March Resolutions: How'd I Do?

I completed all of my March goals! 

Finish Divergent

It was ok. I'm not chomping at the bit to read the other two though. And I haven't seen the movie. So I guess that says a lot about my overall feelings on the book. 

Only Read "Fun" Blogs (e.g. Home Improvement, Design) on the Weekends

I did this and it was hard. But I do believe it helped me to be more productive. Now that it's April, I've slipped back into my bad habit of reading every day. However, I did clean out my blog reader in a major way so I only have a few in there now. It keeps my blog reading time way down. Good stuff. 

Build Something with My Kreg Jig

I built this towel rack, and IT IS AWESOME.

Sprucing Up the Entryway

One of my January resolutions was to make our entryway look nicer. It wasn't hard considering it looked extremely bare. We've lived in this house for over 4 years, but I still had never really done anything in there.

Note: the photos in this post are not good. The entryway is small and has no light, and I use a point-and-shoot camera. The wall color looks different in the after pics, but I didn't paint it radioactive yellow; that's just the terrible lighting.The wall color in the before pics is much more accurate (it's like very creamy coffee). 

Here are the before pics:

And now the afters:

I re-did that little table/chest, and I actually took some before photos, so I will do a post on that later this week. All in all, I only spent about $50 doing this room. I spent $30 total on the square frames for the beautiful William Rice prints from my 2013 calendar, and about $20 total on those green cloth drawers in the closet and the little chalkboard labels for them. I already had the framed Keep Calm and Carry On print, so I repurposed it in here (it had hung in our living room since 2010, so I thought the living room could stand for a change and I like the print in here). The clock was in our living room also, but we got a new one for Christmas, so I re-purposed this one. Chris doesn't like it in here; we are agreeing to disagree while keeping it in here :-) We have had the rug for years; it was left in our very old, very used Volvo when we bought it in 2006, and it's been with us every since (though the Volvo no longer is).

Other little additions to this room: oil-rubbed bronze (ORB) hooks inside the closet door for guests' purses, and I ORBed the switch plate as well. I'd still like to ORB the hinges and doorknob of the closet door, but it's gonna be a bit of a pain because the hinges were painted over, so I'm gonna have to clean them off with mineral spirits and I just haven't felt like doing that. Another project for another day.

I love this little makeover and I feel much better about guests walking through our front door now!

Laundered

It has been almost a year since I began my journey to update the laundry room and kitchen. Whoa. And I'm still not done! But I'm thisclose when it comes to the laundry room. Check out these progress pics to see how far it's come (you can see the Before {here}):

So much that I love here in this pic. The pedestal that {we built} for our washer and dryer.
The updated hardware on the cabinet doors. A peek at {the curtains I made}. 

View of mainly the same stuff, different angle. I love those bright, colorful curtains. I also love having our brooms/mops hung and having the vacuum cleaner live right there. It didn't really have a very good permanent home prior to updating this room. The doggie door is not new (Chris and his friend Jim installed it back in 2011), but I can't rave enough about the awesomeness of having a doggie door. 

The pocket door to the left goes into our kitchen. The door directly in front (with the chalkboard) goes into our garage. It's our main coming and going door. We hung hooks for bags, purses, brief cases. Some of them I bought new at Lowe's; some of them (like the big ones the brief cases are hanging on) were old planter hangers I found in our garage from the previous owners. They have been really helpful in keeping the room organized. 

A better view of the broom hanging station/cleaning supply shelf. You can also see just a few of the many hats that Chris has. We really needed that coat and hat hanger! Chris's friend from work, Hammer, made us the cowboy boot key holder. The green bar on the wall was an old towel bar that I found under the cabinets above the washer. It had been there from the previous owners. I removed it, cleaned it up, and spray painted it that green that I'm loving right now ({Valspar Apple Gloss}). Little baskets hang from it on S-hooks and keep extra sunglasses, cell phone arm bands, and gloves in the winter. 

I guess I maybe should have staged this better and taken most of this stuff off so that it was only sparsely filled, but I really wanted this reveal to be realistic. This is what we're using this stuff for! 

Oh, the command center. I love it. I talk more about creating it {here}, so I'll just point out that the fabric background matches the curtains, then reiterate how much I love it. And how cool dry erase crayons are.

The drying bar! How did we live without it before??? That alien-looking blue thing is the {Pressa drying rack} from Ikea. It's kind of awkward, but it's really nice for indoor drying of socks, tee shirts, etc. The space below the hanging bar is still waiting to be properly finished. I want to put some kind of clothes-folding table there. 

