New Laundry Room

I don't know if any of you have seen or remember our laundry room....but disgustingly ugly and messy are 2 words that would fit it quite well. Thankfully it's toward the back of the house and the only people that saw it were those who went through the garage. Unfortunately, people saw it when they went through the garage. The biggest problems with our laundry room is it had wire racks. I LOATH wire racks. I know they are cheap and that's why the builder installed them but it just can't carry much weight. Most of our closets have these and if you have kids, you know they are going to try to climb them to get to something and of course they are going to break. Hate these things! There was no way I was taking a picture of our laundry room with the junk and mess on the racks so here is a picture of just the racks.

Another problem with our Laundry room was way back in early December we had a leak in our laundry room floor. The plumbers had to jackhammer our floor out and put a hole in the wall to repair the pin size leak in a pipe. Please know that I am totally embarrassed by this picture. Who knew that in a year so much lint and junk could accumulate under and behind a wash machine and dryer? Yuck!

Yet another problem with our laundry room was the lack of light. Who would install such a tiny microscopic light in a laundry room? Well, it certainly wasn't a genius....or anyone who actually did laundry. I guess this picture doesn't do much justice. Imagine the size of a salad bowl...yes, that is how small this light fixture was.

So, you have seen the problems, here are the fixes. This project was one of my favorites (my most favorite project was working on our kitchen). It's one of my favorites because just like our kitchen remodel it has been such a huge improvement. First up, New Flooring. We had some leftover Vinyl tile from our bathrooms. The reason this has taken so long to repair was that we just couldn't agree with what to put in. I didn't want the Vinyl, I wanted to put Pergo flooring back in and Kelly wanted the Vinyl. We are contemplating maybe putting Slate in (some day in the far, far, far, far, far, far off future) after seeing some friend's beautiful Slate floor, but it's just not doable right now. So, as a temporary flooring option until Slate is doable or until we decide we want something else the Vinyl Tile was installed. It actually looks amazingly better than it did and goes with the rest of our house. You really can't tell in the picture but we grouted the vinyl tiles and they look a lot like real tiles until you step on them in bear feet in the winter and your feet aren't cold.

Second Fix, new bigger brighter light fixture. There are now 120 watts of bright light. Woo Hoo! It's amazing that I can actually see stains on clothes now and pre-treat them. Even our clothes are looking better because we have more light. Who knew?

Third and biggest fix, We installed a cabinet door to hide the kids games and added wood shelving for the cleaners and chemicals. We did add the bead board to the cabinet doors to match the kitchen. We bought door pulls but just haven't put them on yet. I love my new laundry room. No more messes. Things are more organized. What could be better? Oh, we also put crown moulding as well. Amazing how much more beautiful a little crown moulding can make a room. Love it!

New Doors

Kelly came to me the other day and told me that we paid off our Lowes Credit card. He then told me that they included a brochure for interest free financing for 18 months. So....how did we celebrate paying off our card? By putting more on. We are FINALLY changing out our doors and our moulding. Here are 2 doors side by side so you can see the before and after. The one on the left is the after and the one on the right is the before. The ugly plain door and plain moulding is gone and so is the nasty gold ball door handle. Gone! Gone! Gone! yay!!!!

Newest Improvements

I realize that I have A LOT of blogging to catch up on. We got a new camera for Christmas (so no more dark photos) but this also meant I had to figure it out, download the software to our computer as well as figure out how to download it to my computer. I'm slow, I know but now that I have it mostly figured out I can start blogging again.


My first post back to our blog is about our house. We have made a few minor improvements and I wanted to share. It really is so fun to work on the house. I love that Kelly and I do it with our own hands because it makes it OURS! It also makes it fun to show off. So, any time you want to see our hard work come on over, we would LOVE to show you in person. Of course, a home cooked meal is also in on the offer. We love to have guests just give us a call.


Okay, first off, we have VERY high ceilings. When we painted our walls Kelly had to do all the high work on a ladder. I tend to have a smoother hand when it comes to painting and I was too scared to get up on the ladder to paint where the ceiling and wall met. It wasn't a perfect line, but it worked and if anyone complained about it....well, then they can come over to paint it for us. Needless to say, no one has complained so it has stayed as it was. Kelly was dying to put some crown moulding up to hide the imperfections but our ceilings are also sloped so the normal crown moulding wouldn't work. We had tons of base moulding left so we decided to take 2, put them together, add a smaller decorative moulding to hide the seam and....
I guess it is a little hard to see in the picture, especially with the moulding being white as well as the ceiling. The moulding is actually 8 inches wide.

