Home Design Cool

Well HELLO! Oh happy day, the kitchen island is done! I busted my butt yesterday painting for hours to get it finished up so I could show you this week. It’s so freaking awesome, I love it! Love it love it love it.

I’m always proud of what I create in our house but this one may be one of my favorites. I keep looking at it thinking, I DID THAT. And it wasn’t crazy expensive either. It’s a wonderful feeling.

If you remember, last year during the family room renovation we pulled up the island to patch the floors. I wanted to move it away from the cabinets a little bit and we had to fix the floors to do that. They had to tear it apart to take it out of the kitchen:

And my “art” project was created. ;) The squiggles are just old glue from past island projects. If you’ve followed along over the years you know this little island has undergone a LOT of redos. This is the last one. I’m not touching it again. Ever.

I used the original island and built off of it – first by making a wine rack out of scrap wood:

I’m sure at this point some of you were like, uhhhh…OK…

You need to TRUST! :)

Next came the cabinet at the end of the island that will house a microwave eventually:

I just built a basic box with screws and wood.

It sat like this for a while – I hosted a party, had friends over…all with the interesting island on display. The best part of it so far was the new size and the butcher block countertop – I LOVE having a larger island. It is fantastic my friends. I added about two and half feet to it in total.

Next up came the supports I built on the side:

I know some of you have mentioned that the chairs are close together – there’s actually five inches between them and it’s plenty for us. I didn’t want to make the island any bigger – that space at the end where the table used to be has grown on us and we love having it open now. (Before it felt massive, so funny.)

Also, in the 11 years we’ve lived in this house we’ve never had two grown adults sit down at the island next to each other anyway (when it was just a two seater). When we have parties one person sits, one leans, and our last party I actually pulled one of the seats off to the side by the new cabinet and sat there so I could talk to people. So the spacing works fine for us – but if you try this you will have to figure out what works best for you!

I planked the whole thing with the same cheap underlayment I used on the fireplace in the family room. And to tie to two areas together even more I painted it the same color – Peppercorn by Sherwin Williams. It ties the whole space together beautifully!:

I’ll take you on a tour of my island. ;) The cabinets were part of the old island, obviously. Everything past that is new. The wine rack is seriously awesome and I need to go buy some more wine to fill it up. (I may have celebrated with a glass last night.)

The new cabinet at the end will have a shelf eventually – I won’t install that until we get the microwave that will go in here. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the bottom shelf – for now it holds cookbooks and I love that we have extra storage!:

I still need to pick up a cover for the outlet, but otherwise the part is done for now. I used plywood for this cabinet since it is cheaper -- you can see the grain of the wood but eventually most of it will be covered with the microwave:

Yes, our Valentine hearts are still up. ;)

I told you more about the stools and how I cut them down here. I was originally going to keep the original color of our island, a lighter blue/gray, but the stools looked awful with it. So I went with the darker and I love it!:

All of those cabinets will be built up to the ceiling and will be painted eventually. In the full light like this the Peppercorn color goes a little blue in pics but in person it’s more gray. There is a definite blue undertone though.

I’ve been trying to figure out a good accent color to use in the kitchen -- I realized in the family room and our bedroom (where I have a wall painted the same color) that I love green with it. So green it will be…with some blue mixed in – I’m loving blue against all the white on the new window seat:

The plan is to take down those cabinets (the microwave will be replaced with a hood) and do shelving in that spot. I think this view will be pretty incredible when that’s done:

I have another idea for that wall that came into my head the other day. I’ll have to see if it will work. That’s like phase six out of ten phases of this kitchen, so it will be awhile. :)

But for now we are enjoying the first two phases that have come together better than I could have dreamed – the window seat and the island:

The new larger island makes me want to cook and bake all the time! I may have to make some brownies to celebrate. It’s so wonderful and turned out even better than I could have hoped.

I found this super old picture and had to share, just because it’s fun to see the changes over the years:

I’ll share a few more details and how I used one of my favorite tools on this project tomorrow! For now, I rest. I may just take a nap on top of it. :)

 

Want to know more? See all the details of this island redo here.

So you may have read that title and came here to read thinking this post was something BIG. Like dreams normal people have…a vacation overseas. Or a new car. World peace. (Um, me too.) My dream? It’s always been a window seat. Every since I was a wee one at 20 years of age – I’ve looked at them in magazines and on TV and I. loved. them.

I have a couple spots in our house where we could potentially build a seat one day, but when we changed things around during our family room reno last year I found a spot that would work even better. I knew it would be perfect and would be extra seating and would look like it was always meant to be there.

