curtains...

Remember my curtain fail?

Well I finally made it to the fabric store to see if there was any fabric I liked enough to make new ones. I HATE making curtains for some reason. I think because it's boring sewing rectangles.

As I was wondering the aisles I found the perfect fabric.


However, there was a problem. It was $45 a yard. Yikes! But it was 50% off. Still not good but no other fabric would do. I calculated that I would need 6 yards. Um, no. Way too much money. So I decided to get 2.5 yards and just make shorter panels. I don't like the look of the shorter panels but I also didn't want to spend a ton of money. Plus these curtains are in the dining room and full length panels always got dirty and trapped food behind them. A bonus is you can see the board and batten wall better. Does it sound like I'm trying to hard to justify them? Well I am.

I decided to stretch the fabric further (I actually needed 3 yards), so I went to the quilting section and bought a cheap fabric that would match to make the top part of the curtain.

Want to see them? Wow! My dining room is actually clean. It doesn't normally look like this.



I used every inch of both fabrics to make them. I love the how the fabric on top matches but doesn't. Well of course I do, I planned it that way.


The new fabric pulls the colors of my Ikea rug in my living room. The rooms are open to one another.

I ordered a stencil for the dining room walls so I will show more pictures when that project is done. Most likely in a few months. Ha-ha.

fail....

I decided to repaint the frames in my dining room to another green. Turns out I loved it. Then I decided my black and white curtains could use some color. So I picked up a bottle of Apple Green dye from Joann's and dyed them.

Fail...they turned out dark and drab. So I decided to bleach them to see if I could fade the color. Double fail. They turned out light and drab.



So I can either remove the color and try to dye them again or buy new fabric. I'm thinking of new fabric. ;) I do like this one.



It would be fun and colorful. We'll see. I wish things turned out how they look in my head!

couldn't take the beige...

I couldn't take the beige color in my dining room so I repainted (with free paint thanks to a gift certificate!) to Benjamin Moore's Pale Oak 0C-20. It is a gray with brown undertones and is a warmer color than the gray that was there.

I painted the living room the same color but need to finish the stripes so I'll snap a picture later.

I do like the Rice Grain color in my hallway so that is staying.

Before (not bad but not me):






I also found two brand new black and white pillows for my couch at Goodwill for $1.99 each. Score!

more painting...

I admit I'm not a beige person. I love color but since we want to sell this house soonish, I figured I would need to get rid of my bright colors. So since I don't want to paint later, I'm painting now (even though we probably won't sell until next Spring).

Color is Rice Grain by Sherwin Williams.

Hallway:


See how the yellow paint doesn't looks so hot anymore.


Dining room is the same color even though it doesn't look like it. I think I will add the stenciled wall back in. It needs something.


Now I need to get the living room painted. It will be Rice Grain as well but I think I will reduce the darkness by 50%. The living room doesn't get as much light.

tweaking...

We ordered our new countertops today and I'm so excited. We're getting Formica laminate in a black basalt color. The quote was very reasonable and got even more reasonable when we agreed to do the tear out and remove appliances and disconnect plumbing. It saved us over half. So now I have to wait 4 weeks for them to come in. Meanwhile I will get started on painting the inside of the cabinets and priming the outside.

In other news, I've been tweaking the house. Our new mantle stain just didn't have enough red in it so I put another coat of a cherry stain right on top and bam! perfection.

Before:


After




Then I found a cute basket and mirror at Goodwill and hung them on my clock wall. I need more of them so hopefully I can find more at Goodwill.



and finally the stenciled dining room was bugging me. It was all too "hello, I'm stenciled, can you see me?" so I painted over it, stenciled it with a smaller stencil and used paint that was slightly lighter then the wall color.

Oh and I also sold the buffet on Craigslist because it was too big for the space and I wanted the money for countertops.

Before:


After:




So now I'm off to teach my kids their school for the day and then clean out kitchen cabinets so I can start the exciting process of priming and painting. Blah.

dining table...

