steph's stuff

Merry Christmas!

We are off to visit family in Michigan for Christmas Eve and then back home late tonight to wait for Santa!

Merry Christmas to all!

 
(credits at Designer Digitals)

 

Home Renovations: Part 4

Are you ready for the pink countertops?

Yep, pink countertops. And I lived with them for almost 9 years. And, really, I lived with them because I thought I didn't have a choice. I thought that kitchen renovations would be tens of thousands of dollars and we didn't have that kind of money. Plus, every year for the past 4 years, I've thought we were going to move. I've looked at houses, researched the market and planned out our move and, every single year, we decided against it. So, I just kept living with those pink countertops.

But no more!

Here's a picture of those countertops:

 

They weren't bright pink or shocking pink. And, at times, I convinced myself that they were more of a dusky sand with a pink tint. But, hell no. They were just pink. Light pink.

And see that hardware up above on the cabinets? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

And possibly even worse than the pink countertops was the wallpaper. Pink and blue flowers. I struggled to find any photos because I wouldn't let photos be taken that showed much of the kitchen. For years, I've staged photos to show only the kitchen table.

In this photo I've shown before, you can see part of the wallpaper in the mirror.

 

See that slight and very blurred strip of pink and blue flowers behind my head? Yep, that was the border all the way around the kitchen. The rest of the walls were a very small flower blue and pink print.

 

You can see the countertops and the lovely print on the wallpaper here. I can't believe I lived with that for almost 9 years.

So, when it came time to renovate the kitchen on a tiny budget, we knew that the wallpaper and the countertops had to go. There was no choice. And we couldn't afford to replace the cabinets and the appliances so we were hoping for a big impact with just color changes.

Eight days of wallpaper stripping later, the walls were ready for paint. (Eight days - I hate wallpaper!!!) I chose Chocolate Froth by Behr - we have this paint in our master bathroom and just love it!

 

I added in black and taupe accessories the room was immediately warmer and cozier. The photos are photos that I took in Maine and I converted them to black and white and printed them at 11 x 14.

You can see the lovely pink countertops in the foreground, though. Those were the last to go. The countertops arrived at 3 pm on Wednesday BEFORE Thanksgiving. And we were hosting Thanksgiving!!! But, we got it in.

I actually did a happy dance in my slippers outside on the front lawn when Tom drove up with the new countertops.

Here are the pink ones right before we removed them. And, yes, we did all the work ourselves - removing the sink, the old countertops, and all of the install of the new.

 

Oh, and see the new cabinet hardware? Much better!

And here's the new countertops!

 

So, on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving dinner, we emptied out the kitchen and installed countertops until 10 pm. Here, the girls are sitting on the counters to give them some weight so Tom can fasten them to the cabinets.

And, finally, the kitchen was done!!!!

  

I love the taupe, brown and black. And because the cabinets are all white, the kitchen is still a very light and bright kitchen.

 

The cabinets are not new and the appliances aren't fancy, but it works for me. :)

 

It's such an enormous improvement. Amazing what paint does for a room! And getting rid of pink countertops. :)

Cost breakdown: Wallpaper stripping tools and chemicals were $40 and paint and tools were approximately $80. The frames were $40, the new curtains and curtain rods were $100 (all from Target) - there's a second window above the sink with matching cafe curtains, and the countertops were $458. I also bought new accessories for the kitchen because we simply didn't have anything that matched and I need to stage the room to sell it. So, the new table runner, vase, napkin holder, paper towel holder and a few more odds and ends for staging cost around $100 more.

Total cost for the kitchen: $818

Cost so far: $1636

We finished the family room/den last night so more on that later this week!   

  

Christmas card outtake

I'm working on a blog post about the kitchen renovations but we're still knee-deep in the family room/den renovations (Tom is hanging curtain rods as I type this and I have to stain part of the floor in a few minutes) so I'm way behind schedule. Add in two sick kids, a holiday program for two kids, a crazy puppy, all of our furniture moved into the kitchen for 72 hours while we had carpet installed, and Christmas shopping and I'm a wee bit behind. My goal is to have the house completely done by Monday so that I can bake cookies with the kids, wrap presents and maybe even quilt next week.

