Happy Anniversary & Happy New Year

Although I am not very big on New Years resolutions, I do make an effort to make every year better than the last. Although this last year of 2011 did have some great moments, it was not the best year I have ever lived and was definitely full of many unexpected surprises. Looking back at all of the circumstances of 2011, it was a HUGE year of growth for me. I learned a lot about myself and became a much stronger person, emotionally and mentally. My grandmother, Nannie, the person I strive to be most like in life, always used to tell me "don't wish your life away". I'm not wishing my life away by any means, as I want to take every experience, good and bad, and learn from them. However, I am looking forward to a new year! I know that 2012 will be a great year! I am excited for what it has to bring.

On another note, January 1st of every year will always remind me of the best day of my entire life! The day I married my husband. I am so lucky to have such an amazing person to share the rest of my life with. Happy 2 Year Anniversary Babe!I love you!

May 2012 be a great year for everyone I know, filled with love, happiness, and success.

Have a lovely 2012!

 

♥ Natalie

DIY Christmas Tree Skirt

Better late than never right?!? I stumbled across a picture of this ruffled Christmas tree skirt at Miss Mustard Seed and absolutely fell in love with it!  Then, after I found out that it was a NO-SEW Christmas tree skirt...yes, NO-SEW, I was determined to squeeze this project in before Christmas. I followed the tutorial over at HGTV and completed the skirt, just in the nick of time. Something about it is just magical and makes really love the Christmas season.

Have a lovely Christmas!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover: Before & After

Hello Lovelies!

The kitchen cabinets and countertops are complete and I FINALLY have some before and after pictures to show you all! 

Before:

After: (Notice the stove & extended bar!)

Before:

After: (Notice the stove, subway tile backsplash, countertops, and hardware)

Before:

After:

Although we only have a few little things left to do to make our kitchen absolutely complete, we are going to take a break for the rest of the year and get back to work on the final touches in 2012. The only things really left on the list are to paint the walls a light gray color, get new kitchen bar stools, new lighting fixtures above the stove, and add some window treatments. Since Matt and I both love our instant gratification, we typically rush into everything and get the first thing we see. Since it's the start of a new year, we decided that a good New Years resolution will be to take our time in selecting the anything new we buy. 

And, just because I can't get enough of it, here are some more after pictures:

Hope you enjoy the pictures! Doesn't it look like a whole new kitchen?!?! We ♥ it!

Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover Part 4: Hinges, Knobs, & Pulls

I did a ton of research for the EXACT kitchen that I wanted. I looked at picture after picture of all different types of kitchens. I even printed out pictures of kitchens that I LOVED and hung them on my fridge so that I could stare at them every day to make sure that I wouldn’t get sick of them. Obviously, I had to compromise a little since we weren’t knocking out any walls or actually getting new cabinets. But, I must say, with all the hard work we put in and the updates we made really gave us the feel of having a new kitchen.

The hardware we picked really helped add our own personal style to our updated kitchen as well. We got the inspiration just by looking at pictures of other blogs and on Pinterest. Then, we went to Home Depot and looked at all the hardware they had in their store. We were shocked at how much hinges and hardware were, so we decided to buy everything online because we knew we could definitely find a better deal elsewhere. 

I think we were the most surprised by how much the hinges were. Our hinges were super old and gross, so we definitely needed to buy some new ones. Since we were doing black and white, we needed white hinges for the top and black hinges for the bottom. We had to buy a total of 21 pairs and at Home Depot these babies were about $2.80 a pair. We ended up finding our new hinges on eBay at $1.58 a pair, which included shipping and tax! We basically saved 40% by getting these online! 

The hardware we found at Home Depot was SUPER crazy expensive. The pulls we wanted were $6.29 a piece at Home Depot. This sounds fine, but when you have to multiply it by 5 drawers, it came out to be more than I thought and it seems kind of silly to spend over $31 on just the pulls. After searching around, we ended up finding very similar (if not better) pulls on Amazon for only $2.19 a pop. We also had to get the knobs for all 20 cabinet doors. The matching knobs at Home Depot were a whopping $2.99 a piece, but we lucked out because the seller we bought the pulls from also sold matching knobs for only $1.89 a piece.

At the end of the day, a little research went a long way!

	Home Depot	Online
Hinges:	$58.80	$33.18
Pulls:	$31.45	$10.95
Knobs:	$59.80	$37.80
Totals:	$150.05	$81.93

Total savings for hinges and hardware was $68.12. Not too bad, if I must say so myself!

