Privacy

So, with the holidays in full force (and taking most of our money) we haven't done very many projects around here lately with the exception of working on our front door. When we moved in, the front door had some sort of painted-on fake stained glass going on, which wasn't horrible but also was not our style and didn't go with the colors that we eventually want in the living room. I don't have a "before" photo because Alton removed the fake stained glass one day while I wasn't here. This is the best I've got:

You can see the design a bit although it is in a shadow. Anyway, here is the door after Alton got to it:

 You can see the back of my awesome homemade ornament wreath. :)

After he removed the "stained glass" we decided to try to "frost" the windows with contact paper. I found a couple of online tutorials, but when we tried it the results were not so great. I think the problem was that in both of the tutorials I found they cut out a pattern of small pieces so there wasn't as much of a surface area to smooth out. We wanted to frost the whole pane and when we tried to smooth out the contact paper we ended up with streaks and bubbles. It's hard to see in these photos, but it was not pretty. Oh well, a roll of contact paper is like $7.00. On to plan B!

Plan B was ordering a white roman shade online. I was able to find one for about $25.00 on clearance at JCPenny. 

Ta-da! Privacy!

It was really nice to get that shade put up after living with a towel over the door for a temporary curtain for about a month. This is much better.

Harley also decided to help us get started on another project, although it is one that we did not intend to tackle for a while:

While we were out, he found a loose bit of carpet near the threshold into the master bedroom and went to town. We would love to replace all of the flooring in the house anyway, but we have nowhere near enough money to do it, so unfortunately the carpet will probably look like this for a while...

Bad dog.

Q: What project did we start four months ago that was just completed?

A: Painting the patio railing.

We went for four months with half of the railing & the gates only being primed. We had good weather over the Labor Day weekend (I know, delayed post. Sorry.) and we got it all done then along with a bonus project I've had my eye on since moving day.

I'm so proud of that railing. Even if it does not do its primary job of keeping chickens off of the patio...

We need to buy or borrow a pressure washer and go over pretty much the whole outside of the house, but the metal patio roof is definitely one of the places that needs it most. We also plan to plant hydrangea bushes in the flower beds on either side of the stairs and we are thinking about removing one step leading to the patio in the hopes that perhaps that will deter the chickens from roosting on the patio railing.

The bonus project that got done over the Labor Day weekend along with the railing was the mailbox. When we moved in the mailbox was pretty ugly:

We kept the post, bought a $7 plain metal mailbox, and used some paint and primer we already had to paint the post and the numbers. For an almost free project, I think it made a huge difference:

A couple of numbers were blurred out for privacy.

I am in love with my new mailbox.

P.S. I just realized that I have never posted any photos of our dog, Harley on here. We got him in July. Shame on me. Here he is:

This is the day we got him:

 This was a few days ago:

They grow up so fast...

Breakfast is Covered for a While

I forgot to mention yesterday that we also bought a new knob for the hall bathroom to replace the blue one and to go with our more modern theme. Here it is:

We also found clear drawer pulls to go with the clear acrylic knobs we purchased for the master bathroom. I looked around online and couldn't find any clear drawer pulls for less than about $25 each. The thought of spending $75 on three little drawer pulls was rather upsetting but I had more or less resigned myself to it when I happened to spot an endcap at Lowes with their specialty knobs and pulls. This was after several trips to multiple locations of both Home Depot and Lowes trying to get the right size and amount of hinges for all the doors and cabinets. You would really think I would have noticed them before, but while frantically rushing down the hinge aisle 10 minutes before closing, I saw them. The Hallelujah Chorus played in my head when I saw that they were less than half the price of the online ones and we managed to snag them and the hinges we needed before the store closed. Yay!

I think the clear hardware will look very snazzy once we fill in the old knob holes and paint the cabinets. Those glorious drawer pulls are the first thing I see when I step into the bathroom these days. I am in love with them.

Another minor project I tackled Friday was unpacking all of our art/picture frames which we've been putting off until the house is painted. I just couldn't stand it any longer so I unpacked everything and arranged the built ins in the living room, which until Friday were pretty much books on one side and nothing on the other. Here is the finished arrangement. Alton and I both reacted by saying that it looks more like people live here now. That's always a good thing to have going on in your house!

Another thing I'm in love with besides my drawer pulls are my Jonathan Adler cat bookends. My mom bought them for me at Barnes and Noble for a housewarming gift. They are on the right above the TV.



We actually are waiting until the walls are painted before hanging up our art, which is why some of it is currently just chilling on the mantle. I painted the orange Matisse copy and the other two are originals by my friend Beth.

