how to paint a bookshelf

Have you ever made your way over to Young House Love?

You may have noticed them on my sidebar...

If you're into home improvement and decorating on a budget, 

you should definitely take a look.

Marty groans inwardly whenever he sees me perusing their lovely blog,

because he knows full well that I'll have an itch to 

PAINT SOMETHING

or

REARRANGE SOMETHING

or

BUILD SOMETHING!!

as soon as I walk away from the computer.

I ambled my way over to their blog a few weeks ago

{if "ambling" is possible on the internet},

and re-read this great tutorial on how to paint pretty much any piece of furniture.

{This is where Marty closed his eyes and did that inward groan thing again.}

And then, my eyes spotted two bookshelves that have been in our house since the beginning.

Marty rescued them out of a dumpster {truly},

and they've been sitting in our living room and kitchen, useful and happy...

Except now, I'd decided that they were going to be pretty, too :)

I didn't take "before" pictures.

But trust me. They were ugly-ish.

You see, I'm not a fan of orange-y colored wood,

and that's exactly what these babies were made of:

So, I dragged them down to the basement

 and gave them each two coats of primer...

{which was agonizing. I'm a very impatient painter.}

Then, I painted them a soft beige,

the same color as our living room walls.

{which means the paint was free = bonus}

Here's one bookshelf in our kitchen.

Note: the second shelf is empty, because it's at Charlie's eye level.

I had these really cute storage jars there before,

but you can imagine what curious little fingers did to my really cute storage jars.

Now, it's a shelf for his snack bowls :)

And here's the other shelf in our living room.

Voila!

Instant {er, sort of} transformation,

that should have cost me nothing...

except I bought these silly sponge rollers, thinking that they would make everything go faster,

and they didn't.

Still... $3.95 for non-orange bookshelves is a superb deal :)

Now, did you check out Young House Love yet?

You probably should.

Just ask your non-decorating-inclined significant other to close their eyes...

how to buy awesome furniture

If you live in the Chicagoland area,

check out Jubilee Furniture.

They're located in a big old warehouse-ish building 

on the corner of North Avenue and Schmale in Carol Stream.

And really, you should go there.

Did I mention you should go there?

Seriously... you should go there.

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon their blog,

or where I even heard about them,

but a couple of years ago, I wandered into their store on a Friday afternoon...

and I was happily, permanently hooked :)

The place is big, and it's filled with furniture.

Beautiful, used, discounted, heavenly FURNITURE!

Sure: because they're reliant solely on their donors, 

they've got a few couches with grandma-style ruffles that rock plaid like it's going outta style...

{nothing against plaid-and-ruffle-couches, mind you}

But, Jubilee also has brand-name, like-new furniture

that's absolutely gorgeous.

It'll make you kiss your overpriced-furniture-showroom-shopping-days goodbye.

And better yet {for all you bargain hunters out there},

they get new items in every week.

You can check out their blog at 8am on Friday morning

{like I do religiously/without fail once in awhile... if I remember...}.

Plus, anything you buy there benefits Outreach Community Ministries,

a wonderful Christian non-profit organization serving the western suburbs of Chicago.

{you know, in case you need a bit of leverage with your hypothetical husband,

who wants to know why you're buying -- yes dear -- another armchair...}

I should probably also say that I don't really know anyone at Jubilee,

and no one's paying me to say this

{although my mention of the grandma-style-ruffle-couches should speak for itself?}

...I'm just a big, nerdy fan.

Did I mention they have free cookies for hungry little one-year-olds?

Those cookies buy me at least five more minutes in the store,

which is awesome.

Here's a Room&Board chair that we picked up last weekend.

The pricetag? $125!

{we used to have a white chair in its place.

but, the color white and one-year-olds in general are horrible, ancient enemies...

hence, the brown, stain-hiding color of our beautiful new chair. ta-daa!}

We got this bedroom dresser from Jubilee about a year ago.

