Project “Add Some Color”

You might remember that a few months ago we gussied up our kitchen with white paint, new countertops, a new sink and faucet, a newly installed microwave, and a subway tile backsplash. 

It looks mighty fine and we love how bright it is now, but it’s lacking some serious color infusion.  Well, I started that infusion with a few tweaks involving spray paint.  For example, see the dark brown spoon holder to the right of the stove in the photo above?  No?  It’s there.  It’s just melded into the color of the cook top, no individuality whatsoever. 

Well that spoon holder’s singing a new song these days to the tune of “Lemon Grass” by Rustoleum:

If I’ve written it one time I’ve written it a thousand buuut, all I did was spray each of my items to be colored with a thin coat of primer, let that dry, and then sprayed them again with a few thin and even coats of color, making sure to spray at every side and angle of each item to get full coverage. You might’ve noticed my multi-tasking as I primed up Mama Mary at the same time.

So there we have it, a leedle bit more color in our stark white kitchen.

The best part about this whole paint party is that it only cost me $4 for the spray paint.  I already had some spray primer on hand and the napkin, spoon, and paper towel holders were wedding gifts from Target five years ago.

Still on my back burner are a hand-painted/stenciled runner, some colorful cookbooks, random decor here and there, and maybe a spray-painted coffee maker?  Not sure about that last one but I’m not going to lie and tell you I positively won’t do it…

Happy weekend!

Dreamin’ of a White Kitchen

Day dreamin’ that is because it’s finally d-o-n-e!  AND it cost us just under $1150 (not including the appliances we bought a couple of years ago)…dirt cheap when you talk kitchen remodels!

Let’s see, where’d we leave off twenty million weeks ago…oh yeah, the tile backsplash.  Had we gotten it done sooner than the week right before the double troubles came, I woulda coulda shoulda written up a detailed tutorial but you’ll have to settle for the nutshell version and seek out more wiser sources if you’d like a splash too.  So, first we washed down the wall real good like and then took some sandpaper to it to get it nice and rough for good adhesion.  To protect our nice, new countertops, we simply taped some garbage bags all around.  Then, it was spread mastic on a small section of wall and place tile, repeat, and repeat again…over and over until… 

…there was full coverage of the most modest kind.  

The ends were a source of much deliberation.  We could either have ended the tile aligned with the top cabinets or the bottom, the latter sticking out a couple inches more.  We chose the top cabinet line-up.  Also, we chose to have a bull-nosed look on each visible end  by grabbing some larger bull-nosed tile (we couldn’t find bull-nosed tile in the 3 x 6 variety in stores) and cutting it down with a tile saw.

Then it was in with white grout and a strip of caulk between the bottom row of tiles and the countertop and wala, a shiny new surface had we.

But anyway, back to the bigger picture.  Look how far we’ve come since I took leftover brown paint to the cabinets a few years ago.

Using my highest status of wifey quite efficiently, I finally persuaded Anthony to rip out the ugg wooden overhang and mini florescent light over our sink (but  not before I tried to rip them out myself) and replace them with a new pendant and seven more necessary inches of light.  Hello 2012.

And here’s the other side, taken from a mixed metal mess to sleek stainless with the addition of the microwave.

Read about how we went from cabinet to shelf and microwave here.  Any day now I’ll fill up that shelf with some more colorful cookbooks, probably of the dessert kind just to stay with my craving trend.  Much better than before, don’t cha think?

Then, just for a 360 feel, here’s the before-new-appliances/present view from the laundry room:

And now for the whole shebang: (right before we moved in)

I still have plans to add some much needed color with a painted runner and a couple of other nick knacks and maybe someday we’ll replace the florescent light and Anthony will let me repaint the laundry room with leftover guest bathroom paint but for now we’re loving the new, lighter and brighter look!

