A Very Sad Living Room: Part II

Once upon a time I went to the D.I. on my lunch break and returned to work with this darling table!  She was $10 and I tried to barter for a lower price because the top is coming loose, but when they wouldn't budge on the price I knew I had to have it anyway.  You can't tell at all from this terrible picture, but the wood was in sad shape.  It was badly stained and scratched up and I probably could/should have worked hard to restore it to its natural wood beauty...

But I decided to paint it white instead :)

Kyle is always pointing out how I am obsessed with white... probably he is right.

My little table is currently serving as an end table in the not-as-sad-as-it-once-was living room.

I'm no furniture expert, but I'm thinking it was hand carved because there are a lot of irregularities in the details.  And that is what I love about it.  I'm guessing somewhere there is an antiques or furniture guru cursing me for painting over this thing.  Oops.

And here is another sad corner of the house, which is pretty much part of the living room.  The entry way needed help in a bad way.  (The little table was sitting underneath those pictures... still not sure what to do about that right now)

So one day we found the mirror/coat rack thing at a yard sale for $5 and the next week I fell in love with this handmade bench I bargained for $13 (they wanted $17).  The bench looks kind of like something someone made in a 7th grade wood shop class.  But that is why I love it.  The curves at the top aren't perfect and the slats on the seat are wonky.  Kind of like me, if you know what I mean ;)  I especially like how our shoes are slightly less visible tucked under the bench now. 

Here's a view of our not-as-sad-as-it-once-was living room from the front door.  I finally decided on hanging some stuff on the walls and our IKEA money tree is thriving in its new corner.  As I mentioned yesterday, the plan is to sew up slipcovers for the love seat and wing back chairs.  Probably in white (I mean, if I'm going to have an obsession, I might as well do it right, right?)

We're going for a green, white, black and navy theme in here.

Or at least until I change my mind again.

Also I think that floor lamp needs to go...

A Very Sad Living Room

Our living room was having an identity crisis.

I couldn't figure out what to hang where, how I wanted things arranged, and the chairs and sofa are two different color blues.

And then there was the corner shelf.

Over a year ago I attempted to lug this thing home on the roof of my little Toyota.  It subsequently fell off at an intersection, denting the trunk, and hurting my precious feelings.  After I'll we've been through together, this shelf is never leaving me.  Buuut I didn't so much love the oak.  Especially since there's also asphalt marks on the back sides now.  Oops!

I grabbed a quart of Lily Pad by Martha Stewart and had it matched in Glidden.

I painted all of the interior in the Lily Pad green and did the outer trim and back in some spare cream high gloss paint I had on hand.

And now I have a home for all my milk glass!  I love having a place to put my favorite collection.  Kyle was a little nauseated at how much milk glass I've aquired, but I still have no intention of quitting :) 

Now that I've had this corner shelf done for a few weeks though, I'm now contemplating adding a stenciled background to it... you know, just for fun.

So little by little this once very sad living room is coming together.  There's still a few big projects left to work in here (namely new slipcovers) but I'll share some of the other things we changed so far a little later.

Biggest Project Ever: Kitchen Makeover!

Well, we FINALLY did it. 

We painted our kitchen cabinets white!

This is the biggest project we've tackled yet and now I kind of feel like we can do anything. 

And let me just say I think I deserve some kind of an award for doing this all while 7 months pregnant.  I mean, how ridiculous is that?!  I probably have a screw loose or something.

Kyle also deserves an award for putting up with a crazy wife during this project.  I may or may not have become a bossy control freak maniac during some of the process.  {sorry, babe}  And he also made dinner each of the 4 nights our kitchen was torn apart.  And did all the dirty work (like scrubbing out the under sink cabinet that had suffered major leakage and molded and the previous owners covered it up). 

So just in case you are also 7 months pregnant (or not) and would like to transform your cabinets from 1998 oak and faux-oak to white and fabulous, here's the process we used:

1.  Clean and clean and clean and clean.... After we Kyle emptied the contents of our cabinets, we scrubbed and scrubbed every inch of the cabinetry with hot soapy water (and a toothbrush for the especially bad places).  And then removed the doors and drawers.

2.  Sand and sand some more.  We used a sander for the doors and drawers and sanded all of the cabinet bases by hand.  After a good roughing up, we wiped everything down with a damp cloth.

