Upgrading a ho hum built-in

 I am currently working on a re-vamp of an exsisting built in for a family in a near by town...we had a chance meeting when I bought a couple of shelves from Ellen about 4 years ago or so...I built her a couple of padded headboards and have done lot's of trim work and a banquette.
It was time to re-paint the family room but Ellen refused to repaint this less than beautiful built-in that they inherited when they purchased this home.
With a lot of re-working this will be a truly beautiful white fresh center piece of the great room.

 The plans were/are to remove the tile and mantel re tile and build new mantel, remove the tile from the hearth and clad with trim and wood painted white, add a shelf on either side, remove glass doors and middle vertical piece, fill in gap above unit and add crown moulding, face frame all the shelving and add bead board to the back of shelves.

This is the style and over all feel I am trying to create.

What has been added to the project,( these things happen all the time, you get in there and other changes become obvious )...remove angled hearth to create a flush with the flooring tile hearth, add foot detail to both base cabinets and new doors for the base cabinet.

Day one was demo day of course, for the most part this all went well a little messy but all that needed to came out successfully.

 Day two we searched and selected marble for the surround and hearth, Ellen picked a classic carrera marble subway tile, a great timeless choice.

 Removing this framing allows us to re shape the hearth, cutting the hardwood I can square this out. The previous owner was a contractor and he loved angles.

 Day three progress was good, I was able to add the two extra shelves, the shelf on the right went smoothly but the left shelf took over an hour because of the angled duct running up the left side, I had to create a template, let's just say it wasn't that easy...I'm just glad its over.

 I face framed the shelves for a nice thick look with the most beautiful poplar.

Today I will tackle a few more details...I will post the progress here, check back in a couple of days.

Customizing standard lower door cabinets with pull outs

 In our last home I added some custom drawer organizers and they helped keep me very organized in the kitchen. About a year ago I added these two pull outs for our container cabinet...you know how messy these things can get.These simple box drawers have kept this so organized I had to add more to most of our lower kitchen cabinets. You can go to the big box store and buy pre-made pull outs but they are very pricey.
So my solution is to just create my own pull outs, it's easy and inexpensive.
Actually the ones I worked on this weekend only cost me the price of the drawer hardware, about $5 each as I used only scraps from other projects to make two new pull outs.

 Here is our snack cabinet in the island, it is a mess, I won't tell you what I think of those half shelves... they are DUMB!
I think if I do ever build again I will have mostly drawers for lower cabinets.

The first step was to clean out all the old stuff and there was a lot due to it's messy state.

 I then cut these strips of wood to attach to the side of the cabinets to then attach the slides to these strips of wood so that the pull outs would clear the hinges.

 It's pretty easy and straight forward.

 I then measured the distance between the slides and cut a piece of plywood and dry fit it before creating the sides of the pull out.

 I used very simple butt joints, these corner clamps make the job easier. Attach the sides to the bottom of the drawer through the holes on the slide, using flat head screws. I made sure to pre-drill to avoid cracking and splitting the wood.

 After adding this single pull out I had the full bottom shelf to move the cereal into this space which emptied almost an entire cabinet...one pull out and I gained an empty cabinet...what a win.

 I will add a lower pull out when the mood strikes...hopefully next week

 Then I tacked this mess, I had the material to build a pull out for the left narrow cabinet.

 Its so nice to not have to kneel down to dig into a base cabinet.Nothing will be lost again...I thought I was out of birthday candles and after this makeover I found I have a bunch.

 I wasn't totally out of steam after the other two additions so I tackled this messy baking drawer...it took a little pine 1x2 and a few cuts,I secured the wood to the drawer with just gorilla glue. This stuff it great. I did the same in the drawer beside the stove and it has worked and lasted beautifully.

Honestly I tend to be kinda messy in drawers and cabinets so this is a really necessity for me. It's a no brainer to keep things tidy when everything has a spot.

There you have it a little pretty simple beginners project.

Thanks for stopping by...

Blog love...Sunny Side Up

I was just minding my own business last night scrolling through Pinterest looking for beautiful home decor, recipes and DIY inspiration and I happened upon once again a blog that literally blows my mind....it's called Sunny Side Up I obviously am drawn to the incredibly beautiful and perfect brand new dream home that I see on the blog I mean look at Erin's house...don't you love it?

 I had to stop myself from getting out the paint brush and painting my brand new kitchen cabinets white. Isn't it dreamy?

 This laundry room may however have me re-painting my laundry room because it is so happy painted in this color...I can't even explain...this is one of two laundry rooms....I want to tell Erin it is possible to have your kids do their own laundry my kids started doing their own laundry at 12 and 15 years old...it is a wonderful thing.

