What have I been up to?

Hello, is anybody here? I've been absent from the blog for a couple months now and I wanted to check in and share some things. I'm going to start with a few of the furniture pieces that I have done lately. Then I thought I could talk about some of the changes we've made to our house in the last couple of months. How does that sound? Good? Okay let's do it!

Let me begin by saying that having an Etsy store has been helping me tremendously with selling furniture so I am very thankful for that. One of the pieces that I redid was this beautiful blue mid century modern dresser.

This is a vintage Basset dresser that I completely sanded, primed and painted with Sherwin Williams high gloss advanced formula paint. I added new glass hardware and spray painted the original bottom pulls in brass. It is quite a stunning piece!

It now lives with a young lady in Brooklyn NY, who fell in love with it and could not resist it's gorgeous new look.

Next up is this campaign dresser. This was definitely the most popular guy in my Etsy shop. I received so many emails for this piece and it too sold quickly. I have a few campaign pieces in stock ready for a makeover so it wont be long before I have another one available in my shop. If you are on the hunt for one keep an eye out on my shop, these things sell like hot cakes.

The last piece I'm going to share today is this sexy little black coffee table. It's painted in glossy black, new hardware from Anthropologie and lined drawer. This piece is still available in my shop! ** Hint, hint ;-)

 That's all for furniture today! I have a bunch of more pieces in my Etsy shop all painted by yours truly, so make sure you stop by and see whats new!

As for house projects, oh my! Where do I start? I would say none of the rooms look quite the same. Our Kitchen got new appliances, Yey!!! This new appliances led to some other changes like adding a wall of cabinets and open shelving. I'm not sharing the after pictures yet because I haven't styled them yet but here's a sneak peek of what's going on. It's like an early Christmas for me this year.

Yes it's ugly and messy but I assure you when I post the reveal pictures you are going to love the changes. You probably noticed that the cabinet doors are missing. Yeah, well when I painted those suckers a few months ago they started bleeding so I put it off for a while but I finally sanded them back down, primed them with oil based primer this time and painted them. No more bleed through just bright white, beautiful cabinets now!

A few other projects we've tackled around here include finally painting the trim and doors in our hallway. Refinishing some furniture pieces, rearranging the living room furniture, still not sure of how I feel about the furniture in there but the layout is working. We cleared out our storage room and made a gym in there, we are painting it this weekend and I'll share that too. Also our entryway/home office is sporting new furniture pieces as well. So yes lots of changes but all for the better.

The trim got a fresh coat of primer and two coats of bright white making everything shiny and new again. I painted the doors with a medium grey color and I love the combo. These are just some of the pictures, but I will be sharing complete afters of every room when I get to that. Also the color on the gym is the one we will be painting over not the new color. That is Pantone's peacock, my daughters chose it when we first moved in because that was their bedroom before. It's a beautiful bold color but I want something more light and subdued to go with the rest of the house.

That is all for this little update of what's going on around here. I'll be back to share more updates soon! If you want to see progress on other spaces please visit the Our Home tab on the top bar. Thank you for stopping by :-)

What To Do With The Space Over The Refrigerator?

As we are working on our kitchen one big question comes to mind.  What to do with the space over the refrigerator?  The first thing we noticed when we did our first walk through the house is  that the refrigerator was facing in the wrong direction, it just didn't feel right.

When we brought in our own refrigerator it became more evident that this was the wrong placement.  There was no kitchen triangle.  You know, the triangle that makes the kitchen flow together and easy to navigate.  Not only that but there's a gap between the wall and the fridge and the other side of the fridge sticks out too much.

We turned it around to see how it would look, and it looks and feels so much better.  The refrigerator reflects light off from the window over the sink and the kitchen looks more open which makes it feel bigger and now there's an actual triangle which makes the kitchen work so much smoother too.  These simple things make a world of difference in the way that we use our kitchen.  

Here's the issue, now the cabinet is facing the wrong way and there's a huge gap in back of the fridge, about a foot long.  The refrigerator door hinges that sit on top of the fridge bump into the cabinet and we can't recess it further back.  We also have the baseboard heater behind it.  

We never use the space over the fridge because it's too far back, the depth of the cabinet is too shallow.  Really we just place random crap on top of the fridge and it's an eye sore.  

