The Curtains Are UP, The Curtains Are UP! {Another Nursery Post}

Yay!  I’m excited, it’s starting to come together a little more.  I still don’t have my dresser or my bookcase/bench, or anything hanging on the walls BUT it feels more like a bedroom now with the BEDS in there and curtains hung.  I knew I wanted to hang the curtains high and also having them lightly gracing the floors in the nursery, but I also knew they probably wouldn’t be long enough for all that.  I really didn’t want them looking like this:

I know it’s not a good shot of the curtains, but maybe you can see how they are 5 inches above the ground!  Why even make curtains?  Is this the new style?  Ick!  Anyways, back to the nursery.  Oh btw, I think I will be making all of my future curtains!

I’m not quite sure why the curtain on the right looks like the fabric starts so much higher.  All four of the curtains in this room are the exact same.  You can see that both fabrics touch the floor at the same length too.  I guess our walls are wonky.  It doesn’t bother me as long as they touch.

Other window.  That is Jeff’s monkey from when he was a baby.  I’m going to make a shadow box for it.  You can’t see the bottom of the fabric here, but it’s the same colors, but the pattern is just petals falling.  Whenever we get our bookcase we will have it pulled out to the sides so you can see.

I love this fabric.  It’s like a vintage watercolor fabric.  I was nervous about bringing the florals in here, because more than likely this room will be home to boy and girl toddlers.  SO I asked a teeny-bopper if the room looked like a boys or girls and she said BOTH!  Success!  I’m one happy mommy (to be)!

Instead of a traditional curtain rod I found two bamboo poles outside our house (don’t ask me where they came from I have no clue).  Anyways I’m going for a woodlands, magically, birdie, vintage, theme 🙂 and I thought these would be perfect!  I just spray painted them with white glossy paint.  No primer, no fuss, I didn’t care if they were perfect.  The curtain hides most of it anyways.

The only bad thing is it gets a little thin on the right side, so not sure how well it will hold the weight.  Seems to be okay since we have the center bracket.

I love the soft pink vintage pillow cases!  So sweet with the pale aqua!  I don’t know if they will always stay.  I want more corals and yellows, but they do make me happy for now…we will see about tomorrow…:P

My Least Favorite Part of the Remodel

If you were to ask me my least favorite part of ‘flipping’ an old house.  I’d tell you there is one project that took the longest (over a year), was the most aggravating, required the most ‘do-overs’, and just down right was NOT fun!

Can you guess what it would be?

If you said refinishing our cabinets you would be right!  I don’t have a ton of images of the process, but I will try to explain what we did the best I can.  I will also give you some tips on what to do and what NOT to do during this trying process.

Here’s what we were working with.

Ugh!  These photos stress me out!  We have 30 something cabinets…I think it’s 36.  You loose count after 20!  This is a LARGE amount of cabinets.  Though I hated every last one of them while I was deglossing, priming, sanding, painting…I am very grateful to have every. last. one of them!

When I first started this project I took all of the cabinets down and brought them outside.  If you have a garage or carport I would HIGHLY suggest taking them there.  Because I started off outside, it ended up causing me tons of headaches and wasted time.  I had no where else to go.  Needless to say I left them outside to dry, dew got on them and birds, yes BIRDS pooped on them!  This was all after I had cleaned, deglossed, sanded, and primed them.  All of the prepping is the worst part, in my opinion, of the whole process.  Here is what I do recommend.

• take them outside and sand them with 100 grit and then 150 grit until really smooth
• wipe all the dust off really, really good (this is VERY important, paint can’t stick to grim)
• make sure you are in a covered area and prime with a heavy duty stain blocking primer (I think ours is ACE brand) prime the back first
• let dry 2 hours or until really dry to the touch
• flip and prime the front
• repeat process with paint (again i used a special cabinet, trim, door paint) color is Cloud Cover by Benjamin Moore
• make sure when you are painting to get a really smooth factory finish you use a FOAM roller!  when you prime you can use a brush if you want, but make sure to use a FOAM roller for the paint!

