Makeover : Dresser to Changing Table

We don't have a ton of space in the nursery so decided to double the changing table with a dresser. 

One of our aunt & uncles on Kelly's side gave us this dresser that had been passed down from their aunt and uncle for their child. Also, it was built in the town where we grew up and still live today. And it was the perfect size. Pretty wicked awesome, huh?

With all of it's lovely, sweet history, this little guy still needed a makeover.

Nursery Makeover

Hello Lovelies :) 

We finally started our nursery last month! 

Firstly, I'll give you our house layout. We live in a two-story old farmhouse with the kitchen, dining room, family room, laundry, master bedroom and bathroom downstairs. Upstairs are three small bedrooms and a walk-through room at the top of the stairs that we use as an office. 

We've been slowly working to condense our messes into organized totes to store in our basement (did I mention that we've been doing this slowly? Sloowwwwlyyyyy.) But two of the rooms upstairs are completely chuck full of stuff. 

So, what room did we pick for the nursery you ask? The messiest, of course! Check it...

Our grandmothers jaws are probably hitting the floor right now, appalled. Sorry! This room holds all of Kelly's hunting gear. It also holds all of his childhood memories - scrapbooks, baby books, clothes, games, beanie babies, school work...just about anything you can imagine. It stores our winter clothes, suitcases, old bed sets, games and some random holiday things. It is just a catch-all really. 

Here's another angle, just to get the full effect...

See our little carpet walking path there? 

So it was some major work and to spare you all of the gory details, I'll just say that between recycle, garbage and goodwill, we were able to condense this mess into 5 totes. FIVE. Yes, we deserve a pat on the back. And cookies. 

So after the cleaning came a little wall-patching and, voila!

What is super awesome (yes, 'super awesome' is in my vocabulary) is that the carpet in this room was brand new when Kelly bought the house about five years ago and since this room has only been used for storage, it's in great condition. 

Great carpet, check. Great paint color, not so check. 

I have what has become a bad habit of painting everything white. Kelly really wanted me to do an actual color for this room, but I convinced him that since we had leftover white paint from the kitchen that we should use it. 

Crue just making himself comfortable on the clean, plush carpet. 

And because there's not a whole lot that I love more than a good before and after side-by-side...

Fresh and clean! We've since put the crib together and have done a dresser makeover for a changing table. I'll be posting with more updates soon :) 

Kitchen Ceiling Demolition

There is nothing that motivates me to clean the kitchen more than it being covered in blown insulation and mouse turds. Can you imagine a little of that sprinkled on your Sunday night dinner?

We have continued our kitchen project in the most disgusting of ways. Not a lot of words needed here, I'll let the pictures tell the story...

Forewarning...the next pictures are not pretty.

Corn Bags

Remember this post? Honey made a corn bag set to go along with the giant Jenga. Our plan was to paint it coral to go along with our wedding color, but we couldn't seem to find the right color and he ended up painting them white. Since I thought they'd be white, I ordered green and yellow corn bags for my Mr. John Deere Green. Then he came home one night and surprised me with the perfect paint color!

I love them. Except, how bad are these going to clash?

 



I bought them from this shop on Etsy - I thought about ordering a couple sets that would match better, maybe dark and light grey, but at the end of the day, who's going to lose sleep over it? Most certainly not I. Plus, it's like a little piece of me and a little piece of him. How corn-y is that? :)

I'd like to know what you call this game. Him and his friends call it plain old 'Bags', I say 'Bean Bags'. 

When I hear it referred to it as 'Cornhole' it makes me cringe. Every. Single. Time. 

Maybe because all I can think of is Beavis and Butthead...

 

Tumblr

Then I am left repeating things like 'Cornolio' and 'Bungholio' over and over in my head in a ridiculous voice. Oh Beavis.

Bye Bye Birdie

And by Birdie, I mean pretty green paint. There was a sneak peek here, but we finally got the pole barn finished! We can no longer direct our lost friends by explaining 'the house with the ugly green pole barn'.

