31 Days of Pinterest Projects - Day 24 - Mudroom Paint Reveal

Part of the reason I was MIA last week was due to the fact that I was painting my little heart out over here.

I finished painting the umpteenth coat of white on the walls and trim {if any of you are going to attempt to paint wood paneling, please beware, it WILL take a gazillion hours of coating and recoating...and waiting for a sunny day so you can see that you need to recoat yet again...LOL}. I also finished the second coat on the shelving unit and grabbed a roller on probably one of the last warm summery days of the year and painted the exterior doors of the mudroom.

Check it out. . .{we still need to put the light fixtures back up, add in the bench under the shelving unit and install a cabinet and hanging rod over the washer/dryer, but after having this area of our home dysfunctional since March, it is great to have it looking this done again}.

I was so thrilled to find that colorful rag rug that tied together all the colors in my vision for $20 just last week.

And yes, we went with ORANGE exterior doors. We discussed it forever and finally Dave said we should just go bold with the orange. It's different and it takes guts. And I'd seen lots of orange and blue on Pinterest and I loved it on there.

We did have a freak-out moment when we first started rolling that orange paint on next to some neon green Frog Tape when we thought it looked like our local Mexican restaurant (La Palma) but after removing the tape and the paint drying, we love it. We think it looks fabulous with the silver-gray siding and it's one of our favorite colors! As an added bonus, it supports the local Tigers :)

Here's my view from the kitchen :) I absolutely love all the bold colors with the crisp white walls. And that oil rubbed bronze door knob just makes me SO happy.

But I think the shelving unit is my absolute favorite part. The color is a greenish-gray that I picked up in the oops section of Walmart for less than $5. I think the paint color, the beadboard that we added to the sides, and the oil rubbed bronze spray painted hooks really create just the vintage vibe that I was going for. 

I had been planning to purchase a few wire baskets for corralling our necessities on the shelves but when the time came, I was feeling thrifty and decided not to spend the money and to instead grab baskets and containers that we already owned from all over the house. I'm loving the collected look I've ended up with.

Another great touch is the King Feed yardstick I just sat up on top of the hooks and the lantern that Dave scored from his brother's storage shed when they cleaned it out last week. Just fun little details that make it so special.

Now, for kicks, let's look back at what this space looked like when we moved in. We've come a long way, haven't we?

Isn't it amazing what a little paint can do? Do you all love it?

And now that I'm on a painting roll I'm itching to move onto the living room trim! 

What's your next painting project?

Kitchen Summarized & Last Roomspiration Link Party

Today I'm going to attempt to summarize our kitchen remodel into one post (which is hard since I blogged about it for an entire month back in August!).

For those of you who read all those posts, bear with me. For those of you who haven't, be sure to click on the links I'm supplying throughout the post for more details on the various aspects. I'm also linking up this post to the Roomspiration Blog Hop Kitchen Edition on the DIY Showoff today. If you're stopping by from over there, be sure to check out the 31 Days to a Clutter Free Home series while you're here!

Of all the rooms we've remodeled in our little 3 bed/2 bath ranch, the Kitchen was the most ....well... the most everything. It was the most expensive, the most extensive, the most time intensive...but it is by far and away the best transformation. Everyone who walks into our home just says "wow" when they see the kitchen. And for good reason. You really don't expect to see a kitchen this nice in this small ranch house in the middle of an Indiana cornfield. And then you find out that we DIY-ed our way through the whole thing and it's even more amazing.

So, let's get down to it!  Here are the before photos - Dark. Dirty. Disfunctional. Disgusting. Diagonal-faux-wood-grain.

And here are the after photos:

And here's how we did it...

First of all, we decided to bust out the wall between the kitchen and front room to open up the living areas in our home and also bring more natural light into the kitchen. This also created a great spot for a breakfast bar.

Then we spent a great deal of time determining a new kitchen floorplan. 

What really helped in this process was when I spent time imagining where I would store every single item we owned in the new kitchen (small appliances, dishes, food, etc.). I literally measured the size of the crockpot, the iced tea maker, etc. so I would be sure to have a cabinet that would hold these things. This helped me to realize that we definitely needed to add a tall pantry cabinet on one side of the room. 

Once we had a layout, we looked into buying cabinets from Lowe's but were disappointed in the quality for the price we would have to pay so we decided to build our own cabinets with the help of Dave's older brother, Patrick. Talk about a DIY project, huh???

