You Know I Love Stripes

And so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I did this:
  to the other side of our newly stamped kitchen rug.

I debated a few other options – diagonal stripes, chevron, etc… – but in the end I loved the idea of the horizontal stripes not to mention that it was the easiest option because all it involved was laying down tape and painting…no cutting, trimming, or measuring.

All I used this two-inch wide masking tape (from Target) to create the stripes:

Before I started I ripped off a small piece of tape and stuck it to my rug to make sure that when removed, it wouldn’t ruin the rug.  Lucky for me, it came off as clean as can be.

So, starting at one end, I laid strips of tape about two inches apart… 
giving me lots of even stripes all the way down the rug.(I actually started laying two pieces of tape together for thicker stripes, but then changed my mind and went with the thin stripes.)

I made sure to wrap the tape around the sides and under the rug so that, if any paint got on the sides, it’d still be where it was supposed to be – part of a stripe. 
Then I carefully took the rug outside and gave it a couple of coats of spray paint, letting the first coat dry (about 30 minutes) before I sprayed the second coat.  After a few hours of leaving it outside to rid it of the paint smell, I brought it in, carefully removed the tape, and laid it in our guest room for 24 hours before bringing it into the kitchen to be walked all over.

We love it!  It seriously looks like it was bought this way.  I noticed that the spray paint preserved the texture of the rug much more than the sponged on latex paint did.

[Update:  Read about how the rug is holding up here!] 

Budget breakdown for this side:
Tape:  $4 (used only about 1/8 of the roll)
Spray Paint:  $4 (used one leftover can and half of another)
Total:  $8
…which brings the Grand Total of the entire project to:  $34
Thirty-four beans for a reversible rug that we can flip and reverse depending on our mood, that can be easily washed, that adds some much need pattern and color into our kitchen, and that gives our dish-washin’ footsies a soft place to land.  Not bad, I’d say!

So, the only question that remains is, which side do you like better?      stripes                                                  or                                             patterned   

.           .           .

I’ve been busy in the nursery and I’ve got a good read/tutorial coming your way this weekend!  Hope to see you then!

P.S.  It’s party time!  Linking up at A Bowl Full of Lemons, Ginger Snap Crafts, and Gingerly Made!

One Down

Three sections to go.  Hopefully priming and painting the next three won't take me two weeks each either.  My fun-filled schedule of babysitting, eating, napping, and painting in between isn't really conducive to a kitchen remodel.  But, the next few weeks seem a little more lax so hopefully I'll have this baby done by the middle of March.

As far as priming and painting go, I followed the same process I used during our master bath paint fest, except I rolled on two coats of paint instead of one.

Primed:

Painted:

Of course we still have a couple of things to do like add a light fixture and some molding to cover the gaps between the sofit and cabinets near the window but that's all on Anthony's to-do list so I'm free to move on to the opposite side.

Speaking of the opposite side, late one night last week we also managed to mangle some shelving and trim to finally make way for the above-the-range microwave we've had living in our guestroom closet for the past year.  Three cheers for getting our old microwave off the counter soon, thereby uncovering some coveted counter space and making our kitchen step even further into the 21st century!

Fingers crossed and hoping upon hope, our new countertops will be here and in next Friday (they were supposed to be here yesterday but were 'back-ordered'), so I'll be sure to squeeze in some exciting pictures of those.  :) 

Have a great weekend!  I'll be spending some of mine doing prenatal yoga, hoping it'll cure my aching abs.  :)

Micro-Mania

Whew!  The Bean Team has been through a whirlwind of fun this past week...a friend visiting, a cupcake-decorating birthday party, a beautiful wedding in South Carolina, and lots of other little things.  But, we're back now and hoping to get back on track with some D.I.O.s (Doing It Ourselves).  The canopy over our bed has become a when-we-have-a-few-minutes job and we're now focusing on changing up a cabinet to accommodate our new microwave!  It's not here quite yet but will be Thursday, along with all of our other appliances.  Read about our recent appliance woes here. 

Here's the future home of the soon-to-be-here microwave:

The only problem is that, once we remove the hood vent, the space between the bottom of the microwave and the top of the stove won't be large enough.  It's recommended you leave 18 inches so that you have room to use the back burners comfortably...and so you don't over-heat the bottom of your microwave.

We actually had this same problem in our first house.  We fixed it there by having a carpenter-friend shorten the cabinet.  We then went to the store where our cabinets were made/purchased, and had some new doors that fit our shortened cabinet made.  Our cabinets were a lot nicer and so we spent a little extra time and money into making our cooking niche look nice.

Well, in this house, since we'd like to replace the cabinets someday (and because the cabinets aren't made anymore), we're not going to go through all the trouble of having doors custom-made and then painting them to match the existing cabinets.  The plan we've devised then, is to remove the doors, hinges, and middle piece, shorten the cabinet, and make a decorative shelf above our microwave.  

We love having the doors to enclose our cookbook, coffeemaker, and blender storage, but the options are nill so those things will have to find another home.

Between educating ourselves on carpentry and Anthony's studies, we hope to have this finished next weekend but we'll see what time brings us.  Hopefully we'll be suffering from joyful success and not "cabinet fever" after this one!