I'll have the kitchen renovation and family room renovation post first thing next week but until then, feel free to laugh at our Christmas card outtake. This one did not make the final cut. LOL!

 

Documenting the holidays

I'm continuing on with my Daily December album and this year's album is the easiest I've ever done. I'm using one of Cathy's Zielske's templates from Designer Digitals and just changing up an element or two every day. It's super easy, very quick and at the end of the month, I'll have a beautiful album that only took me a few minutes every day.

I am not very patient (don't laugh, honey) at all so I chose to use an 8 1/2 x 11 template. This way, I can just print out the pages on my photo printer at home, pop the pages into an 8 1/2 x 11 binder and my album is done. :)

The first two pages in my album were posted earlier this month and here are some of the other pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are new elements added to each page and you can see individual supply lists in my gallery at Designer Digitals. However, the foundation of each page is the same and those basics are listed here with links. :)

Supplies:
Cathy Zielske's Layered Template No. 21 by Cathy Zielske (template)
From My Bookshelf Solids Paper Pack Add-on by Katie Pertiet (background paper)
Grungy Ledger Grids Brushes and Stamps No. 2 by Katie Pertiet (red ledger brushes under the photo and the journaling box)
Stems of Three: Holiday Monograms No. 1 Brushes and Stamps by Michelle Martin (small ornament holding the date)
Holiday Word Strips by Katie Pertiet (word strip above the holly)
Jingle Felt by Pattie Knox (holly and berries)
HTDT No. 13: Bending Shadows by Cassie Jones (all drop shadows)

More renovation posts coming in the next day or two. I have kitchen photos to show and the den/family room is just waiting for the carpet to arrive and then we'll be done!!

Dear Santa

Dear dh Santa,

I know you often need to get a clue some ideas for me for Christmas so I thought I'd help you out this year. I've been a pretty good mom and wife this year there are days you are lucky to have me and there's not much I really want but here are some ideas.

This baby needs a new home. I know my phone contract still has almost a year to go damn it all so it's probably not practical or feasible but it sure would be fun.

And while we're munching on stuff from the Apple store, this lovely machine is amazing why, oh why, is it so expensive - don't spend the money on it and sure would make digi scrapping so much more fun!

Oh, and my favorite camera store feel free to shop here anytime, has that wireless printer on sale!

On another more affordable note, I love this Sea Island Cotton fragrance and cream. And if you're feeling sentimental, remember this lotion from the Four Seasons?

And I know it's not fun and it's downright painful for me, but a treadmill might be fun! No, it won't be but it'd be good for me.

I'm not sure this is much help to you but I'm too tired totally and utterly exhausted is more like it from all the home renovating that I'm still doing to think of much more.

Love,

Steph

 

Home Renovations: Part 3.5

Okay, back to the living room! This was my absolute FAVORITE part of the home renovations we've done to date because it's where we spend all of our time. And it was such a huge transformation for us. And, to be perfectly honest, there were some tears and some regret mixed in. We've hated this room for so long and realizing that we could have had these beautiful hardwood floors all along really filled us with a lot of regret. We almost decided not to sell the house this year simply so we could enjoy these floors. That didn't last for more than a little bit, though. :)

So, here's some photos!

Let me remind you how the room looked before. Once again, I'm totally kicking myself for not taking before and after photos of the rooms. We just didn't think we would be renovating so much. Anyway, all I have to show you for before photos are whatever candids I could find on my computer. As you can see below, the carpeting was just totally trashed. When we moved in, the carpets were almost white. In this photo, not so much white left. The entire carpet was tan. Which matched the yucky tan walls and yucky tan trim. It was all just dirty and blah and the furniture and toys were very dominant againt all the dirty tan.

