Granny Cushions

When my Grandma downsized and moved into a Retirement home she gave me a set of Windsor chairs.

(Oh in case you are wondering about the patch of miss matched wall, I Photoshopped it. Under the patch is an incredibly ugly gold switch plate cover... this place is just full of "treasures" like that)
The are in great shape! I love how they seem hug you when you sit in them.
I keep one by the front door, for those difficult shoes and boots applications,  and one stays in the guest room.  But if we ever have more than six people over for dinner I'll bring them out to use at the table. 

My plan is to recover the cushion with the same fabric that I used to recover the dining room chairs.

From this

To this

I still need to put some covered buttons on them, but so far I love how they look :)

Hopefully I'll get them done in the next few days. Then the next thing on my list is to find sconces... but its proving to be more difficult that I expected.... there are just way to many choices out there. 

Sideboard Struggles

So now that we've got the dining table and chairs, I've been on the hunt for a sideboard.  Obviously not something that will match the table and chairs perfectly, I'd actually prefer something that I can paint. I've found a few on Kijiji, but most of them were pretty warn down.  Well the fates were smiling on us today, because I went to a BBQ at a friend of my mom's, and it just so happened she is selling a sideboard.  I had convinced myself it was to good to be true, but went down into her basement to check it out anyway.  And it's perfect!! Exactly what I was looking for. I did get a picture but it was with my Iphone, so it's not the best quality.  But it looks similar to this one.

gehringroad

Right now its just a natural wood colour, I would like to paint it, but I am having a difficult time deciding which colour to paint it.

With all of the white wainscoting, I'd like to stay away from white.  So I'm thinking a cream or powder blue.

cream

powder blue

 I am leaning more towards the powder blue.

Hopefully I can pick it up at the beginning of the week :)

Playing Catch Up

I have to get better at updating this blog :)
We have been busy around here making this house feel more like home, and I'm proud to say that we are accomplishing it!! So awhile back my mother in law was here and she was nice enough to help me pull down the wallpaper in the dining room, which turned out to be the easiest wallpaper removal in the history of the world. It took us just over an hour! So imagine my surprise when I started to pull down the wallpaper in the guest room, and it decided to put up a fight.  Its going on three weeks now and its still not off the wall yet... Before you ask, no I haven't been working on it for three weeks straight, I work on it, get frustrated with how much wall is coming off with the wallpaper and stop for a bit. Apparently the previous owners thought that glue (not wallpaper glue, just random glue) in any old place was the proper way to hang the paper... So it comes off like a dream and just when I'm starting to feel really good about myself, everything comes to a grinding halt and I end up working on a small section for what seems like forever...
And that's not even the best part, what's underneath that wallpaper was a REAL treat.

Yes that is splatter paint and hand prints... jealous?!

While I've been working in the guest room (more on that later), Dave has been on holidays and working in the dining room (among other things).  I am so happy with everything that he's managed to get done.

This is what we started with

 (picture from before we moved in)

 We pull down the paper and decided to build paneling around the lower part of the room, then put wallpaper, crown molding and a medallion up.
  

 Here is the paper that we decided on. I just love the silver accent in it.

Here is the paneling, it still needs one more coat of paint.
A quick coat of paint on the top part of the wall will hopefully make any future wallpaper removal easy. 

We also found a great mahogany dining table and chairs on Kijiji 

 They did need a bit of a makeover, and I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to paint them. So for now I just recovered them.

Annnnnnd I love how they look!!
I've almost got them finished, I ran out of staples so they will be done tomorrow. 

It's all coming together and I can't wait to see the room all finished :)

The 90%ers

We always seem to start projects and before they are 100% finished we bore of it or move on to something else for whatever reason...
We seem to have done that again... not finished the deck, test paint colours up in the kitchen, parts of garden ripped out, and now we are sanding and painting the trim in the dining room... lol
Oh well at least progress is being made... I would just like to see something finished. 
I think the problem is that I get distracted very easy. :D

Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm such a bad blogger, I have been so busy these last few weeks..er... months...

Over that time, we started the tedious process of pulling down wallpaper, sanding, priming, and painting all the trim, painting Ellie's room, ripping down the deck, building the new one, working on the gardens and and of course all the fun things that come up on a daily basis. Including Ellie starting to walk!!! I'm so proud of her!!

Here is the old deck, it was very unsafe and not built to code ..... 20 years ago. So it was safe to say that it was time to go...

Here is Dave ripping down the deck I would have been helping, but someone had to take the pictures. :)

And here is the (almost) finished product... 

As you can see there is still some work that needs to be done. We wanted to get it at least mostly finished before Ellie's birthday party. We were literally screwing boards down while people were pulling in the drive way.  I can't wait to get it finished, we already love spending time on it, we have a nice little patio set and a tiny picnic table for Ellie. 

Her party was a huge success, I can't believe our little girl is one already, this past year has just flown by. 

The Kitchen

Here is the kitchen (please excuse the yellow florescent light)  It is much bigger than our last kitchen... more than one person can actually be in here at the same time!

Our fridge didn't fit where the previous owners fridge went, so we decided to make our fridge a drink/spare fridge and leave it in the garage, and amazingly enough my wonderful husband agreed to buy my dream fridge, but before that could happen some "rearranging" needed to be done.

The section of cabinets beside the desk were taken out and the two tall ones were moved to the other side of the kitchen and put into the space where the fridge was. 

And I must say, it looks like it was always there. I am completely happy with it. 

And on the other side where those cabinets were we put the new fridge & freezer.

I LOVE this fridge!!

We are still waiting on the trim for the top and bottom, and we are planning on building a bulk head above the trim, to make it look like its really built in .

 Around the rest of the kitchen the plan is to rebuild the island so we can put our microwave in it, and put a butcher block on top, and remove the bar section of it. 

The cabinets will be painted along with the desk section and the island. The closed in section above the kitchen window will be removed to let the maximum amount of light into the kitchen. The hood vent will be replaced, along with the sink and faucet.

We are going to pull out the linoleum floor and put down tile of some kind and add a back splash and paint the trim.

lots of work to do...   

Right now we are getting some painting done in other rooms and ripping out the old deck and putting in a new one (post to follow), so the kitchen will have to wait for a bit. But I can't wait!!!

Starting anew

We bought our last house about seven years ago, and while we were there

 we bought our two dogs,

 got married,

 and had our first child.

 I never thought I would say it, but I love that house. We made it our own, it fit us very well, and I miss it.

But now we have a lovely new house, and its just waiting for us to fill it with our memories, and paint... seriously the whole house is various shades of pink.

I'm starting this blog to document everything we do to our new house. We have so many plans for this house, its slightly overwhelming, I can't really decided where to start.