Half Bath Overhaul

I wish I could've taken credit for this redo, butttttt I can't. Again, my amazing husband swoops in - and this time, becomes a granite installer and plumber.

If you read about my husband the electrician, you know all of his handiness comes from Boy Scouts... and YouTube. This time I was much more comfortable leaving the house knowing he wouldn't get electrocuted... may a little flooding... but that's okay because he is a great swimmer :).

Now, I will give myself a little credit, because I did acquire all of the bathroom renovation materials for just $364. Yep, a toilet, sink/drain, backsplash, granite countertop, and mirror. Needless to say, I gave myself a huge pat on the back for this one.

Here is the before (and actually there used to be wallpaper, but we covered that up the first week we moved in...). 

Like my little Indian dude? 

So, I found all these pieces for our half bath by accident. I am a true believer in keeping a list of what you want and need to get done and just wait for a great find. If you wake up on Saturday morning and decide to do a project, you'll likely spend a lot more money than if you happen to find the items on clearance somewhere. All of our projects have been dictated by when I find a great deal.. which is why there is no rhyme or reason to the order of our projects! 

We hadn't talked about doing the half bath just yet, but I happened to walk into ReStore the other day and run into the manager. He sees me in there often and always says hi to me. He came up and asked me what projects I am working on now. I told him that I am just looking for anything that catches my eye - he took me over to the countertop section and proceeded to tell me he will give me one of the pieces of granite (WITH BULLNOSE!) for $5. Yep. $5. And that is how our half bath redo began.

We purchased a beautiful Kraus over mount sink/facuet combo on sale at Wayfair.com for about $200. A mirror for $25 at ReStore. Backsplash for about $20. And new toilet from SAMs Club for $98.

Ben used a hand saw with a granite cutting blade to cut the granite to size, and a diamond drill bit (not made of real diamonds, just part of it shaped like one... I asked) to install the sink. Then he worked some plumbing magic, and voila!

We have also started on our master bath reno... but until it's done... I think this will work perfectly as my bathroom :).

My Husband the Electrician

My parents totally freaked when I told them Ben was in the attic wiring our new microwave and oven. As adventurous as I may be with figuring out projects, I probably SHOULD have some sense of danger with certain things... My mom says it'll happen when we have kids, or when one of us finds out (the hard way) that we aren't invincible.

Ben asked me not to say where or what we spent on our microwave/dishwasher/oven... But let's just come to the mutal understanding that I stole them. It was one of those shopping trips that you get home and looked at all your loot and do a happy dance.

We removed our double oven from 1980 with the wind-y Rolodex clock, and put a wall oven on top and microwave underneath (by the way - I hate microwaves. It was just a necessary business purchase... that I know use on occasion ;)). The wall oven was an easy install, but there was no electrical plug for the microwave. 

*this actual oven wasn't ours - I was SO happy to get rid of it, we yanked it out and hauled it away so fast I forgot to snap a pic! I googled the make/model of ours tho - and here it is in all its' glory!

My suggestion was that we just run the cord across our countertop, but Ben vetoed that idea immediately. So, he went into the attic and found a junction box and drew the energy from there and ran a cord down the wall behind our oven and installed an outlet. It worked like a charm. I was SO proud of Ben and his partner in crime: YouTube. 

I left during the finishing touches, and when I returned Ben was standing in the kitchen with an adorable sheepish grin on his face. He asked me if I wanted the good or bad news first. I raised an eyebrow... Well, good news is it works! 

Bad news: you can't microwave anything  in the dark. Translation... he pulled the energy from the junction box attached to our kitchen light. Light off, microwave off. Light dimmed... microwave heat dimmed. 

After we laughed our faces off for a few days, he made the quick fix - and all is good in our beautiful new kitchen. 

Porched.

Our exterior has a colonial/Victorian flair to it. It's a pink white-washed brick, white cylinder columns, detailing woodwork between the porch columns, and dark shutters around the windows. That does not reflect our interior AT ALL. We knew we had to update it, but what we had to figure out was what is the least amount of work we could do or the least amount of money to get the biggest impact.

