Painting the Kitchen

The end of June will be 10 years that I closed on my house. I cannot believe I have lived here for 10 years all ready. I lived in the house for over 6 years before I really started caring how it looked or did many updates to it. That is mostly in part due to lack of money but also I just didn't know what I wanted, how to do it and also I had someone else there who didn't do much around the house to help or motivate me to want to improve it.

2011 is when I finally had the freedom to start making the house the way I wanted it. The first thing that I did was paint my kitchen. This is long before my blogging days and before I really did much in regards to do it yourself so the pictures I have aren't great. They were taken with a poor quality Blackberry phone camera and not the best lighting or angles. I also didn't take good before photos so I'm going to try to look through old party photos to show what the kitchen looked like.

I knew I wanted a good red so I went to Home Depot and bought two samples. I painted squares on one part of the wall to try to figure out what red I wanted. It was my first time painting with a dark color. The best advice I can give is after the first coat, don't freak out with how uneven it looks. The second coat makes it look much better and evens it all out.

I have also learned to take your time and be very careful with taping off and going around the trim. Since this was one of my first projects I did NOT take my time and here it is 4 years later and I still look around and see spots I need to touch up. Red that bled through the tape, a spot on the ceiling or places where the tape wasn't totally straight. When you're doing such a dark color you're able to notice EVERYTHING.

Here are some before photos. This first one is from a party but it shows how there also once was wallpaper up as well.

Here is where I was trying out the two different reds. I opted for Behr Gardenia. I used their Paint and Primer in one paint. 

 

You can see I did tape off a lot but I still had a lot of touch ups to do. 

These are just the beginning photos of my kitchen redo. It has taken years and is still currently in progress. The red against the cabinets is not a look that I like.

 

So that is my updated kitchen painting photos. This was done in 2011 as I mentioned. The reason I decided to do this blog today was the "On this Day" thing on Facebook showed these photos and I figured even though it's an old project it's worth blogging about, especially since it was the first thing I really did.

I will try to do another one soon with the cabinets. That was the next thing I did in the kitchen. It really made the red look better. 

Curb Appeal - Front Porch

It is important to have nice curb appeal for your front house. It's most important if you're looking to sell your home because the first thing potential buyers see is the front of your home. I have no intentions on selling my home at this time but do hope to move in the future (5+years maybe). This means I have plenty of time to work on adding curb appeal to my home!

My last post I mentioned some of the updates I have done with the landscaping. Now that spring is here I try to do a little bit of yard work every weekend. This past weekend consisted on mostly just trimming branches and cleaning up a bit. I have two very large pine trees along my driveway that drop a lot of pine needles but also have low hanging branches. On Sunday I spent a lot of time trimming these back so they are not hanging on my car when I park in the driveway or so people are not walking into them when coming up the driveway.

On a bit of a whim, I bought a new welcome mat for the front door. The old one was ruined last summer when I was stripping paint off the front door before I repainted it. It was also about 9 years old so it was time for a new one. This one I saw at Target and fell in love because it just seems so colorful and happy.

The front of my house and the porch is lacking color and decor so the welcome mat helps. I also made a small flower planter this weekend. I've been wanting to add flowers to the porch or even right in front of the porch but planters can be so costly! I try to be frugal but my taste tends to run expensive. Some of the planters I've seen out that I like are $50+! I'm sorry but I'm not spending that sort of money on a planter.

Instead I went out and bought two cinder blocks for approximately $1.09 each! I bought a can of spray paint for $4.98 and sprayed them so they aren't just dreary grey blocks. Then I bought some flowers and potting mix and put them on the porch! I think it turned out fairly well. I need to do a quick touch up on the bottle of the blocks with the spray paint but I like the overall look.

I am thinking I may buy two more blocks and do the same thing and put it on the ground in front of the porch as well. Looking at this picture you can see a bit of the brick is crumbling in one area on the porch. I hope that having flowers in a planter will help hide that a bit. You can also see part of the welcome mat by the door in the photo.

I'm debating what to do with the chair. I could probably get it powder coated to cover the rust. When I had my big Newfoundland dog, Hobie I would sit on the porch in the chair and read and he would lay on the porch with me. Now that I don't have a dog, I feel odd sitting on my front porch. I'm considering removing the chair but I'm not sure if I should replace it with some sort of decor or just leave the front porch free of clutter.

Once I figure out exactly what I plan to do with the porch I will take more photos! Until then, that's my small update on curb appeal!

Spring time means yard work!

Two years ago I ripped out all of the shrubs in front of my house. They were the ugliest things ever. Around the same time I was doing that, a good friend was having her home demolished and rebuilt due to a fire. She was kind enough to let me come and take some of her cement blocks and also flowers from their garden that were going to to tramped on and ripped up.

