Curtains!

While Brandon was gone at a marching band competition, Barb decided to tackle the job of making curtains for the living room. About a month ago we found the fabric we wanted at JoAnn's, but weren't going to pay $37 a yard. After a little bit of searching on the internet, we found it for $9!

 Barb is a VERY thoughtful person. She thinks, thinks some more, thinks again, and THEN does. Thus, everything was done right the FIRST time. :) The fabric is a light linen, so we decided to go with blackout lining. Barb made the curtains so that you can't see ANY seams. She even figured out how to do blind hems with her machine!

The part Barb was MOST excited about was putting GROMMETS on the curtains. She squealed with delight each time she snapped them together. It made Brandon smile every time!

The finished product is on the left below. We still don't have a curtain rod, so here is a picture of the fabric held up to the wall to show what it will look "like."

 

Before Barb even tackled the curtains, she finished the upper cabinets! Look how beautiful they are!

So what did Brandon do? Umm... Here is a custom-width doorway jamb. 

He's working on trim in the rest of the house. Its gonna look so awesome!!

Stay tuned for a picture of the curtains hanging on a ROD! :)

A month (plus) of flooring

Well... THIS is a long over-due post.

So, over LABOR DAY WEEKEND we decided we would tackle the floors in the kitchen so that we could do it all in one big go. Ha.

We started with pulling up the old floor coverings.

We took out the carpet from the hallway and the front room. That was the easy part. Even taking up the foam pad and the staples, AND the carpet tack boards was easy. The hard part was the kitchen.

Under the layer of white linoleum was 1/4 inch plywood. That plywood was stapled into another layer of linoleum. And not just "normal" stapled, like a sane person would do. Someone was crazy trigger happy when they were stapling in the plywood, which was glued onto another layer of 1/4 inch plywood. Which was stapled and nailed into another layer of linoleum. Which was, thankfully, very easy to take off the subfloor.

 The carnage. And this isn't even HALF the pile...

It only took us all of Saturday to rip up the linoleum. And Brandon only sweated enough to completely break out on his forehead for weeks and weeks.

That brings us to Sunday. Which was only half a day due to church, but we spent the ENTIRE work time pulling up nails and staples. It was insanity. The bloody knuckles Brandon got still aren't completely healed. However, by the end of Sunday, the kitchen looked like this:

Sadly, even the unfinished subfloor was starting to look really nice.

So then, on Monday, we started laying the vapor barrier padding and floor.

And, you know how easy flooring is. Look how MUCH we got done in only one day!

Pathetic, I know.

And that was pretty much the case for the next few weeks. A little work here, a little work there.

Three weeks later...

 
And in the mean time, we were distracted by a multitude of mini-projects.

1. Making Barb a vanity table....

So, this REALLY hideous wooden valance was above the sink. Brandon decided to make a vanity table for Barb. This would be really useful, since the bathroom downstairs isn't very big, and doubles as both the master and guest bathroom. It only took a month to get from start to finish on this project too...

2. Barb refinished the mirror the previous owner left.

 3. Brandon changed the four-way light into a bedroom light on the fan.

 

4. We put the upper cabinet doors on the kitchen cabinets.

5. We bought a mower! (Happy Birthday, Brandon!)

6. We even just recently acquired a GREAT chandelier for the dining room. Yay, Homegoods! TJMaxx, Homegoods, and Ross have become good friends of ours.

Sorry. Floors? Oh yeah. A little at a time.

First the kitchen was finished:

Then, the LAST piece a week later in the living room:

And, finally, it was finished!

AREN'T THEY BEAUTIFUL!?!?!?!?! We finished and cleaned up this past Saturday and we were amazed at how much ROOM there is in our house! We both agreed that it finally feels like a HOME, instead of a property that we are slowly working on.


Its crazy. The kitchen took three weeks, and the living room: one. Figures.

And then we decided to tackle one last thing for the weekend: New Laundry Doors! Mind you, this is COLUMBUS day weekend now. Not Labor Day weekend. *ugh*

The previous owner's dog pretty much chewed on EVERYTHING in the kitchen. Pretty sure that's how there was such a big hole in the carpet too. These new doors look awesome.

We really like the "half"-louvre doors, instead of the full louvre which was previously there. AND we loved that they were pre-finished white! YES! We got back all the HOURS we lost on flooring! :)

Barb found these AWESOME rugs. We found out (the hard way) that our floors are quite sensitive to water. Thus, we needed rugs that are rubber on the back to protect the floors from our wet shoes. Couldn't find anything in the nice stores, so, we went to Walmart! YES!