Home Improvement, Paint

Hey new doors, heyyyyyy

After running around like crazy people last night doing some long-overdue grocery shopping and a Costco run, we finally made it to Lowe’s to pick up our new doors! Who wants to see some terrible photos of our doors? Hopefully you do.

I totally sissied out yesterday when it came to carrying them into the house, but we got them in and laid them on our floor. They are rather… beige. But that’s just for now! I am nervous that they will look too fancy on our Plain Jane house, but I am also fabulous at second-guessing my decisions when it comes to things I cannot return. *gulp*

{A Smith of All Trades} New Doors

The door on the left will be our front door, and the other will replace our crummy car port door.

I was a little nervous about leaving them ont he floor because of the pup, so I made a door cage out of chairs to keep Rem out.

He doesn’t seem too interested though.

{A Smith of All Trades} New Doors1

On to the swatches! I am loving the idea of a teal front door. I think the mint will get lost in the whiteness of our house, so a bolder pop of color is in order. I also like the vibrant blue. The hubby also likes the blue and hates the teal… so I should be nice and go with that. But I make no promises.

Sometimes a girl just needs a teal front door! And even though my hubby doesn’t quite believe it, I can always repaint the door if we hate it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Paint SwatchesThose were some quality photos, huh?

Hope you enjoyed. I have no idea when we’ll get a chance to hang them, but you’ll be the first to know once I know!

Happy hump day!

Home Improvement

A few updates on the house

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.