 

Here's another photo that shows you the stained carpeting. Look at the bottom of the photo and you'll see all the stains on the floor. And, as you can also see, the walls and the carpeting and the ceiling were all so blah that I had put up dark drapes to try and bring some life to the room. Unfortunately, all it did was make the room darker and smaller. By the way, I love this photo of the girls and their cousin playing Wii last year. :)

 

So, here's some afters. Again, here's the floors we found after we cleaned them. I had already painted the ceiling, the walls, and all the trim, so when we pulled up the carpeting, all we really had left to do was clean the floor and put the room back together.

 

And, even though we didn't have to pay for the wall-to-wall carpeting, we did have to buy a very large (HUGE) area rug. I really struggled with choosing a color. Our furniture was red, our woods were mahogany tones, but this room is open to the dining room and that rug is black. I was also worried about a dark rug making the room feel small again. But, in the end, I simply had to choose a burgundy rug. And I really like what it added to the room. It grounds it. And that's what I wanted. And Maggie seems to like it, too.

 

I also really liked redecorating the room using pieces we already had. We reused most everything just in different vignettes. This is one of my favorite prints of all time (it's pencil sketch of the circle in Indianapolis and I grew up playing around this monument) and I love the way it looks in this corner. And the lighter drapes look soooooo much better than the dark drapes!

 

We did have to buy one new lamp for this room but that was about the only new thing. 

 

Oh, and I did buy a couple of plants, too.

 

And here's the whole room looking from the foyer. :)

 
  

And did I ever show you the photo of the foyer? That was part of the hallway and I forgot to post this photo. I LOVE having a white door. Love it!

 

And remember how the room looked from the dining room BEFORE?

 

Here's the after from the same angle.

 

It's still a small house and it's still cramped for a family of 5 but it feels like we doubled the size of it by getting rid of that carpeting. The transformation still shocks me everytime I walk in there!

And now for the budget. This is where a lot of it went. Well, here and the kitchen. I'll post the kitchen details later this week.

Cost breakdown: The area rug was $258, the paint cost approximately $70, the floor cleaning supplies cost $40, the drapes are from Target and were only $34, the drapery rod was also from Target and was $45, the plants were on clearance for $4.99 each and I bought 2 for a total of $10, the pots for the plants were $35, the lamp was $25, a small frame from Target was $10, and a small organizer for our Wii supplies was $45.

Total cost for the living room: $572

Total cost so far: $838

Daily December

 

Full credits can be found in my Designer Digitals gallery.

I've decided to do another Daily December album. This year I'm doing just a digi album using one of Cathy Zielske's templates.  I'll write more about it next week (and finish up the renovations posts) but I totally forgot that I'm going to be out of town for part of this weekend for Emily's final Speech Team meet. So, for now, I'll post my first two pages of the album.

 

Full credits can be found in my Designer Digitals gallery.  

Back on Sunday. :)

Home Renovations: Part 3

The third room that we worked on caused us the most anxiety and the most joy so I'm going to split this up into 2 posts so that I can tell the whole story. I mentioned in a previous post that we were totally shocked to find hardwood floors under our carpeting in our dining and living rooms. Honestly, we were both totally shocked and heartbroken at the same time.

We were totally shocked because we had checked under the carpet to see what was there. We had checked years ago when the carpet became stained. We pulled up the carpeting where it connected to the kitchen and there was simply plywood underneath. We could see back a couple of inches, saw the carpet tack strips nailed to plywood and that was it. All we could see in either direction was plywood.

So, we knew when we took on this renovation, we would have to pay for new carpeting and that it would be a huge expense. And it was. It cost us $1100 for carpeting. And that was with us tearing out the old carpet on our own and us moving all of our own furniture. Otherwise, it would have been $1800. Knowing that we were hosting Thankgiving this year, I ordered the carpeting in October so that it would be installed by Thanksgiving. And I had to pay the $1100 up front.

