Kitchen Appliances

Yes, they have arrived! My new refrigerator, dishwasher, and oven- all shiny and new and working properly.

I was at work (last day before spring break- woot woot!) so Adam was home for the delivery. Best Buy hauled the old ones away and my brother in law installed the dishwasher and oven on Saturday. I spent part of the morning yesterday unpacking the oven that was full of the grill plates.

Which happened to be tapped together AND to the rack. Who in their right mind wraps tape around the metal rack for the oven so much that it gets stuck on itself?

It's not like I could leave it! I had to scratch at it with scissors until I could get enough of a grip to peel it off. But that was the only hitch- I love the oven. Especially the five burners on top.

And possibly my favorite part is the griddle, mmm can you smell the bacon??

As far as the dishwasher and fridge go, they are standard and simple and as long as they work correctly I'll be happy. I wish, though, that the stainless front on each of them was not attached when it was delivered. Because when you peel the blue protective film off it gets stuck in the  joints

I think I'll take a razor blade to it or something, but I don't want to scratch them.

Anyway, I am beyond happy with our new appliances. They look good, even from the living room.

Now imagine if only that wall was knocked down, or at least opened up wider... yeah... I'm dreaming of that possibility... *sigh*... Someday...

So, here are the before and after shots of the kitchen (and yes, that is the microwave on top of the fridge- we have limited counter space):

Have you made any upgrades to your place?

Kitchen

The appliances were installed on Saturday!

More info to come later...

The List, Pared Down

Have you ever felt so busy that you don't get anything done? Yeah, that's me this week. That's also why it has taken me a week to repost.
Anyway...

Adam and I sat down and talked about the list. We prioritized everything on the list into wants and needs. Unfortunately painting the guestroom upstairs fell into the want category, so I will have to wait to do that project...
After that initial sorting, we divided the house projects into price categories: free, inexpensive, moderate, and expensive.

Here's the updated list of things we want need to do to the house.

Free!

• declutter my office and the basement. We seriously have a lot of stuff we don't use, well that's how my office is right now anyway. Is anyone in the need of some scrapbooking supplies? Our basement just needs to be reorganized... I think...

$-Inexpensive

• weather strip the front and back doors.
• replace the vent in the down stairs bathroom. There is already one there, but it doesn't work.
• pick out new kitchen appliances. I know, those are expensive. But we are looking out for a deal with 2-3 years 0% interest financing through Best Buy or Sears. So the monthly payment will be small.

$$- Moderate

• Buy a new twin bed frame. This could be considered a want, but the wheels on my old regular metal frame have broken so it's time to upgrade to a sturdy wood framed one.
• buy and build a shed. Adam's parents are supposed to locate the parts and help us build it, but we are ultimately still paying for it.

$$$- Expensive

• Build a backyard privacy fence. Adam spent last summer ripping out the old chain link fence, and now there is nothing but a little left to the side. We need something, like, as soon as possible. Our trash cans blow into the neighbor's yard every time we have a little wind.
• remove a tree from the backyard and bushes on the front and side of the house. The tree may be encroaching on our plumbing in the basement, plus we would like to expand the deck at some point, which the  tree is preventing. 
• Investigate and replace laundry and upstairs bathroom plumbing. The pipes are small in the basin for the laundry machine, so it doesn't drain fast enough for a large load. Plus the main line seems to be getting clogged every now and then, which could be from the roots of the tree. Upstairs we have a leak from the shower, but we cant find where the water is coming from. I even opened the access panel and ran hot water through the shower and still could not see any water dripping from the pipes... grr...
• Replace gutters. When we bought the house they told us the roof had 10 more years, they didn't say anything about the gutters. Which we have found leak in some spots, causing water to sit at the foundation of our house.

So that's the list, pared down. As I start decluttering my office, and dreaming of kitchen appliances, and ignoring the expensive necessary things to do, send some positive vibes my way that we can get it all (or most of it) done this year!

Paint the town red.. er.. yellow

We had a busy weekend. My parents left for a cruise Saturday morning and I thought that we could tackle some projects in their house as an early birthday present/ surprise. My sister and brother in law met up with me and Adam to start working. We painted my old bedrooms (one I shared with my sister, then got my own room, then moved back into the room when my sister moved out) and took off the wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom.

