Country Kitchen Peek-a-Boo Part II

Here's another view of the kitchen, looking towards the stove and the back porch. As you can see, the prior owners had installed beautiful {gag} paneling with blue wood trim and a vibrant sunflower border. Can you sense my sarcasm here? In a normal decorating situation I LOVE sunflowers, but not in this instance!

I have an old whitewashed spice cabinet that
we'll be hanging above the stove. The door will
look much nicer when it's painted and the trim is hung.

I've painted the entire back porch and the other side of the back door. The reason I haven't painted this side of the back door is that Tori insists on jumping up on it - if you enlarge the photo, you can see how damaged the wood is right below the window. Obviously if I paint it, she's just going to scrape the new paint right off! The only stopgap measure I can think of would be to put a piece of plexiglass over the new paint, only right below the window.

Any other suggestions, aside from the impossible ~
training Tori not to jump up?

The carpet was downright disgusting... the only good thing??
I could let the dogs in with wet feet and not worry!!

Country Kitchen Peek-a-Boo

We still have lots to do to finish our kitchen renovation, but I wanted to put up a quick post that shows you how far we've come...

circa July 2008

circa NOW

We still need to put up trim for the ceiling, the floor and around doorways. I am really loving the laminate floor that hubby installed 2 weeks ago. We bought it at Lowe's in September 2008 and it lived behind the living room couch until December 2009! It's so nice to see it on the kitchen floor instead of the boxes in the living room. I had almost forgotten about the rug I had brought with me from Ohio. It was rolled up under the guest bed. I'm so glad I remembered - I was looking at rugs at Lowe's a few weeks ago when it hit me - hey, I HAVE a rug already!

We did as much as we could on our own, to keep the costs down. Obviously hubby installed much of the new stuff -- the ceiling fan, the light fixture above the sink, the new faucet, the floor. He put up new drywall everywhere -- he tore down the tile ceiling, paneling on the walls and the old drywall. I painted the kitchen cabinets as we really could not justify the cost of all new cabinets. We bought new hardware through Ebay.

I just hate the process... what a mess!!!

The kitchen chair and benches were found at our local Dillon's grocery store a few weeks ago. The newest Dillon's in Derby, Kansas, has a section called the Marketplace with furniture and home items. They had a huge sale a few weeks ago, and we got the most fantastic prices on our table and chairs, it was unbelievable. AND we got Dillon's gift cards for our furniture purchases. $10 for every $50 we spent. What a deal!! :)

I don't think you can really see them in this picture, even if you enlarge it... but my fan pulls are of a bucking bronc and a cowboy boot. I brought them with me from Ohio. I guess you could say my heart was always in the west. :-)

I'll post more pics over the next week. I'll probably ask for some advice from my readers. The walls still need to be finished with my pics and such - I don't have things hung the way I want them yet. But all in all, we both really love the way it has turned out.

I Love Our Little House on the Prairie

Finally, we have finished painting the house! My only regret is that I didn't go two shades darker with the trim paint. You can barely tell that the porch columns and the trim around the windows and on the peaks is darker. Maybe next summer, a darker shade for the trim.... shhhhh, don't tell hubby! Next on the agenda... a new screen door.

BEFORE: The summer of '08, with peeling gray paint
and a purpley trim color. For some odd reason, the porch columns
were a shade of blue ???

BEFORE: You can just barely see the porch foundation (above) - the seams
were not totally concreted and it was never primed or painted.
Note ugly light. We replaced the light - see photo below.

IN PROGRESS: Foundation has been patched between the blocks.
Porch interior has been painted, and new light has been installed.

This evening's stormy sky to the west of us.

I made cupcakes to take to work tomorrow - these are homemade
all the way, batter and frosting! They turned out way too deelish, which
means it's uber hard for me to keep my grubby hands off them. Of course,
I doubled the recipe so there's plenty to leave home for hubby.

Never Fear, I've Not Disappeared!!

I've been buried under "have-to's" the last few weeks! Trust me, I'm going to have plenty of time to catch up on my blogging as I only have two more days at my temporary job -- which includes several awards I am oh-so-overdue in thanking the recipients for, a thank you to another blogger for a pair of Lee Slender Secret jeans I won in her giveaway, and pics to show y'all what we've been busy working on around the ole property for the last few weeks! After my last day at work, I'm heading to Ohio on Thursday for a visit with family and friends. I should be back home by Sept. 16th or 17th, and ready to get caught up with my blogging duties.

