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!

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