Vintage Light Fixture Installation

When we moved in there was a non-functional ceiling fan over the spot where a dining table would go:

Boy these pictures from our viewing of the house are terrible and depressing.

We scored a BUNCH of cool vintage enamel fixtures from Dave's dad and with a little bit (ok a lot bit) of elbow grease we have a super cool new light!

That's a lovely shot of the hole in the ceiling left by the fan. And Mr. Pickles and the next project "Operation hide the washer/dryer."

And after much crawling around in the ceiling:

Hmm, these pictures aren't that great either. Oh well. The light is a green color and matches the cool one we got at a flea market in Hamburg (slated to be hung over the sink).

I was also very excited to receive the rest of our Flor tiles that were backordered. Hurrahhhh!

And a big shot of the entire rug!

Posting Break Down

Woah, my apologies for the lake of posts. I started a new job and it's kept me pretty busy (maybe I've already mentioned that).
A new Flor store opened in Houston. They had been open only 1 week and I had already been 4 times. But the upshot is that we ordered a carpet for our living room. And most of it has arrived (a few tiles on backorder) and it's partially installed. I'm totally jazzed about the parquet-style installation. This is a "during" shot.

And very excitingly, I've also hung the curtains. It's really hard to get a good shot of the windows because with the approaching winter the sun is always shining in. 

Night:

 Early Morning:

How to paint shutters

While I would describe our house as brick, there is some woodwork and all the trim and shutters. And all of it was painted 1960s blue. Which is sort of a dusty blue, but not in any attractive sort of Swedish or French way. Just a dirty looking, sad blue.

Well this weekend, I finally got around to painting the trim around the door and started on the shutters. Shutters are such a bitch to paint. We couldn't easily remove them to spray them with ease, so I went with the ole paint brush. Here you see a "during shot," two shutters painted, two still blue. It was so going on the paint gloss black enamel latex paint was so odd. It was like painting with tar. One upshot to painting with tar is that you really only need one coat. And I felt very HGTV saavy because I asked the paint guy to tint the kilz primer so it would be gray instead of white.

On a sidenote, it's so sad to compare how the grass looks in these two pictures. The drought and heat of summer have not been kind to the lawn. Apparently, we may be on the cusp of a 10-year drought in Texas. As a result, I have no plans to resod the front. I think we are going to investigate xeriscaping over the winter.

Here is a close up on the entry way, featuring cream trim and a fancy new brass doorbell to match the door hardware!

Here is a tighter shot of the shutters. I used painted tape to mask off around the shutters to avoid painting the brick. They were a real paint to paint because the old paint was totally crumbly in parts and it's really hard to paint the louvers and not get drips. Hopefully no one will ever get up close and just stare at the shutters. They look 2390482903483290 times better from afar!

Doors, doors, doors

This cool salvage place called Historic Houston unfortunately went out of business. It's quite sad for us, because it was an important resource. Most notably we got our reclaimed wood floors there:
Installation:

Post sanding:

We also bought some metal casement windows. And we went on their final weekend and got a bunch of old wood panel doors for half off (about $40 each). Which is so soooo much cheaper than anything you'd get at Home Depot or Lowes, with a whole bunch more style.

This weekend I painted (with minor patching) the door for my sewing room and we installed it last night. No photos yet though. I also got a nice antique glass knob set from another architectural antiques place in Houston.

And my husband worked on installing new closet doors. Using plain 6 panel doors as bypass doors. For this we did go with the Lowes cheapie because they are really lightweight and well suited for slide.
A photo below (side note this room is not peach, a color I despise, but rather it's orange).

This morning I found this picture and want to do something like this to replace the crapped out louvred door that covers our water heater in the kitchen. The adjacent washer/dryer don't even have a door at this point. I think it would work well!

