done-zo...

done. finished. time out. break.

thats whats going on here. turns out i was fed up and getting frustrated with projects around the house. and so its been decided that i need to take a break. which is really hard for me. especially with unfinished projects looking at me every day. like putting some floating shelves up in the kitchen. or painting the railing. but in order to keep some sanity...it must happen. i guess it doesnt hurt that we are also out of project money so we actually cant do much in the project department.

it was also super frustrating to have to live with this...

...clutter and a bunch of stuff in random places that you frequent a lot. like the kitchen counter. or having tools lying all around the living room floor. or having a bunch of stuff in spare rooms. or just stuff not in a good home. which if you know me, drives me crazy! :) but all in due time. all in due time. right? (at least i hope so)

so i guess you are just stuck waiting for new posts. hopefully we will be able to do some of the things on our 'to do list'. we do have a lot to look forward too coming up...weddings, bachelor parties, our first anniversary and im sure some other things will pop up too.

any suggestions on posts you want to see? info you want to know? things for us to do? let us know!

valleyfair

last thursday i accomplished my resolution for july. and i even had some great help/company from the hubs and our good friends joej & pappy. thursday was the first day in almost a week where the humidity wasnt horrible and the heat indexes werent above 100 so we were lucky!

we started the day on one of the best rides there: steel venom. and a few rides later they somehow convinced me to try a ride i hadnt been on before, the rip tide.

(image from valleyfair.com)

lets just say theres a lot of spinning. like 720 degrees of spinning. plus water. so before the ride, these "trustworthy" friends of mine say "you'll just get a little bit wet". liars i tell you. LIARS!!! i got soaked.  and there ended my trust in them. (just kidding)

at this point i was feeling a little woozy/nauseated. but nothing crazy. so next up: extreme swing. again, i had never been on this and wasnt really watching how "extreme" this swing really was. those trustworthy friends of mine described it as a giant swing. mmm hmmm. suuuuuuuuuuuure. :)

(image from valleyfair.com)

yah. turns out its really extreme. this one made my sick to my stomach. i honestly kept my eyes closed the whole time and probably left some fingernail marks in the hubs' hand. after this we went on the wild thing. and that was my last ride for a long time. i think ive officially become too old to go on these rides. cuz boy oh boy was i nauseous.

so a lunch break was ordered. after lunch we watched a show about music through the ages. it was pretty decent. until they started doing a risky chair "dance" with moves very similar to those learned at a certain bachelorette party last summer... just saying. there were kids in that audience. oh well.

i didnt really feel like a lot more rides so i became a photographer/people watcher. so here goes:

this is the ship. or something like that. the hubs was the only one of us to venture onto this ride. apparently its a "once in a lifetime" ride. im ok with never having that once in lifetime event. 

above is a little stuffed something the hubs won. and yes, there is a diaper on the head. who even knows. below is a picture of us both with snoopy. except it turns out snoopy looks really creepy considering you cant see his eyes.

this is pappy and joej. you know, those "trustworthy" friends of ours...

funny side story: at the beginning of our day at valleyfair we saw this girl who won a GIGANTIC stuff bear/gorilla thing. we chuckled seeing as this animal was about double her size and she was "lucky" enough to be able to carry it around all day. we saw her a few more times throughout the day walking with it on her shoulders and then having to take a break or having to have someone else hold the back of it while she walked.

all in all we had a lot of fun and (like always) it was good to see & hang out with joej & pappy. even if it sounds like they arent trustworthy...they are. just givin them a hard time! the day went by really quickly. all in all, a pretty good day. another resolution checked off the list.

GUEST SPOT

Sooo the hubs gets his first "guest post" finally.  I'm gonna talk about the railing we (I) put up.  You know i'm a cheapskate and like to save some money when I can, so when I saw how much newel posts cost (70 bucks, and oh, newel posts are basically endposts), I thought I will just pay 15 bucks for a 4x4 board and get 2 posts out of it.  BAM-instant 125 dollar savings!

It all started with buying the wood and white spindles to make the railing.  I think we spent around $120 for everything.  Aaaaaaand then I let everything sit for about a month.  Some of these projects seem too new and scary to just jump into-plus there's alot of xbox to play.

 

The first thing I did was to cut the handrail and baserail to size.  Then came the sanding.  Then I had to drill holes for each of the spindles to fit into.  I used a router to make a rounded edge on the railing (a router is basically a drill that has different drill heads- you push the piece of wood onto the side of the router bit and you get a consistent design). Glue everything together, and then bring it inside to put together.

