It's been an expensive month around our house. First we paid for the 7 new windows which have yet to be installed. Then paid for the cabinet doors coming from CA that my dad is going to custom build for laundry room storage. Then our refrigerator has been slowly dying, and instead of yet another craigslist fridge that lasts a year we got a new one. And now our AC is broken.
I guess I can still be thankful that we have good jobs and are able to pay for these things, and that I am blessed with a husband who in 90+ degree weather goes out in the weeds behind our house armed only with crappy harbor freight tools, his laptop of "how to fix your air conditioner" youtubes and a lot of gumption and determination. Yes, I'm very thankful for that. So Doug got a couple new fuses and is planning on installing some other part today to try to fix it. Hope it will work! And the new fridge was delivered this morning.
I can't help feeling down about some house projects that have gone wrong lately. I'm super bummed my deck/porch paint is already peeling. And I had gotten these cool solar bulb lights for the deck and both of them already snapped. Sad! And the violets mom transplanted around the deck have either been eaten by the groundhog or just dried to a crisp in all this hot weather despite my almost daily waterings. Too bad.
Another sadness is our nursery wall we've been working on and is just not turning out as we hoped. More on that another day.
One project that is finally done is the crown molding in our bedroom.
This is how the room looked before Doug and I got married and I moved in:
absolutely disgusting
We painted it "shark loop" grey and moved in.
This year during the late winter we decided to add crown molding. It was a tricky task as it went up on a slant and you had to cut all these inside/outside cuts with the miter saw.
The ol' measure twice cut once apparently does not apply to crown molding. It was like measure several times, cut several times. So often we would measure, cut, and bring the piece in just to have it still be bowing out and too long when we'd try to put it up against the wall. Truly mind-boggling.
yes, this kinda stuff happened a couple times.
We also hung curtain rods and curtains that mom and I lined with old salvation army white sheets to make them more light blocking.
And then we lived with it until the last weekend.
I spent one afternoon puttying all the little nail holes and cracks. Another afternoon painting two coats of white trim paint. A third afternoon applying the caulk between the trim and the ceiling. And maybe I should've stopped there, except our walls must not really be square and I could see cracks underneath the trim and wall that were bugging me. So this morning I caulked that crack. But bummed again because unlike my bathroom caulk job which turned out awesome this caulk looks wavy in some areas and it's just not as good. Hopefully I'm the only one who pays such close attention.
It does feel good to have one more thing checked off the to-do list.
But all these things, and working hard just to have things still 'off' just make me dream of a brand new house.
This last weekend Doug and I went with a realtor to look at a house. All I could see as I walked around was project after project. Maybe if the price were right, possibly, but to be an expensive house and still have tons of work to do, no thanks. I guess it's just as well, I think it's crazy to move now with the baby coming and I want to stick around and enjoy our home improvements and see my gardens grow, at least for now.
Ol' porty did the job, but it was a pain wheeling it over to the sink, you had to be around when it was running because otherwise the water would keep dripping, and it was taking up a lot of floor space too.
Porty in action
Here's how our kitchen looked before the dishwasher install. And yes, it was a very hard decision to lose 3 drawers in a small, storage lacking kitchen!
Handyman Doug creating the space for the dishwasher
The new dishwasher! We had a narrow space so had to get an 18 inch wide dishwasher instead of the standard 24. This will mean it has to be ran more, but we figured it wouldn't be a huge deal. This specialty size was a little more expensive, but we had some Menards rebates back since we did that new deck this summer also. So that was nice.
The dishwasher in it's spot where it remained for several weeks until Doug actually had time to hook it up! We had an electrician out to get electric wired under there, and eventually Doug was able to route the plumbing and get it in there with minimal leaks :)
So of course that meant I had to find another storage solution.
Enter my CraigsList find china cabinet.
This baby is actually a metal cabinet, which could be a pro or con, I don't know. It has a wood grain and looks like wood, but is a little lighter and seems pretty durable.
Of course I couldn't keep that ugly brown. And in a move unlike white-furniture-loving-Anne, I went for a nice pop of color in an aqua.
Naive Anne threw 2 cans of spray paint into her cart thinking that ought to do it, but 7 more cans later I was finally done! Followed by 2 coats of polyurethane.
Sprayed the handles with oil-rubbed bronze
I don't think you can see it there, but I lined the cabinets with a patterned paper too. Then we secured it to the wall so it won't tip on August, and there's a hole in the back going to a thin USB charger thing to charge all our devices. It's working out pretty nicely.
Our final project has been building a kitchen helping tower so August can be at the counter while we make food.
We followed this tutorial, but added hinges so it could fold away for storage. I cut all the pieces and sanded them, and Doug helped assemble.
Stained and sealed
ready for a helper!
And nicely folds away for storage.
Little steps at a time to make our home more efficient for us :)
