So Long Bookcase!

When Jesse and I were first looking at our home, we knew the kitchen needed a lot of work.

 

(This picture was taken after we moved in.) 

I had to move a bookcase in the kitchen just to allow for more storage. The cabinets were hideous as was (IS) the tile floor and there was a wallpapered backsplash that left little to be desired. 

I got to work and said goodbye to the wallpaper and painted the cabinets a nice creamy white.  I also redid the back of the bookcase just to give it a little more character.

Much better, but still the room needed something else. Well, as we know, I like to rearrange things, so the coffee maker and mugs moved to their own spot in the dining room. The bookcase was looking a bit emptier. I found a place for other things in the cabinets and soon I only had the jars and a few white pieces of dinnerware on the bookcase.

Melody mentioned one day that she had a nice stack of old barn boards in her garage and that I could have some! After giving the boards a light sanding, I bought some brackets, attached them to the boards and got rid of the bookcase. 

I can't believe how spacious the kitchen is now that the bookcase is gone! 

This project was the cheapest, most satisfying project that I think I have done around the house so far! Like the front door, I did this project during nap time. Unlike the front door, this project only took one nap time. :) Now I have storage, floor space, and something pretty to look at! 

Happy weekend! 

{DIY} Magnets

Operation Nesting is in full swing.

I am getting our house slowly organized and ready for the baby coming. Little projects here and there are the easiest for me to tackle with Gavin running around wanting to play hockey at every single moment of the day.

One project that I have had my eye on for a while is this disaster area (because the baby is going to really care if the front of the fridge is organized, right?):

Gavin loves to see his friend's faces on the fridge. I love the pictures too, but it was getting to be a mess, with pictures falling almost every time we opened the freezer door or breathed on the front of the fridge. (A little exaggeration). 

I decided to take the uglier magnets that we have received for free and some clothespins and whip up some nicer looking magnets that would keep those pictures of friends up on the fridge where they belong. 

I cleaned off the clothespins and picked pretty scrapbooking paper for the fronts of the magnets. 

I used Mod Podge to glue the paper to the front of the clothespins and advertisement magnets. I used a roll of craft magnets to attach to the back of the clothespins. 

 

Then it was up on the fridge they go! 

Things like bag tags and coupons went on the other side of the fridge so they are still accessible, but not in full view. Much better from the cluttered mess that was going on before!

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{DIY} Coffee Bar

If you have ever had to bake on your stove, had no room for clean or dirty dishes on your kitchen counter, let alone leaving your coffee maker on the counter, you will love what I'm going to show you. 

On Monday, Melody showed you some amazing family pictures that our sister Sara took for them (she took these ones too. Call her if you are local and want some family pictures!). Sara also got married this past summer and she and her husband moved into a tiny rental house. Cute, but tiny, with little kitchen counter space.  

The kitchen did have a space that had nothing in it. The previous owners used it for a small eating area, but Sara and Aaron decided to put their dining room table somewhere else. So that left an awkward space in the kitchen. 

They decided to use the space to build a small coffee bar with storage below.
(Have you noticed that designated coffee spaces are really popular right now?) 

Our dad owns a kitchen cabinet company, and these cabinets were leftover from a kitchen reno. In other words: free! 

Aaron took the doors off the cabinets and sanded down everything before painting the doors and trim with latex paint in Espresso.

With the counter top, Aaron rounded the edges of 2x6's* and glued them together. He then took a belt sander to boards and stained the boards before putting a glossy varnish on top. 
*update: Aaron actually cut off the rounded edges of the 2x6's. Since I'm not a  carpenter, I didn't know the difference. Oops!* 

After accessorizing the space with bars and hooks from IKEA for their mugs and different types of tea (Sara loves her tea), the coffee bar was open for business!

I love the transformation from those old cabinets to this beautiful, much needed counter space!

What's your favourite part of this great DIY project? Can you believe that the handles on the cabinets look completely different, although they are the same? 

New Dining Table

I have been looking for a table for our dining area for 3 years now. The table that we had originally was given to us when we got married. It was a very nice table, just extremely large. The second table that we were given was even bigger but since it was free, who could argue?

