Rocky River Farmhouse

Greta and Will's New Bedroom

2011-06-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

We have a baby due August 3rd so my big kids (4 and 2.5) are moving on up in the world. More specifically, across the hallway. I've been working on transitioning this room from a guest room to a gender-neutral shared space for the past few months and have been really pleased with how it all came together.

Almost everything you see in this picture has been thrifted or given to us with the exception of a few things. Everything began with the rug that was given to us by some friends. It's kind of washed out in this picture, but you can see a clip of its multi-colored glory in the corner of the picture below. It really set the tone for drawing in all the colors so I didn't have to pick any one gender-neutral color. The antique spindle beds were bought on Craigslist. They were originally a dark brown wood and I spray painted them gray. The end tables were given to us a loooong time ago and I refreshed them with some cherry red spray paint from Walmart. I've owned the quilts for a long time but the blue quilt originally came from Target and the patchwork quilt on left came from Land of Nod. The step stools and buckets came from IKEA yesterday and the blue darkening drapes were on sale recently at Lowes. The kids silhouettes I traced, painted on burlap and framed them in the embroidery looms that I already had. It was our latest craft in craft club and my kids love them as much as I do.

This is the corner of the room as you walk in to your right. The white armoire was a hand-me-down given to us by my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. We house all of the outgrown baby clothes in there since we are so limited on closet space in this house. The little vanity was 12 dollars at Goodwill and the bookshelf was 5 bucks at a pharmacy going out of business sale.

This is the corner of the room as you walk into it on your left. The dresser is one we bought a long time ago on Craigslist for $100 and refinished it. The mirror was $12 at Goodwill and the PBK beanbag moose was Will's Christmas gift when he turned one.

Greta kept sneaking in the pictures. :) Both kids slept in their new bedroom last night for the first time and Greta has told me twice this morning that she loves her new room. Success!

There are still a few IKEA nightlights to be mounted (pink flower for Greta and a blue star for Will), a light fixture over the naked bulb in the middle of the room (any cheap or DIY ideas would be appreciated!), a few unbreakable, bulletproof, wipeable accessories for their dresser to cute-sy it up a bit and then we'll be done!

I Heart Maps

2011-05-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

I saw this wreath tutorial the other day on Flowerpatch Farmgirl and decided to try my hand at it using an old atlas I recently picked up in a freebie box.
I used a combination of pennies and copper furniture brads as the centers of the flowers. I just hand cut out a bunch of hearts and didn't have a heart punch like the tutorial had used.

Here it is all tied up with burlap on my newly painted (Mediterranean blue by Valspar)
shutters! I salvaged some shuttered bi fold closet doors from a friend's neighbors garbage. Adam was embarrassed. Is he embarrassed now? I think not.

Lastly, I put some little Ikea plants in an old apple crate on top of a wooden box I hot glued some sawed off yardsticks to the front of. I think it looks kind of patriotic in a flag sort of way. Perfect for summertime!

French Curvy Dresser

2011-05-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

For a while there, I was determined to get some organization in my hallway. I originally had some PB cubbies with plastic dollar store baskets that you could see all of my ~~"haven't found a place for" things~~ junk and it was overwhelming to say the least. After reading the 31 Days organization series from The Nester, I was inspired to gain my hallway back using a dresser. I found this on Craigslist listed for $75 after using words in the search engine like "french" and "provincial" and it had 12 drawers! Perfect for my junk. Love those legs...

And after a light sanding and some glossy white spray paint, I had this!

I distressed it lightly afterwards wherever there were paint blobs that didn't even out. Distressing stuff, even lightly, helps take some of the pressure off of being perfect when spraying. Usually I'm doing it on a napping-kids-timeline or kids-touching-my-newly-painted-things-timeline so either way, I don't have forever to be a perfectionist about paint blobs.

Close-up of my thrifted mirror collection. I love the gold and silver ones as is, but I'm not sure what to do with the wooden ones. Any color advice? The big white one is newly painted so I'll keep it that way.

A little twist on a DIY sunburst mirror. I superglued and hotglued old keys on some old Walmart candle holder mirrors I've had for a long time. Superglue worked best by the way.

To the left of the mirrors, above our bedroom doorway, I wanted to show you my Valentines Day present from Adam. He stayed after work a couple nights and welded up our anniversary date, 6-5-04. We celebrate 7 years on Sunday! :)

On the right hand side of the dresser is an old bucket lamp I spray painted cherry red and copied someones idea of their lampshade I found on a blog. All it took was removing the fabric and leaving the wire frame for the more industrial look. I like the funky look of it, but my energy efficient light bulb is not that pretty. I do love the open lighting it offers though in a dark hallway.

I've been working on a few other things including a summer mantle which I'll be posting later so maybe I'll be back in my good blogging graces soon. :)

Craft Night!

2011-02-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

Once a month, there's a group of girls that get together to do a craft. We have a different hostess each month who chooses, organizes and teaches the craft. So far we've done fabric rosettes, glass painting, wreaths, and this month was button bracelets!

Beautiful girls and sisters, Katie Beth and Meagan. First timers of craft night and first timers of button sewing! It's what craft night is all about! Learning stuff for the first time.

(l-r) Dena, Holly (hostess), Ezra (Dena's baby) and Tiff getting their elastic and thread ready.

The fun part of picking out the buttons. Holly had it all arranged in beautiful glasses and bowls all separated by color so you could easily pick what scheme you wanted to come up with. I don't have a picture of mine, but I did mostly gold and navy with bits of yellow.

We had about 14 girls total including 6 first-timers. So fun. The way we arranged the night was Holly had pre-bought all of the buttons on Ebay and elastic which we divided the cost and paid her accordingly, about $8.00 a piece.

The finished product! Well, at least 2 of them. If you wanted to make your own, you need about 2-inch wide elastic and about 30 buttons. Cluster them closely as you sew them on so there is little to no empty space in between. They look like they came straight from a boutique!

A Blog Without Pictures...

2011-01-10T05:22:00.000-08:00

Fellow friends and reader, my camera has officially kicked the bucket. You won't be hearing from me very often because a blog without pictures is just not as cool. So unless I have something really intelligent to say or some amazing links to post, this might be it for a while. In the meantime, maybe I'll be crafting up a storm behind the scenes and will have lots to show you when I enter back into the blogosphere with a new camera in hand!

Coconut Flakes, Turkey Feathers and Pink Window Panes

2010-11-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

I had so much fun decking my Christmas mantle this year. It was fun to play around with different things I had around the house to make it all come together.

I'm sure you can deduce that coconut flakes mentioned in the title is what I used for the fake snow sprinkles. The letter N came from my picture gallery in the master bedroom and the other "letters" I just gathered from around my house.

Here is my pink window pane. Which started out as white. Then I painted red. Then I painted gold. Then I distressed it. Pink is what became of it.

I was trying to make it like this from PB...
You can't see them in the pictures, but their are strings of twine in between each pane that I nailed in to clip card on. These are just some of my favorite vintage-y ones I've received or collected over the years.

Stockings hung by the chimney with care. The garland came from the cypress trees in my backyard. I made some for the windows too in the living room. They were a cinch to make, but a week later they are crumbling under the slightest touch!

Some bottles I recently numbered from 1-6 with glass paint. The 2 and the 5 were perfect to use as we prepare for the 25th of December. Can you spot my turkey feather in the vase? The other day I looked out my back window to find 5 or 6 wild turkeys in my backyard! I was so excited to find proof of their visit!

Those giant stars are gigantic versions of what my Aunt Ramona taught me how to make while she visited a few weeks ago. I have 7 dangling above my head as I type away in the living room right now. I thought I was making snowflakes, but everyone that sees them talks about how they love my stars. So stars they are.

Maybe one day we'll have our fireplace wired up for gas logs (the chimney is capped off so it can't be wood burning) but in the mean time we can simulate a roasting hot fire with a bunch of tapered candles.

Merry Christmas! I'll be linking up to The Lettered Cottage "Merry Mantle Party" today so if you need any ideas, these girls are the ones to check out!

Free Christmas Cards from Shutterfly!

2010-11-30T05:54:00.001-08:00

I agreed to do a little blog write-up in exchange for 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly! We are on a super tight budget and I considered forgoing cards this year, but this was a deal I couldn't pass up!

Shutterfly has sooo many options of their christmas cards and holiday cards to choose from. This was the one I liked best!My brother-in-law snapped some family pictures of us in my husband's new (yet old and "distressed") 1969 black Ford pickup so I thought the whole retro look of it all with this card would tie together nicely. Normally, back in the good ol' have hours of time to craft days I used to make all my Christmas cards. Alas, it doesn't really save any money and of course you spend tons of time putting them together. Mind you, I consider it a hobby, so it was a task I enjoyed, I just have too many things now that I want to enjoy! These photo cards are the epitome of easy and thoughtful.

We've also given calendars to grandparents and my parents complete with pictures for each month. They're always a hit!

By the way, if you are a blogger, you can participate too! Check it out here!

Fall Mantle, Sitting Room and PB Wall

2010-09-23T05:25:00.000-07:00

Flipping through the Fall Pottery Barn catalog was just the inspiration I needed to fix up our sitting room. Here's the picture that made me swoon...

Okay, and here's mine...

Ha ha. Well, it looks a bitttt different. I promise though, if I had a fancy camera like theirs, it might look a smidge more like PB. I really loved how linear all their pictures were and tried to model that, but I had such a big wall to deal with that I had to spread things out a bit. PS- that tv is only there TEMPORARILY!

Here's another copy-cat attempt...I saw these modular storage crates being sold in the catalog for about 30 bucks a piece! Well, I have a ton of old pine boards left over wall demolition and put those to good use!

Baddabing.

And here's my fall mantle...

With a little close-up...

I still would like to add a little homemade pennant banner that says "Happy Fall" out of burlap fabric that I saw and want to copy from someone's blog and hang it from the mantel.

Here's the piano with my new chair! I'm hoping to find a cheap filing cabinet on Craigslist to put to the right of it so I can get rid of the three plastic filing boxes!

And here's my favorite spot in the house. Love this for my morning quiet times. Would love it more if I had a nearby outlet to plug in the lamp and actually see what I am reading. :) Oh! And I almost forgot to mention my new galvanized metal magazine storage. I got this one and a smaller one (pictured on the other wall) on Craigslist for 25 bucks!

Written About on About.com!

2010-09-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

A writer for the website, about.com, contacted me a couple days ago to see if she could write about my Old Fashioned Birthday Party I threw for Greta, specifically the party hats I made. It's kind of cool seeing my picture on a real live website! :) You can see it here! Thanks to Megan Cooley for the shout-out! She has some great ideas for kids parties in general so I would definitely check her out next time I throw a party!

$1.00 Garage Sale Treasure

2010-08-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Last summer, I picked this old wooden folding chair up at a church yard sale.
After a little spray painting in the color "jade" and a little reupholstering with a little acorn fabric curtain I made for my son's nursery in our old house, I have a new and updated chair!

I think it'd be really cool to paint something on the backrest...like a distressed number, chevron stripe, monogram, etc. I haven't quite figured out where to put the chair, but I think I'll wait to personalize it until it's found it's home.

Playroom/Sunroom Before & After

2010-08-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been MIA for a while. It began with a three week trip to AK, broke my camera against a rock while hiking and dove head first into projects once I got back. And one of those projects is "finished". Well a good-enough-for-now-kind-of finished.

Before

After

Before

After

*You can see the chalkboard paint that I used on the longest wall. The other walls that are painted is the same color in the adjoining room, Hazel by Sherwin Williams.

The red at the bottom of the picture shows how we just painted the sunroom and not the entire porch. It's a massive improvement and hopefully my daughter will stop referring it as "the dirty room". Ha ha. :)

Tutorials for an Old-Fashioned Party

2010-06-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of that birthday post meant nothing to you seeing a bunch of kids and people you don't know, but I wanted to remember it all. Here are a few notes for those interested about the crafts I made for the party.