3.  Prime.  We used Zinsser primer because I use it on everything and so far I have loved every minute of it.  This stuff sticks to anything.   I primed the cabinet bases while Kyle primed the doors and drawers in the garage. 

It was about this point that I began cursing myself for wanting to paint the inside of all the cabinets. 
(We made sure we had plenty of ventilation inside: lots of open windows and fans)

4.  Finish coat.  The primer didn't take long to dry, so we were able to move to the finish coat pretty fast.  We applied 2 coats of high gloss Behr awesomeness in Bleached Linen.  I'm really happy we went with the high gloss.  Our kitchen is small and doesn't allow for a lot of natural light, so the added gloss helps to brighten things up.  On top of that, the finish already feels very durable and will hopefully withstand a few years of regular wear and tear.

Again, I did the cabinet bases.

And Kyle did the drawers and doors!

5.  Hardware.  We hadn't really discussed adding knobs to the cabinet doors and drawers until 7 PM Saturday night and we were almost finished with the all the painting.  So we ran to IKEA, dressed in our finest of painting clothes and grabbed some black knobs.  And then things got tricky.  We quickly learned that the screw heads were not strong enough for the power drill and pretty much melted in no time.  Without going into too much detail, let me just say that we broke a drawer in the process.  So we opted for no knobs on the drawers.  And are now one drawer short...

6.  Done!  Kyle hung the doors Sunday night and Monday I re-loaded all the cabinets and drawers (minus one) and cleaned every inch of the kitchen until it shone. 

I love it SO much I can't stop staring.  It's seriously like having a brand new kitchen.

I have plans to add a beadboard backsplash, remove the blinds and add a little cafe curtain for the window. 

A side-by-side of the before and after.
(For some reason we took the after without the lights on so it's a little dark.  Whatever)

I'M IN LOVE!

Happy House Anniversary!

 
moving day, April 16, 2010

We have officially been in our house for one whole year (and nine days to be exact).

Happy House Anniversary!

Buying our first home was seriously one of the most stressful times in my entire life. 
Honestly, I really didn't believe we could do it. 

We got married in September 2009 and just two months later (when the government announced another $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers) we decided we were going to try for it.  We only had five months to close in order to make the deadline and we had very little saved up for a down payment. 
I really, really didn't believe we could do it.

Looking back, I remember thinking that at some point someone would just bail us out.  Mom? Dad? Anyone have some extra $$$ laying around to hand our way?  How I wished!  Instead we had to get our creative juices going and came up with some new ways to save and earn extra cash.

Goodbye salon hair care.

Goodbye new clothes.

Goodbye vacation fund.

Goodbye cable TV.

Goodbye lunch dates with friends.

But...

Hello Mr. Zesty!

And Twitterman!

I have to say, Kyle wins the prize for the most effort in the "earn extra cash" area.

He dressed up in a pickle costume, an ill-fitting superhero outfit, and donated plasma.
All to add to our house fund.

I started making and selling onesies on etsy, which I really loved

(maybe someday soon I'll get back to that venue). 

I also traveled to Colorado for wholesale markets on weekends to earn extra dollars.

We were busier than ever and it was really very stressful, but I could hardly believe that when it came time to close on our house we had more than enough for the down payment and some extras.  It still would've been nice for someone to have handed us over the cash in the first place, but I think we learned some valuable lessons early in our marriage that helped us to start off strong.  What is even better, is most of our thrifty habits learned during those five months have stayed with us and made it possible for us to do other fun things we really enjoy.

Like fixing up our first home.
And getting ready for our first baby!

Some Assembly Required

Here's a bit of advice for you: when your mom tells you she's worried about you because you haven't blogged enough lately, you know you need to recommit yourself to blogging. If for no other reason but to keep Mom from worrying.

So, Mom, this one's for you.

Unfortunately, I have very little of interest to say because it's November December (how did it get to be December?) and already we are having the dreaded inversions here in Utah. I do not know what an inversion is exactly, but I do know that it makes the skies ever so pathetically gray and hazy and inevitably I get sick for the rest of winter until the tiniest of tulip blossoms begin to sprout from the cold, barren soil. There is just something about all that concentrated pollution hanging around in the air, I am so sure.