The biggest issue with a railing is you need the posts to be secured into the floor.  this means a 1 1/2 foot long screw that needs to be put in pretty straight into the floor.  So luckily I put them in fairly straight and joined everything together to get this:

Ok, ok it's not completely done. But close!  Maybe I'll finish it after I beat this xbox game...

just what you wanted....

more kitchen pictures. right? right. or something like that.

lets start with the backsplash. white tile with a royal blue accent strip near the top. not horrible. but not really my style. or our style? no, my style. the hubs is fine either way i think. so we found a way to paint it. this is just a quick fix. and by quick fix i mean a fix to make me more happy until we save up enough money to get new counters and then save more money to get a new backsplash. so silver it is.

and then theres the paint color. i have no idea what the name is. but if you follow on facebook, it wasnt any of those 3 options. turns out after i posted three color options on facebook for some help in choosing one, i find out the hubs doesnt really like any of those. who knew?!? and what are the chances?!?! so off to the store to get more samples i went. most people probably wont really be able to tell a big difference from what it was to what it is now...but we can. heres a pic to try tell the difference. before (the bottom) was a light blue and after (top) is a blue-purple with more emphasis on blue.

overall its such a relief to have everything painted one color. instead of 3 like it was before. i dont know if im 100% sold on this color, because of its similarity to the previous color. but im gonna give it a few months and then see. and if we arent 100% sure in a few months we can easily change it, only a little sweat equity and some new paint. not too difficult or stressful.

the master = COMPLETE!

we finally were able to put the finishing touches on our master bedroom. even though our seamstress finished the hubs' closet curtains a long time ago. buuuuuuuut we just got around to hanging it up not too long ago. better late than never eh?

and we finally got a wall hanging for the reading nook. and an ottoman. and im super excited to be able to read here. just as soon as i find a book.

and heres our side table. with my actual nook (loooove it!) and the hubs' and my to do list. clearly we have been busy working on the house and not on our to do list. and below is a close up on our spice racks turned book shelves.

so moral of the story: master bedroom = FINISHED!!! wahoo! now, if we could only say that about the rest of the house...

the mystery box...

remember that mystery box? if not, heres a refresher

well inside that mystery box was a new dining set. see that table to the left of the mystery box? yah, that was the old dining table. the one that looked teeny tiny in our new dining room. the one that could fit barely fit 4 people plus their plates & cup around it. and guess what. we love the dining set. (whos surprised?!?!)

we the hubs got one surprise though. pulling staples. lots and lots of staples.

moral of the story: we love it. so much! it definitely fits the space much better & can even extend longer for maybe a family holiday meal sometime!?!? we cant wait to entertain and have people over.

the FINAL kitchen re-do

thats right. we are done with our kitchen. well, actually thats a bit of a lie. whoops. i should say we are done with our kitchen cabinet re-do. and everything is back in its place and we love it! im sure you are sick of me chatting. so after everything was stained, the only thing that had to be done was to put a sealer/varnish/top coat on it. well, actually 3 layers of that but whose counting? now ill stop talking to so you can do some looking.

have i mentioned we love love love how this turned out? and i can guarantee we did NOT spend any where near the $12,000 the home depot department would have charged us. we are so incredibly thankful to the rents who helped us with this project. (thank you! thank you! thank you!!)

now all we have left are minor changes. choosing a paint color. hanging some floating shelves. painting some more white trim (my favorite, jk) and maybe attempting to paint that blue accent line on the backsplash. we will see. dont worry, we'll keep you updated.

kitchen re-do, part 3

ill warn you now. i have no idea how many "parts" this kitchen re-do will end up being. maybe a lot. maybe not. who knows.

so after "step 6: dont cry." we come to step 7.

step 7: vacuum off all the dust. this wasnt too bad. the hubs did that.

step 8: do all those same steps just inside on the cabinet bases.

step 8.5 take a break for the night and relax. being off of my feet never felt so good. except i was pretty sore. along with everyone else. we enjoyed some quality time and good food at applebees.

step 9: stain. we chose a gel stain, which is new to everyone so it was an interesting learning experience. wipe on. wait. wipe off.  but if you waited too long, it was really really hard to wipe off.

check out the difference from no stain to one coat of stain here:

step 10: dont get frustrated. this step was a bit harder for me. you may not know this about me but i like things to look the same. to match. so it was pretty frustrating to see different color variations on the doors. some would look like a light golden brown, some a dark brown and some more of a reddish brown.

step 11: wait to dry and apply 2nd coat of stain. this was really surprising to me. its hard to really see, especially in pictures but i guess you just gotta trust. check out the picture above, the one inside where you can see before any stain and then with one coat of stain. see how it looks like a dark brown there? well turns out it wasnt really that dark. cuz check this out

thats a door with one coat of stain laying on doors with 2 coats of stain. after the second coat of stain, the color was much darker (which we really liked & what we were ultimately going for)  and there wasnt as much/as big of difference in color variations. whew! turns out im a much happier camper now. except im not big into camping so i dont know what that really makes me but whatev.

