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Last day to buy any 2 8x10's and get 1 free. You can go here to see the original post and all the details.
Thanks for all the blog love some of you have given the sale! It has certainly increased the traffic coming into my little shop. :) Will be announcing the giveaway winner tomorrow!
...especially if you have two super handy men like my dad and hubby. In two days they have dramatically changed the appearance of our humble kitchen. :) Turned out they had a couple of days off so monday and tuesday they spent they're free time working on our kitchen. I couldnt have been more excited!! To uh... put it mildly. :)
The kitchen is without a doubt the biggest room in our little house, and yet I always felt like it was the room I disliked the most. We really had a limited amount of money to spend on improvements when we bought the house 3 years ago. There was definitely some necessities in the house that needed purchased (carpet, carpet pad, paint, mortar, sheetrock, flooring for the bathroom to name a few) so the kitchen really didnt get changed much. We ended up painting the cabinets white, and purchased new knobs and drawer pulls. I also painted the inside of the cabinets to make them feel a little cleaner. We purchased some wainscoating and chair rail (the mdf variety to save some bucks) There was an old window that had been boarded up in the kitchen, so we had to finish sealing that up, and had to try to match the mortar with the existing.
(since changed the paint color to a more seller friendly neutral) :)
The kitchen definitely changed from its dark depressing before state.
it took SEVERAL coats to cover that red!
eeeewww....
here is how it looked sunday night.
I had already emptied the lower cabinets on the sink side, hence the clutter on the surrounding areas. :) I had detached the doors and scraped the paint off the upper cabinets on the left hand side because we were originally planning to use the existing frames. Here is our plan in a nutshell:
rework kitchen layout
purchase new lower cabinet frames
purchase new upper cabinets
build new coutertop
tile new countertop
Spray cabinet frames black, use cherry doors, drawer faces etc.
Purchase Dentil Crown molding
recover floor with tundra antique stained flooring (from ikea)
(possibly) purchase used or new black oven
plan the ikea grundtal rail system into my kitchen :)
*purchase wood and make shelves
Purchase and hang wainscoating.
We are definitely trying to keep costs down, but I have always heard that kitchens sell houses, and if your going to sink your money somewhere the kitchen is the place to do it. After we are all done I'll give a detailed list of where our money went. :)
We scored some really great cherry bordeux door and drawer faces. My dad is in construction and ended up having a lady sell my dad around 60 miscellaneous doors, drawer faces, corner bread cabinet end panels, etc. All for about 50.00. Apparently she had ordered new cabinets and many of the doors came slightly damaged, bumps in the finish (really not noticeable to me, but I imagine if you were paying for brand new cabinets you would want brand new quality) I think the cabinet place just ended up replacing her entire order. Long story short we ended up with extras for a super great price!
Anyhow, we really had NO idea what we had and a couple weekends ago finally took a day to inventory them all. I grouped them by size, and my mom came over and wrote down measurements for me. Several of the doors were in boxes labeled wrong.
It took quite a few hours, but it was kinda fun not really knowing what to expect out of each box. From the doors we created our kitchen layout.
Both lowes and Home depot sold unfinished oak cabinets. Since we really needed just the frames, this was the best way for us to go. Home depots unfinished cabinets were cheaper, and I later realized why. Lowes' came with shelves!! While Home Depot's didnt.
I was in charge of removing the doors and drawer faces. Will probably put these up on craigslist. You never know what someone may need. I also did the magority of pulling the old flooring up. FORTUNATELY it came up suuuper easy. There were two layers of flooring, the bottom and older layer was square tiles, so the top stuff ripped up in square shapes. Since the glue on the original stuff was suuper old it came up by just pulling. wheew. Could have easily been a three day job.
Another great score for us was my parents having 8 boxes of the tundra flooring left from they're house. Exactly enough to do our kitchen. We had purchased (2 years ago) a few boxes of some discontinued hardwood flooring. It really wasnt the color I wanted (oak) but at .50 cents a sq. foot I could definitely live with it. Thank goodness my dad suggested using the tundra flooring. It went down sooo much faster then the other stuff would have. No messy glue or stinky fumes to deal with. Not to mention I like the looks of it soo much better! The other flooring is yet another item needed to be listed on craigslist.
Oh so clean feeling. It is so nice to have a nice new kitchen floor. I can clean my floor, and it will actually LOOK clean! :) Jaydon sprayed one of the cabinets black to see how it will look.
When we told the crown molding guy at home depot what we were doing he said "very european feeling" guess we will see. Definitely going to splurge on the dentil thick crown molding. I think it will really set it off. Should match the chair rail, and also part of our original front door has dentil molding on it. Similar to this.
Jaydon is planning to stain it cherry. I am kind of thinking it should be black since the frames will be black... BUT he thinks it will look good cherry? He used to have his own painting buisness, so his opinion seems to trump mine in these cases.