You can read more about that process in great detail here and here. We basically just studied a lot of cabinet displays that we liked at Lowe's to decide what we were going for, how we were going to build it, etc. Then we bought some tools and rough cut cherry and got to work. Nearly 2 years of long weekends and vacation days later, we were done. :)

Here are the boxes built and delivered to our house from Patrick's shop a state away. At that point, they still needed to be installed (obviously), stained, polyurethaned, and the doors still needed to be built and installed. 

They ended up sitting right in that spot for about 3 months while we gutted the kitchen, re-drywalled (let's just say wallpaper borders are NOT my friend), and updated electrical (we added 5 can lights and replaced an old ceiling fan with a flush mount light), etc.

The week before Christmas, our two brother-in-laws, Rod & Linn, came to the rescue and helped Dave finish the drywall and install these bad boys. Here's what the kitchen looked like when they arrived.

Here they are working on it...

And here's what it looked like when they left. What a tremendous blessing those guys were to my sanity!

Shortly after that, Dave got to work on the moldings. Our friend, Mark, helped Dave run the crown model in his woodshop.  We ended up painting the dentil molding portion (the blocks) black. It looks very nice with the cherry cabinets.

And here's the first cabinet with it installed.

And the second. This step made a HUGE difference.

Here you can see all the cabinets stained, with the crown mold (minus the black painted dentil mold).

We purchased all new Frigidaire Gallery stainless steel appliances. I am incredibly pleased with that purchase. They have a nice protective coating that does not fingerprint like other stainless steel appliance suites I've seen before.

After a few more months, Patrick was finished building all the cabinet doors. He brought them to us and we stained and polyurethaned them. Here they are hanging in the Great Room drying.

In the photo below, the cabinets had all been polyurethaned (thanks to my sister-in-law Michelle helping me one long weekend!), the black dentil mold had been added, and all the doors were installed (minus one that was the wrong size and had to be re-built).

And here you can see the bottom molding that we later added.  It helps conceal the under cabinet lights and adds another level of luxury. 

As if DIY-ing the cabinets wasn't enough, we also decided to build our own countertops. (We apparently have a thing against going the easy route.) We considered many materials but loved the look of granite, so we ended up using granite floor tiles to achieve the same look for a fraction of the cost.

We chose 16" square travertine tiles for the floors. The best feature of these floors is that they are the exact color of dirt so they don't have to be cleaned too often!

We call this part the "waterfall" where the tiles just fall right into the sunken Great Room. Levi loves playing there.

For the tile backsplash, we chose a glass accent tile to be placed between the granite tile countertops and the 2" travertine tile (that matches the travertine floor).

Dave even cut rounded tiles around the bottom molding on the cabinets under the microwave. Do you see it? He's so detail oriented. Gotta love it!

In the end, with all our DIY steps along the way, our kitchen remodel only cost $6,950. Overall, I think it was an incredible deal even though it was an incredible amount of work. See my little financial comparison post where I tried to estimate what it could have cost us if we'd hired someone to do the same thing and bought custom cherry cabinets and granite slab countertops.

And just in case you don't remember, this is what the kitchen used to look like. 

It sure has come a long way, hasn't it?

Day 3 - Office Clutter

Welcome to Day 3 of the series, 31 Days to a Clutter Free Home.

Today I'm going to repost a post {with a few edits} from back in August that deals with paper clutter and condensing our home office from an entire room down to a small computer armoire. I'm also linking this up to The Blooming Hydrangea today for the Roomspiration Link Party Closets & Nooks edition.

This is what our home office once looked like. It was a hodge podge of cheap hand-me-down furniture, plastic containers, a dumping ground for random papers and other miscellany, a mess, really.

These photos were taken partway through my pregnancy with Levi. When nesting hit, I decided to attack this room. I spent days, maybe even weeks, sorting and purging. After all, I was making up for 7 years of neglect. This was the room where the door was usually closed. Where we just shoved everything to make the rest of the house look "nice" when someone was coming over.

I hated being in there and it showed. I never went in to do anything, sort, file, purge, etc. So I ended up getting rid of tons of stuff. I searched online for all sorts of tips on decluttering paperwork. I found sites like this with helpful info on what papers you can really throw away.

I had to make a decision to be absolutely ruthless. I threw away cards, letters, love notes, credit card statements, receipts from 12 years before, all my college class notes and paperwork related to my short 4 year stint as a Civil Engineer, etc. We had always pretty much kept EVERYTHING so both of us had A LOT to go through. I did allow myself to keep one file box full of momentos like cards from my sweet grandmother, who has passed away, but for the most part I forced myself to part with lots of stuff. It was a rather cleansing experience, honestly. I knew that once I had a baby and moved onto a new stage in my life, I would not have the time to go through all of that stuff and it was time to wrap this time of my life all up neatly in a box, saving just a few items that would remind me of my childhood, teenage years, college years and young married life. Nowadays it is fun to look through those items and also nice that I no longer have an entire closet devoted to the past. It is nice that our closet is "living in the present" now.

