Kitchen Renovation Reveal...

Well, folks, it's been long in coming, but I've finally gotten around to posting our kitchen renovation. For starters, it took about 5 1/2 weeks from start to finish, but I'm sure it could have been a week less if we hadn't gone on a 10 day vacation in the middle of it. I did get sick of eating out -- and for a girl who eats out a lot, that's saying something. One tip I would give if you are thinking about a kitchen renovation is to keep your microwave till the end of the reno. We had the kitchen gutted and all the appliances but the fridge taken away at the beginning of the project. It would have been great to have the microwave on a table to use during the reno. That's about the only thing I would have done differently. Also, we didn't change the footprint of our kitchen. I've always loved the spaciousness in our kitchen and I've never needed or wanted an island. That's due to the large peninsula we have with so much working space. Not changing the footprint really cut down on costs, which was great. Our kitchen does have plenty of room to add an island if someone would want to do so in the future.

Let's start with some before and after photos from different angles. Here's the angle showing the before desk area and the after. I guess you could say we changed the floor plan by taking out the desk. In the 25 years we lived here, we never used the desk as a desk. The counter above it became a catch-all for mail and the likes, so we didn't want it in the new kitchen. We love that the new area has more storage with more cupboards below and above...

Here's another angle. We always had a "built-in pantry" in the kitchen (shown in second photo), but the new pantry has pull-out shelves, so it is much more usable.

Another angle...

I absolutely love the products we decided upon. The cabinets are a warmer "white" than it shows in the photos, and the glaze around the cabinets picks up the dark brown in the granite. I wanted a really simple subway tile for the backsplash. I don't care for a "busy" backsplash. I would much rather the granite and the cabinets be the star, than the backsplash -- although the backsplash is often what your eye is drawn to first. I love the gray tile with the cream cabinets. The tile picks up the gray in the granite, and the cupboards pick up the whites in the granite -- beautiful...

I love decorating once a room has been renovated, and I always tend to add a touch of whimsy. I didn't want a lot on the counters. Most of the time anything on my counters in the kitchen has to be functional... except for these mice. I bought them in Bar Harbor, Maine, on our trip. Fell in love with them... even though I cannot stand the real thing...

Well, that's about the end of the tour. I did buy one more thing that pretty much typifies my life right now. It's this sign....

I choose joy. That's something I want to be reminded of daily -- that joy and happiness are a choice we make -- not a circumstance. One more thing I choose is fresh flowers -- often. {P.S. - I'm a sucker for Joanna Gaines' new line at Target. Get a load of that beautiful pitcher.}

Luscious Paint Colors...

Last week I was in Virginia visiting my son and his family. It was such a fun week, and I had a lot of time with my two and four year old grandkids during the days while their normally stay-at-home-momma took some classes. During the afternoon while the two year old napped my four year old granddaughter and I crafted. I think I've found someone who loves to craft as much as me. I'd done a bit of pumpkin painting lately, so I thought it might be fun to have her paint some pumpkins. We bought some mini pumpkins at Target and then searched for some acrylic craft paint. Instead, we found these delightful samples pots from Target's Devine Color Collection by Valspar. I'm impressed.

These are beautiful paints and they are customized to Target home decor. Be still my heart. Anyway, I might just have to paint a wall or two in the next couple of months, but this is what my granddaughter did with these luscious paints...

Adorable, eh? 

I'd love to say she takes after me,
but she has her mother's talent for color and style stamped all over her!

I really loved the lustre of this paint, and the colors are gorgeous. We used:

Meadow...

 Pond...

 and Petal...

These beautiful colors certainly put me in the mood to buy some paint brushes and get busy.
I'm picturing a striped wall with all three colors.
Yum.

Exterior House Renovation -- Final Update...

It has been a couple of weeks since our house renovations were complete, but "life" happened in between then and now. I've been on the west coast and the east coast in the last two weeks visiting and helping kids, but now I'm home and can update my blog to include the final exterior house renovations we completed in September. You might remember the last blog post about the renovations, where I showed you a before and mid-renovation photo...

Since this mid renovation photo was taken, we've added shutters to our home. In my first blog post about the exterior renovations I mentioned how we made these shutters. I've come to love them! They added so much to the exterior of our home...

We also added new lighting fixtures. For some reason it took me several days to decided on the exterior fixtures. I knew I wanted barn light style for over the garage door, and I found this one on Amazon...