I can't remember, but I think it was $80? Maybe $75?

The handles were a brassy-bronze color,

so I took them off, spray-painted them a metallic silver,

and popped them back on.

Voila! Instant update!

And... remember this couch?

I went nuts on it when I was pregnant.

It was rockin' the tweedy-plaid pattern when we brought it home from Jubilee.

{I bought because it was a twin-size pullout, which is AWESOME!}

Anyways, I didn't like the plaid,

so I reupholstered it Sherah-style {i.e., I made it all up as I went along}.

It's weathered these past two years pretty well for a DIY upholstery job,

but,

again with the white.

{what was I thinking?}

And so...

I think another trip to Jubilee may be necessary in the near future.

{unless Marty decides to stage an intervention 

to save me from my used-furniture-loving self.}

:)

p.s. Jubilee is open on Fridays from 1-8pm

and Saturdays from 9am-4pm.

Happy shopping!

ta-daa!

Remember this picture that I posted, about a month ago?

It was taken at the beginning of April. We had just put down grass seed, after roto-tilling, weed-pulling, dirt-digging, seed-sowing, and peat-mossing our entire backyard. It was a lot of work...

Ugh. I hate mud.


{Quick recap: when we bought our house, the backyard -- along with pretty much everything else -- was in terrible disarray. At one point, it had been a lovely, landscaped garden, but weeds and horrible perennials with humongous bulbs took over. It was, quite seriously, the closest thing you'll ever get to a jungle in the Midwest.}

But now...

after weeks of watching the mud intently, while doubting everything from our grass seed's sprouting capabilities to the integrity of the kind fellow who sold us the grass seed...



We've got grass!

If I've learned anything through this process, it's that I'd make an absolutely terrible farmer. You should have seen me, squinting at the dirt, saying to Marty, "Yeah... it's been three days. No grass. They totally sold us a dud bag of grass seed."

Silly me.



sigh.
I love grass.

:)

on gardening

I used to silently make fun of people who said that gardening was "exercise." I now stand corrected. Gardening is hard. Hard.

For example, we've got a giant magnolia in the backyard that just finished blooming. All the petals dropped a week or two ago, and I thought I could just leave them. Turns out, dead magnolia petals will kill brand-spanking-new grass seedlings. Which means that dead magnolia petals need to be raked up.
Gross.
{and I thought raking was something you only had to do in the fall.}

But yardwork is also really fulfilling. I just planted a peegee hydrangea in the front yard. It's a little baby tree right now, and hopefully I didn't kill it when I tried to pry it out of the pot {amateur gardener here}, but I'm so stinkin' excited to watch it grow. We're growing some veggies, and flowers too. I'm up to my elbows in dirt these days, and loving it.

Note: our yard is not yet anything to be proud of. In fact, it's the antithesis of "awesome." Thus, I live vicariously through friends who do have pretty yards. For example, I've got a neighbor {hi Petra!} with such a talent for growing things. Her yard is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful -- gorgeous flowers, all summer long. There's a woman a few blocks over with an incredible bed of wildflowers. In the middle of the summer, she has scores of lilies all over the yard. The smell is incredible. A few years ago, I would have never noticed clumps of stonecrop, or barberry, or wildflowers, or whatever. Now, I'm starting to learn the names, and fall in love with plants. It's weird, and wonderful.

Here's a picture of us, right after we finished prepping the backyard for grass seed:

I've got a full post coming up on the state of our jungle, er, yard.

In the meantime: today, I pulled 292 weeds.

Only 60,404 to go...

**Edit**
Coincidentally, my friend Monica just blogged about yardwork, too. She's another one of my friends who happens to have a very pretty yard :) Check it out here...

before and after : stairs

I'm thinking hard about the direction of this little blog, which is why I've been posting so infrequently. In the meantime, here's a "little" project that I tackled at the end of 2010 and never got around to blogging about.

