Basement Finished!

This is it! The time I have been waiting for for over a year.  My basement is finished(well as finished as it is going to get for quite some time).  My husband was so wonderful and finished all of the mudding and sanding, so this past weekend we could get to work on priming and painting.

So first up priming.  All done! Yeah.

Next we painted.  I forgot to take a pic before we started pulling everything out of storage so don't mind the messy room.  Can I just say also this picture does it no justice because the lighting down there is awful.  The color is a pale yellow/cream and really brightens up the room a ton!

Next up is trying to figure out where all the furniture is going to go.  I think we have rearranged it about 8 times now (yes in one day).  I think in the above picture is probably how it is going to stay.  This step was much harder than either of us ever imagined.  We have big chairs that we love, and we wanted to keep it looking open so that our young ones would have plenty of space to run around in.  I think we achieved that look, at least for now!

I couldn't be more excited, my house is truly coming together, and just in time.  We have less than 5 weeks until the baby arrives!  We scheduled our C-section last week and so as long as she doesn't make an early appearance she will be here on 4/6 early in the morning! Now who wants to come help me teach the little man to walk by then??

Kitchen!

I can now say that I have a fully functioning kitchen! My excitment is beyond words!  During this past week I finished sanding down the last of the cabinets, and then I finished staining them.  We went to hang them and of course we ran out of screws and the hardware store in town was already closed.  So the next day we went out got the rest of the screws that we needed! Now guess what, ALL of my cabinets are back in full working order. I have organized everything the way that I want, and I am the happiest person alive, I'm quite sure of it!

We also had a great friend of ours bring over his table saw and miter saw yesterday so we can hopefully get to working on cutting all the trim that is left to go up. Because guess what that is all that is left to do in the kitchen!

Now on to decorating.  I have some really fun ideas, I will see what I can make of them and if they work.  I will definitely be posting about them.  I may even post about them if they fail, just so if you know of a better way to accomplish it, maybe I can get it done.

It looks so much brighter in there the difference is unreal.  You can't really tell how much brighter from the pictures, but even our wonderful roommate said it looked amazing and so much nicer(and he is a man!)

Basement-Painting

Ok so I got antsy, go figure right??

I said the longest wall in the basement was done being sanded right? Soo I decided it was time to prime and paint that wall, just because I can!

Here is it all primed.

Here is it all painted.

I also put my desk back out in the room, so my bill paying can be a bit more organized and I finally got to hang my laundry sign up above the door! (I have had this sign for 2 yrs!!)

It's the little things in life that make life good and enjoyable in my opinion. I was so happy to see color on the wall, just in case you can't really tell from the pictures it is a pale yellow/cream color that is down there.  The lighting is awful sorry.




Now hopefully it will help us get motivated to get moving on the rest of the walls, so we can finally call it a finished project! (well not totally because once I finish the remodel, I will have to find some craft stuff to make for down there)

Kitchen-Almost There

My Kitchen is getting so close!  No one can fully understand how happy and excited this makes me!!  I literally jump up and down just thinking about it. I just keep thinking about it functioning as a normal kitchen again without dust everywhere, and only one counter I can use. Won't that be so grand! I love to cook and bake so it will be great to have all my counter space back.

Yesterday I got the last of the cabinet doors sanded, and two of them primed.  Now I just need to stain the last 4.  The hardest part about all of this is all the waiting that has to occur.  I have to stain both sides of the cabinet door and each side has to dry for at least 4 hrs in between.  In other words, these last 4 cabinet doors could take me a couple of days to get done.  I can only do 2 at a time because that is the biggest area that I have to place them on while they are drying without ruining anything! So we wait....and wait...and wait. Something I have never been too good at.

But I know it will all be worth it in the end.  Here is a picture of what the cabinets currently look like without the last couple of door on them.

 The insides of the cabinets on top will eventually get painted white, but we ran out of white paint so that will have to wait for a while. Which isn't a huge deal in my mind.