And in other news, the chickens have all started laying eggs now! RZR has been laying for a few weeks now and the other two caught up a few days ago.

Our egg holder is overflowing! Aren't Rickshaw's green eggs so cool??



Hardware

We finally got rid of all the ugly, brassy gold hardware in the house! It took a while to get every single hinge and doorknob replaced, but we now have a house full of brushed nickel hardware.



Before:

 After:

 In progress:

 After:

We also replaced all the fleur de lis knobs and pulls in the kitchen with brushed nickel knobs and cup pulls. We are still working on getting all the hinges replaced in there.

Before:

After:

Replacing hardware isn't an expensive project, but it makes a huge impact and really helps update the whole house.

Dirt Under Our Nails and Paint In Our Hair

There are several projects we still want to tackle in the backyard, one of which is growing a vegetable garden. We still have a lot of work to do to actually set the garden up, but we took a couple of small steps last month when Alton bought two 55 gallon barrels (originally used to ship olives) for only $16 each and turned one into a composter and one into a rain barrel. The composter is complete and has been accumulating our plant and paper waste for a while now, as you can see.

Alton spray painted it black so that it would get hotter and break everything down faster. He built a base for it and the whole thing is on a pipe so we can easily flip it over to mix the compost up.

The rain barrel is not yet hooked up because we actually need to have gutters installed to direct rainwater into the barrel. This is it currently. We plan to spray paint it white as a base color to eventually paint some sort of fun design on it.

And in other backyard news, look how big the chickens are! They should be laying eggs any day now.

So that about covers the first half of this post's title. As for the paint in our hair, well our ceilings are not white. They are very light beige, which won't match at all once we paint the walls grey. So we decided to paint the ceilings white. All of them. So far we have only done the craft room because it was completely painted the day before the Art League came to see it. (Yay procrastination!)

Painting ceilings is not fun. Just FYI.



So the ceilings of the craft room were painted as well as the walls. I also painted a couple of cabinets that the previous owners left in the attic. Here they are before:

During:

And after:

And here is the entire room, all painted and neat:

Yes, the cat has an entire wall for her stuff.

Looking good, eh? We still need crown molding, a new fan/light, new blinds (the ones in there are yellowed and brittle), and new door hardware (which we need throughout the whole house). I also plan to get some curtains and to put up a big, custom bulletin board on one wall and a shelf on the other, over the L shaped desk. The craft room is really coming together. I even cleaned out the closet. :)







In the Meantime...

No, we still have not finished the patio railing. We are about 90% there, but the gates need to be tweaked a bit and about half of the railing still only has primer and no paint on it. We have been waiting for a day that Alton is off and it is not raining, but that just hasn't happened recently. In the meantime, we have done a few more projects around the house. We've been sitting on a $30 Target gift card since Christmas and finally used it to buy a soap pump, tissue cover, towel ring, and toilet paper roll holder for the hall bathroom. (We've changed our vision for that bathroom since the previous post I wrote about it, but more on that later.)

 T.P. holder and towel ring before:

...and after:

 The whole shebang:



As you may be able to tell from our accessory selection, we've decided to step away from the coastal vibe we were leaning toward and go with a more modern one. We think it will tie in to the rest of the house better that way. We moved the old towel holder from this bathroom into the master because the previous owners had a towel ring on one side of the vanity in there and a fleur de lis hook on the other side, which we removed. So Alton's side has been towel ring-less for a while and the one we replaced in the hall bath was exactly the same as the one in the master on my side of the vanity.

No towel ring = sad, droopy countertop towel:

Towel ring = happy wall towel.

Ah, bathroom harmony.

There just so happens to be a Lowe's next to the Target we went to for our new bathroom accessories, so we stopped by there to look for something completely different (I'm sure you know how that goes) and walked out with a new pendant light to go above the kitchen sink.

The old fixture:

Here's the new one with the light off:

                                                                           light on:



I love the stripey pattern when the light is on.

So those are the small, indoor projects we've been working on while waiting to finish the railing. Also, my aunt sent me home with a set of wicker furniture when I went over there for the 4th, so here is a shot of our new, free (!) furniture with a sneak peek of the railing in the background:



You can see what I was talking about with all the rain lately in that rather gloomy photo...I'll be back soon with details of the recent eco-friendly project Alton did and hopefully a completed railing. In the meantime we will be choosing the perfect shade of grey for our living room, kitchen, and dining room. Stay tuned!