You would think that such a place like Utah would not have so much pollution, wouldn't you? I thought so. And then I moved here. And now I would like to go back to Colorado to breathe REAL air. You know, the kind without all the polluted haze.

But the "grass is always greener" isn't it?

Speaking of grass (or not), we have a new treadmill! A treadmill which I have yet to use, but spent 3.25 hours assembling (with Kyle) on Tuesday night. I figured it couldn't be that hard to put together.... probably you just screw the handles to the base, right?

Wrong.

267 pieces and half an episode of Glee later, we both had blistered and grease-stained fingers and two small parts too many... I forgot them and decided they were basically cosmetic anyway.

When it comes to marital project assembly, I like to be the "team manager" you could say. I take it upon myself to read the directions and call out orders. Contrary to popular belief, this is not so much because I like to be the boss, but more because if I don't read everything myself, I will not know what I am doing and basically screw everything up. In other words: I can't take directions from someone else. It's one of those personality flaws that probably I'll have to live with forever.

At any rate, we were just tightening up the last of the bolts when I looked into the monster-sized packing box and noticed a curvy bar still in its plastic.

"Oh, what's this for?" I asked.

Kyle groaned with knowing dread.

Yes, I had forgotten a whole piece of the puzzle.

Step 12 of 40 apparently went unnoticed in my calculated study of "Instructions for Assembly."

So probably we would've been done in 2.25 hours had we not had to unscrew basically everything just to fit the curvy bar into its proper place. And then I still managed to forget two small parts.

The good news is, my blistery fingers have nearly healed, all except for my thumb which was instrumental in hanging approximately 23 picture frames last night.

To be continued...

Pop Quiz

Being a homeowner is:

A: Heavenly Bliss

B: The Hardest Thing Ever

C: Super Cool

D: Sometimes Terrifying

Today, the answer is D: Sometimes Terrifying.  And you know why?  Because I ventured into the utility closet to think about changing the furnace filter (no, I do not know how to do it, but how hard could that be?) and as soon as I walked in, the furnace kicked on and streams of firely flames started shooting around inside the furnace! Did you even know it did that?!? In all my years of life on earth I have not once seen a furnace produce firely flames of terror. At first I thought there must be something wrong, that my house was going to catch on fire and all my Christmas sewing would be gone in a flash! But then I closed to door and forgot it was even in there.  Or tried to forget, anyway. I guess it makes sense for there to be firely flames inside... I mean, how else would the air get hot? I guess its just one of those things that you take for granted in life. Like how do marshmallows get so fluffy? We don't ask. We just enjoy.

Just don't even get me started on the leaky water heater.

A Closet Tribunal

I have put my closet on trial.  Each piece of clothing must independently prove itself as worthy of remaining in my closet.  To accomplish this tedious task, I have moved all of my clothes to the left side of the closet, leaving the center rod empty.  I will choose clothing items from the left side, wear them, wash them, and move them to the center rod.  At the end of the month, the items that I've not ever reached for, will be donated.  Fun, huh?! 

My shoes are also getting the same treatment.  Every pair went into a box and at the end of the month, the shoes left in the box are outta here!  This is really more excitement than I can handle.

I love getting rid of things, I really do. It's kind of a sickness, like the opposite of a hoarder.  Only the sickness comes just in phases, and usually peaks about the time that I've strewn my stuff all over the house and in various closets.  And let me tell you, my stuff is everywhere (Just ask Kyle. He will gladly agree). 

Time to purge!  One closet at a time...

There are just too many shades of white these days

link

In our house are four bedrooms that are each a different color:

Dark Green

Baby Blue

Lavendar

Pink

And we've decided to paint them all white.  Do you know how many shades of white there are?  There are way too many, that's what.  After thirty minutes of deliberating we settled on Benjamin Moore Glacier White, neither of us really caring one way or the other.  But now... I'm having second thoughts.

White?

Really?

I mean, I love white, but the rest of our house is definitely not white. 

Will it clash? 

Look out of place? 

Be too sterile? 

Or boring?

Should we have gone with Ballerina White instead of Glacier White?

Glaciers are cold. 

I don't want a cold room. 

But cold would probably be nice in the summer. 

