Project Planning

As much as I'd love to just stay home and work on this blog for a living, I might as well be honest and say that it's pretty damn hard to find something to write about.  Last year, we updated weekly and then bi-weekly for 4 months and I think the only reason we were able to was because we had half a year's worth of projects and pictures we worked on. 

There was a crazy moment in December, where we had this idea to demo and reface our fireplace before the end of the year, but we went to Lowe's to look at stone facades and realized we were on crack to think we could get it done by the end of the year.  This lead to our realization that the kitchen just kicked our asses too much for us to want to even pick up a hammer for a project, which is why we haven't updated this thing for a while.  

Currently, we have a couple projects we're working on.

Painting the exterior of the house: 

We have the UGLIEST paint job in the neighborhood.  After some quotes, we're happy to say we'll be getting our house painted in early-mid April!  It's about time she look just as pretty on the outside as she does in the inside now. :)

Landscaping the front yard:  

We also have the UGLIEST front yard.  All of our neighbors have nicely manicured lawns.  We've been getting flyers and business cards at our front door for landscaping and we sometimes think it's our neighbors dropping us hints.  Out of curiosity, we got a quote to fix our sprinkler system.  It turns out we just weren't turning the damn nobs right and our sprinklers have worked perfect from day one.  So we pretty much just killed the lawn from the first day we moved in for nothing.  ;)

Make the backyard BBQ friendly: 

Our backyard is just as ugly as the front yard, with the broken hot tub and gazebo being used as giant dump for scrap wood and project left overs.

If we can get these 3 things done before it gets warm, we'll be BBQing all year!

His/Her rooms: 

Chris is working on his man cave and I'm working on what I call my "studio" currently.  It's been awesome since they've been pretty bare since we've moved in. 

Before I end the post, I have to post a picture of these cute vintage candle holders I got from http://www.onekingslane.com It's one of my favorite Flash Sale sites when it comes to house stuff.  :) The holders are actually heavy cast iron, unlike the cheap metal ones you can find at most places like Home Goods, Kirklands etc. that are painted with cheap ORB paint.  What was surprising was that they sent a box of stationary cards as a thank you gift.  :)  When I read it, the note was signed by two women, one being Alison Pincus.  Being in the game industry, there is only one Pincus I know of so I googled the name and sure enough she was Mark Pincus' (co founder of Zynga).  Who knew?  

Anywho, I highly recommend One Kings Lane, they have awesome quality stuff. 

Christmas Decorations 2012

Since the December took over our lives like a Blizzard, I'm having to write multiple make up posts to cover everything.  I'm a horrible blogger, but it's better late than never. :)

The day after Thanksgiving we got our fresh tree!  It was a lot easier this year considering we didn't have to stuff an 8 foot tree into a hatchback.  We've been hoarding Christmas decor since Halloween, so we were ready for it this year!

Our theme since last year has been "classic Christmas", with a lot of rustic farmhouse influence of course!  We didn't buy anything glittery and stuck to Red as the main color of things.

Once Chris got the tree set up, I got the ladder and got busy decorating the rest of the day. Here is our tree.  :)  This will probably be the last year our living room will be empty so we took advantage of the tree being set up in front of the window.  Our tree was supposed to be at least 10 feet, but since the man helping us at the tree lot didn't know how to measure, we got stuck with 8 again, and it wasn't perfectly tall enough to properly show the tree topper in the half moon window.  :P

I'm unsure of what possessed us to buy decorations this way, but Chris and I noticed a trend in how we ended up with our Christmas decorations.  Apparently I like to buy reindeer and Chris has a thing for snow men.  My brother and sister-in-law are the same way interestingly.  Here is a picture of our mantle.  Do you see the snowman on the bottom towards the left?  We saw him at a Home Goods store before Halloween and decided not to buy him so early.  The weekend after, we decided to go back and buy him and he was GONE!  In the course of 3 weekends, we went to all the Home Goods and TJ Maxx stores in the east bay area to find him and finally, on a second trip to a previously visited Home Goods, we found him. :)  It was worth it though, because we ended up finding and bringing home so much more decorations. lol

Our families were coming to our house for Christmas this year and our dining room is awfully plain.  I needed something to use as a centerpiece.  Using our awesome and recently bought mitre saw on Black Friday, I decided to make something. ;)  I took two old fence boards that were left over from our fence redo last summer and got to work.  Before I show you what I made, check out this awesome shot of the nifty laser guide the saw comes with.  

