Valentine's Day and Exposing Bricks

My Valentine's Day surprise this year was four days at home! Charlotte had a huge snow storm that started Wednesday morning so I was allowed to fly home a day early. I was one of the last flights to leave Charlotte and came home to another big storm in Philadelphia.

10 inches in Philadelphia!

Both Andrew and Dan stayed at home with me Thursday since the roads were bad so we were all at home, attempting to work. After a quiet morning, the boys got cabin fever and decided to expose our brick wall.

It created a huge mess but it was a good start to see how much work we were up against. The brick is covered in a thick layer of cement, so the boys had to chisel away at the cement inch by inch. We had friends planning to be at our house on Saturday morning so I cut off the brick exposing pretty early.

Day 1, approximately 1 hour of work

On Friday the weather warmed up and Andrew was off to work, so I had the day at home to prep for Valentine's Day. Since we have so many house projects going on, we decided no gifts, just a quiet night at home. I decided to surprise Andrew with cake balls, using a recipe given to me by a friend on my project. I made a box cake (don't judge) and put it in a bowl to destroy. In order to get the cake sticky to take on the ball form, I put a few spoonfuls of icing and mixed up with my hands.

Next, I melted some chocolate to put it on the end of the sticks, stuck them in each ball, and put them in the freezer to take form.

After 20 minutes in the freezer, you are supposed to melt the chocolate and dip each ball in it to coat it. Disaster. I was covered in cake, the balls kept falling in the chocolate and I couldn't get them out. Ugliest.cake balls. ever. Oh well, they still tasted good :)

Dinner was so much better. I found a recipe for pizza on Pinterest, which was so tasty. It was also really fun to do together, we were both pleasantly surprised.

 

Tasty pizza!

Saturday morning we were up early to get ready for our very best friends, Carly and Mike, to visit Philly! Sadly, we got a phone call that the turnpike was a disaster and they couldn't come. I was heartbroken but would rather have Carly around forever than risk the snowy roads. So, we decided to demolish the rest of the living room wall and expose the brick.

Making moves

We spent about three hours chipping away at the cement, which made the room a complete dust-filled mess. Although tedious, it was a strangely satisfying day of work.

Cutting down the dry wall

Day 2 stopping point

We were hooked. The new wall already made a big difference and gave us about six inches of space, which will be great when we get our new couch in a few weeks. We woke up early Sunday morning and were ready for a few more hours of work (our poor neighbors). We got a little smarter and covered all our furniture with old bed sheets to help with the dust.

We set a three hour time limit for ourselves and got to work!

We ended up spending about five hours on the wall, covering ourselves and the house in dust. When the chair I was standing on broke underneath me, I was ready to call it a day.

This has definitely been our favorite project and the best part is that it's free! We were in awe at the difference it makes in our living room.

Since it makes such a mess, we will hold off on doing any more work until next Saturday. Next weekend we will remove the rest of the cement and then figure out how to finish it! Can't wait!