… you know I spray painted that sucker glossy white, right? A few thin and even coats later (I used the Rustoleum Universal stuff with built-in primer) I was left with this guy. I don’t know why I’m holding him up sideways in front of the other wall. I blame book craziness (how long can I blame normal weirdness on book craziness? Two weeks? A month? Three years?).

Then it was hanging time:

And then came Clara’s coats and hats and Burger’s leash:

Ta-dahhhhhhh.

Why didn’t we do this months ago? Now there’s no more running around to try to locate one of Clara’s coats (which used to end up in any number of odd places since it didn’t have a designated drop spot like this).

I can even picture her little lunch box and backpack hanging up here someday. Sniffle.

And there’s still plenty of space for tucking our laundry basket in there. This tiny 3.5′ wide room (not exaggerating, that’s literally the width) is definitely a lesson in figuring out how to get the most organizational bang for our buck. Between the baskets and bins on the shelves that we built next to the washer and dryer to our low-profile shoe caddies made from recycle bins from Ikea by the door, we definitely have squeezed lots of function into this sliver of space.

So that’s another little project that I can officially check off the list, and one more item out of the playroom! Holla. What are you guys spray painting, hanging, organizing lately? Anyone else have random “Dude Get On That Already” challenge coups to share? Isn’t it funny how sometimes it’s the littlest projects that make the biggest difference? We’ve been using these hooks so much for the past few days that we have already wondered aloud several times how we ever lived without them. It’s the little things.

Psst- Sometimes you just need your mom, right? More on that over here on Young House Life.

He’s made of some sort of resin and basically looks like a big glowing ball of clear spaghetti… but in a cool, kinda ’70s way. Update: we’ve learned form a savvy reader that it’s actually called a spaghetti lamp and it’s made out of spun lucite. Our plans back in Feb 2011 were to ORB the gold finish and hang it in our master bathroom nook. Fast-forward to now and the plan has shifted slightly. Instead, we’ve given him a new home in our closet.

The closet seemed to be the better choice because (1) the bathroom nook is visible from the bedroom and we figured this big round fixture might compete visually with the other big round fixture in the room. And (2) the bare bulb in the closet was Yawn City.

 Ahh, much better:

We got on that! Oh happy day! Gotta love using what you have and upgrading a naked old ceiling bulb. We’ll dive into more light-related details in a second, but there were some other closet happenings that went on as well…

When you last saw our closet a few months after we moved in April, it was looking mighty clean and organized.

These days, well, let’s just say it had gotten a bit derailed thanks to a certain chihuahua we all know and love.

It’s actually unfair to place the blame solely on Burger. Sure moving his crate into our closet from the playroom closet meant our laundry basket got displaced from it’s nice little nook. But Clara was actually the main reason for the move. We too often found her playing with Burger’s food, water, and crate – much to Burger’s dismay – so we decided to tuck it away in our room where she doesn’t go that often. For some reason Burger enjoys small spaces, so he feels most comfortable with his crate and even his food/water tucked away in a closet or nook (it’s just dry food, so there’s not any odor and we thankfully don’t have any ants/pests that bother it). So after a year of nook deliberating we declared our closet: The Best Nook For The Job.

To make a long story long, even though this project started because of a light – we couldn’t ignore the other less-than-satisfactory situations going on in here too. And fortunately there was an easy answer. See how much spare room I’ve got on my side of the closet?

Unlike the lady wife, I don’t use my entire shoe rack left here by the previous owners. Yes, I know, I’m such a typical guy – I have one pair of brown shoes and one pair of black shoes and my flip flops and sneakers live in our shoe bins by the door. Meanwhile, on the other side of the closet, Sherry has enough shoes for the both of us. Not that I wear hers. I actually don’t think I could walk in any of them.

So after a bit of couple’s brainstorming (aka: Sherry encouraging me to allow Burger’s crate to pilfer some floor space from my side), I plucked out my shoe rack. And after completing the exhausting task of removing both pairs of shoes from it (sheesh, talk about backbreaking DIY) we got down to business.

Sherry pried it apart and I cut down the two long shelves by about 14 inches and…

…we nailed it back together, thereby creating a John-shoe-collection-sized rack.

And the smaller rack made space for Burger’s crate in the corner. So we’re glad we got on that. Why it took us 13 months of living here, I’m not sure.

But you know what, I really should let Burger give you the tour – since it’s kinda his domain. And yes, this means this post is about to be pretend narrated by a dog.

“Welcome to my bedroom people of the Internet!”

“Here you will find that my crate has been replaced by a clothing receptacle. Apparently my family finds it more important to have their dirty clothes closer to them than their beloved canine.”

“But that’s okay, because now I get more privacy back here in my master suite. Hello? Do you see me here in the back giving you the peeper?”

“Conveniently located next to my sleeping chambers are the dining facilities. Why thank you for asking – yes, I do live the life.”

“Speaking of my delicious cuisine, allow me to indulge myself for a moment.”

