Tag Archives: home improvement

Jun16

my weekend in photos

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Kendra G.

a long day at work meant i was in my pjs by 7pm, actually more like 6:30pm, but who’s counting?
i also came home to my birchbox this month, which was fun to go through, as usual.

we did some major work on the house this weekend (greg mostly), but here is your sneak peek.

breakfast is not complete without your baby & a backpack.

we had an all-american dinner on saturday night including
hot dogs, mac & cheese, watermelon, and corn on the cob.
you can tell it’s summer and this girl loves it.

playing outside between rain showers.
we love bubbles.

i told her to smile (show me your teeth) and this is what she gave me.

happy father’s day!

***

where did the weekend go? we had a good time celebrating father’s day
and getting some housework done…there were also some naps taken in there, too.
how was your weekend?

Jun9

my weekend in photos

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Kendra G.

Standard

school was closed on friday, which meant kenley was home.
we celebrated by running errands and stopped for a donut to celebrate
national doughnut day! yum!

saturday morning, the big ten network was replaying the iu/kentucky game from 2011.
we caught the end of it and explained to kenley exactly where she was
and what we were doing when watford hit the game winning shot.
she is really getting into all things indiana and i couldn’t be more happy about that.
the red shirt was a coincidence. she’s really wearing her christmas pjs. awesome.

we celebrated margot’s first birthday later in the day.
it was adorable, and so fun!

kenley and kyler reading books together at bedtime before their mini-sleepover.

most of the weekend was spent painting and organizing the office / my craft area.
i’m excited to share the updates… boy, what a difference a little paint makes.

ready to hit the road for sea world!

this is as close as we got to the penguins today.
hopefully, we’ll try again next weekend.

***

we had a good weekend and my love/hate relationship with painting continues,
but this weekend i’m actually loving it.
i did not, however, do much resting, so that will be the goal this week.

how was your weekend?

May14

Impromptu Guest Bath Update

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Kendra G.

Standard

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!

May12

my weekend in photos

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Kendra G.

Standard

happy saturday morning from the walking towel dog.

after debating for a while about getting our front landscaping done, we finally bit the bullet.

holy cow, we are so excited. i’m too embarrassed to show you what it looked like before, but you can imagine the hot mess.

while work was being done on the outside, i was doing work on the inside.
i am thrilled that our never ending laundry room projects are finally done!

i was literally craving iced coffee all day on saturday. i finally made some around 7pm.
it was worth the wait.

she loved wearing my cozy socks.

someone loved the mother’s day card i got from daddy. we danced a lot this morning.

i will spare you photos of my wonderful food today, but every single meal i had was delicious.
kenley was in shock of our milkshake, but obviously loved it. how could she not? look at that thing!

if she could be outside all day long, she definitely would.

our only attempt at a picture today, i’ll take it.

***

we had a great, relaxing weekend, napping whenever kenley decided to take a nap,
and not worrying about doing anything.
i had a wonderful mother’s day with my two favorite people.
how was your weekend?

happy mother’s day to all those wonderful mommies out there!

Apr23

{diy} headboard

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Kendra G.

Standard

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.

Standard

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.

Standard

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.

Standard

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.