Uh Oh...

When we moved in our front hallway wall had very stubborn wallpaper on it that only came off with a sander. After several coats of spackle the wall was smooth again and ready for paint. It took 3 coats of paint to cover up any signs of where the wall paper was. I was so excited to hang pictures on the wall and cross this off my to do list. After I finished the 3rd coat I noticed about 10 minutes after I finished that the wall was bumpy. I looked closer and realized that there were air bubbles. Weird, so, I popped the bubbles, sanded them down, spackled again and re-painted. I thought I was done...but I wasn't, the bubble re-appeared! So, I popped them again and soon realized that the paint never stuck to the dry wall! I could peal the paint off the wall in large strips, I just about cried because I was so mad! So, I peeled all the non-sticking paint off the wall, put a strip in a zip lock and headed to Lowe's. The paint people there were puzzled and mixed me up a new gallon of paint. Ben went back with a thicker spackel and smoothed out the wall, again. So, this weekend we will be painting the wall for probably the 5th time...let's hope the 5th time's the charm!

Appliances Part 2

Last week we installed a new microwave. This week we finally installed our new stove! We weren't sure we could fit it in the PT Cruiser so we decided to borrow my parents suburban and trailer. So, after a car switch with my parents we headed off to the store to pick up or stove. When we got there Ben was talking to the clerk who loaded our stove on the trailer and said that we had considered using a PT Cruiser to pick up the stove. The clerk goes "oh, we load stoves into those all the time! They're our favorite vehicle because they're so versitle!" Good thing my parents are only 20 minutes away...

It had been raining on and off all day and it hadn't rained for at least an hour so we thought we were in the clear... we were wrong. As we pulled out of the parking lot it began to rain, not just a drizzle a full out down pour! Thankfully the stove box was pretty thick so the stove didn't get wet.

Once we got home it was pretty quick getting the new stove in and the old out. So now we have a stove that no longer requires a lighter to start the burners, it's got 5 burners, 1 that can boil a gallon of water in 7 minutes, it has a convection oven and a warming drawer.

Now cooking is going to be so much better!

Stove before

Stove After

Let there be light...

Awhile back we put some rope lights above our cabinets to provide some nice "mood lighting." There was one problem with this, in order to turn the lights on/off we had to run the cord down the side of the kitchen cabinet and plug/unplug it every time.

After some thought Ben decided to try and wire the light cord into a light switch. Out came an outlet in the kitchen and in went a light switch/outlet combo. Ben drilled a hole in the top of the cabinet and tried to run the light cord through the wall...one problem, the cord was too big and the space that we had to fish it through was too small.

Ben then says to me, "I think I'm going to have a drill a small hole on the other side of the wall to fish the cord through." I'm thinking a hole the size of a quarter isn't too bad, and would be fairly easy to patch. So I said "alright, that's cool". Soon the sound of power tools fills my kitchen and in a few moments the switch is installed and the lights above the cabinet can now be turned on with the flick of a switch.

I decided to check out Ben's handy work and see if I could take care of the small hole in the wall...errr what I thought was a small hole. See below for what it actually turned out to be... thank goodness I still have a large tub of Spackle!

New Appliances!

We've been wanting to get a new stove and microwave since we moved in over 6 months ago. Every time I want to use the stove I have to light the burner with a lighter because the starters are broken. So, thanks to some amazing holiday sales we are proud owners of a new microwave and stove! However, there was one small glitch, there was never a microwave above our stove, just a fan. Well, thankfully I married a handy man! After some careful cutting and reconfiguring of the cabinets Ben was able to make it look like there had always been a microwave above our stove. Hooray for more counter space and a working stove!The picture above is what the stove area looked like when we moved in.

The picture below is what it looks like now. Next project is to shorten the doors and put them back up!

Kitchen Cabinets

Our kitchen cabinets are probably one of our least favorite things about our house. The only thing we like about them is that they are spacious and they were custom made, meaning we do have some unique storage options. (i.e. all the upper cabinets connect in the inside)

Otherwise the varnish is terrible, it's got a yellow hue to it and they are finished in a REALLY high gloss and thick lacquer. The cabinets had these 1980's looking handles on them that had clearly never been cleaned since the house was built 23 years ago. I'm sure back in the day they were "hip" and "modern" but now they're just ugly.

There's about 30+ handles in the kitchen that we wanted to replace. After some shopping around we found some inexpensive and simple silver handles that had a more modern appearance.

But now, I'm stuck with 30 ugly cabinet handles that nobody (not even Craig's list) will take for free...perhaps I'll just donate them...

Before (above)
After (below)

The Amazing PT Cruiser

Visits to Lowe's and Home Depot have become a regular part of our week now. After Ben finished the attic stairs we needed to put down some plywood for the flooring so we could expand the storage space. So, off to Lowe's we went. We loaded our cart up with 4 pieces of plywood and 4 pieces of dry wall and 2 longer pieces of 2x4's. After we checked out the cashier asked if we needed help loading the items onto our vehicle, we said "sure". So the cashier followed us outside and asked "so, where's your truck?" Ben and I pointed straight ahead at the PT Cruiser. The cashier's eyes got wider and he finally said, "really? you're going to put this on that? *pauses* ummm... OK..."

After they finished loading up the car I turned around to bring the cart back inside and noticed that we had attracted a few bystanders who simply could not believe we could fit all that on top of the PT Cruiser, one person even took a picture of the car. It was pretty funny.

