Take it to the Hoop!

I think it's the cheerleader in me that made me choose this title. I'm a little odd, but at least I realize that about myself. :) I wanted to put my new years resolutions/goals on here. Goals, get it? Take it to the hoop! Are those even called goals? Don't know and don't care. I find it funny, so that's all that matters. :)

I try not to choose too many in order to make them more real and doable. I also like the idea of someone else other than myself, and my husband, seeing these. It makes me hold myself a little more accountable. So, without further ado, here are my goals for 2013.

1. Tackle one big project a month. And by this I mean the projects that will take more time and/or money. Obviously, January is the month of the kitchen. My project for February? Hopefully my fireplace. It needs a face lift, and I can't really paint the living area without redoing it right away. Here is what it looks like now.

While a lot of people may think this looks good, it's just not my jam. I want something that has some interest, but is still neutral enough for me to be able to change up the accessories around the room without it looking odd. Here are some fireplaces that tickle my fancy.

picture from Screaming Meme 

picture from Pig and Paint

Obviously, I really like tile paired with a traditional fireplace surround. I need to find a tile that has interest, but isn't so bold that Brandon would truly hate looking at it everyday. 

2. Be realistic. The process of trying to make a house a home is never ending. I need to make sure that I remember that the house will not always be perfect, mainly because two imperfect people live in it. I need to remember that parts of the house will probably be disaster zones for quite some time. I will probably have some project going on, big or small, that requires part of the house to temporarily become a disaster. This is okay and not the end of the world. I also want to make sure that I am realistic in the time it's going to take to complete projects or save up the money for them. 

3. Add a daily devotional to my everyday routine. While I am usually pretty good about praying everyday, at some point during the day, I find it difficult to actually sit down and just have time for me and the Lord. The one thing that I should definitely be finding time to do, and I'm not! I'm going to make it my mission to find a daily devotional that will help me be more accountable. Hopefully, once I develop the routine, it will be so ingrained that I will do it without really thinking about it. Here is an example of what I am looking for.

Kitchen Part II

In the hopes of making myself feel more accomplished, I decided that I needed to write about the kitchen update. I previously wrote about the cabinet boxes that are complete, are currently crying out to be dressed with some doors. Sadly, I must say that the door situation has been very tedious. Going into this project, I truly thought that we would be able to complete it in a weekend. I had read on other blogs how their kitchen redo took two weeks or five weekends, depending on when you are working on it. I thought this was a ridiculous timeline. I quickly came to realize differently!

After we took the doors off the cabinet boxes, I had a debate with my mom about taking the trim off the doors. I didn't get a picture of a cabinet door by itself, but you might be able to see in this picture.

It looked extremely outdated and I wanted something more modern. I wanted them to look like newer cabinets but without the new cabinet price tag. Let's face it; we're a newly married couple, and our bank accounts reflect that.

Anyway, as my mom and I are debating about taking the molding off and how hard it would be, I look over and Brandon effectively ends the debate when he starts taking the molding off with a screwdriver and a hammer. Well ... I guess that solved our problem. I'm actually really glad he did it, because I don't believe I would have liked the doors so much with the molding.

You can easily see in this picture what the shape was before it came off. Now the problem was that I had lots of wood scraps and little holes left in the doors. I had to scrape off the chipped wood and fill the holes.

 I used a putty knife to fill in the larger holes made by the hardware and I just used my finger to fill in the holes left by the finishing nails that held the molding to the doors.

 Then it was time to break out the big guns. By this, I mean Brandon! Yep, Brandon got to get his sanding on. I could almost see the excited on his face.

Sorry for the craptastic picture, but iPhone at night = awful!!

 You can also tell that he had to put a little more effort where the molding used to be. At the time, we thought we might have to leave them flat faced for a while before we got trim of some sort to make it look a little more modern.

