Save My Seat

 Or, rather, seatS.  From my kids.  And maybe from myself too.  

We bought these chairs* several years ago when I was going through a big mid-century phase (haven't quite grown out of that one yet because it's a w e s o m e).  I found two of them at Dirt Cheap and two more on Amazon Warehouse - each pair a different color but at the time, I didn't mind because they were so cheap.  Sometimes logic leaves me when I see a good deal, what can I say?  So one pair had a gray upholstered seat and the other, an ivory seat.  The gray held up, the ivory?  With kids?  Chairs that we use every single day during meals?  Not so much.


We Just A-Door It

The craziest thing happened to us last year.  We made all these plans for the front of the house (read more about them here) and before we told a single person what they were, a friend texted to say they were getting a new front door, would we want their old one?

Not so unusual or crazy, right?  Except she also sent a photo of that door and immediately, I had to pinch myself and blink 39575 times to make sure I wasn't seeing anything unreal.  It was almost exactly like the door in our plans.  I mean, what are the chances?!

Heart-racing, I made Anthony drop everything and go over to measure to see if it would work and HUZZAH, it was the same size as our current front door (not so crazy since doors come in standard sizes).  He brought it home to his very excited wife, set it in our outdoor storage room, and...there it sat...for over a year.

We've never changed a front door so maybe that was part of why it sat for so long - intimidation - and probably it was also because we have four small children and lives way beyond swapping out doors but either way, we finally pulled that thing out two weekends ago and started the process of getting some more curb appeal up in here.

Sadly, in case you were wondering how to, I didn't take any pictures of how we replaced the old with the new nor am I going to take any of those pictures I didn't take and write up a tutorial because, like I said above, we've never done this before.  We went into it thinking it would probably be a project that seems easy but when you actually start it, it isn't at all and that's exactly what it ended up being.  It took us the majority of two consecutive Saturdays to hang our new door - take down the old, remove the hinges and knobs, run to Lowe's, route out new hinge spots on the new door, go back to Lowe's, rework the door jamb, run quick to Ace Hardware, put hinges on the new door, and finally, hold your breath and hope it all worked out as you hang the new door and hope to goodness it closes right!!!

Spoiler alert:  it did!

I'll show it to you in a second but to appreciate the new even more, let's backtrack to what the front of the house looked like when we moved in, courtesy of a realtor photo:


Screen Time

As the weather cools down (well, anywhere but down here in the still-steamy south) and fall is ushered in, it's really good to get in some good screen time.

But not those kinds of screens.  (Psst, you can read about all of our fave on-a-screen kids apps here though.)

I'm talking window screens.  Yep, let in allll the fresh air.

Our house only had a few of it's windows screens when we bought it and the ones we had weren't in the best condition.  We weren't bothered by it too much because we don't really like the look of full screens covering up our pretty windows (especially since we've put new crystal clear panes in most of them) but we both really like being able to open windows when the weather allows without letting bugs in.  

We toyed with idea of eventually making our own window screens for some of the windows but then we stumbled upon some adjustable window screens - brilliant!   


Built-Ins - Fake It 'Til You Make It

 Hey!  I wish I was sitting here typing up a big kitchen update but alas, I'm not.  I'll blame it on fully enjoying our summer and I'm not mad about it in the least.  Actually, the drier fall air and milder temps will serve us better anyway when it comes to painting cabinet doors outside so you could even say that our lack of kitchen progress this summer is a blessing in disguise, paving the road for efficiency later.  Orrrr maybe that's just wishful thinking...  ;)

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about what we haven't done but something we did do.  It was a little project that only took a few hours one lazy Saturday afternoon.  Not only was it quick but it also itched that scratch that not doing anything creative for a few weeks can create.

It all happened in the reading room (music room?  library?  study?  We're not sure what to call it.)  We've known for at least a year that we want to line the back wall with bookshelves atop cabinets but that's a back burner project as we focus on other things.  For awhile, we improvised with a built-in we moved in from the living room (when we removed the wall between that and the kitchen, this built-in had to be moved) and an old secondhand shelf but that left a bare corner that we just used to store stuff like the vent hood that had to go up in the kitchen.


Not very aesthetically pleasing.  But then time marched on and I found chairs, the vent hood went out and up, supplies were relocated, I moved  in a small bookshelf from the kids' room, and topped it all off with some DIY art in a thrifted frame (tutorial here).

(More) Kitchen Plans

Putting this post together makes me SO excited to get this kitchen started...errr, finished!  We're zooming in on it next!  It won't be a super quick slide into the finish line since we're doing everything ourselves but we're hoping we can get it all in by summer's end, hopefully sooner.  I went into a little bit of detail about how we planned to open it up in the past but that's done and now it's onto the finer details of cabinet colors, counter tops, and a new backsplash.  Here's a peak of what we've nailed down so far: