Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Laundry room makeover, part one

take two!
I never got around to trying to post again yesterday so here we go.


This is what the laundry room looked like when we purchased the house. It is a small room with no window so it is hard to get decent pictures (plus, I still need to figure out what is going on with my camera!) It is kinda hard to tell how high up those cabinets are from the picture, but the ceiling is 9' and there are only a few inches of space at the top of the cabinets. There is also an exhaust vent over one of them so I guess that is why they didn't put them all the way to the ceiling. Hard to tell the color but it is the same fugly beige that covered the rest of the walls in the house.

Yes - I am going to show you the 'real thing' I didn't de-clutter before taking the 'before' pictures. This was the view from the kitchen before we started last week. Once we moved in, it kind of became a catch all room for everything. If you notice how close those cabinets are to the shelf you will see how useless that shelf is. See - I had to shove my laundry soap in between the cabinets. If you notice in the picture of the empty room, the washer hookup is on the right - that doesn't work with a front load washer. (well, it does, but it is much more convenient if it is on the left so you don't have to reach over or around the door to move clothes to the dryer. The door on the washer can not be reversed.)

anyway - as you can see things just piled up in there.

there is also this little cubby on the right with nothing there. I suppose if one wanted to they could put a freezer there but we only need a small one and we are going to put one in the garage later.

I think the builder must buy these light fixtures by the boat-load!

First thing to do was clear the room. Okay - that was actually the second thing - first we had to make room in the garage for the washer and dryer. That was fun. Look how many holes there were to fill!

After that wall was painted. I stuck this one in because it is the only one that comes close to the true color of the room. It is the same green I used in the breakfast room and den but I don't think I've shown those pictures yet. Anyway - it is called 'Pebble' and is from Lowe's.

Good thing one of us is thin and not claustrophobic! Putting the w/d back in was really fun. No kiddos to help so it was just the two of us.

This is the (formerly) empty cubby to the right. I am going to (eventually) make a curtain to go below the bottom shelf to hide the laundry sorter.

We replaced the light fixture and and put new shelving up over the w/d.

and put the w/d on pedestals! (again - no one to help the hubby but me - not fun for either of us!) This is now the view from the kitchen. We had to take the door off to get the w/d out and back in. We haven't put it back up - the washer door hits it when open (which is also the reason the w/d are shifted to the right of the room) so we are going to replace it with French doors. We didn't have the space to paint doors at the same time we were painting the shelving so we will (hopefully) get to that soon. I'll show pictures again (not as many - promise!) when I get the room finished and we get the doors on. Now for the fun part! I have never had a 'real' laundry room before. I would love one of those huge laundry rooms where you can leave your ironing board up etc., but considering my first one was outside in an unattached garage and the last one was in the boys bathroom, I'm pretty happy to have this space now.

Do your projects always go as planned? This started out as simply painting, new light fixture and adjustable shelving.

The totally useless cabinets and shelf we took out of this room are making a new home in the garage where they are much more useful!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Pictureless post

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth - just been really busy. Hubby took last week off work so we could give the laundry a much needed make-over. It isn't completely finished but I was going to show part of the pictures today, however - blogger won't load my photos! I've been trying for the last 30 minutes and it just ain't working! Out of the first five I tried to load, I got one. Tried again, same thing. Tried loading one at a time - nothing. I finally signed out completely - logged back in and tried just loading one. That worked so I tried five more - I got two out of the five. I'm totally frustrated and I'm giving up for now. I just have way to much to do to spend anymore time on it right now - I'll try again later.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Red shoes and pollen

We have a lot of pollen in the air right now. Everything outside is covered in yellow!

My old garden shoes somehow didn't make the move (along with my knee pad) so yesterday I bought myself a new pair. Look how much pollen was on them after just a few minutes outside! We are supposed to get some rain tomorrow - maybe that will wash away some of the yellow dust!
Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Sunshine

We have sunshine today! A little windy, but not too bad unless you are trying to spray paint. :)
My internet has been out the last couple of days so I am really behind with blog reading.
Over the weekend the hubby and I got out and did a little shopping, then worked in the front flower bed.


