Kitchen tour November 2013

Time to do a little kitchen comparison 

Here we were March 2012 looking in from the living room.  Its actually super hard to get a good pic from this angle because of all the light from the windows… makes the colour of the walls look way different than they really are… everything looks so yellow but you can get the jist of what is going on

Here we are November 2013 from the same angle (roughly) with again, bad lighting.  Biggest differences are the door we painted red (Benjamin Moore Geranium, same as front door), hung some curtains to the right there and kinda hard to notice but there is some subway tile back splash that is awesome.  Also painted that dresser you see on the right hand side which is awesome for storage. Added a rug under the kitchen table which has really helped prevent damage to the floor along with adding a bit of coziness.

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I'm trying to think of what to do over the window in the kitchen sink.  Maybe a valance with matching fabric like this… or a shelf something like this… we'll see

                                       

Here's what used to be our coffee corner but it was actually a bit small for our coffee pot so now we just keep our mugs here and use it for wine and the cookie jar:)  We've talked about one day extending the counter out a bit farther so it would fit our coffee pot better.  In hindsight we should have just extended it out from the beginning… still love this little corner.  Nels just finished the back splash here about a month ago.

Here's a bit of a close up of our curtains.  We just finished them last weekend.  I had my first ever experience ordering fabric through fabric.com and it was AWESOME.  I had the fabric shipped to a warehouse at the Sumas border (free shipping) and then my international shipping connections (mom and lori) picked it up for me.  I will definitely be shipping more stuff this way because its so much cheaper and so convenient if someone can pick it up for you.  I ended up doing no-sew curtains after I got into a fight with my sewing machine so we'll see how long they last.  If the iron-on hem does crap out on me I always have the option so sew them because they're cut to size and there is enough fabric for a seam allowance.

Here we are looking from the corner to the living room.  We need some new bar stools at some point… we could easily have 4 around the island but they're too pricey and not really a necessity right now.

 Looking in from the mud room to the kitchen.

and from the mudroom to the other side of the kitchen

 Close up of our painted dresser.  I really love the idea of using furniture in unconventional ways… like this dresser that is obviously supposed to be in a bedroom but is perfect for storing napkins and wrapping paper and craft supplies.  Also shutters for fun even though they don't serve a practical purpose.

Molly's little desk area… I was looking for a way to add tangerine into our kitchen and I love that I was able to in a non permanent way.  If I get sick of this colour I'll just move the table out or paint it another colour :)

This was the Panatone colour of the year for 2012… Tangerine Tango.  I had the colour matched at Benjamin Moore.

Of course our herringbone stencil that we did a few weeks back… I'm still in love with it.

We currently use this bench for some seating.  I love benches because they're a great way to seat more people and this one came from Nels' parents.  I might eventually paint it but for now its been great.

 enough pictures yet????
 nope!!

LOVE the subway tile!!

There you have it. The kitchen as it sits right now.  Maybe we'll leave it alone for awhile now. Its ended up being much more eclectic than I first thought it would be.  In my head I wanted it to be super white and calm.  As we lived in the house for longer and longer that just seemed kinda boring and actually Nels is the one who really wanted me to add some colour so the red door, blue dresser and orange desk for Molly have helped make the room more fun.

Barnboard Monogram

This was a really simple DIY project that has most likely opened the door for MANY more like it.  First of all we have access to an abundance of barn board and secondly i have tonnes of leftover paint that is fun to use for small projects like this.

I'm excited to try out some of the sign painting techniques I've found in the future like this but for our monogram letter we just kinda winged it… Here's a break down of the steps we took

Step #1  Nels went on a barn board scavenger hunt at mom and dads and came back with a beauty that was pretty much ready to hang.

Step #2 We drew a B on the board with a pencil (just free hand).  This was the hardest part and our B isn't exactly perfect but it was alright for our first try:)

Step#3 I found regular paint was a bit thick to brush on the board because of the size of the paint brush I was using and the texture of the board.  I put a bit of water into my paint and it went on much smoother and made tracing the letter easier.

Step#4 We used our picture hanging kit to put two screws and a wire on the back of the board and put it onto a nail we already had on the wall

DONE!!

Super easy afternoon project… probably took about an hour total in time but we still broke it up over 2 days.

*blue paint is Benjamin Moore Blue Nose left over from painting our dresser

Stencilled Herringbone Wall

I've had quite an obsession with the herringbone pattern for awhile now and I had been wanting to do something with this wall in our kitchen for a long time.

One random Wednesday afternoon I threw it out there to Nels and we pulled out the painters tape and magic happened.

I had been looking around at different stencil companies and I had actually decided I was just going to bite the bullet and buy one but the whole idea of stencilling kinda scares me.  How do you keep that stencil straight on the wall?  Doesn't paint get everywhere??  And most importantly I did not want to pay for a stencil plus any other extra supplies I might have needed.  I still LOVE the results of stencilling I see online but I'm not convinced I could do it.

Nels thought he could easily tape off the wall... so he taped the whole thing off for me. we used this tutorial on pinterest for a reference and it was GREAT!!  I wanted a bit of a different pattern so when it came down to painting I just alternated the white colour a bit differently

We used Benjamin Moore Cloud White paint that we have for painting our trim and the original wall colour is Hawthorne yellow (also Benjamin Moore).  Best part is in total this project cost us $8.20  and that's cause we ran out of tape so I ran to the hardware store in town to get some.  I LOVE a quick painting project that has major impact.

Our kitchen is my favourite room in the house so we do like to play around with decorating it a bit.  We put the most money and by far the most time into fun projects for this room.  Next up we are going to paint the door that leads to the deck red and I have some fabric ordered to sew some curtains… we'll see how that goes.