Welcome to Crazy Town

First of all, my husband is a SAINT.

Really. On any given day when I’m working on a project, he comes home to my messes, the house torn apart and everything looking different than it did when he left in the morning.

When he takes business trips for days at a time – forget about it. I think he wonders if he’ll even come home to the same house.

He’s been dealing with my DOCD/DADD (put the “Decorating” in front of either) in a BIG way lately. When I start working on something, I usually have a vision for how I want it to look. And about 95 percent of the time, it turns out like it does in my head.

That rocks.

The other five percent, I become a waffling fool – do I like it? Yes, I do! Wait, no I don’t. I think I do. I don’t at all. What was I thinking? Well, maybe I do. I should like it. But I don’t. But from this direction it looks fantastic! I do like it! Yes! I do! Wait…

You get the picture. It’s exhausting, really.

A project in our master bedroom has turned into one of those. And it needs to be resolved PRONTO. I’m tired of dealing with it. Usually when my head turns all Cybil-like, I know to just live with it for a while and with time I figure out for sure what works and what I like.

This one I still can’t figure out. I’ll spare you all the details, but basically, our bed is about 15 feet off the floor. Or maybe about four feet. Whatever. It’s tall. And we like it.

I used to have our lamps way off to the end of our nightstands. But when laying in bed, we couldn’t reach to turn them off. Hubs actually pulled a muscle once doing it – for real. And, add to that – the nightstands were too low because the bed is so tall, and we basically couldn’t even see to read a book at night because the lamps were so far away and the light was below our heads. Make sense?

Well, just in the past week I resolved the night stand issue (more on that later), but I still can’t decide on the lighting. Originally I had an idea – I LOVE the sconces I used in the Bub’s big boy room, so why not incorporate those?:

I picked up a couple more at Home Depot and installed them above the bed:

And I really loved them, but didn’t love the cords or the brackets on the wall. I thought about painting the cord covers the same color as the wall, or even snaking the cord through the wall, but I knew the cord would still bug me and I didn’t want to put holes in the wall.

I’ve been wanting to take more advantage of our beautiful four poster bed, and have always dreamed of hanging fabric from somewhere, but nothing has ever looked quite right.

This was finally my chance! I got some sheers from Target and rigged them up around the lights. I ended up getting five sheers to make it really full:

I loved it at first – and then something just seemed off. It felt almost hospital-ish to me I guess. And the lampshades blend in too much –  I think if they were a bit bigger and/or a darker color, it would work better. That would be a pretty easy fix.

I absolutely LOVE the way it looks with the lights on:

Lights on is definitely more hotel-ish, not so much hospital, yes? (And I have no idea why every. single. photo. I took leans to the right.)

But here’s the dilemma – from this direction, the room looks drape heavy:

Or is it just me?

I did not clean for you. Forgive me. I want this done and DEAR LORD for all that is good, I just wanted to take the pictures and show you!

Yikes.

I need to mention at this point that hubby LOVED this look. LOVED. We both loved the lights – they are perfect (PERFECT) for checking your iphone reading before bed. That’s the thing – at night I really loved it. During the day something felt off.

So today I found a couple of lamps I loved at HomeGoods, and brought them home to try out a more traditional set up:

The iron thingamabob is not going to stay, but it needed something up there, so just ignore it.

This tells you my insanity right now –- when I first did this today I was all YES – finally! I love it! It feels right.

But hubby got home and really misses those lights and the curtains. He says he likes it either way, but I know he’s secretly wondering what in the heck has happened to his wife and how can he get her and his curtains back?

And just a few minutes ago, I walked in and totally missed the curtains too. And I told him I did. See? I am crazy and he still loves me. He is awesome.

Please help me.

You Squeezies are brilliant. What do your smarty pant minds think?

Things to consider – I’m thinking of a way to break up the rust colored curtains just a tad.  I want to add a touch of cream to them somehow to tie in other parts of the room. They won’t be SO solid – at least in my crazy town head.

