Apt Blog Title

I've been extremely quiet lately, for that I apologize. I received a message on FB asking if I was still blogging and I think it was the little nudge I needed to do a long overdue update. Life is still flying by at a rate that is frankly quite frightening. We are still accomplishing new tasks on the house and property everyday and winter is (God willing) coming to a close.

Quick recap on where we are personally. Last July we got a bit of a push to jump in and finish the unfinished portion of the house (spare rooms and guest bath). With the arrival of our first child in just about 2 weeks, he gave us that little nudge that we needed to jump back into hardcore construction mode again.

List of current projects...
1) Coop- Just needs siding and it's 100% complete. Hoping to get this summer.
2) Spare room #1 (nursery)- Completely done! Just finished putting some pipe shelving up this past weekend. The room is complete with floor, door handles, trim, even a real ceiling light!
3) Master Bath- Still needs quite a bit of work. There is still not trim up in it. I'm trying to convince Brad to just rip out the current counter tops/sinks and put something new in because I'm super lazy and don't want to paint them. Also, I can't figure out what color I want to paint them anyway. We'll see if I'm successful. We need to put something up around the tub as well. I think Brad is planning on using either the old bamboo flooring we have or the cedar fence planks... In a perfect world, we'd just rip out the tub and shower and do a large standup shower across the wall. We'll see what this summer brings.
5) Door Handles- We have them! They are installed. We can actually close doors without jabbing pencils through the holes.
6) Lighting- We finished the exposed bulb cluster light over the dining room table and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. It was a bit of a pain, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I have everything we need for my mason jar chandelier. Maybe that will be this weekends project. It would be nice to get that one up in the kitchen.
7) Cosmetically we've updated a lot of little things around the house. I'll do my best to get the camera charged tonight and get some updated shots of how things look.

State of Things...

We're moving.


Yeah, I just said that! We are moving this weekend. FINALLY!!!!!! I almost don'g believe that it's true. After this weekend, when I look out my windows this is what I'll see.

 

Below are some rough photos of the state of things. I'm hoping to get over tonight and get some stuff cleaned up for some better shots, but bad photos are better than no photos right. The only major change is that most of the cabinet doors are up now and they weren't when I took pictures on Friday.

DIY Crazy!

I have a problem. My problem is that there are about 50 million different projects that I want to do and I just don't have enough time to get them all done! Let me outline just a few. We'll start with my lighting dreams...

This is the light that I want to go above the island in the kitchen. The small problem is that Pottery Barn thinks that I should spend $399 on it and I very strongly disagree. Solution, I'm going to make one. I found very detailed instructions here that I am going to alter slightly to fit my needs. I think I can make my version for around $150 which is way more reasonable. I don't mind spending money on a nice lighting fixture, but I am not putting a $400 light in the DW. That is just a little too fancy for us. Realistically, it doesn't look all that difficult to do. I've found most of what I need online, but I want to use cloth cord for the lights and that is proving a bit more difficult to procure. I'm persistent though, I'll find it! I'll find it if I have to make it myself. Add another month on to this one.

Lighting project number two. This one is for over the dining room table. Again, I plan to alter it slightly, I want the cords to be gray cloth cords that match the mason jar light and I want the light sockets to be white. I'm also planning on hanging the bulbs at slightly different heights. In my head, it's really cool. We'll see how it actually turns out.

So far that about sums up my lighting project for the time being. I'm sure I will find more things in the world of lighting. Someday I'm going to make things easy on myself and just buy stuff, but I guess there's not much fun in that huh?

Another item on the to do list is the chicken coop. We've got a lot of the supplies to build it, it's just a matter of finding the time to get it done. The plan is to move next weekend and I've told Brad that needs to be the next thing we do. The chicks will be about 4 weeks old by then and should be ready to get out of the house by 6 weeks. I really don't want them in the house when they get that big.

Dog Run- This one sounds simple enough in my head, but I know these things never are. We've decided that the front door will lead out into the dog run since we won't ever be using it anyway. Like the coop, the picture for this is in my head, but Brad really wants us to throw down gravel. I agree, though I'm a little concerned about drainage. The last thing I was is for it to reek of dog pee.

Coffee Table! I want to build a coffee table out of some old pallets that I have. I can never seem to find a coffee table that I like, so I'm making one. This is kind of what I'm thinking, though I'm toying around with some other options too. I definitely want it on casters, cause that's just kind of cool. I'm kind of thinking I want more of a bleached out wood look, though I'm not sure how to do that without doing a whitewash style. Whitewash could look pretty cool though. Decisions decisions.

