The Wall That Ruined The Room

Bye Bye stupid wall!  You won't be missed!  Today Brian took down the wall where the washer and dryer were located.

It took us six years to figure out that we just were going to have to deal with moving some plumbing in the slab because THIS WALL SUCKS.  As any of you who have been to our house know, it was right in the center of the kitchen blocking any possible good flow of a functional floor plan.

It's so exciting to see it gone and, WOW!  THE KITCHEN IS HUGE!!!

This has definitely been one of the happiest moments in the remodel for us so far.  I can't explain how much we despised this wall!  hahaha

I actually took this picture zoomed in from the living room.

 

This is the view now from the living room.  

 

Here's a reminder of before

Bye Bye Water Heater and Old Pantry

One of the biggest obsticals for our kitchen was to get the water heater outside.  The refrigerator and new pantry cabinets will be taking their places.

Brian, his dad, and our friend Nick spent the majority of a Saturday moving the water heater outside and finishing up the necessary plumbing.

The ancient pantry had these weird triangle shelves inside that were not even level.  Things fell out all the time.  I can't tell you how many bottles of Gringo Bandito hot sauce lost their lives on these useless things.  Some pretty groovy contact paper lined them as well.

The kitchen already seems so huge with this wall, pantry and water heater gone. 

Here's is the home of the new water heater.  We wanted the cabinet to be as small as possible because, let's face it, this thing is ugly.  So Brian is going to make a little addition piece on the bottom front for the temperature knob.  That's the only part that protruded out of the smallest cabinet we could make work.  After the kitchen is finished we plan to paint the exterior of the house.  This lovely cabinet will hopefully look less awful once it and the house have a new paint job.  At least it's not ugly-ing up the kitchen anymore!

Choosing Kitchen Flooring

The thought of more tile makes my skin crawl a little because I HATE grout.  But, I definitely don't think it's a good idea to bring the wood we have in the rest of the house into the kitchen.  It seems to me like it'd be begging for dropped ice cubes or similar damage causing spills.

So Brian and I narrowed it down to two 12x24" tiles.  We aren't married to these options so if you have any suggestions let us know! We plan to make the grout line the smallest possible with gray grount that would not stand out and hide dirt.

What do you think?  The light or the dark?  I'd love to hear your vote or a suggestion on something else.

Here is our countertop photo again.

As for a backsplash and paint, that is still up in the air too, but these two pictures are the final top inspiration contenders.   I think the first photo is edging into first place.  I'm slightly obsessed with gray right now.

Picking a Countertop

To be honest, kitchens are not my "thing."  I'm not a huge fan of cooking so when it came to designing this kitchen it took an excessive amount of houzz.com browsing.  A year ago, I did take an interior design class, which may have helped me figure out my style a little.  But the one thing from the beginning that I knew I wanted for sure, was a counter top that looked like "cookies and cream ice cream."  Don't ask me why...  I'm not even sure where I got the idea, but I just knew I wanted it.

Besides the look, I was open to other ideas like recycled glass counters, cement, man made quartz, or quartzite.  But as I shopped I found out that these options were actually either more expensive than granite, too soft, or too complicated for us.  We really wanted whatever will hold up the best with the least amount of maintenance and still look awesome.

So once it came down to picking a countertop it seemed like the samples of everything at the big box stores were sooooo boring!  I'm talking cookies and cream put in a blender for 15 minutes boring. Where's the texture?

Dean and I went on MANY trips to the stone stores on State College Blvd in Anaheim and saw a few stones I liked.  

Here are some I was pretty excited about.  

Labrodorite Granite

Cambria Quartz

White Fantasy Quarzite

But as you can see, none exactly were a "cookies and cream" look and they were at the top of our countertop budget.  Even though normally I'm a sucker for blue, we really don't want blues, or browns in this kitchen either.

Before zeroing in on the winning slab I found a store that carried pre-fab slabs.  These are basically countertops that are cut into one long countertop shape with the edges already done.  They had these perfect "cookies and cream" slabs of Viscount White.  I had found The ONE!

I remembered seeing a whole slab of something that was pretty similar to this at one of the previous stores but had breezed right past it.  I thought I'd go back and see if it was the same.

Brian, this time, went with me to check out the slab, and it too was Viscount White.  The sales person explained to us how the prefab slab wouldn't work on an island, which totally made sense.  So we realized the whole slab was the way to go.

The slab was slightly less expensive than the prefab at the other place.  In the end we think this will work out better too because we can choose the edge style. We weren't a fan of the rounded edge on the prefab so that's a nice bonus.

They called over the forklift and moved three slabs out for us to choose from.  It was a blazing 100 degrees outside so we couldn't dwell too long over the decision.  They were all very similar anyway.  I only managed to take about three pictures because I thought I was going to faint from the heat.  haha.  Here is the final choice!  It was fun writing our name on the sold sticker.  :D

The countertop picking process was just like picking a wedding dress, but for the kitchen, so I'm glad to be done with this part of the project.  I can't wait for install day!  

Exciting Kitchen Deliveries

First we had to clear a large area in our garage to make room for our cabinet delivery.

We went with Ikea cabinets so we will have to assemble them all.  I laughed that the directions for the entire kitchen install had one of their ridiculous little allan wrenches on the front.  Yeah right!

Some third party did the delivery.  They were pretty horrible.  They were really rough with our items, but at least the things that were damaged were easily exchanged.

