Screened Porch {A Bug-free Oasis}

One of our favorite spots in our home on Berry Lane is the screened porch. Living in a swampy, wooded area, mosquitoes are a huge problem. Spending time outdoors can be miserable for those of us who are tasty treats for bugs. So, it's especially awesome to have a nice big screened porch that we use as an extension of our living space. I introduced it here in the tour of our outdoor areas.

Freckle Man (finally) finished repairing the screens on one of the walls so it was time to evict the birds living there and settle back in. The inside of the porch is dark wood, which works for me right now. I'd love to have a bright white porch but I don't think I could keep up with the cleaning. You know you shop at IKEA and Target a lot when your 7 year old says, "Hey Mom. Where's that from? Oh, I know! Target or IKEA!" But, true to form, most of the furniture and accessories -- ok, ALL -- are from my two favorite stores. 

The wood chairs and table are IKEA. They're surprisingly sturdy and have held up well over a winter outdoors. The red chairs, red table, and rug are from Target. I just picked up the outdoor rug this summer, on clearance for $60. Not too shabby for a HUGE rug. And these hurricane candle holder are also from Target. Between the candles and the strings of lights, there's a really nice ambient light in the night time.

We also use the wall just outside the back door as a storage area for all of our summer gear. We do a lot of swimming at our neighborhood pool so it's essential (to my sanity anyway) to have all bathing suits, sunblock, towels, etc. right at hand. FM also stores his grill tools on the top shelf out of Freckle Girl's reach. It's not pretty, but it works for us!

 Next week I'm going to try a series featuring all the bathrooms in our house (there are 4). A couple are in ok shape, while the other two are hard-core 70s retro. Stay tuned!

Kitchen Island: Part 2 {It's Getting There}

Ok, before I show the latest kitchen island shots, I have a couple of other fun things going on. First, remember this little shelf we put up to mask a weirdly placed phone jack?

Well, it was looking mighty stark so I dug through boxes of stuff I'd long since forgotten about to find some accessories. Here's what I came up with:

This cookie jar makes me so happy. I know it's hideous and hokey but it was my cookie jar growing up so I adore it. 

On the other side is this fabulous 70s flowered metal tin that was also in my kitchen when I was a kid. I picked up this red ceramic milk bottle at Target to add to the mix. (Excuse the poor picture quality...I'm still learning here)

Ok. Back to the kitchen island progress. My contractor/brother-in-law and I went back and forth about how to secure it to the floor. I wanted it really anchored down but didn't want to cut into the tiles and he was nervous about screwing into the tile in case they cracked. What we ended up with was creating big shims with 2x4s and using a heavy-duty adhesive to keep them in place. This sucker isn't going anywhere!

Then BIL put on the toe-kicks, which is actually pretty challenging when you have four pieces that have to fit perfectly together. But he did a great job and it looks awesome.

Freckle Man installed the doors on the snack cabinet and it looks so fantastic. Check out this shot showing the new cabinet compared to our originals. Not bad huh?

The countertop is where I'm running into the most trouble. I'd originally thought of using a piece of painted plywood or some other temporary counter. BIL ended up having an extra piece of MDF lying around so we decided to use that. BUT, we don't have any overhang for stools to go under. The MDF would bend so it had to be cut to fit the cabinets.

I could easily paint it and seal it, but it doesn't solve the problem of actually sitting at the island. Frankly, I'm not sure how long I can live with it this way. We may end up splurging on granite sooner than I expected. We'll see how quickly we can save up the money and go from there. In the meantime, we have a motley crew of stools around the island with no counter overhang and therefore, no leg room.

Speaking of our odd assortment of stools... I knew that someday I would get a set of matching ones. I wasn't going to even think about it until the counter was done though. However. I hit up a big yard sale this weekend and found these guys!

They are solid hard wood and I got the lot of them for $30!  They need a good cleaning and light sanding and then I'll probably spray paint them black. SCORE! Good deals like this one make me giddy :) Stay tuned for more updates.

Kitchen Island: Part 1

Over the past few days there's been a lot of activity in our kitchen. Our contractor (my awesome brother-in-law) had some free time to come over and secure the cabinets to the floor. Freckle Man had already assembled the structure of the cabinets, seen here and here. But when it comes to work beyond following IKEA directions, we need professional help.

Here's what we started with:

The first step from my point of view was to lay out the location for the island. We wanted it relatively close to the counters so the bulk of the traffic goes AROUND the island rather than behind it. But, I definitely wanted room for the dishwasher door to be open and not have to sneak past it. We usually use a quick wash cycle and leave the door open for the dishes to finish drying. So we ended up going with 3.5 feet from the counter on the dishwasher side. 

On the end, where the "snack cabinet" opens, we moved the island a bit closer to the cupboards so people sitting at the island wouldn't interfere with access to the fridge. But with the cabinet doors only opening on that end, we could get by with less space to walk.