Our bay window in the kitchen was that perfect spot. The first phase was to remove the old back door that used to be in between the windows. While they were at it I had some lights added since that area can get really dark:

It sat like that for the past three months. I didn’t even paint the trim because I was so busy. I lie…I knew it was going to take forever so I ignored it. :)

But last week I finally started the painting and then at the end of the week this started as well:

If you remember I mentioned last week that our plans for the kitchen island changed a bit. Those changes resulted in a HUGE savings – the budget for the island was cut in about a third.

So when the handymen said they would build the seat for $300, I said DO IT:

And yes, I paid them on the last day of the no spend month. :)

I planned to do this myself but I am hosting a shower this weekend (the extra seating will be wonderful!!), I don’t have a table saw and it would take me about a month to do this on my own. And goodness…sometimes it’s nice to have help. So I hired this part out. They framed it and put the face on – and were done in less than a day.

We used scrap two by fours that I had for the frame and some other scrap wood I had for the inside of the seat. I also had them extend the outlet so we could still use it.

Most of it wasn’t too complex – but the top piece did take some precise cutting. I was impressed that they got the front perfectly flush with the wall so the baseboard flows seamlessly. And they had to build up the inside of the bench so the lid would support a few human beings. :)

When they left my work started. Here’s how it looked (I had already started all the trim and painting on the walls last week:

I added the beefed up baseboard first – I do it this way so the vertical boards (the board and batten around the room) have something flush to sit on. I also added a board across the top on the front of the bench:

Next up came quarter round and primer:

It was starting to come together!

I finished up the NINE coats of paint on the windows (three per window – I actually need to do one more quick coat on the fronts of the trim):

Next I sanded and caulked everything and did a coat of semi gloss white all over the seat. The last step was to add the rest of the trim to the front and along the top of the white on the walls:

I actually have one more coat to do on everything and a little more caulking but I was pooped at midnight last night and had to stop. I threw some pillows on here just to show how GREAT that white will look with some color!:

Oh, and I still need to put some trim around the edges on top to hide the small gap along the walls. I am making myself finish all these details before I can start on the island. :)

And of course eventually there will be a big cushion on here as well! It will take me some time to figure out what fabric and colors I want to go with here so that won’t happen for a bit:

It will definitely include some color though! Because this area gets so much sun I’m thinking I’ll have to go with an outdoor fabric.

But for now…isn’t it lovely?? Sing it to yourself:

Every night this past weekend I would stand here before going to bed and just stare at it. I’m not gonna lie, I got a little teary at one point. Goofy I know, but sometimes it hits me hard that I get to do this stuff in our house. Better than I deserve.

Here is it is at night with the lights on:

One more thing to add to my list – a dimmer. Oh yes.

Of course in this house I need things to be functional as well as pretty, so the best part is hiding under that top:

BOOM. (Fist pump and explode):

I’ve had my supplies in here for now but finally a spot for all of the basketballs!! Is this heaven?? 

Actually I don’t know what we’ll keep in here. It may very well be the basketballs. I can also see keeping the big kitchen stuff like the crock pot and drink dispensers in here. Oh my goodness…the possibilities. I do need to add some hinges that will hold up the heavy door though – I think I may have to get something online because nothing I’ve found at the store is strong enough.

There you go…a dream realized. It doesn’t take much for me folks. :) As I mentioned, I hope to get all the little stuff done on the seat this week and then I will start on the island. I will be building the extension for that myself and I’m so excited about my last minute addition! Crossing my fingers it all works out.

After the island is done I’ll be taking a break from the kitchen to save up for the next phase, building an enclosure for the fridge. Thanks again for coming along for my house projects! It’s fun to share this with you all. :)

Linking up to Beth’s party here!

Hey there! I’m back with an update for the plan in the kitchen and I am SO EXCITED because I think I finally have the island figured out. It takes me awhile to get the look of certain things nailed down, and I don’t move on them till I have it all figured out. When I do I move forward fast. :)

Right now our island is four by three feet, a standard builder size. I’ve spruced it up over the years, including adding a butcher block top from IKEA. It actually came in a larger size and I had it cut down and a pretty edge added to it:

When we had the floors patched during our reno last year, I went ahead and had the area under the island patched as well. When we got new floors years ago we had them installed around the island, which I knew right away was a mistake. Trust your gut people!

