redo: hallway

Did I ever show pictures of the hallway we repainted? It is a small hallway so I wanted to go big and fun. I still think I may do something on the top of the wall but that will have to wait until spring.

Before:




After:

This view is the same as above. We took the door off. The frame is from Goodwill and I painted some scrap wood with chalkboard paint to put inside.








Now I want to find another room to paint stripes in.

what my daughter made me...

I needed something for my mantle and I like fresh flowers but wow, can that get expensive. My 14 year old taught herself origami flower making so I commissioned her to make me a vase full.

They are lovely and go perfectly with my new old mirror that I will show soon.

(the rocks in the picture were put there by 6 year old Ellie. She really wants them somewhere).

furniture feature friday

I love this feature at Miss Mustard Seed's blog. I've recently just found her blog and have spent hours looking through posts. Such inspiration!

I entered my chandelier redo on her feature page. Be sure to check out the other creative projects!

redo: kitchen

Before our 6th child, Molly, was born we did a quick redo of our kitchen. Here are the posts: "Kitchen". We painted the cabinets, replaced hardware, sink and fixtures. We never finished putting up moulding or painting the existing moulding.

So last Saturday we finally put the finishing touches. I repainted the faux brick to a sea green/blue color, repainted the paneled walls a cream color, we put up and painted all the moulding as well as repainted the ceiling a bright semi gloss white. The kitchen looks so much better now. This is a temporary fix until we can tear the kitchen out and do a proper renovation.

So before:


You can see our crazy floor that I love but I'm convinced the next home owners will rip it out. After:










I found this paint by number bird a few years ago. I picked the wall color without even thinking about this painting and it matches. I really like this color. (proof here: schoolroom)



So overall I'm happy with the way it turned out. I can certainly live with it for a year or two until we save up enough money to redo the kitchen. Next up for the blog: my living room redo and my amazing hallway redo.

redo: kids room

Remember this?. This was my office/sewing room before. We decided to turn it into Grae and Molly's room. It has a disgusting carpet, no light fixture and a door that didn't open without brute force.

Here is the now. This is right when you walk in.


This is standing by their beds. Notice the dresser. Brian built a wardrobe on top because there is no closet in the room.


This is Molly's side.


And my first quilt. I even free motion quilted it (my first time!).


Graedon's side:


Grae's robot/rocket ship quilt I made.


I took those cheapy crates from Joann's and painted them school bus yellow. We used the curtain wire from Ikea to hang his pictures. The superhero pictures are the fronts of comic books.


We replaced the door with this fiberglass door. You can't see but the upper half of the door is windows (hence the amazing light pouring in).


And finally, here is the view from the backdoor. The pictures Ava made.


I'm very pleased out how the room turned out. It was hard designing something for both a girl and boy but they both love it.

I'll show you some pictures of our cheap kitchen redo as well as the new living room design in a few days.

bikes

So this has been a great summer of firsts for us. I took all 6 kids for a week of camping all by myself. Ava had 13 horse back riding lessons. Ellie lost her first teeth and Lauren had braces put on hers. The older girls are taking piano lessons, will learn to swim in a few weeks and they taught themselves to ride bikes.



Up until 3 years ago, we lived in apartments. There was nowhere to ride or store bikes so the girls never learned how to ride. A great friend gave us a bike and in the course of one weekend, they were off and riding just fine. We took them to our Goodwill Outlet store and found 3 almost brand new bikes; one for Lauren, one for Maddie and one for Ellie. Ava kept the gifted bike.



We were just about to buy Ellie training wheels when she surprised us by riding all by herself. They are having a ball and we go nightly to the school behind our house and ride, ride, ride. Grae and Molly spend the time playing on the playground.



This has been a very busy and expensive summer, and fall is shaping up to be the same way. We'll replace horse riding lessons with girls choir and bike riding with tearing up the upstairs. We're crazy.

Oh and our house appraisal went through fine. We needed to get $220,000 and the appraiser valued our house at $259,000. Wow! We bought the house for $185,000 three years ago so we were happy! This house has a lot of our blood, sweat and tears in it and we love it.

I finished Grae and Molly's quilts and I will show them later. Love picking fabrics for the quilts - sewing them, not so much. I found it boring sewing straight lines but the free motion quilting was fun. I made many errors but you can't tell without really staring at it so that's good! Well, off to sew diapers.

dresser before & after

Here are some not so good pictures of the dresser. Once I get our bedroom painted, I'll take some pictures of it in action.

Before:


After:






I really, really, really love it and it makes me happy to work on labels everyday. I feel so organized.

nothing

Well I'm supposed to be waking Molly up from her nap, or cutting diaper doublers out, or hanging clothes on the line but here I am blogging. I wonder what excuses the pioneer women used for not doing chores? Or did they always do their work? Oh well.


This isn't done yet. I need to get some tie backs for the curtains, touch up the paint and finish putting knobs on the hanger.


Sneak peek at our new door.

We are super close to finishing Grae & Molly's bedroom. I'm just decorating it now. It looks so different then before. Much better. We are in the process of refinancing our house and have an appraiser coming sometime. So that means rushing around fixing things so that he appraises it high. We need to prove we have 20% equity in our home so we can drop PMI and lower our interest rate from 6% to 5%. This will result in a $350 savings each month. Can you believe it? We can make our payments now but how great will it be to have some extra money every month. It's going right into savings to help build our 6 month emergency fund.

