he called me Tom Sawyer

My father-in-law called me Tom Sawyer on facebook this week.

If you are not familiar with the story of Tom Sawyer…basically Tom is a character that uses all kinds of methods to get out of things – mainly work.

After letting Amanda work on tiling my backsplash, I ‘let’ the boys seal the grout. Amanda didn’t need much convincing. The boys, well, I offered extra video game time to anyone that sealed grout for me. My father-in-law might call it Tom Sawyer-ing, I call it genius delegation.

Seriously though, my kids can seal grout and I didn’t have to go back to ‘fix’ their helpful work. I can see all kinds of ways this is going to work out quite well for me….genuinely helpful work that can be hired for some extra video game time. And my dad works for coffee…and hanging out with me 😉 Jackpot.

This started as a project to fixed cabinets that the kids broke climbing on them like ladders and refinish the butcher block counters that I didn’t take care of – at all. Then, there was the painted texture wall back splash that always had food splatters all over it that I couldn’t wait to cover in easy to clean tile.

This heavily used room is getting a facelift…a clean, white, durable for a family of 7 facelift. I’m adding things that make me think of friends…a green cabinet from Amanda and a mug rack from Restore House. There is a lot to be done. I suppose the only upside for cold weather (for me) is all the extra time inside means I’ll finish up this project a bit sooner!