Island Colors

Aaron spent a good part of last night working on our island and he's doing such a great job! We aren't sure what color to make the island though. We can just paint it the same color as the cabinets or we can branch out, maybe stain it a dark stain color, or paint it a completely different color. I've been looking at pictures online to get some inspiration and I love what Thrifty Decor Chick did with her kitchen island.

The idea is the same with the beadboard and even the countertop color looks about right for what we are going for in our kitchen. The only difference it our island is more like a peninsula, situated under the kitchen window.

Aaron has also decided, and I agree, that we don't like the normal run of the mill window shutters. We are missing a couple in the front of the house and I'd just like to replace them all. Right now the one's that are on there are just black vinyl, normal looking shutters but I think I've decided that I like the Board and Batten shutters. They're wooden and I also think instead of buying them for about $40 a piece we could make all of them for almost that much. They would look similar to the one I found below, we would likely paint them a different color though, maybe some sort of slate blue since that is what Aaron is thinking for the siding.

Well I think I'm back in the swing of blog updating so I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day Weekend and fingers crossed Hurricane Earl doesn't ruin out plans. We're shipping up to Boston to do some exploring so I'll let you know next week if the rain and wind threw a wrench in our plans!

Autumn Aroma

I walked into the grocery store today to pick up a few things at lunch and as soon as I walked through the door the aroma of cinnamon pine cones filled the entrance way. I almost stood there for a few minutes to smell the air but didn't have time to waste so I took a huge gulp of air and savored it :) The calendar says 24 days until Fall...I say it's wrong, so it's still 90 degrees outside, September means Autumn therefore it begins in 2 days in my world.

We went a little overboard on purchases last week, it all started with a Craigslist find. A couple was selling their Crate and Barrel Havana Table and Chairs and we were in definite need of a better table for our oversized dining room. The table is beautiful and has the plank look on top.

We also saw an 'antique' hutch on craigslist but discovered after visiting the seller the hutch was intended to be a tv cabinet. I did however love her decorating style full of very bold colors and odd but strangely intriguing color combinations. So the trip wasn't a total fail b/c now I have a ton of ideas floating around my head for what to do with the walls in our house.

My birthday was this weekend, and in the words of an old friend, high five to two-five, it's time to get serious at my age (no more hand me down furniture) haha. Aaron took me to Home Goods and we picked out a few needed items as well as a rug which we found a Furniture4Less.

The colors look a lot brighter in person but I'm working with an iPhone camera. This is under the table and chairs in the dining room in the picture above. Aaron tried for the more traditional looking rug but I think I won that decision. He is working diligently on our island with the time we do have right now so he is commended for that <3

Here she is so far, we bought the beadboard to go around it as well so that is getting put on today. Once this island is finished or at least the outer shell we can get countertops!

Happy August!

So it appears I failed at being a blogger in July. I can't even say it's because I was completely swamped with home renovations (I wish that were the case) it's more of us stalling out and summer taking hold. In the beginning of July we took a little vacation down to the Outer Banks with family and friends, it was much needed beach time. However, I think that beach mentality stuck, at least on me, not so much Aaron. He accomplished more than me this month with beginning to build our kitchen island, working on both the jeeps, and beginning the physical therapy on his knee. I had a lot of attempts but not to many successes...

The track was taken off from around the dining room entryway where the "folding closet doors" use to be. They didn't really fit in between the living room and the dining room. So I sanded the doorway and put two new coats of paint on it...doesn't look the best but the sander broke on me so part of it was sanded by hand. My second attempt was removing the paint off the big outside dining room window. The window has paint peeling all over it because too many layers have been painted on it. We've tried scraping it, striping it, and using a hot air gun (which was a fail since I cracked the window). I got some of the paint off but it's just a really tough job...so now it's sitting there partially paint removed :(

Hopefully August shows more progress, even though each and every weekend this month is booked with outside the house activities. The government should be sending the credit soon so my hands in the mailbox waiting, 14 weeks and counting. They weren't kidding when they said it would take up to 16 weeks. We ended up buying all of the kitchen appliances right off the bat since the refrigerator decided to die with the move. Now we just need countertops, backsplash, and molding :) oh yeah and we still haven't finished painting the cabinets. We did however buy a spray gun for the compressor so hopefully we'll test that out and get the doors painted so we can put them back up and hide all those dishes..

So don't look too closely, but under the cabinets still needs finished, the doors are clearly missing since they still need painted and yes those are plywood counter-tops, and no backsplash. It's a functioning kitchen though so at least we can cook in there.