“Actually, I’d much prefer my culinary assistant to hand feed me right now. Oh tiny human! Come hither!”

Okay, tour’s over. It’s John again. That Burger’s feisty, isn’t he? Anyways, you can see above what we mean when we say that Clara likes to get into his food (don’t mind the sticker covered monkey/sock/floor). It’s not the worst thing that she likes to feed Burger his food piece by piece… if only she didn’t feel the need to swirl each piece around in his water dish first. She gets her strange-ness from her mother I think.

Anyways, this post was supposed to be about a light, right? Sidetracked much? Back to that…

Installation was pretty easy. We cut the plug/cord off and exposed the wires to make it hardwire-able. Then we picked up a kit at Home Depot that would allow us to attach the chain to a crossbar (though we had to hunt down a canopy at a specialty lighting store that would fit). We left everything gold because we figured since it was in the closet it didn’t have to match the other fixtures in the room, and we kinda dig the retro gold look for the closet. We can always paint it down the line if we get “the bug” but for now we like him just the way he is.

The room isn’t really this dark with the light on, I just turned down the exposure on the camera so you can see the texture of the light a bit better. And these pics don’t even do it justice. It’s super cool looking when it’s on. Sherry actually wants to make a video since she says it’s so much better in “real life” so you have that excitement to potentially look forward to…

One of the coolest parts are the little streaks of light it casts all over the wall and ceiling. Like little party streamers or something. We almost feel like we should have installed some mechanism to make it rotate like a disco ball. Okay, not really. But that could’ve been fun…

It’s kind of a shame that the light spent nearly 12 months in a pile in our playroom. But at least it’s hanging up in all of its glory now!  Oh and as for how we figured out the right height for it, I just stood under it as Sherry hung it at different heights and we picked one that gave me a little room – so it hangs around 6’4″ from the floor (our ceilings are 8′ high).

Oh, and if you’re at all curious as to what happened to all of the excess chain that we didn’t use (it had like 8 feet for swagging) – you can see Clara get her Jersey on with it over at Young House Life today. And yes there’s a video. And fist pumping. Predictably, I’m mortified and Sherry’s elated.

So did any of you guys cross something off your “Dude, Get On That Already” list this week? Did you reorganize a closet or otherwise rope your husband into a challenge? How about ghost writing a blog post for a chihuahua? Just me?

Then he sat in our playroom for a while (a while = 6+ months) and I recently walked in there and had this moment where I said to myself “Self: you have got to stop hoarding things in this room. Use them or lose them.” Which led to an initiative I like to call “Dude, Get On That Already.” The dude being me. Naturally. So I’ll probably revisit this initiative over the next few weeks and months (at least I hope I will) as I systematically pare down the hoarded playroom clutter and decide whether I’m going to keep things and actually use/hang/enjoy them or craigslist/donate/yard sale ‘em. A lot of things end up in there for one of two reasons:

• I’m not quite sure where to hang them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)
• I plan to somehow alter things by painting or staining them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)

Well not anymore, folks. I dug in and grabbed my horny little friend and marched his antlers all around the house, trying to find a spot to hang him up and actually enjoy him instead of hiding him away in The Room Of Chaos (yes, that’s its formal name these days, so it gets capital letters and everything). Anyway, after walking around for a while I decided it’d be fun in the kitchen next to the fridge, but the original black color (although very cool in its own right) wasn’t working there. So I dragged my buns outside with a piece of cardboard and some leftover white primer + spray paint.

You know my “thin thin thin and even coats” catchphrase when it comes to spray paint, so I snapped these three in-progress spraying shots to show you how each coat is a nice thin mist. You definitely don’t get full coverage with one thin coat of spray paint – which is a good thing. You’re doing it right if it takes about three of them to slowly accumulate. And always keep your hand moving and hold it 8-10″ away. No thank you drippies. Not on my watch.

Speaking of spray painting tips, this guy’s antlers were still looking dark on the underside, which I knew would be seen when we hung him up, so I waited a full day for his front to cure and then flipped him over to give him a nice deep tissue massage with spray paint on the back.

John and I actually considered a few crazier colors (plum, navy, yellow) but thought that the white would look nice on our grellow walls- especially with the gold mirror in the laundry room so close by (it’s on the other side of the doorway, so we didn’t want it to have to fight for attention).  But I have big plans for some of the other things lurking in the playroom. Oh yes, plum, navy, and beyond…

Don’t mind the paint touch ups we have been meaning to do for over a month. I’ll get to it sometime. Unless I’m too busy spray painting various faux animals.

Work it, antlers. Work it.

As for how I hung it on our paneled walls, anchors are a gal’s best friend.

Here’s the box we’ve had… oh… maybe a year?

They seem to last, which is nice because it’s so annoying to run to the store for little hanging stuff. Boo to that. Anyway, for those who might not know how they work, this might sound like “health class” in 5th grade, but the anchor is the white thing and the screw is the silver thing you know what a screw looks like. So you drill a tiny pilot hole into the wall, hammer (or push) the anchor into the hole, and then screw the screw into the anchor.