Seth was not convinced that a smaller table was the way to go. It seems to be a dumping ground for everything that comes into the house and he thought that if we got a smaller table, we'd never be able to eat at it. I gave all my reasons and opinions as to why I thought it would be a better and finally he agreed!

I started looking seriously on Kijiji and last week, I finally found the one for the price I wanted.

I picked it up last Monday night and I'd have to say that I absolutely love it. Not only does it fit better in the space, it actually makes my house look cleaner!

Before:

After:

Next on my to-do list are the chairs. The were the set that originally went with the table above. I love their shape and form. Plus they are solid wood and in good shape. But the upholstery on them is terrible! It is completely stained and outdated.  I've been running through a few ideas in my head and I'll hopefully have them finished within a few weeks.

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The (Mostly) Finished Kitchen

Last Friday, my mom graciously agreed to watch the girls for me so I could put the last finishing touches on my kitchen. I have to admit, I might have been a little bit giddy from the sheer joy of having a kitchen back together in one piece. (Remember what it looked like here??) It looks beautiful... or at least I think so. My husband has even been bragging about it to people which is a big thing for him since he usually acts so calm and collected. 

Are you ready for it??

Ta-da!!

The hardware is the same that I bought for the bathroom and I have to say that it makes the kitchen look high end. Since the kitchen is the first thing you see when you walk in the house, I knew it had to be a standout and so far, everyone who has come in the house has agreed how wonderful it is (it might be because I was telling them that it was.. but hopefully not!)

The whole process took about 2 weeks to finish all of the cupboard doors and the trim work. I put 4 coats of urethane on the cabinets since they'll tend to get touched more and have water spilled on them. A few more coats now meant less crying later if they got ruined. 

I had originally been planning on painting the cabinets white, but now I'm glad that I went with a more dramatic colour to pop against the nice oak of the floors. 

The nice thing about staining as opposed to painting, is that it really lets the grain of the wood show through.

And since I'm terrible at remembering to take a before picture.. here is a glimpse of what it looked like in February at my daughter's birthday party. You can't see all of the kitchen but you can get the gist of it. 

Awesome picture of me, right??

Eventually we will want to switch out our stove and dishwasher for stainless steel ones to match the microwave and fridge, but for the meantime, they work and so there's no excuse to get rid of them. We are also planning on changing out the countertop since that's a relatively cheap 

So what do you think? Do you think it was worth the effort? 

Easy Canvas Artwork

Last week I had a few days of downtime (I love it when that happens!) and decided that it was time to make some artwork for the wall in my kitchen/dining room. It had been sitting empty since May when I took down the massive picture frame that was there and moved it to the hallway. After taking it down, I realized that there were way too many holes in the wall and it looked junky, so I repaired the wall and repainted it. But since then, it's been sitting empty.

I kept looking around at all my favourite decorating stores like HomeSense and Bed Bath & Beyond but I couldn't find anything that I loved and that had the right price tag.

Since I wasn't having any luck at all, I looked around my house and remembered that I had a few leftover canvases that were 16x20. Perfect! I grabbed some paint and when it was quiet during nap time, I got to work.

I didn't really have anything in mind when I painted, I just knew that I wanted softer colours and something more abstract as opposed to me trying to recreate a painting.

I dabbed my brush onto the canvas until I came up with this:

When I looked at the canvas I really didn't like what I had done with the squiggles at all but I didn't want to make any hasty moves just in case I liked it better on the wall. I took a hammer and some nails and put it on the wall and stared at it... and stared some more. I still didn't like it but decided to leave it there for another day. The next day, I still didn't like it so I took it down and repainted it more in the style of the one on the right and I'm much happier with it.

When Bella woke up, she noticed right away and told me how beautiful it was. I love that kid!

It's probably not going to be permanent artwork but right now I like it and it fills up the space on the wall nicely.

Thanks for all your input the other day on different greys! I'm still trying to convince my hubby that grey is the way to go and I'm sure he'll come around soon... Especially when I assure him that he will not have to paint this massive room!

Chaos and More Chaos

I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend! We had decided that Monday was the day to get things done off our list that we had been wanting some time to do.

Seth tried to finish more of the downstairs bathroom which he says is all ready for me to install a toilet, sink and faucets. I've never tried that before but it can't be too hard, right?!