Party Hats: I bought the fabric at Hobby Lobby.
kidsparties.about.com

Dress: I didn't do the waistband
Dana-Made-It

Pom-Poms:
Rhonna Designs

Cupcakes:
Darn it, I can't remember what magazine I saw them on...they're supposed to be for 4th of July and look like cherry, blueberry and lemon pies out of M&M's. I didn't follow any recipe, just copied what I saw and used a yellow cake box mix. Once baked, spoon out a little cake to make a concave hole and drop some M&M's in there being sure to flip them over so you don't see any M's. Then, frost a tic tac toe pattern on top and a circle around it and voila...a mini pie. :)

Streamers: No tutorial, I just copied.
Dear Lizzy

Pinwheels:
Create Studio

Old-Fashioned Birthday Party

2010-06-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Our little girl turned 3 and we celebrated her birthday old-fashioned style. We held it outside in our backyard in 95 degree weather and thick humidity with 34 people all together. It was a blast, but definitely more comfortable inside than it was outside!

Most importantly, this girl had a great party with all of her besties. She's standing in front of the gift table we set up out of a great old blue door that was in our outbuilding on top of a couple sawhorses. I put those shutters behind it just for fun.

She's also modeling the dress I made for her out of a men's Polo shirt. I never could quite figure out how to make the sleeves quite right, but she was a champ and wore it anyway even though I knew she didn't like it. When I was in the process of altering, I would have her try it on and she disliked it so much she'd say, "Noooo, I can't because I have to go back to bed." (nowhere near bedtime) In the end, she was asking for it back though, so that made me feel better.

All ready for the party with her Great Aunt Pam. You can see the coffee filter pom poms and streamers that I made in the background. These were a hit with Greta. Before her nap that day, she prayed and thanked God for her flags (streamers) and her coffee pots (pom poms). Just like her mama, she loves the details! That made me feel special that she noticed.

All of the other kids were noticing this little (giant) contraption borrowed from the grandparents. It was a hit.

The dilemma in setting up was were to put it, however. I wanted it so the parents could watch the kids all in one area, near the playset and we're we were all eating in the backyard. The only problem is we don't have grass back there yet and Adam kept insisting it would turn into a mud pit. And it did.

Whoops. The bigger boys would cause tidal waves that created a giant mud hole. Look at CJ's back as he walks away.

I also made these party hats that I thought turned out so cute. Even better, most of the kids left them behind, so you'll probably be seeing these again for my son's birthday. They were an easy concept, but I made 16 just a couple hours before the party and it was a little intense trying to get them done between food prep and trying to get myself ready too.

My mother-in-law was great for watching my little guy while I was tending to all the "big" kids.

Expressing his disgust about the mud on his toes. I know, I know! I already said I'm sorry! ;)

Some of our other great family, Uncle Frank and cousins, Treacy, Grant and Alison.

Steve, Audrey and Dena sitting so cute as a family on the front porch.

Dena diving in past the kids for some candy. ;) She is eating for two though!

So glad our friend Kristen, Aaron and baby Noah got to join us too!

(l-r: Brady holding Grant, Jake, Seth, Greta, CJ, Anna Cate, Avery, Saige, Audrey)

Saige showing me her pinwheel she got to take home as a party favor.

As we were cleaning up after the party, the sun started setting over the back field and I took some pictures of the beautiful sunset.

Fry Basket Reinvented

2010-06-09T04:46:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the vintage wire baskets at Pottery Barn, and not so inpired by the $24.00 price tag, I decided to recreate the look. (Mind you, 24 bucks for a great decorating object is not that bad to me, however I needed more than one.) Love these. These are the ones from PB and I'd been looking for just the thing to house all my "above the cabinet" items. I'd been struggling with what to do with such items because heaven knows I just can't get rid of the dozens of mason jars from past canned salmons and strawberry jelly and enamelware given to me by friends and family. So there they were, cluttering up together the tops of the cabs and just.looking.plain.messy. Some people tried to cheer me up saying it looked more cottagey that way, but I couldn't give up on my plans for uniformity some how.

Enter the fry basket.

That's right, folks. For a mere $2.82 each, I found 3 fry baskets at a thrift store that got my ticker tickin'.

All I did to pretty them up was to cut two Trader Joe's bags (any paper grocery bag will do, I just like to rub it in that there's one near me :)) to line the baskets and hide all the unmentionables. And here's what we have today.

Not a great picture with the messy countertops, but you get the idea. Now, I get that much more storage and I can still use the enamelware for my daughter's "old-fashioned" birthday party this weekend when she turns 3. I'll make sure to post those pics too.

*If your nearby thrift store doesn't have weird stuff like fry baskets, try a used kitchen equipment warehouse. They sell everything from ice makers to Viking ranges and you just might find some deep fryer baskets there.

Kids Bathroom Sneak Peek

2010-05-26T12:46:00.001-07:00

Our kids/guest/upstairs bathroom has been a long drawn out project. Probably more than it ought to be but with Adam's long work days and me staying home with the kids all day, we are beat by the time we put them down. So, we usually save any work up there for the weekend. In an effort to try to speed the process along since I don't know how to grout tile (we just have a little area around the toilet), unclog toys from the toilet (she says she flushed 2 and attempted 3) and am tired of trying new ways to remove stains from cast iron (CLR doesn't work, any other ideas?), I decided to get a jump on decorating.

Yesterday, I got out my husband's jigsaw for the first time.

I've really loved all these whales I've been seeing on the internet and attempted at making my own. After drawing the whale on the board using chalk, I just sawed it right out! It was so easy!

I then applied two coats of blue, a darker shade first and lighter on top and sanded it down to show all layers including the white base that I started with. We also painted the wall up top Filtered Shade by Valspar, the same color in the kids room.

I'm trying to be kid-friendly but also decorate this as a not-too-tacky guest bathroom too. I'm gonna hang it up on the wall once I attach some hardware to the back of it.

So there's your sneak peek! Hopefully, blogging about this will keep us motivated to finish soon and I'll post more when we're done!

Painting the Town Red

2010-05-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

I read on someones blog recently as they were gussying up some dishtowels a quote that they loved, "Whenever possible, make the ordinary into extraordinary." Here is our attempt at that.

Playroom, New Friends and Art Shows

2010-05-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

I actually attempted to take clean up the playroom before I took this picture. However, whatever I show "interest" in, my kids are right behind me and want to do it too. I sweep, they want the broom. I empty the dishwasher, they want to stand on the door. I go to the bathroom, they want to watch me. I want to check the mail, they run straight for the road. In this case, I just touch a toy to pick it up and they automatically want to play with all of them. So, this is what you get. At least you can see it in it's practical glory while it's being used.

I have leftover yellow fabric from the kids bedroom curtains that I would love to use on a cornice board in here although I'm not sure how that would work. It seems kind of long to do one across 3 windows so I might have to resort to a little valance. I really don't want to cover up much of the windows view at all, but I do want to hide the blinds while they're up, especially the annoying one on the right that refuses to be cinched up all the way. If you have any thoughts or advice, let me know. I'm all ears!

The adorable little alphabet cards are from Land of Nod. I originally ordered them for baby shower gifts. For a great price of around 20 bucks for the box, I would take the baby's initials and frame them in 3 separate picture frames. It worked for about 2 people before I started running out of letters. It would've been perfect if I knew a baby named Quinn Xylophone Unevercall. Plus, being flowers and fairy's I was somewhat limited to girl babies too. Anyway, the leftovers found their way into the playroom and I plan to replace the missing ones with modpodged letters from the craft store.

NOW, onto one of my original reasons of this post...did you notice the beautiful circle rug in the playroom? It is so incredibly soft and fits the space perfectly with it's multi-colored goodness. The best part? It didn't cost a dime thanks to these two people below on the left.

Chuck and Glenda, some new friends of mine and old friends of my in-laws (pictured on the right,) invited us to their house nearby to give us some things that they weren't using anymore. One of those things was that gorgeous rug. They've been following my blog for some time and could appreciate the house renovation since they were in the middle of their own! They had a beautiful house filled with distinguished furniture, a gorgeous wooden curved staircase in their entryway and meaningful artwork. That last one was my favorite and Glenda shared a great tip with me about it. I wish I had taken pictures of them now, but 2 pieces of artwork that stood out to me happened to be painted by high-schoolers. She used to work in a school and approached the art teacher one day to find a talented artist in the class that needed some encouragement or a nudge in the right direction. She showed the selected student a picture she had taken of a nearby river and asked if they could do it in the style of Monet and then gave them whatever specification she wanted: size, color, etc. When the product was finished, she got a large beautiful oil painting to the tune of $25.00 and the high school student probably made his first ever sale. Both parties win!

And speaking of student artwork, I was asked to judge a local Christian school's art show last week to which I responded with an enthusiastic, "Are you sure?" Of course I love any art show, but as to my qualifications, I wasn't sure they had the right person. I was paired up with another local school's art teacher to co-judge with and I went about judging from the "appreciation" point of view and for her's, it was more technical. We made a good team. I can tell good art when I see it and I thought I'd show you some of their stuff.
This was some of the 5th graders work. Amazing stuff, huh? They made their designs on the paper using glue and then once it dried, they oil painted the rest. I'm a sucker for anything birds (as is the case with much of the blogging world it seems) so I loved that little bird on the bottom right.

I also loved this bouquet of flowers created by a 4th grader! I thought it looked very "Van Gogh."

This was part of the high school exhibit and we kept looking at it saying, "This is not high school work." It was a tough competition, but this piece was one of my favorites and ended up winning 1st place. It was a collage of painted paper cut out to create the image on the print. I so want to hire this girl to do a collage of my house.

The same girl also did this church (bottom right) which was also so very impressive with the shading. I seriously felt as if I were standing on the front lawn watching the sun rise over the steeple.

So there you have it! You never know what kind of talent could be in your neighborhood. Might be worth checking out sometime!

Is it a branch...Is it a snake?

2010-05-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

If you were inspired by my new necklace holder, be careful on the next hunt for yours...

Master Bedroom

2010-05-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it could use some color in the pillows, but I'm working with what I already have. Plus, it's clean so it's definitely worth documenting. Notice my new jewelry holder. I saw a lady at a craft fair displaying her pieces on a branch so I've jumped on that boat. Talk about working with what you have!

Notice the terrarium housing all my lotions on the right?

A trunk from Craigslist that I bought for 40 bucks serves as a perfect end table and storage area. It smells like glue inside, but I just dropped a tupper tote of maternity clothes in there. My hope is that the tote seals them off enough so they won't smell like glue either!

Re-Purposed Drying Rack

2010-04-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

Ever been to a home goods swap? Since moving to Charlotte a year and a half ago, I have met some great budget friendly gals that have hosted clothing swaps and home goods swaps. Basically, the gist of it is to bring some stuff around your house that you don't use or isn't your style anymore but is in good enough condition to go to someone else . It's a great way to get rid of stuff that you love, but just don't have a place for. I love seeing someone else I love being able to use it instead of just donating it to Goodwill (which would be the next best option unless you thought you could make a buck on Craigslist :) ) In return, you get some great stuff from others! In general, the way we played it is if you brought 5 items there, you could bring 5 items home. There were certain rules that if you'd be interested in hosting one, I'd be happy to e-mail you how we did it. Well, my friend Meghann couldn't go to the party and asked me to take a few of her items along . I was happy to oblige, but I forgot one thing in the back of my car.The lone dish drying rack. Now, what am I supposed to do with it? The party had come and gone and Heaven knows I don't hand wash dishes. If I have to for my stoneware or silpat, though, you would catch me wearing these. I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to my Jenn-Air dishwasher. It's the bomb and I never have to pre-rinse or scrape crusties out of my drinking glasses. Anyway, the rack got me to thinking about something else I've been wanting. A spice rack.

I just unscrewed the two pieces and layed one down in the drawer. It's perfect for the spices to nestle in between the rods and then they don't rattle and twist around. Plus I don't have to spin the turn table 189 times before I find the parsley.

How's that for the cost of 0 dollars?

Bird Eggs

2010-04-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

We have a ton of birds on our property and now we are about to have 6 more. In the fern on the far right were these 5 little guys...

About a week ago, I checked on them just a few days after discovering the eggs and was so surprised to see they had already hatched!

There are now these fuzzy four little guys. There were five, but sadly one had fallen out of the nest.