Here’s what it cost us:

Countertops:  $850 (Staron solid surface - Home Depot on sale, with a 10% off coupon, and 5% off matching Lowe’s credit card offer)

Sink: $120 (found clearanced from $420 because of an unseen-once-installed tiny-ish dent)

Faucet:  $80 (Southeastern Salvage)

Pendant light kit:  $15 (Home Depot)

Pendant light glass cover:  $15 (Lowe’s)

Wood and supplies for shelf above microwave:  $20

Primer:  free (already had)

Paint (Valspar’s Promenade):  2 quarts at $13 each

Sander:  free (borrowed)

Sandpaper for said sander:  $5 (Lowe’s)

Deglosser:  $5 (Crown Liquid Deglosser NEXT from Lowe's)

Labor and sick skills of one pregnant lady and her adoring husband:  free

Support and safety enforcement of two buns in the oven:  priceless

Total spent:  $1136 ($3350 if you include the appliances)

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And now I must go love on our little bobble-headed babes…happy weekend everyone!

P.S.  I, Miss Pretty D. Proud, typed this entire post with one hand.

P.S.S. Tag Camille, you’re it…get your kitchen reveal up pronto!  :)

Kitchen? Painted.

   Yes sir, this is what I walk into every morning nowadays, usually to scope out my first breakfast and plan for my second, third, and fourth.  No, it’s not done in the full sense of the word, but the hardest part – painting the cabinets – is.  We have yet to hang the new over-the-range microwave, build the shelf above it, and install a subway tile backsplash until we call it quits with our mini-reno.  Then of course I’ve got a few little things to do to keep me busy until Twin A and B come like taking some paint to a runner that will anchor the floor and hanging a picture collage on the wall between the dining area and the kitchen.  All in slow pregnancy time my friends. 

However, while waiting for Anthony to finish a couple of grad classes so we (more like he and a strong friend) can install the microwave, I’ve been taking advantage of the sweet southern weather and spending a good amount of time outside lounging and even putting in a little sweat equity.  As I mentioned in the twins 23 week post, I had enough energy to sustain a small army last week so I used some of it to improve our love-lacking landscaping.  In particular, one of the beds in the front of our house was looking a little shabby.  You might remember that a few years ago we overhauled our curb appeal, taking it from drab to fab, except since then, a couple of plants we chose had to be replaced.  I was in charge of buying the replacements last year and thought I scored a really good deal when I got a few plants for under five bucks.  So, I planted ‘em, thought they looked good (they always look good at the store) but this year, they grew back looking like weeds.  I should’ve taken a picture but I didn’t.  What I did do was, armed with a little more cash and sense, grabbed a few hibiscus (which are perennials down here) and a few annuals and went to work.

First, I set them in their soon-to-be spots just to make sure I got the spacing right:

  

And then I defied the probable wonderment of every passer-by thinking “look, it’s a pregnant lady with a shovel!” and dug, dug, dug until I got here:

All of the landscaped beds around our casa need a new layer of pine straw (which we use as mulch down here) and some grass seed needs to be sown throughout the yard, but at least our curb appeal isn’t a ‘lack of’ anymore.  And, if I've made the right plant decisions, the only tweaking of landscaped beds we should have to do in the following years is adding some annuals and maybe pine straw.  Fingers crossed. 

 Anyway, I’ve got a rather long list of to-do’s today before Easter that includes making some nips and tucks on some maternity wear, basking in the sun, and possibly some spray paint, so off I go.  I need to keep my mind busy to improve my mood – I found out last night, after finally doing our taxes, that the federal government was bound and determined to swoop in on my parade and take every last cent we had saved up for a new dslr camera.  Lovely.  Sometimes it’s harder to live on a budget than others but, we’ve got blessings galore and for these I am thankful.  :)

  I hope to get some more substantial Saturday posts in the form of tutorials and such on this here blog soon so stay close!  Oh yes, and most importantly, have an incredible Easter!  Thank you Lord Jesus for the sacrifice you made on the cross for us, that we might live and one day be united with you!