We decided to cut out all the detailing and case in the columns with new wood (square columns), and paint it a really organic color. Not sure if "organic" is the right word... But I love it. I use it to describe the natural, outdoorsy, living, rock, moss, green look. Makes sense to me!

Ben's parents came into town a couple weekends ago and helped us execute this. Thank God they did!! They brought a suburban full of tools that made this project exponentially easier. We had to case in 7 columns total. Mitering all the edges of all the planks was the most time consuming. Other than that, painting with the oil based paint was the next trickiest part. If you read my post about me painting our baseboards... you know how I feel about oil based paint!

Buying a pre-fab column from Home Depot costs $100-128/column. Hand making all our columns cost <$57/column. Woo hoo!

We chose paint from Behr, and it totally changed the vibe of our house. All we need to do now is purchase a couple boulders to put in the front garden... and maybe steal a couple outdoor chairs from my parents :).

Oops We Did It Again...

Well, as everyone knows Ben and I went through a torturous project of tearing up carpet, warped fake wood, and deteriorated (30 yr old) linoliom floor stickies.

We have layed off on the home reno projects for a while... But we are back in full force! 

It a all started during thanksgiving week. Ben wanted to put up the Christmas tree early (he would have it up year around if I let him). He loves our Christmas Tree so much, he wanted to redo all of our flooring before he put the tree up so it would look nicer. 

At this point, we had stained concrete in the study/kitchen, carpet in the living room, and red brick path in the entry and into the living room. The easy option would've been to tear up the carpet and brick and stank it to match what we already did. Unfortunately, as we tore up the brick, we saw all the mortar had deteriorated. This meant we could never get all the floor stain to match the way we needed it to, to beautifully execute the open floor look. So, we tiled... ~1500 sq ft.

There are a zillion options, but we wanted to choose a really updated tile that was modern and Restoration Hardware. We decided on wood tile, but at $2.39 (which is the avg price... and found at Homw Depot) that wasn't exactly the budget we wanted. Yes, $2.39 is cheap, comparatively... But I knew we could do better. We went to a local flooring warehouse and found a smaller tile, in a color we may not have otherwise chosen priced at $0.99/sq ft. 

*our original pick @ $2.39 sq/ft

Ben was super apprehensive since it wasn't exactly what he was envisioning, but I reminded him that if we wanted a return on our money one day, we need to renovate with a business mind. He knew I was right :)... and in the end, it was beautiful and perfect.

Definitely the most challenging part was the amount of sq ft we had to cover... and the fact that our foundation wasn't level. We made the best out of it - and no one can tell but us... Except for maybe my super detail oriented dad.

Front Windows - Curtains and Blinds!

This past month has been a little crazy - Reebok CrossFit Games and the launch of a new school year (I work for a healthy school lunch provider). 

Despite the busyness, we have still been doing projects, just not writing about them! Our windows need serious help. From all the pictures I've posted, we all know that vertical blinds are what keeps me up at night. Blinds and curtains (I've now learned) can be a huge investment! One that we weren't ready to take yet. So, for the time being, I was just decorating around them. 

All my windows are at least 84" - which means most of the cheap-y curtains were out of the picture. I thought about making my own with some awesome fabric, but even then the panels (could) cost me around $30 each. 

I found 2 (matching!!) rods at Ross for $4.99 a piece. Score. Then I also happened to find a set of neutral panels in the clearance section at Home Goods, at the right length, for $10!

I also purchased two black tie backs for $2.99 each. It tied in the black cow rug, and it gave our curtains some definition.

I always resort to neutral color palette. I would love to be a bit more bold, but I couldn't pass up $10. It definitely adds to our front wall, don't you think? Now if we could just replace those darn vertical blinds...

Fast forward 2 days (and in the middle of writing this post...) I found them! Remember how I said the vertical blinds kept me up at night? I started hardcore researching pricing and brands etc. for pricing. I wanted to get away with as few windows needing blinds as possible. I talked with my parents and this was their advice: make sure you have matching 2" blinds for every window that is in the front of your house, facing the street. Okay, cool... We have 6 of those (7 sets of blinds though because 1 of our windows is a double wide).