We are in the process of canning anything we can find. So far we have canned blueberry jam and we're getting ready to can peaches (I hope). We didn't plant enough beans to can those but maybe we can find somewhere to pick. Then on to applesauce, pickles and whatever else we find. Our garden is doing great and we're just about ready to pick and eat our grapes. They are so good off the vine.

So that is an update. Not much but I really do need to go wake up Molly so she isn't up until midnight tonight. That wouldn't be fun.

dresser

So I don't know where the before picture is but here is the after picture. We picked this up at Goodwill Outlet for $15. It is a very solid, dovetailed drawers, vintage dresser. $15!!! I already had the mango paint from the mistint bin at Lowes for $2.00. The drawer pulls came with it and I just spray painted them red (that I already had around here too).

Imagine this dresser as a pale wood color with burn marks all over the top. Bad shape. Surprisingly the inside of the drawers look like they had never been used. Perfect shape.



This dresser looks great against the green walls in Grae and Molly's room. I love finding things and fixing them up.

remodel

We're working hard on Grae and Molly's room. So far we have the old trim off, the new ceiling and window trims on and of course the new green paint.

Here's before (when it was my office). Excuse the mess, we were moving stuff around. I loved the colors of blue and orange but the paint was in bad shape and I wanted a new color.




Notice the jolly roger on the door. We're replacing this door and I thought Grae would like that for now.






We painted the ceiling a smoke blue and painted the ceiling fan to match. The window air conditioner is only there through the summer. It gets so hot in that room.

Our new flooring came in so we will rip out the carpet and replace it with wood. Then we will do floor trim and then I can have fun with accessories!

bisky

See this tree. It is no longer there. While this tree provided great shade, it also dropped sugar ALL.OVER.EVERYTHING. Our neighbors weren't very fond of it and asked us every year when it was coming down. And see how it tips toward the neighbors house? They weren't to fond of that either.

So we hired Badger Tree Service to come and take 'er down. I was so hoping that some guy in an old beat up Datsun wouldn't show up with his rusty chainsaw and some rope. Nope, these guys were super professional and had their own truck. With their name on it!



These pictures were taken through a screened window in Lauren's room so they are not the best quality.



These guys were amazing to watch. They worked perfectly well together. It was like watching a chainsaw/chipper/brute force ballet.



Here's our favorite young guy: "Biscuit". At least that's what everyone was calling him. Or "Bisky" as Grae kept yelling out the window (as in "Good job Bisky.")



After one particularly brave and noble cut, which landed the branch perfectly on the ground without ruining anything, we all broke out in applause. We couldn't help it. Of course the window was open and the men could see 7 faces watching in admiration and hear the wild applause. I wonder what they thought of it.

Anyway, after only 2 hours, the tree was cut down and the whole yard cleaned up. Seriously, there are less leaves and junk then when they started. The company is coming back today to grind the stumps down. Graedon hopes Bisky will be there.

So now we need to get the area ready to plant a new, normal tree there. And when I see "we", I mean Brian of course.

makeover

Me: "Are you scared of this color?"
Brian: "Nope, I don't get scared anymore."

The above is the color I'm painting my new desk. We found it on Craigslist for $50.00. It does have all the drawers but I forgot to put them back in for the picture. The back room (which is currently my office) will be Grae and Molly's bedroom. So I have to move my stuff into our bedroom.



I love the rounded corner. It looks very 30's or 40's.


I have one coat of the green paint on and it looks like it will need at least 2 more. I skipped the primer coat and now am regretting it. Oh well. I need to find some funky drawer pulls and I may cover the drawer fronts with some fun paper. We'll see.

my dining room/sewing room

I don't think I ever showed my dining room/sewing room. I painted it peach,green,yellow and then settled on gray.

The frames were cherry colored but I like them lime. Matches the curtains which are made of Heather Bailey's Pop Garden (I need to get a picture of them.)





See how I hide my machines. So clever ;)

We have a new room we're redoing and I'm so excited. I'll be posting progress pictures soon.

my new table

I had this table sitting in the corner for a year now. It holds my laptop and it was UGLY. Since I've been on a decorating kick lately, I decided to paint it yesterday.

Before:


After a couple of coats of my favorite muted turquoise blue:


I adore it now. You can see the new curtains I'm making for the front windows in the back. I'll take pics when I'm done. I love them as well.

We did it!

Well we made it last week on $7.00 and we ate well. By Sunday night I had to get creative with the meal but it was still good. The best thing was we didn't use our credit card although it was tempting. I can't wait to get 6 mth emergency fund going and we will cut up the card!

More Graedon!

Grae fell down on his bottom the other day and I heard him say "Ouch, I hurt my feelings."

We were talking about tatoos and how one of my relatives has one. Grae didn't think this was a good idea and told me the God had a pressure washer and could wash it off. He has a thing for pressure washers ever since he saw Brian washing the house.

Molly is 14 mths old and is starting to say some words we can actually recognize! She says: Daddy, bye, cracker, snack, na-na (for nursing), ama (when she want's something), Mama, Ellie, Aba (Ava), Grae-Grae, baby, cheers (we touch cups together), nana (banana), gookie (cookie), Tin-Tin (for the book), Gah (God), ay-n (amen), mm-mm (food) and more I'm sure. I love this age!

We are over halfway done painting the house and it's only the weather that is stopping us. Either it's too hot to paint or raining. I can't wait until it's over.

Well, I'm off to make dinner now. My least favorite chore of the day. Maybe I can convince one of the girls to do it. We'll see.

Hey look what we're doing

the schoolroom

We cleaned up the schoolroom today so I could finally get pictures. Of course it doesn't look like this now. ;)

Here is the view from the stairs.


