Distractions

    I haven't accomplished much of anything lately. I am fighting off a cold- which means my days consist of going to my job and coming home to rest. Today, I ventured out to the beach. There really is no better distraction. It is a wonder I get anything done with this to distract me. 

My Kitchen

I am renting a little one bedroom apartment. And, I mean SMALL. However, It is a great area of town. I live alone- so it is safe (way more important than being a big space.  My bedroom is a pretty decent size, but the kitchen is small.

I hate doing dishes. I grew up with a dish washer. I have NEVER lived without one- except in college when I ate in the cafeteria anyway. So, my tiny kitchen and limited space makes the dishes even worse.

I did manage to get some decent cute storage going on though- which makes it a little easier to do dishes.

Can you tell I love owls?

While I was in college, I bought a knife block from Ikea. However, a couple days ago I felt like the knife block needed some TLC. So I mod podged some paper on it and covered the ugly edging with some twine. 

Now I am ready to tackle hanging some pictures in the living room!

What has been going on?

I have been up to a number of crafty things lately.

I spent a ton of time getting a vintage door knob, which I got at ReStore, a little less rusty. I spent the most time getting the back plate cleaned off. For some reason the rust was a lot easier to get off this part than the actual knob- so you can get an idea of how bad they were before I cleaned them off at all.

I also kept the inside of the door knob mechanism because I thought that was pretty cool too. Ignore the lack of spray paint inside the numbered pots. I had about 100 different ideas of what I was going to do with these before I decided on the numbers. And, that was after I ran out of spray paint, since I was planning on sanding some of it off the outside originally anyway. 

I love how these look so far. The little bit of rust on the door mechanism I find charming. It surely isn't for everyone.

For those of you who may be wondering how I removed the rust from all the different parts of the door knob- here is what I tried. 1. I tried vinegar and salt. I always used distilled vinegar, but I did try different types of salt ( including kosher, sea salt, and just run of the mill table salt. 2. I also tried ketchup. I tried this because my mom suggested it. It worked to some degree- but it was harder to rub and frankly, it was a little gross.  3. I tried steel wool. I only used that on the back plates. It was a last resort. 

I bought a pack of stencils to do the numbered pots. I wanted to make a sign. However, I was trying to budget money and didn't want to spend money on wood. Luckily, my boyfriend let me use scrap wood from re-doing his house. I selected this pointed one for my sign. I roughed the letters up after painting them with a block sander. 

I also made this one for my boyfriend. It is above the pantry door in the kitchen. 

Happy Monday!

Want to see something amazing?

I am currently waiting for my rusty door knob to soak so I can remove more of the rust. It was so bad I couldn't see the screws on the side to take it apart.

I figured a blog post was a good use of my time.

When my boyfriend bought his house the hallway had cabinets in the hallway. They matched the ones in the kitchen, but they needed to go. When they were removed- we found a surprise and not the good kind.

That spot you see that is green but surrounded by yellow on the wall to the left. That is a painted metal plate that used to hook up to some furnace or something like it. Once it was removed- there was a pretty nice hole.

Luckily, there has been a lot of work on this area. Here is what it looks like now.

If you didn't know the whole had been there before you wouldn't be able to tell now. All that is left is to put baseboard down again.

I am headed back to my vintage door knob!

Deer Antler Art

My boyfriend really wanted me to craft something for his house. Considering that at this point- the house was mostly empty. I wasn't really sure what to do. But, I decided on this antler art for him. I would have rather redone furniture, but with so many rooms that still need stuff narrowing it down would have been pretty hard.

I started with three black and white antlers. I purchased the canvas on sale at Michael's. I used a permanent marker on the canvas for the antler image. I considered painting it- and if I was going to have more time to turn it around I might have done that. But I did not want to wait for that to dry. However, I didn't want to leave them black and white.  And, yes, I am crafting on top of a TV box. My boyfriend got me a new TV for Christmas  and I haven't thrown it out because it is such a good painting and crafting surface.

So, I created a mixture of paint and water to tone down the white a little bit.

This is about as good of a picture of the mixture that I could get.  I used three different craft paint colors and added some water.  I put the paint on and I was just going to use a dry brush, but I didn't like that finish. So I ended up using paper towels to remove some of the paint.

Here is the finished product.

New Additions

A lot has been going on at Ardsley- so, I wanted to take the time to show you some of the new additions to the bedroom, living room, and office.