In the far left fern there are these two little guys. I haven't checked on them recently but I started to last night and the mama bird was sitting pretty on them so I didn't disturb. It's so fun to have National Geographic happening on my front porch. :)

Behr Premium Paint

2010-04-14T18:29:00.001-07:00

Here's the thing. I bought some expensive paint recently for the island. It was Behr's Premium Plus paint the kind that has primer in it and all. Normally, I'm just a basic Valspar cheapest kind of paint you've got kind of girl, but Behr's color was the one I liked the best on the sample card so I just went with that one. I actually just found out a couple months ago that you can buy paint in other brands using shades from their competition. I had NO idea! Anywho, back to Behr, being the first time I've used them and all I have to say I was HIGHLY impressed. This stuff goes a LONG way. I seriously maybe lost 1/4-1/2 inch of paint total in my bucket. Since it had primer already in it, I only needed one coat and I painted the entire piece and still have a full gallon of paint to show for it! It was probably 10 bucks more? (I have no idea since Adam bought it) but after painting the island during one naptime, I can highly recommend this to those who are short on time. I also applied poly before I painted in case I wanted to distress the island, it would show a more finished product underneath. Any thoughts? To distress or not to distress?

I commented below, but just in case you missed it the color is Behr's premium ultra plus (something like that) Carmine Red with 2 extra ounces of white in it. I had to take it back to make it a titch more muted and that's all they had room for. So there you have it!

Oh, and don't buy Walmart's $1.00 cans of spray paint. They've been tried and have been proved to not be true.

Kitchen Island

2010-04-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't shown you our kitchen island yet, but here it is uncovered in all of its natural untouched glory. It's been sitting in our outbuilding covered by a tarp for a couple months until we were able to take some time to paint it and bring it inside. Isn't it beautiful? We paid Adam's old co-worker from Raleigh to custom make one for us and he did an awesome job! It even has a place for a microwave with a hollowed out leg for the cord to run down through.

This picture below is the very first one I saved in my "inspiration" folder as a color palette for my kitchen. Love those muted neutrals, striking black and that pop of red.

And I loved this rug I had picked up last summer in Raleigh at a garage sale with it's grays whites and muted pinks and greens.

So after bringing home a gazillion sample cards of red home from Home Depot, we came up with this!!
I just love it. It's just the perfect pinky red that I was trying to achieve. I wanted something to tie in the brick fireplace, but not be too dark or dreary and give us that pop of color from my original picture. I mulled over the colors for days wondering if I should do the awesome-ly distressed gray that people are doing or a striking black, but when I got stumped that's when I pulled out my inspiration folder and remembered what I really wanted initially.

I can't wait to get my microwave back too! We've just kept ours in the box until we could put it in its rightful home. I don't know about you but stirring around leftover mac n' cheese in a frying pan to warm it up gets kind of old...

Oh yeah, did you notice my cows on the wall. Here's a close up.

I love them too. But what I love even more is hearing my 17 month old do his best cow impression, "Ooooooo," every time we pass them. :)

We plan to top it off with butcher block too.

2 Frying Pans and a Coat Rack

2010-04-02T17:58:00.001-07:00

Since we've moved in January I have been missing 2 frying pans and a coat rack. Well, being the kind of family to walk in and throw your coat up on the rack, we couldn't do the formal coat closet much longer. It's nice to have for the winter coats and rain jackets, but everyday stuff had to be easy to put away and easy to find with two little ones. Using this picture as my inspiration, I decided to give up on the missing coat rack and start fresh.

Lucky for me, I found these hooks soon afterwards at Hobby Lobby at 1/2 price! I took them home and sanded them down to give them a distressed look and let some of the silver metal shine through the white paint.

I did love that white on white look from the magazine, but I had an old naturally distressed shelf in the outbuilding that was too weak structurally to keep as a shelf so I took it apart and used it for mounting my hooks.

And there you have it! It fits perfectly!

Easter Shrine

2010-04-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you combine an old entry way table and...

a thrift store mirror...

and a can of black spray paint?

An Easter shrine of course! Well, er, not really a shrine...but it's a hall table decorated all Eastery and really doesn't serve any other purpose but to just let me get creative in a small amount of space. So, check it out because that's the only reason it's there.

(l-r) African violet in my Ikea lemon planter, crate found in the attic that says "to Charlotte via Charleston" and has something about pansies printed on the side, a stack of metal tart tins I picked up for $1.50 at Habitat ReStore, stuffed chick on Easter clearance last year at Target, old flashlight found in pansy crate in attic holding Dollar Store daisies, decorative sconce that I acquired last month at a home goods swap (have you been to one of those?! They're awesome!).

And let's get a good look at that flashlight. What else do you do with an old flashlight that looks to cool to throw away but serves no other purpose in it's current state? I was pretty proud of myself. :)

Happy Easter everyone!

Romans 6:5-11

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Lovely

2010-03-31T17:58:00.000-07:00

This is my next door neighbors yard with little purple flowers all over it. They even mowed and I was so happy to see the flowers were still there. It looks like a lavender field. The trees belong to my neighbor's neighbors driveway. They are so beautiful. Spring has sprung.

Giveaway

2010-03-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

Go to Create Studio to check it out!

I know. I'm weird.

2010-03-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

I walked into my local Goodwill and saw this sign glowing at me as I approached the lamp section. Without hesitation, I unplugged it and put it in my cart and 10 bucks later it has since found it's way into our sitting room on the piano. I love all of the subway art and old signs now that you can create, but even better, mine lights up. And yes, it says "digital cameras". No sentimental meanings behind this except that I liked it and described it to my mom as an "antique sign". My dad who was visiting at the time rolled his eyes and said it's probably from the 90's. Adam just laughed when he saw it. I love it. What do you think?

Knock-Off Wood

2010-03-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

After two friends of mine referred me to a great furniture design blog, Knock-Off Wood, I decided to check it out for a bench I've been wanting for our entryway. After finding this plan, I got right to work convincing Adam that we needed to get to work! :) And so we did...

And by the next day we had this!

Then, last Saturday morning it was seriously the prettiest day of the season so far with upper 70's and I spent every bit of it outside. First step was distressing the bench. This was not part of the original "knock-off" plan, but I like that look and I wanted it to match our front door with the same distressed look and stain. I have never used a chain before, but my sister told me once that chains are the best and wouldn't you know, I happened to have one lying around! I also used a hammer and nail for little worm holes, a screwdriver that I just raked down the board a few times and a sharp edged piece of hardware that I just dropped in random spots to dent up the board really good.
.

Then I used the same polystain that we used for our door and applied with a sponge brush in one hand and an American flag in the other. My two-year-old kept asking me to hold it and yell, "American Flag! American Flag!" Ha ha. And so I did. :)

And here's what we have to show for it! I could not be happier! We bought a few things at the store when we purchased the lumber, so I'm not exactly sure how much it all cost but the whole bench was probably around $25.00.

Now, I have to rearrange that wall a bit behind it. Maybe with a bunch of pictures or mirrors I think.

Spring Mantel in the Sitting Room

2010-03-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this mantle series by The Lettered Cottage I finally got a vision for our sitting room mantle. I took the first step by completely removing everything on the mantle except for the AK painting that you may remember back from this post.
Everything else came from stuff that I already had and after playing a while and mixing it up until it was just right, I came up with this!

Being Spring and Easter time, I knew I wanted to work my robin's eggs in there somewhere.

My honeysuckle bush is blooming out in our yard which has added to more than one bouqets around the house. I love bring it's scent inside.

One thing I learned from the mantle series is that you can never go wrong with papers and/or books. I had an old childhood Bible that was pretty tattered and another old yet New ;) Testament I had found in the attic here. So I put those in a tarnished silver bowl I picked up at Goodwill the other day along with a book Adam's grandfather wrote, Darkness is Light, and ta da! I'm done until summer when I get to re-decorate my mantle all over again.

Wildlife Cam

2010-03-10T13:56:00.001-08:00

We have tracks. Big tracks. The kind of tracks you don't really feel comfortable with when their right outside your kitchen window. Dog? Cat? Wildcat? Coyote? (Cue the Jaws music). Now, mind you, I don't have mammoth hands or anything (I'm 5'2), but these are from no ordinary tabby cat. We have had a couple spotting's late at night, both Adam and I at separate times and we both witnessed a cat-like animal that ran away quickly but was stockier than a normal cat and low to the ground. It also did not have any distinguishable features like a raccoon would. Adam's grandparents were in town and picked us up a wildlife camera to mount and take pictures when it detects motion. All we have to do is plug in the USB card in the morning to see what it's discovered! Thanks guys!

We've heard there are hairy beasts around these parts...This one seems harmless.

This little guy can't be the match to our prints, but he did eat our little goodies we left out for the loch ness monster. PB&J and ham if you must know.

Not a match either...still on the lookout...we'll let you know.

Blank Canvas...or should I say Chalkboard?

2010-02-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

I had this wall that needed something. After searching for a while and figuring out what to put on it, we finally got an idea! Art was too expensive for such a large space that even Craigslist or Etsy couldn't even compete with. But, of course, this time our inspiration came from Pottery Barn.
Adam just saw this chalkboard the other day in the PB catalog and mentioned how much he'd like something like that to put a family verse up and change it monthly. Well, that got me thinking about our space...and I had just read about this family below on This Young House who painted an entire wall with chalkboard paint. My hesitation with chalk anything has been the dust residue that is left behind, but I didn't mind it so much in this picture for some reason. It just looked old-school-house-y to me.

So, after a trip to Hobby Lobby and picking up a frame that was originally 217.00 and now 80% off and using some old chalkboard paint that we had from a previous project, boy do we have an eye-catching wall now!

*You can also make a frame using trim pieces, but Adam said with the $43.00 I spent, it would've been about the same in price (unless you have some leftover from a previous project) and plus the time it would've taken to build it.

**Are you trying to read what I wrote? My bats (think AA, not flying creatures) died as I was taking the close-up picture. I'll spare you searching for your bifocals and will write you the excerpt from my high school diary below. That's right. It's a diary entry. :) After flipping through my "usual" diary that I wrote in occasionally, I would be mortified to share with you any thought processes that came to my 14-17 year old mind. That is a FFEO (For Family's Eyes Only) because I know they will love me in spite of it...and I have been known to bring it on camping trips for good laughs in the motorhome. So, I will grace you with an excerpt of my journal that I took with me on my senior choir trip to Italy. I just loved every minute of it and I can remember every mental picture I took this night that I write of.

Today, we woke up and ate the same ol' breakfast. Last night was so beautiful! We went to the square and got my picture drawn. This park is the kind you see in the movies. Missy and I were sitting by the fountain looking at people in this outside restaurant called Cafe' Bernini. This place had couples dancing, men serenading, and other men walking around selling long stem roses. We listened to some choirs in the square sing and then we sang also. Anyway, today we went to the Vatican. Also, we went to the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. I saw Peter's grave! Such long walks, but so worth it! I also saw the "Last Judgement" and...

Key Player

2010-02-23T04:24:00.000-08:00

Remember when I blogged about this a few months back? Well, I did it!

These two pictures here are sadly not mine, but the ones I used from Restoration Hardware as inspiration. Let's stop and admire those corbels again......okay, that's enough. Let's get back to the keys.

Here are mine! They're the first thing you see when you walk in the house sandwiched between the hallway and the sitting room and next to our "Welcome To The Farm" sign we got at a craft fair this past summer.
We found five old keys in various places around the house during the renovation. Some are legit and some look like a dollar store diary key, but hey it's a key and so I framed it. :) This one above says "Master" and it was one of my favorite ones. Another says "Mister Mint" with a little guy on it and another one says a company name on it from New York.

The giant one is the key to my Honda.

Actually, my friend Dena found this key door knocker at Hobby Lobby for 2 bucks and I thought it was perfect to complete my collection. Thanks Dena!

Spring Cleaning

2010-02-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

In honor of the 50 degree weather today, I decided to celebrate by doing some spring cleaning on the blog. You can now find handy dandy labels of Before's and After's, Concrete Flooring, Paint Colors and Nat's Self-Portraits at the click of a button. They're towards the bottom near the archives.

Shameless

2010-02-17T04:16:00.000-08:00

I "borrowed" an idea from The Lettered Cottage yesterday. I love their decorating styles and a couple weeks ago she posted a specific post about her wall grouping of photos in their guest bedroom here. I've had a bunch of photos that I've been waiting for Adam to make me ledges for to look like this PB inspiration below in the living room, but after reading TLC, I realized I had a few photos to spare to do a grouping in our bedroom and still have a lot left over for the ledges in the living room later.

Unfortunately, the photo ledge has to take a back seat while snooty guest bathroom and bannister get the drivers side and passenger seat. So a couple days ago, I got busy ~~shamelessly copying Layla and Kevin~~ creating my own original idea and doing a dry run layout of the photos on the floor.

And using this wall in our bedroom to the left of the door. Pay no attention to the bajillion loads of laundry peeking out from the corner of the bed. I have priorities people! (Don't worry Mom, I folded them during American Idol)

Layla says if all else fails, start from the middle and work your way out. Well, I liked my practice run enough to take a couple pictures and just referred to that a lot of times so I knew exactly what picture went where. I still worked from the middle though.

Ta Da!

I'm really happy with the final product. Now, I just need to add and update some photos...

Snow

2010-02-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

Decorative Ledge

2010-02-14T17:26:00.000-08:00

The other day I texted Adam a picture of my ledge in the dining room that I had proudly worked an hour on. I anxiously awaited his response which never came. When he came home from work he explained he never replied because he thought I had just sent him a picture of a pile of stuff I put up there to just get out of the way. Think again bud. You can see the ledge in the upper left hand corner of the dining room.

After closer examination he said he did in fact like it and in he couldn't really tell what was what from the picture, but he liked it better in person. :) My favorite part was everything was free! I found almost everything around our house or out in the outbuilding.

From left to right: (nestled under the dough bowl) a birds nest that was on our front porch on top of our light fixture, the dough bowl found in the attic, the glass jug found in the attic, circle wire thingys found in the outbuilding, candlesticks- wedding gift, potato looking things found outside (At first glance I thought it was a snake egg! Obviously I don't know what snake eggs look like, but you never know. ;) After careful examination it's a pod from a tree of some sort with seeds that shake around inside. Mirror- found in outbuilding, "Home" sign-already owned it, beach grass- already owned, old window weights (far right) used to level windows back in the good ol' days. We found a bunch as we took out walls and Adam thought I was crazy for saving them. They're heavy, but perfect for a Macaulay Culkin "Home Alone" defense with their location over the back door in case we have any bad guys. ;)

Old-New Cabinets

2010-02-10T05:09:00.000-08:00

The old cabinets that are in our kitchen came from this utility room that is now our dining room. You can see them hanging up on the left.

The set on the left has one more glass door (not pictured) and this is the set that is now below. The one on the far right is sitting in our outbuilding because I don't know where to put it yet!

We were going to repaint them, but after having them hanging up in their distressed state for a while, we kind of liked it. My mother-in-law suggested just keeping it that way and so we did! I just scratched it up a little more, put about 3 coats of spray poly on it and then covered the back with the bronze colored tin backsplash.

I actually LOVE it when people have a pop of color on their backsplash, but I decided to keep ours the shimmery bronze that it is and I might paint the inside side panels instead which I noticed today are kind of a sunny yellow color right now.

Metamorphasis of a Chandelier

2010-02-09T03:42:00.000-08:00

In the former dining room (now master bedroom) and we planned to use it in the dining room.

It was beautiful with an antiqued bronze finish, but we've gone with stainless hardware in the kitchen and it would've looked outdated.

First coat: Black

2nd coat: Green, to match my dishes. I just used whatever spray paint was closest to one of my plates I brought into Lowes.

Distressed to let the black and bronze shine through

Hanging in the new dining room, it's rightful home for yet another family to enjoy another dinner under.

Wow. That was rude.

2010-02-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

Man. I am so sorry about that. So, apparently when you don't have the internet for 2 weeks you aren't able to use the internet to tell people you don't have the internet. Well, at least you get things done around the house when you don't have a blog to keep up with. Here's a pictoral update of what we've been up to.

I'm also not to proud to post my "not so pretty" areas. There's a garage sale pile in the corner of the sitting room, the hallway in all it's glory and let's not even mention the dresser in the bedroom. Yes, I've heard of photoshop, but this is real life people! :)

In answering a few questions of some commenters:

1. Our living room color is Croissant by Sherwin Williams. Love it and we get a lot of compliments on it.

2. Lady in Arkansas renovating a house- we did in fact go over some existing flooring with the concrete, but we pulled up some vinyl parquet tiles before that and laid down some plywood and some metal screen before the concrete was poured. I'll be in touch. :)

Sampler Platter

2010-01-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

You asked for it...you got it. This is just a taste of how the house is shaping up. I don't want you to see all the house just yet but here's how a few of the rooms are turning out.

For starters, we ended up buying this Price Pfister Arlington faucet from Lowe's for a little over $200.00. We needed a faucet with one hole so unfortunately I have no use for the soap pump. I hate to see things go wasted so if anyone has an idea of what to do with it or even if you need it, let me know! And yes, it has the faucet has a built-in sprayer which was a must for me.

Lowe's should pay me for showcasing their stuff. Yes, this wallpaper backsplash is from you guessed it. Back when Adam and I were childless and fancy free we spent our Saturday mornings going to Lowe's sidewalk sales and picking up all of their clearance marked items that they had sitting out in front of the store. Not every Lowe's does this we've found so we'd make a ritual of going to Great Harvest Bread for breakfast, hit up our sidewalk sale with some garage sales along the way. Good days.

Anywho, guess how much I paid for this? Well, I don't remember to a T, but I do remember it being somwhere in the range of $1.00-$3.00 for an entire roll. Even better, I walked away with about 5 or 6 rolls of beadboard wallpaper for $1.00 each.

You like my green dishes too? So do I. I bought them last summer from a guy off of Craigslist. He said his wife wanted a change from these jade colored Pottery Barn beauties and I got a set of 20 of EVERYTHING for 40 bucks!

And here's the living room...

Still looking for a lampshade for that log lamp on the right side of the picture. I bought a set of 4 log lamps at a garage sale for $25.00 and they all came with gigantic lampshades that looked like they belonged around a dogs neck after it'd been neutered.

And here's the gal's side of her bedroom. She'll be sleeping in this bed TONIGHT! We're moving in!

Laundry Room

2010-01-17T06:13:00.000-08:00

This was the laundry room as of a week ago. Adam has since added chair rail and baseboards and I'm in the process of painting those. The blue is something "Aquatics" from Valspar...I'll post it in the final laundry room post.

As of Saturday, we got this baby delivered to us from Lowe's with it's matching counterpart. Back before Christmas Adam came across a deal where it was practically a buy one, get one free deal for the Whirlpool Duet frontloaders. We been using this set at my in-laws during the year that we've spent with them and I LOVE them. I just never thought we could afford them! Even better, our delivery date got pushed back week after week (apparently we weren't the only ones who bought them and they ran out of dryers) and they upgraded us to a STEAM dryer! They were actually doing us a favor by delaying the date so we could finish as much in the laundry room anyway and we were the ones who benefitted!

Ummm, yes please.

2010-01-14T04:20:00.000-08:00

I love this for our kitchen faucet, but it's $300.00 even on Ebay and Overstock. :(

Before and After Dining Room Flooring

2010-01-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

Before
Phase 1
*this was the first time we saw the house and the lady's stuff was still all over the place. What is now our dining room used to be her utility room.

Phase 2

Phase 3

AfterPhase 4- Complete!

*Now filled with a dining room table and chairs and a bunch of boxes.

Before and After Hallway Flooring

2010-01-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

Before

After

*This hallway is now decked out with the shelving units and a hallway rug, but it's still messy and I want it to look nice before I post any true "after" pics.

MIA

2010-01-08T06:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away but I have a great reason. Let's just say it involves the following:

A U-Haul

A great group of friends

My awesome packing skills

My super helpful father-in-law

A sprained ankle

messy sitting room

and a messy rest of the house too.

Not to mention a double ear infection for the littlest and four colds for the four of us. It's been a long week...but an exciting one.

Stay tuned!

Antique Cabinets

2010-01-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

Adam and my father-in-law installed the old glass cabinets from the former utility room in our kitchen this weekend! There they are on the left!See our IKEA sink installed too! Maybe on Tuesday, after our plumber comes, we just might have hot water coming out of it! We're kind of high class like that. :)

I wish I was able to scrape, sand and paint before it got hung, but I know the hanging part was going to be the trickiest, so I'm just glad it's up and off the front porch! The color that is on them now won't be too different from how I'll re-paint them. I want them to compliment the new cabinets and not stick out too much. I would love to do something funky to the back of them though to shine behind my plates and dinnerware that will be displayed. I had a friend that taped up scrapbook paper to the back of hers so she could change it whenever she got sick of it! Great idea huh? I'd love something a little more permanent like a different paint color or wall paper or something, but I do love the flexibility and inexpensive yet plentiful patterns that scrapbook paper offers! Maybe wrapping paper too!

Keeping It!

2010-01-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks for everyone's advice and for putting up with some girly wishy-washiness there for a second. We've decided to keep the colors in the master bedroom. I think it does give it that cozy feel and you've made me feel better about it. I don't think we'll need to re-paint anytime soon which I am happy about since I'm busy painting baseboard everywhere else in the house anyway.My Aunt Ramona had asked if the blue was really that dark as it looks in the pictures. Well, it'll look different on a computer but the "cafe blue" from Valspar is a grayish blue and it'll blend nicely with the Elizabeth Paisley duvet I have from Pottery Barn. The chandelier pictured will be transferred to the dining room and will be replaced with an amber colored Austrian crystal chandelier my mom brought back from Vienna.
Here it is with my dad displaying it in all it's glory. My parents took pictures of it before they hauled it down from Alaska when they came and visited in October. They wanted to make sure that I wanted it and mentioned something about me being wishy-washy ;), but I love it! Except for the hideous tassle which I will promptly get rid of and my father-in-law is going to re-wire it out of it's European wiring, I think it'll look great!

Cabinets make it official!

2009-12-31T14:56:00.000-08:00

It's finally a kitchen! This is the beginning of installing the cabinets. They're not in all the way, but definitely getting there!

We still have to install the old glass cabinets to the left of the window. They are currently on our front porch. :)

The cabinet under the window is where our "Domsjo" farm sink will go from IKEA.

The spot to the right of the window will be where the dishwasher will go and the fridge right next to the dw. The cabinet on the floor will go over the fridge and the panel leaning against the wall will run along side the fridge to give it a "built-in" look.

On another note, Joe from Artisan Concrete Solutions sealed our fireplace with the same sealer he finished the floor with. Looks great huh?

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T03:32:00.000-08:00

From our farmhouse to yours... Hope has come! Merry Christmas!

Getting Warmer!

2009-12-25T03:27:00.000-08:00

Paint Mistake?

2009-12-23T04:22:00.000-08:00

It's been fun coming up with a color pallette for all the rooms of our house, but every now and then I second guess myself. This is one of those times. These are the colors in the master bedroom. We began with the white on the lapboard and loved it. Then we painted the walls a khaki color. Then, we painted the ceiling blue.

I love the blue ceiling, but I think we have too many colors going on in a small room.

I think the blue and white will stay, but the khaki might have to go. What do you think? We might just paint over the khaki and do white walls with the blue ceiling.

I pulled these pictures off of Callie's blog over at Simple Eye Design that she got from Pottery Barn. I love the look of the white bedrooms.

I've always thought that white was supposed to be boring, but I find these rooms to be anything but!

I found this image over at House Beautiful when I started looking into painting the ceiling a color. After all it is the fifth wall. :) I went a little darker with the blue because I knew our 10 foot ceilings could handle it. It's a little richer for a master bedroom I thought.

Sooooo...any thoughts? Lose the khaki? Do you like the khaki? Adam says it looks to Eddie Bauer-ish.

Wintry Mix

2009-12-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

Gretchen over at New Every AM called it when she asked if the weather would affect our move. Well, yes, it did.

