Farmhouse Love Episode 13: Sewing & Craft Room

Like most of my Farmhouse Love episodes, this post is long overdue. I'm over the late post guilt though. Ain't nobody got time for that. I'm just happy to have this room functional so I can use it for my ongoing projects.

Like always, let's start with some before pictures.

This is what the room looked like when we moved in. It's a long, narrow room, but it's really quite perfect for my crafty needs. 

The work surfaces and storage units were left behind. Thank you very much.

The former owner of this house used this as as a sewing room, as indicated by the themed curtain and painted drawers. Once upon a time, I would have loved this particular decor, except that I like color on my walls. Too many years spent as a renter have caused me to crave color on the walls.

So I scrubbed everything down and got to work. I went around and around about what color to paint my space, but finally I decided on pink. It makes me happy.

It really could have ended up being just about any color because I love all the colors. Color inspires me.  

My pegboard got a new coat of paint too.

After scouring Pinterest for thread storage ideas, I smacked myself in the head because I had the perfect storage solution right in front of me all along.

I love having my sewing thread on my pegboard, and I wish I would have done it a long time ago. It's so accessible now, and easy to put away. Which means I'll actually put it away.

This is the Making Memories unit that I tweaked way back when. That little letter board above it is a reminder message for my pink hating family. They do not like my pink room, and I don't care. It's mine. 😊

The four bins I have on the top shelf are for my current projects. They are full up to the tippy top. You might laugh, but my new rule for myself is that if I don't have room for the supplies for a new project in one of those bins, then I can't have a new project. 😟 It's for the best.

My dirty little secret is that I have a couple moving boxes underneath the work space which are also stuffed to the gills. It's the thought that counts. Regardless, it's good to have goals.

I've had this chair for at least twenty years. I painted it and added the stencil to coordinate with my new space.

I also painted and stenciled the storage unit and swapped out the hardware with these nifty cup drawer pulls.

I do have a a little problem with this unit, cute as it is. Before I painted it, the inside reeked of mouse droppings. I scrubbed it, and painted it with multiple coats of stain-blocking primer and multiple coats of paint.

Still it reeks. I put air fresheners inside several of the drawers but still, the drawers are stinky. I don't know what else to do besides drag it outside and light it on fire. That seems like such a terrible waste though.

If you have any ideas for me to try, please share.

I'm happy to report that these drawers are not stinky though.

This is my scrapbooking paper stash. I no longer paper scrapbook. I am 100% digital now. This stash does come in handy when the girls have school project boards to do though.

These shelves hold all my Cricut supplies, stamping supplies, and other miscellaneous things. The labels help me to find things when I'm maniacally crafting.

The other end of my room has turned into food storage and paper supplies overflow. It's okay. I'm not bitter about it. Really.

I made these little curtains for the window. They stay open most all of the time. Otherwise the laundry room, which is right next to this room, is as dark as a cave.

Right outside this window is a spooky shed which we haven't used. It's a dark, creepy place where I imagine a serial killer might like to bury the body parts of his victims. 

Sorry. I read a fair amount of Stephen King.

Happy thoughts only. This is my happy place.

Farmhouse Love Episode 12: Family Room

It might appear that I actually have my ducks in a row with two posts in two weeks, but that is definitely not the case. It just so happens that I completed both my kitchen/dining room and my family room over the summer, and I wanted to take the pictures and get them posted so I could cross them off my summer list.

Lame, I know.

Before I show more after pictures, let's revisit the before pictures. These were taken right after we got the keys to our house, and this particular picture was taken from the dining room.

This is just a straight on view. My biggest complaint about this room is that it is too narrow, and there are too many doors so it's basically a high traffic area without adequate room to travel and have furniture at the same time.

Yes. It's basically a very wide hallway.

We need a family room though, and nothing can be done about it, so we just plunked our furniture down and we're living with it.

I didn't hate the fireplace brick, but it didn't really go with my vision for the room. I spent a lot of hours staring at this brick and trying to decide what I wanted to do with it.

The wood stove gets a lot of use in the winter, and we have really enjoyed having it.

This area is outdated, but there's not a lot that can be done about it right now. Eventually we'd like to move the door directly to the left over and put a sliding barn door here. That's down the road though, in a major reno project which we do not yet have the funds for.

Story of our lives. It's called reality.

In the meantime, we'll make use of this space as best we can. The first thing we did is to recycle the television which the former owners so kindly left for us. It cost us $25 to unload it at Best Buy, and it was worth every penny just to see it go. And that only took us two years to do.

Now we can start with the after pictures. As I mentioned before, paint goes a long way.

I painted all the interior doors in the house pretty early on. I was craving something besides off white, and painting the doors helped me live with the rest of the house when I didn't have time to paint.

This is a picture of Rey, the Mustang we've been lucky enough to board for the past eighteen months. Zoë took some amazing pictures of her last winter, and I've been wanting to get a print made with this picture as soon as I saw it. I made this canvas at Canvas on the Cheap. It was easy to make and it was delivered to me quickly. The quality is good, and I would definitely do it again.

Sadly, Rey's owners moved to Boise and she is going to be leaving us very soon. We are going to miss her so much. She brings so much sass to our little herd. One day she even chased a coyote off our property! I love her sweet little heart.

The only reason this family room got painted this summer is because we bought a new wood stove. It's kind of different, isn't it? I like it because I don't have to get down on the ground to load it up. Getting down on the ground isn't so much the problem, it's the getting up off the ground that I don't like.

Anyway, since we were going to have a new stove delivered, I had to paint the ceiling and walls around it, and since I was doing that, I'd better figure out what I was going to do about the multi-colored brick. I had been pinning white washed fireplaces for over a year, so I just went for it.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

And once I painted that little corner, it was like my green light to paint the rest of the family room and it was on.

