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.

$20 for three rooms worth of hardware!

Last week, Hobby Lobby had their decorative hardware on sale 50% off, so we decided to go check it out. We ended up going home with nine knobs for $20.66. That's all six knobs for the living room built-ins, one knob for the hall bathroom, and two knobs for the master bathroom. We plan to get drawer pulls for the three drawers in the master bath, but they didn't have any at Hobby Lobby, so we will probably order those online.

The first knob is a pretty shade of blue. We had no idea what we were going for in the hall bathroom until we saw this knob. We both really liked the color, so our hall bathroom is now going to be blue. :)

We plan to print and frame a couple of photos from our honeymoon to go in here. These are some of the candidates for printing:

We bought clear knobs for the master bath:

I think these will look really cool once the cabinets are painted white.

The knobs we purchased for the built-ins in the living room were a bit of a surprise to us, but once the idea was planted, we just had to do it. Hobby Lobby had lots of white ceramic knobs with black letters on them. Our last name happens to have six letters in it and we happen to have six cabinets in the living room, so we spelled our name out across the built-ins. :) So fun.

So that's how we got three rooms worth of hardware for around $20!

Kitchen photos

I finished unpacking the kitchen yesterday and just wanted to share some photos of it while it's nice and neat.

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had enough money to purchase a new refrigerator. The way that the cabinets are arranged, a counter depth fridge is required in order for the drawer and cabinet door next to it to be functional. Here's our shiny new fridge:

The first project we took on was replacing all the exterior doorknobs. The old ones were a brassy gold color and were showing their age a bit. We are going to be putting brushed nickel hardware throughout the house and these knobs are the first things in the house to introduce that color scheme. 

The second project we did was replacing the brassy-colored dining room light with this more modern nickel one:

The next few small projects we plan to tackle in the kitchen are replacing the light over the sink, replacing the fleur de lis knobs with brushed nickel, painting the walls, and removing the "stained glass" decals from the door.

Of course, we eventually have some big projects we would like to do in the kitchen, including getting new countertops, getting all stainless steel appliances, replacing the flourescent light with recessed fixtures, and probably painting the cabinets. These big projects are not on our radar for a while, but I'll most likely be posting a kitchen inspiration post pretty soon anyway.

Care to join me on my adventure?

My husband and I just moved into our first home on Saturday and my mind has been reeling with all the little things I want to do around the house, so I thought that writing a blog about those things would be a great way to get them out of my head and onto paper (or screen, rather.) I plan to update frequently and include lots of pictures of my inspiration as well as my actual projects. Speaking of actual projects, we've already tackled a few. Our house was outfitted with new exterior doorknobs on Sunday and we bought and installed a new dining room light fixture as well as some new cabinet hardware today. I will be posting photos of those projects as well as some photos of the exterior of the home soon, so stay tuned...