I’m playing around with the idea of a very tailored bed skirt. If I do it, it will be the same color as the main color in the duvet cover. So that’s a lot of fabric going on with the sheers. If it’s too much, I may just get another sheet set and use the fitted sheet as a cover on the box spring (I have a white one on there now), to “hide” the box spring.

The walls are getting molding – it’s going to be a HUGE project. It will be very traditional and will break up the green walls a bit. If I keep the curtains down, I’ll most likely frame out that area above the bed with molding somehow. Not sure what I’d do just yet…

So that’s it. What do you think? Be kind. :) I like both ways, hubby says he likes both ways, but I’m running out of time because those sheers need to be returned soon if I’m not going to keep them! ;)

Oh wise and brilliant bloggy friends – which do you prefer? I know it’s up to me cause it’s my house and all that, but you guys always have great thoughts, so I’d love to hear!

I’m making a final decision tomorrow and will be done one way or the other. I mean, neither options sucks…I just want to be done! (So I can move on to thinking about Christmas decor.)

What?! Who said huh? Hmmmm?

**I’ll announce the giveaway winners tomorrow! For now I must turn my mind off. :)

Our Sanford and Son deck

Well…it’s time to show you the before and after pictures of our deck clean up! As you know, I like to show you the good and the bad around here. And this one was BAD.

After reading this, you will either be highly motivated…or just highly sleepy. ;)

I showed you how we upgraded our deck just a bit last year by adding some new furniture and a faux pergola to the seating area. We LOVED it:

I get a lot of questions about that pergola -- we got it from Menards. I especially love that it opens and closes – so during the day it keeps temps much cooler underneath, and at night we can open it up to see the stars.

But this summer the deck kind of went downhill…fast. It was so stinkin’ H.O.T., we were just never outside. Our backyard gets full sun and it can get unbearable, even under the pergola.

I’m not what you would call an outdoors kind of girl anyway, so when you add the potential for sweat to that…well, I’m just not going outside. :)

Anyhoo, it kind of fell apart. So now I present to you…our crapified deck…

First up, our hot tub. We had this installed when we built the deck, and put it right by the back door. This is good for soaks in the winter, (proximity to the door), but not so good for as far as the beauty factor. It’s hard to make a hot tub pretty. :)

We hadn’t replaced the hot tub cover in five years, so it was disgusting. I mean…EWW. And, it was FULL of water – it took two people to lift one side of it because it was just soaked:

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Those little yellow things are great for propping up paint projects. And they had been out there since I painted our island doors seven weeks ago. I had pretty much just given up. :)

The table cover had been draped ever so beautifully over the railing since ohhhhh….May?:

And the hose had been connected to the hot tub and spread out all over since the last time we drained it in ohhhhh….March?:

Told you – pure AWESOMENESS!!!

:)

Earlier in the summer, we woke to a huge mess – the middle section of our glass table was in itty bitty teeny tiny pieces all over the deck:

We had planned on replacing the whole set, but the little Dave Ramsey voice in our heads told us to wait.

So wait we did…and we had a busted table on the deck all summer. :)

I especially love the next two areas --

HOT. MESS.

Do you hear the Sanford and Son melody playing yet?:

No? Do ya now?:

Maybe now:

I told you our neighbors were really proud.

But it gets even better!

Remember the DIY window boxes I showed you last year?:

Awww…look how cute they looked! Adorable huh?

Well. Huh. About late winter, they started looking a little rough. By spring they started splitting a bit. Just a tad.

By summer, they were full out disaster:

The shutter wasn’t lookin’ so hot either.

Because it was as hot as the surface of the sun out there all summer, I left them…hanging. :)

Oh, and all three boxes fell apart. As you can see in this picture with the “new” outdoor rug from Home Depot that we left rolled up all summer:

Neighbors = loved us.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I used the help of my sis to clean up some of the out of control spots in our house, and this certainly fell under the “out of control” category.