I got more of my bathroom finished by reinstalling the toilet paper holder and getting the towel rack back up on the wall. I didn't realize how important that was, but after two weeks of picking up wet towels that had been dropped on the floor, it was time.

I also got two coats of stain on my kitchen. With Seth's help, I got all of the appliances out of the way and everything taped up. I find that is the absolute worst part. It's so boring to me. There's none of the good results, just cleaning. My garage is full of kitchen cabinet doors everywhere and it's like a game to try to get through without stepping on anything important.

So, instead of showing you anything that was completely finished, I decided to show you what a house looks like that's in the middle of renovations:

Pretty bad, right? I just keep thinking that it will all be worth it in the end! I have one more coat of stain before I start putting coats of urethane on. My dad has picked out a wonderful countertop for us so I have that to look forward to as well.

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Pantry Cleanup

I wish I could tell you that I got hit by the organizing bug and went on a mad dash of organizing and cleaning my home. But no. It was a bug that caused me to clean out our food cabinet (not actually a pantry), but not the organizing bug. 

Ants. 

Lots of disgusting ants. 

Crawling everywhere. In everything. 

Not appreciated. So I pulled everything out of the cabinet and did a little research online for some natural ways to kills ants. Nothing worked. These ants weren't falling for any natural tricks! 

So after calling out on Facebook to my friends and family for their ideas, it looked like Raid was going to be it. And just like the commercials show, they hate it. Good riddance. 

Unfortunately, they had crawled their way into boxes and even the peanut butter jar. I'm going to show you what the cabinet looked before I pulled things out: 

I know. No wonder why the ants came. It was a free for all. Terrible. 

So after I purged A LOT of boxes and who knows what was hiding back there and cleaned the cabinets from little ant footprints, I started putting everything back. 

I only purchased the wire shelves for this project. Everything else that I need to organize the food, I already had in my kitchen or in a closet.

I put some food items that were in bags into jars that I had purchased at the dollar store a while ago. I labeled them with chalkboard labels that I also got at the dollar store. No danger of anything crawling into those jars. 

Snacks went into a wire basket. I found a paint chip that I labeled and stuck onto the basket with a paper clip. 

Since our house is teensy tiny, our medicine is in our food cabinet. On the top shelf. Gavin obviously cannot get into the cabinet so it is okay for now. Cookies seemed like an obvious match beside the medicine because cookies heal any ailment, right? 

Let's get one more look at this cabinet with a before an after side by side picture.  

I can't believe I even let the cabinet to get that bad...Oh well. No more ants and I have a clean and organized cabinet! 

If you want to read when I organized my other cabinet (not too many in this small kitchen), click here. 

Happy weekend!

Label Those Canisters

Our younger sister is getting married in only 2 short weeks! And in honour of her, we are having a bridal shower this weekend. I was cruising around Pinterest looking for some ideas for gifts, and decided to check out her boards of ideas since she is an avid "pinner" as well! 

Since she will be moving into a new house with her soon-to-be-husband after the wedding, she has found lots of cute things that I am sure she would love to have in her home. One idea she pinned was this one here:

{source}

Even though this idea is awesome, the process is a bit complicated and I would just end up keeping the jars myself... because they are so pretty!

 So! Instead, I decided to use a similar idea that would get the job done; chalkboard labels on glass canisters to store your baking ingredients. Genius. And who knew that Martha Stewart has already spray painted little labels with chalkboard paint, so all I have to do is peel them and stick them on the jars? She is so crafty!

Here is the step by step process:

1. Buy jars. You can buy any size jar or canister you would like, I choose to buy all one size.

2. Buy labels. I bought the Martha Stewart brand from Avery (as you can see), and they are pre-painted with chalkboard paint. Of course you can buy regular labels and spray paint them yourself.

3. Stick the labels on the jar... and label them with chalk. 

Done and done! Now all you have to do is fill the jars with the different kinds of baking ingredients you have, and you are set to go! 

I know our sister is going to love having all of her baking supplies in pretty canisters! I know I would... 

Happy Friday everyone, and happy Memorial Day weekend to everyone who is reading from the states!