This is what it looked like when we bought it. From a distance it doesn't look terrible, but when you get closer it was overgrown and needed to be weeded. I don't know why there was a rock border on the back side and not on the front or around the trees. Black mulch seems to be really popular here and I don't think this had been touched since it was first put in. I had now idea that stuff would get that hard! Some of it was like picking out rocks! That palm thingie was just too large - not to mention ugly. Now if you have one in your yard, don't take it personally - in the right setting there is nothing wrong with them, I just didn't like it in my front yard.

Other than weeding and sticking out a few things out just to add some color (this picture was before they made me move my conservatory) we really didn't do anything in the fall.

And here it is today.
The ugly palm thing didn't survive the winter freeze (what a shame) so it came out. Those things have some nasty thorns! When we go home to visit, we have been bringing rock back with us to line the flower beds. This is the rock that once upon a time was a patio at the old house. We saved it when we pulled it up to build a deck. Just to give you an idea of how much there was - we had already lined out flower beds on the front and down one side of the old house plus my dad has used some - and we still have a pretty good size pile to work with!

Since we don't have a truck, we would bring half a dozen or so back with us every visit and we have finally managed to get enough to line this bed and the two little beds around the two trees. I'm not sure exactly what I will end up putting where the palm was, but for now I have a pot of potato vine there. I also don't know what plants will and won't work here yet. I had been through the trial and error phase at the old house and pretty much had it figured out. I had a hard time finding anything to put out - the plant places here don't seem to have the same things I was used to getting in East Texas. I may have to do a little plant shopping next time I'm in. Now that I see the pictures I see that the shrubs I left in the front either need to be moved or trimmed. Anyway - it looks a little cleaner and fresher now. We will see how it evolves from here.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Slow going


Thought I would show you a bit of stitching - I know it has been a while!
Stitching is slow going around here these days. Partly because I've been doing other things (like painting) partly because I just stitch slower than I used to and partly because I can't see what I am stitching! (which I'm sure at least partly accounts for why I stitch slower than I used to) Guess I'll have to break down and visit the eye doc sometime in the near future.
Hope you are having a great week.

Friday, March 5, 2010

I have a little teapot

lamp - with no shade

I've had this little lamp for at least 5 years and it has always sat on my kitchen counter. I kept a 15wt bulb in it and left it on all the time. When we were packing everything for storage I threw the shade away. (it had been in the kitchen and even though I cleaned it regularly, it was a little worse for the wear) I thought I would just buy a new shade once we got moved. No, it didn't occur to me that I could just recover the shade - my brain wasn't working at full capacity at that particular time. So, anyway, I've been looking for a shade ever since I unpacked this lamp. I have brought home (and returned) at least a half dozen because they were either too small or two large.
Here are the latest two candidates


Both are too large (although the square one doesn't look too bad in the pic, IRL it looks too large). I am beyond caring what color the shade is (I can recover it - duh) and have even started looking at lamps with shades thinking if I found the right one, I would buy it just for the shade. Last week (or maybe earlier this week - I don't remember) I was in Home Goods and they had this same little lamp (with the shade!) They probably had a dozen scattered about the store. I almost bought one but I passed it up. Today I went back in and when I saw the square shade I picked it up thinking I could take it and try it on the lamp while I was in the store and if it didn't work, I was going to just go ahead and buy the whole lamp and be done with it. Can you believe they didn't have a single one of those lamps left! So, I brought the square shade home to try it on my poor little naked lamp. Maybe if I just leave it sitting there long enough it will grow on me?

Hope you have a great weekend. Besides painting, I have a couple of lamp shades to return!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A little glitter

Goes a long way - as in everywhere! That is what happens when you glitter at the table. Hubby sat down to eat dinner and asked why I glittered the placemats.
I dug through some boxes in the garage looking for Easter things - I don't have much but I did find a few ceramics I did a long time ago. I thought they could use a little update so I got out the glitter.

Bunnies before

and after



a basket of eggs before (didn't realize until I uploaded the pics that I took this one of the back of the basket - oh well.

and after

a half-dozen eggs before

and after.
Been painting walls - pictures soon!