God must have really been getting sick of me praying for new blinds because I walked into ReStore (local charity place where people take their home/yard materials they don't want), and just the day before a lady donated 6 sets of brand new 2" blinds with all the hardware ! All I needed to find was one more small set to fit a long awkward window in the study (I found one that matched!)! They were $7.50 per window. Yes, you read it correctly - for all the blinds in my house it cost us less than $75. Un-freakin-believable. My parents even flipped out, which says a lot since they are the king and queen of good deals. 

I promise a much better photo soon, but I was SO excited I snapped a quick photo and have been dying to post it!

And to thank ReStore for providing us with such a great steal, we removed our vertical blinds and donated them right back ;).

EASY ARM CHAIR REDO

I found a couple ugly chairs on craigslist for $35 a pair. They looked like worn out office waiting room chairs. I needed a clean lined (EASY to upholster) chair to sit in the corner of our bedroom. This chair wasn't meant to be crazy or fabulous - just a space filler that matched our colors. 

Our bedroom theme is primary blues - sprinkled with other jewel tone pieces (think royal relaxation ;) ). So I decided to have my hubby redo this chair in dark purple velvet fabric.

The part that sucks the most about these projects is how long is takes to remove the BILLION staples. 

I DEFINITELY married a hottie - and don't worry (although we spend almost every non-working minute together), I will never take this sight for granted! 

He removed the fabric, I traced the pieces onto new fabric, cut them out, and he re-stapled. All in an evenings work!

Pretty functional, right? I'm thinking I want to sand down and paint the wood a lighter color - 

We are (but really, just I am) currently working on a chair that Ben says "it looks like Monsters Inc swallowed that chair". I think I'll finish one of the two and post it... I swear it's not blue, but there may be some validity to his statement!

Pantry Hall Chalkboard Painted Doors

Off the backside of our kitchen is a rather long hallway that leads to our laundry room, back door, and garage. We never thought much of it until our friends started coming over and knocking on our back door (so much for all the thought put into my entry way!!). The doors aren't beautiful wood pieces with any classy or historical elegance. They are fake, hollow, flat faced, with outdated knobs.

There are 5 doors in that back hall - who designs this stuff?! Anyways, we needed to find a way to pretty it up... cheaply. I had a couple ideas which included taking the doors off, replacing the doors with nicer ones, just switching the knobs for updated ones, hanging matching wreaths on the 2 pantry doors, and painting the doors. 

Well, a quart of paint costs around $9.95 (and I really was saving up for buying new CrossFit shpes!), so there was our winner!  I had a couple colors in mind - mint green, dry erase paint, and chalkboard paint. The green would have been really fresh looking against our dark walls. The erase board was a neat idea too, but it wasn't the classy rustic look we were going for. The chalkboard paint could be cheesy too.. Or it could add to the local/organic/menu board/farmhouse flare. 

We tried the chalkboard paint with the idea that I would design a menu board mural. It took 1 quart of paint. We did 2 coats on 2 doors.

                                 

The black paint gave the hallway some dramatic interest and appeal. It was easy and oh-so-perfect!

You can see I started to draw our design on the doors! I am hoping to finish it tomorrow and add pictures! :)

Kitchen Cabinet Sprucing

So let me lead off and say I will NEVER use oil based paint ever ever ever again. My dad would be extremely disappointed to find out how blonde, ditzy, dumb  uninformed I was before playing with this messy paint. I grew up watching my dad DIY our home and tinker in his garage for hours upon hours... you'd think I would have learned a thing or two. Ben wasn't home when I decided to touch up our kitchen cabinets - and because I am very impatient, I thought I could paint on my own (I mean, it's JUST paint, right?!)...

I gathered my supplies - a small paint roller, paint tray, oil based paint... and that's it. No tape, no plastic tarp, no gloves, not even a paint shirt... geez, looking back I can't even believe I was so naive...

I had toyed with repainting our cabinets a different color - changing all the hinges (the hinges are external hardware and were painted white to match the cabinets back in the day...). I had even played with adding trim to the current cabinet face to bulk them up a little. At the end of the day though, when I calculated all the time and money that I would have to put into a project, I think - is this THAT important to me, and if our house goes on the market will this project make enough of a difference to add value to our home.