But summer is about to end and then there will be plenty of Utah cold going around.

But ballerinas are so pretty...

Basically I've come to the conclusion that we have much too much house for me to handle.  There are too many decisions, too many rooms, too many choices, and much too many whites for my simpleness to process.  I want there to be a sense of continuity from room to room but I have so many ideas that are all so different that it just feels impossible to achieve.

I'm going out of town this weekend and Kyle is going to paint the lavendar room (aka his office) Glacier White.  I will keep my fingers crossed. 

I mean really, how bad could it be?

My Proudest Moment & More House Updates

This was our kitchen before we moved in.  See that little globe light above the sink?

I replaced it with this! 

I had never before done any kind of electrical work so when I flipped the switched and the light came on I may have almost shed tears of joy.  It was one of my proudest moments thus far.

And this you see was our bedroom prior to our moving in.  It's funny to me how vastly different our taste is from the previous owners'.

And here it is now!

The room still isn't quite done yet, but I'm so excited we finally finished painting it and got the bed assembled!  This is some serious progress, people.

Operation Compromise

Something of a miracle has happened.

Kyle and I agreed on something.

Something in the house.

That something being the future of our bedroom.

Which something involves a lot of painting

And white.

And gray.

The plan of which I devised via Polyvore.

And now, behold The Plan (insert dramatic music):

1. Palette colors by Benjamin Moore: Hawthorne Yellow, Wish, Silver Fox, and Whirlpool.  I'd like to paint the walls Wish and the bedroom furniture white.  The yellow accents come in from the duvet cover, pillows, and accessories.  The drapes are technically brown, but I think they are a similar look to Silver Fox.  I'd also like to incorporate some light blues/aquas for a little beachy feel.

2.  Gold Circles Mirror from Pier One

3.  Vintage Beach Poster from Zazzle.com

4.  12x12 Glossary by Basic Grey from A Cherry On Top

5.  Sand Ruffles Pillow from Pier 1-$30

6.   Yellow Roses Pillow from Pier 1-$40

7.  Bohemian Medallion Duvet Cover Urban Outfitters

8.  Chelsea Dresser  from pbteen (except I'll just paint our dresser white, it'll look similar in the end)

9.  Frame from Zara Home-$30

10.   Set of 5 Yellow Chinese Lotus Stems from Z Gallerie-$55 (I love these!)

11.  MERETE  curtains in brown from IKEA-$20

This means I get to paint our bedroom furniture white!

And our walls something other than green!

And Kyle is going to like it!

(But I do love to make the husband happy)

It feels so good to have a plan, don't you think?

Too bad we're busy every day for the rest of our lives so we have no time to put this plan into action.  But one day... one day it will be done.  It will probably begin with me taking something apart and creating a total disaster and then spending a few spare minutes here and there to put it back together over the course of many weeks.  Because that's just how I do things.  You know, some call it the hard way, but whatever.

"Hot Like Mexico"

image

It is June Eleven and I'm taking a sick day.  You know, just your typical we-can't-do-anything-for-you virus.  Stupid virus.  But have you ever Googled images of viruses?  They are fearsome science-fiction-like creatures to be sure.  But don't you think?

 Houses are so much different when you are inside them all the day long when you usually just come home after five.  For instance, who is it that is constructing the very loud clatter outside?  And why must it rattle my tables?  And does the train really go by five times between nine and eleven in the morning every day?  Really?

And furthermore, why did no one warn us that the wind here is so very much ferocious??  Yes, ferocious.  As in, it blows like unto a hurricane on a near daily basis. 

Ferocious as in I discovered our garbage can lying all over my dahlia sprouts.  This was very puzzling unto me because the garbage can lives about fifty feet away, around two corners from where my dahlia sprouts happen to be.  I mean really, do you see what had to have happened here?  I'm telling you, this wind is serious stuff in these parts.

And while we're asking questions here, why is it that Cream of Wheat is not more filling?  I love the Cream of Wheat but one serving is like unto a snack for my great and spacious appetite.  I'm pretty sure it only makes me hungrier.  (Unfortunately this is not the appetite suppressing type of virus that I have) (Stupid virus).

