Sunday, December 2, 2012

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!!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

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.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

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

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

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!

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Mellow Yellow

Actually, the yellow is not so mellow. It's really bright. I think it shocked my dad when he came over a couple of days ago. When you walk in our front door (ha, which will soon be the SAME BRIGHT YELLOW!) you are greeted in the corner of your left eye by a peek of our built-in bookshelf!

Don't mind the mess. We (by we, I mean Jordan) are still trying to mount the TV and have items scattered ALL over the place.


Here are some before/progress/after shots:

The fireplace bookcase the day of our inspection. Wow!




Here is what it looks like at this very moment:


I also made sure to repaint the actual shelves there and our mantle WHITE! They were kind of nasty and yellowed. They look so good that I can't wait to throw some white paint on the old doors, frames, and trim! Remember this? That WAS the shelves...





One thing I was really excited about was getting rid of our toilet paper stand. I found a TP holder that holds onto the bowl. Voila! I also installed new toilet seats but didn't get around to photos of those. I think maybe the only difference it has made is for my peace of mind.



Some action shots?




And a glamour shot of Harry Potter the dog:


Since I have lots of time off right now I'm hoping to get more and more things done. I just need to have a game plan. Ugh...

'Til next time!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Sneak Peek: Dining Room + Porch

While trying to figure out how to begin this post Jordan said this: "Jordy painted the walls. While I took a nap. And we didn't finish the rest of the room because there's too much crap over there."

So, anyway, yes, Jordan painted the majority of our living/dining room. It's looking pretty awesome. Once that is done we can get started on painting the trim while and it's going to look so crisp, I can't wait! Here's a little sneak at the color:



There is a set of built in shelves to the right of the fireplace that we are going to probably paint a yellow-ish color, keeping the shelves white. It should look pretty neat next to the grey color of the walls. And then eventually the front door will be yellow. Even if it's 10 years from now. YELLOW!

We've also updated our porch. We can now enjoy our street by sitting outside on our new Adirondack chairs! I've been scouring Craigslist for over a month and finally found a pretty good deal. Now, we just have to decide if we want to paint them, stain them, leave them as is, etc. Although, we should probably seal them, right? Anybody know?



I hope to be back soon with a more complete living/dining room update. Due to some RLS (real life shit), I now have more free time during the day. I'll see what I can tackle by myself... and then whine to Jordan, later on, about how much my back hurts. Ha! Goodnight!

P.S. Have you seen how awesome my plant was doing until we were gone one long weekend? Anyway, keep up with my plant saga here: Grow.

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