We also wanted to show a room separation so we added a personal touch in the center. We have claimed the home as a "Kerr" home with a big "K" on the ceiling. I just love vinyl!


Our last improvement is in our living room. We have recently went crazy for Bead Board. I love the look of the stuff. We put some in the kids bathroom and we also put some behind our television. Amazing how one little change can really change the look of the entire room. I LOVE it! I really loved the white walls in this room because the wall behind me where I am taking this picture is a very dark blue. I was afraid by painting this wall yet another color it just wouldn't look good. Once putting the bead board up I noticed that it DID need a bit more contrast. We bought a grey color that is very light so that it gives just enough contrast. It's perfect!

New Kitchen

Isn't the above picture the most beautiful kitchen you have ever seen? No? Yeah, we didn't care for it either. It's what came with our house so we were willing to deal with it for as long as we needed to. We went to Lowe's and got a quote for brand new cabinets and Corian counter tops....about $12,000. They called later that night and told us that they could do it for a little over $9,000. We knew it was going to be expensive so we were willing to wait 5....10 years until we could afford a new kitchen. We had accepted that, since we didn't have that kind of money to put into a kitchen at this time. We went to a friends house and I was in love with their kitchen. When I told them how much I loved their kitchen they told me that they had done it themselves. 2 weeks later Kelly and I were buying supplies and refaced our cabinets to look like new. Below is how each cabinet door now looks. We painted them white, added bead board in the center and put thin molding around the bead board to hold the board down and hide the seams. It took us about two FULL days to reface all of our cabinets. I LOVE it and am so proud to say that Kelly and I did it with our own two hands for the wonderful cost of about $300.
Since we were updating our kitchen we thought we should update our pantry door as well. Here is the before picture. Plain and ugly.
Here is our new decorative door. We pulled off the old molding and added a new decorative moulding. We plan to eventually change out all of the doors in our house to look exactly like this one. This is more of a very long far off project. We have such a long "to do" list when it comes to our home. Unfortunately, all it takes is money.

Here is our before sink. Notice the disgusting tile. I don't know who would put tile counter tops into their new kitchen. The grout is gross and uncleanable. Bleach doesn't even stand a chance against grout. This is actually a good picture of this sink. You can't see the stained porcelain or the black ring around the top of the sink. Even after I re-caulked the sink the black came up through the new caulk. Definitely gross.

Okay, here it is, our new sink and counter top. The sink actually came with the counter tops. I can't even tell you what kind of material it is. It's not porcelain. It's a Matte finish but I absolutely love it. I especially love my new faucet head. Kora asked me if she could take baths in our new sink. I told her it is certainly big enough.
Okay....drum roll please....Our new kitchen!

The countertops are granite. It isn't your standard granite. They actually put this over our existing tile countertop. There was no demo and it was done in about 4 hours. When we went to the L.A. County fair this year we saw a booth for this new counter top. What it is, is mashed granite and epoxy. The top looks just like a granite countertop where the bottom looks like it has all been glued together. It's stronger and cleaner than real granite because there are no natural cracks and crevices for bacteria to hide. I am in love with my new kitchen and more in love with my awesome, handy husband. I have to thank him for our kitchen as well as all the work he did so we could complete it. He really is amazing.

New Deck

This is a project we have been wanting to do since moving here. At first, we were thinking maybe we would cement the area in. I was concerned about cementing the area in because it just wouldn't match the other cemented areas. That is when we thought of making a little deck. This first picture is the "before" picture. Not entirely the before picture because I didn't think to take pictures before we cut the second palm tree down. This area has been such an ugly wasted space. Because of the 2 palm trees, there really wasn't anything else we could do with the area...until the deck!

Kelly placing the cement support blocks.

The frame.

Hunter helping build the frame. He loved helping. All of the kids got to help put in at least one screw so this is truly a family project.

Putting on the top planks.

After an entire Saturday of work we FINALLY finished. After a small dilemma with the lamppost, everything looks great. Okay, ignore the one plank on the bottom, that is our step to hide the cement support blocks. Our power drill ran out of power so we weren't able to put the step in until the next day. Okay, one learned lesson....did you know that a lamppost wont work unless it has 3 light bulbs in it? Yeah, neither did we. The instructions didn't tell us that either. Almost giving up we decided to try it and...voila!

Our completed deck with the barbecue! Kelly cut down the last remaining palm tree and added a table top. We had 2 extra barstools and now they fit perfectly on the deck. We just LOVE our new deck. Amazing how one little change can really make the backyard look so much better....now what to do with the hideous fence? I guess that will be another project for another time.