I had them patch underneath so we could move the island out into the room just a bit. Unfortunately, they had to take all of the pretty trim off in the process. It was a sad day, and our island has looked like an art project gone wrong since. :)

It’s not a big deal – since I knew I wanted to extend it anyway. We’ve hosted friends and parties over the past four months with it looking goofy and it’s not made me twitch too much. But I’m hosting two baby showers in the next month so I really want to get this thing looking good again!

So…the original plan was to double the size from four feet long to eight feet. I also wanted to make it a bit wider too, so the overhang would go over the chairs a little more. The plan included adding a base cabinet for more storage and then building on a bookcase at the end to house a microwave:

(source)

The microwave part is still happening. But I realized two things after doing some more research – one, we’d have to order the cabinet since it would need to match the current ones in our kitchen. We upgraded a little bit when we built, not a lot, but they’re still not cheap. And we’d have to wait weeks to get it in.

The other biggie was the countertop – I was planning to do stone on the island and wood countertops everywhere else originally. But after doing some research I decided I didn’t want to worry about the wood counters around our sink and over the dishwasher. I read some reviews from folks who loved the wood but all (that I read) said they would not do wood again, just because of the stress factor.

And the huge slab of stone for the island was going to cost close to what it will just cost to do the countertops – so now…we’re going stone around the room and sticking with wood on the island. I’m used to the wood there and love it.

Problem is – the only island butcher block I can find is six feet long. I found one that is eight feet but is more expensive. We considered adding a wine fridge to add the length (instead of ordering a cabinet), but then when we thought about it and realized we really only drink red wine. I think you can still put those in there but we just wouldn’t use it.

SO…you with me here? I’m trying to think about how we’ll really use this thing and save some money. So the new plan is to do a six foot countertop. No new cabinet, no wine fridge, just a built in at the end.

I also had to adjust how I want it to look a bit. I got these stools last year and then months later found a third one and grabbed it up:

My first plan was to build out the sides with skinny bookcases. So out from the current island on each side of the three stools:

But as you can see with the six foot island there’s not enough room. (Edited to add that yes, the stools are bar height. I’ll be cutting them down like I did our last set, I just didn’t want to do it until I was positive we were using them.)

I still want that custom look so I am going with even skinnier sides like Jen’s island I’ve shown you before:

It still gives the island a more substantial feel and we’ll have additional storage at the end.

These are little adjustments that I honestly think will look better in the end – simpler and more streamlined. And I think it’s a good thing that the larger island top was going to be too expensive because when I taped things off I realized eight feet was going to be REALLY big:

The tape on the floor next to the island (sorry it’s hard to see) is measured at six feet out. The window seat tape shows where that will go. Funny how I thought having that open space where the table used to sit would be too open – now we love it! Many of you mentioned living with it for awhile and it’s so true. We got used to it pretty fast.

So, it’s not the original plan but it will still be super functional, wayyyy cheaper and really beautiful when it’s done!

Now…our final decision is the countertop. I can go with a basic maple, in a similar tone to what we have now. It’s at a local lumber store and the prices is OK, but more than I spent at IKEA for sure. I also found a few options at Lumber Liquidators. When I called they said they had a basic maple for a GREAT price -- $200! But when I got there to check it out this is the maple:

It’s considered their basic version and it includes the knots which I don’t like. (This is the look with oil on it.)

They also have walnut that’s beautiful but my husband didn’t like it as much:

Of course the one we both love, an acacia wood, is the most expensive:

But I don’t mind paying a bit more for this considering we’re “saving” by not doing so many of the updates we originally planned.

Here’s the deal though – all this time I thought IKEA didn’t carry the island sizes of their butcher anymore, but they do? Readers have told me for years that they don’t have the one we bought years ago but I looked online and you can get it, but you have to order it online. Odd. It says they can ship to our house, and maybe even the store? (Two hours away.) The thing is, I have used this butcher many times and am really happy with it. The price online is less than $200, crazy good!

Has anyone used the island-sized butcher block from IKEA? I’m going to call them to try to get it figured out because if I can get it there I will – the price can’t be beat! AND the island size comes 40 inches wide – exactly the width I’ve been hoping for. After all this research and driving around the place I wanted to get it at from the start may have exactly what I want! :)

I hope my train of thought in this process makes sense – I know it can hard to keep up with sometimes. (Ask my husband.) But I’m thrilled with the plan and am so excited to get started on this first kitchen reno project!!

Yeah, yeah, I can hear my elementary English teacher yelling now -- don’t end a sentence in a preposition. But I have limited space here people!

