A quick makeover

When I was working on making over Clint’s man cave, I decided this little table could use a facelift too.

Before it was wobbly, warped, ugly and for some reason someone had done wall texture on the top of the table.

I didn’t take a before….I know, I know…. but I found it in an old picture.

That sexy leg is not mine, it’s our friend Andres’. He is also responsible for the beer and chewing tobacco, neither of which the Mr or I partake in.

 

Anywho- I had to sand down the top 50 million times to try and smooth out the texture, add in support screws to all the legs, cut a  new bottom shelf out of plywood, prime and paint the whole thing.

It was a pretty easy project I did over the weekend in between other stuff.

Here it is all done up and back in it’s natural habitat:

 

 

It is now right next to his god awful ugly disgusting favorite leather recliner that he sits in when he is up there. It holds controllers, the battery charger, our modem and his game cheater book.

It’s not the most glamorous makeover ever, but it made him happy and it was totally free to do.

 

For those of you who haven’t dug through my archives, I actually re did some other furniture before. Check out  Our entryway mirror, The entryway table and  my nightstand.

Anyone else do any fun makeovers lately?

An unwelcome interruption

So, the other evening I went to take a nice refreshing shower after my workout.

 

You know what is not fun? The smoke detector going off while you are in the shower. You know what’s worse? When your detectors are wired together so all Seven  of the smoke detectors go off at the same time. They also can’t be turned off until it detects clean air.

 

Now, I know they are great for protection and I am very glad they are there.  But when you have a head full of shampoo and have just put on your fancy face scrub and there is no fire……its not the time.

See, the detector is right outside the bathroom door in our bedroom. Apparently (according to the Mr)  the sensor must be dirty and it detected the steam as smoke.

I wish I had a hilarious action shot of me jumping out of the shower dripping wet and fanning the detector to get it to stop, but I guess you’ll have to use your imagination.

Anyone ever have a smoke detector mishap?

Office Fun

The ways I amuse myself at my office job-

When a telemarketer calls and asks for the owner, give them the weirdest most random name you can think of.
Then when they call back and have to ask for said-weird-named person, tell them there is no one here by that name, hang up and then laugh, laugh laugh.

Ya....it's the little things.

I'm stalling

So, we did have an eventful weekend of painting the front wall of the living room. Alas, the Mr didn't get the doorbell or motion sensor re-mounted or put my glass vases back up on the shelf above the closet. So I don't have after pics for you just yet.

Sneak preview!

Instead I shall give you pictures of my adorable family. Because it's my blog and I can.

Allie. Her favorite hiding place in the house. She was PISSED that I busted her out.

Henry. He has both front legs, I swear.

Roxie. Her face is kinda weird in this picture.

Nope, still weird. That dog is just not photogenic.




Well, to at least keep this post semi house related I shall share an awesome tip I learned this weekend.


If your paintbrushes are all hard and caked with paint, put them in a saucepan of hot vinegar. Soak for 1 hour, then simmer for 10 minutes. Wash with soapy water and the old paint will come off and your bristles will be soft again.  YAY!

(FOR WATER-BASED PAINT ONLY!)

Let's all go to the bathroom, shall we?

Let's take our next stop on the house tour somewhere a liitle more personal.

The master bathroom.

We have done quite a bit in here, update wise. Let's she how she rolled on our first walk through, eh?





Thar she blows

We went bold with our color choice in this room since it is small and only we use it, so if it looks bad we didn't really care.

But I totally love it. Whenever someone comes over I take them in there to look at the color.

Here's a dirty little secret though- the paint job SUUUUUUUCCKKKS. This was the first room we painted in the house, it's semi gloss paint and we didn't prime. It looks horrible when you really look close. But it would take priming over it and then re-coating to fix so it's not going anywhere for awhile.

Live and Learn!

Anywho, lets look around more.

This second picture is taken from standing inside the little toilet-alcove room, which is why none of the pictures show a toilet in the bathroom. We have one in there, I swear.


So let's do the checklist of what we have done, shall we?

1. Painted the room peacock blue
2. Painted the builder orangey-oak vanity in light gray and added hardware
3. Installed the curved shower rod (loooooove)
4. Added the stainess shelves/towel racks
5. Installed a new toilet in the secret room (its right inside the entrance to the right, you can see the door frame in the picture above)
6. Added a full length mirror behind the door (which you can see me in in the picture about the color)

There is more to do of course, but this is on the back burner for awhile. Sorry for the terrible pics, my camera did not agree with the light fixture in there and I don't know how to change the white balance-ISO-aperature-blah blah stuff on it.

Can we all just agree how awesome this poster is?



It's level, I swear. My camera just isin't.


It's big (20x30). I totally, totally love it. So much so I couldn't wait to get a frame and pinned it up on the wall naked as soon as I got it :)


So, you have any ideas for me on doing more with the space?

Stats

Dude:

 To all my fellow bloggers out there- are you totally obsessed with your stats like I am? I go on there all the time and see where people are from, how many views I have, what time they are....I find it fascinating.

Granted, my blog is tiny and getting 10 views a day is big for me. But this morning seeing that Italy had turned green just made me giddy. Someone in Italy is reading my nonsense?

I love it. Thank you. Please come back. Click lots.

Clint's Birthday

For Clint's 27th birthday, I planned a most excellent adventure (much better than Bill and Ted's)

Unbeknownst to me, we have been living in the vicinity of an unbelievable place.

The Barry R. Kirshner Wildlife Foundation is an exotic animal sanctuary that rescues and rehabilitates injured or sick exotic animals that would otherwise be put down.