And from the otherside in the hallway.




And standing in front of the sliding glass door.


The chair I recovered in Michael Miller Dick and Jane fabric.


I love these curtains. I took yellow polka dot quilters fabric and bleached it to a mellow yellow and then used the back side to further mellow it out.


The kitchen that Brian built for Ellie and Grae. Molly plays with it everyday.


View going up the stairs. This is the kids gallery. It's just clipboards that we covered with decorative paper.


And there you go.

$1 to buy my love

Remember this?


I never liked it. I had been searching for a replacement but hadn't found anything I really loved, well not any that didn't cost over $400.

When we go to Lowe's or Home Depot we always look in the paint department for "mistint" paints. A lot of times they have some colors we like for a couple of dollars. Brian found a small pot of a vibrant turquoise blue for $1.00 and bought it. At the time, I had no idea what we would use it for. Then inspiration hit. I decided to paint the chandelier. (well Brian actually painted it but still...)

After it was painted, I took the lamp shades off and added vintage crystals. These came off of the chandelier that was here when we moved in. The one that was being held together by twist ties.

I really, really love it now. It especially looks good against the gray I painted on the walls.

A quiet and loving place...

Okay - I'm not sure about the quiet part (I mean I do have my 6 kids here all day homeschooling, baking and generally playing) but I endeavor to make my house feel loving and comfortable. I want guests to feel right at home when they walk in. Feel free to kick your feet up and don't worry about breaking anything.

I'm not perfectly happy with my decorating skills but I am happy when I go into my living room, dining room, bathroom and school room. They seem to reflect my personality.


Here's looking from the front door. The dining room & kitchen is directly to your left when you walk in and the living room to the right.


My slipcovered red couch which I LOVE. My "desk/table" is in the corner in front of the windows.


I still want to get a round table for right beside that blue chair (in front of the fireplace). I also can't think of how to decorate the mantle. It needs something.

Tomorrow I'll show you what we did with the chandelier that I never liked. I LOVE it now and it only cost $1.00 to make it so.

a bit of painting...

We took this (bought off Craigslist over 1 year ago):


And did this with it:

Brian built the top shelf to put our vcr and dvd players in.


I made a skirty thing out of a vintage pillowcase I found at Goodwill.


The blue goes perfectly with the yellow walls and my wonderful curtains. (ignore the ugly plugs, they will be gone soon.)

The blue is a Farrow & Ball color that I had color matched at Lowe's. I painted a red first, then the blue and then sanded it so some of the red would show through. I really like how it turned out.

Speaking of painting...I'm getting ready to paint my dining room again. First it was peach, then I painted it green and now I'll be painting it grey. I just need to pick the perfect grey and boy is that hard! The hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom will be the same grey. My favorite color combination right now is yellow/grey/silver. I'm not sure why.

Oh and here is my birthday present.

When we moved into this house over 2 years ago, I saw this painting in a local antiques store. I loved it but didn't buy it. I was just thinking about it the other day when Brian decided to make a trip down the that same antiques store. He called to tell me they still had it and it was on sale, marked down $25 from the original price. So here she is! She's hanging on the yellow wall that used to be red. She needs some sort of decoration around her but I'm not sure what.

We're almost done with the school room makeover so I'll show you some pics next week. It turned out wonderful!

Feelin' the love

I keep looking in there and then feel compelled to walk around and feel the walls. I may have actually kissed them once ;)

Learn from me...

You have company coming on Friday morning; don't decide that you can't stand the paint color in your living room, paint some new swatches on the wall, decide that the original color wasn't so bad but now you have blue swatches everywhere and no time to repaint the wall. Just don't.

A quick project

Don't you love quick projects? Brian's dad let us have this wood bed frame that was sitting out in his shop.

It's in really great shape but just needs some paint. Bri sanded it down and we had Lauren prime it.
Brian glued a wood decal we bought at Lowe's. It was only $3.49 but really adds to the look of the bed (at least I think so). After 1 coat of primer and two coats of a cottage creamy paint, it was ready to go up to the bedroom.
The whole project took a few hours and cost only $3.49. Can't beat that! I do have another project that won't be quite so easy and certainly not quite so inexpensive.

I want Brian to build me an armoire to hold our flat screen tv. The t.v. will sit on top. I want it to look old and I want it stained my favorite turquoise blue. This is my drawing.
It will have open shelves at the sides and two doors in the middle. The doors will have beadboard on the panels. The hard part will be finding some great short legs for it. I have total confindence that Brian will make it exactly how I have pictured in my head and probably even better. I can't wait to get started on it!

Another project we're going to be starting is fixing up our hallway. I'll try to get some pictures of it later. It's really small and really doesn't get much light. I want to stencil the upper walls and really decorate it in an art deco style. Our house was built in 1938 so it would be appropriate. I've got lots of ideas but little money ;)

Thanks Toots...

I found this painting at Goodwill for $3.99 shortly before Molly Kate was born. I LOVE it! It is hanging in our living room and I need to find an old robin painting to hang above it.



I especially love the signature.

Look what I ordered!

I have been wanting a clothesline for a while, not only to save money but I love the smell of line dryed clothes. The only requirements I had is that it couldn't take up much room and was able to come down to store for the winter.

Found it here:

Can't wait to get it! Now I need to make an apron to hold the clothes pins.

Bedroom progress

We are almost done with our bedroom makeover. The ceiling is a pale silver blue that I LOVE. Here is the inspiration for our paint colors. My Pottery Barn duvet:


We spray painted the brass/faux wood ceiling fan a hammered copper and the blades the same blue as the ceiling. It really disappears now.



