Two For One

I am combining yesterday and today's posts into one because in the rush to finish projects I failed to blog photos yesterday.

We have been hard at work making shelves for our living room, bedroom, and spare bedroom (which also houses my office).  Yesterday was rainy and cold here so it was an easy day to stay inside and get work done.

As paint, stain, and wood glue was drying I decided to work on a shadow box of our wedding stationary that I have been meaning to finish for a while.  I found the shadow box for a couple of dollars at a local thrift store and just needed to recover the back panel and attach my items to it.

Putting together brought back so many good memories of our wedding season.  And now I get to look at it every day as it sits on the shelves we finished for our bedroom!  The shelves are made with 1x3 for the back and base and a 1x2 for the front ledge.  We made two four foot long shelves to display pictures and memories in our bedroom.  The whole project cost $5 for lumber plus wood glue.  

Tomorrow we both go back to school which is bittersweet.  I have loved this one on one time as well as the chance to get caught up around the house, but I am also excited to get back to learning about my passion.  

Happy day 13 of 365.  For anyone going back to school tomorrow good luck on this coming semester!

"Do you need any help?"

We took a trip to Lowe's and Home Depot today to get supplies for several house projects that we would like to have completed before school starts on Monday.  While we are at Lowe's we were asked by no less than six employees if we needed any help.  Apparently we looked lost :/  Nonetheless I'm excited to share pictures of the changes in our house!

My hubby also had a pretty bouquet of roses waiting for me when I got home from work and I wanted to share them because I think he's a sweetie ;)

Another fun transformation taking place for some items in our living room!  I finally took the plunge and went purple!

There is the hodge podge of pictures from a really good day 11 of 365 :)

I want to share with all of you again to check out Joy's blog and the story of her foster daughter "Pie" and their journey towards adopting her.  Please pray for her family and if you feel called contribute to their adoption fund.  Even a dollar means a lot to this family as they work towards making "Pie" a permanent member of their family :)

Thrifted Kitchen Counter Table

Happy Monday!  I have a really exciting project to share that the hubby and I completed this weekend. It was a pretty relaxed weekend in the Calef house and on Saturday we stopped by a local flea market to look around.  It is one of our favorite lazy day activities, and since I wasn't feeling super great on Saturday we thought it was the perfect low key activity :)  

Within a minute of walking in I had found the counter height table I had been looking for since we moved into the house!  And it came with two stools that I desperately needed for the craft room so I looked the purchase as a win :)  $60 for all three pieces!

Since I had been looking for it since we moved in I had several inspiration pieces pinned on my Pinterest boards:

I fell in love with this island from World Market back in the spring.  They no longer carry it (sad day!), but as you can tell from the finished project it was my inspiration piece.

This beautiful furniture redo from Juniper Hill Antiques

A pretty dresser repurposed for the kitchen

This pretty island featured in Southern Living

First step was to remove the hardware from the table and proceed to sand and then clean.  After cleaning away all of the dust I sprayed the bottom a beautiful turquoise blue from Valspar.

We wanted the top to have the look of butcher block without the cost so we picked up 5 pieces of $.99 faux wood laminate.  It is the type that you just peel and stick, but we knew it wouldn't adhere the best to the curved edges so I quickly painted the edges with leftover dark brown paint from the hutch remodel.

After the paint dried we stuck the faux wood tiles in place and placed the new table into the kitchen. It brings color and functional counter space to the room :)  

Did you complete any fun DIY projects this weekend?

Bathroom Update

Happy Wednesday!  I am back with another room in our house to share where we have come from, what it looks like now, and what our future plans are.  This week is the bathroom, which when we moved in was a very white, but not sterile space :/  There was a single wire pantry shelf above the toilet that served as the only storage option beyond the medicine cabinet and creepy vanity.

Unfortunately I only have two very bad photos of the space before that do not show much detail (hindsight is always 20/20!), but the vanity is old and not a place I would store items beyond cleaning supplies, and the medicine cabinet was also gross with country knobs that were not my style.

The first thing we did was take down the weird wire rack (it got used when we redid our closets) and pulled off the medicine cabinet to replace it.  Someone had used the medicine cabinet to cover up a giant hole in the wall (explains why it was off-center) so we made sure to find a much larger medicine cabinet that would adequately cover the hole and caulked all the way around to create a good seal.  We also changed up the paint color to a beautiful dark grey, hung up towel racks for functionality, replaced the light, and brought in temporary shelving.

The little white cabinet outside of the door serves as more bathroom storage. It holds extra contacts, toilet paper, lotions, and hair care products.

As you can see from this shot of the temporary shelving we need more space for storage... like yesterday.

The new light is a lot brighter which is necessary in a space with only one light, and the medicine cabinet is significantly larger than the previous one.  Yay for more storage!