Once Brandon finished sanding (and yes, I did my fair share of sanding too!!), it was time for the tack cloth and then on to priming. Yay! I am currently in the process of trying to finish priming those doors. I calculated earlier, and it takes me about 2 minutes per door. I can only do 22 doors at a time, and this is a two coat household. Needless to say, this is taking FOREVER. Okay, not really, but I am soo ready to have my kitchen in true working order. But, I keep remembering how much work is going into this and how much I already love it and it's not even complete.

Day 1 

at Door Priming Central

Day 2

at Door Priming Central

If you can't tell the difference, for shame! Day 1 I did a double coat on the back of half and one coat on the back of the other half. Day 2 I did a second coat on the half that didn't get two the day before, and then I got one coat on the front of the other half. I don't know if you can see the outline of the molding in this picture, but here's a close up. 

If you're wondering about whether or not we have trim for the cabinets, well, I won't make you hold your breath ... we do! We actually got it for $6 for every 12 ft. piece (it was originally $7 but since we were buying so much, the manager gave us a deal). Here's how we figured out how much we needed.Brandon roughly measure the cabinet boxes.

 I would then write down the numbers he gave me, and then I used my math teacher powers (even though I teach English now, I can still do simple math!! Most of the time.) And here is what my super technical math looked like.

So we figured we would need 30 pieces if they were 10 ft. pieces. They were 12 ft. pieces, so we got 25. Then Brandon got to cutting.

Trim cut for the cabinets so far.

The pile of trim left to cut.

So even though we still have several days to go until our kitchen cabinets are complete, I am very happy about our progress. This project is teaching me to have patience. I am not Flash; I can't get everything done super quick. Real life doesn't work as fast as my brain can come up with ideas. Which is lucky I guess, because not all ideas that come to my mind are worthy of being brought to life (this reminds me of my kitchen island). Hopefully my next kitchen update will be with the kitchen complete.

Kitchen Makeover Part I

I mentioned in an earlier post about our journey to fix update our kitchen. When we first looked at our home, I kind of liked the cabinets. They were a little different than your normal, every day cabinets, and that suited my style. I typically gravitate toward things that are a little different. I like things that stand out, I guess. But once we closed and went to look at the house again, I realized that the previous owner didn't do a good job painting them. It was sloppy work at best.

Once we decided how much we disliked the cabinet color, we jumped right into painting those suckers. I had the perfect picture in my head. I knew that I didn't want white cabinets. There are so many cabinets in this kitchen that I felt like there would be way too much white. I saw a commercial on HGTV that had gray kitchen cabinets. This was my vision. Light gray kitchen cabinets, white/light countertops, colorful backsplash, and eventually, dark wood floors throughout. 

But before we could actually get to the fun part of choosing paint colors and what not, we had to go in and do the dirty work. First, we hung a plastic sheet to close off the kitchen to keep the dust mess to a minimum. 

Then we took off all the doors. And when I say we, I really mean Brandon. He did such a great job, and luckily his drill didn't die until the very last cabinet door.

Once all the doors were off, we Brandon could get those suckers sanded. Brandon used a palm orbital sander and 80 grit sand paper. Brandon thinks he looks a bit silly in this picture, but I sweetly assured him that he looks like he's showing those cabinets whose boss! :)

So, once Brandon actually got to work (instead of posing for the camera), the cabinets looked great and sanded, but unfortunately, we had a huge mess.

This is actually how much dust was produced just from sanding the cabinet boxes. This was the note I found when I went in to look at the progress a few hours later. Can you say awww?

Once everything was sanded, my mom and I jumped right in and started priming. I chose Valspar Bonding Primer. I bought two gallons and I may not even need both of them. Beware that it is a little thick, but it goes on really well, and it covered the fire engine red nicely. Of course, we did do two coats to make sure that it covered everything.

You can tell that I am really working hard, because my hand is blurry. Unfortunately, I got no picture of my mom priming. :( I think I was just in the zone. I learned a valuable lesson while working on this project. I was completely unrealistic about how much time I thought this would take. I seriously went into this thinking that I could get everything primed in a day. Yeah, right. This took us about four days. We had bead board in some places and that meant extra time with the paint brush. Unfortunately, this caused our paint roller to get a little jealous. But we did eventually complete the priming portion of the work. 