After we put these bad boys on, the hard work will be over! I can't wait to show you guys the finished product!

Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover Part 3: Bottom Cabinets

After the countertops were installed, we were antsy to get the entire project finished! It was also nice to know that the bottom cabinets would only be about half as much work as the upper cabinets were. We have about half as many cabinets on the bottom and the process of going dark to darker is much easier than going dark to white.

Unlike the process we did for the upper cabinets, I would suggest this process for anyone wanting to redo their cabinets. It is pretty much the standard way, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. My suggestion is to take a few days when you have absolutely nothing else to do, put some good jams on, and before you know it, you will have newly painted cabinets :).


Step 1: We removed all of the cabinet doors from the top half of our cabinets. (We had to order new hinges, but if you are keeping the same hinges, be sure to organize them in individual baggies so you know which hinges go on each cabinet door. This also goes for the hardware).

Step 2: If your cabinets are already painted, lightly sand the areas that are rough or areas that have any paint peeling off of them. If your cabinets have never previously been painted, you may want to lightly sand all areas of the cabinets. 

Step 3: Wiped down all of the doors and cabinet frame with soap and warm water. 

Step 4: Dried all doors and frame with a lint free white t-shirt.

Step 5: Applied deglosser. We purchased Klean-Strip Deglosser at Home Depot. This deglosser is pretty cheap. An entire bottle only costs about $5 or $6. Since the chemicals in the deglossing liquid are pretty strong, we wore latex gloves throughout this whole process. We applied a generous amount of the liquid on a green scrubby brillo pad and scrubbed each door and the frame of the cabinets thoroughly. (Again...the deglosser will NOT take the paint off. It will only remove the polyurethane. Even if your cabinets to not have polyurethane on them already, it is still a good idea to use this anyway as it acts as an adhesive to the first coat of paint).

Step 6: After the deglosser was applied, we had to do one final wipe down with a lint free white t-shirt. (Used another one of Matt's white t-shirts...They sell these at Home Depot, but these shirts just happen to be a part of Matt's "uniform").

Step 7: We set up an 'assembly line' in our garage by laying all of the cabinet doors out on two long painter plastic sheet thingies (again...our terminology).

Step 8: We started by painting the back side of the cabinet doors with  KILZ2 Latex Primer. We used foam brushes (we discovered that the variety size packs at Ace Hardware are the best price by far!!) Once we applied the primer on the doors, we did the drawers and the actual cabinet frame as well.

Step 9: Once the primer dried, I flipped the cabinets over and applied the primer to the front of the cabinet doors.

Step 10: After the primer was applied and fully dry, we cracked open the Black paint. I swear, Matt thinks I am crazy, because I kept looking at the paint and it looked Grey to me. (I even made him come with me to Home Depot at 8 AM on a Saturday to see if the paint department could add more black tint to it. Well, needless to say, Matt's notion of me being "crazy" was confirmed. The paint was so black, it was impossible for them to add anymore to the can.) So, we came back and I started on the first coat of black. The black paint we used did not have a name per say, but it was 4.5 oz of straight black tint in a quart of Behr Premium Plus Deep Base Interior Eggshell Enamel. Like the process for the primer, I applied the first coat to the back of the cabinet doors, then to the drawers, and the cabinet frame.

Step 11: Once the first coat of black paint dried, I applied the second coat in the same manner.

Step 12: Once the second coat of black paint dried, we applied a thin layer of 'Varathane Satin Polyurethane' to ALL areas of the cabinets and frame. Let Dry.

Step 13:  Hung the bottom cabinet doors back onto the bottom cabinet frame. DONE with Kitchen Makeover Step 3! 

 
Now, all we have to do is attach the hardware to the bottom cabinets and we will be ALMOST done!! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel!!!
 

Pictures and information on where we bought the hardware coming soon...


Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover Part 2: Countertops

Technically, part 2 would be applying the hardware to the upper cabinets, but once we paint the bottom cabinets and put the hardware on those, I will have another post for ya'll on where we got the hardware and how we installed them. We did things a little out of order, but it's just because we were so excited to see what the doors would look like with hardware on them.