Fast forward to the evening of November 17th - two days before the carpet was to be installed. I had already painted the dining room and the living room and the only things left to be done in those two rooms was the floors. So, Tom and I started moving furniture out of the rooms and got ready to rip up the carpet. We were practically giddy at the thought of finally getting new carpeting later that week.

And then Tom knelt down and pulled up the first corner of carpeting. I heard him say something ominous under his breath. I couldn't tell what he had said but the tone of his voice told me something was not good. I looked over at him and he was holding his face in his hands. We had joked about how beautiful hardwood floors would have been in there and that conversation came rushing back to me. My blood ran cold and I said, "No. No. Tell me that there's just plywood under there."

All I could think about was the $1100 that we had paid for new carpeting. He slowly looked up at me and said, "I don't know how we missed it but it's all hardwood floors." He was devastated and it was all I could do not to burst into tears. We had just spent $1100 that we really didn't have and now it was totally wasted. It was not a good night. Yes, we could tell the floors were going to be beautiful but we were heartbroken about the money we had spent.

And once we pulled up the carpet, we could see why we had been fooled. Where the hardwood floors ended, there was a larger than usual gap between the wood and the kitchen flooring so the first row of carpet tacks had been nailed down into plywood. There's no way we would have seen the hardwood in that location. Because it wasn't there.

I called Lowe's right away and explained what had happened. The man on the other end of the phone was very nice but he said I'd have to call back the next day and I could tell that there wasn't going to be anything they could do.

I don't think I slept at all that night. I cried and cried about the new kitchen countertops that we could have bought if we hadn't had to pay for the carpeting. I cried about how long we'd been working without a break and how I was just sick of renovations. I cried for a lot of reasons but most of them involved exhaustion, I think.

The next morning, I called Lowe's back. I had to speak with numerous different departments and a couple of managers. I explained it over and over and got a lot of sympathy but not a lot of hope. Finally, a sales manager said she would handle it herself and she would try to get me at least some of the money back - at least a couple hundred dollars since we weren't going to need their installation services. I was thrilled to get anything back. Losing $900 is better than losing $1100 was all I could think.

A couple of hours later, the sales manager called me back and this was the conversation:

Chris: "Hi Stephanie. Well, I'm sorry to tell you that I couldn't get it all refunded for you. You're going to be liable for the shipping charges but the manufacturer will take the actual carpeting back."

Me: "Okay. How much are the shipping charges?"

Chris: "$56.80. I'm so sorry I couldn't get those refunded for you."

Me: Hysterical laughter and screaming.

Chris: Dead silence then she burst out laughing. "I guess you're not upset with me then."

Me: "You just made my day! I love you!"

Chris: Still laughing so hard she can barely talk, "I'll consider this a good start to my work day then."

We hung up the phone and I screamed out loud again, called Tom and told him the news, and then cried again. Our lovely, beautiful, GORGEOUS hardwoods floors had cost us $56.80. It felt like we had won the lottery!

 

I'll post the rest of the living room photos and budget tomorrow. :)

Long live the crazy puppy!

 

All supplies can be found linked in my gallery at Designer Digitals.

Remember the crazy puppy? He was given total crate confinement for 8 weeks and nearly-total crate confinement for another 4 weeks after badly breaking his leg this past summer. (For the entire story, click on Crazy Puppy Stories at the top of my blog.)

He spent the first 4 weeks tranquilized to help him adjust to the confinement and the next 8 weeks simply being depressed. It hasn't been easy on him and it hasn't been easy on us.

But, a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated his 1st birthday and his release from his crate. He is back!

His prognosis is good, assuming that we're careful with his leg. That leg will always be more fragile than the others and he will definitely have arthritis in it. In fact, I think he probably already does. He definitely does not get up off the floor very quickly and he struggles to change positions if it involves getting up with his hind legs quickly. My guess is that he's going to struggle a lot when he's older. But for right now, he's doing great.

