Quick closet update

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Just a quick update today.

Closets painting is finished and I decided to use Contact paper on the shelves instead of painting them. They're just painted pieces of plywood and pretty rough so I would have probably put Contact paper on them even if I had repainted them. After giving each shelf a Lysol scrub in the tub, I dried them and stuck on the paper.

Before...

After...

I got the paper at Target for just over $6 a roll. I'm so happy the closet looks fresh and clean now!

Tonight's simple task is to finish papering the other two closets. Then I suppose we'll have to get some closet doors...probably a good idea.

Cleanin out my closets

Keeping up with simple tasks for four days in a row! Go me. 

(Pretty sad that I'm actually proud of myself haha.)

The most recent task was done in two parts - Wednesday night prep, Thursday night paint.

Wednesday night - everything out!

Pantry...

Linen closet...

(currently cleaning supplies, tools and other junk closet....)

And the second hall closet...

Then I got out the TSP and washed, then rinsed all three closets. 

Thursday night - paint!

We have been using the same paint inside the closets that we used for the ceiling: Behr Stain Blocking Ceiling Paint in Ultra-Pure White. 

The old paint color just looked SO dull and dirty. YUCK. Next to the fresh white it looked even worse.

Unfortunately I ran out of paint before the job could be completely finished with a paint brush (corners and shelf ledges) but at least I got the majority done with a roller in all three closets. 

Lookin better already.

I ran out of paint around 9pm and Home Depot's open till 10pm so I headed out to pick up some more. I didn't plan on continuing to paint, I just thought I'd get more so I could finish up right after work the next day. I also thought I could peruse the paint chips for some front and back door colors.

Behold!

Wooohooooo those are bright! Melon and Navy Blue by Behr on the left and top, Cobalt by Glidden on the right. I of course couldn't stand it and had to put them on the back door the second I got home.

More dingy dirty peach brown paint...it used to cover the entire house! At least now it's only on the front and back door and in the office. Hope to get rid of all of it very soon. 

Here's what I think of the colors from left to right:

Navy

Kinda boring

Would go with pretty much everything

"Safe" (someone's been watching too much Project Runway and Work of Art)

Melon

Love it in the paint jar, not so sure on the door...looks too fluorescent 

Goes great with the kitchen backsplash

Might be hard to find a rug that doesn't clash

Cobalt

LOVE!!!

LLLOOOOVVVEEE!!!!

But it clashed horribly with the kitchen backsplash. Sad. Sad panda.

So right now I'm not giving up on Melon. I mean, look how good it can be!

source for both pics

Ed likes the Navy cause he says it looks the best with the floor. We'll see ;)

Liebsterific

As I said in yesterday's post, Teresa at Teresa D Boyd passed along the Liebster Blog award to me! 

Thank you so much Teresa!! I love how Teresa posted one of her favorite pics from the blogger that gave her the award, so I thought I would do the same.

Ok I couldn't pick just one...

Great pattern combo!

Oysters Rockefeller....mmmmm....drroooollll

Floor to ceiling curtains at the head of the bed. Love it!

The Liebster  award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers, to promote and encourage new friendships among the blog community.  When you receive it you:

1.  Post the award on your blog.

2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them. 

3. Reveal your 5 picks for the award and let them know. 

4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogosphere... other bloggers.

5. Finally, the best rule of all, have fun and spread the love!

Here are my five!

Kendall Simmons @ A Girl In The World Kendall
Courtney Lane @ Courtney Lane
Kendall is an interior designer and Courtney is an interior design student. These ladies can teach me a lot!

Beth and Jesse @ Je voudrais que 

Beth and Jesse post about anything that interests them be it beautiful, creepy, unbelievable, inspiring or all of the above. I don't know if they have more than 200 followers but if they don't, they should!

Meg @ Nutmeg and Company

Gabbi @ Retro Ranch Renovation

You know I love a good renovation blog and both of these ladies are making beautiful changes to their homes.

Check them out and spread the blogger love!

P.S. I got a (spam?) comment from Mike i Make of Fashion by M&M on my last post. I checked out their blog and was immediately blown away by the background in all of their photos and thought I'd share.

Any guesses on where they live???? I had no idea. And had to look it up. Answer after the pics.

It's Perast, Montenegro. Yeah I still had to look it up on a map :) Must add Montenegro to the travel bucket list!

It can't all happen at once

Lately I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed... now that the kitchen renovation is done, what do I focus on next? There are so many little odds and ends that need to finished... 

Should I paint the inside of the hall closets so we can finally put our sheets and towels away?

Should I get a new bathroom door so I don't feel like I'm in a public bathroom stall?

Should I pick out a color for the front and back door?

....maybe I should just keep watching this Real Housewives of Beverley Hills marathon.....

So this week I decided to just keep it simple. Baby steps. All the things that need to be done don't matter. All I care about is what I decided to do today. 

For example, Monday's task was moving my clothes from my large dresser into a smaller one that fits inside a large closet we have in the basement. Unfortunately all of my clothes are in the basement and Ed's are in the bedroom closet. What can I say, it's a 1956 house and there is one small closet in our master bedroom. Does anyone else have to spread their clothes all over the house due to lack of space? Anyway, a small task but something that needed to be done at some point...so why not now!?

Last night's task was finishing the curtains in the guest bedroom. I wrote a post a couple of week ago about modifying Ikea curtains. Well...I modified one set (two panels) of curtains and then stopped. 

It looked like this...

One panel with tabs removed, one lace panel not hemmed...nothing else done. So last night I thought I would quickly hang up the curtain rods above the other window, hem the lace curtains and feel good having accomplished Tuesday's simple task for the night.