***

Once upon a time, my husband and I bought a dirty cat house. We worked on it hardcore for six months, moved in, and had our baby just two weeks later. At that point, the house was livable, and almost finished... but there were still projects galore, niggling at the back of my mind.

One of them was our staircase.

The kickplates had been painted white before we moved in, but the paint was cheap, watered-down latexy junk, and started peeling off almost instantly... revealing stinky, smelly stained wood underneath. Ick.

Here's the staircase, after I scraped the paint off:

Lovely.

To make this project more challenging, we had already had the flat part of the stairs refinished {that's the nice wood that you see}. Meaning, clumsy, splatter-painter-me would have to be extra careful...

I took a weekend, and painted. And painted. And painted. {Marty should get credit for this job, too. He watched a squirmy baby for almost 48 hours straight so that I could get this done...}

Here are a few more before pictures:



Notice the missing door in this one :)


And, here are the afters:




Much better, right?! {It only took me ten months to get around to it...}

If I keep this pace up, I'll finish my "to-do around the house" list in 3,027 years. Yippee!


{anyone have any tips on mustering up inspiration for finishing unfinished projects? I'd love to hear them! I've got a good one of my own: invite the whole neighborhood over for a Christmas party. It'll get any eye-sore projects in your house finished in no time!}

neighbor-love

Last week, Chicago was hit with a giant blizzard. Depending on who you talk to, we got up to two feet of snow dumped on us. The morning after the storm, we opened our front door, and the snow was up to Marty's waist. It was so stinkin' awesome.

I'm one of those weird people who likes shoveling snow. So while Charlie napped, Marty and I shoveled, and shoveled, and shoveled. {mind you, our driveway isn't that long. we just had these ridiculous snow drifts in front of our house, seriously waist-deep. again, AMAZING! when does it EVER snow like that?!}

Our neighbors were out shoveling, too. We waved, and laughed, and watched their little boys body-slam each other into snow drifts. Charlie woke up, and we brought him outside in his cutsie-baby sled. And then, we all shoveled the driveway of a lady across the street who never talks to anyone. It looked like she was out of town, and who wants to come home to three feet of snow in their driveway? Six shovels made the work go fast. See us pictured, above {minus Marty, the designated photographer}. Later that night, we had an impromptu party, with spicy chili and hot dogs on the menu. I learned that one of our neighbors was a tank operator in the Czech army, another neighbor makes her own yarn, and yet another guy has antique motorcycles in his dining room.

Sweet.

Since the big snow day, I've heard other stories of other people's neighbors being, well, neighborly. Shoveling sidewalks. Pushing out cars. Salting driveways. So, the snow? Love it or hate it: crazy weather makes for good comradery... and yet another opportunity to love your neighbor.

but...

P.S.
we really do have exceptional neighbors.

and...

It's stuff like this that makes buying a cat house totally worth it :)

the TO-DO list.

Just because we finally moved into our house doesn't mean we're finished with it. Our to-do list is about a mile long, and growing by the minute. Literally...

For example: This is a picture of the backyard. Although it's not the clearest... note the absence of grass, and the presence of weeds. I foresee a near future filled with shovels and rototillers...

{also pictured are two former co-workers, digging up a few plants for their own gardens. Jill and Kathy tell me that an avid gardener used to live here, but someone let the yard go downhill, and weeds took over quickly.}

I'll continue to document our home-improvement progress on this little blog. You can laugh along with us {or just be relieved that you haven't bought a fixer-upper, too}.