Our plan

• Carefully remove the cabinet and trim because we are going to reuse it.
• Recess the refrigerator as far back as we can. 
• Reusing the existing cabinet, turning it around and bringing it all the way forward to the front of the fridge so that we can finally access it.  
• Use plywood to build a frame around the fridge and cover the space in back of the cabinet and make cutouts for the baseboard heater.
• Trim around the new built in refrigerator cabinet.

Now here's where I'm not sure what to do.  Because of the baseboard heater we can't add a regular lower cabinet next to the fridge.  This would have been perfect because it would give us more storage and looked more polished.  I am thinking of building a floating cabinet next to the fridge, so that it doesn't interfere with the baseboard heater.  Or building an open shelf style, rolling kitchen cart.  Which is why I temporarily placed that table there to give us somewhat of a visual.  

Right now, what we have in that space are the recycling bins, they serve their purpose well, aside from getting a little too full sometimes.  We have to figure out a way to work them in, because we recycle a ton in our house.  Maybe we can stack them on top of each other like we had them in our old house or move them in to the next room over, which is our home office/entryway.   

This will cover the last thing in the list of the for now phase

• Prime and paint the trim and ceiling semi gloss white.
• Sand and repaint the cabinets, the paint job was done very poorly.
• Change out the hardware on the cabinets.
• Replace the hanging light fixture over the sink with something more our style.
• Do something about the wasted space over the refrigerator.

Which means we replaced the light fixture over the sink!  Remember the Ikea light fixture from the Ikea kitchen wish list?  We were going to wait until the spring to take a trip but a couple weeks ago we needed a brake from all the house, weekend work and instead headed over there and worked on our wish list.  Some of the things on our wish list weren't available and we fell in love with some chairs that weren't in stock, so we will be taking another trip once they are back in stock.

Yes, I know I have to caulk around the medallion, but give me a break!

That's what we are planning to do with the space over the refrigerator.  We are very exited about this change because the flow of the kitchen will be so much better, it's also going to look a lot better once it's finished.  We will be gaining a few inches of space, when we push the refrigerator back, so that's a plus and gaining storage with the cabinet over the fridge and whatever we end up doing next to the fridge.  So yes, yes, yes, I can't wait to work on this!

How To DIY Wood Knobs

When we painted our kitchen cabinets we wanted to save money anywhere we could.  We reused the pulls for the bottom cabinets and decided to DIY our own wood knobs for the top cabinets.  It's really no surprise that we decided to DIY them because we love to DIY everything.  I wanted the knobs to have some personality but still be clean and simple.  

Here's a simple tutorial on how to DIY wood knobs.

Supplies

• 1-1/8 in. x 48 in. wood round dowel
•  5/16 in. t nuts
• 1-1/4 in. round head screws

Steps

• Cut the dowel at 1-1/4 in. lengths in the quantity you need
• Sand edges lightly by hand just to take off any splinters left from cutting
• Mark the center of each dowel
• Drill hole in each center to fit t nuts
• Hammer the t-nuts in to the holes you pre-drilled
• Stain or paint knobs in your choice of color
• Screw them into your cabinets or furniture 

That's it! Now you can gaze at your pretty knobs.  You can DIY your own wood knobs for a fraction of the cost of buying new ones, and they are very easy to make.  They are simple and unique looking!  I love how our wooden knobs tie in with the bottom cabinets and bring some warmth into the top cabinets.   

See the kitchen cabinet makeover reveal here! 

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Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Reveal

Finally, I'm going to share the kitchen cabinet makeover reveal!  It took us a lot longer than we expected to get this done. But we are finally putting the paint brushes and the rollers down.  At least until we recoup from all the unplanned painting we did these past few weeks.  We didn't have a plan for this or a budget because it wasn't in the cards to do this project just yet.  I don't know if you recall from this post but this all started because I wanted a cup of tea.  First I just wanted to do a quick reorganization, then I started pulling off contact paper, next thing you know I'm removing doors and stripping paint off the kitchen cabinets.  We didn't think things through we just went with it.

 Before we had clumpy, flat painted ugly cabinets.  I'm not exaggerating, you can see for yourself here.  Whenever we would clean a them the paint would come off because they were not primed.  They were painted with a flat, cheap paint that would absorb stains and they had thick, clumpy brush marks all over.  Now we have beautiful, smooth, semi gloss kitchen cabinets.  We went with semi gloss white all over the frames of the cabinets and the cabinet fronts on the top cabinets.  For the bottom fronts we stained them in a nice dark Jacobean stain.