Nothing But the Kitchen Sink

That's right, nothing is completely done but the kitchen sink.  But, it's still looking pretty good even with all of the surrounding, unfinished work due to it's new, light-me-up friend:

We still have to add some quarter round molding to the upper corners of the cabinets (see the gaps?) but it's so much better, right?  Especially seeing how far we've come:

As for the pendant itself, it cost us $33 - $15 for the medium-base pendant kit (Home Depot sells a candelabra base, which I wasn't a fan of), $15 for the glass cover, both from Lowe's, and a few bucks for a round electrical box that houses the wires above.  Anthony saved us a good chunk of change by installing it himself.  All it took was removing the old florescent fixture, filling in and then sanding smooth a few screw holes used to hold it up, and hooking up the new pendant using the existing wires and new electrical box - all while the power was off of course.  That whole process was the easy part.  :)  The tough part came in choosing which glass cover we wanted.  In fact, I skipped in and out of both Home Depot and Lowe's and came home with a total of seven covers.

    Originally, I thought for sure we'd love the taupe, crackled one on the far left but once it was up and the switch was on, the light it emitted was too orangey-brown and we wanted light and bright.  The second choice was the seeded glass dome, second in from the left.  We actually let this one hang for a few days and loved the look but ultimately decided we didn't like the fact that it clearly showed the bulbs housing.  So after nixing all the rest, one-by-one, we fell in love with this one:

It looks magnificent lit up...which unfortunately the point and shoot isn't good at capturing.  Initially, I was worried there would be too much white around but with the valance in the background and the window behind, it's just perfect.  :)

And that's all there is to write about the kitchen.  As I type, all of the doors belonging to the opposite side of upper cabinets are in the midst of being primed and painted, set to be back up and swinging next week.  However, as I promised in the twins 19 week post, I do have a couple of little thrifty fun projects to share.

A few weeks ago, as I was browsing one of my fave local haunts - Goodwill - for some maternity sewing projects (of which I still haven't done one), I ran into this woven basket/tray:

By the looks of it, someone may have had some chill partays complete with some chips and dip in this little ditty but me, I saw it as a low-profile basket to house onions, potatoes, and bread (and anything else that gets stored on top of our fridge) in style.  First though, the inner circle had to go.  Lucky for me, it wasn't woven into the basket but merely wired on in three places (I made sure before buying it for $2).  So, out came the needle-nose pliers and off came the circle.

Now it's filled and living on it's new perch:

It adds a little more texture to the kitchen, as small as it is, which is needed with all the white that will be.  I also like how thin it is, allowing me to be able to open the cabinet doors above the fridge have I ever a need even though the glass vases up there would still need to be moved...which brings me to my second little project - those vases.

I was handed-down these preserved veggie vases right after we were married and since then, even though they're supposed to be made to look fresh forever, the veggies at the top of both were looking a little icky. 

The other one had green and red peppers in it and actually looked worse.  I emptied that one a year ago and it's just taken me this long to get to the other.  :)  So, to empty I simply plugged my nose (precautionary, especially while pregnant), turned on the water and waste disposal in the sink, and poured away.  The carrots gave me a little bit of a hard time and I had to dig some of them out with a skewer, but after a few minutes I was left with this:

And this is where I say "to be continued".  I'm not sure what the future holds for these guys but a few ideas I've got are a) filling them with coffee beans (spray painted first?), sand, or something else small enough to fill them, b) dumping paint in the inside to color them from the inside out, or c) turning them into lamps.  Once I know, you'll know and see.  Should be fun!  First priority though is getting the rest of the kitchen donzo and then yanking out the sewing machine to create some increasingly needed maternity wear.  :) 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sandpaper, Nails, and a Mask

Finally!  After living without the oh-so-necessary-these-days internet for a week and getting a run around from our service provider, our web is finally back up and Bean In Love is back in business!  Oh happy Saturday!

As you might know, we've started another project to bring our kitchen out of the dark into the light.  We've already picked out and ordered new countertops so the next step is to get started on re-painting the cabinets.  When we first moved in, we had the great idea to paint the cabinets a chocolate brown using left-over/free paint from our previous house (see here).  Well, it was all great and dandy and looked pretty good when we were done but for some reason the paint remained a little sticky, even to this day.  One cabinet door also had lots of little pieces of roller lint plastered underneath the paint, leftover from the previous owners paint job and it always irked us.  So after we painted our master bath cabinets and fell in love with their look, we decided to carry it into the kitchen as well.  This is the story of how I, during my 16th week of pregnancy with twins, began this somewhat large project while Anthony helped here and there in between work and studying for a masters' exam.  :)

   With our countertops due in on the 17th of this month, I decided to complete the upper cabinets first before they arrived so that I didn't have to worry about accidentally ruining brand new tops with endless piles of paint chips and sawdust and 'oops' drops of primer and paint.  So it began with the upper left side:

 

For starters, I removed all of the doors and hardware and then removed everything from inside the cabinets.

