laundry room renovation

We finished the laundry room probably two months ago now, but only recently got around to the door project we were going back and forth on.  We decided to go ahead with it, and I am so glad we did.  I am loving the new look.  It's actually hard to believe this is the same room since we changed so much!  Here are some before and after shots:

before

after

panoramic pics from my cell phone, a bit distorted but the only way to show the whole width of the room:

before

after

In case you are wondering - yes that is a tension shower rod stretched sideways across the room in the "before" photos.  My solution to a temporary hanging space.  And yes it did fall down at least once a week because we were constantly hanging too much on it...

This started as a simpler house project than it ended up (doesn't it always?!)  Originally, we were just going to add in a counter top, base cabinet, sink, upper cabinets with hanging bar, and tile backsplash.  We were also planning to paint - gold walls just ain't my bag, baby.  We never intended to move plumbing and replace the tile floor, but you know - snowball effect...  So basically we gutted the entire room and started fresh.  We had replaced the washer and dryer when we moved in last year, so that was the only thing we didn't need to change out. 

Remember all those kitchen cabinets we took down when we added in open kitchen shelving a few months back?  Well, we were able to re-purpose all of them - two here in the laundry room and the rest are now extra storage space in the garage.  The base cabinet was one we bought as a clearanced floor model at Lowe's.  It was a lovely rustic brown color before, but I wanted it to match the upper cabinets so we decided to paint it.  We also added extra wood to the top to make it the right height to support the sink and counter top.  Here is a picture of it mid-project:

And completed:

We sanded, primed, and painted it to match the upper cabinets.  We also removed the thermafoil covering from the upper cabinet doors, and gave them a fresh coat of paint so everything was the same color white.  Added on some new hardware and that part was done!  The counter top was built by Erik out of wooden planks.  I think they were 1x6 boards.  He used a jig to drill the holes (I have always wanted a jig so I was super excited about that purchase - yes, I realize my dork-factor here) and then glued and clamped the boards for extra strength.  He then sanded, stained, and sealed (like eight times!) the top for durability.  Once we decided on a sink, he cut a hole to drop it in.  Here he is working on the counter top:

Like I mentioned, we had no intention on ever having to move any plumbing for this project.  However, once we took out the washer, dryer, and sink, I was standing outside the door eyeing the project (dangerous territory - this is how it always starts) and I said "wouldn't it be nice if the washer and dryer were next to each other for laundry purpouses but also to give us a bigger folding area?"  And Erik, after thinking about it for a day, decided he thought it was possible.  "Just let me cut a little hole in the wall to look at the plumbing..." and the next thing I knew the room looked like this:

Ha!  Erik worked quickly to put it back together and moving the plumbing ended up not being as big of an deal as we thought it might.  Once everything was plumbed and patched up he moved onto flooring.  We had also initially not intended on replacing the tile as the room already had tile and it was "okay" looking.  But on one of our Lowe's runs while shopping for wall tile we came across the same wood plank looking tile we had used at our old house and we both stood there lovingly petting it (yea, that's what we do in home improvement stores.)  We literally looked at each other and Erik, with a big sigh said "okay, just put it in the cart."  So, that began this part of the project:

finished tile floor ( insert heart eye emoji here)

We knew we would be happy with the results once all the hard work was done, but honestly I now think we would really have regretted not changing out the flooring.  The old tile, while being "okay," really wouldn't have fit with the rest of the renovation.  So, once the tile was done, I came in for the wall prep and paint.  Being a small room I was able to knock that out pretty quickly.  I choose a slightly off-white color called Dove White, as I wanted to keep the space light and bright, and I knew the tile we had picked out would add enough color to the room.  Once the walls were painted, Erik took back over with the project - installing the upper cabinets and glass tile backsplash.  Actually I think before we got there the machines had to be moved back in, we were at that point well past a week without doing laundry and things were really starting to pile up!  After the tile was done, the base cabinet, counter top, sink, and faucet were installed and the plumbing was hooked up.  I came back in for the finishing touches - a new ceiling light, switch plate covers (we had to move some electrical and I had Erik add in an extra outlet near the pull-down ironing board) and organizing all those laundry supplies into the new cabinets.  I can't say I miss that old, peeling shelf that was there when we moved in:

I don't even know what that grossness is!

much better!

