a bird-watching book for the lakehouse. So now I’m even more annoying with my “Well, look-e-there! It’s a whatchamacallit!”

Right now I have 6 bird feeders at the lake. And the birds go through them very quickly. (With the help of a squirrel every once in a while… even though I have 2 squirrel feeders as well) But it’s neat to watch the birds that stop in. Here are a couple of my favorites:

This little guy is a Nuthatcher and is neat b/c he hops down the tree (like he is in the picture) but they can pick up their heads and look at you from that position. (A unique trait among birds, so says my Kentucky Bird Watching Book).

This guy is a woodpecker. And it surprises me how big he is. He looks funny hanging off the side of the bird feeders!

Here is one of the MANY cardinals that visit. He looks fat and sassy doesn’t he?

This past weekend, we (and by WE, I mean Mr.C and LakeHusband and LakeNeighbor) started tiling the shower in the master bathroom. You have no idea how happy I was that all my colors (the tile, accent tile, and wall color) came together. I think even MrC was surprised.

Nothing’s sexier than a man with a calculator! ;) 

 You can see the color on the wall. I think it’s called cold slate or something like that. It’s a gray-green color.

To compare, this is what the old shower looked like when we bought the house:

Complete with mold growing on the ceiling. There was also uncleanable black gunk all around the shower door.

Oh- and the rotting plywood right at the base of the shower:

Not to mention the STRIPES that were everywhere. Red and Green in fact. It actually took THREE coats of HIGH-HIDING primer to cover the stripes. Crazy.

I can’t wait to be done with it and have a fabulous master bathroom!!

For those who don’t know, I love watching HGTV. This is especially true when I’m travelling for work.

I got this idea off of a show on HGTV (I can’t recall which one, but they’re all good so it could’ve been any of them). I was a little skeptical at first, but with the money it had the potential to save, I was all over it.  (And I think Mr. C was excited that this little HGTV idea didn’t involve him!)

To start with, we had this ceiling fan:

in the lake house. It looks to be a fairly new ceiling fan. BUT- It’s gold. And I’m really not into the gold. BUT- ceiling fans are expensive (or more than what I wanted to spend).

So, with the help of my sister (And with Mr. C’s help getting the fan down) we went to work taping up the parts that we didn’t want to get painted. (We used duct tape and masking tape)

You can see here where we taped the wires and the socket that the light bulbs screw into.

Here you can see that we taped around the motor since we didn’t want it to get painted. (Also the end of the ‘pulls’)

Then you add one can of spray paint (Yes! Spray paint! When I first saw it on HGTV, I was very skeptical!)

For us it was Rustoleum, purchased at Lowe’s for under $5.00. (Silver metallic)

We painted, let it dry, put the fan back together and wa-lah:

It’s now a silver fan! (Changing the fan blades was easy, we just had to flip them over)

I was surprised at how easy it was, really. But, a couple of things to remember:

1.) When spray painting, to get a smooth coat, start and finish off of the object.

2.) Give the paint 24 hours to dry before touching it. I read the can wrong and flipped all the bits and pieces over after a couple of hours and put fingerprints on them. (We needed to paint the other side)

3.) Keeping all the screws seperate and writing what area they go in would’ve saved us a good thirty minutes.

4.) Don’t forget to spray paint the nuts and bolts too, since you’ll be able to see at least some of them.

This is a great way to change the look of your fixtures without spending too much money! Let me know if you try it!

I don’t think I’ve had a picture on here of Barney, our EE (Easter Egger- he carries the blue-egg laying gene) rooster. Him and Fred (our Golden-Laced Wyandotte rooster) get along pretty well for the most part. They’ll often roost side-by-side at night, and only square off every once in a while. He also doesn’t try to attack people like Fred does. (Fred doesn’t attack me b/c he knows that I’m the alpha in the pack!)

He’s a pretty big boy, but he’s not as hard on the ladies as Fred is. I’ve considered sending Fred to the stew pot (Not mine! But I’m sure someone would take him) but I’m sure that Barney would then be more aggressive in trying to assert his alpha-ness.

I caught these two talking on the job:

“…and you know what he said? Nothing!! Like sharing him with 17 other hens is acceptable!”

This past Sunday we went to the lake house to do some more work. We had originally decided not to remove the strips that covered the gap between the drywall. Then we decided that we might as well do it now, b/c painting this room again- even in 15 years- was NOT going to happen.

So, we took off the strips AND the moulding. (molding?) You can see below- all the white spots show were moulding or the strips were.