Starting with the doors (the easy part), I set up a workstation outside and got to sanding, first with a coarse-grit sandpaper and then with a medium-grit until all sides were as smooth as two babies bottoms.  :)

Before:

After:

Since I was just going to paint right over them again, I didn't sand all the way down to the wood.  I just sanded enough to make sure that I had a non-sticky, smooth, flat surface to apply primer and paint to. 

To get in the grooves on the edge of the doors and inside the decorative routing on the fronts, I wrapped some sand paper around the thin, rounded end of Anthony's grill brush and went to town.

Then, a probably unnecessary step but just for good measure, I quickly rubbed each door down with a thin layer of Crown Liquid Deglosser NEXT (from Lowe's) to further ensure a good paint stick.

Then, it was on to the cabinet frames where I employed the same sanding process.

Just for kicks, here's a quick, all-around view of other happenings in the kitchen:

Me - prepped, pregnant, and fully protected.  :)

And, the new tablescape I created:

Lovely, innit?

Anyway, back to the cabinets.  After a couple days of sanding, sore arms, and lots of pregnancy bathroom breaks, I was ready to prime.

And that was that.  Except you quick ones might've also noticed one tiny thing missing...

The gaudy scalloped edge above the sink (if you thought "the light bulb", I'll count that too)!  Hooray for 2012 and modern design people! 

How'd I get it down?  Well, after noticing it appeared to be attached with two screws on each side...

...I simply removed them and tried my hardest (without Anthony's knowledge or approval) to bang, pull, and rip it down but to no avail.

It wasn't until my sweet, unknowing husband came home that night that he noticed my apparent deviousness and hesitantly removed it for me - after removing molding from behind and ripping it from six unseen nails from above (no wonder!) - and thereby exposing the ugly baby florescent light we've got goin' on.  But it's okay, we've got plans for that thing and they don't involve keeping it.  Stay tuned!  :)

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Well, I'm off to start painting and eating, painting and eating (and scouting for the mail man who just might have my Gap maternity jeans in his possession).  Have a great weekend everyone! 

Tops

 We ordered new countertops!  Scuzzy laminate, it's time for you to go!  After waiting and researching and waiting and researching, we actually landed ourselves a good deal (surprise, surprise) at Home Depot.  We found and went with a Staron solid surface that's a tid bit darker than the sample shown on the very left in the pic below.  (I returned the sample before taking a pic...shame, shame.)

 Lucky for us, we snatched up a countertop that was on 'Special Buy' - regularly $42/sq. foot on sale for $37/sq. foot.  On top of that, all of Home Depot's countertops were 10% off plus we persuaded them (easily) to give us an extra 5% if we opened their credit card (to match the deal Lowe's swings around these days).  All of those awesome discounts add up to about $300 in savings!  We can't wait until they're done and in!  Should take two to three weeks.  While we were at it, we scored a new sink (because we can't put an old sink over new countertops, right?...think wine skins people...thank you Jesus)  at a fave discount store around here - Dirt Cheap.  It is/was a $400 stainless steel sink but we got it for 70% off because of one little dent that won't even show once it's in because it's around the undermounted part...if that makes sense.

Anyway, you can be sure we'll have a "they're here and in" post for ya in a few weeks.  As for the current bump situation...

Here 'we' are at 12 weeks.

While we were in our doc's office last week, Anthony asked him what his "professional opinion" was on the sexes of the babes.  He informed us that he usually doesn't give his opinion for a few more weeks but did tell us that the "old wives, whoever and wherever they are, would tell you you've got two girls in there based on their quick heart rates."  Anthony proceeded to put his head on doc's desk...

See you next week!