We also found a really cool sink specifically made for laundry rooms that has a built-in washboard:

Lastly, we gave the door a makeover.  I found a similar door on Pinterest and couldn't get it out of my head how cute it would look on our new laundry room.  So, like the good husband that he is, Erik took over this project and did his best to recreate my Pinterest find.  I think he did an amazing job!

Using the existing door, he cut out the top four panels.  He then installed thin wood fillers to make something of a "box" inside the door, since it is a hollow-core type door.  We had existing plexiglass leftover from the kitchen project, which he cut to fit the hole.  Up until this point the project was free as we were able to reuse materials we already had on hand!  On the back of the door, he used a roll-on style window frosting we found at Lowe's and then installed the glass.  A thin piece of trim was added to both sides to hold the glass in place, and then he gave the whole door a fresh coat of paint.  After it was installed and the hardware replaced, we were able to add the last (and my favorite) part - the decal sign.  I found it on Etsy and it ended up being just the right thing to finish off this project.

And because I can't post without including Arlo...

And one last thing.  If you ever visited our old house and are thinking that the new laundry room looks really familiar, it's because you have pretty much seen it before.  We loved our last laundry area so much we literally copied everything we could about it.  From the white cabinets to the dark counter top and tile floor, to the same exact paint color and very similar tile back splash, we tried to recreate that space again in this house.  What can I say, when you find something you like so much why try and switch it up?  Here is the laundry room we renovated at our last house:

And that's all, folks!  Thanks for coming along on the laundry room tour.  With baby #2 expected to arrive any day now, there are no other big projects on the horizon.  But then again, that's been said before...

;)

DIY stretchy car seat cover

Taking a break from pregnancy/house update/vacation posts to write about a DIY project I recently made.  I fell in love with those striped, stretchy knit car seat covers that seem to be everywhere on blogs and social media right now.  I have a heavier weight car seat cover that I used with Arlo, but for this summer baby I wanted something lighter and more breathable that still allowed me to provide shade and protection when we need to.  I had planned on just buying one of these covers, but realized I could easily make my own for a fraction of the price - and I already had the materials on hand!  I had recently bought several yards of stretch knit material to sew baby hats and headbands, and realized I had the exact amount I needed to whip up a seat cover - and in a striped black and white pattern just like the one I was planing to buy.  I think in times like these it was just meant to be...

I based the size of this cover to fit a Chicco Keyfit 30, but I think it would likely stretch to accommodate most brands of infant car seats.  One of the best things about this project is that it's multi-purposed - it can also be used as a high chair cover, nursing coverup, or shopping cart cover.  It folds up to a compact, lightweight, portable size so you can always have it on hand in the diaper bag.

Ok, on to the tutorial!

DIY stretchy car seat cover

Materials needed:

• lightweight stretch knit fabric - fabric that has a lot of stretch to it works best
• coordinating thread
• scissors

1.)  Start by prewashing your fabric.   Although I don't think stretch knit will shrink too much, it's a good practice to always prewash everything before you sew.

2.)  Cut your fabric to 29" tall by 63" wide, making sure that the width is the stretchy part!  note: if your car seat is larger than a Chicco Keyfit, you may need to cut your fabric a bit wider.

3.)  Fold fabric in half width-wise (see photo below) and lay flat so fold is on left, and fabric is wrong side out.

4.)  Stitch up right side of fabric using a zig-zag or stretch stitch if your machine has one.  (Ignore the pins in the photo below for now, I am about to explain those...)  Your fabric should now be in the shape of a tube with the top and bottom being the open part.

