Finally Completed "Project Paper"

At the beginning of January IHeartOrganizing had a Paper Project Challenge.  At the end of the month everyone gets to link up to their blogs so that everyone can see what others did for the challenge.

Well I finally finished the challenge at the end of February.  Better late then never.

Before

After

I'm very exciting that I finally finished this challenge and that I'm finally organized.

Anyone else take this challenge?  Any other organized spaces?  Do share!!!

Check out her next challenge...february-challenge-project-photography, it's all about digital pictures storage and hard copy storage.  I can't wait to find the time for this challenge.  I'll get to it because it's important.  Make sure you check out all the post to do with the photography challenge....some really great ideas from Jen at IHeartOrganizing.  Thanks for sharing Jen. 

Thanks for stopping by.  I would love to hear from you, so please leave a message.  Have a great day everyone.

House Tour - How My Kitchen was Born - Final Product

Last project was finding a window treatment I loved.  Something that would stand the test of time.

I thought I would love some sort of a valance, but I just didn't love it.  So that had to go.  I knew I had to spend a little more money and get a custom Roman Shade. It's a large window, so I had to buy a custom size.

I searched around online.  I usually start with JCPenny, but I wasn't lovin' anything and for the price I knew I would have to spend and I wanted something with a pattern that I loved.  One that was traditional, but had some style.

I then found this Site & this Site.  You can order samples of most materials they offer.  10 free samples each time you order samples. They send a small, 4x4 about, sample so you can see the fabric type and the real color.  Each persons monitor will probably show a different color, so when it comes to spending money on something custom I know I want the right color.  I know when I received the samples, some of the colors were completely different from what I thought I liked on the screen.  I finally picked which one I loved and I order it.  Unfortunately they don't sell the fabric that I ordered anymore.  It is a Thomas Kinkade material, but it's not on their site anymore. Boo!  I did have a good experience with this online company though.

{I actually ordered from both of these sites. I will show you my other blinds once I put together a post on our Family Room}

 

Here are details of the rest of the kitchen.  If you have any questions about anything in my kitchen, please let me know.

 Note - I was not compensated in any way for this post.  I just wanted to share my great experience with both sites.

Thanks for stopping by.  I would love to hear from you, so please leave a message.  Thanks everyone.  Have a great weekend.

House Tour - The Bathroom

Welcome to our main Bathroom.  Actually our only bathroom...except for the one in the apartment downstairs that my Mom lives in.  When we bought the house the bathroom was already done, except the walls were white.  So we added a medium Sage Green to the walls and the accessories were sage green and a slate blue.  Here is what the bathroom looks like now.

Those are faux wood blinds that we bought at JCPenny.  Love them.

But after 3.5 years now, I want to change the color. I want it to feel more spa like, so I want a nice light Turquoise color for the walls now.  Here is where I found my inspiration.  Yes those are washcloths that I found at Home Goods.  And small little bowls I also found at Home Goods.  This was all the inspiration I needed.  I can paint this room by myself if hubby doesn't want to help me.  So the Turquoise in the washcloth will be the paint color, the beige is the tiles and countertop and I want to add in a little more white to the room.  Not sure about new towels yet, but I will find something we love.

Here are some pictures that inspired me for my bathroom makeover.

via http://www.decorpad.com/

So stay tuned for my mini bathroom make over.

Thanks for stopping by.  I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment.

House Tour - How My Kitchen was Born - Part II

So the construction began (3.5 years ago).  We painted the "Great Room" (Kitchen, Dining Room, Living Room and Hallway) all the same color because it is a completely open area and I wanted to make sure I kept things cohesive.  We used Benjamin Moore, Carlisle Cream (light tan).

Then we received a sample of the cabinets and the granite we chose.  The cabinets are a brownish cherry wood.  The granite is called "Blue Pearl".

Upper and Base cabinets were installed.  The kitchen was really starting to come together for us.  Our contractor was moving along very slowly.  See the white tape on the floor?  That is where our island will go.

Tip:  Use painters tape to map something out so that you can see how it will fit in your room.  Just take the measuresments of your piece and use paitners tape.  You can also do this for picture frames or art to see if you like it on the wall and where to hang it.  With painters tape you don't ruin your paint job.

Since we have cathedral ceilings, we wanted the cabinets around the stove taller.  Love the extra storage and love the design of this.

Then the island was installed.  The window in the backyard is the Living Room area.