We burnt tons of boxes and trash bags full of papers, the junky Sauder computer desk (that I had gotten for free from a coworker). In the end it looked better but I still didn't like being in there.

So when we finished remodeling our Great Room, we decided that we wanted to have our computer in there since we don't have a TV and like to sometimes watch movies on our computer. And that would free up our spare bedroom for guests. However, we did not want our messy home office stuff to be strung all over the Great room. At that point, we had our computer set up on an antique wooden table and were still using the beige metal filing cabinet. Those two pieces of furniture would add NOTHING to our Great room. They would just make it look cluttered.

That's when we got the idea of a computer armoire. We could keep our computer and all our files inside it and then shut the doors when we didn't want to see it. But that meant even more purging would have to take place. So once again, I went through our files and office supplies, and determined what else we could live without. Eventually I was able to let go of even more stuff.

So nowadays, this is what our home office looks like! You can't even tell it's there, can you? That's the idea.

All our office related stuff is stashed neatly in this armoire in the corner of the Great Room.

I purchased this computer armoire off Craigslist. It is VERY sturdy and I'm very satisfied with it. This is a piece of furniture that "works very hard" for me. That is what I love most about it. And it forces me to keep on top of paper clutter or it won't all fit inside this bad boy and then it starts taking over our Great room, which is totally unacceptable. Here's what it looks like inside:

On the inside of the left door is a bulletin board. I ended up holding this magazine file up with thumbtacks to contain our "Items to File" pile. Underneath I have a little coupon organizer (also thumbtacked to the bulletin board) to file random notes that I'm saving and to do lists.

On the inside of the other door is a dry erase board and 2 slots for papers. In the top one is an accordian file from Target (so pretty, huh?) that contains our bills and budget forms for our weekly "Budget Meetings".

And the bottom contains my planner and notebook of blog post ideas.

Above the computer are some cute little cubbies. I have a clear drawer organizer in one cubby containing all types of office supplies (post its, staples, paperclips, etc.) and underneath is a little drawer for our stapler, calculator, printer ink cartridge, video camera, etc.

Next to that are cubbies containing mailing supplies, writing utensils, receipts and other miscellaneous office supplies.

On top of the computer tower is a little purple container 

that holds extra printer paper.

In the far right cubby is one thing that I'm particularly happy with. I had all kinds of miscellaneous cords and batteries for cameras, ipods, etc. I had them all in a drawer at one point and they were always mixed up. I decided on a whim one day to use some little Gerber baby food bowls with lids to contain all that clutter. The 4 containers fit nicely into this cubby alongside the 3 hole punch and rulers, etc.

And the clear lids make it very easy to identify which container I need.

Next to the monitor is a basket of movies and a jam jar that holds pens and scissors.

Underneath the pullout keyboard tray on the left is a shelf for our printer and a file drawer. On the right is another box of files and a cute green box for checks. I'd love to have a cuter file box but this is what I have for now. {I have since purchased a green KASSETT box from IKEA to replace the ugly file box.}

I am so pleased with our new system. It is very handy to have the home office in our Great room where we can all spend time together and condensing it to a small armoire was a fantastic idea because it forces me to keep the amount of paperwork clutter in our home to an absolute minimum.

I always loved ideas of "Cloffices" (closets turned into offices) like Jen's from IHeart Organizing

or Elizabeth's from The Mustard Ceiling

or Ange's from The Blooming Hydrangea

but I personally did not have a spare closet in my home to turn into an office space. For me, the computer armoire was the best solution. I'd also love to someday beautify it a bit more like this armoire I found on Pinterest:

I could line it with fabric, wrapping paper, wallpaper, etc. or even just paint or stencil it. Anything to really make the background pop and make it a more fun space to work in. But for now, we're just rolling with it the way it is. And it works really well!

I just can't believe this amazing transformation only cost me about $120 ($100 for the armoire from Craigslist, $13 for the accordian file from Target and $7 for the green box from Walmart). The rest of the containers I already owned.  What do you think? Are you ready to tame the paper monster that is your home office? How refreshing would it be to reduce your paper clutter down to a small armoire or closet? Or even just to get it put away so it's not taking over your kitchen table or nightstand. Now is the time to say goodbye to all that junk and HELLO to your reclaimed space.

I linked this up to Amanda's Serenity Now Weekend Bloggy Reading Link up Party and it was also featured on Jen's blog back in August!