Okay, if you geographer's out there know where Charlotte is, it's right near the border of S.C. and smack dab in the dark green section which also means 1-3" of rain. Obviously not ideal weather for moving, but do-able if you're desperate. We had a couple of things against us when we contemplated pushing back the move date. #1. We had to make the decision last night (when they were calling for snow) in order to cancel or keep the U-Haul 24 hours in advance otherwise we would've lost the $50.00 deposit. #2. The south is different from the north when it comes to wintry weather. We're just not as prepared and it takes people by surprise every time. People buy gallons of water, prepare for power outages, write their wills ;), etc. I know all of you Alaskan's are laughing out there, but we just didn't want to lose any potential help that might've found it more cozy to sip hot cocoa by the fire that day. #3. We wanted to sip hot cocoa by the fire that day so it kind of worked out anyway.

And now, of course, the forecast has changed from snow to rain, but that's okay. Originally, we were going to move our stuff in, set up house over the holidays and then tie up the loose ends during the next couple weeks. Now we've just switched things around to tying up the loose ends over the holidays and moving and unpacking to follow. That sounds more logical anyway right? Aside from the fact I was seriously contemplating wrapping up some of my kids old toys for Christmas that had been in storage for a year (I'm sure my 2-year old forgot about those lego's anyway :)) and all my winter clothes are still packed away, it's really not going to mess us up that bad.

Just watch a giant storm roll in on January 2nd! Ugh!

Stained Concrete Flooring

2009-12-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

The color is down and we are so excited to show it to you. I have no category for what concrete flooring should look like except for what I've seen in my Aunt Ramona's basement, but I can tell you it looks great in our living areas! I keep thinking it looks like leather.

A patch next to the fireplace. Don't worry, that's just a dusty footprint from us, not my daughter's from a few days ago. :)

It's darker than the hardwoods, but blends nicely with the oak. Gives the house a nice rich tone to it.

The dining room was wet. Those are puddles of stain that have yet to dry.

Hallway

View from the stairs looking down on the hallway.

Isn't it so pretty?

Laundry room.

View from hallway looking into entry way.

View from kitchen looking into living room.

Our concrete guy, Joe had a rep come over to our house to use a high-powered sprayer and apply the stain. This is just to show you how he taped off the baseboard to protect it from overspray. If we ever wanted to change the color, all we'd have to do is buy some stain and spray some new color on top. The concrete underneath wouldn't ever have to be messed with. Joe was impressed with the job the sprayer did and so were we! If ever you have a concrete job in the Charlotte area, check out http://www.artisanconcretesolutions.com/ because when it comes to concrete anything, Joe is your guy. He's applying sealer today and I think the final coat of sealer tomorrow? We'll have some great before and after pics once it's completed!

Almost Done!

2009-12-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

Almost done with the floors, that is. :) The hardwoods need to be sanded over the two coats of poly to give it a buffed finish and then the final coat of poly will be applied. The concrete is setting overnight after being touched up today and will be stained tomorrow with color! We can't wait to see how it all turns out!

You can see the grittiness on top of the grain from the poly. That will be buffed out.

In other exciting news, we move our stuff in on Saturday! Now that the floors and walls are finished we've asked some friends to help us move our stuff in on Saturday morning so we can take the holidays to set up house. Our bodies will remain at the in-laws down the street until we can get a working kitchen and all the saftey hazards taken care of. We're hoping that will take a matter of weeks and not months though!

Concrete Floors

2009-12-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

When I tell people that we are having concrete floors poured in parts of our house, I have a feeling their first thought is this below. After all, it was my thought the first time I heard about it too. Not so, my friends. When I say concrete floors, I want you to think of this:

Ha! Sorry for the bite size pictures. Consider this a morsel of things to come. :) The last two pictures (if you can find your bifocals) show the color that we are going to use called Fawn. It's not the black with the K9, but the caramel with brown splotches around it.

We wanted to pour concrete in 3 different areas: hallway, dining room, and around the fireplace. You may be wondering how we came to decide to do concrete in the first place. Well, that began with the hallway. When we bought the house the hallway had some bumps and dips where the foundation had sagged. The foundation was the first thing we had fixed and although our contractor said, it was built back up to par, it would not be suitable for a game of marbles. :) It still had bumps and dips, but all in all was propped back up to normal. We had some parquet flooring in the hallway that we ripped up and found old linoleum underneath. Under the linoleum was the great possibility of discovering aspestos and so we decided to leave the linoleum because aspestos is dangerous when disturbed and it is advised to just leave it alone. SO, we were left with two options: 1- concrete flooring or 2- tile. We were discouraged by the thought of tiling as it is very hard to make an even surface and to keep the tiles from popping up as we experienced in our last house renovation. Adam had tiled a bathroom and after a couple months, a few tiles would just pop up in the corner and we ended up having to take them all up and put down linoleum tiles. So, having a friend in the concrete biz, we called up Joe and put him to work.

Adam and I did all the prep work (along with the help of a friend, Andy. Thanks!) and there were a few steps. First step was laying down plywood in all of the areas. This picture above is the laundry room and also the last area that needs sheetrock on the walls.

The hallway

Hard worker Adam. He is seriously over here every night. We are so ready to relax!

2nd and 3rd steps were to lay down tar paper and then diamond lathe on top. That stuff is brutal. The diamond lathe is rough cut metal and cut Adam's hands up pretty bad. I also don't recommend you transporting this in anything but the back of a truck as we learned the hard way after it snagged the ceiling of my mother-in-law's Ford Expedition. I know, I know.

Once the lathe is layed you have to staple it to the floor with a staple gun. That was my job.

The next day, I came over to find this! Wet concrete in the hallway.

You can see Joe at the end of the hallway pouring out the last little drips of the self-leveling concrete. He had ordered just enough of what we would need and so absolutely all had to be accounted for. He had to scrape and scrape with his giant squeegee thing to make the concrete stretch as far as possible.

Ta Da! Just makes you want to get your rollerskates and disco ball out. :)

Joe works with these spiky shoes so he can perform miracles and walk on water...er... concrete.

Man of the hour, Joe.

I was able to snap some better pics of the oak floor too. The dark spot is what they will look like when they're finished after they get a coat of poly on them.

Back to Joe working on the patches of floor on both sides of the fireplace.This is what the concrete looked like after drying overnight. We were able to walk on it, but Joe has to come back on Monday and fix some areas where the lathe was showing through.

This is what the bedroom looks like now that the floor is sanded. I'm going to move that chandelier into the dining room and spray paint it a kelly green to match my dishes.

Hardwoods in the sitting room.

Joe came back over the next day, this morning, to work on the fireplaces a little bit more.

He was working so hard and was trying to get out of there to be at another appointment on time.

Greta and I were admiring a red cardinal and I was having fun walking on our new dining room floor when Greta darted over the fireplace patch that Joe had just worked on.

It startled Adam and I so much that we both yelled, "Nooooooooooo!!!" and Greta ran back through the concrete and into her daddy's arms. Here you can see her shoes tell the story.

And so does the concrete. :) That was our cue to leave, but apparently Joe was able to fix it in minutes. Phew!

Oh to feel the sand between my toes...

2009-12-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

Our floors got sanded!
This is the "before" picture, but be prepared for a not-so-dramatic "after" because my flash wasn't working. All three of these next pictures are what they look like now!

We are more convinced now that it is white oak and not red oak like we were originally thinking. I'm happy for white oak! Apparently, it gives off a bluish gray hue which I like better than red.

You can really see the different individual strips of wood now that they are sanded. With advice from our sander man, we are just going to put a couple coats of poly on them, sand and then poly again and call it done!

Bathroom Sink

2009-12-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of the sink we plan to re-use. It even has those x-knobs that I love. I'm sure there's a better word for them, but you get the idea.

Struck Gold

2009-12-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

Thought you might like to see how I've been using some of my pecans. Besides benefitting from some pecan pies, I used them as table decorations for our Thanksgiving table at my in-laws house. To a previous commenter, Sonja, I'm excited to try your recipe using vanilla pudding! If anyone is interested, she posted it below under the blog post "Can-Can you do the Pecan".

After I pick up the nuts, I bring them to the patio table to dry out. Did you know pecans can mildew if you don't let them dry out? And another little factoid about them is that you need at least 2 pecan trees on your property to cross-pollinate or they won't bear anything. Just a couple things I've learned recently. Anyway, I left a bunch of nuts to dry out on the table and noticed my pile dwindling over a couple days. They are now completely gone thanks to this little guy in the corner. He probably thought he struck gold!

Hallway and Stairs

2009-12-03T18:44:00.000-08:00

The hallway is painted! The trim is just normal trim white and the wall color is "Snow Cap" by Valspar. The beadboard ceiling is staying natural and the stairs are still unfinished right now.

I bought these Pottery Barn shelves for a steal at a garage sale last summer. There are 8 units in this picture, but I only have 5. I think it'll be a perfect use of space in this wide hallway.

The brown under the stair treads will be painted white and I think I'm going to number them in a really faint color. Ideally, a stair runner would be great, but I don't think we have the money for that now. We still need to order the sheet metal to go in between and then will trim out the border and add a handrail to finish it off in between the beams.

Succulent

2009-12-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

After I mentioned possibly putting a wallpaper above the beadboard, I started looking around online to see what I could find. Don't you just love this? It's called Succulent by MakeLike and it goes for $200.00 a roll. If they could just knock a zero off, it would be in my price range. Keep your eyes out for me!

Although I love both, I think I like the coral more. Either one though would be fab to tie in the gray and yellow room upstairs.

Upstairs Kids Bathroom

2009-11-30T12:11:00.000-08:00

Complete with beadboard, trim and crown (not pictured, but was added later. :))!

We're using the original tub, sink and medicine cabinet which were way too cool to get rid of. Very "Restoration Hardware". Now, all we need is white subway tile for the shower surround, white hexagon tile for the floor, white paint on the beadboard and trimmings and a paint color on the wall! Any suggestions? Maybe a wallpaper geometric print?

Sitting Room Paint

2009-11-30T11:27:00.001-08:00

In this room, I painted last night with a color called "Hazel" by Sherwin Williams.

I can't wait for that tan-nish mauve-y fireplace to be painted a crisp white!

I love putting Adam on Daddy duty for the night so I can contribute to the house in some way.

I'm Thankful for PAINT!

2009-11-28T11:09:00.001-08:00

During this 4-day Thanksgiving weekend, we've had some family and friends come to help us paint. The whole left side of the house is now painted in "Croissant" by Sherwin Williams and looks beautiful! London, a friend of my sister-in-law's and my brother-in-law, Daniel were two of those helpers. We are so grateful for them!

Dan had to borrow Adam's painting pants and we got a kick out of how they fit him.

This is how the color looks as you enter the entryway.

Looking to the left in into the living room.

Really makes a house look like a home doesn't it?

This is just a close up of the primer over the termite damage on the living room ceiling. We still have to paint over it with ceiling paint and hopefully that'll disquise it that much more.

Keepers of the Home

2009-11-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

We had a group of kids and their moms come do a service project over at our house a couple weeks ago. Never would I ever thought I would end up being a service project one day, but we were so blessed by these kids and their moms willing to serve us in this way. They raked leaves, cleaned out our flower beds, swept, mopped, dusted, cleaned windows, picked up trash, hauled off sticks and broken branches, sprayed weed killer on the driveway and cleaned the bathroom all in a matter of 2 hours. It was such a morale boost for us to just work in a clean area as far as the interior was concerned and not have to worry about the exterior for now. It was even better when one of the girls was like, "Thanks for letting us clean your house!" Um, you're welcome!

Can-Can you do the Pecan?

2009-11-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

You have to say pecan like they do in the south in order for that to rhyme: pee-can. I still say puh-kahn though.

However you want to say it, we have 'em.

We've collected two and a half of these buckets already! I just won a bid on a pecan nut cracker on ebay so we can get crack-a-lackin!