We spent a long day digging up lilies, tulips, hostas and ferns and then replanting them at my house. They looked great the first year and also last year. This year they haven't all come up but I've decided that I want to add a few more. I'm thinking about some black eyed susans. I haven't gone to by them yet so I will update once I do this. 

Here's a bit of how it was before, after and now:

 As you can see in the second picture, my mailbox is on the railing of my front porch. Originally it was on the house but the mailman refused to deliver my mail after a while because I had a loose railing. I moved the mailbox to the front railing and removed the hand rail to go up the steps. The problem with this is that the mail would always get soaked if it was raining. Yes it has a lid on it but 9 times out of 10 it didn't close all the way with the mail in it.

Last weekend when I was adding the new fresh mulch, I installed a new mailbox. It's a regular type of mail box that you would see at end of your driveway if that is how your city did mail. I like this one so much more and I'm excited to also decorate it for the holidays and whatnot.

As you can see from the picture above, I have a second layer of blocks and added some fresh mulch. The mailbox is in and now I have a lot of clean up to do. Tons of pine needles are all over. I'm not sure if I will get to it this year but I have a large area next to the driveway that has pine trees that need to be trimmed, leaves that need to be raked and possibly mulch put down there.


Stay tuned for more photos later this spring/summer with more flowers and not just boring old mulch!

Small updates

I haven't been working on any big projects as of late. My last post I mentioned wanting to build a kitchen cart. That is slowly in process. I bought wood from Lowes last week and had them cut it down to size. However, one of the boards was really warped and not flat so I need to buy a little more.


Back in 2007 I came home from school one Saturday to find my bathroom was completely gutted and torn apart by the guy I was dating at the time. He wanted to redo the bathroom because we had a few loose tiles. This turned into, no tile, no drywall, no tub, sink, toilet, etc. Then it took forever to be put back together again. To the day he finally moved out, he never completed it. Long story short, this was a BIG issue and I won't get into all the drama there.

One of the random things left undone was a little cubby (best way to describe it) that he tiled instead of just doing flat dry wall. I never knew how to grout so it just sat there ungrouted. Once I discovered SimpleGrout the pre-mixed grout that I used for the kitchen floor I realized I could finish up some of the grouting in the bathroom! I had a little left over so I did that this weekend. I did not have enough to complete the project but it's amazing how much better it looks. I may hate how my bathroom looks due to the drama that it took getting it there but one day it will be 100% finished and I will be happy. Here is a quick during and after picture of the grout.

I started to grout before I took a picture so I snapped a quick one after I had started. This was a bit more difficult than the floor just because of gravity. Small pieces kept falling and pushing it into the cracks was a bit more time consuming but it went pretty well. I still have to do the top part and the sides of the cubby, along with a small strip of tile near the tub.

The other small update this week is I bought a new kitchen table! My kitchen is very small and I don't have a dining room so finding a kitchen table the right size has been difficult. The table that I have been using for the almost 10 years I've been in my house was actually there when I moved in. It always worked but was never my style and since I've been doing updates it's been looking more and more shabby and out of date. I think it's from the 90s. Little things like changing your table can make such a difference in looks. You don't always have to spend a lot of money or do big repairs to give your room a makeover.

Odds and Ends

I don't have any big home make over projects going right now. In fact, I'm in the brainstorming mode. There are a lot of different things that I'm researching and trying to figure out what to do.

Today is the first day of spring so I'm starting to think outdoor things. I will do a post soon about ripping up old pushes from the front yard and my starter landscaping that I did two summers ago. However, I want to add to this year with building it up higher and also adding more flowers to it. We also received a really awesome outdoor propane fireplace/pit as a wedding gift last fall. We were unable to use it before it got too cold, so we're excited to use it this year. It is on our back porch which is where I think it will stay. I do want to do more in the backyard as well. I have plans to trim back the trees and maybe remove a couple of scrubs. One by our bedroom window always has birds in it and they make so much  noise and also then sit on the window sill and peck at the screen and have made holes in it!


We also have a new mailbox that I want to install in front of our porch. It still is a little cool out to be doing anything but I'm thinking, planning, and researching what I want to do.

There are a few interior projects I'm also thinking of. I've been wanting a new kitchen table for some time and I think we may have finally found one. The spot for our table is small and it is difficult to find one that fits well but we may have found a small affordable one. It is not high quality but I think for now it will do. I also have been wanting to replace our portable dishwasher with a kitchen cart. The dishwasher does not work so other than a great counter top next to the stove it's useless. We are missing out some great storage space due to this. My plan is to build a kitchen cart. 

