Category Archives: Projects Around the House

May23

Where the laundry gets done…

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Kendra G.

Finally! Our laundry room is done!
I know that I am probably going to go into way more detail than you would like to know
about our laundry room, but this room is important to us. Between our cloth diaper laundry
and laundry for two adults and one little person, we use our laundry room a lot!
With that being said, I was very specific about what I wanted.
It needed to be 100% functional, and of course, cute too.

Moving into the house, this is what the laundry room looked like.
If you would have seen the before-before pictures of the house, you would have
seen a washer and dryer in there… somehow in the process of the bank fixing up the house,
those did not make it. We think someone just took them… along with the fridge,
which we were way more bummed about, but I digress.
We were so excited that there was already a sink and cabinet in there, which saved us some moolah.

Things that needed updating in the original laundry room:

1. Open wire shelf. From our last laundry room, I already knew that I wasn’t a fan,
so when my mom and I painted the room over Christmas break, I didn’t let them put the shelf back up.
I thought this would force us to actually do something with the room, but here we are 5 months later…
We had to replace it with something and tossed around the idea of getting cabinets, but opted for
a shelving unit we found in the As Is section at IKEA for a whopping $25!

2. The fluorescent light. No further explanation needed.

3. Our $10 stand up, folding drying rack that I have had since college. It sat right in the
narrow laundry room, making it hard to open and close the front loading machines.
It was a royal pain in my arse and I swear I hear angels singing the day we installed our new drying racks.

4. Color! Fun fact: this was the first can of paint we bought for the house.
The laundry room… I told you I was excited about it.

5. Paint the cabinets. I originally wanted to do them in white, but I didn’t want to buy the
entire kit for two little cabinets, so I was going to settle with the Espresso that we had purchased already.
But, then it dawned on my to ask Sally to borrow some of her extra grey from when she painted her kitchen cabinets.
It worked out perfectly, and I love the grey!

6. Decor. We really liked the decal we had in our old laundry room so we decided to get another one.
We actually purchased it before we were officially house hunting, due to an expiring Groupon,
but the decal works perfect in the space. I also looked on Pinterest for some fun artwork,
and found the awesome laundry cheat sheet that I printed for free.

7. Store the detergent in style. We already had one large glass jar that served as a gin bucket,
so I got a matching one so we have one jar for diaper detergent and one for laundry detergent.
I made the chalkboard labels from our leftover chalkboard contact paper on the pantry door.

What we still need to do:

1. Get a matching washer to the dryer. Here’s the story.
Somehow during the moving process, the dryer was damaged beyond repair.
After a costly service call, we had to get a new one. It’s sad that the washer and dryer
do not match at this point, but I don’t care enough to go buy a new washer.
We opted not to go with the front loaders this time around, which was kind of a
spur of the moment decision, but we aren’t in love with our washer now,
so I am still very happy with that decision. I would love to get the new washer soon,
but we will use this one until it dies…and that may not be too far away.

2. We would love to eventually paint the counter top too.
I have no idea what color, but something other than what it is now.
It works for now, but I certainly don’t love it.

Source List:

Paint – Valspar Araucana Teal
GRUNDTAL Drying Racks
PRESSA Drying Rack
Shelf Unit – HEMNES Wall/bridging shelf (AS IS section for $25!)
Storage Baskets – Threshold Global Small Milk Crate
Detergent Jars – Target
Laundry Cheat Sheet – Print / Frame
The Laundry Room decal – Dali Decal (purchased with Groupon)
Pendant light – MINUT pendant downlight
Cabinet Paint – Rustoleum Cabinet Restoration Kit in Winter Fog
Cabinet Hardware – Handles / Knobs

May14

Impromptu Guest Bath Update

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Kendra G.

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I knew that somewhere down the road we wanted to paint the cabinets in our bathrooms,
but I really had no timetable on that project, so I added it our (3 page) running to-do list.
Much to my surprise, Home Depot was running a special online for the small
Rustoleum Cabinet Restoration Kit in Espresso - half off!! The whole kit was only $40 and free shipping.