It took us a few days to finish everything up, but it wasn’t hard. We just got rid of almost everything. ;)

The first day, we took about five trips to Goodwill, loading up the table, chairs and matching lounge. The whole set was in bad shape – missing glass, paint chipping off the chairs. And I had already repainted them all once a couple of years ago.

We decided since we’ll be DEBT FREE next summer, we’ll save up for a new set. YES.

Sis and I also took a trip out to the hot tub place to get a new cover:

Oh my goodness – SO much better! You cannot tell how bad the old one was in the pictures, but it was so nasty!

The table cover draped over the railing was FULL of wasps nests. We used a whole can of wasp spray while out there that day because they were everywhere. Because we weren’t keeping the table anyway, the cover was gone too!

After we built the deck years ago, we realized we never created access to the hot tub drain. We had a friend come out and cut the boards so we could access it:

Because I had installed hinges that were way too small and were not meant to be outdoors, they were falling apart and it had become a major safety issue.

True Value to the rescue! I picked out some heavy duty hinges that will hold up to the elements:

I know they’re not pretty, but they are necessary. Function over form and all that.

And oh yeah…this was my selection of hinges and screws at my True Value:

Fantastic!! I am like a kid in a candy store in this place! :)

My favorite part of the small town feel of this True Value is that you can buy individual screws – just as many as you need. They bag them up in the little paper bag – love it!! If you ever went to the hardware store with your Dad when you were little like me, this place would SO bring you back. ;)

Next, I took the beautiful window boxes down, and braced myself for the holes in the siding. UGH.

I do plan on installing new boxes at some point, but in the meantime I didn’t want the holes to be open to the weather, so I picked up some of this fun stuff as well:

I just sprayed it in the holes. A few things to watch for with this stuff – it GROWS. I know, DUH. But it grows a lot. You need very little. And it dries way darker than it looks. And finally -- it’s a one time use can, which I didn’t realize. It seals itself up pretty fast, so know exactly what you want to use it on before you start!

It did the job, but it made a mess! Some elbow grease and a razor takes it off, but I’ll finish that up in the spring:

I gotta have something to do out there next spring, right? ;)

I cleaned up the pergola area, tossed the dead flowers and packed away some of the items in the garage for the winter. We’ll put all of the furniture away in the next month or so.

I finally laid out the new outdoor rug – and after being rolled up in the sun for five months, it was bleached by the sun on just the edge:

I can’t let go of the Sanford and Son look completely. ;)

We had lighting installed on our deck steps years ago, and the bulbs have been burnt out for probably eight months now:

Each one only takes one bulb, so I picked up a few packs of the little halogen bulbs from True Value as well:

You want to make sure not to touch these with your fingers or hands when you install them – the oils from your hands cause them to burn out faster. I always use a paper towel or tissue to plug them in.

Now the deck is so empty…but I actually like it for now!:

It’s a breath of fresh air. I know by spring I’ll be itching to put a table and chairs back out, but it feels SO GOOD to have it decrapified!!

I feel like I’m ready to hibernate for the winter. ;)

There are still a few things we need to address though – one is the stain:

When you use treated wood – WAIT to stain it, for at least a few months. Our construction guy told us six months…after we stained it.

That was a great day. :)

If you do it too soon, it won’t stick. It is such a mess, and we’ve done it twice now. Next spring, we plan to use a power sprayer to really get the old stuff off, then do a couple of coats of stain again.

We still have to get the nasty old hot tub cover hauled to the dump:

Sis and I had to cut slits to get the water out of it! It was SO CRAZY HEAVY.

And the basketball goal has been moved down to the lawn:

Complete with random landscaping bricks to make it steady. Steady on the dead grass. Dead grass from the blazing hot summer.

Awwww yeah….we still got some bah ba ba duh, bah ba ba ba ba ba dum in us baby! I know, you are so jealous of our awesomeness!

And now that song is in your head …buwahahaha!!

So that’s project one of the three we tackled – the garage is pretty much done and our closet was done, then it wasn’t, then it was, now it isn’t again.

I cannot keep it clean to save my life.

