Cardboard?

The odd surprises of home ownership come when & where you least expect it. After one summer of living in our new house, we knew that something was not right with our swamp cooler, but we looked at it multiple times and the motor was good and everything seemed to work well. So my husband crawled into the attic and had no idea what he was about to discover. They had made the ducting out of cardboard, which makes sense because cardboard and water work really well together... NOPE.

So after a long, hot weekend of my sweet husband & brother working in the attic, we have a working cooling system again! YAY!!!

Taking A Step Outside

When we bought the house it was winter, & the lawn was covered in snow, so when the snow melted, we got to see the tragedy underneath. The grass was dying & patchy, & in some areas non-existent. The previous owners had been parking on the lawn & they had an oil leak, so the whole area was dead. Their were a TON of dead rose bushes, a shed falling apart in the back yard, & big pieces of metal and bolts everywhere.

The Beginning!

When we bought the house it was winter & the lawn was covered in snow, so when the snow melted we got to see the tragedy underneath. The grass was dying & patchy, & in some areas non-existent. The previous owners had been parking on the lawn and they had an oil leak, so that whole area was dead. Their were a ton of dead rose bushes, a shed falling apart in the back yard, & big pieces of metal and bolts everywhere. This is the listing picture with the snow.

Here's a picture of it a few years back, before the rose bushes died.

First we declared war against the shed and the rose bushes.

 

Then we gave the grass life again. A couple hundred dollars, some white spray paint, one bucket of red paint and one wreath later its looking pretty cute! We went from being the ugly duckling on the street to the shining star. <3

Here's the progression.

 

Here's the most recent from last fall.

Add two years and some love and voila! Before and Now.

Making A SPLASH!!!

I've always wanted a metal backsplash, I just love the look and feel. My least favorite room in our house is the kitchen, the cabinets suck all the light out of the room, & the counters are ugly. Then there is the laundry room, which had two big holes cut out of the dry wall because we had to replace the laundry knobs. Both were in need of a face lift.

As far as the kitchen goes, I'd love to do this.

I haven't quite talked myself into painting the cabinets since I've never done it, so for now, we'll just stick to painting & a backsplash. Here are photos after we put the backsplash up & installed the lighting under the cabinets.

This weekend we plan on painting the kitchen and I'll keep everyone updated. I also am hanging this up in the kitchen after we paint. I found this old 24 x 36 frame at the D.I. for EIGHT DOLLARS, so I spray painted it & glued the extra scraps from our backsplash together & put them in the frame.

Another Great Reason To Drink Wine!

I've been looking for a ring holder for about a year now with no luck, I have a weird 
aversion to velvet so that eliminates about half my options to start out with and I just haven't found one that speaks to me. So I decided to combine two things I have a lot of rings and WINE CORKS! I have an old RIBBA shadow box from IKEA that I never used, I don't even remember what I bought it for (which describes about half of the stuff I walk out of IKEA holding).

So I grabbed my hand dandy hot glue gun and got to work. First I placed them all in how I wanted, I had to cut the corks one the bottom row in half for the right spacing, then I started glueing my rows together end to end. Then I glued each row down with a little space in between each one. Final step add rings, grab a glass of wine and admire your handy work!

Would You Like Some Shoe With That Glitter?

So, I have a love for SHOES...& GLITTER. When I say I love glitter, I vacuum up more glitter than dust in my house. It's a problem...

A couple months ago, Archie (my cat), got into my closet. He may look sweet & innocent, but there is a shoe murderer lurking right beneath the surface. Needless to say, he was charged with 6 counts of shoe/heel murder.

After seeing the destruction, I decided to make lemonade, instead of throwing away 6 pairs of lemons. I have only done one pair so far because my husband drew the line on me doing this project in the house & it's freezing outside. I started with the ankle boots that I HAD to have for Halloween one year, & then never wore again.

I had read a lot of things online saying to use Mod Podge®, so I tried that first & it didn't really work for me, which is sad because I love Mod Podge & just resulted in my cat (the murderer) getting glitter stuck on his nose. So, I switched to spray glue (Krylon®Super Quick Grip Spray Adhesive).

This stuff works great! Make sure to wear gloves & tape anything on the shoe that you don't want to have glitter on. I just sprayed it on, & then shook glitter all over the spray-glued area. I still have to clear coat it with a clear poly, but it's too cold outside so I will wait. Here's the progress thus far. I love, love, love the results. I'm thinking maybe doing hot pink on the soles. What do you think?

The three B's - Bland Boring & BEIGE

I don't have many photos of our house before because I was just so focused on changing it (an amateurs mistake), but here are the photos we have of it before. The photos don't do it justice. The walls look whitish in the photos but they were the exact same color as the outside of the house. Also, the medium color wood cabinets, bleeck. We even found out that they had made our swamp cooler ducting our of cardboard... This house needed love & paint.

 



 

Dining Table Makeover Begins

I have been looking for an old dining table to makeover for about a year now because all we have is a two-seater cafe style table, which is great, if you have no friends or family who aren't 5'2". Well... after countless hours on KSL, Craigslist, & Ebay, we found it, the one that I was picturing in my head, & it didn't wobble or smell weird, so we handed the $100 over & took her home.

I happen to hate medium or light wood & believe you need to paint, white wash, or stain it dark. So now begins all the possibilities of what I could do to this little treasure. I can't quite commit myself to bold colors yet because the fear of changing my mind about the dining room color palette looms over my head, so I'm sticking to my safe black & white zone. Here's what I plan on doing to it.

I haven't quite nailed down the fabrics yet. I'm thinking along these lines. I am DEFINITELY sold on the chevron, just not sure of the others yet...

I'll keep you posted!!