one year later: part 1 - downstairs

Ok, it's really hard to believe that we've been in the house for a year as of today.*  This also means that it's been approximately 15 months since I've held a paying job.  Both facts are odd in a way but good too.

I haven't been that great at posting our progress on the house.  So I'm going to try to just keep this quick and dirty.  When we moved in and what it looks like now.

Outside front THEN:

Ok... and actually the front of the house looks nearly identical except that my car goes in the garage and it's Will's that sits in the driveway.  And I redid the house numbers but actually, I'm not going to show you a close up of that.  I've been toying with 2 ideas though: 1. paint the garage door green to match the front door which you can't see and 2. spray paint the light fixtures black.

oh, here's a picture of the front door.

Backyard THEN:

I actually don't have any pictures of the deck pre-"awesome craigslist teak deck furniture" since we went out to Golden to get it the day after we moved in.  We haven't done much out here either though we need to repaint/stain/take your pick the deck badly.

Kitchen THEN: 

Ah, the kitchen... It needs so much work that it hasn't even gotten touched yet.

Kitchen NOW:

We've done basically nothing. And there's so much that I want to do.

Living room THEN:

Living room NOW:

Obviously better with furniture and sans gross country curtains and wood trim (not that you can see much in this picture.  Take a look at the window sills).  There are only a few things that we know we need here: mantle, a picture over the TV (it arrived yesterday!), a slipcover for the chair in the corner, and Roman shades and wood blinds for the windows (shades have been in the works since September but they're out of my hands so.... we'll see when we get them).

Guest Room THEN:

Guest Room NOW:

I have a few plans.  I'm going to paint the walls to match the bathroom below, maybe a headboard, maybe a window treatment, and a few accessories.  Well, and finish my gallery wall.

Downstairs Bathroom THEN:

Downstairs Bathroom NOW:

This is one of the more completed rooms in the house.  Mostly achieved through paint and accessories.  We finished laying the floor this weekend and then it's just touching up the baseboard paint (it's amazing how much baseboard that nasty carpet covered) and adding some quarter round.

Dining Room THEN:

Dining Room NOW: 

There's not too much more I want to do here.  Wood blinds.  Crown molding.  Maybe wood floors to match the kitchen and foyer and then area rugs as appropriate down the road.

Laundry Room THEN:

Laundry Room NOW:

All I've managed to do is get new machines since the ones they left us were literally shrinking our clothes even though they were on the lowest possible dryer setting.  I've got plans.  Most of them start with putting a slab of counter over the top of the machines.  But that's just the beginning ;-)

Foyer THEN:
















































Foyer NOW:

You might say it hasn't changed much and it's just the foyer but I painted all those dang spindles myself!  And the army of doors that you can just partially see some of in the second picture - if you include the front door, we have FIVE doors marching in a row.  I swear I'm going to get cutesy signs to put on all of them one day.

* I really did start this on the 12th, the anniversary of the day we moved in but then I realized I didn't have any pictures that were even vaguely current.  So now it's 2 weeks later.  oops.

Oh and I seriously HATE the online blogger interface - I have no idea where all that space came from or how to get rid of it!

our PW adventure

A few weeks ago I discovered that Ree Drummond – The Pioneer Woman was going to be in Denver for a book signing for her new cookbook – Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier. 

Um, yes please.  I want to go to there.

The day of the signing (last Saturday) finally rolled around and we had planned our day around heading to the Tradesmart book store in Littleton for the event which started at 4pm. 

Sweet Pea took her nap and got up with plenty of time for us to stop off to check out a couple of cross stitch shops before going to the book store but we didn’t get out of the house in a timely manner – I mean, really, I should be used to how long it takes to get out of the house with her but I seem to end up about a half hour behind schedule (unless there’s an appointment involved) no matter what I do.  So we decided to only hit one of the shops – thank goodness we did!  I finally found a good Christmas stocking kit for Miss P and a really great shop (Fancimats & More in downtown Littleton).

We walked in to discover that the ladies (one employee and one customer) were discussing, what else than the very same book signing that we were headed to.  I thought that was funny.  We found out from the ladies that the book store had been giving out numbers all day.  Great.

We decided to press on figuring that if we got there and we were way far back in line, we would just stay for the presentation, buy the new cookbook and go home.  So we got there a little before 3:30.  I staked out a spot and waited while Will wandered around with the baby.

The crowd anxiously waiting her presentation.

And then she finally appeared!

Her presentation is just a little history of her life and blog. 
She talks a lot on her blog about how she’s terrible at public speaking… well, it’s true!  But she’s funny and nervous in a very endearing way.

And then she sang to Charlie.  ha!

After her “song,” she came right over to begin signing books.  At this point it was about 4:30. 

My spot won me a perfect vantage point for when she started signing books.  Unfortunately, our number was 248.  We were going to be waiting for quite a while so we actually left and went up the street for dinner.  We’re still not sure why more people didn’t do the same.