I have to take a moment and saw how much I LOVE the mitre saw.  It feels so much safer to use than a table saw and I can see myself spending hours in the garage making awesome things with it.  Not to mention it will be AMAZING to have when we put up crown molding. :)

So I decided to make a simple box like this out of two fence boards.  While nailing it together, two little knots fell out and made holes in it.  I don't know why but I thought it was cute and loved it even more.  :)  I was really happy to finally use the old fence boards because I really love how aged the wood is with the color and texture.  Makes me glad I have a large stock pile on the side of the house. :D  Afterwards, I hunted around the house for things to use with it so I wouldn't have to buy anything.  

 

So with the box I made and things I bought and found, I made something cute like this:

I stuffed the box with a spare garland I bought the previous year, placed two reindeer I found at Home Goods in the center, placed two candle holders inside the box at each end so the candles are raised and covered the candles (so my reindeer don't catch on fire :P ) with these neat bottomless milk bottoms from a set we got on clearance at Kirklands and then stuffed the empty spaces with cinnamon scented pinecones.  TA DA!  

I made the burlap placemats too, if you want to see how I made them, you can find the instructions in the next post. :)

Kitchen Remodel Complete!

It's about time we post this. Today we spent most of the day patching up holes and painting the ceiling and touch up spots. We are so relieved we will never spend another weekend waking up early to work on kitchen projects. It's taken us about 5 months worth of weekends to finish everything, although half of those weekends were spent being lazy and doing other things. :P It may have taken forever but we saved a lot of money and learned a lot of fun things. So at last, here are the before and after shots!

Here is the view from the family room. :)  No more thick ugly white tiled counters with blue grout!

We LOVE our new sink and faucet.  It is stainless steel and deeper than our old one, which was scratched white and rusting.  The faucet is a piece of art on it's own and looks great with the hardware in the kitchen.

Our favorite part of the kitchen, the new island/breakfast bar that now exists where there was once nothing but barely used nook space.

There are a bunch of little things we changed that made a big difference as well.  The island cabinets were the biggest help, giving us plenty of room for the neat kitchen gadgets we got from our wedding that was always tucked away in places we didn't see them.  Now that they're in the island, we can easily get to them and use them on the counter.  It fits our giant crock pot, a rice cooker, a panini grill, a food processor, waffle iron and Chris' giant Ninja blender set and it's accessories.  All in just one cabinet!  Can you believe it?  It's so easy to use them now on top of the island with the new top outlet Chris put in. :)

On the other side of the island, the cabinet holds two large waste baskets that slide in and out.  One is for the garbage, the other is for the recycling and we can fit two giant Costco sized boxes of garbage bags inside there with them! The best part is that we no longer have to have a garbage can strapped to the wall with metal water heater straps because our dog Sam can't get to it!  No more coming home to smelly trash all over the place!  Hooray!  I've always wanted one of these to conveniently hide the eyesores.  I love ALL of the Rev-A-Shelf kits at Lowe's.  This is definitely my favorite little add on. :) I'm still secretly trying to get Chris to get me the two tier Rev-A-Shelf kit for my pots and pans. :P

In between the cabinet that holds the trash and the cabinet that holds the kitchen gadgets are 3 extremely roomy drawers that now hold all our tupperware.  There is so much room and space in the rest of our cabinets now thanks to the island storage.

