Hi Friends! I hope everyone had an enjoyable week! We just got back to Oregon after a really nice visit with hubs family in Iowa. It was great to get out of town for a while and see everyone. It's been about 4 years since we've been back there, so it was nice having a chance to visit with his grandma, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. He has a really big family, which I think is pretty great!

In my last post, I talked a little about a small vintage tent sale we went to. Well, that event just happened to be less than a mile from my families old farmstead. My brother and his amazing girlfriend live there. We stopped by for a quick chat and decided to take a look at the old barn. My mom has been working hard to get rid of the blackberry vines that had grown up around the structure and managed to get it knocked back enough to get a peek inside.  To say I was excited to stick my head in there and get a look would be a major understatement!! Anyone who knows me, knows I love old sh*t, ha!  The barn isn't exactly what I would call safe, so we had to stay out for now, but I did manage to get a few shots of the inside with my cell. 

Nothing has me more excited than this, though:

Hubs and I have been talking for over a year now about building a barn door for our living room entry in to our kitchen.   I've done all kinds of searching and researching about hardware options. Silly me, I didn't even think about the barn.  The things that mean the most to me in my collection of odds and ends are the ones that have family history behind them.  Yes, it's just stuff, but it's stuff that belonged to the people that I love more than anything, so they do hold a very special place in my heart. When my mom said I could have the hardware and some wood to build the door, a project that was just that, a project, became something much more.

Happy day, Friends! I hope you all had a great week. It flew by for me!  I'm back this week with a post about a little country vintage sale we went to yesterday.  It was small, but we had so much fun! Wonderful vendors, a pretty setting and some great deals!  It's just down the road from our family farm where my brother lives, so we stopped by there on the way home for a visit.

Even thought it was Saturday, we decided to venture out early so we could have first pick of the treasures! This sale was about an hour and 15 minutes from our house, so we were up at 5:30 (not much will get me out of bed that early on a Saturday) and on our way at 6:30.  

I know there is a lot going on in this picture, but if you look almost dead center, you'll see a chicken feeder. That's mine now! I am going to plant succulents in it.  Look at the cute heart/wing sculptures. This vendor had a LOT of really cool stuff. I really wanted the big metal piece with the circular holes in it, but I just didn't have a place to put it. It was really cool, though! Maybe we need to build an addition to put all of my treasures in, ha!

I've also been on the hunt for an old boat oar. I found one yesterday that has some pretty amazing color to it. Blue/green and reds, it's perfect! 

Some people might look at this and wonder what the appeal is for old "junk". I look at this oar and I wonder about its history. What bodies of water has it been in? Who made it? Was it a gift from one loved one to another?   I just really love old things.  To that point, I also purchased an old quilt yesterday. I liked the colors, but the reason I decided to get is because of the hand written sentiment.  I often wonder how things like this escape a family and wind up in a vintage sale or flea market. It's kind of sad.  This one will be well taken care of, though. 

I'm looking forward to hitting this sale again next year. I hope it grows in to our own little Round Top, ha! That would be awesome, but actually, part of the charm to me, was the small size. We had a great time!
Until next time, my friends!!

Happy day, my friends! It's time for the kitchen reveal - yaaaayyyy!! If you've been on this journey with me, you know it's been a while. Of course, most renovations take at least twice as long as you expect them to and this one was no different. However, the wait was worth it. We LOVE how it's turned out. It is so much brighter and airier now. It really feels like a completely different kitchen, even though the footprint didn't change at all.  When I look at the before pictures now, I can' hardly remember it being like this. In case you are new to the blog or would like a refresher, here is a photo of how it looked before we started.

Not a bad kitchen, by any stretch of the imagination, just a very dark one that really  wasn't my style at all. So grab your cup of coffee or tea (or margarita if you're so inclined) and enjoy the picture show! As I go through the post, I will put in information on vendors, contractors, paint color, etc. I have not been paid in any way, so no bias here! 