Last week we talked about clutter busters – some of the ways I corral things that tend to mess up the place. This week I’m talking about five of the things I think we have way too many of – and when I say we I mean me and maybe you.

The older I get the less I can stand extra stuff in our house and the easier it is for me to let go of things. It’s still a struggle, don’t get me wrong. But I have less patience for crap we don’t use.

As I continue to move my way around our house this new year, I have noticed a few things we tend to hoard and I finally took a good hard look at whether or not we need so many of them.

I have a feeling many of you have multiples upon multiples of the same. First up, the sheets.

You’ll see I have many “soft” things on this list. I’m not sure why that is. :) So up till a few years ago we had easily four to five sets of sheets for our bed. I’m not sure why I always felt the need to have so many. When we take one set off to wash…we put another on. Not three. Yeah, I could see having a few different sets if you like to change up the look of your room. And yes, there’s always the need for an extra set for those times in the middle of the night when someone is sick. But we do have a washer and dryer – in a matter of a couple hours we’ve got a clean set again.

I’ve already purged our sheets down to three sets -- winter flannel, a more decorative one and our favorite, super soft set. That’s all we need! I did go through it all again and get rid of about eight extra pillow cases – not sure why we had so many?

All of our sheets fit into one bin:

We have one extra set for the guest bed and the Bub has three sets as well. Honestly we don’t even need the three but considering I’ve whittled down this much already I’m pretty proud. ;)

Here’s another biggie around our house – the cups.

Let’s throw mugs in there too, right? What the heck is it about glasses and plastic cups and mugs? They multiply in our house. It doesn’t happen with plates or even bowls – just things we drink out of. It’s because so often a cup turns into a souvenir for us. All those plastic cups that I think I need to remind me of a great trip. I do not need the cup to remember seeing Wicked on Broadway. :)

Or that cactus glass you got for “free” with the margarita and then you went back and got another one so you could have a set? Yeah. Been there.

I pulled every glass and mug out of the cabinet and then purged. This is what we’re left with:

I think that’ll be plenty for the three people in this house. :) And ten mugs for two people who don’t even drink coffee? Yeah, we’re good. Those mugs though – they’re always so cute right? Especially ones with an initial – those really get me.

Next up – blankets. I have a thing with magazines and mugs and blankets. Actually, throw blankets, for real. I swear to you, I think in the back of my head I’m always preparing for the next blizzard. I picture us huddled in the bed together, shivering, with my extra 25 blankets piled on top of us, keeping us alive. Thank GOD for my blankets!!

I mean, seriously. It’s not entirely reasonable but the just-in-case part of my mind makes me keep all the blankets. But I got rid of a few, because we don’t have storage space for 25 of them. If you do I’m tempted to tell you to just keep your blankets to KEEP YOUR FAMILY ALIVE.

I cleared out some and now we have some extra space on my DIY closet shelves:

You know…for extras. ;)

Am I alone on the blanket thing?

My fourth thing you I have too many of – gloves and hats and scarves. You’re probably tired of seeing this closet lately but it’s how we organize it all:

For the kids, yes, numerous hats and pairs of gloves are worth it. But for us, how many do we really need? At one point I had like ten pairs of gloves and I wore two of them, EVER. Now I keep one heavy duty pair for working outside, one pretty/cute pair and one extra set just to have. My husband has the same. I do give myself a pass on scarves cause I’m a girl. :)

By the way, many of you have asked about the tie backs screwed into the door – we have hollow core doors and they hold up just fine. I’ve had them up for years and they hold the weight of bags and backpacks every day, but our son doesn’t bring home any heavy school books just yet. (I don’t use anchors to hang them but that would help!)

My final one is another softie – the towels. So here’s the thing – all my adult life I’ve had many, many sets of towels. But I read something awhile back that really stuck with me and I’ve purged even more since.

We don’t wash our towels every few days and I’ve always felt kind of bad about that – but when you think about how often we wash our sheets, the ones we sleep on at the end of the day, sometimes at our dirtiest, and compare that to how often we’re “supposed” to wash our towels, that we use at our cleanest every day…it doesn’t jive.

I know, towels need to be washed and they can get yucky smelling from not drying out well but if you hang them there’s no reason why you can’t use them a bit longer. And if you’re only using one set at a time…why so many sets? You know what I’m saying?

We’re down to four sets of towels for us, four towels in the Bub’s bathroom and two towels in the basement bathroom:

Honestly, four sets is more than enough for my husband and me. I can still let a few sets sit in the laundry for weeks (not that I would ever do that…) and still have a clean pair of towels to use.