We seemed to deviate from the "plan" for the kitchen process quite a bit, as unexpected things or better ideas came up throughout the process. After we completed part one of our kitchen makeover, I was explaining our original plan of the process to some coworkers. The original plan was to start with the upper cabinets, then paint the bottom cabinets, and then install the countertops last. While talking it over, someone thought of a "hypothetical" situation where the countertop people would possibly ruin my freshly painted bottom cabinets if we did the bottom cabinets before installing the countertops. Well, after thinking it over with my hubs and talking about how much manual labor we actually put into painting the cabinets, we decided it would definitely be best to install the countertops and then do the bottom cabinets. He knew that I would be devastated if anything happened to my cabinets, especially after all of the treacherous work we had to do for the upper cabinets. This was definitely the best route because we were most excited about the countertops, so it was nice to get them even sooner than we thought and we also got to take one weekend off from painting and let the countertop guys get to work!


When we initially started searching for countertops, we weren't quite sure what kind of material we wanted to use. Obviously, I would LOVE granite, but we were on a tight budget and the slabs were definitely out of our price range. We did a ton of internet searches and made a lot of trips to Home Depot to look at samples of countertops and I honestly was not happy with anything unless it was granite. I finally came across this kitchen (which by the way, you MUST follow this blog...her home is lovely and her projects always inspire me). I noticed their kitchen countertops were made of tile and this sparked interest for me. A coworker of Matt's recommended a tile guy (company was called "Flooring Guys" and they don't have a website, so if you live in AZ, let me know and I will send you the contact information). When he came over for an estimate, he suggested checking out granite or travertine tile and said it really wasn't that expensive. He suggested we check out Floor and Decor because they had really good prices for all of their tiles. I was still skeptical, but went to check it out, and he was RIGHT! Since I LOVE granite countertops so much, you can only imagine how excited I was!


Since we were doing white upper cabinets and dark bottom cabinets, we wanted something that would blend well with both colors and help mesh the two opposites together. We found the PERFECT Empire White 12 in. x12 in. granite tiles for only $1.88/Sq.Ft. Isn't that unheard of?!?! I also liked that they were big tiles, so the countertop would appear to look more like a granite slab (Big tiles with very very thin grout). The Flooring Guys also said they would throw in a backsplash for only a tiny bit extra, so we picked up some white subway tiles for only $0.21 each while we were there as well. It was difficult to imagine what this would look like after the countertops and backsplash were installed:

The Flooring Guys took about two days to complete the project.They had to take off and discard our old, discolored, scratched linoleum countertop first and then start laying the plywood and hardibacker as the foundation for our new countertop. We had originally decided not to do a sit up breakfast bar because of the backing on the stove. A new stove was NOT in the plan or budget for this makeover (see I told you we veered off the master plan quite a few times). When the contractors were laying the foundation, they kept asking Matt if he wanted a bar or a lip on the end, so we thought, what the heck, why not. They suggested a 6 inch extension, so Matt took a picture of what this would look like and sent it to me (I was at work). This was the picture I received:

I kept thinking, 6 inches...6 inches?? I can't even fit an appetizer plate on a 6 inch space!?!?! That was when my BFF/Co-worker, Tracie, immediately began Googling what a standard bar would be. Everything said "at least 12 inches". Matt then relayed the message to the contractors and they suggested 10 inches. He asked me and I agreed that length would be ok, so they unbolted the countertop, extended it more and bolted it back down. Matt took a picture and sent it back to me:

The panic started to set in. I was thinking, it needs to be at least 12 inches! I thought about it for a few minutes, called Matt and asked him if he could ask the contractors to make it 12 inches. This is the picture that I received:

I felt horrible being so picky, but I had no other choice! It was either now or never! So, they did extend it AGAIN, and with the end tile, it comes out to 11.75 inches. So after three major changes to the foundation, and the contractors now hating me, I was a very happy camper :)


The next step for the Flooring Guys was to lay out the tile on the counter. We asked for very, very, very thin grout to make the countertops appear more like a slab. I felt sorta weird taking pictures, so I had to sneak up behind when they weren't looking.

After that, they started applying the backsplash to the wall. Now, I started to get EXCITED! It finally looked like it was coming together.

Once, they did that, they applied the grout, stuck the new sink in (LOVE the new stainless steel sink) and cleaned up shop!

YeeeHaww! Part 2 of the Kitchen was complete!

Stay tuned for Part 3...Painting the Bottom Cabinets.  


Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover Part 1: Upper Cabinets

I know I have been promising part 1 of this kitchen transformation for a while, but the process is taking MUCH LONGER than we ever expected!! Please keep in mind the kitchen that what we are working with!