Once everything was laid out, my brother-in-law attached the cupboards to each other, put on the legs, and added the panels. It turns out that it was a good plan to have his help because there was more modifying involved than we thought. Because we had one cabinet sideways (I wanted the "snack cabinet" to open on the side to keep the kids from coming behind the island all the time), the cabinets didn't line up perfectly. See that arrow? BIL had to plane down one of the panels ever so slightly to get it flush with the other panel.

Once the cover panels were on, our island looked like this:

Standing at the sink, the cabinet on the right will be the slide-out trash and recycling containers.

Here's a side view of the snack cabinet. There will be two stools where our cat is in this picture and another two will go on the side near the fridge.

And here's a view from the dining room looking back into the kitchen. Freckle Girl wanted in on the picture action ;)

I'll post Part 2 tomorrow showing how BIL secured the island to the floor, the toe-kicks, our temporary countertop, and my most amazing yard sale find ever. Stay tuned!

I'm a Winner

In a rare turn of events, I actually won something!!!  I keep getting the urge to hold my hands up to my forehead in a big W :)


I wanted to give a big thank you to Michelle at 4 Men 1 Lady for the Target dish set giveaway!  Michelle put together an amazing Gentleman's Tea Party for her boys using Target's line of summer dishes. Check it out:

And she gave away 3 sets of dishes and I am one of the lucky winners!

Aside from the fact that I haven't won anything since I got the closest estimate to the number of jellybeans in the jar at Easter (my mom added a couple extra zero's to my suggestion), I actually love these dishes. Bonus! Thanks again Michelle.

A Little of This & A Little of That

This week has been a jumble of work, kids summer activities, fun shopping and a trip to Brooklyn to visit friends.

On the shopping front, I found these placemats at Target and the pattern matches the design in the curtains, shown here. The color actually matches a wall we have in the living room so maybe I can use these to tie the living and dining rooms together a bit.

One of our cats (Mouse) thought these were a great little treat, meant especially for her. So now you get a mouthful of cat hair with your dinner...yum.

I have been looking for reasonably priced but sturdy bean bag chairs for our playroom for almost two years now. The ones at Target usually are in colors that won't work or have some sort of kiddie applique. And I just can't justify paying $100+ each from Pottery Barn or Land of Nod. On my Target trip I spotted these out of the corner of my eye:  gray AND no applique! For $25, I couldn't pass 'em by.

I love that the gray will go with just about any color I use as an accent (currently orange) in the playroom. Now I just need to find another one so each kid has their own. And I'm seriously thinking about labeling them since apparently one beag bag chair is MUCH better than the other and the big kids have been fighting for the good one ever since they showed up. Sigh.

On to a our trip to Brooklyn sans kids. I think it's been at least a few years since Freckle Man and I have had more than one night away. In preparation for our adventure, I painted my nails an actual COLOR. I know, stop the presses. But I usually just do a white-ish, baseline kinda color so it was fun to amp it up with Essie's enuf is enuf. It's an awesome shade of orangey-coral which is my favorite this summer.

I also found a skirt at TJMaxx with a fantastic pattern. I love that the skirt is loose and flowy but with a crisp geometric pattern.

The trip was a perfect blend of relaxing, sight-seeing and visiting with friends we don't get to see as often as we'd like. Thank you Soren & Cassie!

One of the highlights of the weekend was checking out the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. A lot of the flowers were past their prime but the lilies were absolutely beautiful.

And the Japanese garden and pond was one of my favorites:

I came home refreshed and with lots of new ideas for sprucing up Berry Lane. Stay tuned!

See the Light

One of the next steps I'm planning for our kitchen update--and luckily a step that's pretty cheap--is to improve the lighting. I've been frustrated with the crappy lighting in our kitchen since we moved in but haven't been motivated to make a change until now. Eventually we'd loved to add some recessed cans but that will have to wait a while.

The main ceiling light is this lovely (haha) boob light. 

Originally I'd been thinking of finding some funky track lighting that could mimic the dispersed lighting of recessed.  Once the hubs and I started talking about what we each like, it turns out that he hates track lighting. Like ALL kinds of track lighting. Ok, time to change course. While we were browsing through IKEA we came upon this simple dome light. 

Source

It's the ERBIUM Ceiling Lamp for $25. At 18 inches in diameter it should cast a nice general light throughout the room and hopefully just blend in.

The next lighting spot is over the sink, shown here:

If you peek behind that piece of wood, you see this guy.

So obviously there's a lot of potential here. I mean we're starting with a bare light bulb for gods sake. I'm thinking since the hubs feels pretty strongly about the main ceiling light, this spot might be my chance to try to mix it up a bit. Perhaps a pendant lamp? 

Source

I'm digging this FOTO Pendant Lamp from IKEA for $20. I really like the industrial and schoolhouse type pendants and think it would look awesome as task lighting over the sink. This model comes in 10, 15 and 20 inches and I'm hoping the 10 inch will work in the space.