Basement- Sanding/Mudding phase

My basement has been in this stage since before Elijah was born.  As you can see from my previous post he is already a year old.  It was time to finish this project!

Here is what it looks like currently, I know it is really messy! Not too much extra storage for all the stuff that has to go in that room!

 I'm so excited for this phase to be over.  It should be over any day now.  I know we have the longest wall done, but as you can see we still have one whole chunk of wall that needs a lot of attention.

My personal deadline for this to be fininshed is the end of February we will see if that happens.  Not that I have doubts but I would like it to be done by then so we can start organizing it before this baby gets here!

Ktichen-Flooring installation

We are at a pausing point with the trim until we get a table saw, and you know me always in a hurry and antsy as all get out.  So I begged Greg to please let us lay the flooring before we finished putting up all the trim.  He finally said yes! I can't even begin to explain how happy I was about this!

Here is what the floor looked like before:

Pretty old and nasty huh??

Here is the flooring getting installed:

Here is a picture of behind the fridge all finished:

I love the way it looks with the wall colors.  I'm very happy with the way it looks, with how easy it was to install, and that it is done!

By the way this floor was peel n stick tile, so it was super easy to put in, and it was cheap (we bought it on sale)!

We are getting closer to this room finally being done.  I started it around Thanksgiving time I believe and I would like it done by Valentines Day, then I can cook a nice meal it my finished kitchen!

Dresser refinish

We recently decided to move my dresser up the Eli's room, so that when the next baby arrives there is room for both of their clothes.  Currently there is just closet space but Eli takes up the closet so figured we needed to add another piece of furniture to the room to accommodate this.  My dresser was a very small one from walmart that we got on sale.  Light Birch/Oak color, so didn't go in the room too well. 

Soooo.... we decided to be different.  The room is currently brown on the bottom, blue on the top.  We decided to be different and paint it in the chalkboard paint.  I couldn't help but think how fun and different this would be.  We could write what items were in the drawers or draw pictures.  The possibilities seem endless.  So very excited.  Greg seemed to really like the idea too, so off we went to walmart to find some paint.  They sell it in a spray can for $4, not too bad.  I am going to use our sidewalk chalk to write on it with so we don't have to buy more chalk.

Before Picture:

After Picture:

Dresser Finished:

Yeah, so excited to fill this with little boy and girl clothes!

Kitchen- Trim in

This past weekend we were able to get some of the trim done! I was so happy.

Greg cut all the door trim to the length that it needed to be.

Then we both got to work on staining them! I love that part and I love the way it turned out.

Next he put it up for me.  Yeah that means the trim is done around both of the doors. This means we are getting closer.

We just need to find a table saw to borrow so we can cut the baseboards and get those up, unfortunately our house is old so we got wide trim so it matched the rest of the house which means it doesn't fit in his box! But it's going to look amazing once it is up.

Kitchen Redo Part 3

The painting is all finished! It feels so good to know that all the hard work as far as taping everything off is all done.
Looks pretty nice!

Now I just really need to get these cabinets finished so I can move onto the next step, trim and then new flooring. I can't wait for those as it will really help to pull everything together and look way more polished. Then comes the best part, using it fully functioning without "stuff" in the way.

Another benifit, once I get these cabinet doors back on, I can put a lock on them so Eli will stop pulling all the dishes onto the floor(which is messy from all the sand from the cabinets). That means I will have less messes to clean(in the kitchen that is), and less dishes to do! Always a plus in my book!

Containers

I love the way that the frosted containers looked, when they have the names etched on them such as flour, sugar, and so on.  But I am way too cheap to spend the money on them.  So I bought a 4 piece set of containers on sale for $12, much better than the normal $25 or higher.  I then also got a can of frosted glass spray paint-this was also on sale for $3, and I'm sure I will find some other uses for this great new friend! Got out some of my scrapbook stickers and got to work. 

First I put the letters onto the container to spell what I wanted to label them as. 

