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Showing posts with label home projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home projects. Show all posts

Thursday, April 8, 2010

May I recommend?




When I told my mom that I was dreading cleaning the shower due to weeks of soap scum build-up on the shower door, she quickly told me of a solution. She recommended the Magic Eraser by Mr Clean. I don't know if there are lot of chemicals in this pad (there probably are), but they aren't shooting out in the air as some sprays do for you to inhale. It took one wipe over the shower door with the pad and presto! We have a perfectly clear door. I would recommend this to anyone who ends up spraying the shower two and three times to get it clean, like me. This little eraser really works.

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

News: Part One

I can finally share part one of our news!



Our house went up for sale late last night. It's a great house....I'd buy it! ;) Even though we love our house, we have been thinking about moving slightly east (although, still in north Atlanta) for about a year now. We'd drive by houses, dream, talk, dream, dream, dream...you get the picture. It was hard to hold the news in, but we've been known to seriously talk about putting our house up for sale and never follow through due to one reason or another. This time we have a realtor and it's REAL!

We are so excited. This time we are hoping to reside in a house that could suit us for a lifetime, which means it will have a basement, great schools and hopefully screened in porch to enjoy our morning coffee (and nightcaps.)

So this week and last week have been insanely busy. It started like this:


...and ended like this:
























.



From April 2010


From April 2010

From April 2010

From April 2010


From April 2010

I have used just about every spare minute over the past couple of weeks to clean out the house. The guest bedroom closets are now completely empty, the linen closet labeled and organized, every single cabinet and sink area has been scrubbed clean and reorganized, including new cabinet liners.

I started with the guest rooms thinking they should be easy, "right?" Huuuuge mistake to assume that any organization would be easy. We had crammed luggage, seasonal clothes, you name it into the rooms and used them as storage.

So this was my process to get the house ready:
Step one: Remove all clutter from all closets and put into garage
Step two: Clean, clean, clean
Step three: Stage the rooms. Anything that could fit into the palm of my hand or wasn't pretty went into the garage. I put a dust ruffle on our new bed. Now that I see the picture, I'm adding "iron dust ruffle" to the to do list. By the way, our bed is a Marriott mattress set and I loooooove it. Finally, I put new comforters that I was saving on the guest beds. Side note: What am I saving nice purchases for? In the next house, I will live with the pride of actually using our nice things!
Step four: Clean out the garage and move everything we'd like to keep for the next house into storage.

We cleaned out the garage yesterday. Have you ever seen the show Horders? We looked like a special edition. As I was cleaning out the house, I just set everything in the garage. Yesterday when we were trying to organize at one point I realized I was just turning in circles, with no idea what to do with all of the clutter. We organized three piles: 1. Storage unit 2. Goodwill 3. Trash. After 4 hours of organizing, we hauled it all away with me in the Tahoe and Jay in the Uhaul....



It was much easier once the Uhaul was organized to get everything into storage. Although, there was one incident with a spare couch that I thought would send Jay over the edge. This sofa is heavy. And I mean heavy. It has the recliners at both ends which add weight from the metal and mechanics of the piece. The storage facility has little hallways named as streets and each unit has a street number. Of course, ours is near the back, around two corners. We had to get this couch around these narrow corners so Jay decided to push it completely upright on the end side (by himself without warning) to get it around the corner. I've never seen a struggle ensue like that before. I thought the couch might actually win! He got it though, red face and all, Jay got that darned couch into the unit! I've never seen this man so determined!


When we got home last night, Jay painted the entire family room ceiling in the den for another 2 hours (a little home maintenance from a grout issue in the master bathroom upstairs last year), as I cleaned the house.




What I want to know is, "How in the world do people with children sell houses?" Really, I'd like to know. I think super mom and super dad of the year awards go out to those people.

Last night after we got done with our busy day I went into my usual state of lay in bed and start thinking. It's my new thing. I have been sleeping an average of 4 hours a night. Last night it was 3.5 hours to be exact. I just can't turn my mind off. Worst case scenarios, best case scenarios, dreaming - not actual of course, just the kind that keeps one up at night. I've even taken Melatonin and it hasn't worked. Not even a little. I'm pretty delirious right now with bags under my eyes galore, but can I sleep? No. I need some serious help!! I'm praying that my mind will ease at some point so my worn and tired body can rest.