Once it arrived, it sat in our bathroom for a good month before we even opened it.
It got neglected much like several other house projects over the last few months, which is fine.
Randomly, a couple weeks ago, we decided to get moving on the guest (and only) bathroom upstairs.
It’s a full bath, but the vanity is small, so we knew it’d be perfect to use these cabinets as a test.
Of course, we decided to do this just 5 days before we had visitors coming into town,
I guess that’s just what we needed. We must work well under pressure.

This is what the boring bathroom looked like when we moved in.
We threw up the shower curtain from our old guest bathroom for the time being
since we had family in town very soon after we moved in.
Randomly, over Christmas break, we were shopping at Homegoods for some other items,
and walked out with a shower curtain, bath mats, decor, and the other bathroom essentials.

Even with those items, the bathroom needed more. In comes fixing up the vanity!

I cannot begin to explain how easy the cabinet transformation kit was to work with.
The cabinets ended up taking about 4 days because we were working on them after work.
We stopped after the first two steps because we didn’t feel it needed the protective or shiny coats.

The kit really does transform the cabinets. I am obsessed with how good they look!
To add to it, we decided to frame out the mirror, because you know how we love to frame mirrors.
We used two 1x4s and stained them with the kit so they would match the cabinets perfectly.
The fact that the picture frames matched is just an added bonus.

Since we were so close to being done with the bathroom,
the final piece was to get rid of the builder grade vanity light, since I despise them.
We purchased a brushed nickel 3-light bath light on Amazon
because we couldn’t decide on anything Lowe’s had to offer, and we couldn’t beat the price on Amazon.

I love how much better the bathroom looks with darker cabinets!

Apr23

{diy} headboard

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Kendra G.

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We watch a lot of American Pickers at our house. Greg is really into the show,
mostly to see the unique stuff they stumble upon. I could take it or leave it,
mostly because I kind of get grossed out if the person is a big hoarder, but I’ll watch it with him.

Imagine my excitement when I got home later than usual (on a school night),
and see a door sitting out in our neighbor’s trash to be picked up the next day.
I immediately knew what I wanted to do with it and went inside to tell Greg to go get it.
Since he was already asleep, he was way less excited than I was, and reminded me
that it would probably be there the next morning and he would get it then.
I thought it would be more stealth-like to get it in the middle of the night,
but I agreed and went to bed. He marched over there the next morning in the broad daylight,
and brought the door back… way less dramatic than it would have been the night before,
but whatever.
The door would be turned into a headboard for our guest bedroom upstairs where we have a king size bed,
and the inspiration can be found here.

The door was pretty dented on the white side, but it good shape on the blue side,
so we decided that we would sand it down, clean it up, and paint it, but we weren’t sure what color.
We debated on the color we would paint the door, sanded it down a little, then it sat around while
we got preoccupied with other projects, and life in general.

We finally got back on the ball and started working on the door again.
It must have been a much-needed break, because after Greg (and Kenley) sanded it down again,
we both realized how much we really liked the original color of the blue.
I really wanted to do a color because we don’t plan on painting the walls any time soon,
and we are going with a blue tones-beachy-map-world theme in the room anyway.
How’s that for a theme?
Since we decided to keep the color, we only needed a few more supplies.

We got one piece of crown molding, since we love using crown molding for anything.
See our other crown molding projects here and here.
Greg affixed the crown molding to the door with molding glue and added a piece of wood on top,
so it could act as a shelf down the road, see the inspiration here.

To mount the door to the wall, we used an 18″ picture hanging system.
Keep in mind that this door is metal and relatively light. If this were a solid wood door,
we would have done something different because I don’t think that little sucker would hold it on the wall.

The total cost of this project:

Crown Molding – $18.98
18″ Hangman Picture Hanging System – $10.88
1 x 4 x 8 Piece of Wood – $2.06

For a grand total of about $32!

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Right?

Feb28

what’s cookin’ {kitchen update}

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Kendra G.

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There has been a lot happening in the kitchen, besides cooking…
obviously, because I don’t do that…

Here is our kitchen on the day we closed on the house.
I love it. We love it. But we want to make it our own.