stay tuned...the next kitchen re-do update will be the last.

a kitchen re-do break...

heres a little break from our kitchen re-do updates. we can play a guessing game. real fun right?!?!

any guesses as to whats in this big box? :) ill give you a clue: something exciting! and very heavy.

kitchen re-do, part 2

so we had completed steps 1 and 2
step 1: remove hardware, doors & drawers
step 2: tape of sections not to be stained
step 3: figure out what stain to use.

ok so maybe that shoulda really be step 1 or before. but sometimes things just happen. like a trial of a liquid stain that didnt look dark it just looked like a dirty brown. so after a little internet search we went to a specialty hardware store friday afternoon looking for a gel stain. so the hubs, his mom and i went and 2 people asked us if we had any questions (um yeah) so this guy comes over talks to us about stain, what he uses and why and recommends a product to us. this conversation is like 10 minutes long. then he says, "oh yeah i dont work here im just here a lot". wow, he sure had us fooled. but i think it was re-assuring that he had actually used the product and was recommending it. super nice. anyways...back to the real story...step 4 right?

step 4. the beginning of the real manual labor. the sweat in sweat equity. <side note remember how this year the weather has been crazy, raining a lot and then hot for one day and then rainy again? yea well turns out the weekend we decide to work on the project the weather chooses to stay hot for multiple days in a row. lucky us.>

ok. step 4. manual labor. sweat equity. also known as zip-stripping. at least thats what we call it. aka apply a really potent chemical to the finish to take off the varnish/top coat. this stuff is serious stuff. it immediately starts to bubble and you have to scrape it off. and if it gets on your skin, you know from the immediate stinging/burning sensation. each side of the door needed 2 coats of zipstrip to be scraped off and then a 3rd coat to be taken off with steel wool. so we are talking lots of work. and time. i think we have about 36 cabinet doors.
and about 10 drawers. we took up about every inch of our 3 stall garage.

the hubs and his mom zipstripping away. im sure hes pumped to see this picture up on the blog mainly because his beloved panther picture is making another appearance.

step 5: sanding. after the varnish was off with the chemical we had to sand it. guess who was lucky enough to get that job at first. this girl. the same girl who is allergic to dust. good one.

step 6: dont cry. seems kinda like an odd step eh? ah, but this is a very important one. dont cry. dont cry when you are FINALLY half way through sanding the doors and your hand feels like it wants to fall off because its been vibrating for way too long and your hubs' mother in law tells you we have to sand EVERYTHING AGAIN, this time with a finer sandpaper. 

kitchen re-do, part 1

i think this is probably the biggest project we have taken on. yes, the wallpaper was time consuming. and yes painting the living room, dining room, hallways and entry way was a huge amount of space to paint. but this kitchen re-do is the most time consuming, manual labor project by far.

turns out we arent a fan of shellac. or golden oak. or whatever you call the previous color of our kitchen. when we first bought and moved into our house we always knew we would change the kitchen and give it a little updating. ok maybe more like a lot of updating. we had someone from the home depot come to our house and tell us how much it would be to simply re-face our cabinets, add new hardware and get a new counter. not changing the layout or anything. just add a thin layer of new wood to the outsides and get new doors.  i dont remember the exact cost but it was around $12,000. no joke. clearly we do NOT have that kind of money and probably wont for a very long time. so no go there. the hubs wanted to refinish the cabinets on our own. something about pride. after a bit of convincing and some chatting with my parents (who are refinish pros) we decided we would tackle this project ourselves. some day.

and that some day was starting the fourth of july weekend. cuz why not? :) we solicited the help of my parents and the hubs' mom for some manual labor and started. here are some lovely before pictures...from before we moved in & the house was empty.

and heres one taken on friday before all the fun began. with all the doors taken off.

we i then had to take everything in our kitchen (the drawers, cabinets & counters) and move it. about 75% of the stuff was jam packed into our pantry and the rest is sitting in our living room by our windows and tv stand. so now we have to learn where everything is which can be pretty time consuming. oh well. no pain no gain right?!?!

dresser re-do, part 2

we finally got the dresser-turned-tv-stand completed. thanks to those who guessed the color...but no one guessed correctly. turns out some are a bit more excited about the color choice than others, or maybe it was just a surprise color choice? who knows. i believe the color was called caribbean blue. or something like that.  so...without further ado... here are some pictures...

and check out this size difference. the little teeny tiny black thing in front of the new tv stand, was our old one. crazy how small it actually was...

also, dont you think the new blue tv stand fits the space a lot better?! cuz i do. now that this project is complete...we just have a few more to finish up. next up: kitchen.