You Win Some, You Lose Some

Before I get in to our weekend's activities, I thought I'd share my ridiculous laundry mat experience bright and early Monday morning.  Over the past four months or so, since I've started going to the 24 hour laundry mat (after Ryan pretty much peer pressured me into it),  I've learned that apparently, the laundry mat is not only for doing laundry, it is also a market place of sorts. From socks to underwear to candy, I'm never quite sure what these entrepreneurial men will take out of their large black trash bag and try to sell to my fellow laundry mat goers. Usually, I'm not that surprised by what they have to offer and I often see ladies purchasing these items (although I should note that if you want to go in to this business, candy seems to be the most lucrative especially since the laundry mat also appears to be a playground of sorts), but Monday was a first when I saw a man walking around the laundry mat selling raw steaks.... and no, he didn't have a cooler if you were wondering. Oh, laundry mat, you sure do spice up an ordinary President's day. And no, that wasn't the win I was referring to ;)

This weekend our back room came a long way. Ryan started cementing down the rocks in the bathroom and learned that placing each rock isn't much worse than creating the tile sheets. I'd call that a partial loss and a partial win.

Placing the rocks

All placed in the bathroom

The prize winner of the weekend was my stripes. I'm still amazed that I actually made straight lines.... Here's a quick tutorial of how it went down after a few lessons via the Internet.

Wall after I had painted it white and before I started on the stripes.

I measured the wall, decided on my width of stripes, and used a leveler to draw my lines.

I put up my tape making sure to tape on the outside of where the beige stripes would go.

I sealed the tape with the white paint and let it dry.

On to the stripes! I used a semi gloss paint to give it a sheen.

Peeling off the tape before it drys.

Finished product!!!

I'm pretty much obsessed. I find myself making excuses to go in to the back room to see them, stare and pet them. Ryan may or may not have called out my ridiculousness considering he doesn't do that with the ENTIRE kitchen ;) I couldn't do the back hallway yet because we need to get our new door in (which my fantastic brother in law ordered for us) but we're on our way.

Another win, was that Ryan finished our transition and it looks pretty darn good.

Less of a win and more of housekeeping was that Ryan cleaned up the wires for the dishwasher, secured it and put in a transition piece between it and the cabinet.

Putting in the transition

Done!

We had a bunch of wins this weekend but our big loss came with the bathroom light that I had ordered a few weeks ago. First off, it was a NIGHTMARE to put up. It took up a good thirty minutes and once it was up, we were both kind of like eh, I want to like it but it's just too big.

Oh well, you can't win them all, right? But, of course, I won't leave you on a loss because we had one more win this weekend and that was when Ryan began to grout the laundry room. I pretty much picked the grout color just off of the fact that I didn't want it to look like it should be white when in reality I wanted it to be grey (and show less dirt). So, I told Ryan what I was thinking and he just came back with a color (that's terrifying if you know Ryan's color blind self) and it's pretty darn perfect if you ask me. 

It's still a little wet here so it did get a little lighter this morning but I would definitely call this a win. 

So, that's the story of our wins and losses of the weekend. Now if only I could find a new light for the bathroom....