Room and Board

Do you know what this is?

Let me show you another picture...

That's right!  It's my dining room table!  I can't tell you how wonderful it was to sit down to dinner with my husband.  I've been trying to think of the last time we sat down to a meal in our home...I'm pretty sure it was mid-October.  It is now mid-January!  

For the past 3 months we have been switching out who sits on the low counter in the kitchen and who gets the one stool at the counter (when we didn't just take our dinner into the living room and sit on the couch)...2 chairs at the table are a much better option.

Do you like our $20 table?  Isn't it great.  This is the first time it's been set up since we bought it at a garage sale in October.  Mama knocked on the door of our rental house one Saturday morning and asked what we were doing.  She had seen this table and was pretty sure it was for us.  So we jumped into the truck and drove to check it out.  She was right, and we had about an hour of Keystone Cops as she and I drove around town trying to withdraw the $20 we needed and Andy took the table apart with the garage sale gentleman, loaded it into the truck, and then waited, waited and waited for us to get back.  He had a meeting to go to, so he drove there with the table in the back of his truck.  It was worth the hassle, though!

And,  I have to smile as I look at this picture.  Andy dusted the legs before he put the table together, and we went through the house dusting A LOT of things (including the tabletop) afterwards, but somehow neither of us thought to dust the side of the table.  

Now, I'm not surprised that I didn't think of it, but this picture sure shouts it out to you.  

Oh, and did you notice the walls?  Yes, the dining room is painted!  Yippee.  We still have to put up some trim, hang 2 cupboards and some pictures, and re-install a ceiling fan/light before I'm ready to do a big before and after blog.  But I wanted to let you see the color, Behr Ultra's Saffron Strands. I must admit I was very nervous as I painted.  I did this little wall first:

 Sidenote: I love my calendar this year.

The first coat left me thinking I was going to prime over it, head back to Home Depot and start the whole process over again (as it was, we made 5 trips to Home Depot that day).  But the second coat brought the richness and depth I was looking for. It works really well with their Moroccan Orange, which is in our kitchen. 

That's it.  We're working hard over here, and seeing progress.  Yay!  I love progress!

KTV

disarray

I want you to know before you read this particular post that I am in no way complaining.

It is amazing to me that so many times progress looks like disarray.  Tonight we have a lot of disarray.  A lot of it.

First of all, our dining room is finally ready to be primed and painted!  I am so excited.  Such a lot of progress, but right now it looks like this:

And it was A LOT of work, Andy worked so hard it aged him 20 years!  Look:

See what I mean?!  ;)

So, that's THAT room looking ready for a face lift.

A couple of days ago I was frustrated with not being able to progress on the dining room.  My response to this was to tear apart another room.  It's a perfectly reasonable response (in spite of what my husband may thing).  :)

I attacked my craft room, and I mean ATTACKED it.  

I know what you're thinking, that I cleaned it.  Because obviously it needs it.  

Nope.

What I did was move all of the stuff in the room from side to side as I tore out paneling and tore down ceiling tiles.

But now I know for sure what is hiding behind the facade of this room:

Underneath the paneling is the outside of the house...or what was once the outside.  This was once the porch of the house and they enclosed it.  I'm still contemplating what to do with the walls.

But I know exactly what I want to do with the beadboard ceiling.  Keep it!  Of course I'll have to pull out all of those pesky staples and scrape a lot of paint...but I think it will be worth it in the end.

So, as I said, disarray, but progress.  Lots of progress.

Actually, as I write that, I'm thinking that is often the way that it goes.  We make progress in our lives - towards our goals, physically, spiritually - and it looks and feels merely like disarray.  But it's a beautiful mess, as is so beautifully described in The Shack by William Paul Young.

This is one of the books I would have on my figurative nightstand.  I once read an interview in a magazine and that is one of the questions the interviewer asked, "What books do you have on your nightstand?"  Now, I didn't have a nightstand at the time, and I like the question better as a figurative question.  What books do you turn to over and over again - in your head, or literally pick up and read again and again.  The Shack is one of mine.

You?

KTV

Some detail work

I keep giving you peeks into my kitchen, I think it's time for you to see it.

A few weeks ago friends of ours stopped by on their way to Los Angeles from Michigan, and became the first overnight guests in our new house.  Thanks Patrick and Anke!

In the preparation for their visit, I spent an entire evening hanging pictures.  That wasn't what I PLANNED to do with that particular evening, but as I tidied up the guest room...Well, you know how it goes.  You come across something that reminds you of something and then you realize that you just can't stand bare walls anymore!

Right?  Other people DO get that crazy, right? :)

Anyway, my kitchen was one of the places to get a little "bling" on the walls.

 So, onto pictures of my kitchen...

Andy's coffe area.  The wooden tray allows him to slide it forward when he's making it and push it back  (out of the way) when he's done.  Look at that empty coffee canister!  It's time to make a grocery run!

"There is nothing sweeter than a cup of bitter coffee"...or so Andy says.

Our "command center".  It's still awaiting the organizational board that I feel like I've been working on forever.  However, I love this desk.  I found it at my favorite local store, Good Company for a steal!  The mail organizer was a steal at Goodwill - it has 32 slots and they are labelled for every day of the month.  I file bills and their return envelopes in the day that they are due.  The 32nd slot is for my coupons.

The door into the kitchen, out of the mudroom

"Live a simple life."