I think this lovely, mint-ish green was a popular color in the seventies and that roof was getting to be a fungus, yellow color. Plus, three out of the four sky lights were leaking every time the rain came in. So this spring when our local hardware had a paint sale - buy one gallon get one free, we decided that, even though we weren't quite ready to paint, we couldn't pass up two free gallons.

After a few months of the paint just sitting in the pole barn, we finally had a free weekend where the weather cooperated so we got to work.

We slapped a fresh coat of paint on everything. Front, sides, doors AND roof. A little boring, but we are much happier with it.

 

How about that roof now? The giant water hole isn't usually there, we've had an excessive amount of rain lately. Kelly jokes that we should just turn it into a duck pond.

 

And here are the bright new, crack-free skylights. Yay to no more setting buckets out when it rains!

I'm not sorry to say that we won't miss the old eye-sore.

 

Game Time

Hello my sweet chinchillas. Can you guess what this is? If you guessed an old horse feed sack, you would be partially correct! Guess what's inside? A giant Jenga set!

Our wedding venue has a gorgeous outdoor area, so we thought we'd have a few games that would be fun for both the kids and adults during cocktail hour. Since Kelly is the ever-so-talented power tool operator, he made this set of Jenga blocks. We're going to leave them unstained and our plan is to have a stash of markers so that people leave us something witty and inspiring or, in the kids's case, maybe draw us a picture or two. After the wedding, we'll cross our fingers and try the linseed oil that didn't work in this post to finish and protect the blocks.

Just to give you an idea of the size, I had my big boy sit next to the game once it was set up (don't mind the white paint on his ear, he got into one of our other projects). Then we had to have a practice trial.

 

Apparently this is the winning postition, because a few moves after this I tumbled them. Oops.

Nostalgia

My last horse show of the season was this past weekend at the Ingham County Fairgrounds. This was such a nostalgic place for me because it's where the below photos were taken over thirteen years ago.

We'd stay in our horse tailer for the weekend, which was pretty much a vacation in heaven for me. See the picture on the left? We would hop that fence to go play in the park next to the fairgrounds. Every morning, we'd wake up, take our dollars that we'd bummed off of our parents and run over to the main arena to buy a donut.

Patches was the sweetest horse on earth, I could ride her around the fairgrounds bareback with just her halter and lead rope. The picture on the right is before one of our early morning showmanship classes. I'm bummed that I didn't think to take a photo of Myystr and I in the same place with the same pose.

 

The show this time was complete opposite of last time. Our warm up this time was horrible, to the point of me almost wanting to scratch. In the above photo my trainer, Chris, is trying to calm me down. Once we got in the ring? He was a perfect angel.

 

It felt good to be back.




**PS.
Below is a sneak peek of the pole barn project we've got going on. More on that soon:)

Kitchen Project {Part Three}

It's been a long time coming, but I finally have some new photos! Here are some links if you missed phase one or phase two.

 

We first framed in the top beam, then installed the bar top with wood glue and finishing nails.  The two sides were completed last so that the bar top is sandwiched between the side beams and the counter tops, adding to stabilization. The whole project was stained, but we put a coat of polyurethane on the bar top to protect from wear and tear of everyday use.

We did make a little mistake with the first varnish we used on the bar top. For our first try, we used boiled linseed oil, which was recommended online and from the local hardware store. We applied the varnish correctly, but it ended up bringing out all of the little imperfections underneath the stain. It's a beautiful varnish, but maybe for something that hasn't been stained. Or maybe we only thought we applied it correctly. Who knows. Anywhoo, we had to completely re-sand and re-stain the board before applying the correct varnish.






He then used Minwax Wood Putty in Ebony to hide the small holes left by the finishing nails. Wood putty vs. wood filler is appropriate to use in this instance as we are unable to sand the final project. It was fairly simple to use- simply form a small ball of putty and rub it into the nail hole. From there, make sure to clean off the surrounding area with a clean, dry rag.