Please note that I could not get the right blue in any of these pics.
The walls are a brown that I like now. After I put the first coat on I thought I was living in a sand pit. The paint dried darker - thank goodness - and it is fine now.



Gone are the phone numbers etched on our walls.





Closet doors before.



The closet doors are a pale blue with glass knobs.
Now. Just need to put up some inner moulding.


The sliding door to the sewing room is also a pale blue. Brian is going to paint some branches and cherry blossoms on it soon.


The plaster wall patch repair we had to do turned out great and you can hardly tell there was a big gaping hole there.



Before
\

One coat of plaster


Now
Next up is to build a picture frame headboard for our Sleep Number bed. We already have the moulding and I just need to paint and distress it. Then find some fabric to put inside. I didn't think I would actually be painting at 36.5 weeks pregnant but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Painting the top part of the walls was no big deal but getting up and down off the floor was a challenge. :)


Oh and here is our next project. We scored this dresser at the Goodwill outlet for $20. It is solid oak with dovetailed drawers. We plan on stripping it and staining it. I'm trying to convince Brian to build a hutch for it. We'll see ;) Our current teeny, tiny, small dresser will go to the girls. I'll post some "after pics" soon.

Bridge is done...

We pretty much finished the garden bridge. It is over 8 ft long and made of cedar. Brian didn't want the "new" wood look so I stained it a dark blue. I think it turned out very nice.

Next step is to add some more plants around the rocks under the bridge. Excuse the mound of mulch behind the bridge. We are waiting to put in more garden paths and build the girls playhouse. Then that mound will be gone.

Here is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago.

Day outside

Bedroom progress has begun (i.e. plaster repair) but by the time we got back from Farmer's Market it was time for Grae's nap and work on the room stopped. His bed is in our room so we went outside to start working on building our garden bridge.


Brian working on the second piece of the bridge support. You can see, on the left, the first one cut. While Brian was taking a break, Maddie and I worked on cutting the cedar cross pieces. Yes I helped out and have photo proof!


I really needed goggles but Brian couldn't find any.
And showing my 8 1/2 month pregnant belly. Big isn't it, lol.
We went to the toy store while on our Farmer's Market trip and bought Grae what he desired most. It only cost $2.50.


Walking the plank with his trusty new sword. Forget trucks and cars, Graedon is into pirates, dragons, knights and Peter Pan. He has a Captain Hook voice that he uses when holding a sword.


 

Yeah - painting again!

We are about to do a makeover on our bedroom. We've been living here for 1.5 years and our room has never been touched. The walls have cracks in the plaster, there is some form of tape reisdue on the walls with phone numbers etched in (we haven't called them but I'm always tempted too, lol). The paint is blotchy and we have no curtains, just 2" wood blinds.

Soooo, before the baby comes I decided that I wanted a nice room for a change. We went to Home Depot tonight and purchased some Plaster of Paris for the cracks in the walls and some rollers. I bought 5 gallons of white trim paint and a nice light blue for the ceiling. The walls will be a light brown. I'm going to paint our $5.00 garage sale end tables a deep brown and put some new hardware on them. The ceiling fan will also get painted a dark brown and the metals parts a hammered brown (spray paint). We also need to get a new dresser as the kids really need the one we have. We're going to the antique stores tomorrow morning after perusing the opening day of Hillsboro Farmers Market.

I can't wait until the room is done and we get to hang our antique window frame on the wall.
This one:



I bought some neat bird postcards from etsy that I'm going to put in the windows panes. Hard to describe right now but I will be sure to get a pic of it. I really want Brian to paint some cherry blossoms on the sliding door (the door that leads into the sewing room) but we will see how far we get on the room. I feel a little guilty starting this project when I haven't even finished the kitchen.

But hey - I deserve a nice bedroom, right?

Fun outside & recycling

We decided to build a play area for the kids. I was tired dragging their Little Tikes mountain climber out onto the lawn and then back again. So we started by framing the area with 2x8's and leveling the dirt.

We ordered cedar wood chips from a local company and they delivered that day.

Partly finished. We are going to paint the shed and add some fun signs and outdoor artwork to the side. We are also going to be planting some flowers and evergreen bushes around it.

The kids love it, I love it and it smells so good (because of the cedar)

This ladder was falling apart so Brian hung it on our shed and planted two Akebia vines. They will eventually take over the ladder and fill it with nice flowers.

More recycling. Our house had a Dish Network satellite installed when we moved in. We tore it down, I spray painted the top part aqua, put it on top of an old step stool (also spray painted aqua), sprayed a couple of coats of poly and we have a bird bath.

Landscaping

Nothing is getting done to the interior of the house lately. Even though I look around and think, I need to finish those kitchen cabinents/moulding/trim/tv stand/curtains/hallway/schoolroom/bedroom, etc. It has been nicer to be outside. We are planning a major front door overhaul. And by overhaul I mean ripping it out and building an actual porch, replacing the rotting threshold and putting in a new door.

In the meantime we are working on landscaping our backyard. We have big plans for it.

Here is what is looked like when we moved in:Pretty much it was a lawn filled with mud and moss with overgrown butterfly bushes in between. We ripped those bushes out first thing.

When we had to take down our chimney we saved the bricks and made a circular brick path around the yard. The inside of the circle will stay grass but the outside will be filled with walkways, secret gardens and lots of flowers.


This is where the 2 major butterfly bushes were. Where you see the concrete blocks will be an 8 ft wood bridge. In the very back corner will be a playhouse/stage for the kids.