We don't know exactly how the next few weeks will go. Of course we hope for a quick sale, but realize that there is no telling what can happen in this kind of market. I saw on the news yesterday that it looks as though real estate might be coming back around...and I'm praying that that is true. To an extent. Because I'm hoping for a good deal on a house too!

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Friday, January 22, 2010

Freshening Up

The weather has been warm here lately. It has been almost 60 degrees over the past couple of days. I have to remind myself every winter that there are a lot of false springs in the south. It will be freezing cold next week again. Still, it's nice to feel like freshening up around the house. I took yesterday to do just that.

I updated our Welcome sign that hangs on our fence.







During our trip to the thrift store last weekend, we picked up a heavy gold lamp for $7. I really liked the texture on the base and felt it could look nice painted. It was in good working order so we figured we'd give it a try.

This paint is my favorite brand, by the way. It is thick and comes out strong. I really could have just used one coat, had I not missed a section around the base.



Here's a picture of the original lamp and with one coat of paint.



And here it is sitting in it's new spot on my counter. I found the lamp shade yesterday at Tarjay on clearance for $14! It is a linen like texture and exactly what I set out to find.



I painted an old bird cage, but I'm still not sure how to decorate with it. So maybe I'll talk about it later in another post if it lasts.



Then I painted an old picture frame that I was hoarding in our garage with chalkboard paint and some fresh gray paint. This is the paint that I picked up from Home Depot.



Here's what it looked like before.




I simply took apart the frame, sprayed the chalkboard paint directly onto the glass and sprayed the wood frame separately. It will work perfect in our kitchen for lists and notes!



This paint color is my absolute favorite that I bought yesterday. It is called greek stone. We had an old thrift store table that was just sitting in our garage. I had already primed it, but we just didn't have much to do with it after that. I painted the old table this color and now it's one of my favorites.



I color corrected this picture of the table, which kinda makes it look like there is blue in the paint. There really isn't any so the bottom picture below is without any color correction.



Isn't it a cool color? I love it! I think this table may end up in our family room, which is way better than stuffed in a back room somewhere (where I thought it would end up.) I turned upside down and painted another coat after this picture was taken to finish of the side bald spots and the bottom.



To paint these items, I set them all out in the yard at once. It wasn't particularly windy so it was a great day for this project. I painted the first coat with the respective different colors, came back and painted the second or third coats. It couldn't have been easier and took about 30 minutes of my time (not including the waiting time in between coats). So easy!

Finally, today was also perfect to clean up our front door accessories. We just had our house painted so I used the shutter paint, Sherwin Williams Weathershield Black on them.








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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Hello New Chest

Jay and I bought this chest for $20 at a thrift store last weekend. We knew that we could fix it up and use it as an end table in one of our bedrooms. The wood is pretty beat up, which is what we kinda liked about it. It would really be perfect for the beach house that we hope to have someday.

Here's the process of what we used to put some life into the chest. This is the chest/end table as we bought it.



Notice the nose? She's a little helper! :) Jay was cleaning it out and taking off the nobs in this picture.



Jay was literally walking out the door as I pulled out the sander. As soon as he saw it, I knew that he would be sticking around for a while. We bought the Ryobi hand sander at Home Depot. We, meaning he, sanded the outside of the piece. I loved that he was eager to help. I don't care to sand anyway.



We then painted it with Valspar Ultra Premium semi-gloss white primer and paint from Lowe's.

Here's the chest with one coat of primer and one coat of paint.



Smurphalicious...Isn't he cute? He loved sniffing around outside.



But then he took off with one of my paint brushes. (Thankfully, it was clean.)



And here's the finished product...

The knobs came from Anthropologie. THESE are similar, but we paid $6 and ours have a gold screw, nut and washer. They came from the store. I also decided to paint the inside of the drawers. I think because it seems cleaner to me, although they really would have been okay as they were.





The total cost of the chest was approximately $51:
  • $20 cost of the chest
  • $19 for the knobs
  • $12 for the paint
Not too bad for a wood chest!

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I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.

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