Next on the list is adding some lights under the main bank of cabinets. The sink area and stove/microwave area both have lighting but the space in the middle is pretty dark.

Enter the IKEA GRUNDTAL lights. A 3-pack is only $25. We've been talking about picking these up for almost 2 years so we went ahead and bought 'em. And here they sit, looking all pretty in their box:

The hubs says installing them is a "very involved" project (wink wink) so we'll see how long it takes to put them up. Given that we still have two IKEA lights that we bought over a year ago waiting to be installed, I thinking I shouldn't hold my breath. Stay tuned!

Kitchen Progress

We've seen the dining room side of the dining room/kitchen renovation. Now, it's time for the overlooked kitchen side. But first, it occurred to me that a lot of my decisions lately have been made because of finances. As in, there are none! I'm not the best at planning and budgeting for these types of projects. Mostly because once I start the reno ball rolling, I can just go and go and don't stop until I run out of money. Good strategy huh?

So, I've decided to lay it all out there and document the costs of the project so far.

Construction, electrical, plumbing -- $6,500

New stove, dishwasher & microwave -- $1,600

Island cabinets from IKEA -- $560

Paint & supplies -- $70 (plus some supplies I already had on hand)

GRAND TOTAL:  $8,730

Balance remaining: $0

However, there is still work remaining to be done. While I was up north with the kiddos, Freckle Man was busy tackling a bunch of jobs in the kitchen that are small changes but still have a big impact. Remember this sad wall and how much the phone drove me bonkers?

We hung this still-life over the big phone jack plate thingy. That's the technical term for it. My grandmother painted this piece in 1952 and although it's hard to see in this horrendous pic, the silver pitcher has amazing details of reflections. I have plans to paint it's frame black to match the little shelf we picked up at IKEA.

Then, this little piece of wall that housed the trash can (which will move to an island cabinet)...

...was transformed to this!

I picked up the big whiteboard at Target for $15 and we already had the meal planner and file storage, also from Target. The white shelf is actually a bathroom shelf but it fit just right for this space. I want to put some practical decorative accessories on the top but for now I just have this guy that was, again, my grandmother's:

Ok, so then there's the kitchen island still to go. Since funds were scarce, we went to IKEA and picked up the two cabinets we'll need for the job. We had IKEA cabinets for the peninsula in our old house and were quite happy with them so I'm fine with going that route again. Freckle Man has assembled the basic shell and now we're just waiting for my favorite carpenter extraordinaire (my brother-in-law) to have a few extra hours to come install the buggers. Like screw them to the floor. Permanent.


But for now, here's what we've got hanging out in the garage:

Ok, so it's a little hard to get excited about the island cabinets until they're actually put in to the kitchen. I'll try to be patient. Now for the island countertop, the plan is for a slab of black matte granite. The cabinets are a very close match to our existing ones, but we don't want to try to match the rest of the granite counter, which has a lot of copper tones.

Given that we're out of mulah at this point, I'm looking into cheap DIY wood options just so we can slap a temporary solution on there and make the island usable in the meantime. I came across this cool project: 
http://cleverlyinspired.com/2012/02/10-diy-wood-countertop-2/
Or maybe I'll just get a 4x4 piece of plywood, paint it black, polyurethane, and slap it up there. So add that to the to-do list as well.


Once we've been able to save up a few pennies, we'll finish the kitchen upgrade with the last pieces:
French door refrigerator -- $2,000
Granite counter -- ?? (need to get some estimates)
Lighting -- Stay tuned! I've got some ideas that are coming up next.

These Are the Days

For the last ten days or so I've been deeply entrenched in vacation mode and unplugged. I haven't done any house projects or paid attention to my work emails piling up. And it's been lovely! In a time when I've been searching for balance in my life, it has been wonderful to focus on spending time with my kids.

After several days at our Home Away from Home, we headed back home to celebrate Freckle Boy's birthday. It is Birthday Season after all!

I still find it hard to believe that my little guy is actually a big 10 year old now. Here he is with a goofy grin opening presents:

After presents and breakfast, we headed for the shore. Freckle Boy usually chooses to celebrate at a beach cottage the hubs family has about an hour away. This little village actually celebrates the 4th of July on July 3rd, which is Freckle Boy's birthday! Perfect!

We headed straight to the water. Freckle Girl was a little worried about the waves but the older kids dove right in.

I'm not sure you could call this surfing but he had a blast:

Here's a view looking away from the water. The cottage is in pretty rough shape but has a ton of charm and potential. And the kids love having a super-rustic sleepover! One night's enough though ;)

While I had the kids up north, Freckle Man worked on putting the IKEA cabinets together for our kitchen island and also installed some decorative shelves. I'll post those shots soon. Stay tuned!