A closer look. We planted a dogwood tree, blueberries and ginkos. Underneath the blueberries will be cranberries and a variety of ground cover/plants.


The blueberries.


This is the back of the yard with the enormous lilac tree that I love and Brian hates. Our neighbors took down a huge maple tree and we bought the wood. We have about a doze of these huge logs so we placed them at the base of the lilac. We'll be planting ground cover in front and ferns, hostas and shade loving flowers in back. It will look pretty.

So it's not much to look at now, but will be next year. I can't wait.

More kitchen progress...

You know those faux drawer fronts they put right below the sink? Well we tore ours out and were looking for some metal mesh to put there. They had some at Lowe's for $30 a sheet - ouch.

Lo and behold we found something that would work at Goodwill for get this $1.99! Gotta love Goodwill. We are not sure what it was originally for but it worked perfectly for our drawer fronts. I wish I would have taken a picture of it before but picture the white metal in a round flower pot shape.

Brian took some old moulding we had laying around and built a frame for it, shoved it in there and I love it. Now I need to prime it and paint it the brown cabinent color.

Our upper cabinents are all painted, moulded and hardwared, our floor is done, wall paint is done, curtains are done. All we need to do is put crown moulding on the ceiling and baseboard moulding. I bought some of those neat chrome drawer organizers, they kind that you can pull out. What a difference! Makes our cabinents functional. I need to buy about 6 more but they are $30 a piece so I'll have to buy them as we get some money.

I'll try to have updated pics tomorrow. For now here are the faux drawer fronts.

Floor progress

Our floors are stripped and Brian put a coat of white primer to see what needed to be further sanded.
Soon it will be time to put the floor tiles down.



The hallway also will have tiles.



Oh and I did get my flowers.

Doing better...

We are all almost healthy and sleeping better. Well, most of us. Graedon got used to the idea of sleeping in our bed every night when he was sick and needs to be retrained that his bed is comfortable too. We can't have him and the new baby sleeping in our bed. So last night was the first night of forcing him to go back to sleep in his bed. He only cried for about 10 minutes each time so it wasn't so bad. He woke up in an excellent mood.

The kids and I decided since it was so beautiful outside to go for a nature walk. We discovered a nature trail only a couple of blocks from our house. It was fun! We found horses and wobbly camels to ride on, crocodiles to fight and a great picnic area to eat our cheerios and raisins. Next time we will bring a proper snack and water because the cheerios were left over from our walk yesterday. There is a stinky little stream running along the trail that holds lots of water skippers. We did scare a duck away, much to Graedon's surprise.

Brian is going to be laying down the Congoleum tomorrow morning while we step outside to watch the St. Patrick's Day parade. It goes right by our house. It's a pretty lame parade but we do get lots of candy. The girls are excited and planning on what to wear (has to have green in it).

Well I'm off to make lunch for Ellie and Grae and then put Grae down for his nap. I can't decide if I want to paint the kitchen during nap time or sew (well I want to sew but need to paint the kitchen). The girls can't wait to play in the backyard with their Playmobiles. The build houses for them out of sticks and bricks.

I'll post pics of our progress tomorrow.

Some bits and pieces....

I think I'm going to live. Yesterday I wasn't so sure. This head cold/cough thing is sure hard to get over. Try as I might, I couldn't get to sleep at night and only slept 3 hours (not in a row) on Sunday night. Last night was better and I feel better today too.

Thought I would share some bits and pieces of projects we are working on. I hate to admit this but I'm painting the dining room/living room again. I never really like the orange/green combo so I am going with something a little less fussy. I picked out a nice "cottage" yellow and I LOVE it. The dining room is all painted and I need to prime the living room and paint it. It will look great with the blue kitchen (haven't painted it yet).
Anyway, here are some things around my home:

This is a lamp shade I did to cover up the brown that was underneath. Very easy to do. I just hemmed the top and bottom and did 3 rows of elastic shirring at the top. Made a red polka dot tube and tied it in a bow.


One of the set of curtains I made for the kitchen. I took swiss dot and added a vintage reproduction plaid border. I really like how they turned out.


Pillows I made for the couch. I didn't line them, even though I should have. The covers are removable.


Goodwill finds. The little shelf was $.99 and I may paint it. The pitcher is glass with a pink handle. So cute! Can't wait to put some flowers in it. (hint, hint, Brian)


Some cute reproduction blocks I bought on eBay.


Brian tore out the kitchen floor and I will post what that looks like in a bit. Hopefully the new floor will be done by this Saturday.

Goodwill

We've been trying to visit Goodwill once a week (it's on the way to Lowes/Home Depot). It's been fun and we have found tons of stuff.

Made in Japan ice cream bows: $.69 each.



Just for looks mugs that match the kitchen perfectly: $.49 each.



Little white birds for decorating: $1.99 each.



HUGE vintage window frame with the neat handmade wavy glass: $9.99. This is my favorite find. I'm going to hang it on the wall and put some vintage postcards on the glass (I think).

We are going to try to go to Goodwill tomorrow as we need to make a Lowe's moulding trim run. Bri and I decided to put some moulding on the upper cabinents so they wouldn't be so plain.

More kitchen progress....

The kitchen is coming along. I think I will be back to painting the cabinents tonight. Brian is probably going to rip out the kitchen floor on Saturday so I don't have much time to finish the cabinents. I ordered some vintage swiss dot fabric to make some curtains and need to find some fabric for under the sink. We've decided (for now) to leave the plate and cup cabinent doors off and we still need to add some moulding so it looks nice. Here's some pics so far.

