Cabinetry

The Finished Kitchen

October 15, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 20 Comments

We’ve put all the finishing touches on the kitchen cabinets and are finally enjoying our kitchen! It took us a while to get all the trim work, cabinet feet, and hardware ordered and installed as life is so busy, but we are finally there. Here is what we started with. The cabinets were nice to begin with, but as you know, I love white kitchens…

After…I can’t begin to tell you how much lighter and brighter this room is now.

We also demolished the tile around the kitchen sink to add two drawers, and a trash and recycle bin.

Before:

I was briefly unsettled when Kevin took a sledge hammer to it, hoping the installation went okay.

But, it turned out great, phew! (And, the dog hasn’t figured out how to open the trash bin yet like she did in the last house.)

I painted the toe kicks black and added bun feet to the cabinets so they look more like furniture than builder-basic cabinets. We protected everything with tape & plastic and used black spray paint with a spray sealer.

I also painted the pantry door and french doors to the backyard black then added black hardware to tie it all together.

We still have many more projects in the works to make this house a home!

Filed Under: About Me, Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Home Decor, My Home

My love of white kitchens

September 19, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 7 Comments

I’ve done many white kitchens in the past and I never tire of the look of them. They just seem timeless to me.

I had the opportunity to paint my parents’ oak kitchen cabinets white and when I am over there I always admire how much they brighten up their space. I finally got around to taking an after picture the other day at my sister in law’s baby shower. Here are some “during” pictures as I forgot to take some shots before I got started:

And after:

I love the black hardware against the white for contrast. (I used Benjamin Moore Aura paint in Acadia White.)

On another note, I’m very excited that Kevin and I are going to be building our farmhouse kitchen table soon. He drew up a plan of what we’ve been talking about and here is what we are thinking it will look like:

It’ll take us a few weeks but hopefully I’ll have the after pictures to share sooner than later. I recently finished painting my kitchen cabinet casings (again) and am working on the doors and drawers so there are a lot projects going on at once! Oh, the joys of being a DIY’er and a nester. The projects never end!

Filed Under: About Me, Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Home Decor, My Home, Paint Colors, Table and Chair Sets

Time for another “Keeping it Real” post: status/post move: 2 1/2 weeks

August 8, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 13 Comments

First of all, thank you all for the kind emails checking in on us. We’ve been MIA because things have not really gone according to plan with this move! Our washer broke the first day and we were on the hook for a new W/D right off the bat. Don’t get me wrong, we are beyond blessed and thrilled to be out of the other house (the money pit) and into a much more affordable one that is close to family and school!

Thanks to our great family and friends, we moved everything in a day. It was hotter than hades but the troops still had a great time just being silly and all were in good spirits. Remember that, my friends — it is FUN to help move us! Not that we plan on moving again, the next one will be vertical – to the pearly gates. Or to the home.

Poor Liberty just paced the entire day and was a Nervous Nellie. She simply didn’t know what to do with herself. She wore herself OUT with all that nervous energy. Enter exhibit A: we could have layed a steak in front of her nose when we snapped this pic. She wouldn’t have budged.

Before, I’ve shared one of our first projects which was creating a built-in entertainment center from a unit I found on CL. After Kevin added some trim moulding, cut out the wall, added drywall and then having me paint the whole unit, here is the official “after” with ~~his~~ our t.v. mounted. I just need to add accessories to the glass shelving.

I mentioned when we found out that we got this house that I had a new décor scheme in my head. Well, it’s slowly coming together, mostly because I like to wait until I find what I want on CL and can stand to live in disarray for a while. I’ve searched for months for Windsor chairs like these and finally found them for a great price! Of course, we don’t plan on eating on this folding table forever. We are going to make a rustic, farmhouse table that will fit the space perfectly. I’ve also sold a lot of my old furniture to make room (and cash) for the “new” furniture.

And, I put this “family rules” sign right where you walk by it a hundred times a day.

Now here is where things have turned to pot! I painted the kitchen cabinet casings before we moved in. I’ve done so much cabinet and furniture painting that I never saw this coming – paint peeling off like you’d peel an egg shell:

Here is what it looked like before the fiasco, all ready for their new doors to be painting and put on:

Nice, eh? Well, there WERE nice. Actually, beautiful I might add. But…I need to release some energy here…(insert my best George Banks voice, in the supermarket hotdog bun scene of Father of the Bride)….’because some big shot homeowner (that would be me) got together with some big shot (that would be the paint company) and conspired to make this DIY project a living nightmare!

Actually, the paint company did nothing wrong. This was user (my) error. I think the original owner used heavy oils on her cabinets and I didn’t clean or prep them enough. I was hasty and just wanted it done. Totally my own fault.

