Angie Workman: January Finishmodeling

About me, Nora, and my loves...

I am Angie Workman.  I grew up on our family farm in rural Indiana.  I traveled 1500 miles to study elementary education at BYU after graduating from high school, and on the first week back for my sophomore year...to my dad's dismay, cupid struck my heart and I fell in love with this Provo native...so here I am!

Matt and I have been married for nearly 19 years and we live in Mapleton, Utah with our four sweet kiddios...Brian (13), Michael (10), Rachel (7) and Shea (4).

Before my name was mom, I was Mrs. Workman.  I taught school for five years in Jordan District, which is where I met Nora, along with fellow connectors Amy Webb and Kass Tomany, where we formed a great friendship in our Teacher Support Group (affectionately referred to by its members as TSG).  We spent many Thursday nights enjoying our favorite TV show "Friends" while taking turns cooking for one another.  We have been through thick and thin together--jouyous occassions and sorrowful moments--and while distance seems to have separated us, those wonderful memories still warm my heart, and I'm grateful we can have a yearly reunion, if only through Christmas cards.

I have always loved to play sports of all sorts...softball, volleyball, basketball and tennis were my favorites through high school.  Now I really love to run, Zumba and spin.  I love to create with paper--scrapbooks and homemade cards--but time doesn't really seem to allow much of it anymore.  I am world famous for my dinner roll making skills and can easily whip out 20 dozen rolls in just a few hours.  I love outdoor activities with my family...camping, four-wheeling, hiking...and going back to my family farm for several weeks each summer.  My favorite spectator sport is NASCAR and look forward to seeing my favorite 48 team at the March race in Vegas each year.  I love chocolate--especially Magleby's chocolate cake--ooooh so decadent!

After I retired from teaching, I started to work in our construction business which we started in 1999.  I've mostly done the accounting/office managing up to now, but as I sign my baby up for kindergarten next year, my husband is anxious to move me into more responsibility within the organization to help relieve some of the pressure from him.  We love working together, and I am really looking forward to this next chapter in my life. 

The Project:  Finishmodeling

Our small construction company builds custom homes and does home renovations.  Just like the cobbler's kids are usually the last to get shoes...the contractor's house is the last to get any attention!  That's why I call my project "finishmodeling".  The way I see it, remodeling doesn't really apply because it has to be completed in the first place to "re" model.  

When we built our home, Matt decided he would build our bathroom vanities with all those woodworking tools he just *had* to buy.  We were going to save soooo much money building our own moldings and cabinets with them.  Well, it ended up costing almost twice as much and took 11 years longer than it should have!  Last January, I decided to hire a cabinetmaker to gitrdone.  But, as what happens when you've had 10 years to live in a place and notice some things you'd like to change, we decided to enlarge some moldings and add stains as well.  We got the new moldings up and had the painter come in and stain/lacquer them.  We hired the cabinetmaker to rebuild the upper cabinets and reshape the drawer fronts that had already been built...which also led to rebuilding the lower doors.  

I decided I would go ahead and take care of getting the glass in the cabinet doors and finish caulking in the baseboards.  Yeah.  In all my free time.  So there my bathroom sat for seven months...ALMOST there...but not quite.

So yay for Nora to encourage me to set these goals!  Every time I think I'll put it off, that little Nora voice in my head says, "Now Angie..." and I just do it!  It's just one of Nora's many super powers.  I bought the supplies early in the month, but thanks to it being tax and insurance audit season...there they sat on my shelf...staring me in the face...every time I looked in the mirror!

And as usual, I thought all I would need was a couple of hours and have it knocked out...ha...ha...ha...oh, how I amuse myself.

The first picture shows what I've been looking at for the last year, all around my bathroom--those unsightly gaps between the molding and the wall.  You can also see the stain that bled through onto the tile when they were stained.

I started by placing the frog tape in the appropriate places on all my cabinets and moldings...which is a total nuisance when you have to work around crown molding.  Thank goodness for my handy dandy putty knife to push it into all the crooks and crannies.  And if you have never heard of frog tape--it is the best invention since sliced bread if you have any sort of painting projects.  It has a special additive that forms a barrier on the edges when it gets wet, which helps prevent paint from going underneath to help give you sharper lines.  Sure wish that stuff had been around when I had to paint my house 12 years ago!

The next step was the caulking.  Yes, it is very cumbersome and I hate the feel of raw caulk fingers when I'm done.  Because my moldings are brown and my paint is an earthtone, I went with an almond caulk.  It doesn't leave you with those contrasting white caulk lines peaking at you when you don't get the caulk thinned down quite enough.

For my final step, I took some of my wall color and used a craft paint brush to go over the caulk lines.  If you were doing everything in the right order, you wouldn't have to go back over it like that, but since I painted the walls five years ago...I get to do extra work.  

When I removed the tape, I was so pleased with the straight lines!

Before I started on the painting portion of my project, I took my upper cabinet doors to the glass shop and selected spectrum seedy...we've kind of gone with classic farm-house style in our home.  And I did not pass on the extra $2 charge to install the glass for me--otherwise it may still be leaning against the wall waiting for the hubs to get around to it!  When they were done, brought them home and popped them back on the hinges.

The other portion of this month's goal was to remove the stain that had gotten on my tile and window frame when the painter had stained the moldings.  I was on a magic carpet ride from that lacquer thinner, but it is amazing how such a minor detail can make such a huge difference!  Oh, and that painter's tape that stuck to the wall out of reach when I pulled all the masking down a year ago...it finally went too!

I kind of jumped ahead to my March project a little bit, but once everything was done, I gave it a huge deep cleaning...wiped down every surface, steam cleaned the tile, removed the layer of lacquer dust that coated the light fixture, and dejunked all my drawers and cabinets.  Hauled 3 bags of garbage and 1 bag of donation items out--so liberating to declutter those 4 year old construction magazines from the back of the toilet!  Had these cute helpers working along side me, so it went faster...

And voila!  The finished project...

As I look back, the only problem I encountered with this project is I had to go to the paint store to purchase supplies, and came home with these...

...and the cycle continues to perpetuate itself...

February sneak peek:  Deep cleaning and dejunking of the second story...