First coat of primer on the inside.



The plates cupboard. Notice that it needs some trim on the bottom

Before:



After:



We painted the bottom cabinents "cargo brown" by Ralph Lauren, added some vintage drawer pulls (on clearance at Lowe's for $.97 each) and some really neat knobs on the bottom (not on clearance). Really makes a difference.



I got these blue milk glass knobs on eBay.



Before:

After:



These weren't our first choice for lights but we like them. The give off LOTS of light now. Our kitchen is very bright with the white ceiling and the cream cabinents. We still need to put up some crown moulding.



We laid out some of the new floor tiles and it is going to look great. The colors are aqua and coffee brown. Lots of work but it will be so nice in there.

The kitchen project that won't end...

I must admit that the kitchen is wearing me down. I gave myself until the end of March (and it looks like we will be done before that) but the endless painting is driving me nuts. We are painting the top cabinents in Ralph Lauren "Edwardian Linen" with turquoise blue on the inside (scored that paint for $2.00 at Lowe's). The bottom cabinents will be painted a dark chocolate brown.

So far I have half the lower cabinents done. One coat of primer and 4 coats of brown paint. Brian will be installing the new hardware tonight. The upper cabinents are waiting for sanding so I can put the final coats of paint on them.

Brian is going to try to rip out the floor on Saturday and then we can see what we're dealing with. The floor tiles came in and they are exactly what we wanted and will look really good. I keep telling myself that it will look nice when it's done. It will but will it ever be done?????

Spent so far:
Paint & supplies: $60.00
Lights: $108.00
Paneling: $30.00
Floor & supplies: $178.00 (so far)
Sink: $0.00
Faucet: $98.00 on clearance!
Garbage cans for floor junk: $36.00

What do you do at 10:00 pm?

I paint ceilings and enlist the help of my husband. On Saturday we primed and put one coat of paint on the kitchen ceiling. It made a huge difference in brightness. I was amazed. When we walked in the kitchen on Sunday morning I thought our roof had blown off or someone had raised our ceiling while we slept.

It did need another coat but since it was Sunday I didn't have to do it. So off to church we went.

About 10:00 pm, I felt restless. So out came the paint and ladder and up I went to put the last coat of paint on the ceiling. I then decided to clean the kitchen, do the dishes and mop the floor. The funny part is that Brian didn't think I was crazy. Guess he is used to it by now. So about midnight I crawled in bed. Was I exhausted? Nope. This is the part of my pregnancy where I can't sleep. Fortunately for Brian, I didn't get up and paint something. I just thought about what I would paint.

The next phase in the kitchen makeover is to hang the paneling and prime it, scrub the kitchen cabinents and sand, and then prime and paint. We are waiting on floor samples so we can confirm that the blue/brown scheme is what we're going for. I can hardly wait!

Lest you think...

Lest you think that I have forsaken working out, I have not. I went for 3 30 minute walks this week, lifted weights twice, took the girls for a run and did the painting squats workout. This workout entails squatting down to paint and then leaping up on a chair to reach the ceiling. I painted the hallway and Brian installed the moulding and chair rail - finally. We have said we needed to get it done about 6 months ago, lol.

Now we are about to embark on the $300 fast kitchen makeover. Our original plan was gut the whole kitchen, redo the floor and buy new cabinents. We still want to do that but don't have the $$$ for it now. Also the baby arrives in June and I want running water this summer.

So we found some really cool turquoise and coffee colored peel and stick vinyl tiles that we are going to put down on the floor. Right now there is white vinyl and I hate that it shows everything. Brian will rip that up and replace the subfloor and then lay down the tiles. We are going to do a retro checkerboard pattern.

Then I will be painting the cabinents a creamy white and adding some retro 30's hardware. The walls will be a light tan-ish color and I will paint the dark wood beadboard ceiling a glossy white. We also purchased some new pendant lights with bright red shades from Lowes (think cheap). We have a new sink out in the garage that Brian got for free so we may install that. We are for sure getting a new facet as the one we have sprays your stomach everytime you turn it on.

Most of the money will be going to the floor but I think we can do it all in our budget. It will look so much better and brighter and I will be able to live with it for awhile!

Here's the before:

Carpeting the stairs....done!

We finally got the call that our carpet runner was ready. We could not find any carpet runners at the big box stores that we liked so we went to the local Floors With Flair store and custom ordered one. What we actually did was pick out commercial carpet (like the kind you find at the doctor's or dentist's office) and had it bound on each side.

I don't have any before pictures of what the stairs looked like when we moved in but I will describe it. The stairs were a pale yellow color, including the banister. The paint was chipping and underneath there was green paint. A couple of weeks ago we painted the stairs a creamy white color and the banister a deep, deep purple. I gave it a couple coats of poly and then we just waited for the carpet.





Brian installing it with his new handy-dandy air powered stapler.







The color we picked out is a purple color with flecks of red and golden yellow. It is really nice in person but I couldn't capture it on camera.
What was nice about this carpet was that it had the pad already attached.



Here it is installed. I tried to get a full length picture but there is no light up the stairs yet so they didn't turn out. But you get the idea from this pic. It is sooooooo nice having carpet. I couldn't hear the stomping of feet coming down the stairs this morning!

Here's to good friends...

Yesterday after church we celebrated Maddie's birthday (which was Jan 3). We invited her good friends the Blackman girls, the Barnard girls (and parents) and one of Kreutzer girls. She was so excited and happy.