A into B, baby. Oh but just leave a little bit of the screw sticking out for hanging whatever it is you’re hanging on it (the anchor should be flush with the wall, but the screw might stick out half an inch). Das it.

I gotta tell ya, it took less than an hour of actual time (drying time doesn’t count because you don’t have to stand there and watch it). And that not only includes my little spraying trips in and out for those thin coats but also the whole hanging shebang after he was fully dry. So I have high hopes for my little “Dude, Get On That Already” project. I might just keep this up! And if I ever want to pop it off the wall for a fabulous royal wedding, it makes for a great fascinator.

So are you guys with me on this weird little self-imposed challenge? Any items (or an entire room full of stuff) that you’ve been putting off? Wanna tackle it with me as I go? I’d love to get to at least one thing a week but with kitchen/kid/book stuff I’m not sure if I can stick to that, but it’s definitely the goal! Oh and what should I name this guy? Or is naming white faux animals weird when they don’t have faces? Malcolm? I keep getting Malcolm.

And speaking of projects… surprise!

My apologies for the crazy lighting (oh yeah and the ladders and the dropcloths) but we’re in the midst of getting new lighting! Hah. So there’s just one floor lamp illuminating the back corner of our windowless interior room. Which explains why it looks like a glowing Katy Perry alien is hiding back there or something. But as crazy as it looks… wahoo, it’s progress! More details about the whole process as soon as it’s a wrap (and it’s all cleaned up, photographed, and written out) on Monday!

We loved the added height, texture, and pattern that they brought to the room, but I always wondered if layering some breezy sheers in there someday might make my curtain-loving heart sing. You know, so they’d be fuller and airier and sort of layered and soft looking. So I lived without ‘em for a while but kept my eye out for some cheap fabric or sheers that I thought might do the trick. And then one day in Ikea… I pounced. Two already made 98″ curtain panels for $9 was enough of a deal to make me jump, so I grabbed four packs of white breezy curtains with my living room windows (and glass sliders) in mind. I wish I knew the name for you guys but the packaging got tossed before I could take note and I looked online and didn’t see anything that matched what I got (in price and look). I don’t think they’re Vivan panels since we had those in our last house and these are lighter/thinner, and they’re definitely not Lill curtains (those are super sheer and mosquito-net-y). Update: We think they’re called Wilma. Hope it helps!

Anyway, the first thing I did was toss the panels in the wash (to pre-shrink them so that when I hemmed them they wouldn’t later get washed and be too short if there was any shrinkage). Then I grabbed some ring-clips from Target (the same ones I used to hang the original 8 panels)…

When my sherr-ish panels came out of the dryer I cut the tab tops off (since I could just clip them along the top with my ring-clips to hang them). Oh the tab tops might be a clue if you’re looking for which curtains they are (if they have a rod pocket, like the Vivan panels, it’s not them).

Then I hung them all up using the additional ring clips on the same curtain rod with the patterned panels. To make both curtain panels flow into each other I actually overlapped them a smidge with the ring clips.

Basically the two left-most clips on the patterned panel below also have the white sheers clipped behind them. That way there’s no gap between the curtains and they all move as one unit (ex: if I pull the sheer out both curtain panels extend). Not that we move our curtains. Haha. They’re really more for softness and height. Especially in a giant room like this one – adding anything soft and breezy makes it feel less like a gymnasium and more like a real room.

So I got past the tab-cutting/washing/hanging steps and then I stalled. I had been meaning to hem them and share them for a while but other projects and book stuff popped up so I left these guys unhemmed and a few of you even noticed them in posts like this one, to which I replied “ack, still have to finish that project and then I promise I’ll blog all about it!” Haha, which brings us to this post.

Yup, I finally hemmed them all using heavy-duty iron-on hem tape (Heat N Bond from Michael’s) which I did while they were still hanging right on the rod (see more about that method in this post). I just used a scissors to cut off the excess (there was actually about a foot of it on each one) while leaving an extra inch to accommodate the hem (so once it was hemmed up they’d just graze the floor).

Don’t mind the dust bunnies. Let’s pan out, shall we?

It’s hard to really see the curtains when ya pan way out thanks to all the light coming in, but here ya go. We can’t wait to tackle a big media cabinet build, by the way. Probably after we conquer the kitchen…

Oh and for anyone wondering where the last two curtain panels hang (since it’s easy to see the other 6 in the pics above), we have this slider right off the living room so that’s where those live:

Aw and look at Clara’s little homemade coloring desk. It’s been getting tons of action (she’s either cooking in her kitchen or going nuts with stickers and crayons at her table). Ah to be 20 months old and living it up with tiny furnishings and fake fruit.

But back to the curtains. I really like the breezy layered look and there’s something about a double dose of ring-hooks on each side of those curtain rods that feels kind of posh. At least to a weirdo like me. So that’s my pretty quick (except I took forever to hem them) curtain upgrade. What have you guys been clipping up/sewing/hem-taping these days?