That is where our bathroom is currently at.  On the list of future improvements in artwork for personality, and white floating shelves that wrap around the wall beside and behind the toilet.  We hope to do two that wrap and one on the very bottom that floats just below the light switch.

Thanks for taking a peak into our bathroom!  I'll be back Friday with an easy recipe!

Living Room Update... Finally

We have lived in our house for almost 5 months!  I honestly cannot believe it has been that long, and when I look back at pictures of how our house first looked I am blown away.  We have done so much work to make this house our home and I am so proud of it.  I thought about doing an entire house update in one post, but then decided that I would break it up by rooms in order to show more pictures and details and make the fun last longer!

If you want to look back at all of the pictures from when we first moved in here is my initial post.

Our living room when we moved in was dark, dirty, and in need of TLC.  The walls were a dark hunter green, the trim was painted over with dark, muddy brown, the ceiling fan was brass, and the wood floors had seen better days.

 

We spent two weekends with my amazing in-laws working to paint the house and work on the floors.  They even came back while we were gone on vacation and polyurethaned the floors in the living room and bedrooms!  It was a long process but the end result in the living room is the perfect living space for us :)

We chose the color "Blue Lagoon" by Behr for the walls and LOVE the color as well as the paint.  It took us ONE, yes let me repeat one, coat to cover over the dark hunter green!

The floors look so much better after a good scrub and a coat of polyurethane.  If I was redoing floors in my permanent home I would have sanded, re-stained, and covered the floors with a couple of coats of poly, but this worked great to make the floors look clean, be more durable, and we were able to do all of the floors in the house with one can.

This shelf had a makeover and now acts as my "mantle".  I love it for showcasing sweet mementos during the year, and I am really excited to dress it up for holidays!

The hutch looks so good up against the blue walls!  I love how well all of the bold colors pair with one another in the space.

This is a lamp that we DIY'd out of a fun lampshade I had to have from Target and a pendant light from Home depot :)  It helps to define the "dining" part of the space.

It is hard to see, but behind the door we have a coat rack for purses, school bags, and jackets. You have to get a little crafty when you don't have a coat closet!

We also tackled the ceiling fan during our living room makeover.  It used to be brass, but one day we took it apart (part to paint and mostly to clean) and spray painted all of the metal parts with oil rubbed bronze.  It looks so much classier!

There is the tour of living room!  It has been a long time coming so thank you for being patient :)  There are still blank walls that I would like to have photos on, and I am still on the hunt for the perfect curtains , but it definitely looks and feels much more like home!

Cooler Weather is on Its Way

And it means that we need to get this old house ready for a cold front!  I love it when it gets cool, but it is a reminder (and motivation) that we need to do some slight weather proofing to make sure our house is more energy efficient during the cooler times.

Our first step in doing this was replacing the old weather strips on our front door.  Because this is an old house, a lot of the doors are crooked in the frame because the frame matches the sloping that happens in some rooms in the house. To account for some gaps we knew we needed to put on new weather proofing strips that would create a tight seal and hopefully keep the warm air in and cool air out!

First step was peeling what was left of the current weather strips off.  One it was black and an eye sore on a bright white door, two it was missing in places which meant it wasn't helping our problem much.  We used a razor blade to scrape the existing foam strip and adhesive off of the door.

Once the old was off we simply applied new rubber weather strips all the way around the door.  We secured the ends with finishing nails just to make sure the strips would not move around.

The finished door is one where the weather strip blends in with the door color and creates a nice vacuum seal that will be perfect for the cooler months ahead!

Have a lovely Thursday night!  I am going to get some homework finished, prep for a long day at work (but super exciting day!), and try to plan out what I want to do with my life ;)  If you have any career ideas let me know!

Upgrading to new digs

I feel super cool that I just made that the title of this post.  When I shared it with Cameron he laughed at me... how rude ;)

So this post is about us signing the papers for our new rental house!!!!  WOOHOO!!!  We knew pretty early on in our current place that we did not want to stay here.  1. We are busting at the seams (I should post pictures sometime to show you) and 2. At times we have sketchy neighbors that make living here interesting to say the least.

Going in to a rental house we had a list of wants for a new place:
*Neighborhood close to campus so Cameron can bike to class
*At least 2 bedrooms
*Larger living space (our current living room is tiny)
*Accepts pets
*Yard with space for entertaining
*Under $550
*One car garage

The house we signed the papers for meets these needs and provides the added bonus of a basement, and wonderful landlords that are letting us customize the space to us.  In the next couple of weeks as we work to update and paint the house I will share all of the fun details, but for now I am going to share a few photos of how the house looks right now.

As you can see from the pictures it needs definite TLC, paint, and cutting back of the overgrowth outside, but we are SO excited to start work on our house!  We already have paint colors picked out and ideas for the patio :)  Stay tuned for a lot of DIY in the next couple of weeks!