 First up is the deer head in the living room. I took some pictures of the process because- it was a process. I love this laser level that we purchased from Lowe's. It suctions to the wall. It has been pretty handy so far. When it suctions to the wall it is kind of noisy but it was super helpful. The picture hanging hook- well I am just amazed it holds that deer head. But it has been at least a week since we put the deer head up and it is still there.

My boyfriend has allowed me a lot of input into the house- but sometimes I come over to the house and he has just decided to do something that I had no idea about. So far it has been all good stuff- but my favorite thing he has done so far is add baseboards in the office.  In this picture you can see the office with no baseboards. It looks pretty unfinished. 

After: Office with baseboards

The office also got a new door. Three doors needed to be replaced in the house- the office door included.  I really liked how the old door looked- it had a bunch of glass panes, but it was not in great shape and it only had a screen door to prevent someone from busting all those pretty panes of glass in and being inside. The new door still has glass but there is a security door that adds more security. 

Another room that got some additions is the master bedroom. The additions was bedding. My boyfriend had college bedding that was ok- but he didn't have a dust ruffle or a sham that matched. I spent weeks online looking at every website I could think of looking for "manly" bedding. Now, could I find gender neutral bedding- yes. However, I found it impossible to find bedding that looked like a man lived there.

We ended up creating our own between a couple of stores, Bed Bath and Beyond and Target, and I like the finished product. Please ignore the fact that the shams do not have pillows inside them.

Furniture!

So, finally, there is some furniture in this place. Granted, there was a desk, dresser, and bed scattered throughout the house, but for a 3 bedroom house that really isn't a lot of stuff. However, the living room furniture has arrived.

I am loving the furniture in the living room. I am pretty impressed with my boyfriends selection ( and a little of my help).  None of this furniture is really in the final place- which is pretty obvious if you look at the random location of the entertainment center that is not center and not even against the wall. 

I think once there is some art on the wall and everything is in its place this room is going to look awesome! 

Master Bedroom!

One of the first rooms that was painted was the master bedroom. My boyfriend wanted to paint it a blue color. We settled on this color- which I think turned out pretty well. Before the room was white and now it is this fresh blue color that looks great with the floors now that they have been refinished.

Here is what the bedroom looked like before:

 I love the doors in older houses. Another feature I randomly noticed is how the doors lock. There is a tiny peg next to the handle that you press in to lock the door- I think that is pretty cool too. Something else that was done is this room is that the closets got lights put in them and a ceiling fan was installed. 

Here is the room during the prep work and as you can see I took a break from taping to take this picture. Taping trim is one of my least favorite things to do. But, it is a necessary evil. I wish I would have taken a picture of how bad the paint on the window frames was and what the condition of the old windows was before they were replaced. 

This is after the room had been painted and the windows had been replaced. I really love this blue color!

I choose this room to post about today because just this past weekend we got blinds for this room and another one of the guest bedrooms.  

The blinds are great. They are wood and beautiful. They are Levolor. We considered faux wood blinds, but the price difference wasn't that much and my boyfriend really hated how the pulls on the faux wood blinds looked. 

One great thing about the blinds was that the wood blinds didn't come in the size we needed for the windows- but the Levolor blinds can be cut down at Lowes for you. We just picked all of them up about 20 minutes later when they were done. 

The Living Room and Office

One of the first rooms that we started working on was the living room. The house had a great feature to it- what the realtor called a 'florida room'. That is just fancy talk for a sun room that has been finished. The layout of the house is as follows: you walk into the front door and step directly into the living room, to your left is the dining room, and to your right is the 'florida room'.

Here is what that area looked like when the house was purchased:

As you can see this area is not too bad. That is probably one of the reasons that we started with it. Here is the work that has been done on it so far. Like most of the house, most of the work that has been completed is painting the rooms. I love neutral colors, and if it was my choice the whole house would be some shade of tan or cream. Lucky for the Lowes and Home Depots paint departments, my boyfriend likes some color. 

As you can see, one of the biggest changes, other than the color of the walls is that the floors have been refinished. The hardwood floors were in horrible condition when the house was purchased. Since my boyfriend wanted to get the floors refinished in the house, we had to complete all the painting before that could happen because the whole house is hardwood except the two bathrooms and kitchen . We started working on the house in December 2010. The house has three bedrooms, two bathroom ( both of which had wall paper up before we started to paint), kitchen, dining room, living room, and office. The only room in the house that has not been painted is the guest bath and in a future post you will see why. The carpet in the florida room, which will be used as an office, was replaced with hardwood floors. We think that it helps the house flow a little better.  We also took the mirror over the fireplace down.  The office and living room are painted the same color- a nice manly green color.