I’ll start with the most ~~weird~~ obvious thing in the kitchen.
Yep, that’s a huge hole in the wall.
We aren’t sure what it’s all about, but after much speculation and
conversations with our realtors, we think the previous owners had a beverage fridge in there.
I, at first, would have loved to put another beverage fridge in there,
and we even looked and looked for one.
No luck. The size of the opening was very odd and those things are expensive!

Kenley had a hay day when we first moved in. She couldn’t reach the door handles yet,
so she used this awkward opening as her own, personal door to the food.
Obviously, that got old real quick.
Greg did an awesome job patching it up with dry wall.

Our walls are tricky, too. They are all textured, so to create just enough texture to match wasn’t easy.
He pretty much rocks and you can’t even tell there was a gaping hole there,
unless you’re really looking for it.

Moving on to another part of our pantry… the door.
I cannot even begin to explain how much I loathe this door.
I’m sorry if you have a pantry door like this and/or love it,
I’m not trying to step on any toes here, but it’s just not my style.
So much so, that when Celeste was here to visit, she immediately made a comment
about how she just couldn’t see me liking it… without even knowing just how much I hated it!
My friends know me.

I was actually surprised to see a similar door installed on a recent episode of
Cousins on Call (one of my fave shows by the way… how can you not love these guys?).
I started to second guess myself and thought that maybe it wasn’t all THAT bad…
but nope. I still dislike it (a lot).

Like everything, doors are not cheap, so I thought about alternatives.
I got opinions of friends, did some research, etc. and decided
we were going to paint the glass with chalkboard paint,
until we stumbled upon this little gem… chalkboard contact paper.
We thought, for $7.50, we could give it a whirl and if it didn’t work, we weren’t out a ton of money.

It wasn’t super easy to put on, but we did it and it looks great!
I cured the chalkboard twice by completely covering with chalk and wiping down with a dry paper towel.
I. am. obsessed.
I love it!

Lastly… sorry, this has turned into quite the post, we replaced our island counter.
This was one of the things I wasn’t in love with, but I didn’t dislike it as much as the door.
I just always thought the counter looked too small on top of the island,
and I wasn’t a fan of the cut… triple pencil is the technical name.

We posted this puppy on Craigslist and in 12 hours it was sold.
I could go on and on about how much I love Craigslist, but I’ll save that for another day.

We decided to go with a butcher block style island and purchased the NUMERÄR countertop from IKEA.
Greg cut it to size and sanded the two edges that he cut.
We love it!

There are certain things that keep reminding me that we aren’t the first owners of this house,
but the more we do, the more I really feel like we are making this house our home.

So, that’s what’s cookin’! We hope to keep improving it!

Feb12

coffered and crowned

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Kendra G.

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Our family room has a coffered ceiling, which is one of the things we fell in love with in the very beginning.
As soon as our offer was accepted on the house, ok… maybe a little before that,
we started planning what we wanted to do to the ceiling.
After searching for ideas on Houzz or Pinterest, which actually becomes overwhelming,
we had a good idea of what we wanted it to look like in the end.
The next task was actually getting to that end result!

This is the best before photo I have of the ceiling. This the family room on the day we closed.
The door on the left goes into the master bedroom. The sliding doors on the right go out to the patio.

We knew we wanted to paint the inside of each box a dark gray color.
Our final decision landed on Valspar Wet Pavement and it worked out perfectly.
Greg borrowed a 10 foot ladder for this project because our ceilings are insanely tall,
we’re talking 12 feet tall and 13 feet inside the coffered squares.

Over the course of two nights and one gallon of paint, Greg painted all six squares.
The final verdict was that it was better painting with the extender on the ladder (as shown).
Each square has a pot light, which meant the light bulb was removed and the cover was popped out.
Since we knew that the crown molding was the next step, there was no taping required.
The painting was the easy part.

The entire next day was dedicated to crown molding.
Greg measured every single box, because of course, they weren’t all the same,
that would have been too easy, right?

Thankfully, Santa brought Greg a miter saw for Christmas, so it made this project more fun.
He has experience cutting crown molding from the framed mirrors.
The trick is to cut the molding upside down and backwards.