Since we didn't have a budget set in place for this we used a lot of things we had on hand.  Such as, paint, painting supplies and stain.  We spent about $78 dollars to give our kitchen cabinets a makeover, thanks to all the supplies we already had.

What did we purchase? 

• Shelf liners for the inside of the cabinets 
• Primer
• Polycrylic 
• Extra foam rollers 
• Cabinet hardware template
• Dowel rod 
• T-nuts 
• Screws

We also saved money by reusing the hinges and cabinet pulls.  They had paint all over them but I was able to remove it all and they looked shiny and new again.

  We were going to order all new hardware but then figured we could save more by reusing the ones that were already there.  The pulls look similar to the ones we were going to buy and they are in new condition.  Instead we removed the cup pulls from the drawers and replaced them with the existing pulls that were on the top cabinets.  The cup pulls didn't match with the modern lines of the rest of the hardware.

For the top cabinets we made our own knobs out of wooden dowels.  I will share the details on how we DIY-ed them in a future post.  I used the same stain on them as the bottom cabinets.
*update- How to DIY wood knobs

When I shared the the Lightening up the kitchen post I shared a list of things I would like to do in this for now phase, let's take a look and see where we are on that...

For now phase

• Prime and paint the trim and ceiling semi gloss white.
• Sand and repaint the cabinets, the paint job was done very poorly.
• Change out the hardware on the cabinets.
• Replace the hanging light fixture over the sink with something more our style.
• Do something about the wasted space over the refrigerator.

Look at that, not bad!  All that's left to do is change out the light fixture over the sink and work on the wasted space above the refrigerator.  I shared on this post the budget friendly light fixture I want to buy for over the sink.  For the top of the fridge I'm still simmering a few ideas I have on my head, not quite sure what I will end up doing yet.  But this is a huge improvement on the kitchen.  I hope you enjoyed the kitchen cabinet makeover reveal!  

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Ikea Kitchen Wish List

With the kitchen cabinet makeover moving in full swing, a little Ikea shopping trip is in order.  I made a mood board for my Ikea kitchen wish list of all the goodies we want to grab on our next visit. We are lucky enough to have an Ikea about one hour away but I still like to make a list so that we don't have to make multiple trips in a short period of time.

The first thing that I need to address in the kitchen is organization.  We have been living in this house for about a year and there's a great deal of disorganization. When things are unorganized, they just don't function well, and it drives me bonkers!  Which is why this whole kitchen cabinet makeover fiasco started in the first place, you can read more about that in this post.  I also want to take this as an opportunity to replace some of the kitchen's most daily used items that have seen better days and top it off with some pretty accessories!

Ikea Kitchen Wish list

1. These Stodja Flatware trays will sit perfectly inside the kitchen cabinet drawers and will be perfect to keep things organized.  I have a smaller sized one already that I use to organize eating utensils so I will only need 3 of them.
2. I will grab a few of these Variera Boxes in different sizes to store snacks inside the top kitchen cabinets. We do not have a pantry so we make do with our kitchen cabinets to store food.  We've actually never had a pantry in any of our homes so we are used to storing things in the kitchen cabinets.  If you have a pantry consider yourself spoiled lucky!
3. I've always loved the idea of making food storage look super organized and stylish (who said food storage couldn't be stylish?) and I think I can achieve that with these inexpensive Ikea 365+ dry food jars with lids in different sizes.
4. Who doesn't love Ikea's Ranarp line of lighting?  I've wanted one since the first day I saw them but couldn't think of a space that I needed one for.  The Ranarp pendant lamp will look awesome against the dark woven shades.  
5. We have a few Fargrik coffee mugs already in teal and green that we've acquired over the years, but I love the black ones and at just $.99 ea I think I will give myself permission to to replace all 6 of our mismatched ones.
6. Most of our clear glass drinking cups have deceased so this Ikea 365+ clear glass set will be replacing them.
7. Our current Fargrik 18 piece dinnerware set (we have this set in green)  have served us well but they have seen better days.  They are very heavy duty which is why I love them.  They have taken 6+ feet tumbles  and haven't broken but they have chipped around the edges so I will just be replacing the set with another one of the same in white. 
8. I am vertically challenged so I require a step stool to reach the top shelf of the kitchen cabinets, I've had a cheap, metal and plastic one for years.  It's time for an upgrade! The Bekvam is solid beech wood and just $14.99.  
9. My dish detergent dispenser is a plastic hand soap one that I've been refilling and reusing and the cap is broken, so that's another kitchen accessory that needs replacing, this white Bestaende detergent dispenser should do the trick!
10. I need an extra colander for the sink this small Boholmen colander fits the bill.  It's all about the little things that make life easier.  I only have one big colander and sometimes I need more than one for a dish I'm cooking, so I have to drain it, empty the contents into another container, wash it to use it again (It's annoying).
11. I also need some new dish towels these Ikea 365+ dish towel set will look handsome in the kitchen. 
12. I am a bit of a sentimental person so while online window shopping at Ikea I saw this Iris oven mitt and the pot holders  I want to buy these solely based on the fact that my aunt's (who recently passed away) name, my daughter's middle name and my kids great grandmother's name (who also passed away) is Iris.
13. I'm loving his new Satsumas plant stand for the corner right next to the dishwasher.  It looks kind of mid century modern and I love the wood with the white combination.
14. And because every trip to Ikea cannot end with out me bringing home a new plant I want to buy another one of the Crassula potted plant since one of mines died last week :'-(