Who wants to pet it? Just me?

But back to the matter at hand: last weekend I rearranged Clara’s room. Again. And I owe you guys the details (a few of you even noticed things had moved around here and requested an update), so whoop, here it is. Let’s dive right into the moving madness. Heck, free use-what-you-have rearranging isn’t that bad, is it? No heavy breathing required. From you, at least (I did my fair share of creepy mouth breathing while pushing things around). It actually was only a few simple switches, but the room still looked tore up from the floor up for a little while:

As usual, Clara was in there “helping Mommy dec-rate.” Decorate only has two syllables according to the bean. I love that you can’t see her at all here because she’s not tall enough to poke up from behind the changing pad where she was “juggling” cloth diapers while singing Firework by Katy Perry. No joke.

Just for fun, here’s Clara helping me the last time I went crazy and moved everything around:

Kinda looks the same except she’s wearing summer stuff.

And now here’s the new layout description to help make sense of the madness (see the sketches of makeover 1 and 2 here). Well, it won’t really make sense of my furniture-shuffling-neurosis, but it might explain what’s where and what used to be where:

• The crib which used to be on the wall in front of the door got moved to the wall across from that on the far side of the room
• The dresser that used to be on that wall moved to where the crib once lived
• The chair and side table pretty much stayed where they were
• The floor lamp that used to be behind the chair got moved into the kitchen (where it’s used in our sitting nook by the fireplace)
• Clara’s hamper got “hidden” back where the lamp once was (more on that in a bit)

And here are a ton of pics of her room after my recent switches. First off, it’s nice not to walk right into the side of the crib now that it’s back on the wall I originally wanted to put it (somehow I always planned to put it there but when we moved we stuck it in a corner, and then pulled it near the door, and only now is it back where it “belongs”). It didn’t jut out all that much, but the dresser is about half as deep, so it feels more open when you walk in again.

That little C on the door is from Anthropologie on clearance about a month or two ago. It was $6. Whenever we walk by it Clara says “C for Clara.”

Behind our little reading chair is Clara’s hamper, which is nice because she likes to take everything out of it and throw it around, so putting it a bit out of the way deters her. Sometimes. Other times it’s just a fun obstacle-course-like challenge.

Ah, the crib is finally on that back wall. Mom bliss. All is right with the world. And since I’m Señorita Safety all the frames over the crib are well out of Clara’s reach (the crib is pulled about 18″ away from the wall, although that’s hard to see in these pics). They’re also not only hung with screws & anchors or nails (depending on if I hit a stud) but also reinforced with heavy-duty 3M adhesive strips (which are 100% removable so they won’t kill the wall, but aren’t baby-removable, so nothing will come a-crashing down – even in another unlikely east coast earthquake). Is that crazy first-time-mom enough for ya? I thought so.

Here’s the corner that’s opposite the green mirror and chair:

The shot below is meant to show three things:

• the crib is pulled around 18″ from the wall (although there’s a weird double shadow so it really doesn’t demonstrate that very well – in fact it only looks about 3″ away)
• there are still many blank walls in our house (we still need to add some art to that corner)
• Clara’s closet is still my favorite place in the whole house (as in, I hang out in there and stroke the potato stamped walls)

One of our favorite furniture makeovers ever is still Clara’s $20 craigslist dresser:

It takes a licking (wooden fruit, cars, and blocks get whipped at it often), but keeps on ticking…

Every post deserves a detail shot of a stuffed alligator:

More details. They’re my favorite things in here. The handmade stuff, like these bookshelves John made…

… and the mobile I made.

Another favorite thing in here is the art wall. So many personal things that make me misty eyed. More on everything that hangs up there here.

Monkey detail shot!!!

Hah. That might be the best use of three exclamation points ever. Just kidding. This is:

You get a car!!! You get a car!!! You get a car!!!

Oh to be Oprah for a day. What’s wrong with me? Maybe don’t answer that. Anyway, when it comes to Clara’s third layout since we’ve moved in, I’ve learned not to make any declarative statements (ex: “I love it so much I’ll never move stuff around in there again!”) but I definitely love it the more than the past two setups. So it’s a keeper. At least until I go crazy again…

What rooms have you guys been shifting around? Do you have some that never get changed (our bedroom and living room are pretty much the same as about a month after we moved in) while others seem to move around all the time (Clara’s room and our kitchen seem to have enjoyed the most change so far).

Our frames above the sofa started out with colorful paper in them ($5 worth of craft paper from Michael’s to be exact). That added some fun oomph for a while, but the beauty of that $5 price tag was the freedom to switch things around and just sort of go with the flow. So they sat as plain blocks of color for a while…

… and then we added some fun local art prints (just taped in the middle of our colored paper)…

… but after our new rug arrived we were jonesing for something less colorful (since we had amassed a ton of colorful pillows and some bright accessories like the ceramic hurricanes on the desk). We also decided we could use some more texture, so that somehow triggered me to look in my fabric scrap bin and realize that I had enough burlap-ish textured linen-ish stuff to do the trick.