If you look at the pictures above and below, you can see there is a good mixture of color, from bright white to soft gray and a few beigeish tones. My tile guy, Rick from Square 1 Tile, did a really good job mixing the colors up, so there weren't big areas of blocked color.   He also did an amazing job on the window wrap. It took him longer than he anticipated to do this, but he did really great work and I am really happy with the results.  If you are in the Portland/Salem area and looking for a tile guy, message me and I'd be happy to forward on Rick's contact to you.

We have lived with the counters for a couple of months now and they are awesome! For the first couple of weeks I was really paranoid about staining them, which I guess was kind of silly. I really did do my homework and I knew this was the right product for us. Hubs is pretty hard on a kitchen, so we knew we needed something very durable.  We've spilled pomegranate juice, tomato sauce, oil and who knows what else and have had no problems cleaning them up. If you are interested in specific information on this product, please check out my week 4 renovation post.  We worked with David Foster at NW Cabinet Source. They have quite a few samples and different products to check out.  

You can see from the before and after photos that we had work done on the peninsula to make it stand out more. Before it was just there, no interest to it. If you are interested in having some woodwork done by a pro, please let me know and I can get you in contact with Samuel of Restoration Counselling (he is a woodworker AND a counselor, not a bad combination for people going through a renovation, haha). For more specifics on the peninsula please check out my week 5 reno post.  

The paint color for the bottom cabs is Sherwin Williams Tidewater.  The uppers is a Benjamin Moore color called Cloud White.  We contracted this job out to a very dear friend of my mom's. Her name is Linda and she is a spitfire!! Extremely likable, very funny and a very skilled painter. I would love to be able to say it was all me, but I knew there was no way I could handle that job on top of everything else.  She did a great job and I am very happy I didn't have to deal with it myself, ha!

We had the interior of the glass door cabinets painted in the Tidewater color. I haven't finished loading them up with my pretties yet, but I'm thinking about painting it white instead. I have a lot of pretty blue glass and I think it would look better against a white backdrop. I do love those contrasting colors, though! Decisions, decisions...

I hope you enjoyed the kitchen tour. I know it's been a long time comin'! Thank you, as always, for stopping by and keeping up with me. To those of you who have been checking in to make sure I didn't fall off the face of the planet, thank you, so much appreciated! You know who you are!! :-)

Besides DIY, hubs and I really love to work in the yard. Every year we plant and bark. We're working in more perennials than ever before. We have a smallish yard, but even so, annuals every year get pretty spendy.  I LOVE Hostas and Hydrangeas, we have quite a few of each in the shadier parts of the yard. Hubs favorite are Canna's  and Coleus . The funny thing is, we have a REALLY hard time remembering any plant names, so we do a lot of "that plant over there in that square planter thingy". Luminosity is a girls best friend! 
Ok, so on to today's pictorial, lot of pictures! I hope you enjoy!

That's it for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed the garden tour.  Fingers crossed, I'll be back next week with the kitchen reveal! Everyone have a great week!

Ok, so on to this weeks oddity. Thursday night I am heading home from work and I get a frantic call from my daughter. She told me that our dogs found a baby opossum and attacked it. She got it away from them and was nursing his wounds.  Now, anyone that knows me, knows that I am a complete sucker for animals. In fact, I think animals are better than a lot of humans.  If you've seen past posts. you've seen the menagerie of hairballs that live in our house.  They outnumber us humans!  They are a very big part of our family.   Anyway, my mind is racing on the way home: How on earth do I help a opossum, is it going to live, will I have to take it to the vet to be put down. Oh the awful possibilities!!  I was feeling fairly queasy by the time I pulled in to the driveway. The thought of living with a wounded opossum wouldn't have freaked me out so much if I knew how to take care of one, ha!