But I will show you! :)

 

*I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.*

Mood lighting in the kitchen

Well hello! I hope you had a wonderful weekend! My stepdaughter came home for fall break and we had a blast! The Bub was so thrilled…the two of them are 16 years apart, but you would never know it -- they play (and fight) like they are only a year apart.  ;)

I finally finished up a project last week that was about five months past due. I installed under cabinet lighting in our kitchen years ago – it was just the kind you mount under the cabs and plug in. It worked great for us because of the old black backsplash:

See the cord plugged in? I know…if you’ve read this blog for two hot seconds, you know I loathe cords. BLECH. Hate them.

But the black cords blended right in…even I didn’t notice them. ;)

But when I installed the new, white, beadboard backsplash, those black cords could be no more. I mean…are you kidding me? I would quite literally just pass out from it. Black cords on white?

No way Joe-say!

So the lighting sat in the basement for months while I tried to figure out what I was going to do. My first though was to have an electrician run connections from the outlets in the backsplash into the cabinets…but that just sounded like a mess (and not cheap).

Then I decided to try the battery-operated LED lights, similar to this one:

I liked that they were dimmable. But I wasn’t thrilled with their bright white light. (I know, I know…I’m supposed to love the energy-efficient lights but I am a warm white kind of girl – the LED is so harsh!)

I was living with them for a while, and then one night they were left on all night long, and by morning every. single. one. needed three new batteries. I knew it wouldn’t be the first time that would happen, so they went back to Home Depot. :)

So I kept thinkin’…and finally figured out what I was going to do. Last week I decided to just make a (HUGE) mess and finally git er done!! (Or is that “dun?”)

I figured I had three hidden outlets throughout the kitchen I could use – one behind the fridge, one in the appliance garage and one in the cabinet above the microwave. I only needed to plug in five under cabinet lights and knew I could get to all the outlets needed by going through the cabinets.

I used my 1 1/2 drill bit and started drilling holes under the cabinets for the cords to go through:

I drilled through the sides of the cabinets too, till I got to where the outlet was. To make the cords stay put, I covered them with my handy dandy cord covers:

Then I installed the lights under the cabinets, which is done by simply using a screw:

This part pretty much stinks. You have to contort your body under the cabs just so. I used a small drill bit to make a hole first, then drilled them in – otherwise the screws go flying and you may or may not say a cuss word.

:)

Because I positioned the lights so the cords would barely be showing underneath, I could have just left them alone. But I HATE CORDS (remember?), so I used my cord covers again:

In the past, I used these little jobbies to wind the cord around under the cabinet:

The cord fits in there and you nail it up into the cabinet so they are secured safely.

On that side of the room, I put two of the lights into the appliance garage, and I was going to put the third into the outlet behind the fridge. To operate it, I planned on using a remote to turn it on and off – but the box you plug in wouldn’t fit into the outlet because of the honkin’ cord from the fridge. So I just took it through to the appliance garage too.

The lights around the stove went to the outlet above the microwave, and while I was up above the microwave drilling, I had quite the mishap. :)

I (knock on wood) rarely have accidents…but this one had the potential to be a doozy. I was standing on a chair (first bad idea), and while I was drilling, I leaned against the front of the stove (second bad idea).

It started getting SO HOT all the sudden…and I’m such a fruit loop my first throught was DANG, two drills in one week are burning up on me! (The first one happened when we installed the new pantry door.)

I was so mad! But it just kept getting hotter…and hotter. Then I looked down and saw flames coming from the stovetop. (Within inches of my legs.)

Yeah…I had turned on the gas with my knee.

Awesome!!

In the process I melted the cord of one of my lights – so this free project turned into a $15 one (for a replacement) pretty fast.

But at least I realized it was ME that was almost burning, and not the drill.

Good Lord. Fruit loop, I tell you.

Oh yeah…and I have to warn you. This is easily the messiest project I’ve ever done:

An insane amount of sawdust. Crazy. Use eye protection.

I’ve had lighting above our cabinets for years now too, and I just drilled a hole through the top of the cabinet and used the plug:

On the other side, it’s simply snaked down behind the corner cabinet into the appliance garage.

