I see a red door and I wanted it painted black!

I know I haven't posted anything in a very very very long time.  I do have a very very very good excuse though!  My excuse is that I have been spending time with my family and making decisions on what projects I want to tackle next on the house.  The things we have done are not major projects, but alas, here they are:

I got bitten by the black door bug.  I started when I realized how dirty the exterior garage door was.  I had to do something about it so naturally, I painted it the same color as I had the exterior doors; a dark blackish blue color called Cracked Pepper by Behr.

After I did that, I started noticing how ALL the exterior doors had finger prints on them and I wanted to break up all the white we had going on.  (My husband hates that I am constantly changing my mind FYI!)  I went and bought more black paint in a different shade of black for the doors and before J could stop me, the doors had paint all over them!  He did end up liking what I'd done though... he always does!

before...

after!

Garage door (interior)

Front door

before....

After!

Back from my Hiatus

I know it's been quite a while since I've posted anything, but I've been working my butt off and I finally have time to load all the pictures and projects!  We are done with the remodeling downstairs!  Well, we are done with 90% of the remodeling downstairs!  We have a few walls to take out and openings to rearrange yet and paint touch ups here and there but we are done for the most part!
Let's get on with the pictures....

This is the photo taken from the first time we saw the house.  Again, these are not our decorations!

This is supposed to say"this is how our kitchen looked the first day we moved in" but I'm lazy and was in a hurry typing it!

This picture is from this Summer after we replaced the island:

AND THIS, is the kitchen as is today!!!

This is the only photo I could find that shows the pantry door, the guest bedroom door and the basement door together.  Let me tell you how confusing this was for me!!!  So many times I would walk into the guest room when I wanted to get in the pantry and vice versa.  We decided that a guest room right off the kitchen was dumb and we already had enough guest rooms in this house so we turned in into a formal dining area.

Here is the area now.  J did an amazing job adding a second archway and I no longer mix up my doors and guest aren't puzzled when they are trying to find the bathroom!

Here's the breakfast nook before we moved in:

 Here's the breakfast nook while we were trying to clean this disater up!

And here is the kitchen to date!

Ten months later, we finally got the kitchen painted!  We had some hang ups along the way that slowed us down but at last.... the kitchen is painted!  We had to buy a new oven unexpectedly right before Thanksgiving so you might notice that is different.  And if you go back and follow the progress of the kitchen, you will remember we replaced the island this summer and the fridge was the first thing I changed for an energy efficient one in the first few weeks of moving in.  All we did was repaint the cabinets and I still have new hardware to get for them.  I'm taking my sweet time getting hardware because J and I plan to buy all new cabinets in the next few years.  We hate the existing cabinets but can live with these now that they are white.  The paint color we chose for this area is Behr dolphin fin and the accent color is Behr wet cement.  We already purchased tin tiles for a back splash behind the stove.  Not sure when J will feel like installing them but hopefully soon.  Both of us are pretty burnt out right now.  Oh, and all we did to paint the cabinets was use J's spray painter.  I had previously stripped them all down with an amazing liquid sandpaper and he just sprayed on two coats of gripper followed by two coats of white.

Fall Decorations on a Budget

I'm trying to be really good about decorating on a budget but it's so hard when Fall is my favorite season of the year!  And, I think I've done it with some thrify thinking starting with my new Autumn inspired pillows.

This is my goal: to have seasonal throw pillow all year long.  But, instead of spending a fortune on pillows and trying to figure out where to store them, I'm making seasonal slip covers for my already exisiting pillows.    

The first pillow below is made from a really cute hand towel I found this season at Kohls.  All I did was measure the size of the pillow, cut the towel to size and sew two folds of  coordinating linen fabric to the back.

This beautiful linen and embroidered pumpkin lumbar pillow is a place mat I adored at Kohls as well!  If you look carefully at the place mat when you purchase it, it is already sewn like a pillow with a distinct front and back piece of material.  I simply cut a slit in the center of the back piece of fabric and stuffed it with one of my pillows.  Boom!  Instant pillow!

Here is the new mantle (minus paint and stain) in the family room.  I still have to post my how to for the mantle and bookshelf my amazingly crafty husband built for me.

My foyer is decorated with Halloween decor already as well.

I love these cute Halloween ornaments but I needed a place to hang them.

I simply cut a few branches from a crab-apple tree outside and duct taped the bottom together.  I was going to spray paint the branches black and decorate with some glitter but I think I want to uses the branches somehow for November and December.  I may just need 3 different sets but for now I'm content with their natural look.

I took my glass votive jars and changed them out too.  This one below is stuffed with cotton pillow stuffing and a few black felt cutouts for eyes and a mouth.

I even hit up the bookshelves of my kitchen island!

Here is the living room; full view (still minus white trim and paint sadly)

My Island Oasis

Some of you may know that I took a random vacation and left J to work on the house without any excuses. I was hoping that he would finish the wainscoting so I could paint when I got home but, I was in for an even better surprise! While I was gone, Jeremy installed the cabinets, rerouted the plumbing for the sink and dishwasher and had the granite installed! Seriously? Is there anything that man can't do? WOO HOO! Let me tell you what a big deal this is; I moved how long ago? February! I've been doing dishes BY HAND FOR FOUR since then! The worst part was that we bought a new dishwasher more than 6 weeks ago and it's just been collecting dust. Worse than that? We have had 4 sinks delivered to our home, three of which were broken and chipped. For some reason, FED EX couldn't refrain from dropping the front right side of the box resulting in a headache for me and my granite company. No only that, but I went through two faucets! What evs... it's in the past now. Island installed and guess what! I've still been doing dishes by hand out of habit! HA! (J wants me to be sure and include that he is done with the exception of the trim at the bottom of the cabinets for those nit picking!) Before, I had a two tiered, "W" shaped, corian topped island that was neither functional or aesthetically pleasing. Here are pictures from the first showing of the house an after we moved in
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Now, I have a lovely 8" x 4.5" counter-height, granite rectangle that I love everything about. I've foregone the kitchen table and eat all my meals at the island now.