Alright, enough opossum talk. On to the furniture stuff. I am sharing a link to an oldie, but goodie! This is one of my favorite pieces.  I hope you'll take a gander! 
If you click this link, it will take you to the post: Happy Accident Hutch

Until next time, my friends! Have a wonderful week!!

Hello again, Friends! We just finished up week 6 of the kitchen renovation and things are starting to come together. There is light at the end of the tunnel!  This week has been all about painting! What a difference it has made. I LOVE the cabinet color.  We decided on Sherwin Williams Tidewater for the base cabinet color. The uppers are a Benjamin Moore Cloud White.  We aren't done yet, the uppers in the photos just have primer and 1 coat. I am really loving the blue, it is so pretty! Our goal was to lighten up the space and man, this has definitely done the trick! 

On a side note, we had a pretty exciting morning here at the house. Hubs is putting in a whole house water filtration system.  The water in our little town is pretty awful. It's typically yellow or brown, often smells like sulfur and leaves a white scale on everything. It pretty much sucks trying to keep anything clean that is in contact with water. The water dispenser on our fridge, the sink and faucet in the old kitchen, etc. So we found a whole home system by Whirlpool that sounds promising and it's actually very affordable. We are starting out with just a filter, but know we may need to add a softener.   I'll do a follow up post sometime after we've used it for a while and let you know how it's working out. 

Next week, I will be back with pictures of the cabinetry, hopefully all finished up. Then we'll just have the back splash left and I can do the big reveal!!  Have a great week, everyone! 

Hi Friends! I hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday weekend so far! We have been busy around here trying to finish up a bunch of projects. Why is it always a never-ending list? Ha! Well, at least it keeps us busy.  

The kitchen renovation is chugging along. This week we had Samuel with Restoration Counseling in to fix-up our peninsula. He did a wonderful job on the sink surround so we decided we would have him take care of this project, as well.  This is probably a task that hubs and I could have tackled, but we wanted a real craftsman to work on this since it's one of the focal points of the kitchen.  I really wanted this area to be better defined and stand out on its own.  I showed him a picture on Houzz that was exactly what I wanted and he did it perfectly! Here are a few photos.

Sam made all of the decorative edges and the wide plank panels with a router. He pays attention to the details and that made it worth the extra we spent to have him complete this job.  He really does beautiful work.

Here's Chunk checking out Samuel's handiwork!  
Thank you for checking out the latest update! Next week there will be another significant change. PAINT! The cupboards painting is starting on Thursday.  That is really going to brighten up the space and I am SO excited to get it done. Big changes; sometimes they are a good thing!
So, it's a quick and short post this week. Hubs and I have to get back to tackle the hoarders nest, aka the garage!  Hugs my friends, see you next week!

Here is the slab for the peninsula coming in:

I chose this Quartz product after doing a lot of research on different options. Hubs is the cook in the family and an amazing chef he is. However, he is pretty tough on things, so I knew we needed a stain/heat/cut/hubs resistant product.  I LOVE the look of marble, but I knew I would go crazy living with the marble patina. Etching and staining is just not something I wanted to deal with. There are multiple quartz products out there with a marble look. This one is from Cosmos Granite & Marble and is called Venato Extra CQ 3cm.

Here's one of the slabs in place:

Ok, that's all you get to see for now. I am holding off on the "whole enchilada" photos for the final reveal post. This Thursday our cabinet guy, Samuel, is coming back in to do some work on our peninsula. Come on back next week to check it out.  I hope you all have a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by!

Hi Friends! We just finished up week 3 of the kitchen renovation. We had highs and lows, but overall, we're still hanging in there! Things don't look a ton different than they did last week, so this will be a short post.  So let's start out with the highs of the week. Samuel, our amazing cabinet guy, came in and finished up the apron farm sink surround and he did a fabulous job. You'll notice from the photo above that they wood is a bit different. I decided I REALLY wanted to paint the cabinets, so we told him to use whatever wood was the most affordable.  I am super happy with how it looks.  Here is a before and after shot of Samuel's handiwork! I can hardly wait to get this project completed so I can see the end result!

