so retro

Justin and I have been super busy working on the house here lately. We've painted the exterior (mostly), worked on our garden, installed a dishwasher, a washer, and a drier, cleaned and rearranged things, and done a few small projects. I've got to show you one that we are both loving.

Remember all my wonderful finds from the New Athens town wide yardsale? Well, I got that amazing little record player, and I was trying to decide between fixing the record player and gutting it... we went with gutting it. Here's what we did :)

 This is the infamous before shot :)

 This is my wonderful husband getting those pesky screws out.

And this is the interior... Our Ipod and a little radio. We love it! It has a cool distortion from being in a box. We had a graduation party for Justin a few weeks ago, and everyone was like, "where's the music coming from... omg, is it coming from the record player? that's awesome." We are pretty proud of ourselves.



Now, the project that is driving my nuts at the moment is getting this last little bit of our kitchen done. When we moved in we had no appliances and a weird little desk thing in this spot. We tore out the little desk thing pretty early on because it served no purpose besides annoying me by taking up needed space.

I bought our dishwasher for $35 a few weeks ago. (Score!) My MIL's boyfriend Jim and Justin hooked it up, and it works great. TODAY, I bought this base cabinet from the St. Louis Habitat for Humanity Restore. I expected to pay around $20 for a base cabinet. I could not believe my eyes when I saw that the tag said $1! ONE DOLLAR PEOPLE! That made my day for sure.

 Now, it's door and handle do not match our cabinets, but I am working on that. I'm also working on getting a piece of counter top as close as possible to our existing counter top. Usually Home Depot comes through for me, but it looks like I'm going to have to go to a custom cabinets and counter tops place. This doesn't hurt my feelings too much since I got the cabinet for a dollar. SERIOUSLY A DOLLAR!

Since the cabinets were only a dollar, I also picked up this long skinny one. I've got some big ideas for it, but we will have to see. I'm thinking about hanging it horizontally  in my awkward little nook thing. Also, I think I want to put one of those lift up hydrolic frosted glass doors on it. I might use it to store my tea in. (I am already taking up a whole cabinet of just tea.)


I also went to the Goodwill outlet store. It's a giant Goodwill with bins that you have to sift through and everything in the bins is .79 a pound, books are .39 a pound, and none of the furniture or appliances is over $15. It was amazing! I got a bunch of cool stuff that I really want to show you, but I will have to save it for later. My poor pooch is very sleepy... and I am pretty tired too... sorting through all those bins tuckered me out, lol.

Good-night :)

My pretty new floor!

This morning, I woke up and walked barefooted onto my brand new kitchen floor. The hubs and I have been working very hard on the floor for the last week, and I'm happy to report I have finished photos!

Here is Justin laying the last bit of flooring down... and...Here she is!!! This is while the sealant was still a bit shiny. It's a light gray commercial tile. We chose it because it's

• pretty cheap
• easy to install
• looks nice
• easy to maintain and clean
• and because it is going to wrap down our basement steps and into the basement

The only things left to do in the kitchen are

• put up baseboard trim
• paint the tiles (good-bye yellow!)
• paint the accent wall
• replace the stupid desk thing with a stock cabinet with dish washer housing
• make built-in for accent wall
• hang some art

Seems like a lot, but the floor was a major milestone that we are glad to have finished!

If you can't take the heat...

So yesterday I spent the better part of my afternoon taking up two layers of vinyl from my kitchen floor. My mother-in-law and Justin's cousin Scottie helped. Justin's mom showed me how to use a heat gun... and they do get very hot! Poor Scottie, he was just dropping by to say hi, but he ended up helping anyway. (Thanks Scott!) With three sets of hands, we were able to get the entire kitchen floor up in a couple hours. It went from this...Sorry, one of the best pictures I have pre-floor.... to this...
Tonight, I need to clean up all the glue that was left behind. I put those long boxes down so I can still walk in there without getting stuck. Hopefully Justin will be able to lay the new floor in the next few days or so, although it's hard for him to get anything done on the weekends because he works so much...

