floored by the floor

well the hubs got around to re-installing (most) of the baseboards in the dining room and kitchen so i figured it was safe to take pictures of the "final" project. mind you theres still some baseboards to install and some paint touch ups as well. painting falls in my category i guess so we will see when that gets done. (fyi: that part of the project was never discussed in the planning phases) darn. oh well. 

there isnt a lot to talk about. claire & i left the house and loud banging and left the hubs at home to do his thing. thankfully he already had some practice helping to install my moms floor so there wasnt a lot of to learn. 

here are the before pictures: 
side note - when the hubs took out the laminate by the sliding glass doors, we found that the previous owners had simply covered up an air vent (i think thats what its called) 
 

 

and then underneath the laminate in the dining room we found some LOVELY parkay. 

 

and the afters.  (sorry the lighting is off. i still plan to learn how to use this camera properly. someday...)

 

we love it! its not too light. and the seams are darker which really helps bring in the color of the table and the cabinets. so that projects (almost) done. now to just figure out what project will be next on the list...

 

sneak peek...

 after a nice relaxing weekend (for claire & i) we came home sunday afternoon to this...

surprise!

check out whats hanging out in our basement?! our new floor! 

i couldnt be more excited! oh wait i can...the hubs is gonna install it this weekend while claire & i hang out in hutch. now thats my idea of a great project!

foto friday

happy friday everyone! heres a little project we recently completed. its a pretty easy one. i just have to do some labeling yet. but its already come in super handy. a little measuring cup/spoon organizer. no more searching for the right one.

hope you have a great weekend. while im working this weekend, the hubs will also hopefully be working on his to-do list. or maybe he will play some xbox. who knows.

barstools

our kitchen is complete. finally! we have barstools! i can tell you are all excited about that.  turns out goodwill had a set of 3 just waiting for us. and they were $9 each. MUCH cheaper than the other options we were looking at. and that was the only cost of this project.

you see they started out as a reddish wood with black fabric colors. not exactly anything that matches our current kitchen. but nothing a little paint and some new fabric couldnt change. and that stuff was free. cuz we already had it. we have plenty of white paint and some leftover fabric from that kitchen curtain i made awhile back.

not too shabby right?

how bout a kitchen project?

like some floating shelves? i had to wait on the hubs on this one. thankfully most of his summer requirements (bachelor parties & weddings) are over. so that means hes not out traveling every weekend. so i gave him the measurements and he built it. easy peasy.

after building them i was elected to stain them. and then he was elected to hang em.

and then it was my turn to decorate. im excited for these shelves. it finally completes this blank wall and seems more finished. im also excited to be able to change the decorations for different seasons/holidays. cheesy? probably. but im ok with that.

diy fail

so i attempted some no sew curtains. because im impatient. and because my seamstress lives an hour away and is back to her real job. and because im impatient. so i found a tutorial online (found here) for some no sew/fixed roman shades not too difficult right? riiiiiiiiiight

my goal was to look like this:


(Picture From HERE)


i followed the directions. i swear i did. and i came out with this:

enter the wah wah sounds please. fail. but have no fear. i attempted to fix it with some more stitch witchery stuff its like fabric glue but it comes in strips and you iron to activate. yah, that didnt work either. fail x2. and then i tried some straight up fabric glue. enter a win.

please dont mind the bad lighting or the large cutting board. i was a bit lazy. its not 100% perfect. but im ok with that. it adds a bit of color to our kitchen and hides some holes im also too lazy to patch. :) what can i say. oh well. so what started out as an easy project turned out to be a bit more time consuming and frustrating, but mission accomplished.  

yet another kitchen update

when we last left off with the kitchen we had just painted it a blue/purple color. and it was so nice because before that the kitchen was 3 different colors. but i wasnt 100% sold on that blue/purple color.

so i waited for a few months. actually like a little over a month. but still. i didnt like the color. so i painted the kitchen again. apparently i love painting. thankfully there arent too many large walls in the kitchen so it doesnt actually take too long.

heres what the kitchen looked like before painting it the second time:

and then part way through

and heres the after:

and guess what. i love it. it seems more relaxing or something. i.love.it. and we are sooooo close to being done with the kitchen. the hubs just has to make some floating shelves. to go on the wall in the above picture. and believe you me ive already got a bunch of ideas on how to decorate the shelves. of course, ill keep you posted :)

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 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.

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?!?!