You can also see my trusty painting stool that I’ve about fell off 10 times.

So, after we took off all the unwanted materials (we plan on buying new crown molding, but the molding around the doors and window we kept so we can repaint it) I went through and hammered in all the little nails. It took a while, but sometimes you just need to swing a hammer, ya know?

This is a close-up of the gap between the drywall. Mr. C will fill in the holes, sand it down and we’ll paint. AGAIN. You can see one of the many, many nails that I hammered in too.

I am really happy with the color, even though it still needs at least one more coat (it was a little bare in spots!). In my head, I see a brown coverlet with a white duvet cover on the bed with brown pillows. The trim will be white (or maybe cream?) colored. The curtains will probably be white, but maybe a light brown. There’s still lots to do before we start putting the room together though!

The last picture is one of the lake. They lowered it and they weren’t kidding when they say it gets reduced to a small river in the middle. You can barely see the little river from our deck. Crazy.

With the leaves down, we have a great view of (what used to be) the lake!

Go HERE to see the previous remodel work done at the Lakehouse.

 So a couple weeks ago, Mr. C and I painted. For the first time. For both of us. Painting is NOT as much fun as HGTV makes it look. (But don’t worry HGTV- I still love you!) So we painted primer in Bedroom #2. We got the primer from Wal-Mart. We also bought some plastic to lay down on the floor. You know- in case things got messy.

It was hard to get a pic of the previous color of the walls, but it was sort of a light cream/gray that just made the walls look dirty. (see below)

After we put the first coat of primer on, I was really starting to worry. The paint was looking VERY uneven. After we put on a second coat, it started to blend in together.

This past weekend, we put our first coat of color on the walls. It doesn’t look too hot. We only put one coat on, but we used rollers on the walls and a paint brush on the corners and around the trim and you get tell. Really badly. So we’re hoping a second coat of paint will smooth things out. Man I hope so!

One thing I did find helpful is to put tape down on the carpet around the walls. So when I’m painting the bottoms of the walls, I don’t have to worry about keeping the plastic out of the way of the paint.

The same weekend we painted with primer, Mr. C tore out the shower.

It looked like this before:

This was how it looked mid-demolotion:

And finally, the shower was out:

Even though we haven’t started working on the Guest Bathroom, I’ve been ‘theme searching’ for a while. A local home store had a lighting sale so I found a light fixture that wasn’t overly expensive and looked neat.

Old lighting:

Boring.

And we (and by WE, I mean Mr. C) replaced it with this:

Ignore the stripes, eventually they will be painted over. Eventually. Hopefully when our painting skills improve.

That’s the excitement so far. Did I mention painting is horrible? Or that we’re really bad at it? Feel free to offer advice or opinions. Whew.

If you’re new to my blog, Mr. C and I bought a lake house in Kentucky (we live in Indiana) back in July. Go HERE to see pictures of the outside of the house. Go HERE to see my beginning thoughts on interior decorating.

Mr. C and I semi-started our master bath remodel at the lake this weekend. I hesitate to use remodel, b/c to me remodel means replacing everything when our plan is to only: remove carpet (yes there is carpet in the bathroom- ACK!), lay tile down, take out the old shower, put in new shower, and paint.

As Mr. C thought, the plywood by the shower was rotted from water seeping through the carpet. Not good:

Nothin’ like rotted plywood to make you smile.

You can see the gross-ness of the shower too. There isn’t enough cleaner to get that shower sparkly and new again, which is why we want to replace it.

Here’s another picture of the shower:

The ceiling above the shower has moldy spots, and I’m sure the plywood underneath the shower is rotted too.

But, in case you thought that yanking the shower out was gonna be easy, the shower’s shortest side is 34″. The doorways to get out (there are 4 to get the shower out of the house) is 29″. Apparently when building a manufactured house, you build the shower AROUND the house. Ah yes.

Now let’s take a tour of the rest of the bathroom:

The Toilet: (notice the green and red striping… that’s EVERYWHERE)

The Right-Hand sink with the tall cabinet in the corner:

The full view of the double sinks: (complete with silver towel bar, silver lighting, and gold cabinet hardware)

The tub: (which is actually quite nice)

And the bathroom from the entryway door:

My idea is to make the bathroom spa-like so that when we go down to the lake (our weekend retreat), I can take nice, long, relaxing baths.

And finally, one last picture of Jolee who was barely keeping her eyes open watching all the work:

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