Our long lost friends, the Armstrongs, surprised us by saying they were coming. We were so excited and happy. We haven't seen them in years and it was so nice to catch up. Brian and I even held their newest little girl, Violet. She is sooooo cute. Now I can't wait to see our little one!

Even though we were all tired from the long day, it was nice to sit and relax and talk. Brian and I pledge to invite friends over more often.

----------------------------------------------------------------
I thought I would outline what we spent last week on home projects. It wasn't as bad as I thought. We completely transformed the look of the dining room.

Antique buffet: $495
Wood for paneling: $130
Paint: $68
Chandelier: $130
Buffet mirror: $59
Flower painting: $8
Red bill organizer: $10
Total: $900

With the extra hundred left over from our $1000 budget we bought the Pottery Barn Kids desk and chairs at Goodwill for $69.00 and a HUGE clock from Target for $49.00 for the living room. So were were slightly over $1000. We also bought a mudroom rug at Costco for $16 as our dogs had peed on our other one.

So not too bad. We had the money set aside so everything is paid for!

I'm giving Brian and myself a week off so we can work on our new website and then back to fixing up. My next project is the hallway. I need to paint and Brian needs to install some trim moulding on the ceiling. Then *maybe* we can start work on making our bedroom pretty before the baby gets here.

Home reno is never ending but I like it that way ;)

We did it!

We finished! Or at least enough for now. I LOVE how it all turned out. I wasn't too sure about the green wall at first (Brian picked the new paint color) but now I really like it. Adds some zing to our dining room.



We painted just the front door portion of the room green and around the front door and closet the same color as our living room.





I framed some Heather Bailey Freshcut fabric. I didn't get around to making the seat cushion for the bench yet. The foam pad I needed was too expensive so I need to wait for a coupon.



Here is a picture with the new wainscoting paneling. Brian did a fantastic job - even though he got a little carried away with the nail gun. ;)





Here is my buffet. It looks really good in there.



And a basket of limes to go with our new green wall. I picked the basket up at Goodwill for $0.99!

We are exhausted from staying up really late working on it. We have my family coming over today and a birthday party for Maddie after church tomorrow so we really wanted it done. I actually like working on deadlines. It forces me to get things done.

A lot going on...

No formal exercising going on unless you count going up and down a step ladder at 11:00 pm every night. We've been bit by the remodeling bug again and are working hard to do a $1000 dining room makeover. We have almost spent that but I think we have everything we need (except a new green paint color as I HATE the one I picked out).

We gave ourselves a $1000 budget and are trying to completely makeover the dining room. It was painted a nice yellow when we moved in but came with a chandelier that was held together by twist ties. It had crystals hanging off and was a brassy color. I lived with it a whole year. We purchased a new one at Lowe's that I don't love but it is temporary until we can afford a nice one.


The wall had bubbles in the paint and we are not sure if it is because the dishwasher had leaked (it is right behind that wall). When Brian scraped the bubbles off, huge sections of paint and plaster came off. So we decided to do some wainscoting paneling. Like this: 1900 Farmhouse blog . It is the second entry down.

Ours will be painted a creamy white color. We painted the wall by the front door a green that turned out way to minty so we need to buy another quart of a more olive color. The opposite walls are a nice apricot color that brings out the rich wood of our new 1940's buffet. Brian spotted this in an antique shop and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. This was half our budget but I have always wanted a nice piece of furniture that I can hand down to the kids. But I love it so much that I might be buried in it.




We have a bench underneath the front window and I bought this amazing fabric to match. I'm going to make a padded seat cover. The fabric is from Heather Bailey's Freshcut line.


We also painted one wall of our living room red. I love red and this is a deep dark red paint we bought at Lowe's for $5.00 for a whole gallon. It was labeled "mistint".


Oh and I went to Goodwill last night and spotted this desk and chair set for $69.00. It is from Pottery Barn Kids and retails for $350 for the set on their site. It is in excellent condition and is now displayed proudly in our school room.


And here is the newest member of our family. Captain Jack Sparrow.

We painted our door purple!

We have a beat up door that was painted white. The door doesn't close properly and you can see daylight from the edges if you are inside. Not the best insulator against the cold. Next year we will be ripping out the door and frame and building a porch. For now we are going to be installing a storm door (and energy certified one to take advantage of the tax credit). Hopefully that will help. This spring I had painters tape around the edges to keep out the wind. It was classy looking, let me tell you.

Bri and I got a wild idea to paint the door purple to go with our green house. It's called Rootie Tootie purple. After a couple of coats on the door I sort of liked it. I didn't hate it enough to repaint the door white. Then I got the idea to paint the shutters that same color. Hey why not! Ugh...I hated them. Bri screwed them up next to the windows and bam...we are circus people (as Chris from Notes from the trenches would say.)

Bri heard a lot of...I do not like them...please take them off now...we are the embarassment of the neighborhood....we are those people who paint their houses bright neon green and think it's beautiful...

I was told that he would take them down tomorrow if I still didn't like them. Ellie, our 3 year old, loved them. You can't trust her taste though, she wants to paint the house pink.

The whole next day was spent with me indoors glancing out the windows to see if anyone was pointing and covering their mouths in horror.

As soon as Bri got home from work I stuck a plate of food in front of him with a side of screwdriver. He took the hint and took them down. I was never so relieved to have a plain house. Now I need to repaint the purple shutters white and life will be good again.

Behold the circus:

New roof...

The roof looks really great! I like the color we picked out. Brian wanted a metal roof but we couldn't afford it.

I'm just glad it's done.


Front


Back


Side

We have paint...