As for the heat gun... It was my best friend in the whole world. I was pulling up two layers of tile in the time it would take me to do five or six one layer pieces. Heat guns are awesome BUT they are very, very hot. I accidently hit my elbow on it once after I set it down to cool off.
That was the fastest I moved all day. I jumped up and ran it under cold water.... ouch, ouch, ouch!!! If you are ever planning on using a heat gun, be careful! I got a nasty sun burn at mom's yardsale, so I had plenty of aloe on hand, which has helped a bit... but seriously ouch!!!! Unlike e hot glue gun, heat guns take hours to cool down. We finished up in the kitchen around 5:30 or so, and I went to bed around 10:30 or so, and even though I had unplugged the gun, it was still warm five hours later. YIPES! They are kinda dangerous, but we started pulling up the floor at three... The heat gun made it a 2.5 hour job... but I have a lot more respect for them now. Ouch :(

It will all be worth it when Justin puts in the new kitchen flooring. It's a pretty grey composite tile. It's gonna wrap down the basement stairs and into the basement as well. It will be very pretty when it's all done :)

I've been inspired :)

So last night after I posted my "ta-da" for my kitchen cabinets... I really noticed how much I hate that tile. It was cute until I painted the whole upstairs a light green with gray undertones. (Yes please!) So began my search online for some inspiration, and I found... this...

From: Tara Hatazawa, Interior Designer and Expert Colour Consultant

The colors are all wrong for my house... but I played around on paint shop, and I think I have found two color combinations I like... Considering I did not use actual paint chips to pick my colors, these are completely hypothetical, but I like

I don't know which I will end up with... but I am definitely going to use more than two colors... 4-6 probably, and I want to pull the green into the kitchen. My accent wall is going to be a tealy blue, so also that color. As for my other colors, I want them to be neutrals so it isn't overwhelming.

BONUS: My adorable friend Jenny got me a teapot and some plates as a graduation present. The teapot is from the 70's, but it kind of reminds me of anthropolgie for some reason.
It did not come with any cups though... So I think this is going to become my random tea set... I am going to thrift some cups for it... I'm thinking cups with lions on them or something cute like that. The little nub on the lid is creme, so I'm also gonna see if I can find little creme saucers. This definitely has some potential :)

* That avocado was my breakfast, and it was delicious!

TA-DA!!!

Well, lovelies! I have some pictures of my cabinets for you viewing pleasure.... so without further ado...

After

Before

After

Before

Also, my new fridge :)

My next project in the kitchen is to paint the tiles... they are a pretty color yellow, but it doesn't work with the rest of my color scheme for upstairs. Also they are plastic tiles, so they really don't look that great anyway.
here's a before

I am debating the color I want to paint them now... I was going to paint them a grayish white, that is lighter than the cabinets, and the accents were going to be a teal blue... I just feel like it might be too much white if I do... I might paint them a slightly darker gray color... leaning more toward gray and less toward white, for a bit more contrast. I might also paint the tiles a light blue and accent with a darker blue... I was afraid that next to the green it might be too much color... but I like color :) I don't know, I will have to stare at paint chips for hours again, lol.

I know the wall which the fridge is on now is going to become an accent wall... whatever colors I paint the accent stripes in the tile, I am going to paint that wall the same color. The dh is gonna build me some shelves and such for in there. It's gonna be really cool. I have the blue prints in my head :)

send me some love via comments... I <3 comments!

epic fail

So, I worked on my cabinets all weekend, and they are done! Why is this post titled "epic fail" then? Because I forgot to take my camera! This photo was shot with my camera phone, but I couldn't get any good pictures of the whole cabinets... so we will just call this a teaser, lol.

If I have learned anything doing this project it would be this: I HATE CONTACT PAPER!!!