Cabinets can be pricey project, so I decided that it would not be worth it (...and thank goodness I was right!). I went online to doorcorner.com and found some oil rubbed bronze knobs on sale for $0.94 each. It was a gamble that they would actually turn out nice and heavy, but they arrived a few days later in perfect condition and quite beautiful! I was quite impressed with the quality. I love a good sale *sigh*.

Anyways, I decided to just spruce up the faces of the cabinets - the old paint was dingy and starting to yellow. I pulled out my roller brush and dipped it into the paint and started rolling away. All was going well until I started to get too excited and not so careful - then one by one little drops of paint started to fall onto our brand new counter tops... then onto the newly stained concrete... then onto our sink...

Naturally, I just used my fingers and tried to swipe it up. I noticed the paint didn't "swipe up" like normal though... it spread instead. I just then dropped my roller brush into the paint tray - AND I REACHED MY HAND IN to get it out. I then proceeded to the sink to "wash it off". On went the water and like nothing I've seen before, both of my hands were taken over by white paint - and there was no sign of it ever coming off!!!

All of the droplets of paint that were in and around the sink now became blankets of white mess. I had "gloves" up to my elbows and realized I had a Home Depot down the street, but I could not drive in my condition. I could not pick up my phone to call Ben to come save me. I could not even google to figure out how to home remedy this stuff off my hands. I sat on my kitchen floor and cried until Ben got home.

Luckily, I was only able to get out a few tears before Ben came through the door, took one look at me and burst into laughter. He got me cleaned up, helped me finish the project, and that was the end of me ever going near oil based paint ever again. How traumatizing...

All in all our cabinets are beautiful and the hardware turned out perfect for our kitchen, don't you think?  Just another cheap way to update our house in the ways that count, little by little :)

Open Concept Kitchen

Apparently back in the 80’s, kitchens were not cool. They put their kitchen in the back of the house, surrounded by walls and closed off by doors. Was this a man’s way of keeping his woman in the kitchen – literally…? ;) I kid…

I LOVE kitchens. We are big foodies… not like crazy expensive obscure type of foodies. We just want good, clean, healthy, FLAVORFUL food – and we love to cook everything from scratch (we don’t even own a microwave… yet). My husband is a phenomenal cook (I think I have mentioned that a time or two!), so we both wanted a beautiful kitchen that was the center of our home, since that is where we would be spending most of our time.

To my dismay, our kitchen was surrounded by walls and closed off by doors with locks (let’s not even mention the HOT PINK counter tops, outdated appliances, and bright flowered wallpaper!). After we did our first walk through (before we even bought it) I created a before and after floor plan – if Ben wasn’t game for the project, I wasn’t going to buy the house. Here were my plans:

Before

After!!!

As you can see, I wanted to tear down the large wall that closed off the kitchen/breakfast nook and living room. I wanted sight lines from the stove top to the family room. Ben seemed all for the demo, at the time.  Unfortunately, once we got into the attic, we saw that that wall was the major loading bearing wall. What was going to be a simple wall removal turned into a wall reconstruction (with plumbing and electrical) – WAY harder. 

We blew out the long back wall and kept the side wall for stability. My dad suggested that we cut a large window out of that wall to create an illusion of having clear sight lines, with minimal obstructions. Instead of blowing out the doorway like I wanted, we just “super sized” the doorway to help deter you from feeling like it was supposed to have a door there at one point.

This is what we ended up with:

Our contractor who installed our granite thought to put the granite in the window cut out as well, to help tie in the room. I loved it.

This project actually was very cheap – we reused all the wood from the demo to restructure the columns and half wall (including the baseboards!).  We had to buy a few sheets of dry wall ($8.16 each), and we used leftover mud and paint to texture/color the walls. The most expensive part was the bullnose corners we needed to use to round the corners all over the column/half wall ($3.25 x 12). Ben will probably never gain back those many hours he spent sweating over this wall – reconstruction around load bearing walls is not easy. He will definitely think twice before we do this again :) ! BUT it looks GORGEOUS – I think it was totally worth it!