Basically, all these people were just camped out in the store waiting to be called to get in line.  We grabbed a chunk of floor and let the girl crawl around for awhile.

They’d been playing an awesome country playlist but eventually the bookstore folks and the publisher folks got smart and they put The Muppets on one of the 2 screens that had been put up for the presentation.
Eventually, our number got called.  Not before the bookstore started announcing that if you needed to leave you could leave your books on a cart and Ree would sign them and you could come back and get them the next day.  A lot of people were taking advantage of that.
Aaaaaaand she fell asleep.  I was so hoping to have her meet Ree too. :(  But she was a little tuckered out by that point.

Finally we made it! 

It was about 8:30, 4 hours from when she’d started signing books and she was still so upbeat and nice.  AMAZING.  I was so excited to introduce her to our Sweet Pea since I know that Ree loves babies.  She told us how beautiful she was and that she looked like Snow White and just wanted to pet her.  Ree has to be used to people coming up and stammering at her because she just started asking questions while she signed the books.  Where did we live?  When we told her that we’d just moved to the area, she asked where from and then was joking that she was interrogating us.  Really, she’s just as nice in person as you would expect her to be if you’ve watched her show.  She even patted the babe on the leg.

Oh and thanks to the Tradesmart employee for taking the picture!  Our original plan was for me to have the baby and Will to take the picture but as you saw… she was asleep so Will had to get in the picture with us.

I had 3 books signed  - the original cookbook, Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.

The new cookbook – Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier.
And Charlie the Ranch Dog which we had signed for Miss P. 

If I knew where it was, I probably would have thought to bring The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels – A Love Story too but God only knows which of the bajillion boxes of books that’s in.

I actually bought the new cookbook at the event so I didn’t know what was in it.  I was pleasantly surprised to find two of my favorite recipes from her website. 

Pork Chops with Apples and Creamy Bacon Cheese Grits which if you’ve visited since November, I’ve probably served it to you in all of its delicious glory.  Though one of these days, I’ll finally make the whole thing correct from start to finish.  I haven’t done it yet.

And Summer Stir Fry.  The pictures are different from the recipe version that I’ve used but this is such a tasty summery dish.  I can even get Will to eat tomatoes!
 

So that’s how I got to meet Ree Drummond, Pioneer Woman. 

Well, Pioneer Lady in our house.  Damn you, Will!

nursery – dresser drawer saga

It’s an IKEA dresser so you know I couldn’t leave it just like it was supposed to be, right?  I wasn’t planning anything more major than lining the drawers and swapping out the knobs – I’ve seen some crazy awesome IKEA hacks on Apartment Therapy but nah…

I just went simple.  I lined the drawers and swapped out the knobs. 

Unfortunately, lining the drawers proved bizarrely complicated.  Or maybe I just made it overly complicated.  I don’t know.

The bottoms of the drawers are yellow and white stripes.  I think I’ve mentioned my distaste for yellow, right? So I bought 4 different scrapbook papers – 8 drawers, each paper for 2 drawers – to line them.  I decided that it would be easiest to do this before putting the drawers together so that I could just deal with the flat bottoms of the drawers rather than wholly made up drawers.


My materials – paper, drawer bottoms, DIY modpodge (I don’t recommend it or find better directions than the 50/50 mix of elmer’s and water that I was working with), and a foam brush.

Apply glue with brush.  Stick paper on…

and watch your paper destroy itself :(

Try the rolling pin… no dice.

Try stacking a whole bunch of flat weight on top… no pictures but this didn’t work either.  Actually, that was a complete disaster.  It all stuck together.  No, actually, first it worked but the paper peeled right back off so then I tried to put the “modpodge” on the top surface too and that stuck to everything.

Finally move on to Plan B – use spray mount to stick the paper down and then cover in clear contact paper.  That actually worked like a charm.  I lapped the contact paper over the edges since they would be hidden under the edges of the drawers once they were put together.  I figured that might add to the staying power and make for a more seamless look.

Will put the the rest of the drawers together.

With his little supervisor watching every move, of course ;-)
 
These are the smaller top drawers – the bigger bottom drawers are lined in the green polka dots you see above or pretty plain turquoise-y.

The dresser comes with dark, nearly black knobs which I didn’t think “went” with a pretty white dresser in a baby’s room.  So awhile back, I picked up some pretty pink glass knobs half off at Hobby Lobby.  I know I said that I was going gender neutral but that doesn’t mean that I can’t put in pops of girly that can be easily swapped out if the next munchkin turns out to be a boy.  I also convinced my mom to give me all the brushed nickel knobs that she got for her kitchen cabinets but had to replace since they were too shallow.  Score!

Complete!

 
Bonus – you can almost tell that the walls are 2 different colors in this picture! But – oops!, I just realized that this picture is actually from before I swapped out the rest of the knobs.  D’oh!  Oh well, other things changed too so you’ll see later.

So that’s my very basic, simple IKEA hack on the Hemnes dresser.  Here’s the first part of the story.