Dining Room...again

My inspiration more...2 years ago. I hated the little tiny mirrors though, wanted simpler crown molding, and to personalize it MY way. There are 2 things left undone...I'll give a prize to the first person to notice which 2 things still need done! (And if you find something that I hadn't noticed, I might have to hurt you!

before...

after...(i really wish I'd shown the crown molding in this picture! UGH!)

Here's one with the crown... the mirror (and in another pic you'll see 3 small orange canvasses) are from Kmart...(i hate Kmart!) the sconces are from ebay. It took me HOURS to find the right ones. The curtains don't match but I bet you'd never notice (and no, that isn't one of the 2 things), one set is from Amazon and one from JC Penny...

Here's another random pic...notice my 2 huge pans hanging between the windows. I was nervous about that idea...i LOVE it. So convenient.

kitchen...(notice my collection of utensils on my countertop has grown exponentially. While I don't like taking counterspace, I do love me some Pampered Chef!!!)


Notice the carpet in this one...

NO MORE CARPET!!!! (also, here are those 3 little canvasses...fake canvasses is what i mean)

anther random...

These last 2 are really hard to get good pictures of with a point and shoot camera...but you can see a big difference still.
before...


All in all, i think I kicked the original inspiration photo's BUTT. Better mirror(didn't know all along what i was gonna do, but since i did do a mirror..it is better...)Better crown. And personalized perfectly "A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen" (even if it does drive me completely nuts!!!) And to finish it off...my hubby used a ceiling pan rack so I could hang my pans in the cupboard. I LOVE it.

My kitchen might not be big, but I think I have the best one.

Before and Afters! (Finally!)

This first picture is just an example of how badly our house needed siding! (For those who think we just had an extra $15,000 sitting there ready to pay for sidding. LOL)

Before...this was literally taken the day before they started tearing the house apart.

after...we need some house numbers!

before...

after....this one shows the great need for shutters!

before...

after...

before...

after...

before...

after...

Now when I'm at the park with friends and they ask which house is mine I can say "The green one!" instead of... "well...it kinda looks like the others..it's the 3rd one in if count starting with the blue one...etc.."

The last few weeks

It's been a while. But I always say that. So I'll skip to the next part.

So the last blog I talked about how I had company coming THE NEXT DAY. Well, that went okay. I got the house cleaned, and everything ready. I got all the meals mostly prepared, and then I got sick. Yup. Some host. I had some kind of flu bug that turned into bronchitis-which is still blessing me with it's presence. My family, so far, has been spared. But, even though I was sick (I always get sick when they come. It's enough to wonder if they poisen me!) Anyway, it was good to visit with Bill and Nate again. I missed Rachel a lot though.

Also, about the siding. You guessed it. We did NOT get our siding yet. The update "We'll have it this Thursday." I will believe it when I see it. But this time I have enough hope to actually go out and take the "before" pictures. I'm so excited to see how much it will transform the look of this house!

Now for some Kadenisms:

Kaden- to Katelyn as she scratched his legs- "Katelyn no more scratching. STOP scratching" slight pause..."No scratching! I CAN SCRATCH MYSELF!" the kid cracks me up.

Backing out of the driveway, and Kaden says, "Mom, tomorrow I'm going to climb up the garage door and get up on the roof of the house." silent pause. "Okay?" Okay..i totally thought he was kidding. Nope, he REALLY is gonna.

(Out of the blue) "Mom, when I get a little bit bigger, and that tree gets a little bit smaller, THEN I'm going to climb up it!" -Kaden

On to Kate. She is still refusing to talk...but getting better and getting her point across through screams. She gets so mad when we try to get her to at least do some sign language. She is definitely a stubborn thing. She's had a fever lately from teething...so we're hoping for a 6th tooth soon. They sure do come slow for her.

Maybe the next time I update I'll have pictures of a green house???

Before and Afters

Here are some before pictures. They aren't the best...and I jumped into this project without knowing how much we were gonna end up doing so i didn't take before pics! (It all started as a tear off some wallpaper and paint project.) Notice the carpet in the dining room, and the ugly linoleum (which had lots of paint spilled on it) in the kichen! I wish I had up close of how BADLY done everything was. And I hope these pictures do justice to the absolute drab-ness of the whole room.




It turned into a tear off some wallpaper, fix some walls, paint, tear out some floor, tear out some more floor, tear out even more floor, put in a floor and replace the trim, and paint again project. Luke may never let me start something again! Here are the afters. (We still have some decor to find, some curtains and rods to hang, and a new chandelier to find...)



this last photo is to show off the bookshelf Luke made me, and the perfect baskets I found for it. Also, that wall is white to help offset so much orange :)

Oh So Excited!

Today is the day. THE DAY. It's been a loooooong time coming and I'm so very very excited!

Today is the day the dining room is declared DONE.

(With the exception of needing a new chandelier, one more wall decoration, and some curtains......ok...so maybe a project is never DONE.)

BUT, it will be painted and the hutches moved back in. I will have my bedroom back (read as- I will have my junk heap to turn back into a bedroom.) I will be able to find a place in said (buried) hutches for my new Pampered Chef glasses...so they don't have to sit on my counter anymore.