Kitchen Table Lighting Redo

I love Craigslist - now, I know all kinds of creepy stuff happens with Craigslist, but that is what husbands are for my sweet husband always offers to team up on all my awesome finds! He has driven all over the Houston area and surrounding cities picking up little treasures for me. I definitely don't recommend going alone, no matter how good the deal is (I often have to remind myself of this!).

SO...there was a HORRIBLE dated light fixture in our breakfast area in the kitchen - this picture actually makes it look almost decent, but trust me, it wasn't. Bright gold (circa 1980s, it's a given) with flat glass panes.

I want to do a chandelier for the kitchen lighting (oh so glamorous - but I will probably need Ben's approval :) ), so I needed to find a piece that could compliment it. Hmmm where could I find inspiration that incorporates chandeliers and the rustic them I am going for...? Ya, ya, ya, I know - Restoration Hardware obsessed. So of course we are on a budget, so I scoured Craigslist for something I could revamp. i forgot to take a before picture because I was so excited I had the spray paint can ready for action as soon as Ben brought the light home! $30... boom!

It was a 5 pendant light (see below pic), and it was a bright shiny brushed nickel. It also had some frosted glass coverings that looked a bit "commercial"... but not in the good way.

We unscrewed all of the frosted glass coverings from each of the pendants, and I spray painted it dark brown and let it dry. I then went back with black acrylic paint and a wide  paint brush and dry brushed the black over the chocolate brown so it has a dark distressed look . I wanted the metal for both this fixture and the chandelier to match, so I figured painting by hand would best achieve this effect.

This is my inspiration and then my final outcome (please, everyone, pretend like you do not see the vertical blinds... I haven't gotten around to changing the window treatments :)).

I can't wait to show the whole table with the light above! We have been building away, and our table is freaking awesome!!

Spice Drawer Organization

If you know Ben, you know he LOVES his spices - he is the cook man of the house... who happens to be a phenomenal cook. I am a very lucky girl, I know.

We love flavorful food and use spices often. I thought long and hard about where the most accessible place was for us to store our favorite spices. I did not just want to throw all the bottles in a cabinet/drawer because I knew that would get messy, so I designed accordion shelving to place inside -

 

We had some thin pieces of plywood leftover from a previous project, so Ben cut and I glued the pieces together. It seriously is one of my favorite parts of our kitchen! This drawer is located in our island, right next to our stove top - so convenient, clean, and organized :) oh, and it didn't cost us anything, only about 30 minutes of our time... time well spent together!

Fantastic Find!

Super pumped to find these gems! As everyone knows, my style has a very masculine tone to it - think Restoration Hardware :)

I often look at staged rooms I like and store it away in my memory for safe keeping... I stopped into Marshalls yesterday to find this -

$495 vs $10.. SOLD!

Right now it's just sitting on our kitchen counter... along with his Indian friend - location TBD.

Painted Book Success!

I posted my craft idea the other day - to make matching shiny gold/copper book sets. We have a lot of shelves to fill, but this is a good start!

Backsplash: Subway Tiles

It’s a total bummer we have 3 bathrooms, because I know(sometime in the near future) we will start updating them… and with that updating will come grouting of some sort. 

Grouting looks so much more pleasant than it actually is…now, it’s not hard – but it is definitely gritty and kind of irritating. 

We had dreams of a kitchen back splash that was old world-ish and Tuscan, similar to this:

 

I went to Home Depot/Lowes/online and priced it all out, and our budget (quite frankly) said “hell-no”. I don’t mean to be uncouth, but here were the price comparisons to what we wanted and what we did (which eventually turned EXACTLY into what we wanted :)).

Old World Tuscan:

Total COST: $310 w/o tax… and this was the BASE CASE… not including the decorative tiles I wanted in the border (which was between $8-12per sq ft)!

Subway Tile:

Total COST: $91 w/o tax

Ta-Da! Here is how it turned out - pretty amazing turnout. We are very happy with how well it pulled our kitchen together!

 

 

How We Did It!