Then I had to find a door fixture that complimented that style. That was the challenge. I finally found one on Overstock.com -- from Capital Lighting Dylan Collection.

One of the most notable things we were able to do for this renovation was to change out the garage door. We moved into our home 24 years ago, and over time garage doors get a lot of wear and tear. Ours was no exception. Putting in this new insulated garage door was a wonderful improvement. We decided on a carriage style with windows. We also chose to get the inserts for the windows {not in the above mid renovation photo}, which add a bit a character. For many homes {ours included} a garage door takes up a large part of the front of the home. We wanted to make it an interesting feature.

I am so happy with the results of this renovation, and I'm grateful the colors turned out how I'd hope they would. Again, here's the before...

And the after photos...

FYI: Paint Colors...
Door & Shutters: Benjamin Moore Hale Navy HC154
Trim: Benjamin Moore China White PM20
Siding: Benjamin Moore Custom Color {below} to match Sandstone Garage Door
    542 - 2x (gallon)
    Y3   1x   24.0000
     S1   1x   8.0000  

     R3   0x   7.0000

Update: House Renovations

I don't know how they did it, but the painters we hired had the house painted in three days. I am sooo very happy with the results! They worked so hard. We also had the new garage door installed, which did so much to update our home. The first two photos are during the painting process...

We're not completely done with the renovations. We still have to install the board and batten exterior shutters on the second story.

We also have some dark bronze lighting fixtures to install by the front door and over the garage. I'll post when we are completely done, but so much happened this week that I'll give you a preview of where we stand right now...

I absolutely love the colors of the paint. Whew. Such a relief. The blue (Benjamin Moore Hale Navy) front door is just the punch of color I wanted...

I'll be back in about a week to show you the completely finished renovation.

Exterior Renovations Update...

So excited. I love house renovations. Yesterday the painters power sprayed the house. I was just about ready to call off the painting after that was done because the house looked so much better. {Note to self: Get the house power sprayed every year.} They also caulked and taped off the windows in preparation for the siding being painted today. Cannot wait!

The new garage door is also being installed today. I think this transformation will help update our home almost more than the paint. We shall see...

Exterior House Renovation...

We have a transformation taking place the next couple of weeks at our house. We had our home custom built 24 years ago. We designed the home ourselves and had an architect draw up the plans and chose a contractor to build it.At the time our oldest child was about 12 years old and our youngest 2 years, and we had five children in between the engine and caboose. When the house was finished it was everything we could have wanted in a home at that time in our lives.

Fast forward to the present... my husband and I are empty nesters, and we still love our home.  In the last few years, however, we've needed to do a lot of renovations both on the interior and exterior of the house. Among other renovations to the interior, all four bathrooms have been stripped down to the walls and modernized. A couple of years ago we replaced all the windows in our home and were amazed at the difference in heating and cooling costs it made. Last year we replaced the roof, which was another big expense. Now we're ready to update the exterior paint, add board and batten shutters to the upstairs windows, replace our existing garage door, and add new outdoor lighting. We're also going to have to replace those poor pathetic little bushes under the window on the left. They were practically killed by a frost last year, and they never regained their strength this summer.

I've only chosen exterior paint colors a couple of times in my married life. The first time I did, I chose the paint color from a tiny 1" x 2" paint chip and bought all the paint without first testing it on the house. Big mistake. Colossal mistake. Gargantuan, enormous, and monstrous mistake that one only makes once in life. {My husband had years of ammunition to use against me from that blunder.} We lived with that very green paint color until we sold it a few years later. Oddly, that house has had several other owners since we sold, and none of them ever changed the color of the paint. {Shudder.} We chose very conservative exterior paint colors when we built our current home and have never changed the color. I'm more confident these days though, so I decided a change in color was in order.

Because I am still a little traumatized from my first encounter of picking out exterior paint {some experiences continue to haunt you well into old age}, I have taken two weeks to pick out the colors to paint our house and tested them on the front of our house. Mind you, the difference between a, b, and c in the photo above are not exactly drastic, but they are different enough that I have asked delivery men, neighbors, our postman, strangers walking their dog, and family members who drew near our home to choose their favorite color and kept an itemized list. I figured it's a lot better to have others chime in, so I can point my finger at them if the color doesn't turn out as expected. After tallying up the responses I was happy to see that most agreed with my choice -- "c" for the siding of the house. "C" is a custom color matched to the garage door we are having installed. The white paint will be the trim and the navy blue will be the color of the front door and shutters.