A tufted ottoman for our "closet". Our bed and dressers won't fit in a single room, so we are having a master suite with one whole room dedicated to our clothes! I'm buying, yes buying, garment racks to put up and we'll put our dressers in there as well. I've always wanted a giant walk in closet with an ottoman in the middle. It makes me feel fancy, like a princess. And that makes me happy.

There are plenty more to add to the list, but I feel like I should go tackle some of these things instead of just talking about it. Mostly, I need to get my butt over to the new house and finish putting the cabinet doors up, install the dishwasher & stove. Build a platform for the dryer and washing machine.... the list just never ends! One step at a time, and breath, just breath.

XoXo
Erin

Finished Floors

That's right! The floors are finally done. I never thought this day would come. It feels so good to be able to put the floors behind us and move on to all the finishing touches. I'm absolutely thrilled with the way the floors turned out.

The Bona Mega really made the floors pop! The picture below shows the difference between sealed and not sealed. I was amazing at the difference the Bona made when we were all done.

Partially sealed floors.

Photo montage of the finished floors!!!

Sealed and completed plywood floors!

Close up of the finished floors.

After the floors we completed we started working on our baseboards. We were able to get them all painted and are hoping to put them up this week. We also managed to install a toilet, first time ever, and it's not leaking which is always good and ripped out the kitchen sink. Goals for the week include getting the baseboard up, counter tops painted, and appliances installed if we're lucky. 

Here are some more photos just for fun!

This photo was taken last October when we first started. Please ignore the McDonalds bag. Sometimes we make poor food decisions when we have not time.

This photo was taken this past weekend. My little DW has come so far!

Furniture that Won't Break the Bank

We have a bit of a dilemma. I don't think our current sofa will fit in the room we are planning as using as the main living area. We also don't want to drop $1,500 on a new couch at the moment. So I've been scouring the internet for ideas. This is what I've got so far...

This is the KARLSTAD loveseat and chase in Isunda Gray from IKEA. It's $978 and we would probably want a chair as well. I like the color a lot. We're hoping to go with lighter colored furniture to contrast the floors.

This is the Oregon Chaise Sectional from Dania, priced at $799. Again we'd probably need a chair to go along with it.

This one is probably more of a pipe dream. Also from Dania, this is there Wellington 2 Piece sectional. I love the look of it but it's $1,299 and probably wouldn't fit anyway.

Another one that is on the pricier side is this sofa from LA Furniture. It's $1,195.

If you know of any place that sells more modern style furniture at decent prices let me know. We could always get a cheap couch from one of the discount places around here, but I really want to have something that fits our style.

Slow and Steady...

Nothing ever goes as quickly as I'd like. I was really hoping to have the floors done and ready for pictures by today. Alas, it is not to be. Finishing up the flooring in the kitchen took a little longer than expected on Saturday so we didn't get to stain until Sunday. That being said, we did get a first coat of stain on all of the flooring that is done. It's really dark and I love it! The pictures below are before the excess stain is wiped off. I pretty much looks like black paint when you first apply it. I kind of freaked out a little when I first started applying it.

The plan this week is for one of us to work on the house each night. We're going to swap out nights so that we each get a little down time and then hopefully we can apply the sealer this weekend. We have a ton of stuff going on over the weekend, so it would be really good timing if this all works out. After that we'll put up the trim, move the saws and everything into the side of the house and finish up the small amount of flooring that they sit on now. Then we can move! Wow, it's seems so small when I write it down, but I know that's going to take another couple weeks.

Here are just a few pics of the first coat of stain. I think that it's going to look fantastic when it's all done. Second coat will darken it up and even it out and the top coat will even out the sheen.

I Am a Blogging Liar

I promised photos, like forever ago. I'm a liar as well as a terrible blogger. Such is life.

Status of things....

Floors are coming a long nicely. We probably have over 1/3 of the house done. Here are a few pictures to tide you over. They are taken from my phone so I apologize for the quality. When we are completely done with the floors I may post a tutorial on how we did them. 

I'm really thrilled with how they look so far. Actually, I'm pretty thrilled with how the entire house looks so far. We are staining the floors with Minwax Ebony (pictured below) and then most likely going to seal them with a product called Bona Mega Clear HD.

We bought all new appliances the other week also. The idea of having the washer I've always dreamed of has really motivated me to get all of this stuff done. The walls are painted, the ceilings are done, the kitchen cabinets are 85% complete, and the floors are well on their way. I really will try to get some comprehensive house photos up soon. I was looking at some of the first house photos and I can't believe how different things look. Also, power tools are super fun.