Just a Door Mat

We finally got door mats. It's been about 10 months or so but we finally got them. Hooray for Target.

Front entry:




Back entry:




Does it look more welcoming? Welcome, but not too welcome. Like, hey welcome, but you have to have a key to get in? No? Anyway... I also picked up a soap dispenser. Exciting for me. Jordan thinks I'm crazy.


I also found a set of pillow cases, place mats, a basket to hold place mats and other junk, and a decorative pillow for our room. Too bad it's only the size of my face and we have a king-sized bed. It looks stupid so it will be returned.



It's like doll-sized. Why?!

I don't have much else to give an update on. We had our trees trimmed the other weekend and the guys did some rearranging of our apple tree, cherry tree, and a fig tree that we think a squirrel must have planted. We have a plan to get rid of most of the rose bushes in our backyard. Unfortunately (well fortunately for us, because yuck), the bushes are so old that when we take them out they cannot be replanted. There are a few that are newer that can be moved to a different location. They just are little too "old" for us. We want something fresh. In the meantime say hello to one of our elderly roses:



I have a plan to get started on priming our kitchen cabinet doors tomorrow. This has been a long drawn out project. It's going to make the kitchen look great!! Jordan promised to take me out for dessert. I'm out of here!

Reginald the Key-ng

Well, hi. I suck at updating this. I'm going to blame it on my arms being sore from painting. We are halfway there with the kitchen cabinets! I'm the genius who was lazy and didn't paint the insides of the bottom cabinets but then decided to paint the insides of the top. It sucked.

On inspection day:

A few weeks ago:

Today:

Oh hey, girl!

I still have to clean, prime and paint the doors. Jordan will attach them. We have to pick out hardware. We want cup pulls for the drawers and we thought knobs for the doors, but now I'm leaning toward handles. You can see some of my ideas here: http://pinterest.com/ashleykaye/kitchen-inspiration/ We are also having a set of our doors cut so we can install glass. Fancy.

Behold, Reginald! Our key holder:

He's lonely. I think he wants a neighbor. Picture frame? Mirror? I don't know yet.

We are also in the market for a fire place screen since we are still housing the one that the previous owners left behind.

We also need to lay something over the brick hearth. YUCK! I want some sort of stone or tile? Something easy. Suggestions, anyone?

Remember the list I made in this post? Here's an update:
Our list of things to get done:

• Paint inside of front door
• Frost the front door windows
• Unpack boxes
• Decorate/fill shelf next to fire place, bookcases
• Hide cables from TV above fire place
• Replace light bulbs over dining table (how they are already burnt out from July, I will never know)
• Hang art
• Paint kitchen cabinets
• Paint laundry room cabinets
• Install cabinet hardware
• Find a new fire place screen and other tools
• Find couch/chairs that fit our living room space
• Create custom closet
• Paint bathroom cabinets
• Install new hardware in bathrooms
• Our back room - it's a list in itself

That's all I got.

Update Coming!

I swear that we've been working our butts off to get more stuff done in our house. I don't have all of the photos that I'd like to share and chat about yet. Once I do there will be posts aplenty!

We had a house warming party in the middle of December aka crazy holiday month! We are still trying to find places for all of our things, new additions (from Hanukkah Harry & Santa) as well as where to put our furniture. Both with newish jobs, we are both working hard and are back to getting projects done on the weekend.

The things that I want to share with you are:

1. Reginald our octopus key holder
2. Our completed front door/windows
3. The completed bookcases
4. Our kitchen cabinets
5. Jordan replacing drywall, with a face mask a la "Breaking Bad"
6. Our lemon tree that pretended it was a lime tree for the summer

In the meantime, I've updated our House page! More to come.

The "How's the House Coming Along" Progress Post

I've been lazy. I haven't kept up with this blog because we have projects that are half completed. Yes, the door is still only painted from the outside. We still have the old-lady lace hung up next to it. Our desk has been camping in our living room for a few weeks. The kitchen cabinets are half done. The list goes on...

I left off last time with our front door. I was actually going to do that this weekend but it's been raining for a week straight. Probably not a good time to take the door off or even have it propped open for painting. Here's a reminder:

I also tried to time-warp our linen closet. This is what it looks like inside:

I love a lot of things about the 90s but this shelf liner needs to go. Anyway, I purchased some clear adhesive liner, measured and cut it to fit. I peeled back the bottom liner and it lifted off the paint. I decided I would get back to it later when we take care of more important things. If anyone would like to take a trip back in time, I'm sure I can say that I have a Linen Closet Time Machine.

The next thing we took care of was moving our dresser (one of my grandparent's pieces from the 60s or 70s that they kept in their old Palm Springs home) out of our "closet" and back into our room. We propped it up, primed it, and painted it light grey. Jordan then painted a design on it - I'll show you later.

Now, instead of a hulking, dark and giant lug, the dresser sort of melts into the wall. A picture of that will have to wait...

Remember our crazy bookcases that used be decked out with mirrors until we bought the house and then after work, one day, I came in here and smashed them all with a hammer? Oh good, me too. That side of the room is no longer ghetto. Here's some before and after shots:

Clearly, we still need to put things ON the shelves but at least the hard part is done. Jordan sawed the boards, glued on the fabric, and placed them inside the bookcases. He did a great job!

