Kitchen Renovation, Step #2

Step 2: Begin Demolition

Miss Step 1?

Step-by-step

Note: This step is best done 36 hours after you've returned from vacation via a red-eye flight and are suffering from severe jet lag and lack of sleep.

a) Around 10 am on a holiday, while still wearing your pjs, loudly declare that it's too hot to work outside and that you're too tired to do any "real work" on the kitchen.

b) At 11:30 am ask your husband how destructive you're allowed to be that day. When he replies that he doesn't care "as long as he can start cooking dinner at 5:30 pm" run upstairs and change into your work clothes. Shoes optional.

c) Use a small crowbar, hammer, screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, and basically any other random tools you can find in the basement (remember - you're avoiding going outside) to begin pulling paneling and trim off the walls. Be sure to de-nail the paneling so you don't stab yourself while carrying pieces. When nails and splinters starts to accumulate on the floor, decide that shoes are actually not optional.
NOTE: If you happen to find a large hole with exposed electrical wires poking out of it when you remove the paneling, break off a smaller piece of paneling and nail it back over the hole for your dad to deal with later.
NOTE x2: When you find yourself stuck behind a giant piece of paneling that has sandwiched you between it and the sink, DO NOT ASK FOR HELP. I repeat - DO NOT ASK FOR HELP. Instead, swear, grunt, and shove at it until it moves and consider your teapot, trashcans, and tools that end up on the floor as you scrape the paneling over the countertops collateral damage for your victory.

d) Remove as much paneling as you can reasonably reach without tearing out cabinets. Tear out cabinets if necessary. In order to make sure your husband feels like he's part of the project, ask him nicely to carry discarded cabinets to the curb for you.

e) At 5:25 pm start sweeping up debris and throwing your tools back in the basement.

f) At 5:40 turn the kitchen back over to your husband looking like this:

Please note the smokey outline of what was likely decorative plates near the ceiling. Yummy.

g) Optional step: Fall asleep on the living room floor while your husband makes dinner.

Kitchen Renovation, Step #1

Step 1: Purchase Cabinets

Step-by-step

1a) While touring your favorite used home improvement store with your parents decide that a used set of kitchen cabinets for sale might work in your kitchen and would save you at least $4,000 over new Ikea cabinets.

1b) Take a ton of pictures and measurements of said cabinets to take back and convince your hubby to allow you to spend your tax return on them.

1c) Back at your house, while your parents measure out your kitchen, try to convince your husband to let you go back and buy the cabinets today because your parents and their minivan are leaving in a few hours. NOTE: If your husband makes you promise that the cabinets won't take up the whole garage, smile sweetly and promise that they absolutely will not take up the entire garage.

1d) Return to your favorite used home improvement store to purchase cabinets approximately 25 min before they close and about 3 hours before your parents are scheduled to leave. With the cabinets in the back of the store, this leaves you with enough time to make approximately 2.5 trips to the minivan before the store starts turning off the lights on you. At this point, play up the sympathy vote. If you're lucky, an employee at the store who happens to own a truck may offer to haul the rest of the cabinets home for you for $10. Agree before he can finish offering and then give him $20. NOTE: Try not to cry tears of relief. That will only make things awkward.

1e) Once all of the cabinets are unloaded on your front lawn, carry them back into the garage - filling it entirely. 

1f) Hug parents goodbye, apologize to husband, then quietly do victory dance in your now very-limited garage space.

Gettin' Hitched - Literary Style: DIY Rehearsal Dinner

Warning: Photo Dump. But good photos! Photos from our awesome rehearsal dinner! Since we got married in Michigan, we had a Wisconsin-themed rehearsal dinner in order to incorporate some of J's favorite things - beer, cheese, brats, and beer. Oh - and the Packers, Brewers, and beer.

I should begin with how we started that day though. It was obviously a very stressful day...

Basking in the sun

Project: Hallway Over-Hall, Part 1

This is one of those projects that started because of another project, during which I got distracted and started working on something else - and now this project is finished and the one that I started is still sitting in the garage... sound familiar?

At least both projects are in the hallway. Our weird, little hallway. It's just a really small space in which six different doors/entryways intersect. Clockwise, we have: the entryway from the living room, a closet with a folding door, the door to the guest room, the door to the bathroom, another closet door, and then the door that heads upstairs.  Originally there was actually another door in there too (from when the living room was another bedroom - you can read more about that here), and that may explain why the door that heads upstairs currently swings out into the hallway. And while that may have used to make sense, now it's just an annoying problem.

Gettin' Hitched - Literary Style: DIY Save-the-Dates and Invitations

When the Mr. and I got engaged a few years ago, we weren't really sure where to begin planning. Should we have a big, white wedding or shoot for a destination wedding and get married on a beach somewhere tropical? Hire it out or DIY? How much should we spend? How much can we afford? Should we have a theme? Who should stand up with us? And on and on and on...

Theme-wise, we went round and round a bit, but really only threw around one idea seriously - books. Yep. We're nerds - and we embrace it. We love to read. On trips, part of our suitcases are reserved for books we buy along the way. We retrofitted bookshelves to hold our TV so that we could fit more book in our living room. So ultimately it wasn't a terribly difficult choice - but apparently it wasn't a common one either because I couldn't find Save-the-Dates or invitations to match up with our theme and our budget... so, whats an el' cheapo DIY gal to do? DIY them of course!

Blogging for a Babies and Boobies

One of the great things about LowesBerg (yes - that's what I've named our house. no - it's not a manor, but if Downton Abbey can have a name as well as an address, well, then so can LowesBerg)...

...is its location. We're super convenient to the Metro (DC's lifeline, and the savor of my sanity since I don't have to drive in DC traffic everyday to work), our neighborhood is awesome, and we have some pretty great neighbors.

One of those neighbors is also a former coworker, Gillian, who I already knew before we moved into LowesBerg. I actually called her up when we were looking in the area and she had me come over and do a bit of a walkabout with her and her awesome pups one evening, which further sold me on the area.

Meet Gillian (oh - and that's not one of the pups that I was referencing)

IKEA RAST HACK - Mod Podge Entryway Table

First of all, I need to admit that I usually don't trust my DIY ability. And we've already discussed my aversion to shopping at IKEA. So one plus the other meant when I set out to make our sofa table, I actually bought three Rast dressers in case I completely screwed something up in the process. I figured if all went well, I could just return the third box unopened. Or use the scrap wood for something else since I HATE returning things at IKEA.

Second of all, I apologize because this isn't a very photo-rich post. This was kind of a project that I did randomly over the course of a couple weeks here and there, and when I do that I never remember to take pictures!

Anyway - I've already posted about the sofa table and it's success - what I didn't write in that post, was that one of the dressers that I used was missing the front of a drawer. Good thing I had a spare dresser to steal from.  But what that left me with was an opened, and partially used third dresser that I couldn't return. So what to do? Another IKEA Hack - that's what!