A Tutorial

The best bloggers give helpful DYI tutorials, and even though I'm not a good blogger, I thought I'd be a good idea to step up my game with a helpful and easy DYI tutorial using common items around your house.

In this tutorial I will be teaching you how to channel either your inner hoarder or your inner red neck, so it's great because with minor tweaks you can choose your own adventure!! How exciting.

Let's start here: When all the floors in your entire house, except for the bedrooms, are becoming hardwoods, and in the event that they are getting sanded, stained and finished with highly-toxic chemicals you have to basically move out of your house, and leave nothing on any of the floors that they are finishing. But first when you and your husband are installing them yourself, slowly everything starts to get crammed into different places. The bedrooms have carpet, the bathrooms have tile floors so those rooms are fair game for great storage. Here's how to exercise your hoarding muscles:

Take everything from your hall closet, take drawers from a dresser, take pillows and the cushions from your couch, take the extra leaf for your table, some bins of fabric, all your cleaning supplies and a humidifier and lovingly dump it all into your bedroom. Don't keep it organized, seriously, just dump it. It's way better that way.

After that, move your coffee pot, vanilla syrup and tea kettle into your powder room. Slip more cleaning supplies under the sink for an extra cluttery look. Nothing like making coffee/tea while going potty. No big deal, very red neck.

Then fill a big box with pot and pans, and put that into the powder room as well. The smaller the room the better, makes it way more exciting while making tea/coffee and going potty while not trying to trip over a box. Then add your junk drawer on top for extra measure.

Just when you think you've run out of room for all the junk, I discovered an excellent and creative storage space that can hold LOADS of stuff! Fill 'er up!!!

Need a spatula? Or a toaster? No problem, the bathtub holds it all.

If your kids start to get stressed out and act up with all the change try to just use their bedrooms for storage with one or two key items. Like the coffee table.

Or the microwave.

And then an important part of this tutorial is to have a very "rustic" cook top installed, and go ahead and cook gourmet foods like mac and cheese, frozen stir fry and pancakes. Try to do it WHILE the floors are being installed.

But then you have to wash your dishes in the ever-handy powder room, because of course, get your dishwasher and sink ripped out. That's a given.

The last step that's an important one to this tutorial is that when you've lost most of your shoes in your giant, disorganized pile, find any shoes, preferably fancy ones, wear them with socks, and help install some more floors in them. It's not only a good look, it's practical.

But people! BIG changes are coming! And though this has been a stressful week on many levels, I'm SO THANKFUL for my husband. He is a tireless worker, and he does it all for me. I'm so thankful for our house. The chaos is worth it. I'm thankful for my kids who are resilient when I lose my mind. Don't think I've found it yet. I'm thankful for kind, kind people who help me and care for me. Also, a HUGE shout out to THE BEST NEIGHBORS EVER, Sherwin and Mina who should complain about us with the noise, the mess and unsightly front porch, driveway, parking on their side yard (Neal), but never do. Gracious neighbors who are so kind! We are thankful for you!!!

And so it begins….

My master plan for this weird little house was to open it up. The kitchen was a tiny hall-like, walk-through with minimal storage located in the middle of the house. There was very little counter space. I'd make a simple dinner and it'd look like I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 35 people. Let's review. Here's where we started:

Could be worse, but I knew it could definitely be better. My vision was to open it up to have an open floor plan and have "zones" instead of individual rooms. There is a large living room and a large family room on each side of the kitchen:

Terrible picture, I think I was showing the new window on the right, but this is the family room

This is the living room, also a bad picture.

So the thought has been to turn the large family room into the kitchen and tear down the main support walls separating the kitchen from the above living room. So today was the lucky day we chose to tear down the walls. Here are the before pictures from both sides:

Here's the temporary "kitchen" which is in the dining room, pantry in the living room shelves. Makes for good TV watching snack access. 

We could play a fun game of "eye spy". Can you spy the canned food? Cereal? Fruit by the Foot? 

One side of dry wall down to expose the studs so Neal can get a good look at what we're in for.

The dining room gets chopped in half by plastic so our house resembles that scary part in ET when there's plastic all over their house and those guys are in has-mat suits and they try to steal ET away.

Neal builds temporary walls made from studs to support a few different ceilings, roof trusses, etc.

The 20 foot beam I realize that I have a vital role in moving. Thanks to two awesome friend/neighbors we moved the beam inside through the kitchen window because it was too long and the angles were too sharp to get it in through a door.

Neal acted like this was a two-day job. He acted like we were just going to get the beam inside the house, and then we'd recruit all these strong a burly people to help us install it tomorrow. Nope. His secret plan was actually to recruit his burly wife to install a 400 pound beam with him. This was my pre-game-I'm-a-bit-nervous face. The beam is the long thing by my right shoulder. 

Game time. The beam did fall once, and I did carry one end of the beam up a ladder myself. Every penny that is spent on my membership at Tiger Mountain CrossFit is worth it. Who needs burly helpers when you have a wife with muscle?

It was not easy to install. This is the finished picture. There was some swearing, there was pounding with a sledge hammer, there were some tense moments and some panicked moments, but ultimately Neal and I are very proud that our house didn't fall down and that we installed a huge beam ourselves, and that now our house is open. I think that was the trickiest part of the kitchen remodel and house restructuring, hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from here on out...

p.s. those 2x4s will come out tomorrow, I was too excited to wait for a proper "after" picture. More to come.