Phil's Progress

2009-11-16T10:33:00.000-08:00

My brother-in-law Phil so generously gave up a week of vacation time to come help fast-forward the renovation. He's does renovations for a living, so to have him work in our house all day every day was amazing. Adam joined him in the evenings and took 2 days off of work. With the two of them combined, we saw major progress. What you may see in the pictures below may not look like much, but it's almost what you don't see that Phil worked on even more. All the walls are sooo smooth as he mudded and sanded the walls over and over to make them perfect. The crooked window sill is now straight, the doors have trim around them which took a lot of detailed cutting, the support beams got wrapped with thin wood, and we have crown moulding, base board, primed walls and painted trim!! Plus, being a part of his family's business we were able to use his business account at Sherwin Williams and get $200.00 off of paint!

Door casing around entry way door

Door casing around french doors in sitting room

Crown moulding in master bedroom. I found a crown guy on Craigslist who sold his for $1.00 less than Home Depot per linear foot and delivered it all for ten bucks!

Crown in entry way

Crown in hallway

During one of their workdays, it rained the entire day that they hung crown moulding. It made for such a cold, wet rainy day and they were exhausted.

The kids and I brought them Bojangles Bo-berry biscuits and coffee for a little pick-me-up.

Hallway Before

*sidenote: We really liked the pine on the walls, and really debated leaving them natural or painting them. In the end we decided to keep the ceiling natural here in the hallway (luckily no termites had found there way there!) and paint the walls to avoid it looking like a sauna, which it always reminded me of that. :)

Hallway After. The ceiling is natural, but you can't tell in this pic because it's taped off.

Primed ceilings and primed beams above Adam's head.

The support beams are made of pressed wood and had a really rough and uneven edge. That's why the guys decided to wrap it with thin, but real wood so that it would make it smooth and able to be painted more evenly.

Primed ceiling in living room. We were hoping that by painting the ceiling, it would make the termite damage on the left unnoticeable. Well, you can still see it. I think our when we paint our ceiling, I might pick more of an antique white in hopes that it might disquise it a little better and won't be as "bright". I think an antique white will tie in the kitchen cabinets too a little more than a bright white would.

Thank you Phil! Come back anytime! :)

Prosperity and Adversity

2009-11-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Luke 12:22-31

And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

The other day we were talking with our small group from church about worry and how we often worry even though God ALWAYS provides. We get to the point of fretting about something, God provides, and then we tell ourselves never to worry again. Then, the vicious cycle begins all over again.

Last Monday, we had insulation guys scheduled to come that morning and pump insulation into our exterior walls. With all of the sheetrock, trim and paint work we are doing, we figured we better beef up for the winter and pay the big bucks to get the insulation in beforehand so we didn't have major heating bills come January. The only catch is is that we are at the end of our budget and this was not something we had planned for and all of our monies were accounted for other things in the house. We have pinched and pinched on this budget to make the money stretch as far as possible, but we finally realized we might just have to put this insulation cost of $1,200 on the credit card. Early that morning, we found out that the insulation guys didn't take credit card so we had to regretfully cancel our appointment because we just didn't have the money in the bank.

Would you believe that by the end of the night I had two seperate members of our family call (unknowingly to each other) and with the two combined had offered a total of $1,700 towards helping us finish this renovation. Praise God for these generous families that so willingly gave. We love them. And we love insulation which came later that week. Our babes can sleep in heat. :)

That blue tank was a big insulation hopper that pumped through the tube into all these little holes in the wall. It looked like a carpet cleaners vaccuum.

Little holes were drilled on the tops and bottoms of all the exterior walls.

These were all the holes after Phil and Adam mudded over them.

Major progress happened this week with Phil in town. I'll have some sweet before and after pictures to prove it later.

Eat Your Heart Out, PB.

2009-11-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

Pottery Barn has had these in their "Harvest" decor section of their catalog which are authentic "found" dough bowls. I wonder how a Pottery Barn exec could just happen to "find" thousands of these and then sell them for $150.00+ a piece. I'm just saying, who happens upon that many dough bowls? Aren't they pretty?

Then these pretty vintage wine jugs with the little story on PB's website tells about a wine entrepenuer invested a lot of his money and time in picking out specific bottles for his company. He had a warehouse full apparently. These go for $100.00+.

I poked my head in the attic access to the left the other day after eyeing a few things and decided to crawl in and see exactly what was in there. *side note: I painted the loft. You like? I love oops paint from Home Depot. 5 dolla.

Anyway, I weasled my way into the little hole on the left and stepped on the roof rafters to look closely at some things that the light of my flashlight had landed upon.

Found some trinkets in a wooden box including an old New Testament, an ancient pair of Keds, an old flashlight and one old baseball cleat.

I also found an old galvanized metal ice cream maker.

But my most favorite finds of all were....

An old whiskey bottle and dough bowl! (I'm huffing on my nails right now and brushing them across my left shoulder. Have no idea what I'm talking about? Do exactly what I just wrote and then you'll see. :)) Technically, if I were going to spend $250.00 on those pretty PB items (which I wasn't), I'd be $250.00 richer right now. I can't wait to display these on my kitchen table!

Christmas Came Early

2009-11-08T18:37:00.001-08:00

Our surprise is revealed!

A couple weeks ago, I was on the phone with one of my sisters mentioning in passing how nice it would be to have her handyman husband Phil come help us with all of our projects. Adam has been working so hard every.single.night after long 10 hour days at work. He comes home for dinner, plays with the kids and heads out from 7:00-9:00 or 10:00 to go plug away at sheetrock, mudding, and whatever needs to get done. We have seen so much progress leading up to this point, but it is slow. We've also had some sweet friends come help whenever they can which to them we have been so grateful. Our house has progressed so far, but we still have a LOT of detailed work to go; trim, paint, tile, cabinets, floors, etc. Anyway, Christmas came early.

Phil is here to help.

How's this for a morale booster?

Just hours after I talked to Gretchen, she called back saying that they thought it actually might be possible for them to send Phil out for a week to come help us. With our mileage combined (this sounds like Captain Planet :) ) we were able to get him a ticket for him to come out and help us. After a 16 hour day of flying thorough the night with no sleep, he is going to work all day every day that he is here. Seriously, can you believe this guy? Our spirits our lifted.

We gave Phil the grand tour tonight of the place including the property.

They walked around from room to room getting a game plan together of they'd like to see happen this week.

Adam will be able to take a little time of this week and work alongside Phil. I can't wait to see what they can accomplish together. Praise God for Phil and thank you Gretchen for sending him!

Surprise

2009-11-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

About 11:30 today, we have a surprise coming to our house! SOOOO excited. Be prepared to see great things done. Check back later to see what is is. :)

Glow

2009-11-08T05:14:00.000-08:00

As I was painting the loft yesterday, I looked over to see the sun shining through the new curtains in the kids room. How's that for cozy and inviting?

Sue Whitney

2009-11-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

Back in August, I had the opportunity to go to a home show here in Charlotte. I was so looking forward to hearing everyone speak on home renovations, kitchen remodels and more specifically, junking. Author, speaker, notable junker and creator of Junkmarket Style, Sue Whitney spoke on repurposing trash to treasure. I'm always interested in saving a buck, so she was inspiring in encouraging us to look at everything as possibility. At first, when she asked who in the crowd admitted to being a junker, I wasn't sure what she meant by that. I was thinking more of the A&E show, Hoarders where people can't get rid of old, used make-up sponges or plastic 7-11 cups because they think they might need them again someday. I was hesitant to raise my hand, but then she described junkers as the kind of people who make their husband slow down past the neighbors trash pile to see what kind of goodies they migt be getting rid of. I raised my hand.

During Sue's presentation at the home show, she went through a powerpoint slideshow of pictures from her own home. A couple of pictures caught my eye and I hadn't been able to find them until yesterday. I had done a lot of google searches in the past couple months to find Sue's staircase and chandelier that she had created for her home. Yesterday, during yet another search for these pictures, it led me to a great blog, Harmony and Home, who had done an interview with Sue back in August. I was so happy to discover these pictures that were in her first book Decorating Junkmarket Style . I had bought the book above, Junk Beautiful, in search for them and although it does not include pictues of her own home, it has plenty of great ideas for every room of the house.

without further ado...

The stairs. Yes, the hallway itself is awesome with those old theater signs, but we are in staircase mode at the farmhouse and I can finally show Adam a visual that I've been trying to describe the past few months. A metal grate on the stairs? Have you gone nuts? Unfortunately, this is the only view we get of it, but I'll take it because even from this view, it looks fab. Luckily for us, Adam purchases sheet metal all the time at work so now we have a contact of who to get this from and have got the feelers out already.

Hopefully, we can turn this into that! That support beam you see will be repeated a few more times as you make your way up the stairs, but there will be a handrail that just goes up halfway.

And lastly, here is the barbed wire chandelier. We have a bunch of barbed wire in the backyard and I'd love to see a little bit of it turn into something like this, even if we just hung it outside on a patio one day (Sue's idea).

When we were filling up our dumpsters in the beginning of the demo process, I shouted, "Darn you Sue Whitney!" I can hardly throw anything away without staring at it for 5 minutes and wondering if we can use termite ridden wood or soggy sheetrock somewhere. Okay, so I'm not that bad, but I bet Sue Whitney has a self-portrait somewhere in her house made of those exact materials. :)

Bring in the Sunshine

2009-11-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

Here are the beautiful drapes my mom made when she was in town! Window treatments are not my thing. It is so hard for me to figure out what I want! That is unusual for me because normally I can look at something and figure out soon enough what I want it to look like. Curtains, nada. I knew what color I wanted so I started with that. I wanted sunny curtains to match the neighboring "vintage yellow" room to tie them together a little bit. My last house I had a blue kitchen, tan living room, green office, yellow nursery, red bathroom, all colorful but no symmetry. I'm wanting to see flow-age in this house. Cute mom, cute kid. Dark picture, sorry.

*Back to my ignorance on curtains. I've always heard to hang your curtain rod higher because it makes your windows look bigger. So, I hung it high, but looking at this picture it's starting to bother me. Should I lower it to the molding? Maybe I'll just pull the tops together and get curtain tiebacks. Then, I don't have to spend more hours within a period of 3 DAYS hanging those forsaken curtain rod brackets.

This is a closeup on the fabric.

This is where I got it. My mom and I had to make two trips to Gastonia to Mary Jo's to get more fabric and ended up with two extra yards in the end. That's what happens when you don't know what you want! Bringing two kids two and under doesn't help either. :) This picture looks smokey and I think I know why...

Doesn't he look like a little Vinny smokin' on his pretzel rod? He always hangs them out like it's a big stogie. Funny boy.

So with my extra fabric, I am considering just using it again in the yellow room also. What do you think? Too much yellow? I have a variety of quilts that I want to use on the guest bed and I don't want it to be limited with a certain color scheme in here. The other option would be just a pretty white probably. If I did the yellow, they'd have to be little cafe curtains because of where we've cut them already. I think I'm pushing the bed up to the window anyway so I wouldn't necessarily need the look of the height of the windows. It's not that great of a view, just the neighbors, a power line and an overgrown holly bush.

And if I don't use them in there, I'll probably use them in here..

The bathroom, I don't have any other plans for this room yet though!

Vintage Yellow and Tinted Veil

2009-11-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

While showing my friend, Meghann, around the house one day she suggested that I paint the rooms upstairs since nothing structually needed to be done with them and once painted, I could call them DONE! So, I took her advice and got to work priming away to be one step closer to seeing some sort of completion in the house. We had some sweet friends from church come help us on a Saturday to paint away up here in the guest room. The color is called "Vintage Yellow" by Glidden and I'm very happy with the result.

It's sunny by color in the day, but gets really toned down when the sun sets.

This is the kids' room painted in "Tinted Veil" by Valspar. It's really just a true gray color. I like it, but I'm going to like it better with my colorful decorations up! I think it'll be a perfect neutral pallette to begin with though.