It is quite a mountain just sitting there!  Luckily I've always enjoyed putting furniture together so I think it won't be too murderous.  I'm sure I'll never want to do it again after this project though.  Good thing I have a growing son.  ;)

Later in the week our refrigerator came.  I'm totally in love!  We got it, and our dishwasher on sale at Howard's Appliances in Long Beach.  Our sales person was Tom and he was excellent!  We got killer deals previously on our oven and microwave there.  The refrigerator was $600 less than the best price I could find online!  Maybe it was a mistake, but I jumped on that!

It was pretty awesome watching the Howard's delivery guys do their thing.  That strap they used looked way better for the refrigerator than a dolly.

For now the refrigerator is parked in the dining room (aka our make-shift kitchen) until all the demo and drywall work is done.

Our sink is coming UPS today.  We ordered a Kohler Whitehaven farmhouse sink.  And of course I didn't pay anything near that retail price.  Come on now, you know me!  Thanks so much to my anonymous friend with a killer job discount!

Let the Kitchen Demo Begin!

So some serious demo has started.

I can't put into words how thrilled I am to see this disgusting, lint collecting, fake brick go!

This mini bee hive (with no bees)  was an interesting surprise in the wall.

Making the Perfect Nursery Glider Chair

During my pregnancy I wanted to find a glider chair to have in my son's room. Maybe it was the hormones, but I could NOT find the "perfect" one!

I knew it was something I wouldn't want in his room forever so Craigslist was definitely the place to shop.  I found one in great condition that looked super comfy, but I hated the look.  I am NOT a fan of brown.

I bought the chair from a nice couple who had used it for under a year when their son was also a baby.

Now to the good stuff, the DIY nesting part of my brain took over and I painted and reupholstered the chair.

First, I took the arms and the cushions off the chair to get it ready for painting.  I sanded the chair by hand to get the glossy finish off.  I wasn't sure if this step was even necessary.  It might have even roughed up the chair unnecessarily, but meh, whatever.  I'm no expert!

I used about two cans of rust-oleum primer spray paint.  Next I think I went through about 3 - 5 cans of white spray paint to completely cover the chair with a solid finish.  I left it outside for about 2 days to dry and air out while I made the seat covers.

Next, I went to Joann Fabric and pick a cute frog baby blanket fabric.  It's sort of a flannel.  In retrospect I should have picked a fabric less stretchy, maybe some ::cough, cough::, upholstery fabric, but hey, I was going for "cute" here.  In the long run it held up fine.  I'd just recommend a firmer fabric for anyone else who attempts this.

So anyway, I took each cushion off and simply laid each piece on top of my fabric pieces and drew out the shapes.  I basically made a pillow case for each part.  I didn't want to remove any original fabric incase my reupholstering job totally sucked.  I'd at least have the original as a back up.

I stuffed the seat into my pillowcase and hand sewed the back edge shut.  I used green ribbon and also sewed that into the back edge so the seat can reattached to the chair.

I had to get a little creative around the front corners of the seat and along the top of the head rest.  If parts looked too loose, I'd just flip the fabric inside out again and sew the pillow case shape a little smaller. I did put two pleats on the edges of the front of the seat to keep it neat.  I honestly just "winged" the whole thing.  My grandma would be proud if she had seen my sewing skillz.  ;)  I know that's horrible advice if you're trying to use this as a tutorial though.  Sorry!

As for the arm rests, they only attached to the chair with snaps.  I made similar pillow cases for these sections and just cut rough holes where the snaps clipped.  They were hidden so the rough holes didn't matter.

The top portion also used snaps.  I made small pillowcase coverings for the snap straps there as well and also just cut rough holes for the snaps.  I hand sewed the edge of the covering onto the main piece so it wouldn't pull forward.

Lastly, I used a staple gun and just stapled fabric over the detached cushion section of the ottoman. That part was the easiest.

Overall, the reupholstering has held up well!  We used it more than a whole year, daily, in his room. Like I said, I'd choose a more rigid fabric if I were to do it over, but if you have any sewing ability I'd say go for it and make that chair a one of a kind!

A kid room is the best place to get away with making some goofy fun DIY furniture.

Making Room for Dean

The last bedroom to get a make-over was that of our son, Dean, when he was on his way.  :)

The room up until this point had always been our "extra crap storage room."  It first had this disgusting ancient blue carpet that we tore out pretty much the minute we purchased the house.  But what was underneath was this ugly yellow tile.  A lot of it was breaking apart so we pulled it all up when we finally got around to getting this room ready.

Here you can see the original carpet and the mess we made onto it (on purpose) scraping ceilings before we first moved in.

After Brian touched up any spots on the ceiling walls with mud, we sprayed texture onto them with a hopper. Brian also installed a new closet door and entry door.  He replaced the lame light fixture with a ceiling fan.

For the paint scheme I painted the majority of the room white and two walls a very dark navy blue.

We called Empire to install some carpet.  I don't know what I was thinking putting carpet in a kids bedroom.  Now that he's a toddler it's pretty trashed.  :(   But I just have always preferred carpet in bedrooms.

Going through the nesting phase of pregnancy I created more projects than there were walls to hang them on for the room.

In my childhood room I had two frames each holding baby pictures of my parents.  I decided to do the same for Dean.  I hung those on either side of the window.

I had a photo of some street art I love blown up and hung that over the crib.

Pinterest even hooked me into doing a melted crayon "painting" which turned out pretty nice.

Brian and I both had bunnies when we were babies that we still had possession of so I framed those in a shadow box.

I copied an idea I found on Stumbleupon.com of painting roads as Dean's name.  I used Brian's childhood micro machines and hot glued them onto the painting.

Lastly, I even went all out and painted and reupholstered a glider chair and ottoman that I bought for $50 off craigslist.  You can see that blog here.