Stairway to Storage Paradise

Over the years Ben and I have acquired a wide assortment of things, most of which was stored at my parents house since we only had 4 teeny tiny closets in our apartment. When we moved into our house we needed somewhere to store those forgotten items. Our entire basement is finished, so that wasn't an option for storage of random furniture and Ben's assortment of computer parts and boxes for his company. So, Ben built in the garage what I called the stairway to storage paradise. Storing items in the garage attic has never been easier!

If only we had a Fire Place

The picture above is of the yard before the tree was cut down.

The picture below is of our good family friend Pete cutting down the tree.

According to our backyard neighbor when they built our house the builders just left pre-existing trees. In most cases that'd be quite nice, since the trees would be more mature. But...in our case it's not so nice, since the trees they kept were scraggly and drop sticks all over the yard.

Over time several of the trees have died and we were afraid of having some of the larger branches fall on the house. So, we called up "Stehouwer tree removal and Company" and tackled our 2nd tree removal since owning the house.

Unfortunately we have 2 more trees to take down this Spring... on the bright side, we'll have less leaves and sticks to rake in the fall next year...

How Many Things Can you Cram in a Bathroom?

The carpet in the upstairs was in pretty rough shape when we moved in. Each room had a different color, texture and style of carpet. It looked like a patchwork quilt gone wrong!

When the new carpet got installed all the items that had been put upstairs had to be crammed into the bathroom. I had no idea we had such a spacious bathroom!

More Awkward Colors...

The people that built our house must have really like purple and blue because 2 of the bedrooms were this horrible lavender with light blue carpet, lavender vinyl mini blinds and matching ceiling fans. It was a decorating nightmare.

So one fine Spring Saturday we rounded up my parents, brother and friend and gave the upstairs a fresh coat of paint.

The picture below is of the ceiling fan that came from one of the bedrooms. When you turned it on it wobbled to and fro, and only 2 of the lights worked, one light fixture was cockeyed and was dangling from the fan. It wasn't mounted correctly and the first time Ben walked through the room he whacked his head on one of the blades, the fan came down shortly after that.

Master Bedroom

The picture above is of the master bedroom when we moved in. It was painted in this really awkward teal, with a country border, lacy curtains and matching faded vinyl blinds, and to top it off a ceiling fan. This wasn't just any old ceiling fan, it was painted to match the teal and let's just say if it was turned on you didn't want to be near it, it wasn't the most stable.

So, down came the curtains, fan and wallpaper and up went a fresh coat of paint.

The picture below is of the new wall color, it's a smoky blue color.

Moving Memories

While going through some pictures I came across this one of when we were moving our stuff to our house. Just goes to show one of the many things you can do with a PT Cruiser!

Timber!

The picture above is what the front yard looked like when we moved in. It was terribly overgrown with an odd assortment of bushes and shrubs. The single tree in the yard off to the left of the planter was completely dead, and had been for several years according to our neighbors. (it's the tree that looks like a fork in the picture above)

So, one fine summer day my awesome parents came over with their arsenal of tree and lawn tools and helped us remove our dead tree.

Upstairs Bathroom Transformation

Since we haven't tackled the main floor living room or bathroom/laundry room yet, I'm going to move on to the upstairs. I'll begin with the upstairs bathroom transformation.

The picture below is what it looked like when we moved in:

We then proceeded to tear out the carpet and laminate, took down the floral border that ran the upper perimeter of the room. After that, we put in new tile in the entire bathroom. Below is what it looks like now.

Hallway Make Over

Let's continue the renovation tour by moving to the front hallway on the main floor. When we moved in the hallway had this cutesy country house border.

We invested in some quality wallpaper remover and began what we thought would be a quick job of removing wallpaper. We were wrong, so incredibly wrong. I scraped, scored, scrubbed and saturated that wallpaper with the wallpaper remover gel, but the country house border wouldn't budge. It came off in 1/4 inch pieces, it was miserable. I decided to go find Ben and see what his thoughts were on the wallpaper situation. His solution was a sander. I must say, it was successful and with the help of a large container of Spackle you'd never know we sanded the wallpaper off the wall.


(above: if you look to the far left you can see evidence of my scraping, the section above the light switch was removed with the sander.)

The picture below is what the hallway looks like now; painted in a pale yellow.

The Kitchen Before and After

The top picture is of the kitchen when we moved in. The fluorescent light was so big and obnoxiously bright! (we eventually removed the light) It's hard to see in the picture, but there is a wallpaper border at the top that has little country houses on it.

The bottom picture is of the eating area just off of the kitchen. The country house border continues through the eating area and at one point (we removed it the day after we had possession of the house!) there was a border at the bottom of the wall too...ick.
The light was hideous, the globes had ugly flowers engraved on them and the fan spun, well at the lamest speed ever. High was more like low, and it squeaked really bad! Pretty much the fan was worthless.
As you can see in the picture below, we took down the plate rail, spent hours and hours removing the wallpaper border and added a pendent light above the sink. The new color is called Tuscan Red. We also added rope lights above the cabinets, so at night it adds a nice romantic glow to the kitchen at night.
The picture below is what happens when you set a paint can on the table with the lid not on all the way. I was in a hurry and lifted the paint can to move it but didn't get a good grip on the handle. it slipped out of my hands, fell off the table and when it hit the floor the lid pop off and the paint went everywhere! So, new flooring for the eating area/kitchen is in order!

The top picture is what our house currently looks like.
The bottom picture is what our house looked like when we moved in.

All we did was painted the brown trim/garage door white and painted the shutters red. Several of our neighbors thought we had resided the house too, but we hadn't, the yellow just stand out more now with the white trim.