My mom had picked out the color for the bedroom since I moved out- 2 years ago- but never got around to painting. This wouldn't be such a big deal if the room wasn't teal green... I mean a nasty teal from the 90's. I forgot to take before pictures, but trust me, it wasn't nice. I am sparing your eyes by not having pictures.
The bathroom wallpaper wasn't much better. It had a pretty strong pattern in blue, burgundy, green, and gold. It was peeling.
My other old bedroom, the smaller one, is now a nursery for the grand kids/ my mom's sewing room. It was a pale lilac, not too bad, it just needed to be freshened up.

I got Behr premium plus ultra (paint and primer in one) for the rooms: 2 gallons of Tea Cookie for the bedrooms, 1 of Utah Sky for the bathroom.

The Guestroom was finished on Saturday:

The nursery/ sewing room was finished on Sunday:

The Bathroom... well it's not finished. we got all the wallpaper down on Saturday, but the walls are so bad that we decided not to paint.
There's mold to take care of and some spots need to be patched and sanded.
But I left the paint as a peace offering.

We did the tough work, getting all the paper off and painting the other rooms, so maybe mom will feel less daunted to work on the bathroom.
I hope mom likes her (early) birthday surprise. I know dad will like it, we were plotting with him for about 2 weeks.

A bed fit for a Queen

We finally have a new bed! Why did we need a new bed? Because the metal frame was bending and I was afraid we were going to wake up in the middle of the night from a crash onto the floor.


Liz came over to help put it together, and when we lifted the box spring off the frame I found out that Grover had been a little kleptomaniac- stealing socks, markers, and trash:

So after assembling the pieces for our new bed, plus drilling some different holes because the screw holes didn't line up quite right for the support bar, we had a new, TALL, bed:


It matches our furniture perfectly, it was even made in the same country as our dressers which I thought was funny. And since we went to the trouble to clean out the room to put the bed together, I thought I would try a new layout for the bed. I shifted it to the other window and moved Adam's dresser to the other wall in the same corner. But now that leaves the wall next to the closet looking very bare...

So here's one last before and after of the bedroom:

It's almost a mirror image of itself.

Oh and the light came today. I am attempting to put the pieces together so Adam can hang it and hook up the electrical parts.

I can't wait to see it all lit up!

Living Room Update

The couches we have in our upstairs living room were actually my parents. We were lucky enough to get them when moving into our house because it gave my mom the free space to get new carpet installed and to buy new couches for their downstairs family room. We have their couch (a queen size sleeper, that you might fall through if you actually try to sleep on it) loveseat and chair. I know they are a little bigger than we need, especially since we don't really use this sitting area unless we have people over. We usually hang out in the basement. So anyway, with the exception of actually sleeping on the pull-out, the couches are in pretty good condition. The problem is I really don't like the plaid. My mom picked these out in the 90's, and they are just too country for me.


Instead of buying new couches/ chairs (Adam wants to wait until we have kids, they destroy the couches, then grow up enough to be responsible to care for new ones... i.e. let's wait 10-15 years to buy new ones) I decided to slip cover them. The problem with slipcovers is they are so expensive. The websites I found have slip covers for couches costing $120 +. I could not see myself paying that much and then maybe not even liking them.. I was also kicking myself because I think about 2 weeks ago Target had their slipcovers for $50 each. I did end up picking some up at Target, $60 for the couch, $50 for the love seat (they didn't have the chair cover in the same fabric, but I think we could do with a different color, cream maybe?)
Here's what they look like now (please excuse the mess)

I chose green because our walls, curtains, and rug are cream and cream slipcovers would be too much. Plus they would get dirty quickly. I didn't want brown (I actually kind of hate the color brown anyway) and green just seemed like a color that would work well in the space. Plus it's way better than the plaid. I just need to get new (or fabric to cover the) pillows, and figure out what to do with the chair (slip cover, or get rid of it all together). Adam is also thinking about rearranging, but I'd have to play around with the placement of everything on paper first or something.

What do you think? Comments/ Suggestions welcome!

Making a Message Board

I mentioned that I was going to turn the frame from our wedding program into a message board for my office. Here it is, the way it looked for our wedding:



See the stickers in the corners?

