Kitchen Remodel with Giani Countertops

Well here we go.  I have been putting off this post for a while now due to the large amount of pictures I will have to filter through in order to pick the best ones for the job.  I don't know why it has taken me so long, really.  I LOVE my new kitchen.  The old one was absolutely hands down the most dis functional excuse for a kitchen I had ever had the pleasure of trying to cook in.  The new one is, in a word, AMAZING.  I suppose I will go ahead and let the pictures speak for themselves.

These are before the Remodel:

Are you sufficiently horrified yet?  Seriously looking at these pictures makes me want to run away from home.  It was so bad.  I lived like this for nearly 4 years! UGH *shudder*.  The only thing the kitchen had going for it was the cute curve in the cabinetry above the sink.  I didn't get a very good picture of it before the Husb tore out the cabinets, but you can kind of see it in this picture.

I know that one hole sinks are all the rage these days, but I am telling you; NEVER again.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life, trying to do the dishes in that sink with no dishwasher.  I had to keep the water running the whole time in order to rinse the dishes and then if I came upon something that was full of liquid (such as a sippy cup full of old juice), I had no where to dump it, as the sink was taken.  Seriously, it sucked.  Big time.  Also, the lady that had built the kitchen must have been under 5ft because the counter tops were so low.  I am quite short at my 5'3", but it hurt my back to work at those counter tops.  It is a wonder I ever made dinner or cookies at all.

Now on to the good part.  The "After" pictures.  That is why you are all here, right? Well, here we go.  First off, I will tell you where I got the cabinets and the experience that I had there.  One day the Husb and I were playing around on the IKEA website designing our dream kitchen.  When we finished, we realized that this may actually be attainable.  It was a great feeling, I can assure you.  So, we had to make a trip "Up North" as we refer to it.  We live 3 hours away from the nearest IKEA (how do I survive?).  Lucky for us, we were going up there anyway to see some family and take the kids to the Zoo. 

We went to IKEA and beelined for the Kitchen department.  The very unfriendly staff pulled up our design on the computer and began telling me how my design was "a little tight".  Seriously? I was going to cram all of the cabinet and counter top space in there I could! If she had any idea what I was currently living with, she may have been smart enough to keep her mouth shut.  Well, I quickly assured her that the design was fine and to proceed (did she want to make a sale here or not?).  Well, she then asked me what style of cabinets I wanted.  Of Course the ones that I loved were going out of stock, which she repeatedly told me as she tried to talk me out of them.  When I finally had her convinced that it was what I wanted, we added them to the order.  After some more picking of different necessary items (drawer pulls and the like) we were ready to go.  Except for the counter top.  I just couldn't find one that I loved enough to shell out the cash for.  This is a different tale that I will come back to after I show you some pictures.

Because none of the walls in our house are square and because they are all 15 inch adobe brick, the Husb had to do some framing to make the project a little easier in the long run.  My little brother came over and helped (he is the one with the awesome white man afro).  I also added some pictures of our smallest helper.  How cute is he?

Next up came the building of the cabinets. If you have ever bought anything from IKEA, you know that it all comes in flat boxes and you put it together when you get it home.  Great idea when you are at the store and need to get it home, not so great when you are putting a whole kitchen together.  It took us ALL day to assemble them.  I am sure that our little helpers didn't prolong the process at all.

 Next up came the Counter tops.  I am probably the cheapest person on the planet and I just couldn't bring myself to pay over $1000 for Counter tops.  So, we made some.  The Husb cut them out of plywood (do you think we are crazy yet?).

We found this product called Giani Granite Countertop Paint.



 The website said you could paint over your existing countertop or even over plywood, so we thought; why not? Let's try it.
The first step was to Prime the wood. We used a wood primer first and then the primer that came with the kit.

Then we followed the steps and created our "Granite" Countertop

Doesn't it look great?  The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it still looks pretty good.  Here are some pictures of the finished kitchen along with a side by side comparison of the old and the new.  I love being in the kitchen now.  It is amazing what a little remodel will do.
 

 

 

 

 

Well, what do you think?

Junior Varsity Quilt

I was trying to decide on a quilt for my little boy's room.  As I was browsing through the Pottery Barn Kids Catalog (which I do quite frequently) I found the Junior Varsity Bedroom and fell in love.