The other day someone made this comment: "I'm not really an orange person, but this is coming together and looking GREAT!!" I was thrilled. You don't have to love orange-but I hope it still looks good. Kind of like how I'm not really a pink or purple person, but I can still appreciate when it does look good!

I'll have before/during/after pictures up SOON!!!!

Now Luke can move on to fixing the 2 chairs sitting there unused. And getting the windows we're storing put in, and you know...more fixing up of the house.

But first maybe we'll enjoy a down weekend!

Kitchen Floor

The other day Luke started tearing out the flooring in the kitchen. And by tearing, I mean that literally. Kaden LOVED it. Isn't that a little boys dream? To destroy. And to be helped in destroying by none other than Daddy.

So far "we" (that's a he-we, big time) have one layer of linolium off, 1 layer of plywood off, and 2 layers of linolium to go. Possibly another layer of plywood depending on what we find. I am feeling bad for Luke and will be buying him a BIG SCREEN TV as a thank you with my Pampered Chef money. I know he could have lived with the flooring that was in for years and years, so he's doing this project just for me.

ANYWAY, so the morning after the first layer got torn off Kaden was walking into the kitchen. Right as he was about to step in he stopped-one foot in the air-and exclaimed "OH NO!! Floor BROKEN!"

For how good of a memory he normally has, I was surprised he didn't remember. It was adorable though.

Once again, the floor has turned into more work than we hoped. Yet, again, not more than we probably expected. We've learned that, at least in this house, probably nothing was done to our standards and will be a pain to redo! It's going to get harder and harder to convince Luke to do projects! THAT, or the thank you's will have to get better and better...maybe i shouldn't be starting out with a TV! I'll be posting many before-during-and after pictures as this project progresses. Stay tuned!

Guest Bathroom "Improvements"

This week has been quite eventful. For the past month or so we've been working on tearing off wallpaper, patching walls, texturing, and painting. In the process, we've had to move our fridge at least 9 zillion times. (At least.) Turns out, the LAST time we moved our fridge back into place we forgot to check to make sure it was All Systems Go.

Apparently, it was not.

Guest bathroom before:


Thankfully, Luke was in the guest bathroom about 4 days later and noticed a dripping sound. Earlier in the week I had noticed that it smelled wet, but kept trying to find out why to no avail. He was able to trace the dripping sound up to our refrigerator-specifically-the pipe that connects to our ice maker.

Fantastic.

In the process of trying to find out the extend of the damage the sheetrock on the bathroom side of the wall collapsed. Had we touched the other side (our downstairs family room side) it also would have collapsed.

Right now we have fans blowing, and the toilet out...hoping to have it "workable" (if you don't mind a whole in the sheetrock behind you) for our company who is coming on Thursday.

These mishaps never occur at "convenient" times, do they? We are just thanking God that the damage wasn't worse, there is no mold, and we found it in time to fix it ourselves. Also, about 18 months ago I had torn off all the wallpaper in hopes of painting, and that project got put on hold indefinitely. I am so thankful I hadn't painted/redecorated only to find this mess!

Also. We have decided that we may never have gotten back to the project that is the guest bath (for various reasons, mainly that it was done as horribly as the dining room, and who wants to face that? AND out of sight, out of mind, right?) This will encourage us to tackle that project. Unfortunately, our dining room is on hold as well. I'd truly love to finish that before we switch our attention!

So, this post has a label called "home improvement"...in realization that it gets worse before it gets better....

Guest Bathroom after:

High on Paint?

I ♥ my orange dining room!

and it doesn't even have trim on yet!!!! (here are some views of the work in progress. YOu have to wait to the end to see the paint!)

This is an old pic from right after we moved in. Looks like an innocent wall, doesn't it???? No, it was textured paint over very awfully done wallpaper. It was an eyesore up close. The worse areas were behind the fridge (pic will show later) beside the patio door, and between the light switches (there was just nothing between them. Kind of weird looking...) Not the greatest pic...
The end of this wall (the part that is discouragingly HORRIBLE...)is behind the fridge. Eventually that wall, and the wall behind my counters and stove will be covered by beadboard and white paint. BUT, it does give you a taste of what we were facing for the rest of the walls! (its truly amazing what wallpaper can hide!!!)Also, you will notice, in this picture the area between light switches now has sheetrock/tape/mud/texture/primer!
This picture just shows some more areas of new sheetrock. I wish I'd taken more pictures, but that's how it goes with 2 little kids and a full camera card.
We have put a lot more work into this dining room than we'd hoped. But, honestly, probably not more than was expected. My previous blog with the label "home improvement" tells of the....difficulties we experienced. Unfortunately, I didn't get good pictures of HOW bad it was, and I don't want to go into it here. I'll just say, the pictures you see where we had to patch and add whole new sheetrock were un-salvage-able. The other areas, Luke (with some help from his brother Justin) were able to patch, and retexture.