Hung Over

No, this post doesn't have anything to do with alcohol...or a self-induced nausea fest as a result of too much of it (I don't see how that's "fun"...never have, never will).  Anyway, it does, however, have everything to do with valances.  And it all began with a little bit of this:

and a little bit of that:

I know some of you (eh-hem, Farrah) were hoping I'd have a post on a finished loveseat this lovely Saturday Friday (I know, I usually post on Saturdays but tomorrow my world wide web access will be a world wide won't), but alas, it still sits undone.  I'm at the point with it where I need Anthony's help and he's been swamped with school and work so - no Anthony, no help, no loveseat...yet.  But back to the valances.  It's been on Anthony's to-do list for me to whip up some valances to adorn our dining area windows for like a year.  Finding the perfect fabric took me a long, long time...one reason for the delay in said project...but I did find it.  It wasn't as cheap as I'd been hoping (actually it's the most expensive fabric I've ever bought at $17 a yard) but luckily I only needed two yards to get these babies made.

Here's how it all went up:

First I painstakingly cut out the four rectangles that would soon be sewn into valances and laid them out on our living room floor to make sure they'd look okay...a.k.a. to make sure that there weren't two side-by-side that looked too similar.

I could've made each valance exactly the same - the same floral pattern across each - but that would've required about 4 yards of fabric and I wasn't willing to splurge.  Besides, I liked that they would all be different and since I was using a floral, I could do that without it looking off.

Next up I cut the lining that would be sewn onto the back of each valance.  All I did was lay a large piece of lining fabric (don't know the technical term) over the future valance and then cut it to be about an inch smaller.

After everything was cut I went back and forth from ironing down seams, pinning, and sewing until I had five almost perfect valances ready to be attached to the wood beams that would hold 'em up.

We used two, long (8 ft. I think?) pieces of the cheapest 1x2 pine strips at Lowe's but made sure they were straight before we bought 'em...very important!  Enter handy man Anthony, who cut the wood pieces to the measurement we needed to fit each window.  Because of my little perfectionist personality, I also gave the under side of the wood beam (the side that would show if you looked under the finished valance) a coat of white spray paint, you know, so in case anyone looked underneath they'd look nice too (okay, maybe I'm crazy).  Then, Anthony attached some corner braces we picked up for 75 cents for 2 at our local ReStore.

  

In comes the staple gun and newly sewn valances.  First, we stapled the valance to each corner.  Since we wanted the valances to wrap around the entire piece of wood, we did this first to ensure the fabric was centered and that the side seams were straight and would be flush with the wall.

Then, to make sure the valance hung level, I quickly measured along the length of it.  When I had measured twice and was certain of it's perfection, we began the stapling.

I held each valance in place while Anthony did the clickety-clicking.

We didn't use too many staples since the valances were super lightweight - about one every 4-6 inches.

And then, after a tough 20 minutes of holding and stapling, we celebrated our 'hang-overs' with a rousing game of hide-and-seek.  Ten points if you can find Anthony!  :)

 Haha...that was fun.  Anyway, we did get around to putting them up and we're thrilled with them!  While we were staring, admiring our work, Anthony said "They look so good.  I can't believe we went this long without anything up there."  I don't know...how did we ever survive?!  : p



In case you were curious as to what they looked like underneath...

 To get the crease on the corners, Anthony broke out the iron and made his own corner...yep, that's what I said, Anthony used the iron...I know, I'm a lucky woman.

And finally, here's the whole shebang:

We also hung an itty-bitty valance over the window above the sink, but lighting conditions and a not-so-great camera wouldn't allow a good pic.  You can take my work for it though, it's darn cute.  Now I just need to dress up our plain jane table with a runner and decor or something.  And, now that we've got valances up, the wall to the right of the windows is looking a little too blank and bland, but don't worry, I've got a collage project up my sleeve and I'm sure you'll be hearing about it.  :)

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Stay tuned in the coming weeks if you wanna see a curb-side rocking chair make-over and painted wallpaper...and, crossing my fingers and hoping for time, an un-antiqued, antique loveseat finito.  :)  That's all.  Have a happy weekend everyone!