Tossed and Turned Tuesday- Kitchen’s Done!!

 

This was the easiest project I have ever done…NOT!!!
I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I mean, I get that I wanted some color in my life but I really should have stuck to furniture. It took me 2 weeks to finish this project. Including two weeks of eating around drying doors, cooking around open cabinets, and not to mention looking at an unsightly dining/kitchen every day!
The thing that set me back was the color. At first I wanted a light blue color and when I went to Home Depot, the color I chose looked white in my lighting. I have a photo but it’s on the phone and looks really bad.
So then I chose a darker (light blue) and it came out looking like a bright pastel blue. In order to make lemonade out of lemons, I used this on the little blue humidor I painted  this month which Sammy swears is the same color but I beg to differ.

Since I decided to paint one whole section of cabinets and let it dry before I realized it was (again) not the right color,  I had more to scrape off. This took the longest time!! I even used paint stripper but it had lots of nooks and crannies so it was very time consuming.
In the long run I worked on this two complete weekends and after work in between.  It was the longest project I ever did. But worth it I must say considering I went from this:

To this:



OH! I forgot to mention that I tried to be smart and paint them for the third time with the doors attached…DON'T EVER DO THAT!!  I had drips galore!
Now that this project is done (even though still not quite the blue I was going for) and my husband "likes it enough", I can finally say this was a project I did myself for days on end and I even drilled those holes for knobs and pulls.
I do love my blue kitchen!!
And of course Kunu got in on the action!

One more thing I forgot to show was besides touch ups here and there I have one teeny weenie problem…

D’oh!! Yeah my planning skills suck. I'm going to have to take this handle off and fill the holes then repaint.  Ahh the joy doesn't end.
(please don’t judge my drawer, I dumped everything in then got sidetracked with the handle:)
RITA

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Thrown Away Thursday– Cabinet Fever!

Well I couldn’t just paint my fireplace and look at these ugly cabinets right next to them, now could I?

Also just want to point out that my kitchen island doesn’t usually look that bad but I cleaned off my counter tops and it turned into my staging area.

I’ll be back next week to show you my currently “under construction” kitchen!

Have a great weekend!

Rita

Tossed and Turned Tuesday- My Fireplace

When you live with someone who loves contemporary and you love vintage, then you get married and you have to decorate to fit the both of you, what do you do?

Well, here’s what I did!

I know some of you are thinking “what’s the big whoop?”. Well before it was brown and I hated it. It used to be stark white before that and I hated it even more. I’m usually not this disgruntled I promise but this fireplace is a lose lose situation.

After browsing the web and consulting with a few blog friends it became apparent that this fireplace needed to be redone. I don’t think accessories would have done it alone so after seeing pretty pictures of Cassie of Primitive and Proper’s gray fireplace, I started thinking about gray on my fireplace. The more I pictured it the more I liked it.

I ended up painting it “Elephant Gray” and glazed the wood mantle with a black/ brown concoction I came up with.  Also, if you notice I now have two doors (haha). The one to the left was hidden by a screen and a chair. Upon the recommendation of a friend, I put in two wicker blinds from Ikea. They are hard to see in this photo because of the crazy sun glare that seeps through my windows but trust me they look great!!

As far as the pictures, well I had originally thought of putting a mirror up there but Sammy didn’t like the idea. Then I thought of a nice big picture but the more we looked we never agreed. Sammy actually reminded me of these pictures. They even have have a little history too.

These are the first pictures I ever printed in the graphics department. I even cut them myself.  When Sammy and I split up I decided I needed to paint the kitchen of our town home. I painted it this cool green color and decorated the edge of the top border of the wall with these cool pictures I made. There were more then and my kitchen was only a few feet wide so it looked really great.  When we moved I hung them in our new house on a blank wall where the china cabinet is now and eventually they came down again.

I didn’t think they’d end up back on the wall and I’m glad they did!

 

I still have a few ideas for sprucing it up for now, this’ll do.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we are!

Rita

Thrown Away Thursday–My Fireplace Facelift

Technically this isn’t a “thrown away” item (you probably figured that out already) but if I could’ve removed it and thrown it away, I really would have.

Here’s my blah brown fireplace.

It’s remained naked after Christmas when I took down the festive mantle and decided I was hating the brown. I’ve had all these ideas swirling around in my head but told myself that until I was certain what I wanted, it would remain in the buff.

Albeit’ I didn’t realize it would be four months later that imagination would suddenly strike, but it finally did and I don’t have to look at this anymore!

I also was a good wife and consulted my husband on my thought process and we settled for a happy medium. Actually, that’s a lie, I gave him some options that I liked and took the one idea he had and ran with it.

