Painted Stripes

It happened a while ago, but I spent a few weeknights painting all the brown trim in our family room (by "all" I mean every single window frame, door frame and piece of molding) a creamy white. Along the way, I also painted and spruced up the half bathroom. On a whim I painted horizontal stripes in the same creamy white as all the trim and a super light tan that went on the family room walls.

Before (horrendous photo quality):

 After:

Family Photo Wall

One of the most neglected projects on my list has been organizing all of our family photos. We have photos everywhere, nothing is categorized and I'm petrified we're going to accidentally lose precious baby photos somehow. So, over the past few months, I've been tackling this seemingly monumental task and decided to frame and hang some of my favorites.

The metal "N" is from a little antique store in New Hampshire, the "&" is from Michael's and has been "antiqued" by yours truly and the horseshoe is one of the many we've discovered in the old barn behind our house.

Kitchen Facelift

Wow - I haven't posted anything for almost a year!?!? I did NOT mean to do that. Luckily, just because this blog has suffered some abuse, doesn't mean our house has too. We've actually been really busy fixing things up and I have a lot to post.

Starting with...the kitchen! Since we'll eventually build a new one when we add on to the back of the house, I just wanted to refresh things in the existing kitchen so it was more functional, brighter and was more my speed, style-wise.

When we moved in, there was wallpaper (which I loved, but it was old and falling off the wall in places), a bunch of mismatching cabinets and the lighting was horrible.

Some before shots taken with a horrible camera phone:

 Ugh!!!

 Halfway through!

Since this is a temporary solution, I had to stick to a budget (boo). But, I did it (yea) and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

 I stripped the wallpaper, repaired the walls and painted it 'You Are My Sunshine', Benjamin Moore.

 Since the cabinets didn't match and it was driving me crazy, I painted the builder-grade walnut cabinets and replaced all the hardware. A new schoolhouse flush mount ceiling light makes it nice and bright when the sun's not shining.

 Behind the sink and the stove, I put up Roth Allen textured wallpaper and painted it with Martha Stewart's metallic silver paint. I sealed it all with a Martha Stewart gloss coat. The end effect is pretty close to how a tin back splash would look a portion of the cost.

 New curtains and a cute sign found at a local antique shop.

 The shelf was already there, so I just spruced up the baskets and framed a favorite card. One of the major splurges was on new stools from Ballard.

 The baskets under the kitchen island hold grocery bags and recycling. I hung tin buckets from IKEA next to the stove for all the cooking utensils.

 A new blackboard wall with chalk holder (Home Depot paint tin). It's a hit with the kiddo.

 Close-up of the back splash and more IKEA hardware to hang sponges and keep odds and ends. To give the walnut cabinets a bit more 'oomph', I put up paintable bead board wallpaper (more Roth and Allen) in between the side molding.

All in all, I only bought two gallons of paint and one of primer, a few things from IKEA, the wallpaper and metallic paints for the back splash, three stools (on sale and with a coupon), fabric for curtains, hardware and bead board wallpaper. Total cost: $560!!!