Sorry for that terrible description. It’s just a sand-colored fabric that sort of looks like linen or burlap (you know, it has those crosshatched lines running through it) that I got on super clearance from JoAnn fabrics a while back – so I don’t think it’s actually real linen and it’s a bit too soft to be burlap.

Here’s my completely not scientific framing method. I just:

• unstuck my little art squares that had been taped to the colorful fabric with a loop of tape
• used the same loop of tape to stick them to the center of the eight 12″ x 12″ fabric squares for each frame
• taped the fabric to the back of the frame’s mat on all sides (to keep it from looking saggy and wiggly)
• regular old scotch tape worked for that part, but if you have heavier fabric, something stronger like duct tape might be better

That’s it! Oh and these are Ikea’s ribba frames (with 12 x 12″ openings) if that helps. I love that my tiny polariod-ish prints make you look closer, and when you do, you see the texture in the fabric behind them. It’s really sweet, especially in person. I keep glancing over at them when I sit on the sofa.

Sometimes Burger takes John-sprawled-out-on-the-ottoman-taking-photos-of-the-art to mean that he’s supposed to sit on him. Naturally. So we took more photos and shared them over on Young House Life. Naturally.

Anyway, so the art thing was a free swap and I’ve been using the colored paper that I took out for other projects around the house – like John’s boyscout badge Christmas present.

Oh and since a few folks also requested an open-ottoman shot to see how it’s all organized in there, here ya go:

The big woven basket is my paint chip bin (yes I keep various paint decks in there and even save loose paint chips so I can later do weird things like make art or ornaments with them). The other three baskets are for various Clara toys. There’s also a giant blanket in there (it can actually stretch across the entire monster of a sectional that we have and cover me in one corner and John in the other corner, which makes me crazyhappy). It’s just a king sized blanket I found at HomeGoods a while back for 25 bucks.

So there you have it – two living room goings-on. What have you guys been framing lately? Any fabric “mats” or backgrounds? What about fabric as art? That’s always fun too! Any ottoman organization? We learned really fast that tossing things in without smaller bins and baskets = chaos. Like a small tornado hit ottoman-ville every time we cracked it open. So apparently it’s all about sub-containment inside of larger containment devices. Lesson learned.

Psst- A reader (thanks Caroline!) sent along the link to this article about why people seem to be “wired” with the desire to DIY things, and it’s so interesting! The “add one egg” thing is especially amazing to me.

First the why. Although the faux wood blinds on Clara’s bedroom window provided a decent amount of light-blockage, I knew blackout fabric would make the room pitch black in the middle of the day (which means it might help with the just-one-forty-five-minute-nap that we’ve been getting these days). To JoAnn fabrics I flew, and purchased 5.5 yards of blackout fabric (which sort of felt like the white fabric on roller-blinds). Thanks to a 50% coupon I got it all for $15.

Now for the how:

• I returned home with the 5.5 yards of fabric (I measured her existing curtains to see how much I’d need beforehand)
• I washed the fabric (it said dry clean only but the lady at the counter said I could wash it on cold and air dry it without any issue and she was right)
• I unclipped the two fabric curtain panels from Clara’s room and laid one on the floor on top of the blackout fabric to use as a template
• I cut two blackout panels to the same size as the two curtains

• I debated sewing the back side of the fabric to the back side of the blackout fabric on three sides and then turning it rightside-in to hand sew the top closed, creating a finished panel the same way you’d make a pillow cover
• I realized I had four minutes before nap time and couldn’t wait to see if the blackout fabric would even make a difference
• I used my ring clips along the curtain rod to clip the curtain up in front of the blackout fabric without sewing anything together (thanks to the weight of both materials, the fabric drapes down in front of the liner, looking virtually identical to how it looked without it)

Haha, so with that description of virtually identical, I will now share a photo of Clara’s room that looks pretty much the same as many others I’ve shown sans blackout liner. Haha. But know that it’s there. Lurking.

So yeah, I’ll probably go back and sew at least a few sides of them together like a proper semi-dysfunctional seamstress (remember, I’m not exactly old friends with Oh Brother, but for now… it works). Clara has been giving us about 90 minutes for naptime instead of 45 for the past two days since we added it (we’ll take it!) and now sleeps 12+ straight hours overnight (from 7:30 pm to 8 am). In the keep-it-real department, she has always been an awesome night sleeper (I take no credit, it’s just how she was made) so this was more about attempting to convince her that napping for more than 45 minutes in the 12-ish hour span of day between that awesome night of sleep is a good idea. It was a total bonus that her usual 7:30 wake up time scooched back to 8.

So those blackout liners are well worth the fifteen bucks and fifteen minutes spent. Sleeping until 8 for the past two days has been amazing life saving, especially since we’ve been going to bed around 2am due to book stuff. But it’s all worth it! Can’t wait to share sneak peeks of our book shoots and other how-does-this-word-doc-become-an-actual-book stuff as we go (now that the final manuscript is in as of last night, well, this morning at 2:14am). Woot!