I actually painted the dining table about a month ago but never got around to showing pictures. The table seats all 8 of us but I keep two chairs on either side of the buffet so it doesn't look so crowded.

It was just a solid oak round dining table and I wanted to break up the oakiness (hey, new word!) of it.

I took one of the million cans of gray sample paint and slapped several coats on the base, sanded it down and sealed it with poly. Honestly, it took me a few hours over two days. Why do I put these things off?

Before:


In other home remodeling news, we haven't even finished the upstairs bathroom (who actually likes to do finish trimming?) and I have big plans to redo the kitchen. We would like to gut it but that is not in our budget as we would like to move in about a year. So the plan is to repaint the cabinets (adding some moulding for interest), reglaze the old formica countertops, new floor to match the mudroom, some beadboard on the side cabinets and new stainless steel appliances. Oh and actually make the electrical up to code (I don't think extension cords are really code-friendly).




Stainless steel appliances here.

This floor in kitchen:


I like the layout of the kitchen and the cabinets are old but really, really solid. This is just really a cosmetic update that will hopefully help to sell the house later on. The new owners can gut it if they like :)

I really don't want to leave this house but we really would like to move closer to our friends and church. We drive 45 minutes to church and sometimes more if there are activities on a week night. So we'll see how it goes. At least I will get a nicer kitchen even if we don't sell!

stenciling...

This is what Brian and I worked on last night. I've been wanting to do it for awhile and had the stencil but never the motivation. But I told myself I couldn't watch the newest episode of Psych on Hulu until I had it done. Brian graciously agreed to help me.

He held the stencil and I used a foam roller to apply the paint. It went pretty fast. We finished both walls in under 2 hours.

Before:


After:






I started freaking out on the first row and thought maybe the Polar Bear White was too bright but decided to keep going. Now I love it.

I'm thinking I need something on either side of the green frames but I don't know what. Something wood tone.

Please ignore my unfinished table. I'm going to paint the base a light gray and sand down the top and either stain it lighter or a mahogany color.

Linking:

chairs...

We had these great Pottery Barn dining chairs bought on Craigslist a while ago. I loved them!
We recently bought a huge round table and I decided I didn't want my chairs to match anymore. I love the look of mismatched chairs. I sold the Pottery Barn chairs and came out ahead. So I also bought another round table with 4 chairs for $50. They were plain old ugly oak but solid.

Did I mention I got 4 of them and a table for $50?

See?


So I used my new sander...


And my $5.00 mistint Kilz primer...


To get this...well this times 4 since I had 4 chairs.


I used a brush to paint the first chair and then quickly decided to break out my paint sprayer. I did 4 coats of Olympic "Black Magic" which is a gray/black and beautiful. It's the same color of the countertop in the new bathroom. I will not be using Olympic paint again though, I think I will have it color matched at Sherwin Williams or Ben Moore. The Olympic paint didn't cover well at all.

Anyway, I got this times 4. I sealed it with some polyacrylic and we're using them now.


I just have to paint the round table it came with black and paint our huge dining round table gray and I'll be "done". All of you DIYers will understand the "". Is there ever really done?

my dining room/sewing room

I don't think I ever showed my dining room/sewing room. I painted it peach,green,yellow and then settled on gray.

The frames were cherry colored but I like them lime. Matches the curtains which are made of Heather Bailey's Pop Garden (I need to get a picture of them.)





See how I hide my machines. So clever ;)

We have a new room we're redoing and I'm so excited. I'll be posting progress pictures soon.

Here's to good friends...

Yesterday after church we celebrated Maddie's birthday (which was Jan 3). We invited her good friends the Blackman girls, the Barnard girls (and parents) and one of Kreutzer girls. She was so excited and happy.