Unpacking, Uncluttering, Un-enjoyable :)

We're moved into the new house! Finally, and we have about half of it unpacked. We are counting down the days now to our obx vacation which is much needed at this point. My dad brought Aaron and I these two chairs which I love! They could use some reupholstering but they are really neat, plus any deck furniture at this point is a plus! Aaron's mom also brought us four different potted tomato plants for the deck since there wasn't any time this year for garden planting.

I only have a picture of part of the kitchen to release for right now :) the kitchen is still a work in progress but it should be done soon. I'll also post pictures of the remainder of the house later, it hasn't changed much, now there are just things filling all the empty spaces. The Home Goods store opened up down in Collegeville so I finally got to experience it and I wish I hadn't! There were cart loads of things I would have purchased given less restraint. I did manage however buy two lamps for the living room, a mirror/artwork stand for the bedroom, and a decorative mirror that we'll be hanging in the living room. For now I have the mirror on the stand for the effect.

We ended up buying all of our appliances this week, the refrigerator came first since our old one decided to die during the move. As you can tell we haven't finished the doors on the cabinets yet, or the countertops, or the backsplash...or the base of the cabinets for that matter. But like I said it's coming right along! Below are my Home Good purchases:

We plan on getting everything (as much as humanly possible) unpacked this weekend, the stove and dishwasher should be coming soon, either today or Monday. Then in a few short days we'll be laying on the beach drinking margaritas :) I'll try and be more diligent about updating our progress now that we are moved in!

Moving Day!

Here it is two months to the day since Aaron and I bought our first home and we will be officially moved into it on Saturday! It's hard to believe it has been two months already! I'm anxious to be in the house and start unpacking and rearranging what little bit of furniture I feel we have. Patience Patience Patience, one of those little things I absolutely do not have. I want all the furniture, decorations, appliances, lights, and fixtures right  now as well as wanting to take numerous vacations this year and we just can't have it all I suppose.

I've been wanting to take an elaborate vacation and am having a hard time waiting until the "Big Day" (whenever that might be) to take one,  so for now I'm planning a Napa getaway and hope those plans hold for this September. Some wine and travels will do us good after this busy transition we're having into home ownership. Moving week has commenced and the big moving day is on Saturday. Updated Kitchen pictures to follow!

Artwork for the kitchen

Today Aaron made one last push to finish as much as he could before going back to work. The tile is all laid and grouted and it looks awesome! The tile needs to be cleaned up a bit but I think we are so close to pulling this all together before we move in and I'm getting really excited.

I'm jumping ahead of myself and if Aaron knew I was trying to buy art for the walls already he'd likely say "It's not time for that yet, we still have to finish the cabinets, molding, baseboard, light, build the island, and buy the appliances. But what's a kitchen without paintings on the walls?! Either way I ventured on over to Overstock and decided on some pieces that are a signature for our kitchen.

Now if someone could go ahead and paint these for me, I would love an amateur (or professional) version :)

Here are the best pictures I could grab of the kitchen floor when I was over there this evening. There isn't a light in the kitchen yet so it was a little dark to take the picture but it still turned out pretty well. I think the grout looks wonderful and I can't wait to see what the before and after pictures of the kitchen look like.

Also due to my impatience and Lowe's not having the light fixture I orginially set out to find, I settled for one that was in stock and equally charming. It's a bronze traditional 5 light track that ties in nicely with the rest of the browns in the kitchen. (Purchased at Lowe's for $88)

It's a Coffee Tile weekend

We had lots of help this weekend from both our families and sunny (but very hot) weather. I should have taken a picture of the front of the house but forgot, Deb cut down the rest of the hedges that overtook the front of the house. It opened up the front and looks so much better already with just stumps haha. We just have to decide what to plant there now to make it pretty.

The men stuck to the kitchen for nearly 8 hours after a water pump scare. Thank goodness it was revived, what a disaster that would have been. My dad provided the tile saw, and with lots of man power the beautiful coffee tile turned our kitchen into a very inviting space (that is as long as you can close your eyes and envision, cabinets, appliances and a light fixture haha). All coming soon!

The grouting will be done tomorrow, we chose a grout color a bit lighter than the actual tile. The color is called haystack.  It's hard to tell the true color of the tile from these pictures (and all the dust) so i'll try and get some better pictures taken this week with the grout in place.

It's starting to finally hit me that I can do things to the house since I own it. It's a strange feeling having free range, but it also made me realize how many projects actually need to take place to get the house looking the way we envision!

Slowly looking like a Kitchen

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend. We decided to take a little break (I decided...) and go camping with some wonderful college friends down in Maryland. The weather was great and my dad went crabbing on Sunday so we even got to come home to a bushel of crabs and feast with the family (oh how I miss Maryland)

The kitchen is finally taking shape, we only have 23 more days to move out of our rental home so we are in crunch time now getting the kitchen to a functioning point. Here are a few updates:

I guess it's been about a week and a half at this point but we have managed to lay the hardie backerboard on the kitchen floor, tape and mortar the joints, patch holes in the wall, sand the walls, and primer.