The problem with this is I have no tools and no experience! That is where Pinterest, Home Depot, and friends/family come in. I found a style that I think would work very good in that space. Here is what I hope to make:


I love that there are shelves so I can store things such as containers of flour, sugar, etc. It looks like it could be pretty basic and not difficult to do. The problem I am having is getting a good drawing down with measurements. I can paint pictures and do colored pencil landscape drawings but for the life of me I can not draw a darn kitchen cart! 

Hopefully I'm able to make this work somehow, some way soon though. 


I'm also still hoping to finish off the spare room/Dan's room. We need a large shelving unit hung, light fixture install and either an old English D painted directly on the wall or onto a canvas. It will baseball/Detroit Tigers
themed room. 

There are a lot of other big projects (redoing the basement) I'd love to do but those may not happen this year.

Cord/Cable Organization!

Hi there readers! We have not had internet for about 5 days at home. I've been having issues with Wow Cable off and on for a few months now and after calling, having technicians come out on different occasions I'm hoping it's finally fixed. They ran all new wires outside.

That's not what this post is about though. This past weekend I didn't do any big projects regarding home makeover but I did do some cleaning and organizing.

I have a TV in the bedroom and due to the layout of the room and plugs, I've had a power strip and the cords just laying on the floor. My husband has to navigate his way around these cords and sometimes has almost tripped over them!

I found this really great product on Amazon called a Cable Corral. It comes in two sizes (large/junior) three colors (black, white, silver) and also they have two models. They have one that screws under your desk but they also have what is called a 2 way that allows you to choose to screw it under a desk or onto a wall.

I chose the white two way model. With the exception of the TV stand that you can see a little of in the photo, my furniture is white. I do have plans to possibly sand and repaint that one day so that's why I went with the white color. I chose to screw it onto the wall just to have it up and out of the way because there is nothing in the corner anyway.

Here it is hanging! It was super easy to install. It came with a little sticker thing and 4 screws. I only needed 2 screws since I used it as the wall mount. The sticker part you put onto the cable corral where you put the screw and then stick it on the wall and just screw right through the sticker. This way you aren't trying to line up the holes or holding one end while doing the other. It sticks onto the wall (without the power strip in it) allowing you to just screw it to the wall.

Now my husband won't be tripping over wires and they are out of the way! I am planning on buying the large size one to bring into my office at work. We have had floods a few times and I always worry about my power strips being on the floor.

I highly recommend purchasing one of these! I think they are also sold from Cableorganizer.com and Techdekproducts.com

Painted Front Door

My house is about 50 years old. I think the door may be the original door. It is a heavy duty wood door. It has always been a dirty off-white color on both the inside and the outside. In certain areas the paint was cracked and even was peeling off a bit.

This of course gave me the idea that it would be fairly easy to strip the paint off and repaint it. Due to the areas of cracked and peeling paint, I didn't want to just add another paint onto it. I researched and found Citristrip Paint Remover had good reviews and the fumes were not as toxic as other paint removers. Since it was my front door and I knew I wouldn't have time to do it all at once, I decided to leave the door on the hinges when I first started off. I applied it to the interior of the door and let it sit.

After about 30 minutes it started to bubble up. I was able to scrape off the paint pretty easily. It was a tedious process and it did take a few applications but it was not too bad.

 I then started on the front of the door. Woah, what a disaster! The Citristrip did NOTHING. It barely bubbled up. It turns out that the front of the door had many layers of paint and due to being exterior, the sun baked the paint on for years.

I went back to Home Depot and bought Klean-Strip which is a stronger paint stripper. This required wearing a mask as the fumes were strong. Gloves were required for both Citristrip and Klean-Strip but with Citristrip I didn't wear them. With Klean-Strip if it got on my skin it burned. So definitely wear thick gloves if you ever use that product.

After a lot of layers of paint stripper, a lot of hours of scraping, I was asking what I got myself into and regretting the choice to do this. It was definitely a lot worse than I thought it would be. It was also a mess using both products. The paint becomes wet and almost gummy. Nothing I seemed to do worked well and since it has the panels, getting into the corners and grooves was very difficult.

Finally I was able to borrow a sander from a co-worker. We took the door off the hinges and while wearing a mask so I wouldn't be breathing in dust, I got to work sanding it.That is what did the trick and finally got the paint off.

Once all the paint was off, I was able to prime it and paint it! That was the easy part. I also decided to replace the old door handle and got a  more updated door handle as well.

Now for the final picture. I chose teal for both the inside and the outside because I wanted a pop of color. The inside of my house is very neutral with beige walls and beige and black furniture. The teal brightens it up.

Looking at the photo, I realize this was taken with only one coat of paint on the door. It did require a second coat and looks much better and even. Here is a closer view with two coats of paint. From a distance it looks nice. I am a perfectionist and just could not get some of the old paint up completely in the grooves so if you look closely in person you see the imperfections but I'm learning to not focus on those.