Your home improvement store should have this.  It saved my life as far as painting goes, I know you are thinking I’m being a little dramatic, but after spending countless hours fretting over brushstrokes you will know what I mean!

• you will probably have to do 3 or so thin coats of paint on the front of your cabinets doors, just make sure each coat is completely dry (follow the directions on your paint can)
• you should wait at least a week before you hang them.

We waited much, much longer, because the first one we hung did not line back up.  If you are having this problem and have purchased new hinges and are trying to line them up with the old holes you could have a problem.  We tried to find new hinges that were as close to our old ones.  Our old ones were hammered bronze with pointy tops.  I didn’t want to reuse them (they were old and flimsy), but I would highly recommend just spray painting your old ones so you don’t have any issues with rehanging them.  To make ours fit they are all butted up really close to each other and we still have to close both doors at the same time on some of them.  We have found if we sand the doors down where they touch each other we can make them fit.

See what I mean about ‘my least favorite part’?  Nothing but a headache I tell ya!

We decided to attach all the doors back but 6.  To the far right we removed a drawer and two doors and had installed our new dishwasher by our refrigerator.I have NO idea how I survived the last 2 years without you!

 I’m so in love with my dishwasher!  He has made my life soooo much easier!  I am a cooking, cleaning, machine now that I have him!  Wow!  Words don’t even…

 

I have found the best way to clean my stainless appliances is Pledge multi-surface.  I haven’t really researched a natural alternative, because I already had this on hand, but when I use it all I will search Pinterest for a recipe!  Let me know if ya’ll have found anything.  I’m sure in the future there will be tons of little finger smudges… 🙂

Besides the cabinets we removed for the dishwasher, we left cabinets open on both sides of our stove (yes, it’s new and it’s gas.  I love it as much as the dishwasher)!

This is the ‘before’ picture of the open cabinets.

Make sure to remove hardware (haven’t done that here) and prime the backs, sides, everywhere.  I didn’t have to paint the bottom of mine because we lined it with cork underlayment.

Here are some of my antique kitchen wares.  The top shelf is a bunch of items I’ve collected at yard sales, or were given to me by my grandmother.  I know the old coffee strainer on the left is from her.  Reminds me of my Paw-Paw (he had to have his coffee everyday).  The cobalt blue bottles are old Milk of Magnesia containers (I think) given to me by a sweet, sweet, lady at church here in Piedmont.  The Tea Set was given to me by another sweet lady from Tulsa, Ok.  It’s actually from Tiffany’s.  I really need to get it appraised.  I haven’t been able to find anything on the internet about it.  I picked up the blue Mason jars and tea cups (my all time favorites) at a local thrift store, along with the old timey tea tins.  I keep my fresh tea leaves in there.  I tried to put all my cookbooks on the shelf, but cookbooks are so tall!

I LOVE this side!  In case you haven’t noticed there is a definite blue/green/grey theme in our home.  We love spa/ocean/calming colors.  Reminds us of home.  I pretend those are sea gulls on that pitcher too.  There is also an obvious ‘tea’ theme going on.  I love me some hot tea on a cold morning!  English Breakfast is my tea of choice (in case you were curious).

Here is a shot of my beautiful stove!  Oh how I love this stove.  I think she is a girl, since the dishwasher is a boy.  I think that’s a great idea! 😛  Well, I sat my pink cup on the counter and forgot to move it for the shot.  😦  Oh well.  Anyways my stove is gas and has grates across the top, in the middle is a griddle size grate.  I don’t know if that is what it is called, but I put my griddle up there and I LOVE it!  There is an obvious, ugly, brown square in the middle of my kitchen.  That is where our future microwave (that matches the stove/dishwasher) is going.  We plan to make concrete countertops and then we will replace the sink with this:

What’s better than a farmhouse sink?