It gets a lot darker when you turn the corner in the room towards Will's side of the room, but there's only room for his crib there so dark is actually not that bad. My mom was just in town and made curtains for the room. Check back soon to see the goodness. They're beautiful. :)

Marble Countertops

2009-10-27T18:55:00.003-07:00

I've always been drawn to pictures of kitchens like this and after a while I started to realize what was the underlying connection between them all. Marble countertops. I love this kitchen. From the glass cabinets, farmouse barstools, white subway tile and stainless appliances, it suits my style perfectly...but, not my budget. :)

We are trying to achieve all that plus an island that our friend in Raleigh is making for us. We plan to put a butcher block countertop on that piece of furniture and paint it it's own color. I have no idea what color yet though...This picture above is just a picture that popped up when I googled marble and butcherblock countertops. I would like a darker wood, but this gives you a general idea of what it would look like. Kind of meets the criteria I've set for the house with the whole "old meets new" vibe.

I've always liked the marble, but never expected to be able to afford it. I saw on Craigslist and in the paper last weekend a "we quit sale" and highly discounted prices on marble and granite. Imagine my surprise when I showed up early Saturday morning to find this price below.
$250.00!! Of course, I loved the price, but this pure white was not really what I wanted. The guy helping me had two matching pieces of carrera marble with veins which is exactly what I was looking for.

Here it is! I had to get 2 slabs for a total of $500.00 even though I only needed 1.5 slabs, but we plan to just use the other half in our master bath reno down the road.

Going Green

2009-10-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

One man's junk...

is another man's treasure!

Recognize any similarities in the two pictures? Who would've thought we could've repurposed our putting green from our front porch? Adam's cousin John helped us on the house one Saturday and was able to put some of our trash to good use! He coaches a baseball team down in Alabama and asked if we willing to part with our beloved greenery to use in his batting cage. Um, sure. Thanks so much for your help John!

A Great Tip!

2009-10-11T05:31:00.000-07:00

I have always thought that this idea would be so great and apparently my dream has come true! I was over at this blog, http://www.bungalow23.com/, today and he writes:

A Craigslist Tip
Did you know that you can subscribe to your favorite Craigslist searches in your blog feed reader? That’s how I found my buffet.
Just enter your search criteria in Craigslist, then scroll down to the bottom of the results page. In the lower right corner you will find an RSS link. Right-click the link and then select “copy link address” from the pop-up menu. Then open your feed reader (I use Google Reader) and paste that link address as a new subscription.
Now, whenever new items matching your search are added to your local Craigslist site, you’ll get notified in your feed reader.
I find that this technique saves me time by showing me only the content I want to see, and it helps me respond quickly after items are listed.
Happy hunting!

Yay! I'm off to plug mine in!

My list will be:
-stainless range hood
-new water heater
-playground set
-front loaders (we need a stackable set of a washer and dryer. I told myself after our last one in the townhome that I would never do that again, but alas our new laundry room is 2 inches too narrow. If I can find a cheap set of quality front loaders, then I can get laundry cycles that actually wash AND (gasp) dry!! It was too much for my last unit to handle my army sized loads and if I can get my hands on some front loaders that can be stacked then I'll be good to go on my dreaded Monday laundry days.)

I also look for anything with these key words: Pottery Barn, Land of Nod, Crate (&) Barrel, Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware, etc., but I won't plug those in. I have a feeling my feeder would be going a little crazy...

Updated Picture Tour

2009-10-08T06:58:00.001-07:00

It's been a while. We're busy with two babies and a house renovation. I'm sure you can understand. :) I forget what you've seen and what you haven't so let me just pull some pics out to show you what's been going on.
The new paint color, "vintage yellow" by Glidden, that will go in the pink guest room upstairs.

The "Filtered Shade" gray color by Valspar that will go in the kids room upstairs.

Proud of my priming skills upstairs now that both rooms are done. Just primed...not painted.

The fireplace cleaned and ready to be sealed. Remember, the stove is going to hide that patch of new brick. I know, it still looks dirty, but that is the best it's going to get. We call it "rustic." :)

Updated staircase with the wall gone and new pine stair treads. We're trying to come up with a cool idea for a custom banister now...staircase post to come...

Vaulted ceiling in dining room with sheetrock and brand new windows that Adam replaced!

Old doorway leading from former living room to former dining room. Now that it's a master bedroom, we needed to wall it up.

House on an early Saturday morning waiting for work to be done.

Through those beams is my new laundry room that Adam and his dad framed up. Doorway entrance is from the hall. We're looking at it from the dining room.

And the sheetrock work that still needs to be done in the sitting room over the boards and on both sides of the doors.

Bummer

2009-10-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

Remember this pretty beadboard ceiling in the kitchen? I liked it so much I wanted to keep it natural, but as we kept pulling back sheetrock, we noticed termite damage in the living room.

Which looks like this.

Bummer. So, we'll sand it, paint it white and pretend we never saw how pretty it could've been. It'll open the room up that much more anyway, right?

Sitting Room Chairs

2009-10-08T06:15:00.000-07:00

These are the chairs I found at Habitat for Humanity for less than $50.00 a piece. The one on the left has the tiniest little tear in the upholstery, but other than that, they are in tip top shape and HEAVY!

They're upstairs for now, away from sheetrock dust and just awaiting their placement in the sitting room one of these days!

Boy Meets Girl

2009-09-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm working up the courage of putting my 2 year old daughter in the same room as my 11 month old son. Since our house is a 3 bedroom house, right away I assigned one upstairs to my daughter and the other one to my son. However, the more I thought about wanting to accommodate guests and having an area to work on crafts, I just decided to buck up and put them in the same room. So, without further ado, here are the pictures I've collected as inspiration for this shared gender neutral space.

These are the pictures of the room that they will be in in order as if you were walking through the room.
These windows are the first thing you see on the far wall.

Turn the corner (picture an J shape and now you're at the bottom of the J)

Arriving to the closet (at the end of the J...you have no idea what I'm talking about do you? ha! My husband tells me all the time, things that make sense to me don't necessarily mean that they make sense to others). It's a fairly big closet but we'll definitely need to add some shelves to maximize the space. All of this junk you see in the pictures are from the previous owner.

Next, I wanted to remember exactly what I had in storage (it's been almost a year!!) so I pulled up some archived pictures of the kids rooms.

This is Will's nursery from our previous home in Raleigh. My intent was to transplant the entire scheme since he only slept in here ONE DAY by the time we moved. That curtain was my first sewing project and I was so proud of it that I didn't even care I made it too small. Oh my. I see it now!

Close up of his Dwell Studio bedding I bought off of Craigslist.

Greta's room. I can't find a close up online of the quilt, but it is a patchwork pattern with a various degree of pale pinks, reds, blues and greens and cream.

These next ones are pictures I found from Oh Dee Doh.

I love a rainy Saturday morning to surf through fun pictures like these!

I was so inspired by the color palette in this room. I never thought I would agree with gray in a kids room, but I'm a total believer now!I love how the main furniture elements are wooden with neutral walls and the splashes of color are found in the objects decorating the room. This will work well to bring in the combination of my kids stuff to decorate with such as Gretas' pink latern with Will's red latern.

I love all the browns and wood use in this room. I think I'll do the gray on the walls and do chocolate as accents (which you already see with the dresser in Will's room that I hope to squeeze in this room somehow...) We already have the hardwood floors so we've got that going for us. Then, add in all the fun colorful stuff and call it good!

This next room, although a baby girls room, just shows the eclectic, vintage look that I love and am will try to accomplish in the room. From the funky frames, repurposed furniture, and that ladder...yes please.

But the one thing I absolutely love in here is that pallet bed used as a reading nook with the old door headboard. I showed it to Adam this morning and he's not totally sold on the caster wheels, but I suggested table legs instead and he thought it might work. I totally think I could do this for Greta's bed since the walls are so low where they start to slant upwards. She wouldn't need a headboard as it'd be more a sideboard to give the look of a bed and not just a bunch of pallets in their room. Then again, when she's older and starts telling people she sleeps on pallets, it may not work after all. :) I love it anyhow.

I'm pretty sure I don't have the wall space for this, but I love the collection of letters I found at Project Nursery used with all different fonts and colors to pull all the other colors in the room together. I love that button for the O and for a lot of the other letters, the mom mod podged scrapbook paper on some that she had collected over time. She did a great job.

Charming Innovations

2009-09-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, Katie, in Raleigh has started a new blog and design business and I thought I'd share some pictures on her recent posts. I absolutely love her ideas!

She pulled this picture from Design Sponge and this is the exact color palette I've been mulling over and over in my mind! It's so great to see someone took my idea and put it picture form! Okay, okay, well I could never have come up with something so chic, but I'm totally thinking marigold shutters and that dark blue on my porch floor. Loves it.

This was another idea that Katie pulled from Restoration Hardware and it couldn't have been better timing for me to stumble upon this!

Awful, awful picture I know. But, it's the coolest key that actually says "Master Key" on it. This is one of two old keys we've come across in the house reno. Now I'm totally excited to do this...

If only I could just find 4 more keys! Now, let's talk about those corbels! Mmmmm, yes please.

I already have Katie's website posted to the right so check her out for more great ideas. I know I will!

Sneak Peek Reveal

2009-09-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here's the new kitchen ceiling! Looks great huh?

Now just picture this on the walls:

I really hesitate to put this out there because on my screen it looks like a pinky tan. When in fact, it "should" be more of a buttery beige. I described what kind of color I wanted and my sister recommended "Croissant" by Sherwin Williams. Her mother-in-law loved it so much she painted her whole house in it so I figured it had to be good! She said even the paint swatch at the store doesn't do it justice. Well, we've painted in different forms of daylight around the house as a little sampler to see what it looks like and I'm quite content right now with my choice. In the dark it definitely brings it down the the neutral tan zone and in the light it brightens up to a sunny butter.

As for the LVL beams around the chimney and this one separating the kitchen from the dining room, I think I've decided on painting that the trim color now that I'll have the contrast I want with the natural beadboard.

I can't wait to see this all come together! In case you haven't figured out by now, our self-proclaimed deadline of "end of September" is not going to happen. We now proclaim it end of October. :)

My Saturday Project

2009-09-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my mother-in-law who kept the kids for me Saturday morning and afternoon, I was able to go over to the house and work. My job was to pull all of the carpet staples and tack strip off of the floor in the sitting room. I'm trying to move room by room to make it a "sanctuary" and give us some sort of mental relief that things are actually getting done. When you look at the whole house, sometimes it's overwhelming thinking about all that still needs to be done. This helps my brain realize that there's not a whole lot left to do in this room.

Sneak Peek

2009-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Adam and Doug, our small group leader at church, tore down all the sheetrock in the living room and kitchen yesterday. I haven't been there to see it yet, but here's a little sneak peek of what it looks like. The beadboard on the left is what we've discovered when our contractor had to pull back the sheetrock to put the lvl beam. We liked it so much, we decided to do that with the rest of the rooms on this side of the house... I think we'll keep it natural too. I'll post a picture of the rest of the room once I get over there to see it with my own eyes!

3D Tour

2009-09-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

Occasionally when I talk to my oldest sister on the phone about kitchen design she responds with a lot of "uh-huh's" and "hmmm's". I can tell that she's trying to sound like she understands, but then we laugh about how she has no clue what I'm talking about. This post is for her and for people like her. We met with a cabinet guy the other day and I was SO excited to see his drawing for our new kitchen. He is such a stellar guy, you can even see how he drew up the living room and dining room on either side of the kitchen. Step inside and welcome to the future left side of my home. :)

This is what you would see as you enter the living room from the entry way.

This unit of cabinets will serve as a pantry.

This hanging unit of cabinets is something he drew up, but we have decided NOT to go with it. It does limit our storage that much more, but with it being right next to a pass-thru we don't want it to obstruct traffic in any way. The glass cabinets on the left are ones that we are recycling from the old utility room. The island will be custom made from a friend of ours in Raleigh.

The only difference with this picture is that we forgot to include a dishwasher! I know we're living in a 1920's house, but this girl does not do dishes 1920's style. It will be sandwiched between the sink and the fridge. I just bought a matching set stainless, Jenn-air fridge and dishwasher off of Craigslist and I think they will look great next to each other.

Although lovely, I don't think this hutch will fit on this wall with our big dining room table. So, we'll have to nix that also. Yes, that means that even more lost storage, but I think we have a piece of furniture that is smaller and will work fine instead. Once we get our table out of storage and can take true measurements, we may decide later to do this.

We've Got Hang-Ups

2009-09-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Doors that is....They're all hung up! This was the "before" picture.