Ok, on to the low, which was really only a low because it stressed me out and gave me a stomach ache, haha!  Wednesday, they came out to do the counter template. The counter guy said that the sink structure was built too high.  I couldn't get a hold of Sam because he was out of cell range and since I wasn't here when he built it, I wasn't sure of why he built it the way he did.  It did indeed look like it was built up too high. Long story a little shorter, he built it right where it needed to be.  When our house was built, rather than putting the floor in and then resting the cabinetry on top of the floor, they put the cabinets in, then built the floor around them. The means our counter tops are lower than normal. Since the oven and dishwasher went in after the build was complete, they are sitting on top of the flooring, leaving them higher than the surrounding cabinetry. Are you confused yet?! Basically what it boils down to is we had to rip all of the counter off, then come back and build it back up with 3/4" plywood. The counter overhang will hide the plywood, but we'll come back in with 3/4 round to finish it off. I'll be sure to take pics of that once it happens, just in case someone else runs in to this problem!

Yesterday we ripped out the remaining counters and today we added the plywood back. It's now all ready for the slab.

On another note, hubs and I have been doing some yard work. The weather here in the Great PNW has been amazing!!  The Northwest is pretty well known for the rain we get. The rumor is true, we do get a lot of rain. Lots of times, it's what I call "beachey". Misty rain. Stuff is wet for 8-9 months of the year, so any kind of wood that is outside really needs to be treated with care. Every year we pressure wash and re-stain our deck. It's about 8 years old, but it still looks like new because we are committed to really taking care of it. It's a pretty easy task and I swear, it transforms our back yard!  Now if I'd been thinking, I would have taken some pre-pressure wash pictures, so you would really see the full effect, but I forgot to do that. What you see here is an after pressure wash pic and then after staining. 

Until next week, my friends! Be sure to stop back by to take a look at the new quartz counter tops!! Woohoo! 

Ok, so on to demo week 2. Progress has been a little slow, but a few things have happened. A really great guy, Samuel, came in and prepped the cabinet for the farm sink.  This is a task that hubs and I were not up for. This job requires cabinetry work and we wanted to be doubly sure the sink foundation was nice and solid, so we have a pro handling it.  We were hoping to have the counter template done this last week, but that didn't work out, so we have them coming in on Wednesday. Then Thursday, Samuel will be back out to build out the cabinet doors and I believe the sink surround, but am not 100% sure on that. He will be coming back for a 3rd time, after the counter is installed to do the last bit of finishing work.

One project we needed to knock out was fixing the craters we made in the wall when taking out the existing back splash.  We picked up some Beadex 90 and went to work. This is something I've never done before, but it was pretty easy, actually. It's funny, a couple of years ago, I would have been terrified to do a job like this, but after you do a few things, it's not so scary any more. You just have to jump in and realize if you mess something up, it's not the end of the world (unless you do something crazy, like cut a live electrical wire, then it may be the end of your world - save that stuff for the Pros). 

I did the first layer and since some of the holes were REALLY big,  I let it dry all day and overnight before sanding and coming back with a second coat. This morning I broke out the orbital sander and went to work. 10 seconds in, I was standing in a white cloud. I knew that wasn't going to work because let's be honest, I don't want to dust the entire house!  So we broke out the shop vac, a coffee cup and some duct tape, haha. Yes, I know, but hey, you do what you got to do. This jinkies tape job did the trick, though!

Ok, so now we have the holes fixed. We also skim coated over the texture on the wall where the backsplash will be to give it a nice flat surface to adhere to. No, I've never done a skim coat before, either, but it turned out pretty flat and it doesn't have to be pretty. Just flat. I will be sanding it down one more time tonight, just to make sure it's ready to go.

Ok, guys, that is it for this week. Time to get off the computer and get back to work! Thank you, as always, for stopping by to see what we've been up to. I'll be back next week with another update!