I love planning

You might remember my idea book. Were I keep most of my ideas, torn from magazine, sketched from memory or imagination, pulled from catalogs or printed from the web.

Here is a page from my idea book, I've known since October that I wanted ladder back chairs for the kitchen. The closest I could find were these:

But there was no way I was paying over $300 per chair... PUH-LEASE!!!

And I really wanted rush seats to match the bar stools we've had for years:

My search has gone on and on since October. I found some things that were the right shape, with the right seat, but the color was wrong, or the color was right but the seat was wrong. Found a couple that were really close online but they were either way too expensive or they had pretty bad reviews and I wanted to be able to sit on them myself to test them out.

Then last week, I made the "mistake" of going to TJ Maxx with my friend Cass. She is my good luck charm when it comes to shopping. I believe Jim might look at her as a curse... as anytime I've gotten shopping with her, it costs us about $100. (Exhibit A: master bedroom redo. Exhibit B: our zebra bench)

And what did I find, the perfect chairs, right color, right shape, right seat and pretty good price, $69 per chair. They were even really sturdy. I tried to put them on layaway as they so weren't in the budget right now. They've ended layaway at this particular store. Since they only had 2 chairs and that is just what we needed, I bit the bullet, reworked the budget and brought the chairs home.

I'm so happy I got the chairs, they are just what I wanted, just what I planned for... so for the next week, we're eating out of the freezer and pantry instead of a big grocery shopping trip this week.

Kitchen Renovation - Section 1 Budget

I've gotten a couple of questions on the budget for what we've done so far here, I've got some of the numbers scattered in different posts, but here they are in one place for this section. If you happen to have any other questions, don't hesitate to let me know.

1. Café Shelves - built from mostly reclaimed materials: $50
2. Paint for wall: $20*
3. Moving outlets from the floor, to above the counter, my fabulous husband did those, we just bought supplies: $10
4. 3 base cabinets: $100 on Craigslist
5. Wood for trash/recycling bin, plus hinges (some of the wood was reclaimed): $30
6. Laminate counter top from Ikea: $69
7. Primer, paint and paint sprayer for cabinets: $120*

* - These costs are part of the whole kitchen, so I don't really consider them part of section 1, budget is shown below both ways.

Total Cost if this was all we were doing: $389
Total Cost for this section taking into account future use of materials: $249

Either way you look at, I think we got a bargain.

Hanging Our Cafe Shelves

I'm awful at getting the placement of things on walls right. Things are forever too high, or covering the 10-12 attempts it took me to get the placement right.

I'm trying to get better at that.... a few months ago, when planning the wall above my bookcase, I played with paper to get the right arrangement and it worked.

So when it came time to hang the Ballard Inspired Café Shelves, I was nervous. They are 7 feet long with 3 brackets and I pictured it going all kinds of awful. Here is how we ensured the perfect placement:

• 1st we put a piece of tape across the back of the shelves over the brackets and marked exactly where the mounting pieces where.
• Then we moved the tape, up to the wall and made sure it was perfectly level.

• We put the anchors in, right through the tape and then remove the tape.
• All that was left to do, was hang the shelves.

And - I can't say how proud of I am of these shelves. They would have cost well over $250 retail and we wouldn't have gotten exactly what we wanted. Instead, I made them, with mostly reclaimed materials for around $50!!!

Now, to accessorize them! Oh what fun!

If you missed the full tutorial on how to make these shelves, you can check it out here.

Edited to add:

Kitchen Renovation - Section 1 COMPLETE!!!

Well, almost complete, we still have to add knobs and pulls but we're going to do that when the other sections are finished.

I'm going to try to not get to wordy here and just let the pictures show our progress. Throughout the week I'll go through more of each part's step by step including cutting the counter top, making the recycling center and hanging the Café Shelves.

So without further delay, I present section 1 of our kitchen renovation.

Before:

During:

After:

We are beyond THRILLED with the way this section turned out. I've already eliminated our island cart and only filled up less than a third of this new storage.

In case you are interested in learning more about any of the above projects that I've already finished and blogged about here is a list:

• Kitchen Table and Benches
• Café Shelves
• Counter Top Selection
• Finding the Base Cabinets

I'll be linking this up to a bunch of link parties, please be sure visit the list of link parties on the right hand side to see all the fabulous parties and visit all the wonderful blogs with fabulous ideas!

Sneak Peak: New Trash/Recycling Bin

The space where we keep our trash can in the kitchen is being taken up by new counter space - as a solution to this we are converting one of the "new" cabinets into a trash/recycling bin.