I use rope lights for soft light:

Everything is plugged into a surge protector with a switch, so all of the lighting in the room is turned on with two switches. Which is WAY better than going around and switching on each and every light as I had it before. ;)

I missed our soft kitchen mood lighting so!:

I have them on every. single. night. Most nights, they are the only lights on in the kitchen.

Like I mentioned, this project was almost free – I’ve had the lights for some time. But if you’re interested in doing this in your kitchen, the small, (about ten inches?) lights are about $10. The medium size (20 inches) is about $15. I know they have a larger size and I think it’s $20.

I use the incandscent version because I like the warm light:

But they have a ton of options! I’ve purchased them at both Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Ideally I’d love to have them all wired and flip one switch…but for now, they take approximately four seconds to turn on and it was just a couple hours covered in sawdust to make it happen. 

I have noticed lately that I can see the reflection of the rope lights in some of my accesories above the cabs, so I think I’m going to try moving them behind everything to see how that works:

(Ignore the placement and accessories…most of it is changing.)

Oh, and I’ve mentioned my luscious dimmers (yes. I called them luscious.) before – I have them on almost every light fixture in our house:

They save money and the low light just plain lovely in any room!

Have you installed mood lighting in your kitchen? Did you do it the real way or the pretend way like me? ;) (If you’ve blogged about it, please link to it!)

DIY disclaimer: Again…I am no electrician – putting cords through cabinets is probably not the way an expert would accomplish this project. Be sure to watch rough edges so the cords to do not rub against them. (I have put duct tape around the edges of the holes I drilled just to make sure everything is smooth.)

OK…I promise to blog about something other than the kitchen this week! (But I’m on a ROLL!!)

Holiday with Matthew Mead!

YES. I’m thinking about Christmas. YES, I know it’s still October. I do this every year, and I don’t apologize for my GLEEEEEE. :)

I do blame my son – the older he gets, the more magical the season gets. This Halloween will be the most fun yet, and I’m over the moon excited to see how he takes in this Christmas.

We’ve been going through the holiday aisles at Lowe’s for weeks…and at Hobby Lobby for months. ;) I finally found The Polar Express at Target and we watched it for the first time on Monday – and it is simply fantastic.

Big. Fat. Sigh.

Bring on the holiday goodness!

Because I just couldn’t wait -- I’m bringing it for you this week! I was beyond thrilled when Matthew Mead decided to use one of my past projects as inspiration for one in his upcoming Holiday with Matthew Mead magazine.

The publication is quite literally hot off the presses as I speak…er…write:

As Matthew says –

“It’s 144 pages of holiday inspiration - featuring well-known and admired designers, bloggers and top-notch stories -- and printed on beautiful paper (while not drowning in ads!). We consider Holiday with Matthew Mead part book/part magazine - a publication that you will keep from year to year and add to your collection of Holiday decorating, crafting and cooking magazines and books.”

Ack – I cannot WAIT to see it!! Like I need more ways to get in the spirit.  :)

I’m so excited because I’ll have an extra copy I’m giving away to one of you!

Yippee! (This is just one of the many great giveaways coming up for you lucky Squeezies over the next few weeks on TDC!)

If you’d like a chance at a free copy of this “book-azine” – leave a comment here!

If you’re as excited as me and would like another chance at winning, feel free to mention it on your blog, Facebook or Twitter, with a link to this post, then come back and let me know that you did. (If you do all three, let me know in three more comments!)

And if you’d like to order a copy, visit Matthew’s site here. (If you ordered one already, it should be in your mailbox by the end of this month.)

I’ll leave this giveaway open till next Monday, the 25th. (If you comment anonymously or have a private blog, leave an email in your comment and be sure to write it as follows – name (at) whatever (dot) com. I don’t want anyone getting any spammy junk from leaving your email here!)  :)

Good luck!

**I can’t wait to show you what else I’ve been working on in the kitchen – I’m a woman on a mission…to finish this redo!