If you haven't ever used it, it is a pain in the butt. It is sticky and hard to control... (That's what she said.) In fact, it is a veritable onslaught of "that's what she said jokes waiting to happen... ugh! Never again! I never would have used it, but the choice was made for me by the former homeowner. She had used contact paper, and we pulled it up. Nothing was taking that glue off though, so I had to put some back over it.

I will admit though, this dotted contact paper I got at Target was really cute, and even though I was very frustrated by the installation process, I do at least think it looks cute... that's enough.

So, finished product pictures soon :) or at least soonish, lol.

if I don't write them down now, I won't remember...

source

Ideas:

I had two good ideas last night as I was falling asleep. By a miracle I still remember them now, lol.


source

1. For my kitchen, I want to make a cafe curtain. I've been playing around with all kinds of stuff, but have recently been really inspired by Feeling Stitchy's Blog. I think I just want to make a plain white or creme colored pocket curtain and then add little embroidery doodles as I feel so inspired. I might make the doodles tell the story of our house, our love, and our future kids. So I'll stitch important dates, pictures, quotes, and memories. I like the idea that it will be an ever changing curtain, and it will make me happy to have something so sentimental in my kitchen. It's gonna be kinda like a embroidered curtain scrapbook :)
   *I may or may not use the little boxes... I like the idea of a more organic and free flowing curtain.
   

1. 
2. I have a "Florida Water Birds" poster that used to be my Grandma Hilda's. It hung over her hat rack. She would always make us grab a hat to wear to the beach... she had a ton of hats, but they were all kinda old ladyish, so I hated wearing them. I would do anything to go to the beach though, so I would just grin and bear it. Grandma's house was full of wonderful things. She had that "museum of natural history" style that's so hot right now down. She had pinned butterflies, jar collections, and picture books everywhere. I loved that about her house. I'm so glad to have this poster because it reminds me of all those good times. My mama had it mounted to protect it from further damage, it got a little beat up on it's way to me. (I think it actually looks even cooler now.)

BUT ANYWAY, the idea! Recently I acquired this huge print and frame. I have been looking for

a frame big enough to put my poster in for a while now... and this one is big enough... and a little too big...

I was pondering where I would go to get my costume mat... which I new was gonna be really expensive, but i was willing to bite that bullet because I got the frame for free. But then a light bulb went off. I used to do photography and we learned to cut mats. There are always scraps :) I think I want to collect a bunch of white, creme, blue, green, and brown mat scraps and upcycle them into a giant mat for my giant poster. It looks really good in my head... so after we move I think I'm gonna go to all the places around town I know who do custom framing and ask if I can have their mat scraps to recycle. :) Hopefully they will let me have them :)

OH, and as a bonus, I think I'm gonna reuse the black and white print in a decoupage project I'm dreaming about.... Ok, enough dreaming, I need to get down to business and work on my last paper... *trudges off to the less fun part of her day*

The Kitchen

The Kitchen:
I've been working hard on the kitchen cabinets for almost a month. They started out as icky laminate stock cabinets...

But then we took all the doors and hardware down, and sanded the heck out of everything. Two coats of primer later and the kitchen already seemed brighter and happier :)


Today I put the first coat of paint on the fronts of all the doors. Everything else has two coats. MIL came over and primed the insides of my cabinets, which I'm really grateful for... it looks MUCH better that way! I might paint the insides blue or yellow... I think a pop of color inside would be nice.


This is my basement workspace. Yeah, it's dreary... but it was too cold and wet when I started to paint outside.

There will be pictures soon of the new color. It's called "Alpaca" and it's a tanish creme color.

In the works

• paint the insides of the cabinets
• put the cabinets back together
• find some contact paper I can live with (I HATE contact paper but the former owner had it, and the shelves are all nasty and sticky, and I can't get them clean... I feel I have no choice... unless someone has an idea!? I'm open to ideas!)
  
• sand, prime, and paint the yellow and black tiles
• paint the accent wall
• lay down the tiles for the floor
• find inexpensive pulls and cups (or spray paint the old ones)
• make a cafe curtain
• make recycling bin
• and a thousand other things, lol