:)

moving day

Quick recap: just about six months ago, my husband and I bought a fixer-upper. No really. A real fixer-upper... complete with raccoons in the attic, lots and lots of cat poop, and a nasty smell that permeated just about every inch of the property. {you know, not trying to sugarcoat things here or anything...}

We started the demolition work in July--ripping out floors and subfloors {before now, I didn't even know what a subfloor was}, most of the walls and ceilings, and all of the plumbing, electricity, ductwork, and windows. With lots {and lots and lots} of generous help from our family and friends, we started putting the house back together in September... and it's taken us until now to get it all in. New subfloors, walls, ductwork, electric, plumbing, cabinets, windows, doors, soffits, tile, trim, insulation--you name it, we replaced it. {Some have asked if we might have been better off ripping the whole house down and starting from scratch. Honestly, though, where's the fun in that?}

We plan on officially moving in this weekend {and really, not a moment too soon... our little guy is due in less than 2 weeks! ha!}. There are a million projects left to finish... but it's cozy, and livable, and 100% completely ours.

Here's a picture taken back in August, on the first day the guys started ripping out the floors. {Look at our expressions. Marty had just started to understand the gravity of the situation, but I clearly still had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into...}


And here's an "after," taken a few nights ago:


For a full recap in pictures, check out my facebook album :)

perfect shade of gray

This quick little post is entirely unrelated to photography. {consider yourself forewarned}

Chicago is in the middle of a messy winter storm: snow, followed by freezing rain, then back to snow. We're anticipating a high of 13 degrees tomorrow. Yes indeed, winter is here.

While the wind howls outside, I've been spending all my time inside... with lots and lots of paint. You see, since I'm unable to do much along the lines of heavy-lifting or operating power tools, I've been relatively useless throughout this whole home renovation process. That is, until now, when suddenly, sixteen gallons of multicolored paint have appeared in our living room, and I'm the one who's in charge of getting that paint on the walls, inside of a week. Yikes.

It's a daunting task... but the colors make it better. I have creamy tones picked out for the kitchen, something a bit different all set for the living room, and a funky green ready and waiting for baby's room. But my little studio space had me stumped. It's a tiny room, and for the life of me, I couldn't decide on a color---until today, when I stumbled upon Benjamin Moore's Classic Gray.

Ironically, it's the same color as the sky outside... but it's got a cheerful tone to it, I promise :)

Between tonight and tomorrow, I'm hoping to put in about fifteen hours' worth of painting. If you think of it, prayers for my sanity would be deeply appreciated ;)

{also, if you live in the area, and would like to help slap some paint on the walls, I can promise you cheerful conversation, lots of Christmas music, and payment in the Starbucks beverage of your choice. sounds too good to pass up, eh?!}

house update

This is me. Standing in my kitchen.

{Did you notice it has walls? And lights? Trust me: this is very exciting...}

A bit of background: after buying the house and ripping out all the floors, we soon realized that about 60% of the walls and almost all the ceilings needed to be replaced. Yikes. So, we {and a boatload of sympathetic friends/family members} hung the drywall ourselves, and then brought in the pros to do the taping/mudding/sanding.

It sounds silly, but psychologically, it was tough to walk through our house when it didn't have walls. I mean, really: with a baby coming in under two months, it's a bit disheartening to see insulation and 2x4's everywhere. So last night, when we walked through our cozy little house and flipped on lights to reveal smooth. straight. pretty. walls... it was absolutely lovely :)

Next up? Lots and lots {and lots and lots...} of painting.

We're still waiting for the drywallers to finish mudding and sanding. So until then, I'm picking out paint colors, buying curtains, and celebrating our new walls by smooching Mr. G...

he's been busy...

At the house, it's time for ductwork this week.

And since I'm clueless when it comes to this sort of thing, I sit back in my chair, take pictures, and offer unhelpful suggestions like, "Instead of spending so much time screwing pieces of metal together, why don't you just tape those two ducts together with some duct tape? Hmmm?"

{Poor Marty.}

Friend me!

So it may seem as if I've abandoned this blog, but I promise, my leave of absence is temporary! This summer has been absolutely nuts (weddings, church events, doctor's appointments, and yes, the house), and I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. What's up for the future? A blog redesign, some up and coming shoots, and exciting news from Marty and I are all on the horizon. Stay tuned :)

For updates on the status of our house-in-progress (along with fun pictures of ripped-up floors and Marty wielding deadly machinery), friend me on Facebook!