I hope you come back Tuesday to see what it looks like now.

Rita

Meet Andie!

I caved and bought Brianna a rat for her birthday. Meet Andie, her pet Rat. No not a hamster or gerbil, a rat with a tail. I have to admit he’s pretty freakin’ adorable and sweet though.

Yes, he’s the latest addition to our family and he’s getting along nicely!

So for those of you thinking, “is she crazy?? I wouldn’t let that thing in my house”…well typically I’d concur and would never see myself getting one, much less holding it, but I did.

Sorry for the blurry pictures but this little guy is fast!

The thing that really put me over the edge is, if most of you don’t know, Brianna (just turned 15 year old) suffers from depression. We’ve had a rough couple of years and though most days can be a struggle, the thing that hurts me most is she hates her smile.  I, needless to say, love that smile of hers and for her birthday(and quite frankly the last couple of years or so) all she’s wanted was a rat.

So this year for her birthday, I drove her to pet smart and told her to pick one out.  She got her rat and I got her smile that I miss seeing so much. I’d say we both won with him!

On a side note, we have a cat and two dogs whom I honestly expected would react different to this little guy.

Kunu,the cat, likes to walk into Brianna’s room every now and again and will sit and stare at the rat. Most times he doesn’t even care that Andie’s in the house.

Reese, on the other hand wants him dead. She tries to bite at his tail every time it sticks out of the cage and when we take him out, she jumps and nips in the air. I told Sammy that it’s kind of like seeing those vampire movies when the vampire gets around blood and is uncontrollable. She gets a little crazy like that! I can see her plotting something with the way she looks at him.

Tubby… well you’ll have to see for yourself. I think it’s safe to say, he found another friend.

Tubby first meeting

You have to know that Tubby is a licker to fully appreciate this video. haha!

Rita

Tossed and Turned Tuesday- Humidor–Just say No

So after a few comments on my post Thursday, I’ve come to the conclusion that my new found mystery piece was in fact a humidor. I still don’t understand exactly what it’s purpose in life is nor how it was used, other than for storing cigars but in my mind I imagine that I saved this little guy from a future of black lung

 

Also, I was pretty stumped on what it should look like and nothing seemed to speak to me so I went with this:

Here’s the before shots:

 

And remember that funky red felt on the sides, well I have a great tip for getting that crap off! After trying like heck to scrape it off and getting nowhere fast, I just doused it with water and it came off pretty easy. See photos below.

This weekend I’m working on my kitchen cabinets and am not really having any luck BUT this piece is kind of a foreshadow post of how you make lemonade out of lemons.  muahhhahhahhahha

See you later and don’t forget to stop by parties I’ll be linking up to. See my link up party page at the top!

Rita

Thrown Away Thursday–Mystery Piece

I’m not quite sure what the heck this is or what it’s used for but I do know it’s old and made of wood and I can paint it so that’s exactly what I intend to do.

If anyone has any suggestions, I’m totally open to them.

This is Easter weekend so I hope you have a great Easter or at least an great extra day off of work! I know I will

See ya,
Rita

Tossed and Turned Tuesday – My Awesome New Drawers!

Last week you saw my new chest of drawers that I fell madly in love with and coveted for my own. Well, I already had an idea in mind for what I wanted but was scared at what result I would get. Yes, ME,I was scared.

I knew I didn’t want the chalk finish of my Annie Sloan Paris Gray so some glazing would be involved, however, I also knew I didn’t want major glazing either. Kinda like a kid in a candy store, you kind of know what you want but you don’t know if you’ll end up with the right thing!

Looking at it now, I love the result. It’s not too bright gray like it was when I stared, not too shiny, not too distressed…it’s just perfect! For me and my room anyway. Now I can give Sammy his own chest of drawers!

Again, here’s what I started with:

Nice and old and falling apart!

And After:

And yes, that’s my shadow outline in the background (sorry).

Ready for more of me??? I wanted to show you how sometimes you have to mess up a bit to get the look you’re going for so I had Brianna take some photos of my goof up!

But first this is what I used to get my distressed result: Brown paint and water!

Warning this photo looks nasty but it’s just brown paint (promise)

Yep, a paint and water mixture was slapped on and wiped off until I got the result I was looking for.

EXCEPT…on this side, it didn’t come out QUITE like I wanted. Can you see the brown lines coming through? That WAS NOT supposed to happen!

So in my case you take a coffee break and start again. REPAINT, distress, wipe…

This is what it looks like now:

Now I just need to find a place for it in my room! I can’t wait to see how it looks against my dark accent wall! I’ll have to get back to you on that~

Thanks for stopping by!

Rita

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