Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Painted Interior Cabinets: Pinterest Challenge Spring Edition

The Pinterest Challenge (Spring Edition)  is here!  It's time to join in on the pinterest project party fun.  Last challenge I was a guest host (still crazy to me) and put together a diy fabric ottoman.  The Pinterest challenge is just a fun way of getting all of us to stop pinning and actually doing!  I love it.  This time around Sherry and Katie have two new awesome co-hosts Emily and Renee.  Make sure you stop by their blogs to check out their projects and link up with them!


Ok, so on to my pinterest project - painting the interior kitchen cabinets.  Here is my "pinspiration" - I'm  sure lots of you have seen this cute photo and even pinned it yourself.
This project is from Elsie and Emma over at A Beautiful Mess.  Isn't is so cute and fun?  I want my cabinets to look like this.  Challenge accepted.

Ok - first confession.  I'm not as finished as I would have liked to have been.  I do have the painting completed just not the cabinets filled yet.   But, I'm getting ahead of myself - let's take a look back (way back) to the original state of our kitchen cabinets when we moved it.


Not pretty.  Almost immediately the first thing we did was paint our kitchen cabinets.  We love them now.  They are obviously not new but way better.  We have debated so many times on what to do with this kitchen.  Do we gut the whole thing, leave the cabinets and just replace the countertop - the questions loom.  The longer we live here the more we lean towards not gutting the whole thing.  We do however want to replace the the countertops, add a backsplash, take down that weird middle piece over the window, etc.  We just don't want to over upgrade our small house.  So, those questions are for another day.


Here's the secret behind those painted cabinets - they are totally crazy half primed on the inside.



This was one of those - I'll get to it one day things.  Well, the one day has finally come.  

Here's a glimpse at the bottom cabinet - that shelf is old and grody.  Don't freak - I had it covered with shelf liner but removed it to clean and paint.


So, the color choice.  I wanted something fun but not too crazy and something that would be a pretty contrast/background for my dishes and kitchen gadgets.  This pretty navy/indigo color by valspar wonderfully named "Jazz Club" totally won.  I also loved the quality of this paint - it went on really smooth and nice.  I did do two coats but my cabinets were totally weird and half primed so I went into this knowing that would be the case.


I love using a foam cabinet roller when painting cabinets - the interior was no different.


This is my first coat before edging it all out.  Its a little brighter here (this is during the drying phase).  Paint almost always dries a little darker - and this paint is no exception.


The actual painting of the interior of the cabinets was actually really easy and quick.  The worst part about this project was pulling everything out and having your kitchen all over your house while you are in the middle of this.  


So after two quick and easy coats we have this.  I.love.it.  I love this color, I love that our cabinets feel finished now, I can't wait to re-stock them and organize them - I could go on.


Oh, here's the bottom shelf.  I love the pop of navy down there.  Now I need to find a really fun and pretty cabinet liner for the bottom.


I go by and just open the cabinets up for no reason now to just see the insides.  This totally makes me want to replace a few doors with glass doors so I can easily see inside.


I still have some white touch ups I need to do and of course - actually filling the cabinets back up.  But for now I'm in love.

Thanks so much to Katie, Sherry, Emily and Renee for hosting the pinterest challenge!  

Thanks for stopping by today!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Adding a little More Curb Appeal

We have been working, working, working on this little house of ours and because of that this little blog of mine has been neglected a bit.  The cool thing is - I have a bunch of projects to share coming up - so I'm excited about that.  One of which is our finished patio!  I can't wait to share how it turned out.   Pretty much as soon as we finished we had a monsoon roll in so I haven't been able to get any good after pics - looks like it might be a good day for taking some after shots - so stay tuned.

One of our goals for this spring is to get our yard cleaned up, neat and pretty.   We shared some in our painting the house post about how we have begun adding some character to our yard with new plants and mulch and a new walkway.  It was definitely time for some color though.

I have to brag a little and say that I have the sweetest husband ever.  I went and grabbed a yellow rose bush to plant in the front and also some veggies and herbs for our side bed.  A few days later Justin came home with a lot more herbs and four more rose bushes.  How sweet is he?  Look how pretty they are....




I hated the exterior of this house so much when we moved in - from the paint choices to the landscaping.  I love it so much now.  Look how far we've come...


It doesn't even seem like the same house.  



I also have a little side plant bed that was nothing but weeds when we moved in...and pretty much has stayed that way for the last two years.  It has been driving me crazy and I needed to do something about it.


I started by getting rid of the weeds and adding soil.  We actually added some soil in from the patio dig out a few weeks ago.  I also purchased some garden soil to supplement as well.  A little poking and tilling around was needed to break up the ground a bit and prepare it for planting.  This pic below is how its looked for the last few months.


I planted some of the veggies and herbs I had and I'm still working on getting the rest in (between patio building and major downpours).  I opted to make this a veggie and herb garden as opposed to a flower bed.  This area gets lots of sun and I love that its right outside the kitchen door (perfect for grabbing some fresh herbs while cooking).


Some of Silas' little seedlings have even made it in there.


Oh, I planted a blueberry bush too - does anyone have any pointers for growing blueberries??


We spend a lot of time outdoors so all of these little updates are so exciting to me.  The patio post is coming soon!  Also, tomorrow is the spring edition of the pinterest challenge.  Remember when I was a guest host in the winter?  Yeah, that was crazy.  I have a project I'm working on for that and hopefully will be finished before tomorrow so I can share!  Can't wait to see what everyone has done this time!

Anyone else working on prettying up your yard?  Share with me!!

Have a great day!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Building the Patio - Choosing Pavers

Its definitely time for an update when it comes to the patio.  Things have been moving rather slowly around here - well at least when it comes to patio building.  Over the weekend our goal was to pick out, purchase and lay down the patio - that however did not happen.  Seems as though choosing a paver took a little longer than originally thought and then loading them and unloading them took longer than expected as well.  Its just the way projects go sometimes.  So, I don't have a finished patio to show you yet but we do have pavers.....


As you can gather we actually have two different kinds going on.  I wasn't necessarily planning on choosing a paver and a brick but when I saw this brick I really kind of loved it.


Its called Old Towne Blend by Pavestone.  I love the variation of colors and after some deliberation we all (Me, Justin, Mark and Buddy) decided that it would be a nice accent.  


Now, on to the main paver.  Originally I was just thinking of going with something really plain.  I didn't like square and I didn't want anything that would be rough and leave an uneven surface (its surprising how many pavers are bumpy...who wants to sit on a bumpy patio?)  But everyone else wasn't feeling my decision.  So we kind of went back and forth several times.  


After finding the brick and agreeing it would make a great accent I was really liking this square paver - this one is Nantucket's Yorkstone Tan Variegated.  The variation of color is really nice and it has a slight texture to it.  Its plain with a twist I would say.


We have been playing around with patterns this week - we are kind of liking this.  Honestly, I'm sure we will re-arrange and arrange again before we decide on the final pattern.


Slowly this week our plan is to start moving the pavers from the front yard to the back (something we haven't started yet).  This patio job is a ton of work from start to finish.  Everything is heavy and labor intensive.  I'm so thankful my toughest job yet was choosing which pavers we wanted.  Man, that was difficult/I'm kind of spoiled.  Someone has to make lunch though right?

 Hopefully we will have a finished patio by the end of this weekend!  Can't wait to share the finished project with you!

So have any of you guys ever started a project and have it take way longer than expected?  Do you have trouble choosing your project supplies sometimes?  Share with me!

Have a great Wednesday!!

PS - You can check out our previous patio posts here:  Building a Patio Part One, Patio Part Two