Tea House

We went with my in-laws to a few open house this afternoon, they like that kind of thing.

This house was neat, with a huge wood shop, and this great little tea house on the property. It's a great building, really artful craftsmanship. It would be amazing to have something like this, it was really cool to be in there.

Fence Mock Up

Like we don't have enough half finished projects to do. *Cough* Exterior Paint * Cough* Faucets* Ahem*

This mock up of a fence for the front yard looks like one of those old timey signs. I love the look of it out front, it helps out the house's mid century modern street cred. I mean, curb appeal.

Living Room Paint

Besides some touching up, and scraping that blue tape up off the floor, I'm done painting the living room. Phew, I do not like to paint. It looks pretty good, but it'll be awhile before I can look at it without thinking about having to climb up and down a ladder a million times.

The ceilings and trim are semi gloss Kelly Moore 'Swiss Coffee,' and the wall is KM 'Portland Whitbed.' They have everything available as no VOC if you ask for it, it costs an extra couple bucks per can. It was great to get no VOC, it didn't smell at all, and it won't be off gassing any volatile organic compounds.

If we had paid our (really reasonable priced) painting contractor to paint this room, it would have cost about $600. Yay for me.

Link: Yellow and Gray

I love this light gray and yellow color combination so much. Found on an oldish Design Sponge post. I saw this about a month ago, and put it to work when I picked out the paint in the half bathroom. I'm going to get the camera in there and post some photos of it, I'm really liking it in there.

via: Design Sponge

The Hatch

Part of the paint preparations in the living room is on 'The Hatch.' There is a sky light in here for some reason, and all it brings into the house is blinding sun light and burning heat. Oh, and it also condenses water and drips on the floor. Shortly after buying the house, we screwed some cardboard to the ceiling. I know, we're so fancy.

The plan now is to build a little frame or something with some wood slats, or something. I don't know, my husband is in charge of that project. I'll paint it when he's done with it. I originally wanted to get a fancy shade for it, but the kind that I want that are tracked for horizontal installation are, like, $300. Hence, the cardboard.

Artful Curls

Before & After: Living Room Windows

The window trim in the living room was weird. Actually, the entire living room is a bit odd, it was probably a patio to begin with, then the room was added, maybe in the '70s. So the whole room is a bit screwy, but it's the largest single room in the house.

We just clipped the curved end off of the bottom of the window trim, planed off the raggedy edges left by the saw, and painted it the wall color. There are five windows like that, and three of them are covered up by the couch. There's no other wood trim on the windows except this bottom sash (told you it was weird).

Bike Parking

Since the tool chests were set up in the garage, we had to park the bikes outside. But they're still behind the gate, and actually in a more convenient spot for getting them out on the road. And they are parked by the lovely lemon tree here in the side yard.

My bicycle is this Giant Sedona with Xtracycle and seat in front for Bean. Z rides on the deck there in the back. My husband rides his old red Univega.

Garage

The rest of the garage is pretty messy. We do have room to park the car, though, so score 1 for me.

And look at the new tool chests, ooh la la. We picked these up yesterday, and spent this morning filling them up with all the tools that were pretty much just piled all over the work bench area. The tool situation was getting out of control, we've needed tool drawers like these for a long time now

Link

I love the look of this photo grid on apartmenttherapy.com. The black and white really makes it. I don't really have a great spot or subjects for something like this, but I like it.

Shade Sails

We just got these shade sails up in the backyard. I was worried about the shade since we had the tree trimmed, and these are perfect. It's so nice, I spent half the afternoon under here.

Half Bathroom Progress

The half bathroom work began when we were just going to have the toilet replaced. We figured we could get a new toilet to replace the old one, and mess with the wallpaper and junk later. Once the old one was out, we look in the box and saw the new one was chipped. So, while we had the room, might as well redo the whole bathroom, right?

So here's my husband putting the new low flow toilet with this long and dainty wrench. It's so cute, it looks like a magic wand.

I spent hours and hours on the floor dying all that grout, and I picked a light gray for the walls. The last thing we have to do is to replace the old faucet. So, yay, we finally have two bathrooms.

Link: ApartmentTherapy.com

Bright white kitchen on apartmenttherapy.com

Now that our floor is mostly white, something like this might work for us.

Grout

Jeez, sick of me talking about grout yet? Grout grout grout. Hope I'm almost done working on it, so I can stop talking about it. Phew.

Kitchen: In progress

I'm probably about half way done with dying the grout in the kitchen. The dark grout on the left is what we have been living with for four years. The whitish on the right is one application or two of the grout dye. And those are my big feet.

The process is pretty much crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees with a toothbrush, brushing some 'grout renew' liquid into the grout areas. Then, I wipe it off a little after 5 minutes or so, and end up having to make two or three applications. The kitchen isn't very big, but it's easier to do it in sections so that I can move around while it's drying. Like most things, I'm doing it kind of half assed as well, but I like the way it's turning out.

Link: ModMidMod.com

Love this blog for mid century modern exteriors inspiration: ModMidMod

Bathroom: Before & After

The full bathroom needed paint and a new fan (and new floor tile, maybe later) to make it a bit more finished looking in there. Last year, I painted it a light gray really quickly, and I'm not very good at painting.

So, a professional paint job and a new fan, and we're good to go. My husband picked the paint color, it's a little bluish for me. We like gray around here. And, the before photo was taking mid fan replacement.

The next thing I should do is decant all those bottles into nice ones, a' la Chez Larsson. That's almond Dr. Bronner's liquid castille soap in the green bottle, btw. Thumbs up. The floor tiles should really be replaced, as they are cracked and whoever installed them did a crappy job. I might end up just dying what's left of the grout in the meantime.

Kitchen: Before

Our galley kitchen is small and not particularly attractive. Ugh, that hardware is ugly. The countertops, yuck. It is, apparently, a great place to park your little bike.

Anyway, fixing up the kitchen is a long term (and big $$) project. We decided not to replace the cabinets, or the floor. *Sigh.* Step one is the tile grout on the floor. We can have the backsplashes torn down, hardware and counters replaced (we're thinking PaperStone or recycled glass), and the cabinets painted. Eventually. Making it work, people.

Pots

I hadn't even noticed we planted so many things until it was time to get rid of all the pots. I think these were mostly from tree saplings. I've been cleaning out the backyard for the last couple of days, there were some wire, pots, broken rakes, flat soccer balls, etc., that were all just uglying up the place. Got rid of these on freecycle.

Half Bathroom Walls: Before

There are two layers of (ugly) wallpaper peeling off the walls, offsetting this (ugly) yellow tile. This is kind of a screwy half bathroom anyway, the cabinet is skewed on one side to allow the door opening. I know, how could we have this eyesore in our house for years and years? We closed the door and completely ignored it. For shame.

Instead of a complete, back to studs renovation, with poured concrete floors, wall mounted faucet and lav, and a hatbox toilet, we'll be doing a few quick, cheap fixes. I'm picking my paint colors, and crossing my fingers.

Half Bathroom Tile: Before

Gross, right? We have had this half bathroom for four years and have never used it. Between the peeling wallpaper, 4 gallon per flush toilet, and this floor, it is just not an appealing place to be, even for a minute.

We are hiring a painter to strip the wallpaper and paint the walls. My job, however, will be to dye the grout. I think this will go a long way into making this tile bearable. We're embarking on quite a few band aid renovations, but this is first. Since Bean has transitioned out of diapers, it will be nice to have two bathrooms between the four bathroom-goers.