He concentrated on one box at a time, cutting all four sides of molding at once.
To put them up, he used a nail gun… thanks Chris for letting us borrow your Christmas gift!
Once all four pieces were up, he wasn’t quite done yet.
He used finishing caulk between each piece and the nail holes.
Greg didn’t move on to the next box until the previous one was completely done.

It may seem like he whipped right through these boxes, but it wasn’t that easy.
If just one cut was off just a little bit, the two pieces would not line up together,
causing him to cut and re-cut, until the two pieces were flush.
There was a lot of up and down on the ladder throughout the course of the day.
It literally took the entire day…like 10 hours!

Before we started this project, there was much discussion on how we were going to go about this,
and I’ll be the first to admit that I said several times that we should just hire someone to come do it.
I think it was all in the stress of moving and getting settled right in the middle of the holiday season,
coupled with having a 13-14 month old running around, yet still going about our daily lives.
I am so glad Greg convinced me otherwise!
It was so nice having my parents here after Christmas to help with other things while Greg got this done.
I am especially thankful we didn’t hire someone after we were watching HGTV
and they estimated that crown molding labor was around $1500 (!!) for one room.

The supplies we used for this project include:

1 Gallon of Valspar Wet Pavement paint – $33
2 EverTrue 8-piece Primed MDF Crown Moulding – $176.87 (with 10% off coupon)
2 DAP White Caulk - $4

The grand total on this project was $215 and it was worth every penny.
We love the new look!

Jan29

DIY faux wainscoting

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Kendra G.

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We’ve been in the new house for two months now and I’m finally ready to share a project!
When we moved in, the house was a complete blank slate, which was nice,
but also very intimidating. Our first priority was Kenley’s room,
because we wanted her to feel comfortable and help the transition.

This is how it looked the day we closed on the house.

We knew we wanted to do this room very similar to her old room,
but with the chair rail already there, we weren’t sure how to go about it.
I really love wainscoting, but that would have required us to take off the chair rail,
and the base board, and it was going to be a pretty penny, not to mention, time consuming.
We didn’t have energy to tackle that project, in the midst of moving & running after a one year old.

Instead, I came across this tutorial from The Idea Room and thought we could definitely pull it off.

We purchased the 5/8 x 1-1/4 x 8 edging at Lowe’s and went with the poplar & red oak finish because it was cheaper.
We were planning on painting it the same color as the wall, so it didn’t matter either way.

We liked how the boxes looked in the tutorial we found and decided to stick with their dimensions.
The boxes have 4 inches all the way around them; from the chair rail, the base board, the wall, and the next box.
Once we knew how much space, we measured each wall to determine how many boxes we will need.

I’m a visual learner, so I had to draw it out to get the gist of what we were doing.
Don’t look too closely, I’m sure there are some mistakes; and yes, I had to write out what 31 minus 8 was…
measure twice and cut once, right?

Once we started cutting the 8 foot long pieces of edging,
we realized we probably could have done it more efficiently,
to get the most out of each piece, but we didn’t so we just kept going.

As Greg was cutting the pieces, and Kenley was napping,
I thought it would be a good idea to start spray painting each piece.
At this point, Greg had already painted Kenley’s room white below the chair rail,
so my big idea was to just spray paint each piece and put them on the white wall.
That didn’t last very long.
I quickly became annoyed and decided to paint them once they were on the wall,
with actual paint and a paintbrush. It was so much easier.

Once they were all cut and half of them were painted, Greg started nailing them to the wall with a nail gun.
After he was done, I started painting them. Just for good measure, we did two coats of paint the whole way around.
We left it “almost done” for a while, so let’s fast forward through the holidays…
Once we came back to it, Greg caulked any of the open spaces around the wood and the nail holes.
It probably would have been best if we reversed the process and caulked before we painted,
but we started this project on Thanksgiving, the day after we moved in, so we really didn’t think about it.

Overall, I love how it looks!
It’s so much better than just a plain white wall below the chair rail.

Mar26

Pinspiration: DIY Framed Mirror

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Kendra G.

