Kitchens are fun to design, but also a little scary. Designing a kitchen isn't like designing a bedroom, where you basically take a box and add things, and you can easily change those things later if you decide you hate them. Kitchens are not easily changeable, and the things that go into them are expensive.
You have to choose wisely, adding elements that you love, but also keeping in mind that you need to love them forever. So that super colorful bird tile that pulls all the colors you love …
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The Ultimate Guide to Painting Cabinets
A few months ago I asked which DIY topics y'all would like me to cover, and the most popular answer was a post on how to paint cabinets. That surprised me a bit, because I've actually written quite a few posts on the subject. The information is scattered and not easy to find though, so the obvious answer was to write one big post containing everything I've learned so far. So here it is, my ultimate guide to painting cabinets!
The first thing you need to know about painting …
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Our NBI Drainboard Sink – Two Years Later
It was exactly two years ago now that we started using our NBI Drainboard sink, which means its received enough use and abuse to give it a fair review. A lot of you will have no interest in this, but ever since my initial post about the sink I've received a slow but steady flow of emails asking how it is holding up, so I know there is some interest out there.
When we chose this sink I was skeptical about its durability and functionality. All I knew is that it fit with my vision for the …
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Installing Our Highback Drainboard Sink
The first draft of this post was titled "Installing our Highback, Double Drainboard, Faux Vintage Kitchen Sink", which is quite a big description for a simple sink. That title is like when they introduce Kahaleesi on Game of Thrones, and they're all "Daenerys of the House Targaryen, The First of Her Name, The Unburnt.... eight more super long descriptive tiles...and Mother of Dragons." It's the longest title ever, and I'm over here rolling my eyes at the TV and thinking "just call her the queen …
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DIY Reclaimed Wood Ceiling (so cheap, so pretty)
I don't think I've been THIS excited about showing y'all a project in a long time. The reclaimed wood ceiling in our kitchen and dining room is finished and it is just SO GOOD.
It's cozy and warm and I just love it. The house feels so much less like an unfinished white box and more like the home I have always pictured in my head. Also, the whole thing only cost $322. That's a deal in my book.
A wood ceiling in the kitchen and dining room was on the "must have" list from the …
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How To Install a Light Fixture with the DIYZ App
*Thank you to the DIYZ® app for sponsoring this post. All opinions are 100% mine.
Let’s be honest here....progress in the kitchen is pretty much not happening these days. We got it to where it’s almost completely functional and then quickly became sidetracked with other things. It’s looked like this for a while now -
BUT, we did hang a light above the sink recently, so yay for steps in the right direction!
So last month I was at a local home decor boutique and spotted this …
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State of the House, 2017 – Main Living Areas
Alright, who’s ready for an interior house tour? Fair warning, this is not some beautifully staged, perfect house tour that you find all over home blogs, this is a very unfinished and unpretty tour so you know exactly where the house stands. Today I’ll show you the main living areas (areas in red below), and in the next post we’ll do the bedrooms, bathrooms, and loft.
Just as a recap for any newbies, this is a custom home that my husband and I designed. We hired a builder to …
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Simple Faux Leaded Glass and Our Rustic Pantry Door
There's nothing better than character in a house. Old houses are unique and tell a story, and my goal is to make our new house look anything but new. I think the pantry door and transom accomplish that goal pretty well.
I bought the door from the antiques fair in Round Top a few years ago (not the failure of a trip I blogged about, but a previous one) and paid $80 for it. Even though the green on my cabinets and the green on the door don’t match (or maybe because they don't) it works …
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The Most Organized Pantry in the World
Okay, that title might be a biiit of a stretch, but either way...the pantry is complete! I posted the first part of the pantry redo months ago, and even though we finished a majority of it soon after I refused to post it until it was 100% complete. Adam and have a problem of only finishing things 90% of the way and moving onto the next project (I even wrote a post about it years ago) and I’m breaking the cycle.
So as a refresher, here was the before...
(Yes, my house is messy. It’s …
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One of a Kind Double Barstools
Alright, let’s skip the fluffy intro and get right down to it - I’ve been on the hunt or barstools for the island. Originally I had my eye on these from West Elm...
They cost $199 a pop and I needed four, so with tax and shipping came to nearly $1000. I stalked them for awhile, but even with the best sale + coupon + rebate combo I couldn’t justify spending that much money. Besides, I had and idea...
Instead of getting four barstools that will never be pushed in just right and …
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Planning and Building a Pantry (Part I)
A few months ago Adam and I finished our master closet, which became the first finished room in the house. It was so organized and amazing that we decided to skip some of the bigger projects we had planned and instead pick another tiny room and finish it 100%. We debated doing a bathroom, the office, or the pantry, and eventually landed on the pantry.