No I Haven't Died and DIY Stainless Countertops

Hello Everyone!
Sorry for the long delay in posts. I'm sure everyone has just been breathless in anticipation with what has been going on in my house. Not that much, actually. We went on an awesome vacation to the Pacific Northwest. It was really fun and the temperature was never over 80 degrees. We left during and came back to a continuing heatwave in Houston. Nothing like 110 degree temps to make you feel like working on your house!
I have misplaced the connection to plug my camera into my computer. So pictures continue to be Iphone only. Exhibit A: Temperature 112 degrees. AGH

Exhibit B: Cool rug purchased by husband in El Paso, featuring Emmit and his vigil waiting for said husband to come home.

Exhibit C, D, E and F: Stainless countertops

I removed all of the blue laminate from these niches in the kitchen and painted the surrounding cabinets. We had priced out having stainless steel cut by a metal shop and also looked at new laminates (couldn't decide if laminate carrara was cool or god awful). But then my father in law mentioned that he had some old duct work that was stainless and the pieces were probably large enough that he could cut the segments we needed for the kitchen! And HOORAH it worked. This was also the smoothest DIY project we've done in awhile. Or course the sheets didn't fit perfectly into their new home, but my husband easily (or it seemed to me) filed them down (or whatever) to make them fit. And he sanded out all the imperfections, so they have a cool brushed surface. Then I rolled on contact adhesive and we stuck them in place! HOOOORAH.

Weekend Update

Well, despite one snafu of dining room paint turning out really minty, thus creating multiple trips to Lowe's to remedy the situation, it was a successful weekend of home renovations!

As expected, the kitchen looked like a bomb went off as I had to empty a bunch of large drawers in order to paint them.

Bomb has gone off.

Mint green dining room. ACK!

Before/During

Now I just have to wait a few days for the paint to cure on the drawers before attaching the handles.

The fridge surround is also looking quite nice.

 So re: the dining room. After I decided the mint paint was terrible. I went back to Lowe's and bought 4 different samples. And settled on "Parakeet Pete" which is very similar to the paint in our bedroom. But hey, it's not the same shade and I figure since the rooms have different exposures (dining room-north, bedroom-west) the paint will look quite different.

New paint!

I got some edging done last night.

Hus Band out of Town

My husband is out of town for 2 WEEKS! He actually left on Monday and will return next Sunday, methinks. I have realized I'm a truly boring person because (as a co-worker put it) instead of being able to "just party and eat pop tarts and drink boxed wine and run around your house naked like when your parents would leave you alone as a teenager. You gotta do shit." I've given myself a long list of things I want to get accomplished while he's away. And I'm boring because I'm really excited about these plans. They are mostly things that involve destroying the kitchen (or at least the small semblance of order that we currently have) which is easier to tolerate when you are one person who thinks that rice krispy treats make for a great dinner.

Oh that reminds me of a second sub-plan to the for these days alone. I was going to try to avoid going to the grocery store entirely to save up for our Seattle vacation. As I had cup a soup last night, I've already had to abandon this plan. Cup a soup 4 days in to being left alone, means you have hit the bottom of the barrel (or pantry) and need to buy some food.

My plans are to:
paint the dining room
hang dining room curtains
continue with painting the kitchen cabinets, which includes making repairs to the wood veneer, moving the fridge, and emptying large drawers full of stuff
paint exterior metal columns black (someone pointed out the current blue/rust looks is sort of shabby chic, but I think black will be better)
use chalkboard paint on drawers (per previous post)

So far, I've begun the prep work for the kitchen painting.

I cleared the dining room (which is totally not a dining room at this point, but a staging area for kitchen improvements). This picture is very sad, because I consider the dining room cleared for painting, yet clearly it's not. Imagine how awful it looked before?!?

 I also bought zero VOC paint for the dining room. (Test painting spot pictured below).

Super Fab Use for Chalkboard Paint

I was cruising around on Design Sponge and saw the most awesome idea.
My kitchen cabinets have the same "drawers within a cabinet" thing goin on. Below the doors are off for painting, revealing interior drawers.

I'm totally going to use chalkboard paint to paint the drawer fronts to label them. HOT DOG.

Balloon Shades!

I made great progress with the linen balloon shades for my sewing room. Of course I had to clean up my sewing room and vacuum before attempting to put down my cardboard cutting mat and get to work.