I'm standing in the pasture to get this photo... you can see I got the foundation cleaned up and primed with Kilz, all ready to paint! A few months ago, hubby mixed up some concrete and filled all the cracks in this foundation, which is newer than the house foundation but was obviously never finished by the previous occupants. Now all I need to do is get house paint on it to match the house. How do you like hubby's solution to get to the top of the house?! Extension ladder propped and tied down in the back of the pick-up truck.

Of course, as I was leaving the pasture, I just had to get
this shot of a wild sunflower! :)

Our Humble Abode... Before and After

The front porch last summer and now... as you can see, still need to paint the blue beam along the ceiling of the porch. Hubby finished caulking the foundation under the porch the other day; I need to get Kilz primer on it, then paint it. Note the new front porch light; we bought the same light for the back porch but still need to install it. The previous owners had just bare bulbs as their porch lights... nice, eh?


Another view of the front porch. We still need to replace the screen door; it will be the same as the back screen door that we replaced last autumn. (Just wait until you see the pic of the old BACK screen door further down in my post!!) We also want to get some roll-up blinds for the front porch. It would be lovely to sit on that bench in the evening, but alas, the setting sun is directly in front of our porch. It's not only blinding, it's freaking hot!


The back side of the house; you may notice a small patch of gray near the eaves (see pic below). There was a bird's nest there, and upon closer inspection we believed there could be babies, so we painted around them for the time being. The other day, the nest was laying on the ground with several broken eggs. The nest was an old barn swallow nest from last year and sparrows had decided it would make a nice home; obviously they did not do a home inspection first and so that was a flawed decision on their part, as the old barn swallow nest probably needed some shoring up. Oh well. I guess we can paint that area now. We still need to paint the entire eaves on this side of the house too.

The other side of the house last summer. Ehw.

And now this summer... much better, I think.

The back door, last summer.
That chair protected Ringo's dog food from rain, just in case you were wondering...
click here to see post about salvaged chairs.


The new back screen door.

We removed the awning, which was beat to heck in a hailstorm last year; not sure if we will get a new awning? Still have to put up the new porch light. Need to replace (or paint) the board along the roof line. Moved Ringo's doghouse off the porch and eventually we want to build a bigger back deck.

So you can see how busy we have been... all this house work in addition to all the fence repairs we have been doing, and tons of outside property maintenance. I'm hoping we can get our vegetable garden started NEXT year, and get more bushes and flowers planted around the house.

Baby steps, right?! :-) But I think we've come a long way since last summer already. A big thank you to my mom, who hatched up the plan to paint the house while she was here a few weeks ago. How many moms do you know that would suggest something that insane when they come to visit you?!

(I haven't even posted the before and afters of the kitchen,
only because it's not done yet...)

Country Livin' with a Refurbished Patio Table

I love breathing new life into found objects. My mom and I repainted this table base last summer -- left behind by the previous owners. It was a dirty, dirty beige. We fixed 'er up and painted it a bright red, then mom made this mosaic tabletop for it (it had no tabletop). Isn't it bee-YOO-tee-full?! We had to give it a test run with pina coladas and a crown/sprite combo last weekend... we'll be utilizing it for some hamburgers and salad later today.



Hubster had these two vintage green patio chairs ... we spruced them up with a bright aqua paint. Can you tell I like bright, vivid caribbean colors? :-) Just the perfect colors to brighten up the Kansas prairie!

And of course, Ringo is doing his ranch dog impersonation..... lazing in the sun.

Now I must go outside to assist with the house painting job. Hubby is currently patching an area of foundation that is quite cracked and wide open; mom is applying a 2nd coat of trim paint to several windows. They probably don't appreciate the fact that I am updating my blog....

The Never-Ending Home Project

BEFORE
The trim color "matches" the metal roof (ehw)
As you can see, LOTS of scraping and sanding to prep for paint
Lil Miss Tori wants to be outside with her dad

AFTER
A nice neutral tan color with darker brown trim

Would you believe it was my 67-year old mom's idea to paint the house? (She's probably regretting that grand idea by now.)

We planned on repainting it this year as it was in bad shape when hubby bought it a few years ago. But it's a big job, and we wanted to plan strategically around the weather. As luck would have it, mom came to visit last Fri, with plans to only stay through Tuesday. But she's still here since it was HER idea to paint our house, lol... the weather's been great. Very dry (no rain), BUT the gnats were atrocious for a few days, and we've both got our share of welts. I'm glad the gnats seem rather sparse today, thank goodness.