I really, really like this chalkboard. We had a ceiling light in our kitchen when we moved in; the leafy metal thing (at the time, it was finished in oil-rubbed bronze) was the decorative frame around the light fixture. Well, the fixture flat out died, no bringing it back from the dead. So we removed it and replaced it with a ceiling fan (I don't care what blog people say, when you live in the South, ceiling fans are the best!). But I knew this beautiful frame could be re-purposed  so I kept for a couple of years. Lo and behold, I decided I wanted a chalkboard on the door and this was the perfect frame. I spray painted it with Valspar Apple Gloss. The chalk board it just a circle of {Valspar chalkboard paint} applied directly to the door (three coats). 

I got these little mesh baskets at Tuesday Morning and the wooden letters at Hobby Lobby
(spray painted with {Rustoleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover in Satin Lagoon}). 

This is an {extra-large open-top L.L. Bean Boat and Tote bag} that I got years ago (the color is Marigold, but they don't appear to offer it anymore). We keep all of our clothes that need to be dry-cleaned in here. And they pretty much never leave because we rarely take things to be dry-cleaned. But the bag is pretty!

So.....here is a run-down of what we did to the laundry room:

• Added planking to top half of wall
• Trimmed out planking (with some family help)
• Added chair rail (with some family help)
• Painted planking, cabinets, and ceiling
• Painted drywall
• Painted trim
• Added new hardware
• Lined shelves
• Built washer dryer pedestal
• Built cleaning supply shelf/broom rack
• Added hat rack
• Added purse/bag hooks
• Created chalkboard on door
• Created command station
• Added baskets to hold everyday stuff
• Added drying/hanging rod
• Made and hung curtains

And here's what we still have to do:

• Fix cabinet clasps in a couple of cabinets
• Touch up some cabinet paint
• Clean up white paint lines around window mullions
• Build clothes folding shelf
• Prettify dog food container
• Spackle and paint mistake holes
• Get pretty rug
• Get pretty light fixture
• Bring light switch panels out so they're flush with walls (now that paneling has made walls thicker)
• Organize medicine et al in cabinets

And maybe eventually we'll:

• Build better/prettier cleaning supply shelf (something more like {this})
• Maybe re-paint walls a crisp white (??)
• Update doors on cabinets to something more architecturally interesting and newer/cleaner

So that's where we're at right now. Progress. Major progress. And our first real DIY project. It pretty much taught me that Chris is good at building stuff, but doesn't really enjoy it. And this is supposed to be fun, not a chore for him. So I'm trying to do projects that I can mainly complete on my own so he can use his very limited free time to do stuff that is fun and relaxing for him. But I'm so glad that we've learned that pretty early on and didn't rip out our kitchen or something. Learning on a relatively tiny project like the laundry room has been just fine!

Welcome February!!

Stunning weather this weekend means extra-long Saturday walk with the puppies.
We walked down to the trail and then all the way down and back. 

That resulted in lots of steps! Big accomplishment!

The spoils of my trip to the Goodwill. I got that woven chevron blanket for $1.99! And Hilary's autobiography for $1.29, which turned out to be a very apropos purchase because apparently she retired as Secretary of State?!? What rock have I been living under that I just found out about that this evening!

Got some good lovey-snuggles in with the puppies, very important stuff. 

Oh, and I finally finished the "command center" in our laundry room. My board was inspired by {this design}, but I used foam board covered in fabric
and mounted into a $1.99 frame from Goodwill instead of plywood. 

{McKenzie} provided a couple of printables with her tutorial,
which I gratefully used on my board. 

Did you know that you can write on glass with dry erase markers (and {dry erase crayons}) and it wipes right off when you need it to? These frames were a dollar each from Dollar Tree. 

One of the snacks I made for the Super Bowl were these {PB&J Thumbprint cookies} from Emma at A Beautiful Mess.
She used blackberry jam in hers; these ones are made with strawberry. Delish. 

Got some good Parcheesi playing in before the Super Bowl.
These crazy Texans call it something else, but it's the same game ;-)
And this particular version is home-made and vintage-y, and I love it. 

Clydus needs a mani-pedi.

Major Kitchen Organization Overhaul Update: Washer/Dryer Pedestal Has Been Built!

Whew! That took a looong time! We started the washer/dryer pedestal in May and we're technically not finished (I'm still putting the finishing painting touches on it, but we'll save that for another post, shall we?). It didn't need to take that long. And, actually, the part I'm posting about today didn't; it only took a few hours one Sunday. It's been the painting and trim and all that stuff that has gone sloooowly. 

The main reason why the project crawled along at a snail's pace was because the pedestal can't be brought in until the wall behind the washer and dryer is finished and painted, so there's no sense worrying too much about getting it done in a hurry. But now that there is a visible (albeit faint) light at the end of the Wall Treatment Tunnel, I wanted to get the pedestal all finished up so it's ready when the walls are done. I took some pictures of the progress. Like I said, the final, finished painted project will be discussed in a forth-coming post. 

Our pedestal was inspired by Sausha's pedestal that we found on Ana White's blog.

We started with 2 x 4s, 2 x 6s, 4 x 4s (treated)...

...and a big ol' piece of 3/4" treated plywood.

A few hours of this...

Got us this...

...then this...

....and, finally, THIS!

Ok, I know this isn't all that impressive, but it was a super big deal to me. Our first big "furniture" carpentry project!

I'll probably finish the rest of the pedestal this weekend, so stop by again for a final reveal :-)

Major Kitchen Organization Overhaul Update 7: Paneling is All Up!

The walls of my laundry room are covered in horizontal paneling!!! 

Big Tex and I finished putting up the panels this afternoon. In total, it took six packages of EverTrue Plank Paneling. At $10.97 a package, that's a pretty darn cheap wall treatment! Thanks to Karen at the The Quaint Cottage for leading me to these super affordable and easy-to-work-with panels. 

The project is far from done. The panels still need to be trimmed out, caulked, primed, and painted, but this is still a huge step. It feels like a major milestone and I'm super psyched :-)

Salvation Makeover: Magnetic Makeup Drawer-Shelf

I took a break from kitchen organization this weekend and actually finished a project! And it was one that I can really use, because my bathroom is out-of-control messy. It's a little better now though! ;-)

Using an old drawer that I got at the Habitat ReStore, I created a magnetic makeup shelf for corralling all my makeup and keeping it accessible to me. I wore eyeshadow that's not taupe to work today because I was able to get my hands on my other colors! Read on for the details and how to.

A couple months ago, my friend Erica (check out her blog here!) and I went to the Habitat ReStore on our lunch break, and Erica had one of her brilliant ideas: take one of their million old, mismatched drawers and make it into a shelf! I immediately fell in love with the idea and decided to take it one step further. I had seen this framed magnetic makeup board on Pinterest and wanted to incorporate that concept into my drawer-shelf. 

I scrubbed it down and removed the probably 30-year old contact paper lining the bottom. Then, using my handy-dandy birthday sander, I got to work sanding and smoothing.

I filled in the holes where the pulls had been, then re-sanded after the spackle was dry. 

I asked Big Tex to remove the little lip that hung over the bottom (now back) of the drawer. That way it would lay flush against the wall once I hung it up. 

I sprayed it with three coats of Valspar Premium Spray Paint (I think the color is called Exotic Sea). I sanded lightly between coats. Then I sprayed it with a coat of clear acrylic sealer. 

I cut out a piece of this cute fabric I got on sale at Hobby Lobby and Mod Podged it to the bottom of the drawer-shelf. Then I totally dropped the ball on my photo documentation and forgot to take pictures of the metal I put on the inside back of the shelf. It was decorative sheet metal that I got at Hobby Lobby. It was really easy to work with (I was able to trim it with scissors, but I would use tin snips if I did it again because it was hard on my hands to cut it with scissors). I hot-glued the metal onto the back of the shelf but, as usual for me, the hot glue didn't really work, so I had to rely on the screws that I used to hold the shelf on the wall to also keep my metal on (no biggie really, the screws had to be there anyway!). 

Ta-Da! My finished makeup shelf! I got a roll of trimable, adhesive magnet to put on the back of my makeup, but supplemented the adhesive with super glue because the adhesive backing on the magnet is not very strong. But now those little magnets aren't coming off my makeup and it's living happily on the shelf!

I also Mod Podged some scrapbook paper onto two little tin cans (I've become a hoarder of tin cans and it finally paid off!), and put my makeup brushes, lipsticks, etc. in them. And there's plenty of room on the inner and top shelf for my perfumes and pretty smelling lotions and sprays! 

I love my new makeup shelf! What do you think?

Salvation Makeover - Quick Hit

Shower Caddy Under the Kitchen Sink

This shower caddy didn't fit quite right in our shower, but it's perfectly good. So I spray painted it and hung it under the kitchen sink to hold sponges and stuff.

To keep it from swinging when the door is opened and closed, I secured it with these nylon fasteners (I found them in the "Hard-To-Find" bins in the hardware section of Lowe's).