Another little Rev-A-Shelf kit we got was the "pull out cabinet basket" for under the sink.  It creatively uses that decorative drawer face and lets you open it to have access to two little plastic trays that hold those gross sponges/brushes that you'd normally see above the sink.  You can't see it in the picture, but the best part is that it comes with a ring holder that is built into the tray.  I surprisingly use this A LOT and I no longer have to look for my ring on the counter or put it somewhere where I can potentially lose it. If you're worried that the trays are stuck and can't be cleaned, well they can!  You can slide them out and wash them when needed.  

One of the first things we did when we first started working on the kitchen was paint the insides of the cabinets.  While the doors were off and while the counter tops were demoed, we took the time to paint the insides of the cabinets.  It was a pain in the butt to paint, especially the lower corner cabinets because they were real deep.  However, we knew that if we only painted the doors and frames, it would be really dark inside.  Now they're nice and bright when we open the doors. :)

Products mentioned in this post:

Progress on the Kitchen Front

We hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! :)  Chris and I took an extra two days off this week to finish the kitchen.  We'd of been done already but we've been awful lazy at just finishing everything off.  By finishing, I mean patching up the ceiling holes and painting.  It's just so annoying to do and so messy.  On top of it all, Christmas is fast approaching and we've been getting sidetracked left and right with shopping holiday sales and decorating for Christmas.

Despite it all, we have made some slight progress.  Remember that weird beveled mirror framed doorway to the dining room?  We finally got rid of it!  No more space teleporter.  :P  The inner casing, the parts of the door frame that replaced the mirrored areas were actually part of a premade casing kit you can buy at Lowe's.  The big white frame is something we added and that was not in the kit.

While getting the doorway done, I wanted to give the windows the same kind of treatment, so we bought the same material that was used for the doorframe which was 3" and 5" wide MDF boards. So while Chris was doing homework the previous two weekends, I was cutting the pieces and hammering them in.  On a scale of 1-5 on wife difficulty level, I give this a "3" because the boards are heavy and if you don't have a nail gun, it's a $@#%! to have to hammer it all by yourself.  

I won't lie, after all the wood pieces (which felt like a lot) got to the house, I felt slightly overwhelmed thinking this was a project I would be doing on my own without husband help.  I had a small moment of "what the hell was I thinking" but I got to it because  I knew Chris would throw a fit if I asked him to help me return it all back to Lowe's.  LOL  

What really gave me the push was thinking about these windows and how much I love how the chunky white windows make a statement.   So I got to cutting, hoping mine would look as good.  :P  I measured and cut the casings (which are the parts of the window that are inside the frame) first.  This was a breeze until I realized some of the drywall was not even with the casing.   Annoying!  As if builder grade frameless drywall windows weren't bad enough, the builders had to have uneven drywall. -.-  I did some reading and it turns out, you're just supposed to hammer the drywall edges so that they're flat and flush with the casing.  So as you can see, that is why the newly painted wall is peeling.  Not to worry, that part gets covered by the frame.  Sometimes the windows are edged with beaded metal edges beneath the drywall.  You can just hammer that flat too.

The next roadblock was the large window in the kitchen.  There was not enough room for the thick MDF wood to perfectly fit inside because of the way the window closes, so I had to get a thin 1/2 " piece and cut it with the tablesaw to fit into the frame and still have room for the window to shut properly. Afterwards, I sanded and primed the pieces.  Thankfully, it was just the big window I had to do this with.  After the casings were done, the easy part was framing them. 

Here is what the windows looked like before:

Here is what they look like now:

I love them and the detail it ads to the space  The windows seem bigger and the whites make the room brighter.  Some people might not get it or care, but it's a big difference and it matters.  My siblings both lived in older craftsman style houses in Berkeley before and I always loved how the windows and doors were framed with amazing transoms or how there were built-in shelves in the  nooks and crannies.  There was a lot of character built into homes back then that you just don't get in a lot of  builder homes.  