Here is a sneak peak at how it is coming along:

Hopefully the 1st section of the kitchen will be done in the next week and I'll be able to post the full details on this and a few other fun projects.

Initial Coasters (Almost a fail)

After thinking about it for a few days I decided the trivets & bowl didn't feel like enough to give my future sister-in-law for her shower. I wanted to do something a little more personal, something that would mean something to the both of them becoming a family.

Thankfully, I found the perfect napkins to make a set of coasters similar to the ones I made around the holidays.

Materials:

• Cocktail Napkins 
• Tile (mine are from the same box I got before the holidays at the ReStore.)
• Mod Podge (which I STILL cannot believe isn't called Modge Podge.)
• Foam brush
• Sealer/varnish
• Cork sticker thingies to protect the table from the tile (not picture anywhere... sorry!!!)

Step one, wash the tile:

Open the napkin and decide what portion you are going to use:

Then trim it to the part you are going to use and remove the back layer if your napkin is more than one ply, which it likely is.

It turns out, mine were actually 3 ply - I didn't realize this for the 1st 3 coasters, but don't worry, I actually ruined my entire first set of these and when I remade them, I made sure to remove the 2 back layers rather than just 1... more on my mistakes later.

Apply a gob of mod podge to the tile and spread it out:

Then apply your napkin to the top of the tile and coat with mod podge.

Now in the above picture, you can start to see where this project was going wrong... see how the edge of the napkin is visible all the way around? That happened for 2 reasons, first, the area I wanted to show was smaller than my napkin and second, because I didn't remove the 2nd of the 3 ply napkin.

To deal with that I made my third mistake (I was on a roll, why stop at 2 mistakes...) I applied the boarder of the napkins to the tile.

But because of the irregular edge of my tile, the perfect line of the stripes, and how hard it can be to perfectly place this light weight napkin on the tile... we ended up with this:

Ughhhh... that is not the look I was going for.

Thankfully, I started them early enough to start over... and in doing so, I removed that 2nd ply - which meant that once the mod podge was applied over the napkin, then the sealer... the edge of the napkin completely disappeared. All I had to do was apply the cork think to the back to protect surfaces from the course tile and they were good to go!

There... THAT is the look I was going for. Very simple, elegant...

I like them so much, I just might make a set for us.

I'm not the only creative one in the family...

Thought I'd share a project that my daughter did last year.

First, our playroom carpet, this was not meant to be ours, but my mother insisted and she was right.

Then about a year later, I found this poster at the trade show my association manages:

It now hangs in the playroom too.

These two pieces inspired my Bug Girl to pick up a marker, paint and paint brushes to create this:

It took her well over an hour, which for being 5 I thought showed amazing dedication. It has been featured in our kitchen since she created it, but I think it is time I let it go to the place she had envisioned it being, the playroom.

Bucket Recycle

As we are trying to keep costs down as low as possible while coming up with solutions to each of our issues - which mostly center around storage.

We've been under using the buckets for years, they all say the same thing so getting the right thing in each bucket never happens and they all end up holding clutter.

So... I got out the tape and chalk board paint.

Covered as much bucket as possible:

Sanded the area to be spray painted:

And Spray painted them:

When I took off the tape, some of the paint came with it... usually this sort of thing would piss me off, but for some reason - I'm ok with it.

And now, the buckets can be labeled for whatever we want to use them for, which to begin with seems like one for Bug's school stuff, Baby Bear's day care stuff and something to hold the crafts that seem to overtake our home.

In a few years all school stuff can go in the kids buckets, turns out that back packs fit perfectly in them!

Now, we just have to keep plugging away to finish the kitchen, I know just where these are going to go!

Linking this old post to the Chalkboard Paint Party at The Stories of A to Z

Curly Girl

My daughter has been blessed with perfectly pin straight hair. I envy her, my hair is mostly straight except for this strange kinky area in the back.

But she decided last week that she wanted to have curly hair... so I sent her up to the tub and grabbed some left over fabric figuring we'd do rag curls.

Materials:

• Little girl with wet hair
• Fabric to cut into strips
• A night for her to sleep while the hair dries and curls set

Snip the fabric in 1 inch sections:

And then rip them into strips:

Take sections of hair and wrap them around the fabric, then roll the fabric up to the scalp.

Tie the ends of the fabric together and move onto the next section until the entire head is covered in fabric scraps.

Last - send her to bed...

In the morning, remove the strips of fabric, add some conditioner and you've got a girl with curls!

The Third Time is the Charm

I have had 2 attempts at using etching cream. The first time was a complete failure. The second time went a little better.

And on the third time, I made this little cutie!!!

Realized while lighting it today, that I hadn't shared it yet!