We also plan to lay gray floor tile and to put up white subway tile for our backsplash.  Here’s another shot:

I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier but the paint color in the open shelving is Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore.  This is the same color that we painted the dining room, hall, and will be painting the boy room.  I love it.  I think it looks good with the white/gray.  I’m not sure if the wall color on the left will stay the same.  Also, ignore the ugly crockpot.  I was making meatballs for the Halloween party.

So there you have it…so far.  Still a long ways to go, but we are done with the cabinets and I now have a stove and dishwasher so I am one HAPPY girl!  Sorry for such a long post.  It should have probably been 3!

 

My First Attempt at Street Photography (Small Town Alabama Street Photography)

Last Saturday our small town had an Octoberfest.  There were over 70 vendors!  I couldn’t believe the turn out.  It was very crowded.  I’ve always wanted to do “street photography”, but I don’t live in a big city with lots of action on the streets AND I’m super nervous about taking pictures of strangers.  Yes, I know with photography you photograph “strangers”, but not really.  You get to know them a little before and a lot during the shoot.  This is me taking pictures of people without their permission.  It feels odd.  Luckily I live in a town of “good ol’ country boys and girls” and they didn’t seem to notice mind.  I only got a few “blog worthy shots” and you might not even think they are worthy of that! lol  Anyways here goes…

 This is our bike trail (Chief Ladiga) we love it!  It’s very long, it goes all the way to Georgia.  It’s a perfect place to bike with the family or just stroll around.  It’s definitely one of the reasons we love this town!

 There was live music at the festival, and this guy just couldn’t get enough of it.  I love that he looked my way right when I took this shot.

Caught again!  This lady had a beautiful singing voice!  I really enjoyed the music, the perfect compliment to my southern style bbq pork sandwich I enjoyed.

These guys were loving their nachos!  You can see a different perspective when you get down to street level!

Lots of bbq smokers out making yummy lunch for us to enjoy.  The pulled pork sandwich was the best I ever had!

We brought this little guy home with us.  A local artist makes concrete statues and birdbaths.  I thought he’d look right at home in our flowerbeds.  I can’t decide if I want to paint each part of him,

or spray paint him all the same color.  Like this:

I think the “all over color” makes him look more modern…what do you think?

So there you have it, my first attempt at “street photography”, not really though. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nursery *Inspired*

Just so you can get a “feel” for the room, I’m going to share some photos that will give you a taste of what is to come (hopefully).

This is the light fixture I want to make to go in there.  Love the shadows and the vintage feel.

We have a really big wall on the right when you go into the room.  I hope to find an old dresser and paint it a fun bright color.  I’m thinking a darker teal, or white, or gray.  I’m going to make a changing pad and use the dresser as a changing table, plus it doubles as storage for clothes, since closets in older homes are uber small!

Yes, I know this is a sewing machine table, but I posted it because of the wall above the table.  I want to add two shelves of varying lengths and then do a picture gallery to the right of it, kinda like this:

We will use all white frames to display special art and pictures.

I also want to crochet this basket to hold the baby’s toys:

I’d love to have these clouds over the crib, which might or might not be in this room.

Over one toddler bed I’m going to make a 9inch dream catcher, over the other I’d like to have a collection of cuckoo clocks (I haven’t been able to find any anywhere)!

Our toddler bed placement will be like this:

And then of course we have to have a bookcase bench under the window.  I’ve already made the cushion and Jeff is planning on making the actual bench.  Hopefully it will look something like this:

I have to get to work sewing a strip of fabric to the bottom of my white curtains for this room and then I will take some more shots with the beds and curtains and rug in there.  Hope you enjoyed this post!  Baby rooms are my favorite to look at and dream about, could you have guessed that! 🙂