(You can also check my FB status updates for exciting news on the rising cost of drywall, how many sheets of plywood it takes to lay new subflooring, and what we plan to do with the dead cats we found under the house... seriously...)

Enjoy the sunshine :)

Adventures in Home-Ownership (installment #3)

While I love sharing my home improvement stories with you all, this is obviously not a home renovation blog. Thus, per the requests of a friend or two, I'll leave you with one last picture of the current state of our personal lives...

I think Marty's smiling under that mask? Like I've said before, I'm married to an eternal optimist!

Now, on to the prettier stuff of life! More photography, coming tomorrow :)

Adventures in Home-Ownership (installment #2)

Hello house!

There she is, in all of her fixer-upper glory...

You'll note flags in the yard (utility markers for when the sewer is dug up this week), ivy covering the chimney (we'll be up there one of these days, teetering on a ladder with wire brushes in hand, trying to pull the pesky stuff down), and an open front door (because at the moment, bugs are the least of our concerns).

A few notable events from the last two days:

1) Clean entire house. House smells like flowers. Close house up for the night.
2) Return to house next morning. House smells worse than ever.
3) Pray that God would show us where the stupid smell is coming from, gosh darn it.
4) Marty discovers an attic. Marty opens the attic. Marty discovers 5 inches of raccoon poop in attic. Minor meltdown occurs. Then, we thank God (see point #3).
5) Raccoon discovered on roof. Marty and visiting brother-in-law-to-be attempt to coerce us into letting them shoot it. Overruled.
6) Standing in the kitchen, underneath a running ceiling fan, I suddenly feel drops of water on my arm. I look up. Water is dripping from our ceiling fan. Yikes.
7) Crowd of neighbors gather on front lawn. One thinks that I'm the cleaning lady, hired by the new owners. I tell him that I am the new owner. No comment from neighbor.
8) Marty begins to clean out attic. Unfortunately, attic is 100+ degrees. Marty is miraculously optimistic.
9) We buy new locks. And another gas mask.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. Needless to say, we're the talk of our little neighborhood, we're in over our heads, and we're absolutely loving it.

Minus the raccoon poop.

A Much-Needed Update (or, Adventures in Home Ownership, Installment #1)

After much deliberation, debate, haggling, hassles, a few tears, lots of headaches, and earnest prayers ("God, if this isn't the house for us, just burn it down or something?"),
we are, for better or for worse, homeowners.

A side note to my apartment-dwelling readers:
this post isn't intended to make you feel bad about your current situation.
In fact, you'll probably be happier than ever about your living quarters,
once you hear a few of our stories.
Seriously.

;)

Story #1
Marty and I are walking around our new house.
I am wearing a respirator.
{I am not kidding. It's a full-blown, commercial grade gas mask.}
We're in the master bedroom, about to go downstairs and clean out cabinets,
when Marty decides to start pounding on the walls.
{At this point, I think he's crazy.
I soon learn that he is not.}
He says shhhhhh
pounds some more
and we listen to the sound of scratching, clawing, pattering feet
behind the wall.
Behind the wall.
In my bedroom-to-be.
More pounding from Marty; more clawing and hissing from animals behind the drywall.
I hear them scampering everywhere inside the walls.
An hour later, Marty, his dad, and brother are setting up a "humane" trap on the roof,
right outside the gaping hole on the roof that we never noticed before.
They bait the trap with a hot dog...

Needless to say, our hands are full right now.
My little sister is getting married in two weeks,
and we just bought a raccoon-infested house that smells.
Don't get me wrong; I'm ridiculously excited about the house.
But we have a sort of love-hate relationship going right now.
And I think it's therapeutic to share these stories with you all.
:)

Pictures to follow soon,
once I learn how to shoot with a respirator strapped to my head.