We wanted to paint the siding last week but it rained all week. The roof went on one day before the rain but not the gutters. Oh no - the gutter guy couldn't make it over. So we had waterfalls coming off of our house all week. The new siding was really muddy.

We woke up this morning to sunny skies and warm weather. By 8:30 am we dipped our paintbrush in the green paint and went to town. Lowe's did an excellent job of color matching to the old ugly green. (we are going to repaint the house in a year or so and will be using Benjamin Moore. Lowe's paint is temporary).

Here it is in progress.





I don't like painting but I did the majority of it. Of course no pics of me doing it. ;)

Getting there....

We put the tar paper on over the brand spanking new plywood. It had skip sheeting and we pulled it all out, re-insulated and nailed up the plywood.

>Brian put up new window moulding and a window sill. I've already primed it!

New pre-primed cedar siding. Bri and I are doing it ourselves and it isn't nearly as hard as I thought. Actually kinda fun.

Chimney's

Before: one furnace chimney (the tall one) falling down, one fireplace chimney falling down.

Furnace chimney gone...

Fireplace chimney going...

Dry Rot in progress

Remember our little dryrot project?

Well my dad came over and said that we couldn't take care of it all from the inside and would have to tackle it from the outside. Problem is we have brick along the bottom 1/3 of the house. We were going to just remove the brick from the dry rotted areas and patch it with cedar siding to match the top of the house. My helpful dad and Brian decide to remove all the brick from the front.

Before:

See the brick on the bottom 1/3?

After:



My dad sledge-hammering away.

More...

Major dry rot! I don't think I snapped a picture of the worst of it. We found some more on the other side of the door. So Bri and my dad are replacing the 2x4's and rim joists that are damaged. We only knew about the dry rot because the window moulding was rotted away.

Dry rot

Outside on of our kitchen windows is dry rot. We knew we would have to take care of it this summer but we keep putting it off. You see, in order to take care of the outside dry rot, we have to open up the inside kitchen wall. We thought the kitchen was lath and plaster and knew how incredibly messy it would be. Imagine our surprise when we found out it was sheetrock!

This saturday I thought it was time to see what was in there. I casually mentioned it to Brian. He agreed we *should* but really didn't want cut into the wall right then. No problem, I'll do it. I took a screw driver and smashed into the wall. I gleefully pulled out sheetrock until I got nervous that all sorts of bugs might pile out. Brian sighed and took over. Wow! We found lots of dry rot. The wood was so brittle and rotted we just broke it off. There was insulation in there but it was rotted too.

Brian sealed the hole up with some paneling and we will tackle that project on Saturday. Our fear is we may have to take out some of the kitchen cabinents. So a fairly small project can turn into a whole kitchen remodel. I'm kind of excited though. Once the dry rot is taken care of we can install the new floor and paint. My ugly kitchen will look pretty soon.

The roof

The roofing guys took a break and I snuck outside to see how it's coming. This is what I saw.
Oh you can see our new chimney from the last pic.

More chimney antics

Yesterday the chimney guy (Dennis) left for a break. He was gone a long time so it was an event when he pulled back into our driveway with his huge truck. The girls were in the kitchen watching. The driveway is only a couple of feet from the window so they had a great view.

I was at my computer at the other side of the house half listening to them tell me that the chimney guy was here and he had an orange bottle with him.

"An orange bottle?" I said.

"I think it's shampoo,"said Ava.

"It's not shampoo," I said.

"He's going to wash himself because he's really dirty" said Ellie (age 3).

"I sure it's not shampoo," I said. "Why would he bring shampoo with him? And get away from the window because I'm sure he can hear you."

"Oh it's sunscreen," said Maddie.

"How do you know it's sunscreen?" I said, willing them with eyes to get away from the window and leave the poor man alone.

"Because he's rubbing it all over his face," Ava said. "And it says sunblock 80 on the bottle."

That's when I noticed that the window was open and he could hear them talking. I motioned agressively for them to come to me.

"The window is open girls. He heard everything you said."

"Oops...." was the collective word along with a little shuffling of embarassed feet.

Then I saw him walk by the window with a small smile on his face. Hope he found it amusing.

Of chimney's & diapers

Yesterday, today and tomorrow we are having one chimney rebuilt and the firebox repointed and the furnace chimney taken down to the roof. I will post before and after pictures in a few days (when we have an after). This is the first step. The second step involves a complete roof tear-0ff, a dormer added to the back of the house, re-roof and new gutters.

It will be nice when it's done. The dormer will provide us with a second full bath and a 4th bedroom.

When the chimney guys were here yesterday, we couldn't go outside for fear of falling bricks. As soon as I noticed them moving around to the front chimney I begged them to let us go to the back of our back yard. I even offered cash and they agreed (and didn't take the bribe).

Right before we made our way outside, I noticed them taking a break in our back yard. They were eating lunch and sitting under our apple tree. No problem, that's the best spot in our yard.
After they were done we went outside. That's when I noticed the diaper sitting right in front of where they were sitting. Not just a diaper but a used diaper. I was so embarrassed. Not only was I embarassed with our roof, falling gutters and chimney's. I was also ashamed off our air conditioner sitting on our back porch held up by duct tape and plywood. Nice.

Wonder what they thought of as they were munching on their sandwiches and looking at the diaper? I don't want to know.

Oh and one of the young guys knocked on the door and asked to use our bathroom. Maddie had just finished cleaning it - whew! So as he was coming in Ava snapped a picture of him with her new little camera. He said "Did you just take a picture of me?" She giggled and so did I. Hey at least it wasn't while he was in the bathroom. That happens around here.