Oooh! I almost forgot, we finally got transitions again.  Chris did an amazing job using dark walnut stain to stain the transitions to match our floors and then sealed them.  It's been over a year since we've taken the old nasty gold ones out, I thought we'd be collecting crumbs and dog hair in the crevice forever.  lol  Yay honey!  We also finished putting in new chunky baseboards. :)

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Vintage Finds #1: Rusty Love

Last spring I saw a really cute rusty green bread box on the internet that I couldn't stop thinking about.  It was rusty, it was green and it was love at first sight.  <3  The only thing is that it was selling for $40 and I couldn't stomach paying that much for something so rusty.  Since then, I'd been googling for it once a month, hoping to find one for less with no luck.

In September, while we were antiquing in Napa, we went to a store that sort of looked like a community version of Goodwill but bigger.  The minute we got there, Chris and I immediately found things that caught our eye.  Chris found an awesome rare German beer stein (he collects them) and in the corner of my eye was a speck of green that turned out to be.... THE BREAD BOX!!!  Look how awesome the green has faded.  It's actually in better shape than the one I saw on the internet.  

Just when I thought the excitement was over, I went to look at the little sticker price that was on the box and it said "11 pc for $12.50".  Eleven pieces?!?  It turns out, I not only got to get the bread box, but also a set of old green tin cans too!  I felt like I won the lottery. :P

I haven't figured out where I want to use the cans, so currently they hide inside the bread box. :P  However, the bread box has found a home on top of the fridge. :)

One thing I've repeatedly seen in farmhouse decor vignettes are old rusty scales turned into clocks.  I've seen this one sell in stores and online anywhere from $57 - $115.  While it's cute, I've seen it in person and the quality doesn't seem to fit the price. :-/  Instead I went on a hunt to find actual old scale.  I luckily found this old rusty green one on Ebay for $17.  Now it holds my cute little garlic basket. :)  (The basket was $4 from the Sur La Table clearance section)  Scales are so cute!  I've seen some people use hanging ones to hold plants too, so I'm keeping my eye out for those now!

Chris, my best friend Justine and  I, went to the Alameda Antique fair a couple months back and it was amazing.  We spent hours combing through everything and saw everything from knick knack boxes full of old typewriter keys, rusty oxidized hardware and vintage jewelry to rustic industrial looking furniture made by local bay area craftsmen that rival those made by Restoration Hardware.  I luckily stuck to a decent price budget and came back with, a small 3 piece bookcase/cabinet, an old rusty washboard and a rusty old flour sifter.

I bought the old wooden washboard for $8 hoping to use it in the laundry room for decoration one day.  I don't have anything else to put in there yet.  The old flour sifter was $4 and when I bought it Chris was worried I'd actually use it. lol

Here is where they all live today. :)

Epic Kitchen Remodel: Recessed Lighting

Yesterday Chris took down the last remaining reminder of our old kitchen, our fluorescent lights! So proud of my hubby! It's been so nice not having a huge ugly wooden square box above the kitchen. Our ceiling feels so much higher.

After some research we went with six Utilitech easy install kits. Here was the process in detail.

1. Remove old box housing the fluorescent lighting.

2. Remove light bulbs and any old electrical elements.

3. Plan out where you want the new recessed lights. We went with 6 holes between the studs because we didn't want to have to put new sheet rock up if we had to skip a stud. Although, after the holes were made, we discovered that there was enough space to run wire above the studs if we wanted to move the holes.

4. Cut holes. The cans for the recessed lighting had templates built into the packaging, so all we had to do was trace the circles over where we wanted them to be. I sloppily cut the first hole with the oscillating saw, thinking it would be as easy as the rectangular hole we made for the island light... HORRIBLE idea. Small circles are a lot harder to cut with those things and dust flew everywhere. Chris ended up cutting the remaining 5 holes with an exact-o knife perfectly.