Our long lost friends, the Armstrongs, surprised us by saying they were coming. We were so excited and happy. We haven't seen them in years and it was so nice to catch up. Brian and I even held their newest little girl, Violet. She is sooooo cute. Now I can't wait to see our little one!

Even though we were all tired from the long day, it was nice to sit and relax and talk. Brian and I pledge to invite friends over more often.

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I thought I would outline what we spent last week on home projects. It wasn't as bad as I thought. We completely transformed the look of the dining room.

Antique buffet: $495
Wood for paneling: $130
Paint: $68
Chandelier: $130
Buffet mirror: $59
Flower painting: $8
Red bill organizer: $10
Total: $900

With the extra hundred left over from our $1000 budget we bought the Pottery Barn Kids desk and chairs at Goodwill for $69.00 and a HUGE clock from Target for $49.00 for the living room. So were were slightly over $1000. We also bought a mudroom rug at Costco for $16 as our dogs had peed on our other one.

So not too bad. We had the money set aside so everything is paid for!

I'm giving Brian and myself a week off so we can work on our new website and then back to fixing up. My next project is the hallway. I need to paint and Brian needs to install some trim moulding on the ceiling. Then *maybe* we can start work on making our bedroom pretty before the baby gets here.

Home reno is never ending but I like it that way ;)

We did it!

We finished! Or at least enough for now. I LOVE how it all turned out. I wasn't too sure about the green wall at first (Brian picked the new paint color) but now I really like it. Adds some zing to our dining room.



We painted just the front door portion of the room green and around the front door and closet the same color as our living room.





I framed some Heather Bailey Freshcut fabric. I didn't get around to making the seat cushion for the bench yet. The foam pad I needed was too expensive so I need to wait for a coupon.



Here is a picture with the new wainscoting paneling. Brian did a fantastic job - even though he got a little carried away with the nail gun. ;)





Here is my buffet. It looks really good in there.



And a basket of limes to go with our new green wall. I picked the basket up at Goodwill for $0.99!

We are exhausted from staying up really late working on it. We have my family coming over today and a birthday party for Maddie after church tomorrow so we really wanted it done. I actually like working on deadlines. It forces me to get things done.

A lot going on...

No formal exercising going on unless you count going up and down a step ladder at 11:00 pm every night. We've been bit by the remodeling bug again and are working hard to do a $1000 dining room makeover. We have almost spent that but I think we have everything we need (except a new green paint color as I HATE the one I picked out).

We gave ourselves a $1000 budget and are trying to completely makeover the dining room. It was painted a nice yellow when we moved in but came with a chandelier that was held together by twist ties. It had crystals hanging off and was a brassy color. I lived with it a whole year. We purchased a new one at Lowe's that I don't love but it is temporary until we can afford a nice one.


The wall had bubbles in the paint and we are not sure if it is because the dishwasher had leaked (it is right behind that wall). When Brian scraped the bubbles off, huge sections of paint and plaster came off. So we decided to do some wainscoting paneling. Like this: 1900 Farmhouse blog . It is the second entry down.

Ours will be painted a creamy white color. We painted the wall by the front door a green that turned out way to minty so we need to buy another quart of a more olive color. The opposite walls are a nice apricot color that brings out the rich wood of our new 1940's buffet. Brian spotted this in an antique shop and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. This was half our budget but I have always wanted a nice piece of furniture that I can hand down to the kids. But I love it so much that I might be buried in it.




We have a bench underneath the front window and I bought this amazing fabric to match. I'm going to make a padded seat cover. The fabric is from Heather Bailey's Freshcut line.


We also painted one wall of our living room red. I love red and this is a deep dark red paint we bought at Lowe's for $5.00 for a whole gallon. It was labeled "mistint".


Oh and I went to Goodwill last night and spotted this desk and chair set for $69.00. It is from Pottery Barn Kids and retails for $350 for the set on their site. It is in excellent condition and is now displayed proudly in our school room.


And here is the newest member of our family. Captain Jack Sparrow.