Having fun removing wallpaper

I can't believe we have been living in our house almost a year! We have been working on the house since we moved in and even though we have tons of project to do, I am happy with the results we have and little by little the house is looking like our home. 

When we moved in the house was dark and filled with ugly and dark wallpaper. I think it's safe to say the previous owner like the color green. The living room was green, the kitchen cabinets were green and the ceiling had stenciled green flowers on it (it looked cute, but not my style) and the bathroom still have some sort of greenish gray tile floor with green accent tile on the wall. So, green EVERYWHERE. 

I am not going to lie, removing wallpaper SUCK, but I couldn't live with it so I decided to read some information on how to remove wallpaper online. Then, I took a trip to Home Depot the same day we close on our house and bought this Zinsser Ultra concentrate wallpaper stripper. I love this little bottle because it work like magic and you just need to mix it with water and it last forever. I don't think I use half of the bottle for this whole room. I pour the mix into this sprayer and soak up the area well. If you think you sprayed enough to the wall, think twice, you will need to spray a couple of times between the process. I recommend before you start spraying make some whole in the wallpaper with the Zinsser single head papertiger tool. And a wall scraper helps to remove the paper easily.

Now, here is the thing, I didn't know anything about removing wallpaper, but I learned while doing it. So, if you are planning on removing wallpaper soon, don't get scare, you can do it. Just make sure you go over with the "papertiger" tool many time as your hand allows you to go. You need to make sure you are making enough holes for the mix to go in there and soak the paper. After you are done removing it, you will need to sand it down with a pole sander because it will be yucky and you don't want to paint over that.

Things you will need:

1. Zinsser Ultra Concentrate Striper here
2. Sprayer here
3. Zinsser papertigerhere
4. Wall scraper here
5. Pole sander here

Let me know if you know any other tips on how to remove wallpaper!
Thanks for reading!

Carolina

Painting the exterior of the house

If i ever knew how hard it's to paint the exterior of a house. I think I would have prepared myself a little better for this task, especially on a day where the temperature reached the 90's! Although, I enjoyed picking the main color and the color for the shutters. We used around 6 gallons of paint for a  is 1300 sq ft old cute cape.

Here is Hubby scraping and our Realtor painting ( He came for a couple of hours to help us out!)

If you notice the top left side shows the condition of the old paint. 

I see progress!

The back of the house almost done!

My mother in law holding the ladder for my father in law while he was painting the top side of the house and Camila having a snack, she had a busy day.

I am so grateful for all the family and friends help during that crazy weekend. The VA required us to have the house painted with two coats within three days. So, we bought the exterior Marquee paint at Home Depot and it worked wonderful. We only paint one coat and the inspector approved it! 

We used Behr Gray area as the main color and for the trims we used Mountain Peak White from Benjamin Moore.

And, they connected the sewer to the city hence the dirt on the front yard. Yes, We have a ton of work to do in the yard.

  

After hours of signing papers, we finally closed and we went to eat sushi to celebrate. The waiter was nice enough to shot a pic of us holding our house key!

After we closed on the house, I removed the wallpaper in the living room and I am almost done with that room. I will post about it later.

Thanks for reading!

Carolina

New House

It's been a while since I posted in here. Busy life gets in the way between work, family, school classes and searching for a house it's kind of difficult to have spare time to write. We have been looking for a house since October, 2012. We would jump in the car and go to one, two or thee appointments to see houses. Some weekends we visited between five and seven houses, some days were crazy! After several months of searching without any luck, (we were about to put our search on the side right before we saw this house) we talked to our Realtor and made an appointment to go to an Open House. We saw the house on the list of the email we received every day. The house did not have any pictures of the inside but the outside seemed cute and I love the yard immediately even though we did not have any idea of the condition of the house on the inside (this is a scary feeling from houses we had seen before). I don't remember the reason why but we could not make it on time to see the house that day and to be honest, I was done looking at houses and I didn't want to reschedule the appointment. Here is where our Realtor comes in  like a Super Hero to rescue us from the "I am tired to see houses" stage. he suggested to reschedule it for another day. Well, we said yes and we went to see the house the next day.  Behind the wallpaper and a dated kitchen, we saw a house with lots of POTENTIAL that will fits our needs after some work and love. 

This was the original picture listed online.

I took this picture and the one below after they accepted our offer.

We have not close on the house yet. As of today, the bank still waiting on one more document: the appraisal report. We think we will have a closing date after that paper arrives to the bank. 

The house looks naked, it needs some serious work in the front yard, some plants and nice flowers as well.  I think I will becoming an expert in gardening! Also, we are going to install our own kitchen cabinets, get a new counter top, change the flooring, take off the wall paper in the living room, and paint the bedrooms. I will post pictures of the cabinets and counter top we chose because I need some advice choosing the color for the kitchen.

A trip to the Farm

Last weekend, while my husband was working, I decided to call my mom and asked her to do some research on places we could go. She found out this little farm twenty minutes away from my house called Brooksby Farm. We packed some snacks and mom, stepdad, sister and Camila drove to our destination.

This little guy welcomed us to this little he seemed very serious, but he just tried to scare us!

She was observing the animals with Grandpa.

They have different chickens, rosters, and other tropical birds. We bought little cups with food for them, she was  fascinated feeding them their food through the hole. And she made a new friend!

We did not bring any veggies for the other animals, so we grabbed some plants from the ground!

She was saying oink-oink to the pig and he was saying "oink-oink" back to her :-)

She had a blast chasing the animals around and we definitely are coming back for apple picking!

Having fun in the swing

We have been very lucky with the warm weather in Boston lately. Today was 75 degrees! What a great day to go to the park and get some fresh air. As soon as I say let's go, Camila gets her jacket and waits for me in front of the door. She loves to be outside. Oh, and shopping too :)

Mom, we should do this everyday!!!!

Wait, Are those kids running? I need to figure out how to get out of here!!

I better be nice to mommy....... PLEEEAAAASEE???

A very young vet

It is amazing how Camila loves dogs so much. This is my mom's dog, Boby. He is very patient with her, which is very important since she is all over him. She gives him hugs and kisses, sometimes way too many hugs that make him run away from her. Also, she knows it is very important to check his tags and to make sure his rabies and all vaccines are up to date before they can play :)

A trip to Connecticut

Camila and I packed our bags and headed down to CT to visit my friend from childhood, Ana. We stayed over her house and visited a couple of consignment stores and they had such a great deals! I bought a lot of Summer outfits for Cami and the prices and the quality are not bad at all at Once upon a child!! After a busy day shopping, we stopped at Cora Cora, a Peruvian Restaurant close to Hartford and of course I have to say the food was delicious and Camila tried for the first time Chicha, a Peruvian drink made from purple corn (yes, we do have purple corn!) She didn't get that side from daddy, she definitely got that from me. After, lunch we went back to MA. Thanks for having us Tia Ana!