Seriously, what is it about the soft stuff? And of course those are the things that take up the most space!

I went through all five of these for a quick purge this week and it took me about 30 minutes. I piled up a bunch of cups and mugs:

And a whole pile of blankets and pillow cases and towels and scarves:

And the house feels lighter, yet again!

By the way, if anyone is interested in that airplane sheet set, send me an email. I got a few sets years ago for the Bub’s room knowing they may discontinue them. (They are a full sized set.) These have been taken, thanks! :)

Are there any other items you would add to this list? Do you have too many of these as well? Do you keep extras of all the soft things like me?

Hello and happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day my friends! First of all, I have to say WHOA – I did not expect that response to Friday’s post! I loved reading all of your thoughts! I read every single one and if you left a link to your blog, I will be by…it just may take me awhile. ;)

I think it’s lovely that so many of you are invested in blogs and feel a connection because I do as well. I think I can speak for most bloggers when I say that it’s very important to us. I don’t ever want you to feel obligated to comment here – I know it takes time. But if you want to I love it! :) I feel like that’s how I get to know you.

Anyway, today’s project is a quick one – oh how I wish it was quick to complete! Actually it isn’t done just yet but I’m so happy with the progess I had to share. I think it goes to show what a difference simple changes can make!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue the board and batten that we have in the family room into the rest of the kitchen:

We don’t really have much wall space in there anyway so I wasn’t sure it would be needed. But then I realized it looked a little odd just having a few tiny walls without it…so this project was started.

The bay window and the pantry wall is what I’m talking about today:

(To see more about that glass pantry door, go here. To see how I made the glass more private for cheap, go here.)

Sorry for the bad iPhone pics – I didn’t realize how bad they looked till I got them on here. There were a few things I wanted to do in this area – the old baseboards had stain all over them (that would normally be covered by quarter round) but I’ve been redoing the base in here anyway. That wall was still the old wall color – a Ralph Lauren color called Sisal that I had mixed at Home Depot nearly 11 year ago.

And finally, I wanted to redo the door trim to match the craftsman look on the rest of the main floor – this was the last door to tackle, whoot!! I still have most of the doors upstairs but I call that progress!

So the first step was to remove the baseboards around the door – which I’ve told you is a total pain in the butt. One, because our base was installed incredibly well and it’s hard to remove anyway, but two, because we were lazy (see one) and didn’t take the base off before we had the hardwoods installed years ago. It’s hard to get down under there to get it out. But I got it done, then took the old trim off:

I explained that process and how I do the craftsman trim in more detail in this post.

Next up, I measured how high the board and batten would go and then painted the semi gloss white up to that point. Three coats later and it was ready to go!:

If you remember this is a no spend month for me – the door trim was sitting in the garage. I got it a couple months back to do the trim around our bedroom window, but I realized after the fact that it wouldn’t be worth it on there. With the roman shades hung high and the drapes on the sides, you wouldn’t see it anyway. SO…some of that trim got used here.

I started the upper part of the board and batten look with some scrap I had leftover from the family room. So far I’m THRILLED with how it looks:

So much prettier, right? Gah, I will never tire of the power of white trim.

So here’s the thing – you don’t even have to do the whole board and batten look to get a big impact like this. Just the white walls and the trim along the top makes a big statement, right?

I still have a lot to do that I hope to get done this week. The baseboards still need to go in – but I will probably stop at the bay window since eventually there will be a window seat there. Maybe I will just continue it so it looks nice for the time being. I did start painting the trim on the bay windows:

Only one coat on one window though – only eight more coats left (on all the windows). And the lower part of the walls need two more coats of white in the bay window as well.

It will take forever but I can already tell it’s going to look so good!:

In a couple weeks I’ll get a bit more trim to add the board and batten look to these walls too. I don’t think I’ll do many vertical pieces though -- at least not as many as the rest of the room. The walls are too small and I don’t want it to get too busy.

And of course, I need to hang my fork and spoon back up! I get asked about those a lot – I found them at a thrift store years and years ago. They were black and I sprayed them a silver color.

Because I love before and afters (they show me how far it’s come) here’s what we had yesterday morning:   

And here’s what we have this morning!:

Lots left to do but I’m so excited to get this whole area finished up after months of in between!

Doesn’t the white paint and trim look so fresh? Love it! The painting takes forever but it’s a cheap job for sure – and it makes such a difference! Now I cannot wait to get that window seat started! :)