We actually have a couple projects to share. In the last couple months, we replaced the kitchen flooring and built a bench over the radiator. Here is where we started over a year ago: The lovely original hardwoods throughout the first floor had been covered in ... read more
kitchen
Re-painting the kitchen cabinets
The base cabinets in our kitchen looked horrible. It wasn't the cabinets themselves, it was the finish. As with much of the house, their paint job was pretty terrible. It was streaky and bumpy, which made lots of grooves for oils and dirt to collect, and they were ... read more
Free slate trays
I'm short. Really short. 5 feet even, actually. With 20+ years of practice, I can get around just find in a world built for people significantly taller than me (unless there's a glass item I need on the top shelf at the grocery store--I still haven't figured that one ... read more
Cheap industrial lighting to replace an ugly ceiling fan
We have new lights in the kitchen. Behold, our DIY cheap industrial lighting: We finally took down the big old ceiling fan over in the breakfast area and added this industrial-looking light. We have a matching one over the kitchen sink to, which you'll see ... read more
DIY wall art for the kitchen
Last week, we put bamboo blinds on the naked kitchen windows. I thought it would help with the empty feeling of the breakfast area, but it kind of made it worse. It was too stark of a contrast in the sea of white. Curtains would help, but they aren't possible ... read more
Silly half wall
When you walk into our house, you enter into the living room. If you look straight ahead, you are facing the dining room, and the kitchen beyond that. This is what it looks like: Is it a half-wall or just a wall with a hole in it? A pass-through? I've never ... read more
The big kitchen reveal
Ready for the kitchen before and after? Here is the before--not terrible, but not what we wanted: And here is what it looks like now: We love how open and simple it is. And it's the perfect balance of masculine and feminine for us. (And not at all preppy.) The ... read more
We did it!
Our new kitchen shelves are finally installed. As usual, we made adjustments to the plan as we went. The shelves to the left of the stove were going to go all the way to the corner, but we liked it better with the shorter shelves, and there is still enough room ... read more
The shelves for the open shelving
Along with many other random building materials, we have a single raw, pine stair tread in the dining room. When I originally had the idea to ditch the upper kitchen cabinets for open shelving, of course, I first had to pitch the idea to the Hubs. So I grabbed that ... read more