 However, love does not always equal attainability and I knew there was no way I would ever be able to shell out that much money for a quilt.  Therefore, I had to recreate it.  I had never made a quilt before, so it was quite a daunting task I had ahead of me.  I had my mom help me decide what size it needed to be and then I set out to find all of the different types of fabric I would need.  This is a lot easier said than done.  I would have thought that with Plaid being all the rage it would have been a breeze to find different colors and types.  Boy, was I wrong.  After shopping online for what seemed like months, I finally found all of the patterns I was looking for.

Now the hard part.  Cutting it out and putting it all together! I am not going to lie and say it was easy.  It was NOT! It also took me FOREVER.  Luckily, we hadn't moved him into his new room yet, so I had some time to get it done.  Also, I can't even begin to tell you the pride I feel when I look at his cute custom quilt.  I hope someday he appreciates it as much as I think he should!

The great thing about making it myself is that I got to personalize it a bit.  On one of the squares I did the numbers 668 which are the dates of his Birthday June 6, 2008.  I also did his initials JJC.  The number 89 was my brothers football number at the time, so I put that on there as well.

 

I really really really love it.  The only trouble is, now I have to make one for his little brother and I just don't know if I am up to it!

Painted Growth Chart

My sister and I tried to make some growth charts with paint rather than stain and I think they turned out so cute! We were playing around and decided to put a cute picture on one of them and this is how it turned out:

Isn't the owl so cute? And it matches my dining room perfectly! Too bad I already have one.  Hopefully someone wants this one, because it needs a good home.


To view a tutorial on the growth charts click here

DIY Roman Shades

Again I have been inspired by Pinterest. I saw a picture of some DIY roman shades and knew that is exactly what i wanted to do in my living room.  I followed the link to the site 365 Days to Simplicityand realized that it would be SO easy to make them.  I was then on the search for fabric.  I live no where near a fabric store that carries home decorating fabric so i did much browsing online, with no luck.  I had to go to the Dr. in the "city", so I went to a Joann while I was there.  Again, no luck! I was getting a little frustrated! On my way home, I stopped at Walmart and decided that i might as well check there.  Can you believe they had the PERFECT fabric?! I was seriously AMAZED.  Not only did they have the perfect one for my shades, but they also had the one for my pillows!

But, back to the shades.  I pretty much followed the directions that 365 Days gives, however, I added a grommet to put the pull string through so i didn't have to reach around behind the shade each time I wanted to put them up or down.  I hope you can see that in the picture at the top of the string.

The best part was I didn't even have to lug my sewing machine out to make them.  All it took was a little "Heat n Bond" and fabric glue.  AMAZING, right? I know!  Here are some more pics to give you the full effect.

Aren't they awesome?  I seriously love them.  I often catch myself just looking at them and taking great pride in my gluing skills . . . .





Monster Beanie

I had been looking for a beanie that would fit my 1 year old for quite a while.  All I ever found were too big or too little.  They would either squeeze his head or fall over his eyes so he couldn't see.  Neither were very effective.  I was on Pinterest one day (can you believe that?) and I found a pattern for this monster beanie



I thought it was so cute! I whipped out the yarn that I had handy and made a couple for my little boys.  I had to modify it for the baby, as his head is much smaller, so I just did 50 stitches to the end instead of going up to 60. I also crocheted the teeth instead of using felt (partly because I didn't have any white felt and partly because I liked the look of it better)  It worked out pretty well. 

Here is a pic of the two monsters in the truck.

Superhero Capes

J and I made him some more superhero capes.  I found a font that is so Awesome! (Thank you Pinterest!) The font is called Hall of Heroes and it has pretty much any superhero emblem you can think of.  I downloaded the font, ordered some fabric from Joanns and got to work.  I found a couple tutorials online that helped me figure out how to make them.  The first one is on vanillajoy.com and it gave a great suggestion to use a skirt pattern to get the shape of the cape.  Genious! However, I found a pattern for the collar that I really liked on floatingworldviews.com.  I am not sure how the lady on vanillajoy created her collars, but I used the pattern from fwv and adjusted it to fit the shape of the cape that I created from my skirt pattern.  After I got the capes cut out, and the edged surged, I printed out the emblems; or "powers" as J calls them and cut them out in the different colors then sewed them on.  They turned out awesome and J LOVES them. 

