Fireplace--Transformation

After remodeling the great room...the oak fireplace stuck out like a sore thumb.


Two coats of Zinsser primer by Rustolium, two coats of Behr decorator white latex leftover from the remodel, and finishing up with an antiquing rub from the craft store...

Voila:





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All I want is a hardwood floor...

2011 marks 16 years that we have been in our home. 16 years of 3 boys roughhousing, 16 years of beige carpet, 16 years of white vinyl kitchen floors. 16 years of pets, spills, more roughhousing and just plain wear and tear.

I began the year wishing for a hardwood floor. That's all I wanted. Rip out the carpet, tear up the old vinyl floor that never looks clean (unless I spent 6 hours on my hands and knees scrubbing).


I began pricing wood flooring. After a couple of bids, financially, I knew we had to consider doing the work ourselves. Finally, at Lumber Liquidators we found a great deal on beautiful Brazilian Cherry engineered flooring at only $2.17 per square foot, so we loaded up the truck with our purchase of 1100 square feet. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves in to.

Thus began the project. There was no way we were putting in a wood floor without first repainting the living room, dining room, and two story entry. This part of the project took us about a month.

Then, looking at our kitchen, I knew we had to paint or replace the old oak kitchen cabinets. My kitchen was always sadly lacking in cabinet space. The cabinets did not go all the way to the ceiling and the large bar took up a lot of space with very little usable cupboard space.


Rob's parents recently had their kitchen remodeled by Precision Woodworking of Lindon. So I worked with them to design our new kitchen.

Now everything was set in motion for the rest of the project.
(Sexiest man alive, pulling down the old cabinets!)


One of the hardest parts of the job was tearing out the vinyl floor. What a mess. We removed all of the baseboards, the carpet and about 12,000 staples from the sub floor. Then we had to rent a belt sander to level the sub floor. If you ever put in a wood floor, make sure you do that important step, or your hardwood floor will not work.

Then we began laying the hardwood floor. This part of the project took us about a month. During the project, we had so much help. We could not have completed it without help from many friends and family. Thanks to them all.


After the hardwood was finished in the kitchen area, Precision Woodworking installed our beautiful glazed white kitchen cabinets. Love, love, love them!

The entire project took another month to finish all of the details. I will chronicle other parts of the project in several later blog posts.

All I wanted was a hardwood floor...yeah, poor Rob, next time I have a small remodeling idea, I think he will run away and join the circus. He was so patient with me. Thank you Rob and to all who helped.

Here are some after photos of the kitchen remodel.







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"The Pink Chest"

My Mom assigned "clever" names to things in our house.

We had "The Yellow Thing" which was a rolling yellow cart where Mom placed her items related to her church calling (job). We had "The China Cabinet" (OK, maybe not so clever), where she kept her nice serving dishes and goblets for Thanksgiving dinners.

Then, there was "The Pink Chest". This was a plain nondescript cabinet, just off the kitchen, probably built by my grandfather Christensen. This cabinet was used as an office supply desk. For some reason, it was painted a cheerful light pink. I always loved "The Pink Chest". I loved that the door opened up and became a desk surface. I loved that there was always a roll of adding machine tape hung on one of the drawer knobs for notes and grocery lists. The same drawer which held the famous "Pink Scissors". (Yes, I still have "The Pink Scissors")

After Mom passed away and Dad remarried, my stepmother stripped off the pink paint, sanded it down and stained it to an ugly orangy wood color. The worst part was that she took some ugly plastic contact paper with giant orange flowers and glued that to the front of the chest. After Dad died, we were going through some of the things that were left, I took the chest home with me. I ripped off the plastic contact paper almost immediately but the chest has sat mostly unused in the guest room for the past several years.

Until two weeks ago...

I primed the chest with Zinsser by RustOleum. Then I painted the whole thing with a chalky white latex paint. After that I bought some antiquing rub from Robert's crafts and also picked up some sheets of scrap book paper, with the idea of decoupaging them to the front of the chest.

I rubbed on some of the antiquing paint and then finished off by attaching the scrap book pages with several layers ModgePodge.

I am so happy with the finished product. I will need to come up with a clever new name for it now. What do you think? Oh, and there is still a roll of adding machine tape hanging from the drawer inside.

Mud Room Transformation

Last week Rob and Tyler went on a scout camp out for 5 days. So I decided to remodel the Mudroom while they were gone.