Our next trip to Ikea will be in spring, thankfully it's just around the corner, I can't wait!  

I will be sharing a post this week of the kitchen cabinet makeover so keep an eye out for that!  For more kitchen posts click here! 

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Stripping Paint Off Kitchen Cabinets

Last week when I was lining the kitchen cabinets, we decided it was time to give our kitchen cabinets a makeover.  In order to do so we will be stripping paint off the kitchen cabinets.  The kitchen was painted in a classic combination of white uppers and black lowers.  The colors were great but the finish on the cabinets was HORRIBLE!!!!!  I'm not exaggerating!  See for yourself....

Glopped on layers of thick paint in a flat finish.  A ballillion brush marks. Every time I would wipe the cabinets down paint would rub off.  This paint job was a total half ass attempt to make the kitchen look better so that it could sell (the cabinets were all black when they first listed but after almost a year of sitting on the market they had to neutralize the color palette in the whole house, I mean they had "Bloody Mary Red" on the walls before and toned it down to a neutral green).  Well we knew from the very moment we saw them that we had to redo them but that didn't bother us, we are no strangers to this type of hard work.  We love a good DIY makeover!  We had redone all of the wood floors before we moved in and we were running out of steam so we figured we would tackle the cabinets later down the road.  We switched out the appliances, the light fixture and painted the faux brick backsplash to hold us off a little longer you can read more about that here. 

We can't afford a major kitchen overhaul but we can work with what we have and be a lot happier in our home now.  This was an out of the blue project, so since we hadn't set a budget for this, I wanted to save as much as possible by using products I already had.  Luckily I am a painter and I have an arsenal of painting supplies.

Here is a list of the supplies we used

• Frog tape and Sharpie marker 
• Paint stripper
• Painting brush
• Spatula
• Paint thinner
• Steel wool pads grade #0000
• Cleaning rags
• Wood Filler
• Sand paper 60 grit and 220 grit
• Palm Sander 
• Celebratory bottle of wine of your choice

Before you begin stripping the kitchen cabinets you have to prep.  First number your doors with the frog tape and Sharpie, remove all the doors and place all the hardware in a zip-lock bag.  Cover counter tops and appliances with drop cloths or plastic.  Now you are ready to begin the stripping process.  

Apply paint stripper with painting brush to the frames and doors in generous amounts.  Let it sit for more than 15 minutes, you will see the paint start to bubble up. Use your spatula to scrape off the layers of paint and then clean off the leftover residue with the paint thinner and your steel wool pads.  Then Clean them with a damp rag.  

Prep all the doors for sanding, if you are going to change your hardware of placement of the hardware fill the holes where the hardware used to be with wood filler.  Use a palm sander with 60 grit sand paper to remove finish and then follow with 220 grit to smooth down the wood.

After cleaning with paint thinner, I painted the inside in charcoal

When you are done, pat yourself on the back, take a shower and enjoy a well deserved glass of wine while watching some Grey's Anatomy on Netflix to celebrate being done stripping paint off the kitchen cabinets.

Check here for the latest kitchen update on Instagram  

You can follow me on Instagram for more behind the scenes on project updates

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