Haha....it didn't quite work out this way. I had completely forgotten that I hadn't taken the tabs off of the second set of curtain panels, and I realized that the lace Ikea curtains don't come with iron on hem tape. I may have thrown my head back in dramatic fashion and groaned ooooooh aaaaarre you kidding meee?!?! But I pressed on, and I'm glad I did. I hemmed four panels of lace curtains, removed tabs from two panels and hung two curtain rods. Again...not an epic accomplishment, but something I can cross off the list. (Btw...I noticed in a post last week that Sherry of YHL just cut the tabs off her curtains with scissors and hung them up. Makes me wonder why I went through the trouble of removing them...)

Anyhoo, now the room looks like this!

Much better than this!

(As it was when we first saw the house)

(and right after we had the floors refinished)

Slowly but surely things are getting done. One (baby) step at a time.

Tomorrow I'll be back to post about Teresa @ Teresa D Boyd. She was kind enough to give me the Liebster Award!! Thank you Teresa!! You're the sweetest ;)

Quick and easy project

Not sure if I can even call this a "project"...but I thought I'd share it anyway. One of our wedding gifts was a knife-wall-hanger-magnet-thing and Ed's been wanting to hang it up for quite a while. So last night, he did.

Yay!

I helped by watching Ed work, taking pictures, and eating this straight from the pan with a fork (of course)...

I do what I can.

P.S. I'm sad that I can't eat chocolate cream pie now without thinking of "the terrible awful".

Indecision

-------Check out the new update to the Cookery page!-------

I am having the worst time trying to make a decision on rugs and fabric for our house! 

Mainly just rugs for our living room and dining room...and fabric for our Craigslist chairs.

I think there are two reasons why it's hard for me to pick something. First, rugs and fabric can be expensive and second, rugs and upholstery are not things I plan on changing out year to year. So I have to be sure that I absolutely love it. And as far as the chairs go, I have never reupholstered something so I'm trying to figure out what type of fabric I want in addition to what color, pattern, etc. After seeing some chairs like this:

via

via

via

I thought that velvet could be really fun. So I ordered some samples from www.fabric.com.

Pomegranite, Rust and Very Berry

Cadet Blue, Green Lilly, Navy, and Colonial Blue

If Ed didn't live here I would have already purchased several yards of Very Berry.

For some reason he doesn't want two bright pink chairs in his living room. Weird.

So my second choice was the Colonial Blue which (I think) is actually the most boring of the colors...except for maybe the Green Lilly. But in the end, regardless of color, I don't think velvet is the way to go. Look at allllll those little bits of lint and fuzz....

With one of these (modeling my bachelorette party sash)....

I think I would be lint-rollering the chairs every day. Every hour. 

So the search for the perfect chair fabric continues *sigh*

BUT! We did finally decide on a rug for the living room! Prepare to be underwhelmed!

Wild and crazy right?? Haha. I love the braided pattern and natural color. I think it will really cozy up the living room and go nicely with the chevron curtains. We should have it here within the next couple of weeks!

Finishing touches

Unfortunatley we haven't been able to post a final kitchen "reveal" because we got to the point where the kitchen was useable and then came to a screaching halt. We committed a cardinal sin of DIY....we started using the kitchen before it was finished! You know how that goes... you get comfortable (and lazy!) and before you know it it's five years later and that piece of trim (or whatever) is still not installed. Well we can't let that happen. The holidays are over and it's time to get back to work. Here are some of the things that still needed to be finished in our kitchen...

A door frame...

A vent cover, baseboards and quarter round...

and some more crown moulding.

We faced some challenges when installing the new door frame. The old walls were twice as thick (some weird combo of plaster and drywall) as the new drywall we installed so we needed to add some extra trim to make up the difference.

We also couldn't find plinth blocks that matched the rest of the blocks in the house so we had to get creative and make some. We found some trim that looked similar and then added filler pieces until it was *almost* perfect.

Not quite there...

Theeerrrre we go.

I'll have to put my sculptor hat on again when I touch it up with wood filler cause like I said, it's not perfect.

But  I'm happy that it matches! You can see the original trim in the background here:

Next we were on to the baseboard and quarter round which was much easier to install since there were no angels involved. And we were lucky enough to find a vent cover that fit at Home Depot.

Then....we were on to the scary part. 

Crown moulding. 

Up until this point we had only cut straight edges for the fake beam in the center of the ceiling. But now we needed to figure out the angles to go around the fridge cabinet and cover the second beam (where the old wall used to be).

---Old shot so you can see the unfinished top of the fridge cabinet---

Nothing makes me feel dumber than trying to figure out crown moulding!! Time to bust out this pic again.

We made so many cuts on a test piece before we finally cut the real thing. 

Also, to make things extra difficult, we had already installed trim on the center beam, and one side of the second beam which meant we needed to cope the crown moulding. Eek! If you don't know, coping is a process where you...well...it's really hard to describe. Here, watch this:

Basically you remove the extra wood that is exposed once you have made your cut. This allows the two pieces of moulding to fit together at a 45 degree angle. 

So I bought myself a coping saw for $8.

And gave it a shot.

Success!!

It looks good in this picture but up close it's definitely not perfect. We will be finessing the moulding quite a bit with wood filler/caulk. I'm still happy with it though! The fridge cabinet looks so snazzy now.

Once we got the general idea, covering the second beam was a little easier. The kitchen's a mess in this pic but I can't believe how far we've come! 

From this...

To this!

There are still some odds and ends to finish the finishing touches (aaargh it's never ending!!!) but we'll get to that final reveal post some day soon. I hope!