And this is the "after"! I love the stark contrast against the white. Some of you have mentioned the lovely putting green on the front porch and that is a hole in one straight to the dumpster. The white curved railings we hope to sandblast the paint off of that and repaint them black probably. I'm taking suggestions of what to paint the shutters and the cement color of the floor now (the part that is currently red). I'm thinking a grayish blue for the floor and maybe a navy for the shutters? I also like a yellow too for shutters so like I said, I'm totally open to any ideas you have!

The door at night in the dark. We decided to ditch the storm door for 2 reasons. 1. The porch is deep enough we don't feel like we need it. 2. The new door looks cooler when it's not hiding behind glass.

Close up

The hardware is an antique pewter we ordered online. We didn't want to do black and we didn't want shiny silver either so we felt this was a good compromise and are VERY happy with it.

We decided to do regular tempered glass for around $60.00 as opposed to $300.00 worth of custom glass with iron work. That's something I want to learn down the road and I think once I could figure out how to do the iron work I might be able to create the lattice look that I want right on top of our current panes. I plan to hang up cute little farm-y curtains though so people can't see right inside.

It even looks good with watermelons casually leaning up against it.

Our next hang-up is this lovely window covered by the sheer curtain. This window seperated the sitting room to the sunroom. The only way to access the sunroom was to go out the front door and through the entrance on the front porch.

Well, that window has since been replaced by this lovely set of french doors!

We found this set of doors on Craigslist and couldn't be happier with them. Apparently Will feels the same. :) They're a little bit taller and a little bit more narrow than the norm and fit perfectly in the room.

With the fireplace on the left and the french doors on the right, I have a feeling this will be one of my favorite rooms in the house. Both doors open and I can just imagine the lovely breeze coming through the open sunroom windows as I lie on my chaise reading my books (aka-blogs) :). Actually, I don't have a chaise but I did find some SA-weet velvety seafoamy pair of side chairs the other day at Habitat. I hope they can go in this room.

And since we're on the topic of decorating, the color on the top is the one we chose to paint with. It's called Hazel by Sherwin Williams. I'm not normally a fancy paint brand kind of girl, but the Labor Day special was 25% off so we splurged on this color and our main color for the downstairs. As for the wood on the walls around the house, this wall had some termite damage as you can see by the discoloration. Being an exterior wall (or at least used to be before they added the sunroom) we were not too surprised. We've had the house inspected and although we don't have a current problem with termites, we can pay a little bit for a treatment and prevent them in the future. All to say is, we love the look of exposed wood on the walls, but this one might get covered back up with sheetrock.

Pottery Barnwood

2009-09-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'll give you a little sneak peek of what I'm currently working on... Does this look familiar? It's in PB's new fall catalog of decorating vintage style, which of course I love! I loved this horse wall art, but I'm not really a horse person. So, it got me thinking...

I have a ton of wood pulled down from the walls of our house. Most we plan to use for flooring, but we had salvaged a bunch of smaller pieces for me to use for crafty projects like such.

I got to work quilting together some of the wood, piecing them together so that the seams wouldn't match and it would look like we had taken it straight off the wall in one unit.

After I nailed them into a thin piece of luan plywood, I freehanded a favorite place of mine and home for 21 years onto the boards getting braver each time beginning with a pencil, pen and finally a paint pen.

Once I was happy with the final product, I took some leftover ceiling paint and painted everything but Alaska. I absolutely would not use the pen again to trace as it was bleeding through every coat of paint. After about 4 coats of paint, I finally learned my lesson and put primer on. Why do I always do that??? After a few more coats of primer, I was happy with the final product and really this isn't even the final product! We still need to cut it down to square size and I plan to distress it a little like the PB version. $199.00 saved and I got exactly what I wanted!

Surprise Package!

2009-09-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I had three boxes come in the mail filled with goodies from my friend Sara! She lives up in Ohio and had some goodies that she didn't need anymore and thought of me.

Look at all my treasure! Well, this is just 2 of the boxes and my Chick-Fil-A sweet tea that just finishes the country, southern tone of it all.

Aren't these scales SA-weet? Can you say bookends? Thank you Sara!!

I changed my mind

2009-09-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

Annnnddd, I switched up the kitchen again. I'll blog details later. Nothing drastic. Let's just say that the island is now an island and the stove will sit in front of the chimney (on the kitchen side of course).

Goodbye and Hello

2009-09-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Goodbye nasty ceiling tiles.

Hello vaulted ceiling! (those vertical beams won't be staying...)

Adam and I have been busy (hence the lack of blogging) getting down and dirty in our soon to be dining room. We are so thankful to live with his parents right now who are able to put the kids down and be at home so we can slip away and get some stuff done on the house.

Underneath the ceiling tiles, we found old beadboard ceiling. They came down like toothpicks so there wasn't anything salvageable.

Under the beadboard, there was insulation. The first time Adam and I discovered this, we were not prepared for this and left after 30 minutes with the black lung hacking up and covered with fiberglass shards from the insulation. It was awful. As you can see, I came prepared for the next day.

We enjoy doing this kind of stuff together. Adam likes having me help him even though the other day when he whacked me on accident with a board he admitted it was the first time he's ever heard someone say "owie" on the job. Ha ha.

Often, we take the kids over with us in the evening when we want to check on how progress is coming with the jobs our contractor is taking care of. Soon, Will will be crawling all over this kitchen floor.

Our LVL beams came in to replace the walls we took out. I really want to play these beams up and Adam said they're not able to be stained. So I want to paint them brown to make them look like wooden beams and Adam is skeptical because then they'll just look like I painted them to make them look real wood. I looked up faux painting, but I'm not sure about that. It might look to faux. I'd love some suggestions or any affirmation for anything that I just mentioned. The ceilings are 10 feet high so I figured if they look that bad, they're still high up there and not close up for anyone to notice.

View of the living room, the kitchen (with the ceiling fan) and the dining room with the new vaulted ceiling!

My plan for the fireplace is to cover up as much of that brick with a mantle and clean up the rest. If anyone has any good advice of fireplace/soot cleaners, then do share of what and where to find it. As for the chimney, I'm going to clean that up with a wire brush and air compressor to get all the loose dirt off. As far as sealing is concerned, I've read everything from poly, to evaporated milk (or was it sweetened condensed?) to good ol' regular brick sealer. I don't want anything shiny, but just something to hold all the mortar in place and not end up in my pot of chili.

Almost Ready for Harvest!

2009-09-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

They're purple! That was a surprise to us. My mother-in-law and grape aficionado wannabe :) did some taste testing tonight and is pretty convinced that they're Concord grapes. We live in Concord, NC so I figured concord grapes in concord sounded pretty appropriate.

Can you see it?

2009-08-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

These is a picture of the type and color of kitchen cabinets we're going to order.

These are the old ones from the utility room that we're integrating in with the new ones.

Although cute and bold, this is NOT our kitchen. We did however just buy that kitchen sink at IKEA pictured above those cute little cheery little cherry curtains.

This is an 3D image of the kitchen island that we're going for. We've hired a friend of ours, Ryan, in Raleigh to build it for us. He worked with Adam at his previous job and is very skilled in this kind of woodworking. A couple things have changed though since another friend, Matt, drew this up for us. 1. There's going to be a 2-door cabinet underneath the sink. 2. The left hand cabinet will have a drawer above it. 3. It will have big ol' table legs on all of the corners. 4. AND there will be a bar area behind the sink. 5. And I'm thinking about painting it gray...6. I don't know about countertops yet though....

Lastly, the island really won't be an island at all. More like a peninsula that will jut up to the fireplace and hide that hideous cement job. We are keeping both walk-throughs open to the living room. As you look at this picture, the bar seating area will be the side that Adam is on and the cabinets, dishwasher and sink, will be on the other side. The wall to the right (not pictured, but it's the one with the window on it) will hold all of the other base and upper cabinets, stove, fridge and pantry. It'll basically be a galley kitchen except with 2 walk-throughs to minimize traffic and maximize on open space.

Ta-Da!

2009-08-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

My two year old, Greta, is really into exclaiming, "ta-da" at random moments and most times used inappropriately. She did however understand the concept the other day when her little naked self came running out of the bathroom after going potty on the big girls toilet yelling, "TA-DA!". Adam and I had one of those ta-da moments the other day. And it had nothing to do with using a big girls potty. :)

This is the new living room with the wall to the right housing a walled up double-sided hearth. Our homework assignment from our contractor was to get in there, rip down the sheetrock and expose the fireplace and chimney so he could advise us on how best to take it out.

We got to work ripping off the sheetrock right away and as expected found the lapboard underneath. We pryed off every piece as gingerly as possible so that we might be able to reuse it for possible flooring in the hallway and dining room. You can see the fireplace hearth boarded up down at the bottom of the pic. Well, little did we expect, once we took off the boards what exactly the fireplace and chimney would look like...

TA-DA!!!

Okay, seriously, how awesome is this? We were giddy when we discovered just how cool it looked and the thought of taking it out went completely out the window. Right away we started dreaming up new kitchen designs and furniture placement in the living room. I think it can work. We just have to pray that our contractor can figure out an inexpensive way for us to reinforce it from underneath.

This is the view from the front door with the fireplace to the left. Has some wow-factor to it huh?

This is the other side of the wall pre-demo in the to-be kitchen.

I was on the other side of the wall hammering on the lapboards so Adam could pry them off easier.

This is the side from the kitchen with the hearth filled in. I love how the chimney narrows at the top because it still gives us the roomy open air feel that we were trying to achieve. High ceilings are nothing to complain about either. Kitchen design is coming along slowly but surely, but let me tell you, that is hard work! I lose sleep every night trying to come up with a perfect work triangle design and still give me all the cabinet space I need including the plate rack and pantry that I want. I've tried Google Sketch-up to try to visualize it on the computer, but it took more mental energy to figure it out and I ended up using a pencil and paper. If anyone knows of a good kitchen design resource to use, do tell!

Kitchen Demo

2009-08-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

Adam and his dad took out all of the cabinets last weekend, the sink and the countertop. We're one step closer to a master bathroom!

It was our goal to recycle some of the cabinets into a pantry of some sort in the new kitchen, but they came out in pieces of wood instead of solid pieces. They were built board by board and they really couldn't have been salvaged.

This hole was for the exhaust fan for the stove hood. My father-in-law came home and told me they found 7 dead mice when they pulled out the hood. Barf.

The old sink that we are going to give away to some church friends who have been wanting one. We've got our eye on an apron front farmhouse sink from IKEA and were happy to find this one a new home.

Cutting a Rug

2009-08-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

One thing that can be crossed off of our to-do list is ripping up the carpet in the old dining and living room. Adam was here all day Saturday working and took care of these rooms. We've got a dumpster coming tomorrow so we can get rid off all the carpet in the corner.

It's amazing how much homey-er it feels by just exposing the hardwoods in the living room pictured above and below. We need to pull out the nails and refinish by sanding and putting on a clear coat of poly.

I can't wait to lay a big rug down and haul in the furniture soon!

(Speaking of timelines, we've been asked when the big move-in date is and the answer to that is we don't know. Hopefully, by early September is what we're thinking. The hardest and longest part of this renovation was going to be the foundation. Now that that is finished, we can keep cruising along and be in sooner than later!)

(Speaking of foundation, it's done! You can walk down the hallway and not have to feel the big dip in the middle anymore. I'm sure it's never going to be suitable for a game of marbles, but it's good enough for us.)

Bobcat

2009-08-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we rented a bobcat to clear away the big dirt piles near the house. Although Adam was on it for a little while that morning, a friend came over later and took care of the rest for us. We are so grateful to our friend Joe who took the time to do that for us. He is in the concrete biz and has to level many a ground so he was fast and efficient. If you are in the area and need a good concrete guy, we have just the guy for you!Greta watching her daddy on the "digger".

As you face the house, this is the right of the house where one large dirt pile stood.

This is on the left side of the house where another once stood. All gone now!

One other transformation was ripping up the planter in the backyard. You can see in previous posts a big planter with overgrown shrubs and bushes. Now we have room to run and play and build a playground instead. All of the dirt was just put at the back of the property to use when we need it.