5.)   Keeping fabric wrong side out, lay your fabric flat again.  Measure and pin the corners as I did in the photo below, 8" over from each side and 14" down from the top.  Put a pin in each of those locations and then run pins between them, making a triangle shape.  I used a marking pen and straight edge to draw a line first, then inserted my pins along the line.

6.)  Repeat for other side.

7.)  Sew along the pin lines, again using a zig-zag or stretch stitch.  Now is a good time to mention the walking foot.  I recently purchased one for all the knit fabric projects that I am in the process of making, and let me tell you - it is a game changer!  A walking foot helps to feed the fabric evenly on top and bottom, avoiding the annoying bunching that can otherwise happen when working with knits.  I highly recommend one if you plan to work with this type of fabric often, they run only about $20 at JoAnns.

8.)  Using a rotary cutter (or scissors), cut off triangle of fabric that you just sewed.  Repeat for other side.  note: don't cut off the stitched line that you just sewed!

This is what it should look like at this point:

Hey, guess what?!  You are done!  That's how incredibly easy these are.  Turn it right-side out and pop on your car seat!  The small hole is at the top and the larger hole is on the bottom.  There is no need to hem the top or bottom because this type of fabric will not fray.

See how stretchy it is?  So easy to peek at baby!

I was just a tiny bit sad that I had used up every inch of this fabric that I bought without making a baby hat, which was this materials original intended use.  Well, I had used up almost every inch...  I realized the two cut off triangles could be sewn into a piece large enough for a newborn size hat!

Now, I can say that I used up every inch....

This cover (and hat!) cost only $10 for the fabric, about a third of the price of a ready-made one you might buy online.  It only takes about 10-15 minutes to sew up and would make a great gift as well.  If you make this tutorial please let me know, I would love to see pictures and know how it worked out for you!  Here is a picture I found on Pinterest showing how else you can use a stretchy cover like the one I made:

happy sewing!  :)

kitchen reno, take three.

We are officially done working on our kitchen, and now I can finally share it with y'all!  I am really excited about how it turned out.  My last post was written about our first two kitchen renovation projects, you can read that here if you missed it: kitchen reno, take one and two.  This is the first time we have lived in a house while we did any major work on it, for the last two houses we always lived someplace else while the work was being done since they were both whole-house makeovers.  Being around for the renovation actually turned out to be way less of an issue than I originally thought it would be.  In some ways it was easier - we didn't have to leave to go work on another house and things had to stay pretty tidy for the most part since we couldn't really live and eat in a total construction zone for the six or so weeks it took to finish the project.  There were some days where I was cooking dinner in the "clean" half of the kitchen while Erik was putting up tile in another part!  While the last kitchen we did was pretty much my baby - I did all the cabinet refinishing, painting, electrical, and hardware installation myself, this time around Erik is responsible for almost all the hard work, and he did such a fantastic job.  I will take a little credit for some of the design and painting, but outside of that it was all him.  Here are some pictures, and more about how we did it (and in a really budget-friendly way!):

before:

after:

A little about how this project started...  When we first saw our current house, we immediately loved almost everything about it.  The layout is exactly what we wanted, the location is great, it has a nice fenced-in back yard for Lucy and the kids.  But I did have to look past a couple cosmetic things to get on board with buying it, knowing we would eventually change them out.  The thing I disliked most was the brown glass kitchen tile backsplash.  I don't know why I disliked it so much, I know some people really like that style, but I was just not a fan.  I contemplated trying to paint it as a temporary cover-up, but realized I would want to eventually replace it anyway so I held out until we were under contract on our old house and knew we would be able to comfortably afford starting on our planned house projects (as in, there was an end in sight to the double house payments we had been making for almost a year - blah!)  So this whole thing started out as simply replacing the backsplash, and totally snowballed into something much larger.  But, after six years of on and off house renovations, we should have known that was bound to happen!  That's just how we roll.  Anyhow, as the tile was being ripped out, we started talking about making a few other changes.  We have both always loved open shelving, and while it felt a bit scary to think about removing our existing cabinets (what if we actually hated having the exposed shelves?!) we decided to go for it and I am so happy we did.  Taking down one cabinet turned into taking out a total of four, and adding in floating wooden shelves in their place.  I love how much it opened up the kitchen and it is a much lighter and brighter space because of it.