I'll tell you what, we will ALL be glad when this project is done. But it makes our lil country home look SO nice. :-) Now if I can just get some time to plant flowers it will look even better!

More pics to come as we finish up over the next few days. And then I'll get back to my bloggy friends too. Sorry I've been rather remiss in visiting everyone's blog AGAIN. I'll be back soon, I promise!

IS IT MARGARITA TIME YET?!!

I'm Baaaacccckkkk!

I've returned to bloggy-land after my self-imposed exile of the last week. Mom just left this morning to head to Ohio. She's anxious to get home now.

While she was here, we accomplished much. I'm thinking I shouldn't say just WHAT we accomplished, as I'd like it to be a surprise for hubby when he returns from Seattle at the end of the month. Although it won't be quite the same surprise he had for me when I returned from Arizona a few weeks ago, you know, um, that big fire ...

No, my surprises are actually quite pleasant, and probably not as photo-worthy as his fire. And since I didn't take any photos at all this week while she was here, that means I have no BEFORE photos, before we worked our magic transformations ...

I will say that we were busy, busy, busy, and we fell into bed at the end of each day, our muscles sore and achy, but in a good way. You know how that feels, when you've accomplished much. Even though your body may be screaming at you, it's a wonderful feeling when you've crossed multiple projects off "the list".

I will say that we washed and hand-waxed his extremely muddy truck on Tuesday. What an enormous undertaking that was. I think about 1/4 of the way through the waxing, we wished with all our little hearts that we were DONE. Talk about sore arms and shoulders!! And would you know, some silly lil birds had the audacity to POOP on this mega-clean truck? Now I will have to wipe the bird do0-doo off before I pick him up from the airport, else he will never believe that we spent HOURS on shining his truck!

I know, I know.... it's a RANCH truck, and it will get dirty again ... so very, very dirty. But doesn't it look oh so nice now??!

Old Chair Renovation

Ta-da! I finally finished one of my smaller projects earlier this week. Tom had 6 of these crappy dining chairs; several were beyond repair. I picked the two that were in the best of shape, scrubbed the rust off the chrome with steel wool, and recovered them with a faux leather material. I finished the second chair earlier this week; I started this project in the autumn, so um, you can see I tend to put things off at times. I decided that I must finish this small project before I could start refinishing the kitchen cabinets! Now, since yesterday, I have been working on the lower kitchen cabinets. I'm hoping to finish the cabinets by next weekend. Think positive! :)

One of the old "crappy" chairs

Ta-da! The new recovered chair

Close-up of faux leather fabric

The Ongoing Kitchen Renovation Saga

after ~ new kitchen faucet


before ~ old kitchen faucet

There will be more kitchen renovation pics to come. For those who don't know, we tore out the walls and ceiling completely, and Tom has put up new drywall. We still need to finish the drywall, then prime and paint the walls and ceiling, and plaster the ceiling. We'll be getting those items finished up this weekend, since he has 5 days off.

After that, a new western style ceiling fan, new countertop and hopefully a new tile backsplash (with mom's help!), and new laminate flooring. When mom comes back in early November, we're going to repaint all the cabinets and put on the new brushed nickel handles that Tom bought on Ebay.

In the meantime, it's ongoing, and it's messy! I'll be so glad when it's all done.

Back Porch Renovation

Before
Note the pink blinds and curtain topper. And the ugly gray panelling. UGH.

After
TA-DA! Neutral paint colors for walls and cabinets with alabaster window blind. Note my colorful dog painting by Susan Rene. We also infused shots of aqua throughout the back porch -- the closet door and the fabric covering for an antique phone bench. There will be more updates to the back porch in the weeks to come, the light being the next update.

A Splash of the Caribbean in Kansas

How's this for a hot shot of color in Kansas?! The table had been abandoned and left by the previous owners. It was in pretty bad shape, so we (mom & I) decided that bright, bright colors was the way to go. The chairs were Tom's and had been repainted green several years ago (see last photo in July post); however, I thought what better color to go with red than aqua! I can't help myself, I love my bright, sunny colors. Mom painted all the outdoor furniture and didn't she do an awesome job?!

On the back porch, we infused the aqua into the new and neutral color scheme. A closet door now screams "look at me!" when you walk into the house. A small western styled hook on the aqua door reminds visitors they're in the American west, not a cottage in the caribbean. A small and rustic 3-hook wall rack from the Pottery Barn provided a spot to hang the dog collars and leads. Tom's much-treasured clock from an aunt hangs above the 3-hook rack.