These shades were relatively easy to make. I decided not to line the fabric because I wanted it to bunch up really easily and was afraid that a lining would hamper this effect. Although one of the windows faces west and gets a lot of afternoon sun. So I might leave the temporary paper shade up behind it long term to cut down on sun exposure. Although, I'm sure by the time the sunlight has destroyed the shade, I'll be ready for something new. And I used a coupon and Joann's so I got the fabric for under $25 total.
Here is the first shade nearly complete (you can see still see the pins marking the hem). They aren't cute as full as my inspiration picture. But they are close enough and look really pretty. Since they are unlined, you see all of the texture of the linen during the day.

Membership, Flash Sale Websites

I'm totally intrigued by all of the membership, flash sale websites that keep cropping up. At first I only knew of the ones primarily aimed at clothing/accessories: Rue La La, Gilt, the Outnet. But then I stumble across the Foundary and even better, One King's Lane.  And then I saw One King's Lane featured on Million Dollar Decorators and loved it even more. This morning I bought this:

Now here's the deal. We already own this poster and have meant to frame it to hang above our bed (we are so patriotic). But I'll be damned if I can find an affordable 30 x 38 poster frame. I think it's worth $100 (cost with shipping) for the frame alone. And now I don't have to worry about finding a dust and pet hair free zone to frame the thing!
If I'm lucky it will arrive when my husband is out of town (he doesn't read this blog) and I can hide it away for Christmas!

How to Be Really Thrifty

Today I went to Michaels! Woohoo, I love going there. Even though the store is mostly full of crap and if you don't have a coupon you feel like you are totally being ripped off. I needed Antique Gold Rub'n Buff. The curtain rods from our old living room are being repurposed for the dining room. And in the process of turning one long rod into 2 smaller ones, I need to do some repainting. I also need new (or rather more) finials. Irritatingly, the finials sold at Home Depot are about 1/4 inch smaller than the ones I have. So they really won't work. And I didn't want to spend $20 buying new wood finials.

I would probably need to buy 4, if I couldn't find any the same size in Houston and had to order online. So also at Michael's I scored some 2 inch wooden balls, like the one below.

It's the exact same size as the current finial (which I've been carrying around in my purse for 2 weeks). I'm just going to slice off the excess from the current finials and turn them all into balls that just screw into the rod. You don't even see the connection, you just need the ball on the end to prevent the curtain ring from falling off.

I can't wait to go home paint everything flat blat and then use the rub'n buff over top to make it a worn out antique gold!

Oh but guess what I still need to find more stupid wooden rings that are the same size as my current rings.

The Master Bathroom

This post is not chronologically accurate because the master bathroom was one of the first projects we tackled. And when I say we, I mean we hired a contractor to redo the bathroom before we moved in because we needed it done quickly and at that point were comfortable entirely gutting a bathroom by ourselves (although, after this process my husband is confident he can tackle the hall bath with perhaps a bit of help from a plumber).

Here was the inspiration photo. Which we didn't really nail, but hey we've got the marble mosaic floor and subway tile with gray grout.

The original bathroom was HIDEOUS. It was painted cafe o lait and chocolate brown (including the ceiling) and the previous owners had painted over the pink and blue tile and tub with regular latex paint that was peeling.

Before:

Hey what do you know I'm wearing that same shirt again today!

Demo:

 

Rebuilding:

Yeah marble mosaic floor that we got on a mega deal of like $2 a square foot. It's worked out so well because the various shades of gray really hide dirt!

 I really like this Ikea sink.

There are only two missing components. I'd love to have a cabinet like this for towels (upper left of photo)

And we have an antique medical cabinet to get powder coated. Apparently there needs to be some kind of door repair that my husband is working on. This is not our cabinet, but quite similar.

Oh man I bet new glass is going to cost like 50 million dollars. We are also still deciding on a color. At first I thought white, must be white. But we've seen some others at a store in Houston that are brightly colored and now I'm thinking an aqua would be cool.