These are the lyrics to a song that was written for me.  My friend CarrieAnn put it together for me.
The song is about a prayer warrior and, though I don't feel it aptly describes me, it is something that I am moving toward.

This is the door that will get you to the treehouse, with a little view of my Betty Boop apron and my refrigerator.

This is one of my favorite paintings - Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss".  It's actually a wedding card from the same friend, CarrieAnn.  She knows me.

 Now comes the real reason I wanted to show you pictures of my kitchen.  You see that pretty lightswitch plate cover?  A local artist hand painted it for me. Would you like to see more?  I LOVE them, and love the whimsy they bring to my kitchen.

This one is my favorite - I love this color of blue.

If you want to find out about having her update some of yours, she's asked that you leave information here and I'll get it to her.  After all, she's my Mama.  They were a part of her Christmas gift to me, and she enjoyed doing them so much she'd like the chance to do it again.

Okay, that's that.  Another room in progress tomorrow!

KTV

Bar Stools!

Okay, this post is going to tell you a lot about me.  "What" about me...well, I'll let you decide.

Keep reading to learn about these beauties.

So, we have this lovely counter...

It's much MORE lovely now that the cupboards are down and the wall color is being changed.  But more on THAT later.

And I am so excited to be able to sit at it and eat my breakfast; have friends sit at it while I cook...you get the idea.  We currently have no dining room chairs, much less stools to sit at this lovely counter.  So, I went looking at thrift stores.  And looking, and looking, and looking.  I finally found these two chairs.  Andy was so disgusted by them that he only agreed to take them home if I promised to have the stained material off of them by the time he got back from a football game he was watching.

See, they don't look so bad.

And at this price how could I resist?

That was no problem!  I quickly agreed.

Here's what I did:

They really were pretty bad.  There was no thought of salvaging the canvas that covered the seats.

I removed all these staples, and easily took off the canvas.

Which revealed foam covered

particle board seats.  I unscrewed those (thanks to my handy dandy drill).

Primed the frame.

Using Rust-Oleum Primer.  I love this stuff!  I loved that I could spray it, and I loved that I didn't need to sand the frame before I primed it.

I cut out the material that I got at Joanne's, in the home decorating department.  Off the Clearance Rack (bonus points to Karlie).  HMS "Fun Foliage" Home Seasons Up. 

  I layed the material down, wrong side up, placed the foam in the center of it, and the particle board (bottom side up) to top it all off.  Then I staple gunned (I'm not actually sure that that is a word) the corners onto the underside of the particle board.

Next step, a LARGE amount of staples to keep it all secure.  It doesn't look very pretty on the underside...

but I'm pleased with the cushions from a bird's eye view :).

Now, all of that happened in a few hours (after a trip to Joanne's for the material, the staple gun, staples and primer).  And then the poor stools waited and waited for me to get the supplies together to paint the frame.

I found a tutorial here on how to make and use chalkpaint (not to be confused with chalkboard paint, as in my awesome refrigerator).  So I followed the instructions.  I love it when that works!  

I chose to use some of the leftover paint from my kitchen,  so this really was a cheap and easy job.

So, victory and success right?  No.  I came home after Thanksgiving (yes, that is how long ago this began) and could not for the life of me find the 8 screws I had set aside with my drill to complete this project.  

No problem, I went to my box of screws confident to find just what I needed.  No.

So, last week (that's about 6 weeks later) I went to hang up the curtains in my bedroom and found the 8 screws!  Yay!  It took me 5 minutes to finish this 2 month project :).

Nice, right?

Now, you are probably wondering why they are sitting against a wall, instead of nestled under my counter.  Are you?

I am.

I'll tell you.

I forgot to measure how high they are.  

That's right, I never checked to make sure they would fit under the counter.

Sigh.

So now I have to wait until I can find somewhere to cut them.

Because there is no way I trust myself to cut them even.

And who wants to sit on a stool and feel like you're at sea?

Not me.

Sigh.

So, that's a little bit about me and a lot about my $5 stools. :)

KTV

The little things...

Oh my!  It's been nearly a month since my last post.  I have only one excuse, but it's a good one...Christmas.

My Christmas was wonderful.  My brother and his fiance` were able to stay in town for nearly a week (after various delays and mix-ups), and that made for a real family holiday.

As a result, there haven't been many big changes made in the house.  So, I've been feeling like nothing has been happening.

However, in the spirit of "despise not the days of small beginnings", I've decided to talk a little about the little stuff.

First of all, for Christmas I was given a wonderfully sweet present by my husband.  Andy has never claimed to be a "handyman", but he MADE me my big present this year.

I love movies, and I have "collected" quotes for the past 20 years.  Andy trolled through my quote book and picked some great ones!  He stained some of the wood (which is from the original fence around the yard), and left the rest.  I love it.  It reads to me like a conversation between 2 people.  Can you name the 5 movies represented here?

Did you notice the little blue circle?  Here's a close-up:

It's a winter ornament given to me by my little friend, Nora.  The snowmen are her little fingers...isn't it sweet?!

Okay, that's one of the presents he gave me.  The other was really a great thing for our house.  I love the welcoming light of a porch light.  Previously we had a very dull welcome, at best.  Now?

Isn't that so much more welcoming?  It's literally a lantern on a hill.  Want to see it up close?

It's a $400 light that Andy found on sale for $50!  Whoop whoop!  Doesn't it look like it was made for that space?!

More tomorrow...I actually have a lot of little things to show you - it's right after Christmas after all!

KTV