It was a busy weekend of home improvements. It began with building Brian a coffee cart Friday night. I decided to order this on Christmas Day because Brian got a coffee grinder for Christmas and his coffee pot is big and there were too many appliances cluttering the counter. It’s clutter since I don’t personally drink coffee, but I know Brian enjoys his morning coffee. So with lots of measuring the area we had free on one wall and scrolling through different coffee carts on Wayfair and Overstock, I settled on this one at Wayfair since it was super affordable and the dimensions seemed perfect. Honestly it fits really nice in the area and while the wood color doesn’t really go with the grey and white in the kitchen, it actually matches our hardware floors nicely and it adds extra storage for things in the kitchen so it works. I am still playing around with what to store on the shelves, but I brought the food processor up from the basement to store on the bottom shelf and just had an extra case of La Croix sitting on the kitchen floor. I moved the toaster to the shelf and Brian’s new meat grinder I got him for Christmas. I got a cute little basket at HomeGoods on Sunday and it’s the perfect size for holding all the meat grinder parts.
Since Christmas and New Year’s were so low key this year, I decided to tackle painting the bedroom doors and bathroom door white so that everything matched with the trim I painted last year and the 1 white door Brian painted a while ago. When we moved into our house, the bathroom and kitchen were recently remodeled with white trim so we wanted to update everything to white trim for a nice flow. Well after 2.5 years of living here, I finally got some more paint and learned to sand the doors and paint them. Since one door was already white, I had 3 doors left. I painted one over Christmas weekend and then did the second over New Year’s. That left one more for this weekend, which was perfect before I get back to school classes.
Saturday morning, we took off the bathroom door. So, yes, we had no bathroom door for the weekend. I had a busy morning between running to the grocery store and taking a Zumba class via zoom at 11am. Then I had the idea to make minestrone soup at home so I had that for lunch and finally got to sanding and painting the first coat. I would say it took me a bit over an hour to sand both sides and get the first coat of paint on which isn’t bad.
I let it dry for a few hours while I chatted with my sister and then decided to make an almond flour chocolate cake. Erin shared this recipe last week and it seemed simple as I had most of the ingredients on hand already and I knew Brian would like the almond flour base of it. I started making the cake around 4pm and by 5:30, I was frosting it. Overall, not too bad and kept me busy until dinner.
After eating some dinner, it was time to try the cake. It did not disappoint. Brian loved it and said we had a winner. I need to improve my frosting skills, but otherwise, great cake and you can’t even tell the base is almond flour. I also will say, the cake keeps you more full and content versus regular cake. Usually all the sugar and carbs make you want to go back for more, but since this cake has almond flour and so many eggs, I actually felt satisfied with it. I will definitely be making again since it was easy to make and so tasty.
In the evening Saturday I put another coat of paint on the door. It does best with 2 coats. Then I let it dry overnight before flipping it over to paint the other side Sunday.
It will dry Sunday night and then be ready to put up today and we will finally have all white doors and trim in the hallway which is super exciting. It’s great to see projects come together. I will never claim to be a professional painter or even sander, but I think I did a decent job for my first time. It also reminds me that just a simple change like adding a coffee cart or painting a door, can make a big difference.
Did you tackle any projects over Christmas or New Year’s?
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Great job on the doors! I’m glad you enjoyed finishing a project. You already know what our projects were over Christmas and New Year’s.
Love,
Mom