Many of you know that Mike and I recently lost our kitten Vespa, whom became a part of our family. We were both devastated when he was diagnosed with FIP and it became apparent he wouldn't make it.

Although we were both in a pretty sad place for awhile, many people we talked to said the best way to get over a lost pet is to get another one. We knew this was what was best, but with the impending house purchase and the constant back and forth while we were working on the house we didn't think it was the right time.

After casually perusing Craigslist for kittens (something I'm not ashamed to say I did often), we came across a listing that broke our hearts. A girl who lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland had 3 cats and 6 kittens and was getting desperate. She went on to say that if she didn't find homes she would have to dump them at a farm she frequented. Now, I'm not sure if she really would have or not, but I didn't want to take that chance.

Mike and I drove up, saying out loud that if we didn't feel right we wouldn't take one of the kittens, but both secretly thinking that we were going to be kitten parents again. After hanging out with the cats and kittens, there was only one kitten that walked up to us and let us hold him without much fuss. We knew he was the one.

Benelli started out very skittish and even hid behind the furnace the first day we left him at home by himself. After a couple days of pure spoiling and love he came around. He effortlessly fit into our little family and is both a terror (when he wakes us up at 4:00 in the morning wanting to hang out) and a joy (when he cuddles up to your neck while watching tv). Though it's been hard with the long days we spend at the house, he doesn't seem to hold it against us!

Now for some excruciatingly cute pictures of our Mascot:



 

Mike and I are the perfect renovating pair. While he’s better at the heavy duty stuff, i.e. re-wiring the electric, building window seats, and drywalling, I’m better at the finishing touches like painting and decorating. This weekend I really shined! All day Friday and the weekend was spent with a paint brush fused to my right hand and a paint roller in the left, (although that’s somewhat of an exaggeration, at some points I really was in that position). While Mike and our (heaven-sent) friends have done a lot of the dirty work, my major contribution to this reno is the painting. Mike detests it, and lucky for him I love it! We haven’t completely finished, but I wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at the colors I chose.

Here is the Living Room color. It changes in the light and sometimes it looks beige but most of the time it is a soft green.



The Hallway and Stairs are in a soft gray. I wanted to lighten the space to make it feel bigger, but also wanted something that would set off the trim.



The Hallway goes into the Master Bedroom which I picked a calming blue.



I wanted the Guest Bedroom to be similar in tone and feel to the Master Bedroom, but with a more crisp feeling. I plan to use green and yellow accessories to accentuate the gray walls.


The Dining Room and Office both are the same Bungolow Beige SW7511 which I wasn't able to find a swatch for. But like the name says, it's beige, although there's about 77 different shades of beige, they're all the same, boring beige. I wanted the dining room to be clean and crisp and not too loud. I wanted the office to have a neutral background so that the papers and projects I make don't clash with the walls.

The overall palate is somewhat muted, but before I began, Mike capped my color selection to three colors! How anyone decorates a whole house with three colors is beyond me, but his fear was walking into each room and being assaulted with a new color and the rooms feeling detached from each other. Through many hours of deliberation I came up with five hoping that he would give his approval. Last night after finishing the Master Bedroom and Guest Bedroom he was standing in the hallway looking at each room back and forth and said "I know you don't want to hear this but, these rooms look like the same color." I'm not sure what he's talking about because they're completely different, but it let's me know I'm doing my job!

On second thought, maybe not. One of the problems with renovating a house old enough to be our grandparent, not to mention one that in its previous life was a rental, is what seems like an overall 3 inch layer of paint over everything. This isn’t so bad on the walls, hey, it sometimes smooths out the slight imperfections in the plaster. When it becomes unbearable is the trim. Although I’m not a historical perfectionist and need/want the natural wood trim, I would like my trim not to have bubbles/peels/scratches or an overall paint layer that is so thick it makes the trim details indistinguishable.

So what does any sane home renovator do, you ask? Definitely not strip it. But, no one ever said Mike and I were sane! After some help from friends, we tried every option out there. Highly caustic, smelly chemical stripper? Check. Low-odor organic stripper? Check. Heat gun? Check. The best option? A $10 sharp blade scrapper from Ace Hardware. At least for the trim that had paint (no primer) over high gloss, which was pretty much everywhere. I think this was the one time the previous homeowners less than inadequate painting worked in our favor. After it’s all said and done, I’m glad we did it. The new paint will look great on our freshly stripped trim.