My fresh new kitchen

*disclaimer- all photos were taken with my phone... so they're not so great.  We'll have to deal.*

Lately, it feels like the walls of my house are closing in around me. After 3 years, it feels like none of the rooms are actually "done", with the exception of my office and the powder room on the main floor. I don't love any of the rooms and nothing is exactly as I want it. All re-decorating projects for the other rooms are started, but nothing had been completed.  I'm either waiting to find that perfect piece of furniture, or I've been putting off doing anything because, well.... I'm lazy. 

When we moved into our house 3 years ago, our kitchen cupboards were the originals (our house was 19 years old) and two drawers were missing from the bank.  We thought it would be easy to replace the drawers, but we were VERY wrong, and we didn't have the money (or desire) to replace all the cupboards.  We finally had someone come in and make custom drawers for us, that sat unpainted, for months. Finally, this past weekend I decided it was time to freshen them up. 

So began operation make my house lovable.

Bubba helped me take the doors off before he left on Saturday morning.  You can see in the below picture they they are cheap melamine, with the typical late eighties wooden handles.

As you can see, I'm not great at cupboard organization.

Luckily it was a super nice weekend weather wise, so I was able to setup my project in the backyard. With the heavenly help of my super handy Mom, I scrubbed each door with TSP, sanded it, scrubbed again, primed with super sticky primer and then painted.

(note: the above picture was taken approximately 2 minutes before Lola ran across the drying doors on that towel, towards the open sliding glass door to the house, with paint covered feet.  In reaction, I knocked over that table, including the full can of white primer.  Awesome)

It took us the better part of Saturday and Sunday, but by Monday morning they were dry and ready to be re-hung.  Bub tackled that, with the help of his Dad, while I was at work.  They also attached new hardware!

I came home to this:

I'm so happy with them.  They're not perfect, but if I had a proper before picture, you would understand how much better this looks.  It's just much cleaner.

So, what's left in the kitchen?  New table, new window coverings and a new dishwasher.  So, lots to do still, but this is definitely one big step closer to being happy with my house for the next couple of years.

Bedroom Revamp

One of my favorite parts about our house, both when we bought it and now, is our master bedroom.  It's small as far as most masters go, but it's definitely not too small.  The best part about it though is that it's on the front of the house with a wall of windows.  The room has such amazing natural light and I love going to bed and waking up looking outside.

I don't have a picture from the inside, but here's an exterior shot.  All of those windows on the 2nd floor are in our bedroom.

When we moved in, most of the rooms in the house were builder beige (with the exception of the spare rooms which were forest green and barbie pink).  We have since painted the livingroom (a grey-blue) and the office (a funky sage-green), but that's pretty much it.  I've decided that I'm bored with the beige and I want to revamp our bedroom since it's my favorite room in the house.

We just got this bedding by Ty Pennington (not my room btw- and we didn't get the lamp or throws):

I was a little concerned when we ordered it that it was going to be too plain (I like funky stuff), but when you see it in person, it's awesome.  The comforter is two different patterns top and bottom so when you fold it down it's got a really cool contrast and then the sheets are white with beige circles... very comfortable looking while still being chic.  We added 2 silk black throws with black geometric shapes and 1 purplish-blue silk throw with circles to pull in from the sheets... and it looks awesome. I was so exicted to go to bed and read last night just so I could snuggle in.

Our sidetables and dresser are currently modern white, but I think I'm going to paint and lacquer them black, and then I'm going to paint the walls.... PURPLE.  I want it to be really dramatic and I've pulled all the colors together and it's going to work well.  Now I just have to decide what color to do the curtains. We currently have the white horizontal blinds that came with the house, but I want to get some roman shades or roller blinds I think.  

The other option I've considered is making some kind of cool headboard or doing the wall behind our bed in a different color, some kind of panelling or funky (there's that word again) wall-paper.

I like these ideas (obviously with my own color choices though):

LOVE this one... I'm such a nerd. 

This one is actually made with an old door.... kinda cool and easy to do.

I'm kind of leaning towards this one. It's got to most "dramatic" potential.

or many of the wallpapers here. 

I've decided that I'm not going to wait anymore to get these things done to my house. I have to live there so I want to love it and make it my own.  So, our bedroom is step one.  Hopefully I can get going on it after exams next week!

Excited!