Who's Back?!

Hey everyone! It has been too long since we have posted on the blog. We have many projects that were completed over the very busy summer and can't wait to share them with you.

Here's what we have been up to over the summer:

• Saw our Jayhawks play in the Final Four and Championship basketball games
• Went to cousin Tim and Lyndsi's wedding in Nashville
• Celebrated our second wedding anniversary a midst the worst power outage we have ever seen (5 days without power and 90 degrees!)
• Spent a few weekends at the beach with family
• Went to Canada to visit relatives
• Went to Emily & David's wedding in West Virginia
• Attended many baseball games
• Went to Eric & Hillary's wedding 
• Saw The Boss in concert 
• Ran in the Army Ten Miler race
• enjoyed sunny afternoons on our deck :)

It has been a busy but awesome summer and now that the leaves are changing it's time again for more projects. I personally enjoy working on projects while RC cheers for the Redskins. 

Tea Anyone?!

The night before our wedding my Nana gave me some tea cups that belonged to my grandmother - they mean a lot to me since I never met my grandmother. Since receiving them I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to display them or where they could go since we don’t have a lot of space. Remember when I was lusting after this china cabinet? For my birthday RC gave me this awesome cabinet and we figured I could display all the china from our wedding and my grandmother’s tea cups and my other fragile treasures - this one is more our style.
 

I love being able to walk by it and seeing it all rather than having it stored away and only used for special occasions. I think tonight I will have a glass of wine in a Waterford glass and a cup of tea in my beloved tea cups.

MV Big Flea

Remember when I scored these AMAZING deals at the community sale?! Well I just heard that they have set the date for 2012. Mark your calendars for May 5, 2012! If you want more information or would like to donate items to the sale you can find details here.

Power Towel

Our bathroom gets pretty steamy - no not like that – like actual steam from the hot water (get your mind out of the gutter). We don’t have a window in the bathroom itself to let the steam escape so it can take all day for our towels to dry out but if it’s a humid day the towels can have a real hard time drying out. This is a problem for the towels especially if you have the sense of smell like I do. I can smell things long before anyone else does which is both a blessing and a curse. You can imagine how disgusted I was to discover that since our towels were not completely drying out they were smelling like mildew. Not exactly what you want to smell first thing in the morning after a shower.

The towels are really nice ones we received as a wedding gift and were washed every week so I wasn’t okay with just buying new towels. I figured that someone else out there had to have this same problem and hopefully a solution. After consulting the interwebs I found some information on how to get rid of the mildew smell:

• Put your towels in the washing machine, using the hottest water available. Add one or two cups of white vinegar. Do not add detergent, fabric softener, or any other products at this time. Run the washer.
• Leave the towels in the washer and wash the same load again just as you would normally with laundry soap. Again, use the hottest water available. Don't use fabric softener or any other products.
• Dry the load in the dryer using a high heat setting. Towels should be thoroughly dry when you pull them out. If they're not dry, put them back in, or move them immediately outside and hang them in the sunlight.

Courtesy of LifeHacker

And for more power towels check out this awesomely hilarious video explaining what a power towel is. Courtesy of the Kansas State Wildcats (enough fodder for us Jayhawks to mock our in-state rivals for years).

Folding Laundry

When we first moved into our home the basement was an apartment of sorts – we think this is the case because the closet had been converted into a quasi-kitchen with a fully functioning garbage disposal. I’m not sure why but it totally grosses me out that it used to function that way. One of the first things RC and his dad did was pulled out the counters that were down there and got rid of the garbage disposal – it was not something that anyone could or should reuse. It was gross – mainly because it wasn’t hooked up properly. They then moved the washer and dryer that was in the bathroom into the closet that was always meant to be a laundry closet except all the doors had been pulled out so it was just totally exposed.

