no time

for a long post. we are still squeezing in reno work upstairs, my sister's wedding is this saturday, and i am officially 24 weeks pregnant and not getting any smaller! here are some scenes from our lives during these past weeks:

we're replacing all the doors upstairs (there are seven), so ben and i scoped out bmo for a deal. the tagline is "the handyman's candy store" and it is so true. that place is addicting. we found one door for the linen closet——solid maple for 75 beans. not bad.

ben convinced me to splurge on the dollar bottle of sprecker bbq sauce at menards. we have fancy taste.

my love for menards grew (is that possible?) when they replaced our two broken stanley tape measures for FREE. free people. i was pretty excited.

so excited that i got into a floor sample bathtub.

 loony tunes t-shirt and all. like i said, we're fancy.

i hosted another shower and lunch for my sister and made these simple cheesecake bars. recipe here.

and i got crafty to make some candy-filled favors for the guests. instructions here.

you probably won't hear from me until after the wedding. au revoir!

when life hands you paint chips . . .

make art.

or at least that is what someone with borderline hoarding tendencies would say. and that person would be me.

i made this from paint samples, because apparently i can't bear to throw them away. kind of the same reasons for this project. hmmm.

but making this diy paint chip art was a motivating factor for finishing the art wall in our living room because it filled an odd gap in my design. i finished the art wall last year, i think? i can't remember. i had the frames assembled on the floor upstairs for a months before i finally went for it and put some nails in the wall.

this art wall was super fun to assemble, in part because it is a collection of found items with a few fun pieces i've purchased over the years. and most of the frames i already owned, i think. here are some close-ups from left to right, and then i'll tell you stories/sources for each piece.

ok. sources.

1. from the cover of a catalog. // 2. a freebie that came with a print ordered from blancucha on etsy. // 3. lemon yellow citrus birds print from sugarloop on etsy. // 4. love candy print in bubblegum from madebygirl. // 5. a pair of toy spy sunglasses (ben's!) mounted on premier prints chipper slub yellow fabric. // 6. a ribbon from the handle of an anne taylor loft bag. // 7. translucent blue birds print from sugarloop on etsy. // 8. diy paint chip art by me. // 9. a freebie notecard that came with prints ordered from sugarloop on etsy. i wrote in "for freedom Christ has set us free!" which is part of galatians 5:1, a favorite verse.

i guess the point of this story is that frame-able stuff is all around. only three of the nine things on that wall are actual art prints i bought. the rest were freebies that came with those prints or found items. so think outside the box and get creative with all the wonderful bits and bobs around the house!

***i must give credit to emily henderson for her ideas and motivational power. do you watch secrets from a stylist on hgtv? i catch episodes online from time to time, and seeing the composition of art in this episode definitely motivated me to stop procrastinating and just put these pictures up in a freeform, sprawling way. love that show!

dresser refurb

good morning, lads and lasses!

this is an old project that i finished last year, but if you've been here a while, you know how i roll. i still owe you pictures of our master bath, which we finished in august of 2010, but that's for another day.

ben and i inherited this old dresser from his family's cabin. it's a really fun dresser with a great shape, but unfortunately, the dresser itself wasn't in such great shape. it was plenty sturdy, it just had some finish issues. but i could see past the braces, glasses, and frumpy wardrobe. i knew we could turn her into student council president. vote for summer! i think i will.

i thought about painting her (yes, it's a she) a fun color. yellow? aqua? no, no. i thought it best to stick to neutral since we planned on putting her in our bedroom with the bright red headboard. so i rummaged through our substantial paint stash and came up with a way to do this for free using leftover paint from other projects.

first, i gave her a good vacuum and scrub inside and out. then i left her out to dry and it rained. oops. then like a month went by with her back in the garage so i washed her again.

sand, prime, sand, paint, sand, paint, varnish. or something like that. i reused the old hardware making this (i think?) a free project. the best kind. voila!

she cleans up nice, don't you think? i like her little scalloped skirt. and the paint treatment goes with our bedside tables even though the furniture is different.

we have a very substantial closet attached to our master bath, so we didn't need to use this dresser for clothes. since i cleaned out and organized the linen closet, i can move the bed linens in here and have them that much closer to the bed. i've got jewelry and a temporary mirror up top, but as always, a work in progress.

adios!