 I even found an emblem with an R on it for the baby.  He looks pretty dang cute in it too.

Faucets

Well I ordered my faucets.  I got a pretty good deal off eBay, so I went for it.  I ended up going with the Brushed Nickel.  I think it will be a good contrast to the Oil Rubbed Bronze tub. 

Upcoming Bathroom Project

I just ordered the bead board wallpaper for my upstairs bathroom! Yay! I can't wait for this project to start to take shape.  I found this as I was browsing the web at freshhome.com and fell in love with pretty much everything about it. I hope I can make my little boys' bathroom look as cute.



I also found this faucet on eBay and I LOVE IT. Hopefully I can get me one.



I scored us a claw foot tub for $100 and my husband grinded off the outside then spray painted it the oil rubbed bronze color.  This faucet would look fantastic with it.  I will post more pics when we get this thing going.

Poster

I found this poster print on Allposters.com and I fell in love.

Of course I ordered it.  I thought I would try the same thing that I did with the prints of my babies.  I will build a frame and texture the print.  I am pretty excited!  It will look fantastic in my livingroom.

Framed Textured Poster Prints

I had these cute poster prints of my babies and I wanted to frame them in big thick frames.  Well, Big Thick Frames are not in my budget.  Seriously, if a frame is more than $20, I am not going to buy it, no matter how great it is going to look on my wall.  So, I thought that I would make my own.  I went to the hardware store and bought some MDF Moulding.  I painted it black and then cut it with the miter saw to get the angles.  I stapled each piece together (which is REALLY hard to do with MDF).  I think brackets would be the way to go were I to do it again.  I then glued my poster prints to a sheet of MDF using Mod Podge.  I did this by rolling the Mod Podge on the MDF with a small foam roller, then scraping it with a credit card to make it smooth and to make sure that I didn't have too much on there (I didn't want it to bubble).  I had previously cut their names out with the cricut on some vinyl and then placed in on the front of the picture.  Once I had the picture glued on the board, I got some texture cream (I got mine fromPoppy Seed Projects, but there are other places to get it) and rolled it on over the top of the picture.  I did a couple of coats of it.  It is nice because you want it to be bumpy and textured so you don't have to worry about making it perfect and smooth.  Because I textured the photos I didn't have to have glass in the frame.  The texture cream makes it look almost like an artists painting.  I love the way they look on my wall.  Plus, the babies just make it look so cute!

Growth Chart Tutorial

I mentioned that I was inspired by Pinterest on making these growth charts. I found them on dearlily and thought they were just so darn cute.  After reading up on ways to make them, this is what I did:

I went to our local hardware store and bought a 1x8x12 board.  I did this because they did not have a 6 ft board.  I had them cut it in half and this way I had enough wood for two charts.  I sanded it just enough to smooth out the rough spots and then I stained it by brushing on some stain then spreading it with a rag.  This is what it looked like afterward. 

After the stain dried, I took my tape measure and marked the inches from one end of the board to the other with a pencil.  I then took a square and made my lines longer.  For each 1/4 of an inch I made the line 2 inches long while the rest I made 1 inch long.  After I had them penciled on, I took a sharpie and traced it to make it look like this:

For those of you who don't know what a "square" is, it is that triangle shaped thing lying on the ground in the picture.

After I had the inches marked, I found a font I liked and printed out the numbers.  I traced the back of the numbers with the pencil and then traced them onto the board.  I have since laminated the numbers and created my own stencils my cutting the shape of the number out to make the process easier.  After tracing the numbers on the board, I again went over it with the sharpie and filled it in.

And that was it.  The board was complete.  Until I decided I wanted to personalize it a little bit.  I know most people use their last names for their personalization's, but I live around a lot of family and I wanted mine to be unique.  So, I used my husbands name and added "& Co" afterwards.  I thought it turned out very cute

When I mark the measurements, I use a super fine point sharpie after I take the initial measurement with a pencil.  It works quite well and it doesn't take up a lot of space on the board.

Can you see the marking at 3'3"?  That would be my 3 year old's height.  He thinks it is so cool that he is three and he is 3 feet tall.