When your husband's second home is Lowes

"Where everyone knows your name, and they're always glad you came," would be the bar "Cheers" for some, but for my husband this place is Lowes. Literally, every person who works there knows Neal, and loves him. He's directed customers to the correct aisle, and has given advice to other customers on what supplies/parts they need, while also knowing the name of every cashier, the guys at the pro desk, the window desk (not official name), and the people in the appliances. He's a friendly guy, and all of his friends are at Lowes. 

This is evidenced in the miracle that took place in my life. Miracle could be a slight over statement, but as you'll see by the pictures displayed you'll definitely well up with tears of excitement at least. 

So, one day Neal called me and said he had been at his second home (Lowes) and his friend (one of the ladies who works there and loves Neal) casually asked him if he needed a front door. Silly Neal forgot that in fact I'm always on the hunt for everything and told her no. She said that a custom-ordered door had been returned and they were trying to sell it for $500. Thankfully since he's under my influences he did eventually remember that I had said a few billion times that our current front door needs to go.

"She's such a snob," you're thinking, "there's nothing wrong with that door," and you're sort of right. The doors were just fine. I didn't really want a double door, and we had figured out the door had been kicked in at some point before we moved in, so we wanted something a bit more secure. But, this was LOW on the priority list because I knew the door I wanted was like $3,000. Other projects were going to take priority over a door.

Since Neal usually goes home (Lowes) multiple times a day, he was back a few hours later, the door was still there, and this time called me to see if I was interested. Of course, I was skeptical. I knew the chances of a returned door being something I actually liked were slim to none. I have specific taste, and I've settled before and regretted it. He texted me this picture:

 It was the exact front door I wanted, maybe not in red, but paint is easy. I told him to break any law he needed to in order to ensure that door was mine. I was so nervous that someone would beat me to it. Thankfully no laws were broken.

And clearly I was the winner.

AND, it had been marked down AGAIN from when Neal had been in 3 hours earlier. Please notice the original price: $3041.76, and notice how badly they wanted to be rid of it: $300. Are the tears welling up in your eyes?

So, it came home and I immediately put my best crew to work to get in installed.

Neal, once again blurry in a picture because he's always moving.

My ever-helpful four year old who is using his plastic chain saw to help.

And my six-year-old who's always willing to help as long as it's not too wet, too dirty, too heavy, too hard, too loud or anything else.

The back of the door was ugly brown, and you can see the bottom of the entry light. It's on it's way out too.

It was also incredible that the new hardware we had bought and installed on the white front door after we moved in, fit perfectly in the holes that were already cut in this door.

Now, the red is fun and cute, but I think it needs to be navy blue or mint green. I haven't pulled the trigger yet. I like the red, but I feel like the color is too bright of a shade for a mellow gray house color. I tried a few mint green samples, but it was too light, so I'll be thinking on that for a while.

Inside with a few coats of Benjamin Moore's OC-17, White Dove, and trimmed out.

The outside, trimmed out. 

The moral of this story is: be friendly like Neal.

The "Glamorous Barn" Powder Room

When we moved in, there was a little closet that had been the laundry room. Because we did the mudroom/laundry room project, we had this little room that housed the furnace and hot water heater. Because the current kitchen has no storage we used that little room as kitchen storage. It was either going to be the pantry for the new kitchen or it was going to be a powder room. We decided on powder room because bathrooms always add more value to a home. 

This is the current family room that is the future kitchen. Door on the left is mudroom/laundry, door on the right is new powder room. The man working is Neal, of course, because working is what he does. And the mess is from us, because we actually live in our house while projects go on, which makes life messy, fun, dusty and interesting.

Low lights of the space before it's beautification: the carmel-colored paint that won't leave me alone (I think this literally is the last spot in the house with this color). The nondescript ceiling light. The linoleum floors. 

And it begins! The window became smaller so Neal could make a closet with bifold doors for the water heater/furnace.

Here you can see the dark charcoal tile floor (same as the laundry room for some cohesion). On the walls is plywood for some board and batten. Look how golden that lighting is from that old light. Yuck.

Here's where the project gets real. I took a design risk with BLACK paint. Oh yes. As you can see by the picture my very practical, khaki-loving husband, was NOT so sure about it. Honestly, I wasn't either, but it started to grow on me, when I picked up…..

This beautiful, amazing, perfectly-sized, I-love-it-so-much light off of Craigslist. I hear angels sing every time I look at it. 

The glamorous barn started to come together. We couldn't find a vanity we liked for a price we loved, so Neal built one. I showed him like two pictures, and BAM! I had a vanity. He's like a fairy-guy-mother.

So then inspiration strikes, and I hear this little powder room begging for pale pink (maybe it was the angels telling me) and a little bit more gold. 

This print is from one of my favorite artists, Lindsay, from Lindsay Letters. And she's having a sale in July so get on it. It says "Be strong and courageous, seek adventure and truth." Good words to ponder while going potty.

This was a little postcard from Hammerpress studio in Kansas City. I really love letterpress. Both of the gold frames game from the thrift store. I really hate buying retail-priced frames. They always seem so expensive for what you're getting. There's more excitement and potential for funky junk with thrift store frames. I didn't spray these, but a can of spray paint can transform anything, so usually I just hunt for shapes, not color.

This was a greeting card I put in a frame, but the company doesn't do cards anymore. 

I threw up a "curtain" just to add some more color, but it needs help, so at some point I'll help it.

Two wire baskets add all the storage it needs. 

And there you go, a "glamorous barn" powder room is born.