When we finally decided to redo the kitchen cabinets, we decided to go with the 'Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation' kit. We had already "been there, done that" with painting kitchen cabinets the traditional way a few years back, so we were antsy for a new, quicker, and easier way to get these done. The decision to redo a kitchen is quite a big decision because of the amount of time and manual labor you have to invest in the process.

Anyway, prior to finally deciding to move forward with the entire project, I did a bunch of research and read a ton of reviews on other blogs of people who had done the 'Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation'. It looked so easy and the pictures looked amazing. It looked like a method that was too good to pass up. Well, the kit (and other blogs...not naming any names) said that the process was SUPER easy and would only take 2 (or even 3) coats MAX. Ummm...I beg to differ. Let's put it this way...The plan was to get the painting done in two weekends. We figured with 2 coats, we could get the top cabinets (going dark to white) done within one weekend and then the next weekend get to work on the bottom cabinets (dark to darker). Well my friends, this was not the case AT ALL. Probably because I had to do 5 coats...YES 5 COATS of white to get from dark to white on the top cabinets. Let me break it down for you:

Step 1: We removed all of the cabinet doors from the top half of our cabinets. (We had to order new hinges, but if you are keeping the same hinges, be sure to organize them in individual baggies so you know which hinges go on each cabinet door. This also goes for the hardware).

Step 2: Although the Rustoleum Transformation Kit does not require sanding, our cabinets were in pretty bad condition (even Home Depot agreed), so we decided to lightly sand any areas that were rough or had paint peeling off of them. 

Step 3: Wiped down all of the doors and cabinet frame with soap and warm water. The cabinets around the stove were pretty grimy, so we made sure to scrub those down pretty well.

Step 4: Dried all doors and frame with a lint free white t-shirt.

Step 5: Applied the deglosser that came in the 'Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation' kit. Since the chemicals in the deglossing liquid are pretty strong, we wore latex gloves throughout this whole process. We applied a generous amount of the liquid on a green scrubby brillo pad and scrubbed each door and the frame of the cabinets thoroughly. At first we were a little confused because we were under the assumption that all of the paint would come off as well. When we noticed that none (I repeat, none) of the reddish-brown paint was coming off, we decided to take a quick break and head to Home Depot to make sure we were on track.

The employees at Home Depot told us that we were doing this correctly and that the deglosser will not take off the paint, it would just take off top layer of polyurethane that most cabinets have (pretty sure ours did not, but it's good to use this anyway as it acts as an adhesive to the first coat of paint).

Step 6: After the deglosser was applied, we had to do one final wipe down with a lint free white t-shirt. (They sell these at Home Depot, but these shirts just happen to be a part of Matt's "uniform", so I snagged an old one of his).

Step 7: We set up an 'assembly line' in our garage by laying all of the cabinet doors out on two long painter plastic sheet thingies (pretty sure that's not the correct term, but that's what we call them). We didn't really have to worry about taping and covering the inside so much because we are getting new countertops installed. It was actually kind of fun vandalizing our current countertops during this project :).

Step 8: We started by painting the back side of the cabinet doors with the 'Bond Coat' from the 'Rustoleum Transformation Kit'. Since our appliances are all white, we decided to go with the color "Pure White" from the kit. We didn't want anything to be off white next to our super white appliances. Once we did the first coat, we did the first coat on the actual cabinet frame.

Step 9: Instead of flipping the cabinet doors over to the front, I did the second coat on the backside of the cabinet doors again. This is when we noticed that we would definitely need more than 3 coats. We applied the second coat to the inside as well.

Step 10: We ran out of the 'Bond Coat' from the Rustoleum Kit and we were pretty confident that we would need another full coat, if not two more coats, so we went back to Home Depot and they suggested we use 'Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White' paint in an eggshell finish. They assured me that as long as this was the last coat of paint on everything, all of the paint would be the same shade. 

Step 11: We purchased the Behr paint and went straight home to start on the 3rd coat (3rd coat of the back side of the doors and of the frame...at this point, we haven't even touched the front of the cabinet doors). The Behr paint was definitely a lot thicker and covered a lot more of the darkness from our original cabinets. We were still unhappy with the Rustoleum product and felt that we were mislead into thinking it would be a heck of a lot easier, so I called and they immediately refunded our money. They did suggest that we use primer first and then use the Rustoleum product, but this was after the fact, and to us, it just seemed like the same process as doing it the same old traditional way, so spending $80 on the kit as well just didn't seem cost effective. (I will say that the process from going dark to darker would probably work fine, however, if you are not using their glaze or special finishing techniques, it just doesn't seem worth it to spend that much money on the kit. We will not be using the Rustoleum Kit for the bottom half of our cabinets).