That spot where the television used to sit is what I am now calling my wood hole. I think it's going to be the next sought after feature for homeowners. I'm going to stuff it full of firewood, and then Peanut Head won't have to traipse back and forth to the garage for firewood all winter long.

Won't that be nice for him?

I really had no business doing any work inside the house over the summer since we have so much work outside that needs to be done. As you can see, that didn't stop me.

I carried my blue from the dining room onto the opposite wall in the family room. It makes me happy.

More doors! Can you even believe that? There is basically only one way to arrange the furniture in this room, and you're lookin' at it. If you see another one, please tell me, because I could use some help.

We probably shouldn't even have an ottoman in here on account of the fact that there's no room to walk, but we like to put our feet up.

I must tell you about these shelves.

We desperately needed an up high place to put two of our surround sound speakers, so originally I bought two cute little farmhouse picture ledges at Fred Meyer's. That was an extreme fail though, because they were very cheaply made, and I ended up having to return them.

So after we put the holes in the walls and I had to fill them, Peanut Head started grilling me about what it was exactly that I wanted, and then he showed me this piece of wood he drug in from the field.

Isn't it beautiful? Okay, maybe not yet, but can you see its potential?

I hosed it off, lightly sanded it, and then stained it. I didn't want to go too crazy with the sanding because I wanted it to retain it's original character, but minus the dirt and bugs. I'm all over farmhouse decor, but not the dirty kind. 😷

Originally I envisioned more of a barn wood grey, but there was something about the wood that compelled me to stain it. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

And that completes our family room. Next up is my sewing and craft room. It's 95% finished. I just need to make some curtains, clean the cat vomit stain off the carpet, and then finally take some pictures. With any luck I'll have three posts in three weeks. Look at me go!

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Farmhouse Love Episode 11: Kitchen/Dining Room

Well hello there! I was starting to think I'd never get back here to do this blog post for the kitchen and dining room which I started on back in March and finally finished in June.

We've been living in this house for just over two years now, and you might recall that this is what our kitchen and dining room looked like when we first got the keys.

I loved a lot of things about this space from the very first time I saw it. The biggest being the size. This is the most counter space we have ever had, and boy do we make use of it.

Of course there were things that I didn't like as well, but almost nothing that couldn't be fixed with some time and money.

The very first thing I did after cleaning and unpacking, was to replace the hardware on the cabinetry. The handles and knobs were wood and collecting all kinds of dirt and grime that couldn't be cleaned.

I was itching to paint this space since day one. I would gaze at the walls while eating my breakfast every day, imagining different colors on the walls.

Most of this house started out with this tan-beige color. I don't hate it, but I'm craving more cool colors for this house. I picked Sherwin Williams' Repose Gray for my neutral throughout the house, and with each room I paint, I'm convinced that I made the right choice.

Down the road I'd like to stain the upper cabinets a darker color, and possibly paint my lower cabinets. I haven't decided for sure on what color yet. I've entertained the thought of painting at least the island red and antiquing it, but I don't know if I can pull the trigger on that one yet. It's kind of cray cray, even for me.

And honestly, Peanut Head tolerated my kitchen chair refresh, but I don't know if he has it in him to let a red island slide.

I cannot wait to replace the countertops with some sort of solid surface, maybe granite, but it is definitely not in the budget right now. What was in the budget was the subway tile backsplash which I installed over the course of two weeks in March and June.

The previous backsplash didn't go all the way up to the cabinets, and it was not a first rate job. It made me so twitchy, I couldn't stand it, so I was anxious to start demo and get rid of it.

Here it is. Nope. I do not miss it one little bit.

What I wasn't expecting was for the wall to come off with the tile during demo. It was a nightmare of a job, and it took me a couple days just to get rid of all the old tile.

It was pretty cool to see the second window that I just knew used to be in Zoe's room before the addition was put on.

Thanks to YouTube and all the nice people that took the time to school me, I learned how to replace drywall.

I am by no means a professional, but I'm extremely anal so I am pretty happy with the end result.

The tile is going to help me tolerate the countertops until the girls finish college in nine years or so. Crossing fingers that I don't have to wait that long, but it could happen and I'm prepared for the possibility.

I'm going to have to wait even longer to replace the flooring in this room and others. Honestly, I'm afraid to even get an estimate for it at this point because I just don't even want to know.

In the meantime, I'm happy with changing the things that I can afford to change. For example, paint is relatively inexpensive and it makes a big difference. 

I just have to hold back my crazy side because I gravitate towards loud, bright colors. And I'm still catching flack from Zoë Bug about the kitchen chairs.

The window wall was painted in Behr's Shimmering Pool. I love this color because it's bright, but not overpowering. And it makes me happy.

Peanut Head gave me the outdoor ceiling fan for Mother's Day. It's so fancy, it has a remote. I don't have to guess which chain pull is the fan and which is the light because there aren't any chain pulls. How cool is that? On the other hand, if we lose the remote I think we're screwed.

Do you see that little tray on the edge of the kitchen table? That's for Peanut Head to put his crap in when he walks in the back door. He's always putting his dirty gloves, hat, glasses, etc., right on the table and the placemats and it. Drives. Me. Over. The Edge.

This tray is me giving in to the putting of the crap on the table. And it works . . . sometimes.

Other times I wrestle with myself to "Let it Go!" while taking deep, calming breaths. Because really, is it that important?

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

I have a problem and he doesn't listen to me.

Just kidding. Peanut Head largely tolerates me. I get away with soooo much.

Just look at my kitchen chairs.