  

He runs around the yard with Tom chasing balls and frisbees as much as he can.

 

He's getting really, really big and strong! Look at him next to Libby - he's over 80 pounds right now from what we can tell. He has a huge head and is very broad for a Golden Retriever. His dad was enormous so we kind of expected it but it's still a surprise to see how big he's getting.

 

And he's getting snuggles. Lots and lots of snuggles. This was supposed to be a grooming session.

 

Not much grooming going on. :)

 

He still makes me crazy. He still gets into stuff and nips the kids. He still eats all of our socks and jumps on us. He still barks like mad when someone rings the doorbell and puts his huge head and tongue all over my laptop. But, he's our crazy puppy and we're so happy that he's still with us. :)   

  
 

Home Renovations: Part 2

The second part of the house that we decided to work on was the dining room. We didn't really plan on doing much in this room but it was the little things in this room that made all the difference.

I don't have very many photos of the dining room before for some reason. But I'll do my best to describe it to you. It's a small room - almost perfectly square and placed in between the kitchen and the living room. It has nice crown molding in it but the crown molding and the trim around the floor were painted the same color as the walls. Actually, the ceiling was painted the same color, too. It was as if the previous owners just took a gallon of paint and threw it on the entire room - no contrast anywhere and no thought to highlight the architectural features of the room.

And it had the most horrible gold chandelier you've ever seen. I have no excuses why we had never replaced it. I'm guessing laziness is the primary culprit.

 

And, yes, that is me out of focus sticking my tongue out at myself. :p  But I think you can see the reflection of the horrid chandelier and the walls and molding in this photo. It was all just blah.

 
 

As you can also see in this photo above (sorry it's so bad - taken long ago with my cell phone), the carpet was almost the same color as well and flowed directly into the living room carpet. So, imagine a carpet that was light, light cream in a dining room (why would you ever want carpeting in a dining room????) and used daily by 3 kids, a dog and a cat. The light cream carpet was definitely tan by the time we ripped it up.

You can see some of the lovely stains in this photo, too. (Hard to believe this was Sawyer just a few months ago!!!) Oh, and more of that lovely gold floor stripping. Ugh.

 

Our goal for this room was to simply change the light fixture and paint. The carpet was going to be replaced, too, because we were replacing the living room carpet and this was all one piece.

And this is where we hit the lottery. We fully expected to find sub-flooring under the carpeting based on a previous check of the flooring under the carpet. 

But look what we found!!!!!!!!!!

 

Gorgeous hardwood floors!!!! We were stunned - but I'll write more about the carpeting surprise in another post. :)

So, after we stopped jumping up and down with joy about the floors, we realized that the other changes that we had done really did make a huge difference.

New chandelier and new paint:

 

I painted the ceiling white, the walls Benjamin Moore China White and the molding and trim Benjamin Moore Simply White. The China White is such a beautiful neutral color - I want to use this everywhere! It provides a beautiful contrast to the bright white trim, yet is still so light and neutral. The undertones are more taupe than yellow and I like that, too. The chandelier is from Lowe's.

 

We also repurposed photos that I had in the room but grouped them together on the same wall and that made a huge difference. And, once again, the contrast between the white mats, the black frames and walls is nice.

 

I added a bright flower arrangement on the table to give the room a pop of color, too. There's some red and black arrangements and details on the buffet, also, but I thought that it needed a bit more color than that. We also kept the same black area rug that had previously been in there, as well as the sheers. (There had also been heavy burgundy drapes on top of the sheers, but I took those down to allow more light in.)

And, finally, the room in its entirety.

 

Cost breakdown: The chandelier cost $38 at Lowe's (I bargain shopped for every single thing), the paint cost approximately $70, and the decorations cost under $10 at Michaels. Everything else was repurposed or reused.

Total cost for the dining room: $118.

Total cost so far: $266.

Part three to come soon. :)