So there is all this drool worthy decor to pin and inspire but there is something else....

ORGANIZATION ....Erin is the queen of organization...which resulted in my waking up this morning feeling like I need desperately to organize better....and I got right to cleaning out cabinets in my kitchen early this morning. 

 Check out this POST for all Erin's organization posts...you can thank me later.

After taking a good hard look at how unorganized I currently am, I am going to go through all my stuff and get rid of what we don't need and don't use and after that I am going to tackle adding drawers to all our lower cabinets in the kitchen which I have been meaning to do...I figure if I tackle one cabinet a week than it will be very managable. I'm kind of excited.

I'm going to soon show on the blog once again how to easily and affordably add pull outs and drawers to standard base cabinets...it's so easy so check back for that next week. You can take a look at this POST here to see how I added drawers to this cabinet which has been a huge success organization is eassy if everything has it's own space.

What DIY projects are in the works.....

 It is officially fall here in Canada...cooler nights mixed with beautiful warm to hot days the kids are back in school and there is snow on the ground in Calgary....I'm sad about that for my fellow Canadians because its just plain unacceptable for there to be snow in September or October and it even offends me in November, December bring it on but that's just how I feel....becuase I am not a winter girl. I don't like cold, I don't like snow, I don't like any winter sports....I kind of wish I did because the winter is long...
I thought I would warm things up a touch in the living room/aka rec room lately since it has become our video game room for my girls and their friends...I think it's time to start planning a basement rec room for real.
I dug out these lamp shade slipcovers that I made a while back ...what a nice easy way to change things up. If you's like to check out this easy DIY project you can see a tutorial HERE

 So what is in the works for DIY around the house...well the dining room floors that is for sure...I am so sick of seeing this subfloor...it's gotta go and soon. I need to go get that purchased so it can acclimatize for a good long time.

Dining room plans:
Pine floors (stained dark of course)
Wood beams
Most likely v-groove on the ceiling
Crown moulding
Making our round table larger to accomodate seating for 6
Built ins

Beams like this image from Houzz

Built ins will come down the line, this image is inspiring me...its perfect for our dining room, image found on HGTV

The next project in the planning stage is my youngest daughters bathroom...it needs a lot of work.

This is quite a before shot

Bathroom plans:
Paint the cabinet white or soft grey
Adding a foot base detail to the cabinet
Adding drawers inside the cabinet
Framing the mirror
Adding a cornice and trim to the tub area
Long custom shower curtain
Paint the walls
Decorative feature for the mirror wall

I still have 100 sq feet of this beautiful tile so I want to use it in this bathroom somewhere...maybe above the mirror for the accent? 

Or maybe the toilet wall??? Im not sure but that reminds me of our girls bathroom in our old house I loved the tiled walls.

You can see that old post HERE  I loved all that tile in that bathroom...it's a terrible photo I know,sorry.

You can see the rest of that place HERE I loved that house....I am happy to say it's even better now that the current owners ripped out the rest of the carpet and installed wide plank pine in all the bedrooms and stained it dark...it's gorgeous and I am so glad the owners that live there now bought our old house.I miss this backyard though...and that sweet bunkie, our backyard will eventually get to that happy place it just takes time. 

Back to what's in store...these walls

I have decided I need some planks or ship lap walls and this wall is screaming for it...four walls in the kitchen will get this treatment sometime in the near future but like I said the dining room comes first then Sophie's bathroom and then I can move onto this project.

 One more project that I think I need to get started is the hallway wainscoting.... I still have a difficult time kneeling since injuring my ankles (my one ankle has limited range of motion still) this summer so I will take things slowly and only tackle what I can. It's going to look spectacular.

Here is the little bit of wainscoting I do have completed in the hall as well as the staircase of course...I am so glad I have the job completed. 

So that's what I have planned, it's a lot I know and there's just one little old me...so this should take a while to complete but that's OK there is no rush...I will do what I can as quickly as I can. 

My only timeline is to have the dining room completed before Halloween becuase last year the day before Halloween I ripped out the dining room carpet and more than a year without progress for me is unacceptable...because if it goes past a year it could stay that way forever...

Thanks for checking in and taking time to read my rambling post....have a wonderful day.

Chris 

Project curb appeal complete

 I wanted to share the completed front door makeover...I'm sure most won't notice the changes because the front door looks like it should always have been trimmed like it is now, but to me it sure is a noticable difference.

 I am so much happier with our front door now...these kind of things make me happy.

What a difference a year makes...we removed the awful pavers and railings had the porch clad in composite material to make it look like a wood porch, new stone steps and old brick style pavers in a herringbone pattern and now the added header and new door color.