Second I taped off a box around the letters and then put newspaper all around it so that it would not spray the rest of the jar.

Third, I sprayed the jar with the frosted glass spray paint.

Forth, when the paint was still a bit tacky I removed the letters and allowed it to finish drying.

Fifth, I enjoyed my new project.  Just what I wanted at a much lower cost.

I only labeled two of the jars, one flour and the other sugar.  As I am not quite sure what I want to put in the other two, but am content with them having no labels.  I just wanted some nice containers to put on my kitchen counter once my kitchen is finished!

Kitchen Redo-Part 2

So I have stained all the bottom drawers and put the new hardware on.  Here is what it looks like now! (I still have to do all the cabinet doors)

I repainted the back wall in this picture light grey and then the overhang, is now a silver/grey color slightly darker than the wall.  The rest of the walls are going to be white, but there is some more mudding that needs to be done on them before I can prime and paint those.  I just was anxious to see what the walls would start to look like so I painted the walls that I could!  I am really liking how everything s coming together.  I can't wait to get the flooring down. 

It will probably be awhile before we can put the new trim in, as we will probably put in a new back door at the same time, since it is in really rough shape.  But I am ok with the trim being off as long as it needs to be as long as I can still have a functioning kitchen. And last time I checked the trim does not affect how a kitchen is used, so we should be fine!!

I still have the cabinets in the back of the kitchen to do, so they match the front but I am not in as much of a hurry to get those done, since you can't see them right when you walk in. We shall see what I can get done this coming week and weekend.  Maybe I can get the walls finished and painted and those cabinet doors done finally.

Kitchen Redo-Part 1

So the first thing I decide to tackle was all the cabinet bases, so we have everything in boxes around the kitchen and all over the dining room table.  Messy which drives me nutty, but gives me motivation to try and get it done asap!  So here is a picture of the base sanded down.  I didn't know it had such good looking wood underneath all the ugliness. It was quite a bit of work even though I used an electric sander, but it tore through the sandpaper as there was a lot of uneven parts in the wood and some nicks that I sanded out.  I also sanded them so they are a bit rough and more natural feeling.  I like it feeling like real wood and not so smooth like most cabinets are.  So I used 80 grit sandpaper and did not go over it with a finer sandpaper as my wise husband told me a professional would do.  I told him I didn't want it to look that way, he doesn't seem to convinced yet.  We'll see if I can win him over in the end. Watch for some stain pictures coming soon as that is what I have been working on this past weekend.  Hopefully the front cabinets will be done by this coming weekend so then we can work on the other cabinets next weekend or get the walls painted so they match a little better! I'm having so much fun with this project!

Kitchen Redo- Before

So I have absolutely hated my kitchen since we bought our house.  It is long and skinny aka a galley kitchen.  But everything set up in it is very funny, almost like it used to look a lot different but Greg and I cannot figure out what they did and why.  Any way, when we moved in we decided to just paint it and ignore it because it would need a lot of work to make it look better.  So desperate because I didn't like how it looked and that is where I spend a lot of my time, I kept looking for ways to redo a kitchen for cheap, how to refinish cabinets and so on.  Well we finally figured out what to do as we were browsing through Home Depot one day.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!!  We found some really cheap flooring, and ours before was awful.  Then we found some pale blue tinted stain for the cabinets, so we decided to strip them down to the bare wood and start all over again.  I then had leftover pale gray paint and some white paint left so we the walls would be that color.  I was good with those changes, but then Greg suggested that we rip out the old trim and put in new(we have ripped out the old, but it will take awhile before we have money for the new).  Let me just say again, I'm so excited about all these changes I think it is going to make our kitchen look so much brighter since it looked like a dark hole before.  So here are some before pictures so you know what I am working with and when I say everything was dark you will see what I mean.

These are the dark cabinets that are everywhere, just not my favorite color and original to the house as they are all funny sizes.  So we just made do with them by refinishing them.  Plus one gallon of stain is much cheaper than all new cabinets.