My mudroom is just off of the garage. It has always been a catchall for piles of coats, papers, boots, school work and various kitchen overflow. Now that I have remodeled the kitchen (blog post coming soon) I do not have to place any items from the kitchen into the mudroom. Here are some before shots:


















>A few years ago I had the idea of making one entire wall a magnet board. It was OK for a while, but I found that we really never used the magnet board in the mudroom to it's full potential. So I removed the huge piece of sheet metal, patched the holes in the walls, repainted the room with Behr Premium Paint in Parisian Taupe. Then I patched and sanded the shelves in the mudroom and painted the shelves and the doors and trim in Behr Decorator White.


I had wanted to put doors covering the shelves in the mudroom, but since I have spent all of my budget on my kitchen remodel, I opted to hang a shower curtain over the shelves instead. I think it turned out pretty and practical.

The entire cost for this project was $20. I only had to purchase a new shower curtain rod and curtain hooks. I had leftover paint from the kitchen remodel.

I finished this project all by myself at 1:30 am the night before Rob and Tyler returned from their camp out.

What do you think of the completed project? Here are the after photos (These photos were taken with my phone. I really need to get a nice camera)

Sneak Peak

The total remodel is in the ending phases....We are just finishing the baseboards, and the last few pieces of the Brazilian Cherry Hardwood Floor. We lived without a kitchen for over three weeks. That got old quite quickly.

I will be blogging several times to show the different rooms since the remodel.

Our two story entry features a large shelf area that I have never been satisfied with. We painted the part of the wall that juts out a darker color called Sandstone. It turned out really nice and compliments the Parisian Taupe that is the main color of the first floor. Everything on the shelf was purchased from yard sales or my favorite thrift store: Deseret Industries.

Here is a sneak peak of the first completed element of the transformation.
















I am so excited to be finished with this project. Every night and every weekend has been filled with work, bruised knees, blisters and slivers. But it will all be worth it in the end.

Next week, I will reveal the completed living room.

Roll with the changes....

Changes are coming...

We are in the middle of a total transformation of our main floor. Here are a few before shots

Stay tuned for updates!

I Am A Basket Case

I have had this Ikea "Expedit" Bookcase for a couple of years. I have enjoyed using it to display various collectible items in my dining room. It's been fun, but the new me, the practical, organized me, wanted to change it up a bit.

So, for my birthday, I purchased 16 (with help from my friend Emily) baskets from Ikea. I love the new look and my kitchen is sadly lacking in cabinet space. So I will use the baskets to help store some of my kitchen linens, extra pasta and dry goods to help augment my kitchen storage.

So here are the before and after shots. What do you think? Do you have any ideas for what I could store in them?

Before: Cute and Fun!


After: Organized and useful but still pretty.

Organize My Bling!

This:



Plus this 1$ thrift store find:



Equals:

Guest Room

My guest room had become a catch-all for my treasures found at DI.

Tyler had also begun using it to store his computer parts. (he rebuilds broken computers)

Tyler and I had started calling it our "Hoarding Room".

Well, enough was enough, so a couple of weeks ago I completely cleaned, organized and re-arranged to make it a pretty space for any guests we might have.

Over the years this room has been a place of healing for several members of our family

Tony remembers staying there during the week after he broke his ankle while snowboarding.

Josh recovered from two surgeries there and lived with us for a few months while saving to buy his first Condo.

My brother Terry stayed with us for a year while making some changes in his life.

So now the room is ready in case it is needed again. I hope the room continues to be a place of healing for our family.

Hoarders

The TV show Hoarders has done crazy things to me...
I have spent the first two weeks of 2011 going through everything in my home. I have definite Hoarder proclivities. (big word, I know)

So the next few posts will chronicle my adventures in organizing and purging my house.

So today I share with you the adventures of cleaning out my kitchen pantry.

First, I need to see if all of this:




Can fit into this:




My new philosophy in cleaning and organizing has become: Do I love it? Do I use it? So I guess that can work with food too. When my son Josh lived with us for a while we ended up with a lot of organic and whole wheat based food items in the pantry. So there they have remained since he left over a year ago. Do I love it? No. Do I use it? No. So away they went into the trash.

Also, I have been trying to organize using containers. So I separated items into baskets based on their uses. Baking items in one, breakfast items in another, pastas, well you get the drift...

So here is the finished product:




This feels so good.


Tune in again next week to see what I have done in the guest room. My son Tyler and I have renamed the guest room "The Hoarder Room".