It would have been fine to leave it exposed with some trim and storage solutions inside the closet but it was just noisy. I took this project as my own since I had huge problems with the noise that our washer and dryer make. Back in September (yes it has taken me this long to complete the project and blog about it) I bought bi-fold doors to replace some of the broken ones and to install where there wasn’t one.

Getting them to fit in the car was quite comical; it is a good thing that I was the only one in the car because another person would not have fit. After I got them down to the basement I wondered what I got myself into because I had no idea how to install these things and was hoping there were some really good directions included with the doors. I figured I can read and follow directions (much like I did when I replaced the fill valve) and in no time I would have fully functioning bi-fold doors concealing my laundry area. Once I got the door in place I couldn’t figure out why it kept struggling to open against the carpet. A good hour later I realized that the pivot joint that keeps it in place can be adjusted to raise the door up or down to avoid carpet resistance. Once I figured that out my door moved like butter.

For a few weeks I left them unpainted just to make sure they were working properly. The doors themselves come primed not painted so I finally painted them - just gave them a few coats of Behr pure white. The final step was adding some decorative hardware – the door kits come with these ugly wooden knobs and I liked the look of the brushed nickel ones we had already put on a similar closet upstairs.

Finally the basement looks less like an unfinished cold place and more like a little room where I can happily fold laundry. I actually don’t mind folding the laundry – the worst part is definitely putting the folded clothes away.

ORBsession

I forgot how incredible spray paint is. I have been trolling pintrest and admiring how so many people had taken spray paint and made incredible transformations of regular items into brand-new looking fixtures. I’ve never really used spray paint in the past – lots of hairspray but not spray paint. When I saw all these amazing transformations it reminded me of one time I helped my aunt spray paint some outdoor furniture but since it was my first time I think she ended up having to do a second coat…sorry about that DC.

Since we moved into our house I have never really been crazy about the switchplates and was not excited about the monetary investment of buying designer switch plates – which look fantastic, by the way, since we bought a few for our bathroom. However, when you have a hundred million switchplates and outlet covers it can get expensive. Last time I was at the hardware store I checked out the spray paint and found this Rustoleum Metallic finishes paint; at $7 I figured I would buy it and see what kinds of junk I could find and turn into works of art. I bought the Oil Rubbed Bronze (aka ORB on the interwebs) and the Brushed Nickel finish.
I have yet to find some junk I could spray paint into expensive looking art but I thought I would try it out on a switchplate and a C that I had around the house.

Pretty great transformation – and for only $7 I can paint all my switchplates and outlet covers to make them look better than just builder white. I think it brings a little warmth to the wall. I also tried out the brushed nickel on another switchplate but ended up liking the ORB finish better because I am totally ORBsessed.

I continue to look for other items around the house that will feed my new addiction to spray paint. I considered spray painting my sunburst mirror but a voice inside my head said “put down that spray paint – it looks great as is”… hooray for my frontal lobe. I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to finally find a solution for all the switchplates that I was planning on replacing; with the money I saved I’m buying shoes.

Challenge Accepted!

I took the Pinterest Challenge…It was not an actual challenge sponsored by Pinterest but rather an informal challenge posed by Young House Love! I have been trolling Pinterest for a while now and have found so many great things on there - some real creative people out there.
Interestingly enough I have also been looking for some artwork for our kitchen. We have a wall that is rather bare and just needed something but I could never decide what kind of art we wanted to add to the kitchen. Enter my pinterest creation! (PS I'm still obsessed with how our harwood floors look)

It is where we’re from and where we met – we like to tell people we met in the middle because really it is true. I drew my inspiration from here.

As to how I completed the project: I bought 3 frames from Michaels and some scrapbook paper that I liked. I found map outlines of our states on the internet and printed and cut out the shapes and glued them to the background paper I chose. The frames were originally black, but I felt that they kind of clashed so I painted them with Oil-Rubbed Bronze spray paint – that stuff is amazing.

What do you think? Anyone else out there take the challenge or create something on your own? Feel free to share your pinterest creations in the comments!