So, I made an appointment for a private tour and surprised Clint for his birthday. (However, he knew where we were going as soon as we turned off the main road- turns out he had installed the alarm in their offices and knew where it was. Bummer)

But never the less, we had the most amazing time. Our guide was a really nice guy with a ridiculously awesome British accent who took us around telling us all about each animal. It was practically magical.

Unfortunately all we had was cell phones so the pictures aren't of the best quality and it was hard to get a good picture through 2 chain link fences, but it is what it is.

A bengal tiger, I believe he was partially blind. But so sweet!

Hard to see, but this is a lion laying out on his back. He was rolling around playing.

Chuffy the white tiger

A lioness

Gabby the ocelot. She was sticking her paw out and whacking the
 guide in the shoulder to get his attention, lol. So cute!

These bears were adorable! They were running around playing tag and jumping in and out of the water.

There were so many more animals, but we were to enamored with them and their story to take pictures.

When we finished the tour, out guide took us over to the house/office area where the owner lives and they keep more animals. We were in store for a special treat. 



They let us hold a snake and some lizards. It was fun! But we were in store for something even more....

It was a slow day and their wasn't many people there. Since we were just 2 responsible adults-they let us in on something that very few people will ever get to experience.....

We held.a.baby.lion.cub.

Did you hear me?

We got to HOLD A BABY LION CUB!!

It was crazy awesome. The little chubster was heavy and kept rubbing on my neck wanting loves. It was so cute!!

So let's get back to seriousness now. That day was actually and entirely life-changing. All the people there are 100% volunteers and they do such good things. They operate completely on donations.

When we walked out of this place I honest to god had the thought of wanting to go rob a bank just to give them money.

As soon as we get out of debt I plan to send them money every month. Someday we want to sponsor an animal.

I guess this post got off track (it could be because I am watching HIMYM while writing....) but the point is the same.

Clint had a fun birthday.

We had a great experience. I can't wait to go back.

The little things.....

Lately I have been enamored and amazed and overjoyed by one thing in particular.

White paint.

Never in my life did I imagine that I would be married, own a home, and spend a fair amount of time smiling like a fool at my baseboards.

We have finally been painting the main areas of the house. Its a long slow process but it looks SO GOOD!

It's a hard thing to translate to pictures.

This is a good indication of the three colors in our main great room area right now.

          Far left is the beigey off white that was on every single surface of the house when we got it. We are painting all the doors and trim bright white.

          The middle trim color is the bright white (Glidden off-the-shelf base 2, I believe).

          The far right color is Olympic's Thin Ice. It is a super-duper light gray-blue. Very neutral and just enough to make the white really pop.


So as of now the house is kind of mis-matched.
All the baseboards and door trim (less a small area behind the turtle tank) are bright white.
Half of the walls in the room are Thin Ice.
3 out of 6 doors are bright white.

The mis-match drive me nuts, but hey, what can I do? Gotta work all day to pay for paint, ya know.





Just ridiculous.



Prreeetttty Colors. (Clint programmed our alarm to say "Griffith Res". So Cute.



That's how we roll around these parts, we break down a giant project into annoying half-done little bits. How about you?

Lets hope downstairs is done by Spring!

Kitchen Update

So, we are making progress galore on the house these last few months and its about time to start sharing. I will try and go room by room as they get to a (for now) finished point.

Lets start with the kitchen, shall we? (No, of course it's not because it was the cleanest room in the house when I happen to grab the camera.....)

Here is what our kitchen looked like on the day we first toured the house:

Ya. For reals.

The previous owners were forclosed on and evicted by the sheriffs, so there was STUFF everywhere all over the house. *Fun Fact: if you look close at the header pic of the house, the eviction notice is taped in the window*

Can we just take a minute here to take note of the dishwasher? This was the original dishwasher that came with the house, which was built 5 years before. for 5 YEARS these people didn't take the blue plastic covering off the front of their dishwasher. .........really?......REALLY? Maybe I'm just OCD but that about drove me batty. So much so that  I actually ripped it off during our first tour, lol. The realtor was not pleased.

Another lovely feature that this picture doesn't capture is GREASE. An inch thick on all the surfaces of the room. GROSS. It took me 2 days and a lot of chemicals to make that place even close to usable.

Anyway, not the point. We're here to see the changes we I have made.



Different angle, my bad. It was 5:30am.


1. You can't see it in the before, but that gargantuan light fixture was the same color as the cabinets. Clint took it down and I painted that sucker with the paint match to the ceiling. Blend, big girl, blend.

2. The nasty, gross, sticky, disgusting vent hood was taken down ripped apart, scrubbed, steam stripped and painted black. So much better.

3. We got a new dishwasher for Christmas 2010. I prefer all black appliances over stainless.

4 The back splash wall and window wall were painted with a dark gray can of oops paint from Home Depot. Holla for $7 gallon of Semi-Gloss!

5. I have to point out that plant in the window I nurtured from a bulb to grow so beautifully. I have no green thumb so this is a big deal. (Don't mind the dirty dishes next to the sink).

6. All the carnival glass on top of the cabinets was Clint's grandmas. Love. Too bad its filled with lead and is only for looking not using.

7. Fun fact? The white spots all over the floor mat are flour from my first ever time making Christmas cookies. I made 13 dozen. It was a mess. Plus I burnt my hand pretty bad.


So....there it is for now! The still-to-do-someday list stands at:

• Paint the cabinets crisp white and add brushed nickel hardware
• Replace the awful horrible tile counter tops with solid surface
• Get a new stove when this one dies
• Soooooomeday put in continuous hardwoods through the entire bottom floor

So that's that for now. Anyone else do super cheap but super awesome upgrades after moving in? Tell me all about it!

Updates to come!

Well, I know I suck at blogging, but I promise to work on it!

We have done tons of work on the house and I just need to take pictures and I will start posting soon. I swear!