mini triumphs in organizing

happy friday, everyone! has it been a good week? i see almost-60-degree weather in the forecast for this weekend here in minnesota, so i am jumping for joy!

i am not an organized person. it just never comes easy to me. i'm going to go ahead and label myself a creative type with a creative (aka scattered) mind. ahem.

when we moved into our current home, the entire main level was torn up and nothing went where it was supposed to go. i'm talking stove in the basement, dishes in an upstairs closet, and an entire room downstairs full of empty boxes and packing supplies. as we finish projects and create new spaces in our home, i spend a good amount of time trying to untangle the mess of moving into a house that was being renovated. catch my drift?

but i want to be an organized person. maybe it is the nesting instinct, but i feel it heavily now. when i was clearing out the upstairs linen closet for the reno and realized that we have medicine and toiletries in at least three different places in our house, it was time to act. fast.

i pulled everything out so that i could combine like with like and toss expired items.

now you and me are bff because you've seen the contents of my medicine cabinet. in all honesty, i did crop this photo . . .  i have some dignity, i guess. ;)

after a quick run to target for some extra plastic bins, a motivated evening when i realized i didn't want to step over this hazardous pile during my midnight trip to the bathroom, and finding a few blank tags i made years ago, we now have a crazy organized linen closet. behold!

everything is so easy to find! i mentioned that i've been couponing, and one of the goals of the method is to stock up on your staples when you can get a good deal. so now i have a great system for organizing my stockpile. and it's a system that ben can understand, too, which isn't always the case. :)

here's to more organizing before baby comes!

upstairs reno: demo days

welcome back!

after a few weekends of solid progress, we are officially carpetless upstairs AND my STUDly husband took the pink bathroom down to the STUDs (with help——see below!). there have been a few surprises, both of the good and bad variety.

surprise #1: the hardwood floors under the carpet in the purple room are in terrible shape. we knew there was wood underneath, but we didn't know there would be a huge spot of water damage in the middle of the room with tons of gapping between the planks. i've been taking bids to have the floors repaired and refinished, which would involve a good amount of patching, and it is spen-D. the contractors said it would be cheaper to just replace the whole floor, so i think we'll end up putting down carpet again, which is fine by me for a kid's room (this will be the nursery).

but the question remains: do we tear up the wood or carpet over it? i personally want to tear up the wood and replace any portions of the subfloor that are damaged. that's just my style: do it now because we won't want to do it later!

surprise #2: the tile under the carpet in the blue room looks suspiciously like asbestos tile. my heart just sank when i saw it. there was already a broken piece (eek!) so we sent it and the mastic underneath in for testing.

we just heard back this week that the tile is NOT asbestos, but the mastic contains small amounts of it. the guy we've been working with was very helpful in explaining to me what this means and what exactly might be hazardous. the asbestos in the mastic is only harmful if we rip up the tile and take something abrasive to the mastic to release it as a dust (which we wouldn't do). we were reassured that carpeting over the tile is a very safe option, especially using the existing carpet tacks. when i told our guy that i am pregnant and this is a room kids will eventually sleep in, he said that if he were in the same situation, he would feel very good about carpeting over the tile. that was very helpful. nonetheless, when we sell the house, we must disclose the asbestos in the mastic, so ben and i are going to take bids on having it all removed just to see.

surprise #3: the stair treads and risers are hardwood! this gets an exclamation because it is exciting to me. i was thinking it would just be plywood underneath that nasty carpet.

after a few hours with these tools, i ended up with a few blisters but staple-free stairs.

these will be refinished/painted/a combo of the two. this view is literally the first thing you see when you walk in the front door, so i want to do something special. i'm thinking of a DIY runner . . . something with stripes . . . yes. i think so.

the bathroom yielded no surprises, as far as i know. our friend bert (of bookshelf fame) came over and like a superstar demoed with ben. i am pregnant and not allowed to do such things——even though i do enjoy a good demo day every once in a bit (see this post) my clinic said no way (and with good reason). they have me on a sort of modified rest so i am taking it easy.

my pregnancy-safe contribution was to sweep up and shop-vac afterward. (with a mask on, of course.) i love using the big shop vac. so satisfying.

that's where we stand. and did i mention that i scored a granite vanity top and sink at menards for $57? i did. and i'm very excited about it.

more to come! we move slowly, but we've got a deadline (baby comes in july, Lord willing!) so we will be hustling!