 

 

I wasn't much help but an extra pair of hands, but honey did a fabulous job. I knew it was going to look good, but it turned out even better than expected and we both love it. We love it so much that we decided that the rest of the kitchen might like a little bit of a face lift too.

Wouldn't want anyone to get bored around here- right?

GIF

So here's what we're thinking next...

Symphony of Destruction

It was like FernGully in our woods this weekend. I could practically hear the poor little faeries scrambling for a new tree to call home.

This is the entrance to our little forest. Not very pleaseant for an evening stroll, unless you're decked out in coveralls and a helmet with a face shield. 

 

Enter Mr. Bobcat Forestry Cutter.

Kelly's cousin, who operates this type of equipment for a living, was kind enough to haul this monster to our house and spend his Saturday afternoon clearing a path so that we could enjoy our woods a little more.

We went through and marked a tentative destruction course with a pretty high tech trail marker that some of you may have heard of. Toilet paper. Then he went at it! 

There are no pictures of the monster in action because this thing could send a wooden spear through a person quicker than Joffrey could lop off Ned Starks head.  I wasn't gettin up close and personal with that.

 

 

The machine leaves behind a trail of stringy wood over the smaller mulch, but after a couple hours (and a few blisters) with some steel rakes, we had a nice clear path that was covered in smaller mulch.

I did have to take one small break to, you know, enjoy some eye candy.

 

 

We're so grateful to Troy coming over and clearing this path for us. Don't mind the dog butts, they love the trails as much as we do

I am calling them my horse trails. One might be sweet enough to point out that we don't actually have any horses, but dare to dream, right?

Kitchen Project {Part Two}

Now that we’d knocked out the wall, it was time to start working on the faux beams. Kelly was able to find a few boards of roughly milled red oak up at the farm. This wood had actually been logged from his great-grandmother’s property when his grandpa was just a boy, back when horses were used for logging.  

The planks were very rough, so we used a planer that allowed us to even out the thickness of the board while leaving it with a semi-smooth surface. Although the boards looked much better after being run through a couple of times, they still needed to be sanded.

We started by using a belt sander with 50 grit sandpaper, which helped to remove all of the black marks caused by the planer. We then switched to a finishing sander first with 80, then 220 grit to smooth down the whole board.  

We were left with these beautiful red-tinted oak boards, which prompted a debate on whether we should stain them dark or leave them in their original color. In the end, we decided to go dark. We used Minwax Oil-Based Ebony Stain, which soaks into the wood and turns it a rich, dark brown. The two wide pieces only needed two coats of stain, while the thinner piece will need a third coat.

Next step- hanging these puppies!  

Kitchen Project {Part One}

 

Our kitchen project has been in the works for, oh, let’s just say quite some time now. No complaints, I don’t mind living in a ‘house in progress’. They all are anyways, right? Houses in progress?

 

 

What you can’t see behind that looming dark wall is a room full of big, bright windows. How nice would the kitchen be if we could knock out the top half and let in some light?

The plan was to remove the upper wall and cabinets, then top the counter with an elevated bar. We first carefully removed the cabinets and stashed them upstairs for later use. Then came the fun part. Honey was very hesitant to give me the hammer, but after I took a couple quick swings there was no turning back.

 

 

The two outlets had to be moved to make the bar the correct height. One went to the far right, just above the countertop on the kitchen wall. The second moved lower and to the opposite side of the wall on the back side of the cabinets.

After a bit of finesse with a jigsaw, we were left with this!  

 

 

Look at all of that beautiful, bright, natural light! A fresh coat of paint never hurt either. The end goal is to frame in all of the open beams to get the effect of a chunky, naked barn beam. It will form a ‘T’ to the ground, with an elevated bar top above the counter.  

Are there any projects going on in your neck of the woods?

 

 

*Progress Update - Part Two, Part Three