Chalkboard Wars

It's begun.

The Chalkboard Wars.

I can see it now. A neverending exchange of (not so) witty insults. A vicious cycle of juvenile name calling. A perpetual show of sibling rivalry.

The perfect environment in which to raise a kid.

Remember how I chalkboardified the panels of our kitchen door?  Well, they've become something of a message center for people exiting our home.

In a rare & misguided tenderhearted moment, I changed the message on the door from "Thank You, Come Again!" to "We love Stephen!" (We being Joseph & myself.) Will I never learn?

That evening, Theresa, Stephen's sister, crossed out Stephen and wrote her name. So, the door read, "We love Stephen Theresa!" Fair enough. We do love Theresa. How can you not?

Then, the next morning, before I could even take a picture of Theresa's handiwork, I discovered that the message had been altered yet again by my extremely mature and adult husband.

Oh, yeah. This is definitely the start of something great...

All Because of a Candy Striped Shower Curtain

Sometimes you get lucky and stumble across a cinch piece. That perfect bit of art, fabric, or furniture that can tie a whole room together. With that single discovery, everything else just clicks into place. It's wonderful!

Sometimes you get really, really lucky and you stumble across a cinch piece that is 100% FREE! Woot!

A couple of months ago, my sister switched apartments. In the process, she went through all of her belongings and gave away a bunch of stuff.  I gleefully took some of her clothes and linens. I'm a serious sucker for free stuff. It's a problem.

So there I was, standing in the kitchen, staring down at my new pile of linens, and contemplating their potential uses... when the light bulb went on.

"OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! THAT STRIPED FABRIC WOULD MAKE PERFECT KITCHEN CURTAINS!!!!"

Everything snowballed from that point on.

If you give Caroline fabric for curtains, she'll want a new wall color to go with them. If you let Caroline pick out a new wall color, she'll want to switch out all of the art work. If you let Caroline switch out all of the artwork, then she'll want to turn her door into a chalkboard. If you let Caroline create a chalkboard list making location, she'll want to completely rearrange all of the furniture in her house. Et cetera.

See. Snowball effect.

Personally, I blame my sister Sarah. She gave me the "must change everything around once a month" bug. You'd think as a physician's assistant that she would warn me it was contagious, but did she? No. Wench.

I'm leaning more and more towards bright happy blues and greens in my home lately. So, I pulled out all of my cheerful turquoise/teal blue paint chips and after about 5 minutes of deliberation and elimination, I settled on Eddie Bauer's Signature Weathered Glass.

It's super cheerful. Like "you WILL smile while you scrub dishes" cheerful. When I first painted the kitchen, I kept waffling back and forth between, "I LOVE IT!" and "OH, GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?" Now that I've lived with it for a while, I definitely love it.

Anyways, back to the destiny of that fabulous striped fabric. After coming across fixed flat roman shade tutorials at both Centsational Girl and Fly Through Our Window, I'd been itching to make some for my kitchen. So I put on my sewing cap and got to work. In my kitchen. Is it weird to sew in your kitchen?? Inquiring minds want to know.

Did I mention that the striped fabric is my sister's old shower curtain?? Yes. You heard me. Her shower curtain. Crazy, I know, but when I cut it into fourths, there was just enough fabric to make shades for all four of my kitchen windows. It was meant to be.

I had some black out fabric leftover from the nursery.

 So, I lined each of the four pieces of the shower curtain with it.

After that, it was simply a matter of figuring out the width and number of folds and tacking them in place.

I slid dowels into each of the folds to keep them from sagging. As for hanging the curtains up, I used the rods from the icky old vinyl shades that were hanging in the house when we first bought it.

It took me a while, but it was actually a super easy project. And I'm in love with the results.

They are fabulously bright and cheerful. They make me think of candy stripes. And candy is always good, right?

Ignore small child consuming mandarin oranges. He's not relevant to this post. Oh, who am I kidding. He's cute and fantastic. Please admire him at your leisure.

The burgundy stripe in the fabric perfectly complements the cabinets while the rest of the stripes allow me to bring a variety of other colors into the room.

Wait, could that be a triangle hanging next to that ridiculously long and unrealistic "to do list"? Surely not. She doesn't really announce dinner with a triangle does she?? Nuts.

Yup, my candy stripe shades give me the courage to play with such colors as turquoise, green, and orange. Colors make me happy :). I need rainbows, stat!

Now I just have to figure out how the hell I'm going to build a sink surround.

And finish gluing/sanding/varnishing the counter top to the right of the stove.

Maybe build some more shelving, install some backsplash, and rearrange everything. You know, just a few small little tasks that need taking care of. *sigh* It's only been two years. What's a little more time?

I was determined to wait until the kitchen was completely done before showing it off to you... but it's been over a month and I can't stand it anymore. I'm more of a "Hey, look at my progress!" kind of girl. So, here are a few before and afters:

Before - Beige & Bleh

I have a sneaking suspicion that Hurricane Joseph has been in the cabinets again.

After - Colorful Awesomeness

Before

After

Before

After

I think the shades work really well with the rug as well. I'll share more about the artwork in the kitchen in a later blog post. For now, I'm just going to enjoy my candy striped windows.

Homemade Kitchen Chalkboards!

Did you know that it is ridiculously easy to make your own chalkboard paint?? All you need is 2 tablespoons of unsanded grout for every cup of paint.

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Mix them together & voila! You have chalkboard paint. Which kind of looks a lot like sludge if I do say so myself.

Thank you, Centsational Girl & Martha Stewart for gifting me with a cheap and addictive decor-related substance. That's just what I needed.

Sure, I could have bought a can of chalkboard paint from Lowes for $15... but if I had an entire can of chalkboard paint, I would probably try to chalkboard-ify everything in my house just to use it up.