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Misha started posting pinspiration projects, obviously inspired by Pinterest,
so I thought I’d join the fun with our latest project!

I pinned this a while ago and we have talked about framing our bathroom mirrors ever since,
but we finally got around to it this weekend, thanks to Greg deciding the time is now!

[ original pin via full of great ideas ]

We hit up Lowe’s on Saturday, obviously, because Lowe’s knows.

Kenley was pumped.

We got our supplies.

1 x 4 to go the entire way around the mirror
Thin trim with one rounded side for the top and bottom
Crown molding for the top
Liquid nails for mirrors
Caulking
2 cans of white spray paint

Gotta love the standard builder light fixtures.
Don’t worry, that one bulb has been out for months.

The first parts were easy,
measure the width and height of the mirror,
cut the 1 x4 and trim, then spray paint it white.

After the spray paint was dry, it was time to glue with the liquid nails.

We started at the bottom and worked our way up.
I say “we”, but Greg did majority of the work… he’s a rock star.

Then we made the decision to change out the light
because the original crown molding we chose blocked the light.
Big win for us. Great decision on our part.

The hardest part of this project was figuring out how to cut the crown molding,
especially on the side that is not flush against the wall.
We used a miter saw to cut the molding at a 45 degree angle to do an outside corner cut
that you can see on the left side of the mirror.

Our original piece of crown molding was very tall, which ended up blocking the lights and didn’t look good at all.
So back to Lowe’s we went for a third time and picked out a different crown molding that was shorter and more awesome.

We are so happy with the final project and can’t believe it’s the same bathroom.
Such an easy upgrade to the standard mirror and lights that the builders install.

Feb10

DIY Ribbon Wreath

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Kendra G.

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I was drawn to this pin by the pink and green (obviously) and have been eyeing for a while.
When it came time to actually commit to doing a Pinterest project, I searched for the original link.
I could not find it anywhere, so I really didn’t know where to begin with this.

Updated: The original link is from Etsy!

[via Etsy]

I decided to wing it.
I started by getting one spool of ribbon in six different patterns.
Plus a wire wreath.
I got all of this at JoAnn’s.

I cut the ribbon in strips about 5-6 inches long.
The thicker ribbon needed to be a little longer to tie easier.
Then, I just tied the ribbon onto the wreath.

Those six spools of ribbon got me, oh…this far.

So, I went out and got some more ribbon.
Of course, they were out of some of the patterns I had already purchased, but I made do.

I got back to work, cutting, and tying.
I quickly learned that I could spread the ribbon out a little more than I had done initially.
So I ended up moving some of the ribbon from the first go around.

The thicker ribbon does take up more room, which is nice.
I had a couple spools left over, so I ended up using about 20 spools. Yikes!
I probably could have still spread it out even more in order to use less.

I already had a white “K” but I thought it’d be fun to spice it up a bit.

I spaced the tape out the width of a ruler, but you could do the stripes however you’d like.
I had the grand idea of doing chevron stripes, but that was a battle I knew I couldn’t win.
So straight stripes won out.

The pink spray paint is from Lowe’s.
And I’m already on the hunt for more things to spray paint. I love the color!

I hung the finished “K” with dental floss after Target didn’t have fishing line.
It worked perfectly!

This whole project took me about two weeks.
I would sit and tie ribbon whenever I had some free time.
However, it was not as cheap as I would have liked.
I would recommend stocking up on ribbon in advance that you find on sale
and/or use lots of coupons!

I did look on Etsy for similar wreaths and they were more than what I spent, even before shipping.
In my eyes, that’s a win!

Overall, I’m very pleased with how it turned out!

Jan16

my [long] weekend in photos

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Kendra G.

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headed to hob lob with melissa

and completed this project thanks to pinterest

mandy was here from the other orange county

so we got much needed pedicures

heart pancakes made with love

a starbucks kind of morning

did you have a long weekend? what did you do?

Jan1

my weekend in photos: happy new year

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Kendra G.

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One resolution for 2012 is to start (check!) and keep up with the series my weekend in photos.
My cousin Misha has been doing it and I really enjoy seeing what they do each weekend.
So, here it goes!