Tag: handles

Home Improvement

OMG OMG OMG Craft room!

Jessica Smith

Best blog post title ever, huh? It perfectly relays my excitement for my craft room. This weekend the hubster, my dad and I fixed up my craft room so it is epic-ly awesome.

I bought two cabinets for my  room when I went garage sale hopping last month. I paid a whole $5 for each cabinet. Brand new they would have cost $130 a piece! Sweet savings. The best part about them is that the woman who sold them to me used them in her craft room. She was so excited that I would be using the for the same purpose.

I also picked up a third cabinet from Lowe’s. Unfortunately, it was too tall so I had to return it. So the hubby and I visited a local hardware thrift store that sells home improvement items from people’s home renovations. They had lots of cabinets, window and doors that otherwise might have been thrown away. We were able to find a white cabinet that was the same height as my yard sale goodies for $35!

Before we picked up the third cabinet I planned on painting the other two white. I thought the white would pop against the teal walls. So I primed my yard sale cabinets, leaving “X” marks on the sides that I didn’t want people to see. Since my third cabinet was already white, I didn’t have to paint it!

Once the cabinets were primed, I painted then with two coats of semi-gloss white paint.

While I waited for the cabinets to dry, I hopped in my car and drove back to Lowe’s (this past week I was at either Home Depot or Lowe’s four different times!). I originally bought knobs for my cabinet drawers, but since the other cabinet had handles I swapped out the knobs for 11 matching handles.

I easily switched the cabinet hardware on the one with pre-existing handles. Then the hubster and I installed the handles on the two cabinets without any hardware. We were using my small electric drill until we got fed up with its lack of power. I asked my dad to borrow his bigger, better drill. He said, “Of course,” then surprised us with our very own corded, super powerful drill. He’s awesome.

With the new drill, Brian finished installing the hardware on the cabinets and all systems were go for putting the laminate on top. If you need a slab of pre-cut laminate, Lowe’s is the place to go. Home Depot no longer carries the pre-cut pieces, so you have to pay big bucks ($14 a square foot and higher) for their laminate. I was able to buy a 8 foot long piece of laminate at Lowe’s for $108 — and I had a 10% off coupon. Not too bad!

After we had the laminate on top of the cabinets we maneuvered things around so two cabinets were on one side, and the bigger cabinet was on the other. This left a perfect amount of space for a chair in the middle! It’s also the perfect place for Remmy to cuddle up and take a nap while I do crafts. We decided not to glue, screw, install, etc. the laminate quite yet, just in case I want to rearrange the cabinets. We’ll probably do that in a couple of weeks after I take the room for a test drive.

My dad had a great idea to buy a power strip and mount it to the side of one cabinet so I have a lot of outlets I can use. It was also great because it saved us from drilling out a hole for electrical cords in the laminate and it’s hidden from sight.

Aren’t they so cute working together!?! Love it. And how about those banana boxers! Get a belt, hubbs.

Check out my beautiful workspace! All in all, it only cost about $150.

I’m so impressed with how well the cabinets match. The white looks fantastic and the hardware is great.

We also installed shelves for even more storage. The hubby and I bought super long shelves for our office right after we moved into our house. We had them cut down so they’d fit perfectly in our nook, and we saved the remnants just in case we needed them later on. These pieces were a great length for my craft room, so I grabbed some shelving mounts this weekend and I had me some fancy new shelves. (Don’t mind all of the crap below the shelves… I’m working on it haha).

With all of my new storage, I’ll finally be able to clean up my craft room so it is a working space! *HUGE sigh of relief*

What do you think? Want to come craft with me in my sweet new space!?!?!

Home Improvement

A few updates on the house

Jessica Smith

I finally remembered my camera AND the memory card! So, as promised, here are some updates on our house!!

Kitchen Cabinet Hardware

I mentioned earlier in the week that we added handles to our kitchen cabinets. Look at how nice they look! Glen had a great way for installing the handles on the same spot on each cabinet. He took a piece of cardboard and cut it into an “L” shape. He then pressed the handle into the cardboard to make an indent where the holes needed to be drilled. You drill holes in your cardboard and line up your cardboard stencil the same way on each cabinet, and voila! Perfectly spaced cabinet handles! It was a neat trick that will certainly come in handy in the future.

Before:

After:

Ahhhh, so much better. Now we can actually figure out which way the cabinets open, which is especially nice since the Fannie Mae people installed some of them opening the wrong way. Oh well! Problem solved.

Basement Renovation

Now, on to the basement. I showed you a picture yesterday of the entire basement torn out. Glen finished that yesterday while Brian and I were at work. It looks huge!

The debris seems to be never-ending. Check out all of the bricks from our rounded fireplace hearth. This will be fun to remove.

Our fireplace looks a little sad now with no hearth, mantel or molding. But I know it will look so much better when this whole reno is complete. I’m going to pick out a granite hearth after work today. We are getting a black hearth will sparkly, gold flecks in it.

Glen also started ripping up the carpet in the room. Look at the lovely flooring we had underneath!

But wait, there’s more!

We have three different types of flooring in one space. I think we should leave it like that, except that we already bought new flooring last night. We also bought recessed lighting kits for my craft room, the family room and our kitchen. I can’t wait for all of the light!

Paint

So I have a confession to make. I picked out paint last night, and I’m already concerned that I picked a bad color. I bought a can of Valspar Sprinkle for my craft room and two cans of Olympic Caruso for our bedroom… I am second guessing myself though. Bad news bears.

Valspar Sprinkle - Craft Room
Olympic Caruso paint – Bedroom

So what do you think? My craft room has no windows, so I think the bright blue will be OK. But I’m less sure about the Caruso color for our bedroom. And we bought two cans… ugh. Silly hubby, I told him we should buy the $2.50 samples!

A secret room?

My last update is that we discovered we have a secret room in our house! Well, sort of. When we looked at our house we noticed a little cubby underneath our stairs that I joked was Brian’s timeout room. Well, it turns out this mini cubby is another long storage area! Glen found a hidden light in the cubby yesterday, and I was incredibly excited!

Once you get past the stair cubby, you can stand up back there (just be careful of the nails poking through at the ceiling from the floor above). Of course, I had to test it out.

Bahaha. I love our secret room! It’s so sneaky :p And the pink carpet is just oh so nice.

Tonight, Dad and the hubby are planning on dragging all of the debris out to the  car port so Brian can load up a U-Haul tomorrow and take it to the dump. Meanwhile, I’ll be taping and spackling so I can paint this weekend. AND!!!! Tomorrow we get our fence. So excited to have a large cage for our crazy beast of a dog.