Aaron's dad generously took a day to cut the backerboard to fit around the pipes and baseboards. We bought 4-50 lb bags of versabond tinset mortar (gray) to seal the boards to the floor. Home depot also sells special screws and bits to use to screw the board to the floor.

It's a long process but after we got all the boards down we had to tape the cracks with joint tape and then mortar over the tape.

We will be painting the walls today and laying the tile this weekend. The next pictures you should be up this weekend of the final paint and tile progress!

I'll also be discussing our cabinet situation once I have more time. We have decided to scratch the staining idea due to the type of wood and go with painting them a mocha brown color. Details to follow.

Cabinet Therapy

We seem to be weekend warriors like many homeowners. I always have big ambitions while sitting at work thinking I'll get off and drive over to the house and work on the cabinets or painting. For some reason it never turns out that way. It looks like Aaron and his father will be working on the floor today while I'm at work so it'll be nice to see the progress taking shape in the Kitchen.

I really want to have this kitchen functioning by the time we are fully moved in, in about a month. It'll be a close one but I think we can pull most of it off. I've acquired a bunch of random pieces of furniture from my dad, mostly some end tables and wall shelving. All which need refinished in some way, so I'll be working on those during rainy days. I'm trying decide on color schemes for each room, I bought a lot of samples, all earthy tones, so I'll have to start testing those on the walls and get some opinions.

Yesterday, we did go over to the house for a few hours to start the cabinet re-staining process. We used a really fine grade of steel wool to go over the cabinets with, then we applied a stripper (in thick layers with a medium sized paint brush) on the fronts of the cabinets, and finally we used a plastic paint scraper to peel away the shiny finish that covered the tops of the cabinets.

We laid all of the cabinets on their backs and went over the faces with the steel wool and stripper below.

The stripper is a pretty strong chemical so I would recommend gloves and a well ventilated room, We did this in the garage with the doors and windows open. After we used the steel wool and applied the stripper we went over the cabinets a couple of times with the stripper to keep the cabinets wet enough to absorb the chemical. You don't want to let it dry on the cabinets, it will tough to scrape the finish away.

After about two coats and touching up a few spots on the cabinets that didn't look like they were beginning to peel we started scraping away the finish. Surprisingly it came up in strips which made it really each to peel way. You can see how it started to bubble up and peel away, we let the chemical stripper sit on the cabinets for about a half hour, when we could tell it was ready to go.

We will probably go over the cabinets one more time with the stripper to see if we can get anything else to peel off, next we'll start sanding the tops and finally we can stain!

I also wanted to mention that I will be working on the flower boxes this weekend. I mentioned them in one of my other posts but I figured I'd snap a few pictures to show how great these boxes are. I'm not sure what color I'm going to paint them yet but I want to get them painted and planted this weekend :)

Cooking Comfort

I saw this in Home magazine while I was in the waiting room last week for Aaron's surgery. Lucky for me that had a ton of these type of magazines which just so happen to be my favorite. I'm not sure if these seem like an old person item or not but I love cooking and it would be great to have something comfortable to stand on, especially since I am always barefoot.

They have a ton of different sizes, colors, and patterns. I think I might have to get one of these once we get the kitchen finished up. Kitchen Comfort

Cabinet Stain

We had orginially started out using a Minwax stain that we used on a table I found on the side of the road :) that Aaron refinished for me, such a great guy! The stain was called dark chestnut but it wasn't coming out much darker than the original cabinets and if we're going to put all this time into refinishing them we want a more drastic change.

The Antique Walnut, shown in the picture, is the stain we chose so hopefully this will be the one.

 It's going to take a lot of time to refinish the cabinets since they have a glaze over them. The color right now is in between the Pecan and Old Maple colors above. The color isn't terrible but it's just not us. I'll have more details of the process soon.

On Saturday we went over to the house. I used a hot air gun (great idea!) and a scraper to remove the glue from the old backplash off the wall. The hot air gun works wonders on glue (and paint, so i'm told). You can buy them at any home improvement store. It took a couple hours but look at the difference it made! The walls are still in pretty bad shape but once we get them cleaned and the holes patched up we can paint! I'm going to test swatches soon, we're staying in the brown family for the kitchen, we love our Coffee :)

Aaron demonstrating his one-legged ability in home reno'ing.

One more thing I discovered out back growing amongst the patch of mint...

Can someone tell me what kind of flower this is? It's huge and beautfiul and there were quite a few of them growing.