Such a simple task, but it made such a huge difference!  Obviously we still need to dig out the roots, but at least now people can walk by our sidewalk without stepping off!  And we can see when we’re pulling out of our driveway! 

This actually spurred us on to clean up the front gardens, too.  The left side is done and mulched, but we have to wait on a little something for the right side…

Once these little baby robins hatch, the bush is out of there!

The “e” and “j” are from Anthropologie, my first purchase from there ever!  What an awesome store.

And up close:

For the “&” I was way too cheap to buy another letter from Anthropologie, so I used a door from a cabinet we had removed from the kitchen, painted it white and distressed it.  I then painted the “&” with some acrylic paint, and before it had dried, I wiped some of the paint off with a paper towel to make it look distressed as well (this has become a favorite method of mine!).  I used this method on the centerpiece for our dining room as well, where I stenciled our wedding date on an old wooden box.

I purchased some chicken wire to use in the frames, that way we can clip whatever mementos we want to them.  I’ll admit that we haven’t updated them since I made them, but they’re nice memories to have!  I typically don’t hang too many pictures of ourselves on the walls, so it was a nice change to have something more personal in our bedroom.

I think I can call the bedroom officially “done” for now!

Also, I’ve updated the pictures and a few descriptions on the house tour page, so be sure to check it out!

The majority of what we needed to do was finish painting the ceiling, walls, and trim.  I also finished the floor by stenciling on it, and I love the results!  I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do the floor stencil if this was our “forever” kitchen, but since this is a “live-with-it” stage until we can do a whole gut job, I went for it!  I’m so glad I did!  The floor was probably the most tedious part of the entire kitchen update.  It started with peeling old linoleum off of the plywood subfloor, which of course required very nasty chemicals to get all of the glue off.  Then it needed to be wood puttied, sanded down a bit, and finally primed and painted.  This part of the process has been done for a while, but we needed to wait until the rest was done to finish the painting and stenciling part.  I’m glad we waited – the floor got pretty scratched up moving things around, and it had more than a couple paint drips on it!

There are just a few minor details to still finish up, but here is our kitchen as it is right now!

We purchased our fridge from the Sears scratch and dent in Lawrenceville.  It’s a Whirlpool, and we really like it.  I love having the freezer drawer on the bottom!  We didn’t get a french door fridge because we were afraid the door handle would hit the wall on the right side.  We also didn’t want a water dispenser in the door so that we’d have more room on the inside.

The red letter “N” above is from an antique shop down the road in Tarentum.  You can also see above how we replaced the old cabinet and stove hood with a new microwave and a shelf to hold pretty fiestaware dishes.  We were able to find the microwave on craigslist, brand new.  Our oven and dishwasher are from a local store called Good Housekeeping, which I would highly recommend.  We purchased a Frigidaire Pro stove with induction and electric cook top, and convection or conventional oven.  Our dishwasher is also a Frigidaire Pro, and we’ve been extremely pleased with both of them.

In the few months since we decided to stencil the floor, I’ve been searching high and low for a stencil to use.  The only place I found that sells large scale stencils was extremely expensive.  So I decided to make my own   I used Adobe Illustrator to create the design, then I printed it out and transferred it on to plastic used by quilters for their templates.  I cut it out and voila – my own custom stencil!  I was very pleased with how it all worked out, and I saved a TON of money by doing it myself.  For the colors, I used gray on gray.  I actually just used the same floor paint (Valspar floor paint in gray) but mixed in a little of our white trim paint to get the lighter gray color.

You can also see the pot rack in the picture – it’s a Grundtal shelf from Ikea, with s-hooks allowing the pots to hang.  We desperately needed the storage – our kitchen is fairly small (which also makes it difficult to photograph).

The artwork above are two vintage pieces … one is the instruction manual for my mother’s old Sunbeam mixer, and the other is a cookbook found at a friend’s house which had been left by a previous owner.  I love that both of them worked perfectly with the color scheme!  You can also see the curtains in the room… I actually made them with a flat twin bed sheet from Walmart with red trim sewn on (from Jo-Ann’s).  The curtain hardware is from Ikea.  The wall color is Palm Springs, from ACE hardware.  It’s their Royal brand.

Above shows the detail on the red trim.  I actually just machine-sewed it on – it took no time at all!

Obviously the biggest impact in the kitchen was just paint, paint, and more paint.  I don’t think we left a single surface untouched!  We use Purdy paintbrushes for all of our painting, they are by far the best that we’ve used.  Typically when we paint, I cut in while Jared rolls.  I’ve found that Purdy’s angled brushes are perfect for this, my favorite being the Cub XL brush.  I’ve been using the same Cub XL brush for months now, and it’s still holding up great.  Purdy recently provided me with a set of paintbrushes to review, and I give them 2 thumbs up for great brushes that are long lasting and perfect for all of our needs!

So there it is… the kitchen is FINALLY done for now!!  There are always a few minor things we need to do, but I’m very pleased with how it all turned out.

Here is the view looking into the living room:

Here is the view looking toward the kitchen.  As you can see, this is the beginning stages of the wallpaper removal.  It had to get worse first, right?

This is apparently the location of an old whiteboard… maybe the kids didn’t know the whiteboard was gone!?  It took quite a few coats (like 6 or 7) of primer to cover this up.  The face on the left is actually a hole in the plaster that was fixed with glue.  We had to cut it out and replace it with some drywall… the right way

Here’s what it looked like after we tore up the old carpet, but before the floor was refinished.

Here’s a similar view right after we finished the floors.  We managed to get most of the dark stains out!

And here’s the dining room right after moving in (what a mess!) and replacing the broken door.  We still have yet to trim the new sliding door.

And finally… the current progress of our dining room.  I’m quite happy with how it’s turning out.

A few things to point out:

• The rug isn’t staying.  It’s just temporary to protect the floors and give our cat some comfort until we find a new rug.
• The dresser-turned-buffet is going to get repainted!
• I stenciled an old box with our anniversary date (inspired by this pin).
• I found the lampshade in the trash and recovered it (with information from this pin).
• The flowers were from my hubby for my birthday
• The gallery wall is something I’ve been dreaming about for a while.  I’m sure I’ll add to it as time goes.  Most of the paintings and frames were found at garage sales or at goodwill.  The top painting was done by me in college, and the frame was another birthday present a few years ago.  The cross stitch is a family piece.  Nothing was purchased new!
• The items on the buffet have been collected… some from garage sales, some as presents… and again, nothing bought new

Stay tuned for some additional house updates and new projects!

I’ll admit it.  I liked it.  I went for the first time Thursday night, and actually came home with something – a perfectly good, but outdated lampshade!  It has a great shape – a drum shade, but tall.  We made a trip to Ikea this weekend, and I came home with some gray printed fabric to re-do my shade.

It honestly wasn’t too difficult to recover – I simply hot-glued the new fabric around the top and bottom edges.  The trickiest part was the edging.  I made my own bias tape out of a left-over white sheet that had already been cut up.  I hot glued it around the edges, and voila – a “brand new” lamp shade!

I then dismantled our old light fixture in the dining room, which we inherited with the house (i.e. FREE), and spray painted it.  I put back together the pieces I wanted and added a ceiling medallion.

The entire project cost $27… $7 for a yard of fabric from Ikea, and $20 for a new ceiling medallion.  I already had the spray paint!

Here’s the finished product – I am in love with it!

Click here to see the “before” of the dining room.

We were also able to use a new location, Lingrow Farms – a big thank you to Linda and Joy who allowed us to have our photo shoot there!

I suppose this means winter is now on its way… can’t say I’m too happy about that!