What's going on ....

Its kind of funny the two rooms available to decorate are the powder room and the laundry room. 

 But my focus is definitely on painting and more painting . Painting cabinets , the stairs and brackets.
I am also trying to plug away at some trim carpentry like the detail trim valance of the kitchen uppers.

 I added edge trim to the laundry closet , next step more painting and door building.

 Some of the brackets that need so much careful painting. I have lots of cabinet doors in the basement that I am slowly working on. These brackets will be tricky to attach to the bottom of the kitchen uppers, I think I may have figured out just how to do it , fingers crossed.

 I just realized after reading another blog that I forgot to share the hardware I chose. I wanted to update the TV cabinet in the living room with with a little brass hardware. I found the library style pulls at Home Depot they are Martha Stewart , and $4.95 I believe , if I remember correctly. They are great quality and a great price. The little knobs are from Lowe's and were $2.65 , but no promises I remember exactly down to the pennies , OK?

I also decided to change out the chrome knobs on the drawers to these contemporary chrome pulls.
They need a little polish up now and again due to finger prints , but they sparkle. These were approx $5.95.

A little on the appliance front.

 Here is our lovely hood and chimney cover , sadly I don't  have 14' ceilings to accommodate this chimney cover. There was a picking problem at the warehouse and we got a chimney 2' taller than we need. They will be bringing us the correct sized chimney tomorrow.  I am so excited to see this installed, the issue is now that I must tile the wall behind the stove before Tuesday . I will be off to find the perfect subway tile a little later, add that to the list.

So that is what's going on around here a whole lot of little details. Oh and I am so excited to share that the appliance installer is coming on Tuesday and he says I will have my range hood installed and and my gas stove as well as my dishwasher . I have not had a dishwasher for 7 weeks , it's torture.
Here is my dishwasher as it sits, dishwasher/work surface.I am so excited to have a dishwasher again.

How kinda sorta funny is it that when I heard our dishwasher was back ordered to March 23rd I figured we would have the kitchen all done and ready for the dishwasher by then, I guess I under estimated just how long it takes for one person to take a builder kitchen to custom beautiful, we still don't know quite how long that takes. I did have help installing the floor , so its not all just me ....
Bye for now , have a great weekend.

Laundry room musings

This Urban Grace laundry room was our jumping off , both my husband and I love it .

I think our laundry room is a combination of these two , the one below is from Canadian House and Home.

I am still plugging away improving our little laundry room. I have always dreamed of having an actual laundry room , this is my very first one and it has almost everything that I longed for and I'm very happy to have it. 

 I have completed the upper cabinets as far as the painting and details go. Remember the cabinet on the right is the one we re-located from the kitchen , turned out to be a great move.
There is still lots to do like tile, build a lower sink cabinet and counter to extend over the washer and dryer.

 Turns out I had just the right baskets for my shelf just laying around , these are from Ikea .

 The coat closet to the left of the sink was redundant , our front hall closet is more than sufficient for our needs. I did not plan on us using this narrow laundry room as a main entry , I think that would make for one messy laundry room. So my plan was to re-configure it into a pantry closet instead, more storage is always a plus.

First I removed the sliding closet doors that just got in my way. I plan to build two narrow doors for this closet, I priced out 8Ft doors to fit this closet that match our other doors , the price of those special order doors is $170 each , um no way . The upstairs closet doors are going to be $50 each , how can two little doors be $170?
 I know it looks a little rough right now. I added a second shelf above the one standard shelf and removed the hanging bar. I used MDF shelf pieces to create a tower to hold these baskets I picked up last week. I will be adding trim and details to pretty it all up .

 I found these labels at Staples they are Martha Stewart the whole line of stationary is so adorable.

 This is one of my favourite features in the laundry room. http://www.leevalley.com/en/hardware/page.aspx?p=40565&cat=3,67405&ap=1  , its a drop hook , its the perfect spot for hanging air dry pieces.

 This has been a great room for the dogs , they get fed in here out of the way , and I think they prefer it this way. I am planning on doing perhaps board and baton or tall beadboard to this wall and adding hooks.

I found this basket and its perfect for my drying paint brushes.

So things are moving along nicely.

Sitting pretty

I was so excited to finally be able to return the breakfast table into the kitchen. The flooring install, staining and top coating took a long while and we very much missed having some where to sit for meals.

 This is my solid pine table I picked up for $40 , what a deal. I sanded and sanded until it was completely bare wood again . I stained it with Kona 2 coats , but that brought out a strong shade of orange that I hated. So I went back to the store and picked up Classic black stain and top coat, 2 coats again in satin sanding lightly between coats , it feels so smooth .

Before

This is how our house still sits today , a sad dirt yard surrounds our home...I long for grass , landscaping and trees...I think we should seriously consider a hot tub for the space behind the garage. We could easily fit an 8'x8' sized tub , I think it might be helpful with all the many labour intensive projects we have planned , we might want to soak our weary muscles. A pool would be a nice addition to our yard but lets face it a hot tub can be used year round and a pool some years is barely needed , you never know how long or nice our warm/hot season is. I mean is late April and its freezing , I don't dare put away my winter coat .
I'm sure we could make a hot tub look good with a raised deck around it to make it look built in right , sadly they tend to be on the ugly side .

I should really get going I have a very long list to tackle today .
Prime brackets did it !
Install rain head showers for the girls did it !
Return library books did it !
Pick up MDF shelves from HD to make closet organizers (yippy) did it !
Top coat stairs did it !
Install shoe moulding in kitchen 
Fill in hole above vent for hood did it!
Paint cabinet doors 
Paint kitchen uppers did it !