Instead, since I already had some leftover black paint at home, I bought the smallest quantity of unsanded grout I could find for $4. Now, I can take any color paint and make it into chalkboard paint. Hmm. The teacher in me has a sneaking suspicion that everything in my house just might end up chalkboard-ified after all... Just not in black.

Starting with the under the stairs closet door in the kitchen. Here's the before:

And here's the after:

Did I mention that I'm in the process of redecorating the whole kitchen? Because I am. Consider this a sneak peek until I finally finish the counters, curtains, and shelving.

I debated going with green chalkboard instead of black, but with the black kitchen appliances and my collection of cast iron pans, black ultimately won out. I think it was the right decision. Thanks, Sarah, for giving me a friendly shove in that direction!

Now I have a list writing center. In plain view. Where I'm less likely to ignore it. Probably.

Look at all that space for lists! Ridiculously long, unreasonable, unobtainable lists, here I come!

Unable to stop with the closet door, I turned my attention to my poor, sad, stained, off white, kitchen door...

*shudder*

A couple of weekends ago, my sister-in-law Sarah (of Five Camels) and I were sitting in the kitchen discussing decor plans, when Sarah turned to me and said:

Sarah: Do you know what that door needs?

Me: What?

Sarah: Chalkboard panels.

Me: HECK YEAH! Genius!

We don't get along at all. ;)

Fast forward a few weeks and the door looks like this:

(Sarah - I totally copied your above door Palm Sunday palm display... because I really liked it!)

The door will probably end up being Joseph's "list writing" center. You know. For all those lists 2 year olds like to scribble write.

(Think Apu Nahasapeemapetilo from The Simpsons)

Wasn't that fun??

Now. I need someone to physically restrain me before I give in to further temptation...

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Mmm. Chalkboard paint. The new Meth. Right, Sarah? ;)

Classy Champagne Soap

For the past couple of months, I've been hoarding collecting glass bottles in the kitchen with a variety of uses in mind for them. Today, I took the first step toward utilizing them.

Meet our New Year's Eve champagne bottle:

The first step was to remove the labels. Why do labels always have to be so uncooperative anyways? If labels were criminals, they would always have "resisting arrest" and "assaulting an officer" added to their list of charges. Little punks! I didn't bother soaking the bottle. After ripping off what I could, I pulled out my trusty razor blade and got to scraping. Just as good as Goo Gone.

Once the bottle was clean and free of it's label, I poured in a mixture of soap and water.

Then I topped off the bottle with an old olive oil spout. I like it! I like it a lot!

Time to test it out. The soap came out too slowly, so I poured some of the soap back into it's original bottle to  make room for more water. I added water and mixed it with the soap until it came out at a satisfactory speed (necessary, since you can't exactly squeeze a wine bottle...).

Stephen doesn't like it. He says it looks silly. I am completely ignoring him (with affection). I love the bright green color and the shape of the bottle. I think it's a big step up from simply using the store bought plastic soap bottle. I love that I didn't spend any money on it. And, most importantly, I am the one who does the dishes. So the bottle stays. FOR. EV. ER. (Name that movie!)

Besides... The bubbles look super neat after you finish pouring the soap!

I want a matching bottle for my stove-side olive oil. And maybe a cute method to label the two bottles so they never, ever get mixed up. Blech. Anyone out there have some nifty labeling ideas? The label would have to hold up after getting wet. That's the tricky part.

Now, I just need a good reason to buy some champagne. So, my dear sisters-in-law, how do you feel about Mimosas this weekend?

All Hail The New Monarchs!

The cabinets have officially been crowned!
Back when we first installed the cabinets, I stained some crown molding with the intention of using it to finish the cabinets. Naturally, that means that the molding sat around collecting dust for several months.

Taking on the installation of crown molding is actually terrifying. It's so easy to screw it up! For the cabinets, I was going to need 90 degree outside corners and 135 degree inside and outside corners. In my head, that means you divide the angle in half and cut the molding at 45 degrees for the 90 degree corner. BUT IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!! ARGH.

Since the molding sits at an angle, it's much more complicated than you think it will be. To keep myself sane and avoid wasting a ton of expensive molding, I used some scrap molding and made some labeled templates.

90 degree inside & outside corner templates:

135 degree inside & outside corner templates:

I carefully measured all of the pieces I would need for the cabinets.

I used my handy dandy compound angle miter saw (bought on super sale on Black Friday!). It gives you both a miter and a bevel angle, so you don't have to hand shave the inside corners. Thank goodness. You can also cut the crown while it is lying flat, which is a HUGE help!

I followed this chart in the instruction manual as closely as I could. Every time I set up a cut, I double (triple/quadruple) checked it to make sure it was what I needed. I checked the cuts against my templates.

This chart and the saw give you the angles for the miter and the bevel for a 90 degree angle. I had to look up the appropriate cuts for the 135 degree angles. This chart was very helpful.

To conserve the molding and ensure that I didn't run short, I tried to use both sides of each and every cut whenever I could.

I laid the crown out on the counters under each of the cabinets as I cut them. That way, I was able to keep track of which piece went where. I cut a lot of the pieces just slightly longer than they needed to be so that I wouldn't accidentally come up short. You can always trim a little off, but you can't make the pieces longer after the fact. I only cut one piece at the wrong angle early on and was able to salvage it by using it in a place where I needed a shorter piece.Stephen & I used the nail gun & air compressor (thanks Grandmom & Pop!) to put the molding up.Match up the corners, then nail the piece in place. Bar area before:Bar area after:Before:After:Before:After:Before:After:Overall after:

Certainly not the final product, but a good step forward!