They actually were a last minute solution, the day before the wedding. As friends were putting the program in the frame, the glass broke:

So I knew I couldn't just swap out the program for a different picture. I didn't want to keep stickers on the glass, and I don't think I could afford to buy a new piece of glass for the frame (I didn't price it out, but it just didn't seem economical). So I bought some cork from Target for about $6 and attached it with the included mounting strips. It wasn't the exact size I needed, so I used a box cutter to trim the edges.

And here it is! All that's left to do now is paint the cork the same color as the wall, cover with a piece of fabric left over from the curtains, and hang it on the wall.

What do you think?

Blue, White, and a touch of Black

I finished painting the black table white, and painting all the doors and trim the same color. Here is the finished paint job:


I do really like the blue and white color scheme, with a little bit of black thrown in too. And according to HGTV, adding a little black sharpens the other colors in the room.


But I still have some accessorizing to do. I need to figure out what to do with the printer/ paper holder under the desk:


And decide whether or not to paint the shelf (it is laminate) or install floating shelves between the door and closet. Also I have Adam's old mesh cube system that takes up a lot of space. I could reorganize again and eliminate some of the things, and add more shelves or something.


So far the only decorating idea I have is to take the big frame that held our wedding program and turn it into a cork message board.

Any ideas?

Painting the Desk

I got ambitious today and decided to tackle the desk (old dining table) in my office. Since I already had the paint supplies out from painting the dining set, I thought I would go ahead and paint my desk. This was my inspiration for my office.

I say 'was' because the chairs are now painted black. I know, I know, black chairs are not on the mood board at all, they don't even really fit into the blue and white color scheme I wanted. I got nervous, because the chairs matched the desk and I thought maybe I should keep the desk black. But I had the paint already. So then I remembered Sherry's Desk.


It is a white desk with a black chair. And it doesn't look bad or mismatched at all. So I thought this look could work in my office too.
So I started painting. Luckily I had the Behr paint + primer (in Decorator's white) so that should help me cover a black table with white paint. I was actually surprised with how well it covered the black. The only problem was painting the top. It is so long, I ended up with a line down the middle because of the way I was painting. So for the second coat, I went against the grain of the wood to avoid getting that nasty line down the middle again.
Here's how the table looked after each coat of paint:


I think it looks pretty good after only two coats of paint, but I think I am going to give the top another coat, just to get a clean finished look.

I will post updated pictures when the doors and trim are painted the same color (hey I have a whole gallon of this paint, and the doors are currently too off-white for my taste). Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

Dining Solution

I have finished painting the chairs (all 6 of them)! Instead of using the sanding block, I used a liquid sanding solution that I used when Adam's parents painted our kitchen cabinets. They took two coats of the paint+primer, and some spots needed a third coat, especially the back of the chairs. Here's what they looked like after each coat:


And here's the whole dining set. (I did paint the leaf and other two chairs, but we don't need them for everyday use).

So to refresh your memory here is the table before:


and after:


What do you think?

Dining Progress

A little bit ago I posted about our dining dilemma. To refresh your memory, here is our dining set:

With all the scratches and gouges too:


Here were the proposed painting options I found:

So after picking my favorite option, and showing Adam the choices, we decided to paint the whole table black. I would have preferred to leave the top stained, but as Adam pointed out, it would be easier to paint the whole thing, and then it would match the other furniture more closely.
Since Home Depot was having a $5 off each gallon of Behr paint sale, I went and bought the necessary supplies:

I lucked out and got the premium plus, paint and primer in one, which should eliminate the need to prime and paint two coats. I started by filling in the gouges on the top:



It looked a little messy, but after sanding it was smooth.


And don't forget to wipe down all the dust that gets lefts behind


Then you're ready to paint. I used a brush for everything except the top of the table. For that I used a roller (side note, I forgot to use tape to get the fuzzies off the roller and it left some behind in the paint on the top of the table- oops). The table ended up taking two coats of paint and it looks good, so different than what it looked like before.

Oh and if you plan on doing a painting project and you have a little pet that likes to look out the windows, watch them closely! I thought I could trust Grover by being in the bedroom in between coats, I was wrong. Can you see his little foot prints?


I will post before and after shots when the chairs are painted. That should be interesting.