This is messy, but you can see how the flooring turned out. Look at all that useable counter space!? I am so excited to have a work area next to the oven, I wont have to walk around that microwave cabinet anymore. I am really excited to use the grundtal rail system to the right of the stove. I think it will give the kitchen a chef feeling, and hopefully set our house apart from any others a buyer may be looking at.
Removing the lower cabinets to the right allows us to scoot the kitchen table over and keeps the "work zone" open feeling. Which is so nice. The uppers are the next big job to tackle. Then the tile, but we wont be doing that until Jaydon finishes spraying the lower cabinets, and I can finally use them! Remodeling is fun, but I get tired of the disorderly state the house has to be in. I have canned foods in the girls' room, and other misc kitchen stuff scattered throughout the house. :)
Wheeew... that was a long winded post! I'll give you guys an update when I have some more news and pictures. Hopefully within the next couple of days. :)
This is my latest work in progress, and I fear it ironically has me suffering from writers block. :) I want to use a quote, or even a patterned image of sorts on the paper... but I cant seem to decide on much! I also have another typewriter that is more retro as opposed to vintage, so I need to come up with a couple different ideas. :)
Do I have any writers in here that instantly have any ideas? I can see going soo many different directions with this one, that I am having a hard time deciding on any one way. Curious to hear how you guys see it?
Yep! Thats right!! Its been awhile since I had a buy 2 get 1 free sale... so I thought now would be a good time to bring it back. Some of you probably already know all the details that apply, but here they are for anyone new tuning in.
The fine print...err bold print: For each 2 prints purchased you will have the option of choosing one free print. Please do not add your free print to your shopping cart, but please do let me know in the message to seller
(upon checkout) which print you would like as your free choice. There
is no limit to how many prints you purchase. Example: If you were to
purchase 4 prints, you would have two free prints to choose. The sale does not apply to already discounted print sets, or higher priced limited edition prints. :) If you have any questions please feel free to send me an etsy conversation or drop me an e-mail! You can find my e-mail address under my profile pic at the top of the blog. :) Sale ends April 30th at 12:00 PST.
To enter the giveaway: This one is a little different then any giveaway I have had to date. Basically everyone that blogs about the sale is entered into the giveaway. Be sure and leave a comment here with a link to your post and I will enter you into a giveaway to win a free 8x10 print of your choice. Winner will be randomly chosen March 1st. I figure thats as good a way as any to spread the word! Feel free to post the graphic I uploaded here, as well as any images from my shop that seem to appeal to you or your blog readers. :) You can also copy the details above or any text from this post. :) Thanks a bunch!! I'll be back in a bit with another post!
I am really really happy with how they seem to work in our living room. I picked these up from ikea a couple trips ago. You really cant beat the price 29.99 for 2 panels. They are the stockholm figur curtains. I love that they add a subtle graphic design without overwhelming the space. They are also sheer enough that they let in quite a bit of light when closed. I mounted these about 7" higher then my window trim. We are fortunate enough to have high ceilings, but why not accentuate a good thing? :)
Here is a sneek peek at the living room without curtains. Gotta love that trim! This is where I had the curtain rod hung originally.
In the picture below, you can see how the living room looked before. You'll notice more has changed then just the curtains. :) The area rug was moved to the kitchen where it now happily resides under the dining room table.
Have you stopped by this young house? I stumbled across John and Sherry's blog a few weeks back, and am addicted. They have such a cute personality, and I love what they are doing with they're house! This picture and post inspired me to finally replace my cheapo wal-mart blinds.
I couldnt find any bamboo blinds at my local wal-mart, so I ordered some from overstock. I purchased the shanghai color . Hopefully it will match the bamboo blind covering the window in our front door.
Anyhow, I ordered three. I think they will add some great texture to the living room! What do you guys think? I just received an e-mail saying that had been shipped, I am so excited to install them!
hello! Wanted to let you guys know that there is a giveaway happening over at sandier pastures blog. You have until april 17th to leave a comment and be eligible to win. It is any 8x10 print of your choice, so you can actually pick which one you want.... AND I finally finished up a print I have been working on for months.... so now you have one more print to add to the 93 other choices in the shop. :)
It is titled "you are unique" and you may recognize the perfume bottle from my blog banner. :) Anyhow, have to make this short but I wanted to get you all in on the giveaway!!
A really long overdue photo shoot of my Trin. 4 years old and going on 20. It seems like I wait way too long in between photo shoots of her. She was so excited to be using my vintage cameras, and I think her favorite part was wearing the cameras with straps around her neck. :)
In case anyone is wondering... I used these photoshop actions created (for free!) from the lovely pioneer woman I used the seventies action set, and you can download it along with a few other really great ones here. I discovered her blog and actions from nicole of making it lovely. Its amazing what you can find in blogland isnt it? :)
I have been missing using my camera on a daily basis. Contemplating starting flickr's project365 again. The last time I think I kept it going for 72 days. Not long enough... :) But those pictures are so much fun to look back on now. I would definitely have them all published into a photo book from blurb. How totally neat that would be.
I think I just might make the attempt again. I will regret it if I dont! :) Everyone will have to help me keep on trach!!
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