Have you guys taken any shortcuts lately? Are you all in complete disbelief that Clara runs around all day long and only naps for 45-90 minutes? When the Bowers came to visit Will was regularly serving up three hour naps and Jeremy couldn’t believe how Clara would pop back up a little over a half-hour later and be raring to go. And yes, I was jealous of their sweetly slumbering son. Very, very jealous. Do you know how much backsplash tile we could start installing over a nice three hour chunk of time? Haha. That’s ok though, we definitely can’t complain about the awesome night sleep Clara has given us pretty much from day one. And the fact that we can put her to bed at 7:30 and hammer away from 8 o-clock on is pretty darn awesome.

… mostly because we found ourselves staring at that mismatched unpainted paneling (shudder) and those ugly unpainted/stained/gross parts of the ceiling that were exposed when we removed the upper cabinets.

So what’d we do? Why we got a-paintin’ of course!

The paneling took two coats of primer and two coats of paint (just to be safe). And the ceiling took… well, more coats of primer and paint than I care to share (I lost count, actually – maybe five or six?). Since some of it was totally unpainted and other areas were stained, we just wanted to be extra sure it looked seamless with the rest of the ceiling when we were done. Thankfully, after lots o’ coats of Kilz CleanStart primer (it’s no-VOC) and the ceiling paint that the previous owners left us in the basement… it all matched in the end. Can I get a whew?

The effect was much improved kinda-sorta improved. I mean it’s still a very raw space. But once we get the new counters installed (we hope to share photos of that shebang tomorrow!), get molding back around the window, add some backsplash tile, redo the lighting, paint those cabinets, and lay our cork floors, things should look a lot more polished. So we’re happy to be inching ever so slowly towards the finish line.

The last thing we had to do before the whole counter installation was add those darn support brackets that we mentioned back in this pre-Thanksgiving post. Basically we learned from the counter template guy that any overhang over 10″ needed some support (our peninsula will have a 12″ overhang on two sides). We could’ve paid $300 to have the Corian reinforced, but the guy also mentioned a cheaper DIY option. It’s like he knew us.

So we bought six 10″ steel brackets in the hardware aisle at Lowe’s and Sherry did her favorite thing (enter spray paint, stage right). At $6 a piece it came to $36, which isn’t free, but sure beats 300 big ones.

Once they were dry I brought them in, along with some scrap pieces of wood that I cut into 12″ sections. The template guy said we shouldn’t just screw the (heavy) brackets into the cabinets alone, but instead should put some wood inside the cabinet to help them hold nice and strong by drilling into that thicker wood surface hidden behind the cabinet.

So after measuring and marking my cabinets to make sure the brackets would be evenly spaced, I loosely hammered my scrap wood in place on the other side of the cabinet (if this isn’t making sense now, it will by the end of the post… hopefully).

To screw them in, I used another scrap piece of wood to act as my temporary counter so I was sure to place them at the right height (to be sure they would carry the load of the overhang without being too high or too low). Then I secured the bracket with three screws.

Here’s how it was looking after I secured the first three brackets in place. Of course, once the counters arrive we’ll also screw them into the Corian from below (Corian has wood reinforcement stuff to screw into underneath it whenever it’s manufactured for an overhang).

And although once the counters are installed and the cabinets are all painted white the brackets will barely be visible, we’re still thinking that we’ll add some shaker-style panels to dress up the back (and side?) of the peninsula. That way those will add some detailing and also allow us to completely hide the brackets behind some panel trim (by routing out the back of it and laying it over the brackets to conceal them). Hopefully it’ll be a fun challenge. I’ll keep you posted on that when we get to that step.

So here’s the kitchen in its counter-ready state. Oh, perhaps you’ll notice that we also primed a stripe of the refrigerator surround right where it meets the counter:

We didn’t want to prime and paint the cabinets before our impending counter installation (when our granite counters got installed in our first house, the white cabinets required lots of touch ups due to tons of scraping and shoving to get the heavy, tight fitting counters in place). So we’d rather just cover the counters and paint stuff afterward. But we thought that little stripe of primer applied beforehand would make it easier to paint right up to the edge of the counters without leaving a sliver of wood peeking through (now if there’s a tiny gap between the paint and the counters, it’ll be white and not brown, so it should blend right in).

It’s looking somewhat like a kitchen, right? Oh but of course ignore the wood chairs (they’re not counter height or the right color so they’re just place-holders for now).

In keeping-it-real news, the kitchen is actually looking more like this:

Of course, as parents when we saw those exposed brackets our “Toddler Impalement Device!” alarms went off, but thanks to some leftover cabinet shelves, we fashioned a dummy counter to make the edges more visible to Clara (and her sometimes clumsy parents). Having the chairs there certainly helps too.

Maybe we should just cancel our Corian order and learn to love these?

Yeah, or not. So excited that our next update for you guys should be INSTALLED COUNTERS. Hopefully tomorrow morning. Woot!