We debated a bit about the tile, I have always wanted to do white subway but then worried it was getting too popular and that maybe I would get tired of it down the road.  But it's a pretty classic look and I have liked it for a long time so we went with it.  Initially we purchased all the tile and supplies from our local big box store but I then realized that I didn't like the boarder pieces you had to use with it, so we returned it and started looking for other options.  Since we were planning to tile up and around the window, I didn't want the distraction of a border all the way around that space, so we had to find tile available with finished edges so it could literally just "stop" where we wanted it to.  We ended up finding the prefect tile at a local tile shop.  The tile we went with not only had the edging options we were looking for, but was also a matte finish and a soft white color, as opposed to the glossy variety sold at the big box stores.  The downside was the cost, the stuff we went with was around three times as much as we originally planned on spending, but it was worth it to us knowing we would be looking at it for (hopefully) a lot of years to come. 

Did you notice anything missing in these pictures?  We got rid of our microwave!  Last September a coworker of mine and I got into a serious discussion about microwaves and it really got me thinking - why on earth am I comfortable with a machine in my house designed to radiate my food?!  We buy organic foods to avoid this very thing, and here I am radiating it after I bring it home.  Not that I microwaved everything, but I did use it often to quickly reheat leftovers.  So, that very day after talking to her, I came home and put a piece of tape over the door that said "no no no" to remind myself not to use it.  Ha!  It worked, we haven't used it since that day and quite honestly it has been incredibly easy to heat up our food in other ways.  Now I mostly use our toaster oven that I bought to replace the microwave, or the oven if it's a larger amount of stuff to reheat.  The space that used to hold the microwave is now open - we added in a light to keep that area bright and a shelf above for decorative items.  I am on the hunt for a large artificial plant to put up there but haven't found it yet.  If you know where to buy large, realistic-looking artificial plants please let me know!

Now let's talk about those glass doors.  That is another idea we came up with when we were talking about how to give the kitchen a brighter and more open feel.  We initially removed the doors with the intent to replace them with new ones.  Strangely enough, neither of our big box stores could specially order custom sized glass doors, so we turned to the internets.  Erik found a website that sold them for $150 a pop, which I thought was quite expensive, especially since we needed three doors.  When I realized they were that costly and didn't even come painted or with glass, I said no way Jose.  We started looking for other solutions, and Erik found what turned out to be the best solution possible.  We actually used the existing doors, cut a hole in the middle and (I almost don't want to tell you this part) added in plexiglass!  Erik found this tutorial and loosely followed it to make our doors.  A huge sheet of plexiglass was around $60 and he had to buy a routing tool to help cut the space for the glass to fit into, so the whole door project cost only around $100, maybe a bit more.  And Erik is happy because he got another tool out of the deal!  The tutorial promised that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real glass and plexiglass, and honestly, you can't!  The only way you can tell is by tapping on the glass, and really, how often do you do such a thing?  He added in some trim on the face of the door to hold the glass in place, filled in the seam, and put several coats of paint on top.  It was pretty easy and sooo much less expensive than buying new doors!!

We went back and forth on paint colors, it was probably the hardest decision of the whole project.  The kitchen opens up to the living room, which is painted a nice, neutral beige.  I tend to pick warmer colors but fell in love with the cooler grey/blues for the kitchen since they look so nice next to the white tile.  In the end, we picked a light grey with a hint of blue, but on the walls it definitely looks more blueish.  We love it though, and it looks fine next to the beige living room, which I was most concerned about. It is definitely a nice change from the formerly gold wall color!  The switch plates were something else that Erik and I went back and forth about, he wanted something decorative, I wanted something that would blend in with the tile.  As a compromise, I ordered white metal plates online.  When they arrived and I installed one, I noticed they were not the same color white as the tile so those were sent back.  The best solution ended up being the plain, inexpensive plastic plates.  They were just the right color white and blended in well with the tile.  We also replaced the switches and plugs - I tried to clean them but years of kitchen gunk had made them dingy, especially when next to the white tile.