Applicances were installed next and the backside of the island still needed it's panels.

Panels installed....now it looked like cabinets.

Then we needed to figure out our back splash.  So we went to the tile store and took some samples home with us.  Then we taped the tiles up with painters tape so we could get an idea how home the tiles might look.

Tip:  you can go to a tile store (at least on Long Island) and take home samples of times for a few days to see how they look in your home.

Close up of the glass tile.  We went with this glass tile and the gray slate 4x4 tile above.

Granite was installed.  We love it.  It has lots of silver and black in it.  We loved how the silver in the granite worked with the stainless steel appliances. And in this picture you can see our new hardwood floors.

The glass cabinets on the left are used for our china because we don't have enough room in our Dining Room for a china cabinet.

Close up of our granite.  "Blue Pearl."

We decided to go with a diamond pattern for our 4x4 gray slate tiles.  Again we used painters tape on the backside to figure out what we liked best.

Here is the back splash installed.

I have to take pictures of the way the Kitchen looks like now.  I've made a few tweaks to the kitchen over the 3.5 years that we have had the Kitchen.  Stay tuned for the complete after pictures with some in between pictures.  Rooms always evolve over time and I will show you how the Kitchen evolved.

Thanks for stopping by.  I would love to hear from you, so please leave a message.

Jen

House Tour - How My Kitchen was Born

This is how my New Kitchen began.....

These were the pictures we saw on our Multiple Listing site when we were looking for houses 3.5 years ago.  We were very excited that it was a nice looking white kichen.  We would just need some new flooring.  So we went to see the house.  Well the house was NOT well kept at all.  There were many animals in the house and there were even "urine" stains on the hardwood floors.  Yuck!!!  As nice as these cabinets might look in the pictures, they were really gross and dirty on the inside.  There was even nail polish on the black countertops.  At first we thought we would just replace the countertops, but that didn't work out because some of the base cabinets were not level and you can't install granite on unbalanced cabinets.  So we started to do some homework and see how much a new kitchen would cost us.  At the time we didn't know that much about kitchens and owning a home.  There are a lot of things we would do diffently the next time.

These pictures are from after we closed on the house.

You can see from this picture how small the kitchen footprint really is.  The pictures from the Multiple Lisitng Site were misleading because they use a wide angle lens that makes rooms look bigger then they really are.  Sneaky!!!  They call this a "G" shape kitchen layout.  I called it "this-is-not-enough-room-for-me-kitchen-layout".  So the planning really began.  The stove was so gross, I couldn't even think about ever cooking in it.  It had to go.....it all had to go.  We cleaned the frig and the next day when we came back to work on the house....the frig was dead.  HAHA!!!  I have to laugh about it now, but thank god we weren't living their for 4 months until all the work was done.

This picture is the cabinets that are right above the countertop on the left side of the first picture.  I didn't like these at all because you had to duck down to see anyone that was in the kitchen.  Plus they were mostly for display and I didn't want them.  Taking this down really opened the kitchen up.

Here we have the lovely peal and stick tiles over ceramic tiles (don't ask we still don't know why) and the wood floors that are in the Living Room.  That is the hallway to our bedrooms and bathroom.  And the ugly banister that we replaced.  More on that later.

We went to Home Depot and this is what they came up with for us. It's a free service and you don't have to buy. But please make sure you check with your local Home Depot before starting something like this and make sure it's still free because this was 3.5 years ago. We knew we wanted to open that "G" shaped layout and this is what they came up with. We also wanted an island in this kitchen.

 This is what the island would look like from inside the kitchen.  We knew we wanted something bigger and the room could handle something bigger too.  So we ask for one more idea for the island.

 This is what they came up with....love it.  We changed it a little once we hired our contactor, but we are glad we made the little change.  We didn't make a half wall like the drawing below, we just used the base cabinets with a slab of granite on top for the island.  We love it.  We also made little changes to the cabinet design as well.  More details on that soon.

The construction started about a month later after we hired a contractor.

All the cabinets are down and the flooring is gone as well.

This side of the room will be the Dining Room 

The hallway to the bedrooms with the flooring gone.  We installed all new hardwoods throughout this floor.

So that is a tour of how our new kitchen was born.  Next post I will take you through the "During" and the "After".

Thanks for stopping by.  Please leave a comment, I would love to hear from you.  Have a great weekend everyone!!!