Step 12: We still saw some darkness coming through so we applied one more full coat. After this 4th coat, we FINALLY saw the darkness from the previous color start to disappear! I got a little neurotic with the painting, so I went through and did little touch ups to make for a 5th coat of white paint. I just figured that I had spent so much time perfecting everything, why not just be neurotic all the way to the very end...right? I mean c'mon, how could I not be neurotic?? My house was a DISASTER and I looked like this:

I can actually explain this one...I started out with shorts and a t-shirt, but it was FREEZING, so I put long johns on. I was painting in my garage and technically long johns are underwear, so I thought it would be inappropriate to just wear underwear with my garage door wide open, so I threw the shorts on over. Again, because it was so cold, I had to bust out the FUGGS (Fake-Uggs) and the climbing on countertops was really taking a toll on my knees, so I thought, why not just throw some knee pads on too!

Step 13: After the 5th coat of white paint was applied to the backside of the cabinet doors and the cabinet frame, we finally got around to the front of the cabinet doors. Since we were no longer using the Rustoleum product and going the traditional way, we purchased "KILZ2 Latex" Primer at Home Depot and applied 1 solid coat to the front of each cabinet door. Although hindsight is 20/20, we should have gone the traditional route from the very beginning. You could immediately tell how much stronger the primer was as a base compared to the Rustoleum Bond Coat we used as the first coat on the backside of the doors.

Step 14: After the primer dried, applied the first coat of the 'Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White' paint to the front of the cabinet doors.

Step 15: Applied the second coat of the  'Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White' paint to the front of the cabinet doors.

Step 16: Applied the third coat of the 'Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White' paint to the front of the cabinet doors.

Step 17: Applied a thin layer of 'Varathane Satin Polyurethane' to ALL areas of the cabinets and frame. Let Dry.

Step 18:  Hung the cabinet doors back onto the cabinets. DONE with Kitchen Makeover Step 1! Take a look here for the before pics. Please pardon the mess!!

This is definitely NOT the ideal way to redo your cabinets. I also want to clarify that I'm not completely knocking the Rustoleum Transformation Kits. The cabinets we were redoing were already painted and dark, so they may have not been the best type of cabinets to try and get to white with. However, it would have been nice if the instructions had notes about "ideal type of cabinet" to use the product on or tips, such as using primer first if you are going from dark to white. 

Hope to have Part 2 of our kitchen makeover posted for you soon!

Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Burlap Squares Advent Calendar

Between all of the traveling and kitchen remodeling Matt and I have been doing lately, I have had very little time to get ready and start decorating for the Christmas season.

Christmas time is definitely one of the best parts of the year so I thought I would start the decorating by making a quick little handmade Advent Calendar. Since I had so much burlap left over from the Harvest banner I made last month, I decided to use some for this project.

Here is a list of what I used to make this project:

• Burlap
• Off-white sheets (You can use an old one or just buy cheapies from Walmart)
• Frame ($3.99 at Goodwill)
• Hemp string
• Thumbtacks
• Mini clothespins
• Stamps & Ink
• Chocolate Coins

I started by taking the frame and spray painting it with Rustoleum Heirloom White spray paint. I know the frame already looked like this color to begin with, but it really needed a quick little refresher to make it look nicer.

Next, I cut the hemp string into 5 separate strings. I then took thumbtacks and tacked the end of each string to either side of the backside of the frame.

Once the frame was ready, I took the burlap and cut out 25 squares. The nice thing about the burlap is the squares don't have to be cut perfectly and it still looks cute. 

After cutting the burlap, I cut out 25 rectangular strips of the off-white sheets. (I had originally tried stamping the numbers on the burlap and well, that was not the best idea. I couldn't even make out the #1 so I scratched that idea and went with some cheapo Walmart sheets that I have for another upcoming project). Once I had 25 squares of burlap and 25 rectangular sheets, I stamped each of the rectangular sheets from #1 to #25. 

The final step is to take the piece of sheet with the appropriate number and lay it over the burlap and clothespin that to the hemp string. Then, take a piece of chocolate (I used gold coins) and stick that in the clothespin, on the back of the fabric. 

And...voila! You've got yourself a cute little Advent Calendar that can be reused every year (of course you will have to replenish the chocolate). This frame can also be used during the year to hang pictures or other miscellaneous things.

Counting down the days till Christmas...

 

♥ Natalie