In addition to new paint and a lighter colored backsplash, we also removed the gaudy 6" granite backsplash, added in some under-cabinet LED lights, and added a light above the stove, all which combined, made a drastic improvement in the brightness of the room.  We replaced the knobs with handles on the cabinet doors, and smaller profile knobs on the drawers.  We upgraded the light fixtures with the exception of the pot rack above the island which we both really like, and the light above the table which I am still shopping for, I am pretty sure we will replace it at some point.  And that is pretty much it!  I feel like we made a drastic change and this renovation cost far, far less than the last two kitchens.  I think because we didn't have to replace anything major - cabinets, counter top, or appliances.  The stuff we did buy was pretty inexpensive in terms of renovation materials.  I don't know the total cost of the project, but I can tell you it was surprisingly inexpensive.  And two of the cabinets we took out of the kitchen will soon be repurposed up in our laundry room, which will save us more on that project's costs.

The part of the kitchen pictured above is between the main part of the kitchen and living room.  We didn't do much here except remove the granite backsplash, paint, and change out the hardware, but we have tentative plans for a future phase two of this renovation.  Behind the wall on the other side of these cabinets, is the shower/tub of the full bathroom downstairs.  All of the bedrooms in our house are upstairs, and we don't ever see ourselves needing a shower or tub on the main level, so we are thinking of turning that full bath into a half bath, and using the shower space to put in a larger, walk-in pantry.  We do have a pantry, and I will not complain about it - it's the first pantry I have ever had and I love it!!  But we feel like we could add in some additional pantry space, plus a small bar/countertop/desk thingy and wine fridge inside it.  That's Erik's dream anyway!  This plan won't happen for a few years I'm sure, once baby #2 enters the picture all house projects will be put on hold for a while.

One other area that is kind of part of the kitchen, is an area we worked on last year shortly after we bought our house.  I found the idea on Pinterest, and we literally completed the whole thing in just one weekends time. There is a small entry space from the garage into the kitchen, where we took a blank wall and turned it into something of a permanent coat rack.  This was a quick and easy project that really made quite the difference in the small space, and also gave us a functional place to hang our coats and bags.  There is a large coat closet directly across from it, but we turned that into a "cat closet" for our spoiled kitty, with a cat door and ventilation fan for the litter box fumes.  I know, I know, he's a really lucky cat (you would think he would show more appreciation, but no.  None at all.)  Anyway, we have another coat closet by the front door for winter jackets and additional shoe storage, but our everyday things are kept by the garage for easy access.

And finally, a few random photos of the renovation as it was happening...

this evening started with "I wonder how hard it is for that tile to come out..." and ended with this!

close up of the brown glass tile, oversized granite backsplash, and gold walls.  hey, 1996 called and wants their kitchen back! 

who does this?!  fixing little things like this made a big difference.  we moved this outlet over a few inches while we had the drywall out, replaced the outlet itself, and freshened up the window trim and caulk.

in the main area of the kitchen it ended up being easier to just remove and replace the drywall, which wasn't our original plan but gave easy access to run the new electrical wires through the wall.

Arlo loved watching Erik work in the kitchen and learned all about different types of tools and materials!

first few rows of tile complete!

hanging the floating shelves was something we did a good bit of research on, and in the end decided to drill holes in the studs (actually having to add in a few extra studs where we wanted them), screw in these metal rods, and then slide on the shelves which also had holes drilled in them.  

unfinished shelves before they were stained and sealed

I mentioned in a previous post that we had plans to start working on our laundry room when my parents were here a few weekends ago, but we ended up using that entire weekend to work on the kitchen.  In the upcoming month we will (hopefully) start and finish the laundry room and I will share some pics of that when it's done.  Thanks for coming along on what turned out to be, a rather long tour of our updated kitchen!