Wow!! Looks a million times better already. (Don't mind the detached vent hood in the photo above. I didn't actually break it; I just took it down to paint the sides.)

Once we finished priming, it was finally time to go to Ace Hardware and actually choose paint chips. This was sooo much harder than I thought. Once you've gotten used to living in white apartments for so long, choosing a paint color is a giant task. I know the guy at the paint counter probably thought I was crazy, and I'm sure my mom was equally frustrated. I just couldn't decide. It was too much pressure. I finally decided on Gray Harbor and Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore. 

Choosing our paint colors ended up being quite easy once I painted a door in each color and we could actually see what it looked like in our space. We ended up picking the one on the right, Stonington Gray. So I got to work painting the actual cabinet boxes. 

 It looked really good while I was painting. Then I took a step back and had a serious shock. Somehow my paint ended up a light blue gray, instead of the true gray that we had thought it was. Luckily Brandon and I both liked it, but we have to do some deliberating about how we are going to actually accessorize the area.

 So here's our actual painted product. It may be hard to tell in the pictures what the actual color is, but I really like it. It's definitely different and I think that is what appeals to me. Obviously we are still missing doors and drawers. We actually completed sanding those today, and hopefully I will start on priming them soon. That update will come as soon as it's complete. I also need to update the kitchen island. You might be able to tell, but I painted the island Aegean Teal by Benjamine Moore and then decided that it made the kitchen cabinets look too blue. Back to the drawing board, I guess. Hopefully, we will have the kitchen put back together soon.

YHL Love

I may be a little late on the bandwagon that is Young House Love, but I guess better late than never. I got my Young House Love book a couple of days ago, and naturally, I have already read through the whole thing. I'm a complete nerd.

 I actually ordered this before Christmas, but because it was such a popular book or because they were unprepared for the demand, it was unavailable at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. This just would not do. I absolutely had to have it NOW! I am not a very patient person when it comes to books. Well, on www.younghouselove.com they mentioned a little shop in their area that was selling books online. Not only did they have copies they would mail, but they also had signed copies. SIGNED!! I'm a nerd like that. So even though I haven't gone to one of their book signings, I still have a signed copy. Hopefully, they will do a book signing near here in January or February. Then I would be a complete and total nerd and have them sign it twice. Too cool for school!!

Two is Better Than One

Lucky for me (and the hubby too!), there are many thrift stores/antique malls/hotel liquidation places to visit in Middle Georgia when you need to find things on the cheap. This past weekend my mom and I went to Forsyth, Ga to visit the hotel liquidation store there. This is a great place to find lamps, picture frames, and mirrors. This was my original purpose in visiting the store. We have a library/office that has absolutely NO overhead light fixture, so it is very dark. I wanted to see if I could find some lamps to fix that problem. I ended up coming home with no lamps. I did come home with a HUGE mirror.

Please, don't mind the mess in the background. We just moved in five days ago. Wow!! It feels like much longer than that. I guess we have been having a pretty busy five days with painting the kitchen cabinets. More on that update as soon as we finish. 

I also got a really ugly full of potential coffee table. My plan at the moment is to re-purpose it as an ottoman. This was a huge find for only $10. Even though it's not the most attractive table, it's super sturdy and will make a nice additional seating/foot rest. 

Of course, my favorite find of the day were these two plaid chairs. I didn't see any others in the place, which is very unusual. This is a hotel liquidation store that buys furniture from hotels who are either going out of business or remodeling, so they receive many of the same things. Naturally, as soon as I saw them it was LOVE!! I had to have them. I was a little worried about what the hubster would think of these chairs, but I gave them the butt test, and they were not only really awesome looking, but they also felt really awesome. 

I even love the fabric. Now, these will eventually have to be reupholstered. I either need to save up to have a professional do it, or get up the confidence to do it myself. It will probably be the latter. It would be so cool to say, "hey, I reupholstered those babies!" I might not have needed two, but they were the only two left and I didn't want them to be lonely without the other one. And lets face it, two is always better than one!