 


 Now it's just the wainscoting I'm waiting for so I can paint like I mentioned earlier. The cabinets in the kitchen will be replace next year so we will be painting them for the time being. We are almost done with phase one! Then we can sit back and relax err... J can sit back and relax, I'm unfamiliar with that word! By the end of summer, our house will be ready for guests and I won't be tripping on boxes and dodging construction. I seriously can't wait!

My Half Finished Projects

I mentioned that my progress would be much slower with a 5 and 3 year old slowing me down. I can't work well into the night anymore and I think J is about sick of working on the house unless he's tearing things down. Forget clean up... that's apparently my job too. And I just haven't had the energy and spark to work into the wee hours of the morning. So here's what I've been doing. None of these projects are finished. I know. I know. I should probably work on one thing at a time. I hear you. But sometimes my wonderful hubby just likes to scare the crap out of me with the sound of a crashing wall. You'll see what I mean... OPENING UP OUR LIVING ROOM:

We decided to open up the formal living room and make the house more open and less choppy. The best way to do this was by removing the wall between the formal living room and the In-law Suite Master Bedroom. We saw no need for such a large guest room and wanted to have access to the double doors that led outside from that room. We still have yet to paint the formal living area and I haven't even begun to decorate the new space which we refer to the "family room" now. REMOVING THE CARPET FROM THE STEPS:

I did stay up into the wee hours of the morning with this project. It was not fun pulling out every staple and and nail. But, the effort was worth it I think. First, I got rid of the nastiest carpet in the world and second, there are beautiful hard wood steps beneath! This is my inspiration photo for what I will be doing with my newly uncovered stairs:

traditional staircase design by boston architect Siemasko + Verbridge

THE KITCHEN MAKEOVER: The first time I saw this kitchen, I thought to myself, "Now THIS is a kitchen I can cook in!". I was wrong. Once I started unpacking dishes, I realized I had no counter space and the cabinets were bass ackwards. The worst part was the ginormous island taking up most of the kitchen and slowing the flow of traffic in and out of the kitchen. Also, the cabinets weren't designed for someone who cooks. There's no space for me to store my dishes or my spices. In other words, we came to the realization we would have to replace the cabinets. Oh, and I hated the huge 60" wide fridge. It was obnoxious!!! So here we go...

Our new island cabinets are here and I'm waiting on J to install them. He's been rewiring the outlets and moving the plumbing around. Meanwhile, I've been working on the sink. Let's just say I drove two hours one way to pick up a sink yesterday and got it home, pulled it out of the box and J found a huge chip in the porcelain. I'm heartbroken. I have a 4 hour trip ahead of me to return it and I might go with something different now. I'm stressed to the max because out granite needs to be measured and I'm on a timeline with that. The kids and I have been looking everywhere and they are bored out of their minds comparing sinks and faucets! That still won't stop H from modeling everything I take a picture of as you can see in these out takes:

Dirty Dirty Dirty

In case you're wondering where I've been, duty calls outside the home right now. However, after work today, I found myself knee deep in a mess of a mess. There's only one room I've put off cleaning in the whole entire house until now. And, if you know me and you've been over before, you would know that I get totally creeped out by the in-law suit bathroom. I almost feel like it's haunted, but not or maybe it's just knowing that these people were the dirtiest of the whole group and bathrooms are... well, they are DIRTY!!!
I began cleaning the linoleum flooring and that's about as far as I got today. I reached a point where I just wanted to cry because I felt like I was being punished. I swear to God, I know that that floor has not ever been cleaned. NOT EVER!! Not once in 9 years had it been cleaned; it was so unbelievably dirty that I did not even anticipate the filth. Have I gotten my point across? I'm not even trying to be dramatic; it just brought me to tears having to clean up after someone else like this.
I started with my Shark steam mop. FAIL! I sprayed the whole floor down with white vinegar. Fail! I shook borax all over the floor and scrubbed it a third time. Fail! I didn't want to do it, but I reached a breaking point when I opened the bathroom cabinets for the first time and it looked like a nasty hairy man had crawled inside and shaved his body, leaving his hair in EVERY drawer. I really did cry this time and ran for the bleach. Straight bleach. I dumped it on the floor and spent the next hour losing my sense of smell, eyes burning, scrubbing up the deeply embedded dirt. I did leave two windows open but I still have a headache from the chemicals. And after all that, I still wouldn't eat off that floor! I followed the bleach with another round of steam cleaning and called it quits to work on something else.
I'll post pictures of the bathroom tomorrow when I tackle it and Mr Shaved Body's hair again.
My other project was settling on the final design for our new kitchen island. This was not anticipated so soon but one of our major design stores in Ohio is going out of business. So heads up Columbus, Ohio!!! The Great Indoors at Polaris Parkway is going out of business and starts it's liquidation May 15. Right now the sales are great, especially on granite! After seeing the prices, we couldn't say no and jumped into this project unexpectedly. We bought the granite and sped off looking for someone to do our cabinets. Props to "Keith" at Home Depot in New Albany for that. He quote unquote said to us, "Don't worry, I don't design things that suck". With that, I spit my ideas out and he made them come to life. Here are my inspiration photos for our future kitchen.

OUR KITCHEN:
The next 3 pictures are from the first time I viewed the house:







This is what it currently looks like:




INSPIRATION PHOTOS: