Help Me Decide

I want to tackle a fairly simple project this weekend - painting our front door.  Right now our front door doesn't look very inviting.  It is the same color as our house and is covered up by a storm door.  To add more interest and make it look inviting, I'm going to paint the door a fun color.  Problem is, I can't decide which color. I *think* I have narrowed it down to two colors, but my mind changes about once a minute so a minute from now I might be back to 6 color choices!

Here is our house

And here is what I have it narrowed down to:


Yellow

or green

What do you think?  Leave a comment and help an indecisive girl out!

Backyard Fire Pit

Dan has wanted lots of things one thing since we moved in to this house - a fire pit.  We had discussed our projects agenda right when we moved in and we had decided that landscaping/outdoor work was one of those things that was going to wait until next summer.  Until I came home from a weekend away to discover Dan had worked extremely hard all weekend long to start creating that fire pit. 

We started with this:

 If you look at the right of that picture, you'll see all of the plants crammed in to a small space, along with an old wooden, rooting bridge. 

When I returned home after my weekend away, we were left with this:

In the back of this triangle was some extremely tall grass looking stuff that we had decided we wanted to get rid of.  Dan dug all of that out and left the plants for me to take care of.  Yes, in the mean time, he also created a "for now" fire pit for himself -right on top of the dirt/sand.

I moved the remaining plants from the triangle to along the back of the house.   It started out looking like this:

We move the edging out about 1.5 feet to give the plants a little more room

And moved all the plants

They look a little sad, but I'm hoping that next year they come back all bright and colorful again!

As you can see in the pictures above, the edging around the previous plants/bridge was a trianglish shape.  I wasn't fond of the shape, so we used some extra edging that we found behind our shed to make it a square.  And, here I go, failing to take "during" pictures again.  So words will have to do!  After digging out the square, we measured to find the middle.  Then we measured how large our fire pit was going to be and dug a circle that was mostly flat.  From there, we started placing our angled stones in a circle for the first layer.  This had to be the most time consuming part because we tried to pay close attention and make sure all of the pavers were level.  After the first level was down, the remaining two were simple, we just staggered the placement.  While I was stacking, Dan was digging out the middle of the fire pit a little bit and stacking up some of that dirt around the edges of the inside for extra support. 

When we moved in, we also had a sandbox in the middle of the yard.  Dan moved all of the sand from the sandbox over to the fire pit area. 

For now, this is our completed fire pit area.  My mom argued that sand would get messy, but as always, we wanted to do this project on a budget.   I'd say we did pretty good at creating a nice looking fire pit on a budget, here is the breakdown:

- Edging pavers: free, already in the yard
- Sand: Free, came from the sand box
- Wedge pavers: $40 from craigslist.  At Menards they are $1.50 a piece, we picked them up for $.50 a piece - that's one third of the price!  It took around 80 to create the pit.
- Wood to create the fire: Free - from craigslist

We are both very pleased with the way it turned out!

One Room Down, 8 to Go!

We have our first finished room in the house - the master bathroom!  Well, finished until I decide to update the faucets and light fixture.  But, that will be awhile so I'm labeling it finished for now!

When I glazed the bathroom vanity, I also glazed some trim to add to our mirror as a frame.  I debated between an espresso frame and a white frame to match the trim, but I went wish espresso since the counter tops are a very light off-white. 

The process for the frame was similar to adding trim to our bathroom doors. I purchased trim from Home Depot that had the look I was going for.  Then I measured and used our miter saw box to cut each trim piece at 45 degree angles on each end.  I glazed the pieces.  Make sure the glaze the back as well, as the back of the frame will reflect in the mirror.  Once the pieces were glazed, I used gorilla glue to glue them around the mirror.  I finished the frame off by using wood filler in each of the tiny corner cracks and giving those cracks a little glaze. 

The frame was my final step to our finished bathroom.  Ultimately, I'd love to replace the light fixture and faucets, but everything costs money so I'll live with them for awhile! 

Here was the bathroom before we moved in.  Complete with a wallpapered window scene - you can see the reflection of it in the 2nd photo.  

And here it is now:

Here is a rundown of what was done:

- removed the wallpaper and painted the walls Glidden Granite Gray

- painted the trim white

- made a roman shade for the window

- added new towel bars and hooks

- created my own artwork, both the painting and in the frames

- purchased frames for above the toilet from Pier1

- glazed the bathroom vanity

- added a frame to the mirror

It only took us 7 months, but it feels good to have one room completed!

Hello Basement!

Since we moved in, the basement has pretty much been used as our storage area and that is it!  This is all due to the fact that it had pink commercial grade carpet just laying on the concrete, along with a little hodge-podged linoleum and stained blue carpet in the spare room.  Needless to say, we needed new flooring before we were going to spend time down there. 

Take a look at what it looked like before today:

I guess the basement wasn't picture worthy when we first moved in.  This is the best picture I have of the pink carpet in the living room area.

The blue carpet in the guest bedroom:

And the hodge-podged linoleum that went from the bathroom out in to the living area.  What you can't see in this picture is the gross black stains around the toilet and tub.

And as of ten minutes ago, this is what we have to work with now:
A carpeted living room and guest bedroom

And a tiled bathroom (excuse the fact that I was so excited to take pictures that I haven't vacuumed or swept yet, or filed nail holes on the trim)

 

And you may have noticed, the trim is all white now and the walls are painted as well.  My awesome mother-in-law and sister-in-law slaved away helped me tackle that project over the past few days! 

Good-Bye Honey Oak!

The bathroom is the first room in our house to be completely free of all honey oak!  This weekend I used this glazing technique to turn our bathroom cabinets from honey oak to espresso.  My camera was dead, so I didn't get the step by step photos.  But, I  followed the tutorial step for step and the only difference was the brand of products I used .  I used Behr Sweet Molasses and Behr Faux Glaze, mixing the glaze and paint 4 to 1. 

Here they are before the transformation:

 It is hard to see the cabinets in this picture, but it is all I have, I forgot to actually take a before picture that I knew would turn out specifically to show the color of the cabinets.  For reference - they matched the color of the door. 

Here they are now:

 

MUCH better - prettier and more modern, just my style :)  

P.S.  One of these times I'll stop getting SO excited to take pictures to share with everyone and wait for natural sunlight!  But, not this time :)

I've Been Bad

A bad blogger that is!  The last couple months have flown by so fast with something going on every.single.weekend!  I can't believe it is the middle of July already, where has my summer gone?! 

I promise to be back later this week with some updates to our master bathroom!  Dan and I were actually home this weekend and had time to work on some house projects, so I'll have something to post about!

Until then, I'll leave you with some pretty pictures.  Part of the reason we were so busy was because my beautiful sister-in-law (Dan's sister) got married.  The wedding was outdoors and super hot, but worth it because it was gorgeous! 

Here's the beautiful bride herself

 

The ceremony was outdoors at a garden

We were both part of their special day

And because I love this picture of Dan - I'll include it as well.  Isn't he handsome?!

Congrats Brittany & Brandon - wishing you many years of happiness together!  

Home Tour

I finally added some pictures to my home tour page!  Since we moved in a few short months ago, there aren't any real after pictures and there probably won't be for quite some time.  But, it gives you a good idea of what we are working with.