Front View:Side View:

Amazing What a Little Paint and New Hardware Can Do

It's interesting to find that once you FINALLY have a home you realize that the list of "to do" projects is really never ending. Kelly and I have decided to break up projects into rooms. Our goal is to complete a room in a weekend. Yesterday our goal was our Master Bathroom. A few things that needed to get done was touch-up painting, baseboards, caulking, painting cabinets, putting a wood border around our mirror and installing new faucets. Originally we thought this was going to be a 6 hour job so we designated Saturday to get everything done. Plans got a little distorted when we decided to let the missionaries come over and wash their car....Kelly got them to do a little service for us and had them install the ceiling fan we bought months ago in Hunter's room. Then Kelly asked me if I wanted to see Eclipse....ahhh, yes! He is dying to see Predators but because he promised to see Eclipse with me he said we needed to get Eclipse out of the way so we could see Predators. So we got as much as we could done on Saturday. We finished all of the painting and got 1 faucet installed. Yesterday we installed the last faucet, put up the cabinet doors and it looks amazing. When you can't really afford to put in new cabinets it's nice to know you have other options as cheap as a can of paint. So, here are a few before and after photos.

Before:

After: (We also got new knobs and a drawer pull. The other ones were so ugly. Love the brushed nickle look)

Before: You can't tell from this picture but the knobs actually turned the wrong way when you needed to turn the water on. I think this might have been the way they were designed but why would you design something to turn a different way than what EVERYONE is used to? We have lived here for 5 months now and the day we took them out I would still try to turn it the "right" way.

After: So glad I can turn the knobs in the "right" direction now to turn the water on. And it looks so much more beautiful than the other faucet head.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get to the baseboards or the border around the mirror. Regardless, it was a successful project weekend!

To Cover or Not to Cover, That is the Question

We have a large rectangular window over our main window in our Living Room. A big dilemma that we had was whether or not we were going to put a covering over it or not. Kelly was all for putting up something but I was more hesitant because I LOVE the light that the window lets in. Because it's so high we don't have to worry about privacy. A big problem was without a covering, at around dinner time the window would let in light right at our dinner table practically blinding and roasting people from the heat. Since summer has only barely started I decided to give in and cover the window. After talking to my Interior Designer Brother-in-law, Gus, he suggested a sheer fabric. The whole time I was thinking I had to cover it with a thick fabric. I actually went with a fabric slightly thicker than a sheer. I picked white so that it would still be bright. I'm still not sure what I think about it but it does make a big difference. As you can see in the after picture below it still lets in light...in fact, you may not even be able make out the fabric, but it's there. Thank you Gus, for guiding me to the right fabric. I would have never thought of it on my own.

Before:

After:

2 Car Garage

Well, we have finally done it. We have officially cleaned out our garage and can now fit 2 cars in it. We got rid of a ton of stuff, went through the last of the boxes in the garage and rearranged what needed to stay in there. We had to get creative with our second fridge but in the end it all fit, as well as both of our cars. It's a happy day!

We must have been feeling like doing home improvements this day because after we cleaned out the garage we installed our chandelier. Here are the before and after pictures. We had to call my Dad over to help because the chandelier that came with the house was really heavy. We also changed out our ceiling fan over our dining room table too so that the lights would all match (brushed nickle look).

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

A Bit More Color

Here are a few new pictures of our house. The picture on the right is the new color we put on our walls. Both of the colors are colors we already have throughout our house. These walls were originally white but we thought it needed a bit more color. We haven't finished the wall leading up our stairs because the wall is so tall. We have a tall ladder but it's definitely a 2 person job. Kelly did the painting when the kids and I were out of the house. We are in the process of painting all the bathroom walls. I have also started decorating. I enjoyed having nothing on the walls for a bit but now I'm ready for a little change.

The second picture is the outside of our house. We....or I have been wondering what color we want to paint our house if we do. I would absolutely love to do a grey with white trim and black accents. The only problem with these colors is that ALL the houses in the neighborhood are some form of brown or tan like ours. Should we venture out and keep to the brown but just make it a bolder brown so it still fits in but not totally stick out....or should we go with the grey and make it stick out? Suggestions???

Fire

I really should have put this post after the Angel's Game post because it actually happened the same night. The other events I posted after were just more important so I thought this one could be postponed a few days. The picture on the right is from our backyard. As we were driving home from the Angels game we saw a huge orange fire from the freeway . The whole time I remember hoping the fire was some other mountain and not ours. Once we got home I realized it WAS our mountain that was on fire. Here are a few pictures. I still don't know how the fire started but there were plenty of news helicopters and it did get some news coverage. The only thing that made this fire not SO scary was the fact that there was no wind. If there had been wind it might have been a lot worse. This last picture is from our Bedroom window. It's a really pretty view normally but as you can see it's a little blackened. When we first moved here is was a beautiful green. The only good thing that came out of the fire was the fact that now it's done and we really don't have to worry about our mountain catching fire again during this years fire season.