Oh how joyfully we’ll use the sink (my have we missed it!). Merry Countermas to us! We actually have a working fridge, stove, and dishwasher so we’re still able to cook at home (thank goodness) but washing the not-dishwasher-safe-stuff in the bathroom sink/tub is annoying. Is there anything you guys are anxiously awaiting? Have you done any ceiling priming & painting lately? Did you lose count of the coats. Oh man, it feels good to be done, doesn’t it?

Psst- We’ve listed our old granite counters on craigslist for anyone who is interested. You can find more info on them here.

So about a week ago I was standing in the frame hallway thinking about my dad and his awesome drawings and realized that I needed one to frame in honor of him and his super cool art skillz that inspired me so much as a kid. So I called him up (you can see an old picture of him here) and begged him to photocopy one of them and send me the copy in a big rigid “do not bend” envelope. But he did me one better. He sent me the original (!) of what he calls his “best drawing ever” – a super sweet seventies-tastic owl that he sketched in 1972 (when I was negative ten years old).

First of all, I love that dad named him “Owlie” since I’m no stranger to naming my ceramic animals (like this gal). I also love that if you look closely you’ll see that the entire owl is made up of repeating shapes and patterns (totally a signature thing that my dad did in nearly all of his sketches). And everything from the repeated hexagons to the soft layered colors that feel so “authentic seventies” just makes me smile. I know owls are all the rage these days, but I love that my father sketched this guy 39 years ago! Although maybe owls were hot commodities then too. Haha. Everything old is new again.

Anyway, true to my obnoxiously excitable personality, the receipt of this amazing guy got me ridiculously hyper. Stupid-giddy even. I couldn’t bring myself to frame the original (way too precious) so I decided to scan it so I could mail the original right back to dad where it belonged. And since my father had mentioned that he wished he hadn’t cut it down and matted it on purple paper decades ago, I took the opportunity to “digitally restore” his sketch to its original glory by putting it on a while background just as it had originally appeared. I also moved the little signature and date together for the new not-cut-down arrangement while I was at it:

Then I printed it out and popped it into a hallway gallery frame that had something less exciting (a picture of our wedding table, but we already have a few other more beloved wedding pics on the wall so… it got dethroned by Owlie).

Total spent: $0.

I think it makes the entire wall.

And sure enough, when we recently had some people over they gravitated to it and I got to proudly tell them that my father drew it in 1972! Woo to the hoo. Get it? Owl? Hoo? See what I did there?

Anyway, I love me some dad-made owl art. And as many of you know, I also love me some crocheted owl hattage on the bean (she calls this her “hoo hat”). Can my child really be into bad puns at the ripe old age of a year and a half?

With us parents… I think so. Oh and in case you haven’t seen her singing Adele, here’s that link for ya.

Have you guys framed anything that your friends or relatives have drawn? Did you only feel right keeping a copy of it? For some reason the original just feels like it belongs at dad’s house taped up next to his desk like it always has been (I also sent him a “digitally restored” printout, in case he wants one of those). What’s with kids wanting their parents to keep their houses exactly the same for sentimental reasons, anyway?

Psst- We announced this weeks three giveaway winners! Click here to see if you’re one of them.

First on our list of little things was filling the gaps next to our stove.

The base cabinet that we removed was 36″ wide, but the stove is only about 30″ leaving a little under 3″ of nothingness on either side. Since you can’t squeeze much function into two and 3/4ths inches (almost every pull-out drawer was 3″ or more), we decided just to put in filler pieces of wood. Oh and for anyone wondering why we didn’t scoot the stove to one side and add a wider pull out drawer, if we didn’t leave the stove centered the hood would be off-center, which would mean widening the ceiling hole (= drama). Plus none of the thin slide out drawers had doors that looked like our existing ones anyway, so it was just not worth the money/trouble. And although we thought about some sort of ornate leg or braided detail, we ultimately decided that we wanted other things like the wall of penny tile backsplash to be the star (along with items on our floating shelves), so two thin and basic filler pieces of wood were our final pick.

I grabbed a few pine “project boards” at Lowe’s, cut them to size, and drilled some pilot holes with my Kreg jig before screwing them carefully into place.

Obviously we needed the fillers at the front to visually fill the gap, but we also decided to put one at the back in case the counter guy needed it for support:

In total, each side had three separate filler pieces. We probably could’ve gotten away with two, but it’s not like the boards were breaking the bank (I spent about $11 total on this entire project – which is at least $100 cheaper than some sort of pull out dealie).

Here are both sides done (ready for the stove to slide back into place):

Not bad, eh? Once the counters are on and the cabinets are primed and painted no one will even notice them. Especially since many of the other base cabinets in our kitchen already have fillers in the 2.5″ range.

Then we stepped a little closer and put on our Picky Pants and we saw that there was still a noticeable gap. Guess we’ve gotta go buy a bigger stove…

Kidding. Obviously I just needed to add one more sliver of filler wood. The gap was just over 1/4 of an inch, and I knew we could do better. So I headed back out to Lowe’s a grabbed a couple of these.