Last week the hubs and I went to Home Depot and bought the boards for the board and batten shutters. I wasn't thrilled with light-weight plastic ready-made shutters that you can purchase, so we decided to build our own. How difficult can it be to attach a few pieces of wood together, like this...

We decided on "Cellular PVC Trim" from Home Depot. It came in 8' lengths which ended up being very economical because of the lengths we needed cut. We had the wood cut to the proper length at Home Depot, so we didn't even have to bother using a saw. Last week I painted the boards, and we'll assemble them sometime this week. I'm very excited about this project!

I'll check back with a few updates as the project progresses!

DIY Sea Glass Vases

I'm fond of sea glass, 

so when I saw these beautiful vases at West Elm I knew I had to have one or two...

{source}

...until I saw the prices. The litty bitty bud vase is $25 -- the largest vase (still small) was $44.

It's amazing how quick I can become disenchanted when things are overpriced.

I was hopeful that I could find some sea glass vases for a better price, so I went to Hobby Lobby and found this selection on sale for 50% off. I bought the small one on the left for $12.50 on sale. Still, I wanted a better selection with different sizes and shapes of vases, so I decided to make some of my own. How hard could it be?

Let me state up front, that not all my ideas are good ones. What came next was a lot of trial and error and a bit of success.

Hobby Lobby is currently having their 90% off clearance sales right now, and, as luck would have it, there was a variety of glass vases for the taking! So, I bought a couple of large vases for about $2 each.

They might look small in the photo above, but they are actually much larger than the ones for sale at West Elm or Hobby Lobby. I also picked up the vases below for pennies, and they were already slightly tinted. So far, so good.

I began by looking up "how to make sea glass vases" on the internet and Pinterest, but I came up with very little. There is a Martha Stewart product out there, but you have to paint it on, and I didn't think it would work well on the large vases I'd bought. There's a Mod Podge technique that sounds interesting. I might try that next time. I did a little more research and found a glass paint that dries transparent. That's just what I needed for the first phase of my project.

Vitrail paint, by Pebeo, is a solvent based, transparent paint commonly used for stained glass creations. The paint dries to a hard surface and is resistance to gentle washing. I bought several colors of this paint and went to work with high hopes.

Materials:

•  Glass vases, bottles, jars that have been thoroughly cleaned 
• Vitrail, by Pebeo, glass paint {Hobby Lobby in Art Department, Regular price: $7.99. Use a 40% off coupon!}
• 100% Acetone Nail Polish Remover

Instead of painting the outside, I decided to stain the inside of the vase. The size of your glass vase will determine how much paint you use. Simply pour some paint into the bottom of your vase and add a half a cap-full of acetone {100% acetone nail polish remover}. Mix the solution together -- adding a little more acetone or paint if needed. The idea is to leave the paint as thick as possible, but make it thin enough to coat the inside of the glass vase. Swirl the combined mixture around the entire interior of the vase until it is thoroughly coated. Turn the vase upside down and let the excess paint drip out of the vase. This solution can be put back into the paint container and used again on another vase. If necessary dip a cotton swab into the acetone and clean excess paint from the top of the vase. Don't be concerned if the paint looks opaque or cloudy. When the paint dries completely, it will be come transparent and have a glass-like finish. This technique worked beautifully on two of the vases {see one below}..

...and failed miserably on two more...

Back to the drawing board. I'm still not sure what happened, but I think the last two vases had some texture on the inside of the vase which didn't allow the paint to coat the glass thoroughly. That's my best guess. Fortunately, the Vitrail paint is solvent based, so the next morning I dumped a container of Acetone Nail Polish remover inside those two vases which dissolved the paint and cleaned them out lickity-split. I decided it's much, much easier to buy glass that is slightly tinted to begin with!

In the meantime, I'd come across a much easier and less expensive technique to help make the vases look a little more like sea glass. Simply spray the outside of the vase with a frosted glass spray. Do a little at a time and add more frosting if necessary.

{source}

When the glass frosting has dried, lightly spray a little flat white spray paint onto the glass.

A little of the white paint will go a long way.

 

Those two methods (glass frosting and white spray paint) will work together to give your vases a sea glass look, especially if the glass vase is already tinted.

These vases are going in my newly painted laundry room. They'll find a home on the top of the cupboards above the sink.