3. Adjust wiring. Chris just extended the wiring 5 more times, running it all in a circle to accommodate the six cans we bought.

4. Pop the cans in. The beauty about the cans we chose was that they easily popped into the ceiling. The cans have these metal expanders that you adjust from inside the cup, making the light can catch onto the sheetrock.

5. Screw lights into cans.

Again, here was our awful light before with the light box the same nasty 80's oak color as our old cabinets with the crappy cracked half discolored plastic covers that liked to collect dead bugs that flew inside.

Ta da! Here are our lights! Obviously we still have to do light patching and paint the beige ceiling square to match but we love the new lights! The lighting is actually warm in color, which was my concern. The light they cast is nice and soft, bright enough to light the area but not disgustingly bright like fluorescent lights.

While Chris worked on the lights, I was busy casing the windows and doorway. The windows were a last minute project. I saw similar projects on Pinterest that made me want to do it but I am really excited now because I know they're gonna look great! We are so close to being done with the kitchen, I almost can't believe it's almost over. Hopefully if the windows are framed and all our little patch and paint areas are finished, we an finally show our full on kitchen reveal next weekend. :)

Crafty Post #2: Vintage Carrier Makeover & Mossy Monogram

This weekend, Chris had a seven page paper to write for school.  Most of his Saturday was spent doing research and putting it all together, so I knew I wouldn't get any husband help on any projects.  So I picked a couple small things that I knew I could do on my own.

So last September, we went to all of the antique/thrift stores we could find in Napa that were listed in Yelp.  One antique store had a back room labeled "clearance" and I found this pretty little thing in a cardboard box full of old dishes.  I didn't know what it was at the time, but I thought it looked pretty neat and I liked the design with all the little holes.  I wasn't sure what I'd do with it but it was partially rusty so I bought it. :P  When we got home, I googled the markings I found inside and found out it's actually a vintage casserole dish carrier possibly from the 1930s.  I really hope it's from the 1930's and that it belonged to some lady who tried to make her family meals all Martha Stewart fancy during the great depression. lol (Did you like how my mind wandered off like that?  That's the kind of silly crap I think about when I buy my rusty collectibles) 

So I finally had a plan for what I wanted to do with it.  Since, it didn't come with a casserole dish of any kind, I decided to make a wooden base for it.  I got some of the scrap wood left from the wooden pig I made and used the jigsaw to cut out a little circle that was roughly the circumference of the carrier.  Afterwards I stained it a dark walnut. 

Now the pretty vintage casserole carrier has a new life purpose, serving as a tray for the olive oil, salt and pepper. :P

While  I was making a mess outside, I decided I might as well make a cool mossy letter "B" to add more green to the kitchen.  (You can never have too much green!)

How to make a Mossy Monogram!

1. Draw out the letter of your choice.  If you can't draw, I suggest printing out a very large letter in a font you like.

2. Cut the shape out in wood with a jigsaw.  It doesn't have to be perfect since it's going to be covered in moss, but it's fairly easy to go back around the edges with the tool and shave off the oopsies if needed.  If you have a difficult letter with a hole in the middle,you can just use a drill to make a starter point hole for the jigsaw blade.

Again, if you haven't already bought a jigsaw, I suggest buying one for less than a nice pair of jeans.  Also, they are so easy and not scary to use, a sewing machine is more difficult to master.

3. Cut and Glue Moss to your letter.  I used hot glue to attach the moss to the wood.

*Easier Options*  I've seen some people make the monogram out of those paper/cardboard letters you can find at craft stores.  So if you don't want to cut wood, that would be a safe option.  I just made one out of wood because I haven't seen any cardboard ones that are really big or in the font I like.  Also, I wanted something heavier in case I made it a wreath so it wouldn't blow around outside.

Ta da!  I put a pretty bow on it and made it wreath like. :)

Items used and mentioned for this project:

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