It’s a 3/8″ thick project board that fit perfectly into my slightly-too-big gap, thank goodness (though they added $4 to my total budget, now breaking the bank at $15). So I nailed those two suckers in place, being super sensitive to keeping them flush with my other filler piece along the front.

Here’s what they looked like on both sides. I didn’t bother putting them any further than the first two panels since they were strictly aesthetic.

Then we just slid the stove back in. MUCH better. I know it’s hard to tell in the pic below, but trust us that it’s just about as snug as we’d ever want it (any closer it would be hard to get the stove in and out). Oh and once we demo the tile from behind the stove it’ll be able to push back against the wall a bit more for a more flush look. And once we add the toe kick across the front of all the cabinets the bottom will be seamless too.

So with that done…

… our next little task was over on the peninsula.

Since we don’t want the guy templating the counters to think we want an angled corner or anything, we wanted to attach a flat panel on the back of the entire peninsula. It’s something we’d have to do eventually, so why not tackle it while we wait for counters? You can see in the photo above that I had already attached a little corner piece to anchor the panel against the half wall. Here it is a little closer:

It’s basically just two scrap pieces of wood that I screwed together at a 90-degree angle using my jig. Then I screwed it into the wall so that the flat edge would be flush with the back of the cabinets. Then I was ready to attach my plywood panel.

I actually bought this piece of wood back when I got the plywood for our refrigerator built-in so I could transport it in my rented Lowe’s truck (how’s that for thinking ahead!). It’s just a thin piece of “utility plywood” that the Lowe’s guy recommended. It was a whopping $9. They had cut it to size for me in the wood cutting area, but because we had later switched from a 21″ end cabinet to an 18″ end cabinet I had 3″ of overhang that I had to cut off with my jigsaw.

So here it is all cut and nailed into place:

Not very exciting looking, we know. Eventually we’ll be adding trim – baseboards, corner pieces and maybe even a three paneled board and batten look. Not sure yet. Oh, and it will of course get painted to match the cabinets. But for now it accomplishes the goal of squaring off that corner for the countertop measuring festivities (it’ll have a 12″ overhang of Corian on two sides to accommodate four stools).

Can you sort of start to see how it’s coming together? Of course the chairs are placeholder and we hope to get some lighter looking stools (maybe made of acrylic for a nice airy feeling).

Oh, and do you notice the other thing that we did in the picture above? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a “p” and ends with “aint touch ups.”

Obviously paint was not a critical step for the counter templating process, but it was more for our sanity (and we had it all on hand so it was free). There’s still lots to be painted (um, hello cabinets – but those have to wait until we get our counters in to avoid dings). So we got busy painting the raw trim, drywall, and paneling leftover from the pantry/fridge shuffle and wall opening. It really does make our exceedingly unfinished kitchen look a smidge less unfinished.

You’ll notice that we opted to paint the inside edge of the half wall light grey like the dining room. We figured it’d be weird to carry the grellow that’s on the kitchen paneling over since the side of the half-wall is drywall (like the light gray dining room). The soft grey is much more subtle and almost looks white like the rest of the door jamb, so it works nicely.

Oh and don’t mind the drip on the “temporary threshold.” That’s actually just a piece of paneling that we had leftover from the wall opening project that we cut down, flipped painted-side-down, and nailed in to bridge the gap that was created by removing the wall. It’ll eventually get covered with cork and we’ll add a very small threshold to join the cork to the original hardwood (just like we did in our first house where the original hardwoods met the new ones that we added to half of the house).

Now here are a bunch of “after painting” pictures of the kitchen and dining room (since it’s the closest thing we’ll have to a polished after for at least a few months). But ignore the two oddly placed floor lamps in the dining room (we can’t wait to get a big chandelier for over the dining table) along with the new microwave box sitting near the built ins (the new dishwasher box is hanging out in the office until install time).

Oh, and although it’s not the most glamorous angle, a few folks requested a view from the living room, so here it is. We love that we can see the giant picture window from the back of the house. Widening this doorway would definitely be a nice change, but having widened a former-exterior brick wall in our first house we know it’s a messy and not necessarily easy job (this used to be the back of our house before they added an addition, which means it’s hugely load bearing and could be a big ol’ can of worms). So for now it’s on our “maybe someday list.” Although sometimes we think we’ll appreciate the privacy in the living room since it’s not a big wide-open straight shot from the front window to the back of the house.

Wow, that was a lot of pictures for a post about little things like filling gaps around the stove, nailing a panel to the peninsula, and doing some paint touch ups. I counted an even 30 photos. Guess we’ve been a bit trigger happy with the camera lately. Must have something to do with that glorious new doorway of ours. And yes, we still walk into the kitchen and grin at it like fools.

What little updates or small progress have you made on projects around your house? Any last minute tasks that you’re trying to bang out before this weekend or Thanksgiving?

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.