But this does mean that we are sanding the ENTIRE kitchen down to the bare wood because we don’t want to risk it happening again. Dust soup anyone?

So, this is now how the kitchen has looked for two weeks! At least we recently found some pendant lighting for the island, which brightens my state of mind when I walk into this room. We are also in search of a lot of lighting fixtures since the owners took it all with them, along with the grass in the backyard.

I am, however, loving my new office and it’s coming together easily. I enjoy working from this desk that I refinished a while back (another CL find), and the units we had at the old house fit well into the corners for a lot of storage a Mother needs. We just have some finishing touches to do in here and I’m calling it good!

I’ll try to be better about posting our progress! You can read how this house of ours has evolved in previous posts.

What about you – any move in/DIY headaches?

Filed Under: About Me, Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Furniture, Home Decor, Household, My Home, Ramblings, Real and Raw, Uncategorized

Working on the kitchen

June 21, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 18 Comments

This is the status of our kitchen cabinets right now. I can’t wait to clear coat them this weekend and rip all the plastic and paper off! I am really happy with the creamy white color which was a custom mix.

The island had tile on either side of the sink, which Kevin and I thought was wasted storage space. So, he demo’d the tile.

And we added 2 drawers plus pull out trash and recycle bins.

Then Mama went to work!

Here is a before of the kitchen at a glance~

And now ~

We are adding bun feet to the bottom cabinets, too.

I don’t know how long the doors will take me, but I am on the lookout for black hardware. If you see any let me know because I’m only seeing ORB, and brass.

Until next time,

Filed Under: Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Home Decor, Household, My Home, Uncategorized

Time for another house update!

June 15, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 15 Comments

I hope this post finds everyone well and enjoying summer!

I can’t believe the man power we’ve put into this new house. The sweat equity was way more than I bargained for. And, I’ll admit to a few tears and mini-tantrums because of how long the painting has taken me, which isn’t close to being finished. However, things are taking shape and it’s nice to compare the before and afters to see how far we’ve come.

This was Kevin’s office after tearing down tile from the walls (it was the owner’s “dog room” so they must have hosed it down or something. I surely don’t know, but was surprised there wasn’t a drain in the middle of the room).

Here is what it looked like after drywall and after replacing their “dog’s lookout gate” with a regular office door. We were glad to make it into a normal office entry. Kevin found door casings that fit perfectly.

We moved out our existing built-in office furniture from our current office and made them work in his new one. There was a lot of wood filling and patching by reconfiguring, so our solution to blend it all in was to go with a black distressed finish. The wall color I chose was Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray. It’s more green than gray.

Here is a close-up of the cabinet finish.

And, on Mama’s agenda tomorrow is to paint the kitchen casings. I spend several days taping and putting plastic everywhere to avoid all the over spray. The cabinet doors can wait for now. We really want to get moved into this house, and know our list of over-achieving projects will eventually get done. We just wanted to get the biggies done first because I don’t want to live in a mess, and Chloe is a neat freak. It’s actually come in handy, but can drive a Mother crazy sometimes.

Until next time,

Filed Under: About Me, Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Home Decor, My Home, Uncategorized

How to :: diy built-in entertainment center

May 30, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 7 Comments

I haven’t posted in a while, because we’ve been busy getting some projects under our belt before moving in to the new house – all the big dusty and paint fume projects, that is.
And let me tell you…these tasks are taking 5 times as long as I had planned on! However, I AM starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. One thing that must be completed is our DIY built-in entertainment center. Here is what we started out with (this photo is from the original MLS listing):

I was lucky to find this unit on Craigslist, and we immediately went to work on making it a built-in fixture in our family room.

Kevin added the beadboard and trim to finish everything off before the t.v. is mounted.

More close-ups of patching and making this unit a “custom” built-in:

Here is what it looked like after adding the drywall:

And after painting the walls Frazee Keratin:

We taped everything off so I could use my paint sprayer and make everything pretty!

…and after a few coats of a custom-mixed creamy white paint….

Updated to show the after::

Another project we’ve been working on is removing tile around our kitchen island. We thought it was such a waste not to be functional so we are adding pull-out trash and recycle cabinets:

With the new/unfinished cabinets I’ll have to paint everything to look cohesive. It’ll eventually be beautiful!

Filed Under: Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Home Decor, My Home

2011 in review & 1000 followers giveaway

January 5, 2012 by Christa @ Stories of a House 30 Comments

Happy New Year!

