DIY
Kid Chairs Get a Little Glam
I’ve haven’t been feeling too motivated in the crafty, decorating department lately. What can I say? Sometimes you’re on fire, sometimes you’re not! When the urge to spray paint something this week surged through me, well, I grabbed the first thing in sight that hadn’t yet been altered: the chairs at my kids’ game table. I’ve had these kid chairs for a few years now. And yes, they still had the price tags on them. *insert forehead slap here* They are from The Container Store and are probably the only thing I’ve ever purchased from that store. At the time, I was looking for a set of kids’ chairs that weren’t obnoxious.…
Repairing Nicks and Scratches in Linoleum or Vinyl Flooring
If you were to play that game “which of these things don’t belong,” well, the flooring in our kitchen would definitely win the prize. It does not fit in with the gorgeous wood floors throughout the rest of the house. It is a big sheet of chipped, scratched, dinged and maybe-burned linoleum. I really have no idea what could have caused so much damage to one section of flooring. While this was not the overall ugliest linoleum I had ever lived with, it was certainly the most damaged. I couldn’t wait to tear it out. But then I couldn’t decide what to replace it with. So, I sat there staring at…
Kitchen Refresh Part 7: The Reveal
Have I kept you waiting long enough to see how our kitchen refresh turned out? I’ve been living with it in a final-for-now state for a little more than 2 weeks. Remember how it looked before? I know, I know. Try and contain your jealousy. Not everyone can have sticky, puke green-colored cabinets. Ready for the after? Here’s that same corner now. Much better, right? I’m so glad this house presented the opportunity to paint the bottom cabinets black because that might not happen again. It’s my favorite part about this little refresh. The black paint works like magic and almost makes my black appliances disappear! The other thing I’m so…
Kitchen Refresh Part 6: Hardware
Before I typed this post, I was working on the backsplash. No, really. I was genuinely working on the backsplash, which is the last part of this little project. I’m ready to wrap this thing up in the next few days. Not that I’ll get final pictures taken that quick! In the next two weeks we have birthdays for both of my kids, end of year parties, kindergarten round-up, sports and I’m sure I’m forgetting something else. In the meantime, I have some lovely, not-so-lovely iPhone photos to share. After I painted the cabinets, I reused the cabinet knobs to save some dough. Someone still makes these knobs, by the way.…
Kitchen Refresh Part 5: Backsplash Dilemma
Free time is a precious commodity. Am I right? That’s why it pains me to think about the amount of time I’ve spent online searching for backsplash inspiration. It really is ridiculous. I’m really surprised I haven’t dreamed about backsplashes since they are top-of-mind lately. I want a backsplash option that isn’t permanent and isn’t expensive. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? My first choice was to use Smart Tiles since I’d heard about them from somewhere. I can’t hold the “where” part in my feeble mind. My heart was set on trying out their peel and stick backsplash tiles. It sounded like just my kind of project! Looks like real tile, right? It’s not!…
Kitchen Refresh Part 4: Unexpected Kindness
I am still making headway on the kitchen. As of last night, I had FINALLY finished sanding the remaining 5 cabinet doors. That means I only have the cabinet frames on one section to sand down and then we’ll be in the home stretch! Considering that it took 35 minutes to sand this ONE SINGLE door front and back, I will be happy to be done with the down and dirty sanding phase of this project. Oh, and I wasn’t messing around. I used 40 grit sandpaper to get through a billion and one layers of paint on this door and it still took that long. Then I had to go back…
Kitchen Refresh Part 3: Be Prepared For Anything
I didn’t make as much progress on the kitchen last week as I wanted to. Apparently real life can’t stop for labor-intensive DIY projects. Say what? Plus, the labor-intensive part of this project multiplied a little this week. Haha! Joke’s on me! If I haven’t said it before, I will say it now. (And I will use some all-caps typing to drive home my point.) When you are doing ANYTHING to an older home be prepared for ANYTHING to happen. Seriously. There are all sorts of crazy things hiding behind the walls of your home just waiting for you to open them up. Then they jump out and yell “GOTCHA.” So,…
Coatrack from a Wine Bar
Before we had kids we spent money on things like furniture instead of nerf guns and Pokemon. It was so long ago, I barely remember. At least we purchased some long-lasting pieces that I still love like this wine bar cabinet from Pier 1. We use the piece, but not to hold wine. That goes in the wine fridge. 😉 The back of the cabinet had a wood ledge on hinges that you could push up to act like a real “bar” area if people wanted to sit there while you poured a drink from the other side. That never happened. The wine cabinet has always been pushed up against the wall and…
Kitchen Refresh – Part 2
I made a little bit of progress on the kitchen project this weekend. I always seem to invite friends over when I’m smack-dab in the middle of a project. “Hey! I ripped my kitchen apart! Come over for a BBQ!” Good friends don’t judge. They just bring wine. So, that meant there was more fun, but less work happening! Not really a bad thing, in my opinion! If you recall, I said we were going to try a few different methods of getting our cabinets ready to paint. We started on the bottom half of the cabinetry because I had a plan in place for that section. The plan for…
Kitchen Refresh – The Beginning
I considered calling this post “Putting Lipstick on a Pig,” but I thought that would confuse the Google search algorithm. Our kitchen needs a major gut job. What it’s going to get is a little glamour session. Is it warped that I’m slightly more excited to see how little or much we can transform a space with just elbow grease and minimal dollars spent? Probably. #noapologies So, this is the disaster I’m working with: I’ve actually seen worse. I’m sure I’ve lived with worse. At a minimum, the plan is to paint the cabinets and figure out some sort of backsplash, since there is no backsplash to speak of. I’ve already…