The pantry is 3 ft by 7 ft and is situated under the stairs, which means one of the walls is shorter than the other. It’s a tiny little …
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Industrial Pipe Kitchen Shelving
From the time we started designing our house I knew I wanted some open shelving in the kitchen. Not all open shelving (because it would look cluttered), but just enough for our everyday dishes. We put open shelving in our last kitchen and really loved it, I liked having the dishes out in the open, and since we used them everyday dust was never an issue. So Adam and I designed the sink wall in the new house to have a big window with a view and shelving on either side.
I’ve always loved …
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The Search for a Vintage Farmhouse Sink
From the time I started sketching up our new house on graph paper nearly two years ago, I knew I wanted a vintage farmhouse sink for the kitchen. Not a modern apron front farmhouse sink that are popular today, but an antique one from the 20’s or 30’s. Those weren’t my only demands though, no...I also wanted it to have a single basin, high back, and double drainboards. I was basically searching for a needle in a haystack....a very expensive needle, as it turns out.
SOURCE - $2,695.00 + …
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Kitchen Progress – Dark green cabinets, a rustic wood countertop, and lighting
Last time I did an overall kitchen update we had just installed the cabinets and it looked like this....
Well now we have not only moved in, but I’ve painted the cabinets, we poured our concrete countertops, added a wood island top, bought appliances, and installed our island lighting.
First thing first, the cabinet color. I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I went from wanting a light airy green to something dark and dramatic, and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased …
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DIY Concrete Countertops, Part III – Sealing
If I’ve learned anything about DIY in the last 5.5 years of writing this blog, it’s that it’s all about the sealer. You could do the most awesome job ever on a project, and if you don’t seal it correctly it’s all for naught.
I knew I needed an amazing sealer for my concrete countertops, for three reasons....
Concrete is a porous material, so it’s susceptible to stains
Not only are our countertops concrete, but they are also white
I’m messy
So even though Z Counterform sent …
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Introducing “Oakmoss”
As many of you know, I’ve been struggling to choose a color for our kitchen cabinets. Adam started building the cabinets about eight months ago and asked me to choose a color, and the only thing I was sure of is that I wanted some sort of green. So I started looking at light, airy, neutral greens, and landed on “Grassland" from Sherwin Williams.
He painted the cabinets that color, and I instantly hated it. So I started looking for darker alternatives and settled on a neutral green …
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DIY Concrete Countertops, Part II – The Pour
*Thank you to Z Counterform for sponsoring this post.
Alright, here it is...part II of my concrete countertop series! I know a lot of you have been patiently waiting for this post and I’m excited to share all the details. (Read part 1 here if you haven’t already.)
Before we get started on the tutorial, let me just tell you that neither Adam or I have ever worked with concrete, we are truly newbies at this. We spent a ton of time watching videos and reading tutorials online, but had no …
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DIY Concrete Countertops, Part I- Setting the Forms
Well, we did it...we actually poured our own concrete countertops! Adam and I spent hours and hours (and hours) researching this before we did it. We read tutorials and watched YouTube videos and generally felt prepared and confident...but honestly, the process still didn’t go quite like we thought it would. Turns out no amount of research or reading can compare to actually getting your hands dirty. I already knew that...but now I know it better.
There are a lot of steps and information to …
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My Painted Kitchen Cabinets – Five Years Later
Since we have been on the subject of kitchen cabinets lately, I thought perhaps y’all would appreciate an update on the ones I painted five years ago. Truth be told they aren’t holding up that well, so if I can keep someone from making the same mistakes I did that would be great.
So five years ago Adam and I took this dated, boring, builder grade kitchen...
and turned it into this...
The total price on the kitchen renovation was about $3,800 ($2,200 on new appliances + …
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Installed Cabinets
Happy Fourth of July everyone! I was scrolling through Facebook today and looking at all the festive pictures and memes, and interspersed between and the red white and blue was this gem...
It made me laugh out loud...so I had to share, of course.
Anyway, in the last post I left you with a trailer full of cabinets...
and an empty kitchen.
Then one day this happened...
And now we have the beginning of a kitchen!
So, would you like a quick tour?
First up we …
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Cabinet Beginnings
One of the main ways we are saving huge amounts of money on the kitchen is by building our own cabinets. Way back when Adam and I were dating (as teenagers about 14 years ago) his family ran a custom cabinet shop. They built the cabinets themselves, which means that my handy husband isn’t new to this whole cabinet building thing. We got a quote for cabinets anyway (just to make sure building our own was worth the time and effort) and it came back around 10K. So far Adam has built and installed …
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