Lastly, has anyone watched the Alejandro video from Lady Gaga?  I suggest you do not.  It is eight minutes and forty-three seconds of weirdness.  She is weird.  I will admit, I do like some of her music and it's so very catchy and a good beat to run to (you know, if I ever wanted to run or something) but I do think her videos are all sorts of bizarre and disturbing.  I have to give her a virtual high-five though for doing a video with no mascara.  I do think a girl like her should probably always wear mascara.  And does anyone even high-five anymore?  But maybe that is so 1995 or something.

Be Cool My Babies

I pretty much kill every plant I've ever tried to grow. 

Would one call that a black thumb?  I'm just not so very sure.  About a month ago I planted a bunch of dahlia tubers (tubers? really? so weird.).

 And now look at my babies!! 

This is just one of the dahlia plants, but they're all sprouting quite nicely.  My inner pessimist tells me to enjoy it while it lasts because they will all shrivel up and die soon.  You know, the black thumb and all.

Oh but then there's this. 

This here is a pot of dirt that has looked just like this since we moved in.  I just assumed that the previous owners had planted something in there and that one day it would begin to sprout magical goodness.  But I think I could be wrong.  I think there is nothing in there.  Just a pot of dirt. Or maybe they were just sucky gardeners.  Either way, it's a nice comparison to the lovely sprouts I have growing up (take that former owners of our house!).

p.s. extra points if you love Conan and even more extra points if you buy this for a baby in your life:

from here

A Totally Self-Serving Tuesday

At some point during our recent move I lost the charger for the battery to my camera and therefore had to use Kyle's camera to document my goings on.  But then he got tired of me misplacing using his camera and I was forced to seek alternative photo options.

But good news! I found my camera battery charger, (which was actually not lost at at all, I just was too lazy to look for it) and I used it to take self-gratifying photos of things I've been doing.  So here is where I gloat a little about the things that have made me ever so happy-slash-busy the last month or two. (Consider yourselves warned)

Um, I've been working on this little clutch for Anna The Great for a few weeks here and there and I finally finished it!  Glory!  How I do love those fabrics...

Anna The Great sent me the tutorial from here and was brave enough to let me whip it up for her!  It's the first handbag sort of thing I've ever made and I have to say, I kinda wanted to keep it for myself.  But I didn't, because I'm nice like that.

Behold the kitchen!  You know, the kitchen I painted "all by myself."  (But okay so Kyle helped me).  Quite honestly, it is a little more "baby blue" and a lot less "aqua" than I had wanted, but I'm getting over it. I rearranged some of our household accessories and now I pretty much love it.

I relocated this print from K2 Imaging to the kitchen.

And this one too.  I like the added red. 

Probably the best part about painting the kitchen blue is now Kyle is almost equally as excited as I am to paint our cabinets white!  And then there will need to be something done about those laminate countertops...

Have you been wondering lately about The Chair?  Well, here he is in all his reupholstered glory!  Not too shabby, if I must say so myself (and I really must).

Just a reminder, this is what he was before.  Ew.

And now! 

(Insert public applause and bow of gratitude)  (This is, after all, a totally self-serving Tuesday)

Ahh, and remember the lamp I won on ebay??  I finally found a shade for her at a garage sale (for one dollar!).  Now she lives by my bedside.  I love my milk glass lamp, really I do.  And that mirrored thing behind it?  That will soon be painted white.

I firmly believe that anything ugly or kind-of-ugly can become very much attractive when painted white.  But don't you think?

Today I Am Thinking Yellow

You know what's happened?  Now that we've painted the main floor and it's, you know, mostly put together in a way that I can enjoy for a few months, I've almost instantaneously become driven to redo our bedroom.  Actually, it's more of a do than a re-do because we haven't done anything to redo in the first place.  Make sense?

So we kind of have this whole blue thing going on throughout the house, but I don't want to be overwhelmed by blue because I love blue and too much blue might just be too much.  You know?  But we have a blue duvet and so there will be some blue.  And to go with the blue, you know what I'm thinking?  Yellow.  Today I am thinking yellow.

You know, a happy mustardy yellow of sorts.

With a little blue?

Mixed in with little apple green would be nice.

 

And maybe some grey, perhaps??

Or even a palette like this.

So today I am thinking yellow, but tomorrow I'll probably change my mind.  It's just how I roll.