On to the kitchen! I was able to paint our bottom cabinets. That may sounds awesome but it was only 5. I still have to paint the top - ugh. We went with a charcoal color on the bottom and are probably going with a white-cream color up top. I also had hardware delivered but it turned out NOT looking like it did online. So, project is only a quarter done.

One side - BEFORE looking into the kitchen:

Other side - AFTER looking out from kitchen:

Our list of things to get done:

• Paint inside of front door
• Frost the front door windows
• Unpack boxes
• Decorate/fill shelf next to fire place, bookcases
• Hide cables from TV above fire place
• Replace light bulbs over dining table (how they are already burnt out from July, I will never know)
• Hang art
• Paint kitchen cabinets
• Paint laundry room cabinets
• Install cabinet hardware
• Find a new fire place screen and other tools
• Find couch/chairs that fit our living room space
• Create custom closet
• Paint bathroom cabinets
• Install new hardware in bathrooms
• Our back room - it's a list in itself

Here's a photo from work a couple of days ago. The clouds were creeping down the mountains during our "storm."

Happy December!!

No Stairway! Denied!

I'm not really sure why my post title is what it is but I feel a little bit stuck. We have too many projects going on at once. Or at least, that's what my head thinks. I have to touch up the paint in the bathroom but what I really want to be doing is painting the rest of the front door. But to do that I need to get rid of the ugly curtain rods and putty the holes and finish priming and tape rosin paper to the windows so people can't see in and the list of dumb things goes on.

So, this is what I've been staring at for over a week. I had figured that while the door was off the hinges and being painted yellow, I should at least prime the inside of the frame. And then I decided to just go ahead and prime some other places. And while we can tell it will really make the room much cleaner and brighter, it's big ole hot mess right now.

I don't have too much else to update you with. I touched up some ugly spots in our kitchen. It looks much better to me but since no one has really spent much time in our house, besides us, it won't make a difference to anyone else.

We also made a functional decorative purchase. He has a name: Reginald. We're not sure where to put Reg yet but as an octopus he will be holding our keys sometime in the near future. Picture to come.

Hmmm... Oh! I also spray painted our house numbers dark blue. That took all of 5 minutes. But that's all I have to share!

Does anyone know where they have great deals on front door handle sets and door knobs? All of ours are kind of grimy. Ewww.

A Sunny Door & A Shiny Top

I've been working hard over the last week or two on a couple of projects. 1. Our kitchen pass-through counter top. 2. The outside of our front door.

Our kitchen pass-through window actually started off being framed by dark shutters. After a few weeks of staring at them once we got the keys, we took those suckers off.

Getting rid of those shutters makes the space look cleaner and more modern. It also makes the room look bigger. What was grossing me out was the poo-brown paint or stain that they previous owners used on the counter top. Over the last few months we thought about what to do about it. Do we paint it a dark charcoal color? Do we paint it white? I then decided that I wanted to strip it down and then paint a pattern over it so that you could see the wood grain next to the painted pattern. Then I decided to strip it, sand it, and stain it.

Before:

Hey guys, don't forget to wear protective gloves and eye-wear!!
I'm putting on the gunk that lifts old paint or stain. It definitely burned the inside of my nose - it's pretty toxic smelling.

Nudey shot:

After I put the stain on I slapped on some poly and called it a night. With only a few hours of absorption it looks a little red:

And here she is all normal brown and rustic-y looking! (The lighting wasn't too great when I took the photo. Trust me - it's loads better!

The next steps will be to paint the trim around the "window" a clean white and to slap a pattern on the counter top. We have one in mind and will most definitely post about it when it's complete - whenever that is!

Project # 2! I've been anxiously waiting for the day when I could paint our front door yellow. I'm sure some of you have heard me mindlessly blabbering on about it a few times before. My strong partner in crime, Jordan, unhinged the door for me and laid it out in our back room on some cinder blocks. There, I spent the whole day priming and painting. No joke, we put the door back on last after 10pm. I don't think it was fully dry. I definitely have a few touch ups to do.

For some reason I can't find a before photo that doesn't have our security door open. But I do have some shots of the poo-brown color the door was. I think the previous owners liked poo-brown a lot.

Primed:

Painted!!:

Oh yes, and decorated for Halloween. I got the idea from this blog right here: Hi Sugarplum! I thought they looked cute and simple and headed over to Michael's to grab some felt.

I'm hoping to tackle the inside of our front door soon. At that point we can remove the ugly doily that plagues the windows next to the front door. I won't even burn your eyes until I can do a proper before and after!

I just finished off my box of Raisinets, which means it's time to sign off. More soon!

Thanks for reading,
Ashley

Help Me Wednesday: Built Ins

I think about this blog all the time. I feel kind of bad that I don't have too much to write about right now. Even though I have the time to do more, WE haven't had much time to organize ourselves together and decide what to tackle next.

Remember the yellow built ins that I painted? I painted the actual shelves and our mantle white. Within a few days I had also painted the other set of built ins completely white. Our problem is deciding on what to do with the wall portion of these built ins.

That is where the title of this post comes in. HELP ME! Does anyone have any ideas? We thought about getting some foam board and attaching fabric to it. I can't paint it because there used to be mirrors glued to the wood. The glue is the black lines you see all over. It's not flat and would look pretty gross through the paint.

Thank you!