New Lights

All of the lights in our house are ugly. We are working very slowly at changing them. This was our first try. Kelly changed 3 lights. They all looked like this one here. You may look at it and think it's not bad....but in all truthfulness, it really isn't, it's just not us. Plus, it was a bit too small.

In this picture Kelly is working his magic and changing out the old fixture for the new one. In case you were wondering, yes, the ceiling was a hideous green. Who paints their ceilings green?May I also add that although when we bought this house it was all white you could tell when we were repainting that the hall that this light fixture was in, the walls were also this nasty green.

Here is the finished product, yay! So beautiful. Kelly did a great job. He also changed the ceiling fan in the girls room. The fan that was in there had flat blades that wouldn't push the air down no matter which way you moved the switch. Who would install a ceiling fan that didn't work when you bought it? Oh well, not our problem but we did have to fix that problem and now the girls have a working ceiling fan.

Working Hard

As we have been working hard on the inside of our house we have recently started working on the outside of our house. Since I generally kill all living plants, I asked Kelly's Mom who always has a beautiful planter in front of her house, to help me plant a few flowers in my entry way. The picture on the left is Mylie's way of helping out. The picture on the right is what we had to work with. I should have taken the before picture of the huge mess of dead ugly plants but instead it's a picture of a cleaned out planter with one rose tree left. I attempted to transplant it into the pot that Mylie is sitting in but it looks like the transplant didn't take. In fact, my poor rose tree looks dead. See, I kill all plants. Kelly's mom helped me pick out flowers that would survive under my care. Before she left she told me I still needed to buy miracle grow and put it on the flowers not too long after planting. A few days later she asked me how my flowers were doing. I told her a few of them looked good but a lot of them looked like they were dying despite my efforts to keep them well watered. When she asked me if I had bought my miracle grow yet I had realized the reason for my flowers poor growth. After buying the miracle grow, spreading it on and watering, the results were almost instant. My flowers looked better and are growing beautifully.

I realize now that I should have removed my sign so you could see all my flowers...I make myself laugh sometimes.

Projects

As most of you know, we have purchased a home last month. It's still mostly work in progress but we are hopefully nearing an end soon. Here are a few pictures to show you some of the work we've done so far.
The entire house was painted white and after living in a mostly white apartment we decided we needed a bit of color. I have always loved blue and white so I decided to go with a deep blue accent wall and keep my separator wall white.

This was the only room in the house that was not white. This is now the girls room which is now a beautiful purple color. We also decided that we wanted all of the bedrooms to have carpet so it was up to us to pull up all the existing flooring in preparation for the new carpeting....Lots of work. There is also a hall right outside of the bedrooms that had a whitish/pink tile....that had to go. We were hoping they could carpet right over the tile but to our dismay they told us it all had to go. Kelly wasn't too thrilled but I talked him into it. After 2 days of destruction we go it all out. We felt a bit over our heads with that project but now the hall is all carpeted and I am loving our choice and loving my hubby for all the hard work he has put into "our" home.

This is our dining room/living room. It had tile and it wasn't really that bad but it just wasn't us. We decided to install laminate. Actually, it had a bunch of pits in it that trapped dirt and made it look really dirty. This too was another decision I'm loving. After attempting to save the baseboards we realized that whoever installed them, didn't do it correctly, therefore making the attempt at "saving" the baseboards impossible.


In this picture, Kelly is prepping the flooring for laminate. The floor took us a few days to finish but I think Kelly and I are now masters at laminate installation.

We have most of our big projects completed. We are still finishing up 1 more bathroom and need a new hose for the downstairs bathroom and our final project is installing baseboards throughout the house. We have a few rooms officially completed but our house still looks like a war zone with boxes strewn here and there. The baseboard project was put on temporary hold after Kora knocked Kelly's nail gun down the stairs and we thought it was broken. Surprisingly, after a few days, Kelly tried it again and it worked. "It's a miracle!" So, we can start working on baseboards again. It has been a long tiring process and many times both Kelly and I have wondered why we wanted to become home owners so badly but at the end of the day we look around and we see that this is ours. We can paint it the colors we want, we can pick out the flooring we want, we can destroy and repair anything we want, because it's all ours. I'm so grateful for my sweet Hubby. I really couldn't ask for a better man. Love that man!