When I started my little blog in 2010 I had ZERO expectations. Sure, I wanted to take furniture refinishing to the next level and share it with whomever would have the patience to sit through my ramblings…but I NEVER expected I’d be enjoying friendships with people from all around the world via phone, email, and text. I absolutely love what I do, and I appreciate your friendship, whether you just lurk or directly correspond with me. Thank you so much….muah!

2011 was a year of growth and change for myself and our family. I like to blog about these things here and there because this is my little scrapbook journal (I gave paper scrapbooking the old college try but failed miserably). This isn’t just for my family to read but also for my blog family to get to know me better as a real person, and not just a girl who perpetually has paint in her hair and under her nails. Here’s our 2011 in a nutshell:

* Last week we received final approval on the second home we put an offer on which is just a few doors down from my folks’ house. This transaction took 5 weeks. The other offer we made is still going on 9 months and is dead in the water. God is good; we like this house better, and being so close to Mom and Dad is the most AMAZING blessing ever (along with having my brother and his wife 2 blocks away). So this means we are putting our lovely home on the market and the packing begins. (Anyone wanna come and help; I’ll feed ya!) We look forward to downsizing and cutting expenses, but will greatly miss this home which holds precious memories.

* The girls changed schools. Boy was this ever the 2011 monstrosity. It took about 3 months before the tears subsided, and although they are doing okay, and in spite of being voted class representatives, they aren’t “feeling it.” But, they are really learning a lot. Many times I’ve resorted to saying, “hate me now, thank me later.” I was offered a job as their school nurse, but since I absolutely love the refinishing and working one day/week at the surgery center combo I accepted a substitute school nurse position. I can render aid to playground boo-boos and stay in the loop of what’s happening at the school.

* I was invited to put my furniture in the most adorable boutique, and I move in on January 12th. Email me if you want the location!

* My sister got engaged to the most wonderful man. She waited 32 years and he was worth the wait.

* I am now seeing a personal trainer because I am wearing a strapless dress next month to the aforementioned occasion. Right now my arms are shaking because I did a total of 210 push ups this morning. That was not a typo; thanks, Mark

* We resolved to take more family trips in 2011 and have done pretty well. We did Florida, a Disney cruise with Kevin’s family, camping (twice, with great friends from church community group), and annual passes to Disney. We’ve been to Disney twice in 2 months so far, and the girls cried last night when we came back home. I see another trip in our future, soon.

* I wrote a book! I can’t believe I accomplished it with the help of our friends, Mike and Keeley of European Paint Finishes. Kevin and I truly enjoy their company, and they are a whiz at what they do. Love them!

Well, enough about me and my family…on to the giveaway!

Having 1,000 followers and 2,010 RSS readers is very humbling. If you “like” Stories one way or the other (facebook, Google follower, RSS feed – I’m easy) just leave a comment for any or all of them and I’ll randomly select a wonderful person to receive a download link to our Guide to Furniture Finishes e-book. If you already have the book before the giveaway is over and are selected, I’ll just refund ya

Happy New Year and blessings from above to you ALL!

(Scroll up to the top to click to leave a comment; another WordPress feature I need to figure out…)

Filed Under: About Me, Antiques, Before and After, Cabinetry, Do it Yourself, Family, faq, Favorites, Finding Furniture, Furniture, Home Decor, Household, My Home, Organizing, Paint Colors, Products I Like, Project Diaries, Ramblings, Real and Raw, Recipes, Table and Chair Sets, Thrifting, Tutorials, Uncategorized, Video Tutorials, Wood Finishing, Workspace

Mom’s Laundry Room Makeover, Part 1

May 9, 2011 by Christa @ Stories of a House 13 Comments

I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Mother’s Day!

We did things a little different this year, and gave Mom our sweat equity

to show her our love and appreciation for all she has done for us.

She and Dad recently moved into a new house, and she’s been making it a home.

She wanted her laundry room to look clean and cheerful, so that’s what we gave her!

Here is what it looked like before – I remembered the picture after taking the cabinet doors down.

They were your garden variety of oak.

I brought the doors and drawers home to spray them,

then came back before the weekend to finish up the casings.

Boo kept me company while I worked.

That’s my brother, Ryan. When he’s not out saving lives or fighting fires he’s an in-demand handy man because he is a perfectionist and knows his stuff! We made a great team. While we painted, my sister and Ryan’s wife helped my Mom take pictures of stuff and listed them on CL for her.

A very productive Mother’s Day!

My Dad took down the builder shelf above the washer/dryer because they will inherit my laundry stand when I move, which will hide that white thing in the back. I am really going to miss that stand!

All that is left is for Mom to pull it all together by adding black and white accents to the walls, and then take down the fluorescent lighting and add a cute chandelier.