This is us choosing colors. I chose the one on the right!
Then Luke painted: 3 coats of orange, 2 coats of Polar Bear white.
It looks like NEW!
...well...new without trim...I guess. (there will be a chair rail where the paint meets (obviously) and crown moulding, and floor trim...and hopefully laminate wood flooring!!!!
AND NOW (drumroll, please!) here are the long awaited, still not finished pictures of the dining room!





UM. Can I just LIVE in my dining room now?

Happenings in the Antonich Household

This week we are watching my nephews Collin and Warren. It has been fun and Kaden has thoroughly enjoyed the company! Even Kate has loved the extra action! Their parents, Justin and Rose, stayed through the weekend with us. Justin and Luke were able to finish mudding the new sheetrock and all the places that needed patches, retextured, primed, and now are dining room has 2 big orange wall tester blobs on it.

AM I REALLY GOING TO DO ORANGE?!

Justin and Rose left Monday, during the kids' naptime, to head over to Rapid City to attend an AMF Missionary Conference. I had cooking club that night, so I spent the afternoon cleaning up from all the mudding/texturing/extra dishes from company mess. The kids played and played and it was actually easier than if I'd just had Kaden and Kate!

Today I have another cooking club, but I'm hoping to get the kitchen/dining room clean before it gets warm out. Then when it's nice I hope to take the kids out to play in the pool!

Justin and Rose will be back tomorrow afternoon, and the time with the kids will be all to short :(
Back to the walls...I will post pictures soon of the progress and colors!

Home Depot Broke My Wallet

Yes, you read right. Figuratively speaking, Home Depot broke my wallet. It was unkind to us today as we purchased many tools, supplies, and gadgets for the near future. We are still working on the wallpaper removal project. There are moments when I wonder what I've gotten myself into, and moments where I am just so, SO excited to finish. I has become almost monumental. We have now taken down all the trim around windows, doors, and floor, since the wallpaper was on, under, or otherwise hindered by it. Most of it is junk because between wallpaper and paint it would be more work than it's worth to try to clean up. Thankfully, I had already decided i wanted to put up crown molding, so when it became a must at least I wasn't irritated. The previous owners painted all over the ceilings (and by all over, I guess I don't really mean ALL OVER. but at least an inch into the ceiling..with lovely TEXTURED gray/tan paint.) The only other option would be to paint the ceiling which reaches over the stairs, into the living room, and beyond. I ♥ crown molding.

SINCE we have the trim off....I am *hesitantly* trying to convince Luke to go ahead and do the flooring as well. I would LOVE to have laminate wood-looking flooring in the kitchen and dining room. It would require pulling up carpet to certain point in the entry, and pulling up the kitchen linolium..which, SURPRISE, is also painted all over. (And by all over I DO mean all over. Its like they flung paint...)

I think I have decided that instead of repainting the parts behind my counters, I want to do beadboard. I {think}. I am still going to browse the world wide web for more inspiration. I decided to do something other than paint when I realized that both behind the fridge and my counters IS wallpaper after all. Not only that, but it's been impossible to get more than a millimeter of wallpaper off at a time. Also, the paint over the wallpaper is peeling terribly. I'm sorry, I don't want to face it. Let's cover it.

I am very excited though. I just can't wait to see the finished project. And even if it isn't perfect, it can't be worse, and I KNOW it will be better by a long shot If you haven't seen, here is the photo that inspired this whole project...Its the one I keep going back to -daily- to remind me how great it's going to be!!!!

Making My House Into My Home. (It's not as easy as it sounds!)

Today a friend helped me tear off wallpaper in our dining room. It was fun to do with someone else, but it was work. I'm finding that I'm (already) sore. I'm not sure if it's worse just that I'm sore, or that I was feeling it within an hour of being done.

We ran into some interesting problems...which, sadly, I knew we would. It seems as though whoever owned this house before us had to have purposely done everything wrong. There is no way you could accidentally do things SO horrible. First, wallpapering walls. REALLY, PEOPLE????? No offense...actually..yes, take offense...really? WALLPAPER?!?? Second, while wallpapering, not bothering to make it the same length as your wall, and then sticking it to both the ceiling and trim randomly as it's too long? SERIOUSLY! Third, taking off just enough wallpaper to fix part of the wall, then painting OVER wallpaper the rest of the wallpaper to hide the problem???? really, people? REALLY??? Fourth, using textured paint. TEXTURED!? to "hide" (which it did a very poor job of) your wallpaper missing, putty filled (and not sanded or made even)wall? Fifth, painting OVER the wallpaper onto both the trim and the ceiling further more looking terrible and making it even more difficult to get off. Sixth, rolling on the TEXTURED paint so fast that it splatters not ONLY on the baseboards and trim, but also the floors. COULD WE DO THIS JOB ANY WORSE?

I rest my case: one must TRY to do this terrible of a job.

and to fix it....I don't want to think about it anymore.

Anyway, all that to say, we've got the wallpaper of 2 of the 3 walls (granted, one wall is VERY small...but still...a wall), and the 3rd wall will be the doozy. Going around a window, patio door and back behind the fridge means there's much more trim that they *most likely* decided to seal more with paint.

I have no words.