Nursery/ Baby Girl Bedroom Before and Afters

Hi everyone!  Yes I know it’s been a few weeks.  Just because I haven’t been posting doesn’t mean we have been working our fingers to the bone!  We’ve been incredibly busy over here working most nights until after 12am, or should that be morning… Anyways, we painted the bathroom, but still have some edging to do.  We caulked the bathtub.  We had the ceilings re-texture and the walls patched up in 4 of our rooms and in the hallway.  We just finished painting the nursery last night, I had to wait until this morning to take pictures.  I haven’t moved anything in there yet.  I wanted to give ya’ll a good “before” and “after” with nothing in the room first.  Jeff and I are in LOVE with this room.  The last thing we did last night and the first thing we did this morning when we woke up was go look in there!  🙂  The color is called Barely Teal.  It is a Benjamin Moore paint color that we had mixed in Clark + Kensington paint.  It took exactly one gallon and two coats (no primer).  The paint is supposed to be a primer + paint.  I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.  Our favorite local hardware store stopped carrying BM paint because the price kept going up.  The Clark+Kensington paint was about $33 for a gallon.  Which I feel is still pretty high.  I don’t think it is any better than Olympic, Glidden, or Valspar.  It seemed really thin especially for a primer + paint.  Also, it does have a strong paint odor, but says low VOC.  Anyways, that is my short review on the Clark + Kensington paint….I’d rather have Benjamin Moore, guess with all the painting I’ve been doing I have evidently become a paint snob!

Now on to our super cute baby nursery.  In past posts (if you’ve kept up with us) you know we are working our fastest to get our home in tip-top shape to be approved as foster parents.  It’s impossible to know if you will be given boys, girls, or a mix of the two.  My idea was to create a “girl room” and a “boy room”.  The boy room is larger, because I figured they need more room to wrestle and “horse-play” (did your mom every yell “no horse-playing around in the pool?)  haha, what on earth!?!  Anyways, the boys get the bigger bedroom and the girls get the tiny girly room.  The boy room will be a guest bedroom until we actually get boys and possibly put bunk beds in there.  The girl room will hold our two toddler beds and our bedroom will eventually have a crib (just in case a newborn is placed with us).

The “before” picture of the nursery was taken on the first day we ever saw this house.  I should have taken a new one when I cleaned it out to paint, but I hate taking “before” pictures.  I just want to get on with the good part, ya know?

Okay, now that the “before” is done with, feast your eyes upon this:

I can almost guarantee this old ceiling fixture isn’t staying.  It’s pretty rusty and gross, but at least you can get a good shot of our gorgeous ceilings!  This texture is called brocade.  Also, these windows are horrific and VERY old.  This is what they looked like and what they like to do when it’s colder outside than inside:

 Needless to say they will be replaced when we can scrounge up a few THOUSAND dollars.  We had a quote and it was close to $14,000 to replace all 24 windows in our house!  OH MY STARSSS!

Back to the good stuff!

 Other corner.

Here is a pretty accurate shot of the floor color.  We stained it bombay mahogany, and then topped it off with a shiny polyurethane.

Another shot of the ceiling.  The texture reminds me of icing!  I love it.  We have painted all the ceilings in our house Antique White in Semi-Gloss.  The paint brand is Better Homes by Glidden.  You can get it at Wal-Mart.  We bought 6 cans because it was clearanced down to $9 a gallon from $23.  I didn’t know how I’d feel about the gloss or the off white, but surprisingly I LOVE it… A LOT.  The shine shows off the texture better than a matte color would.

So there you have it…for now!  There will be many, many more posts about our nursery, seeing as it is our favorite room in the house!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amridge Lectures

We’ve spent the last few days at the Amridge (Jeff’s Alma Mater) Lectures  in Montgomery  We had a lot of fun and learned a lot.  We ate a lot of good food! 🙂  The first day we ate at Dreamlands BBQ.Huge portions!  The sauce was really tangy, but not very sweet.

We ate at Lek’s Railroad Thai the next day!  It was a really cool place.  We took friends with us this time.

At the lectures they had a display of the Bible from the past 2000 years.  It was so neat to see the Cuneiform, and a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Last night we got to go bowling with some old friends.  It was so much fun!  We actually had couches to lounge on while we waited our turn!

All of these pictures were taken with Jeff’s Samsung Galaxy Player.  It did pretty good.  I promise we did more than eat and play!  I just didn’t take pictures in the lectures!  It was really fun, but we are happy to be home!