Thanksgiving Planning (i.e. Holy Cow - Only 1 Week Left!)

I can't believe we are halfway through November already.  Just craziness.

The hubs' parents are coming from Illinois for Thanksgiving this year, so we have exactly one week to finish up all the kitchen projects before we actually have guests over.  My sister and her two kiddos will also be joining us, so the chalkboard wall's gotta be ready.  Here's where we are and what we've still gotta get crackin' on:

1.  Paneling for the chalkboard wall - We bought the paneling and trim last night and tonight we're putting it on, and then I get to paint it tomorrow night.  We have to wait until Friday to condition the chalkboard paint (which is just taking a stick of chalk and rubbing it all over, then erasing it).

2.  Quarter round for the toekick - I got the toekick painted yesterday and the trim bought last night, so we just have to put it on now.

3.  Make a window treatment for the naked window - I decided to make one instead of buying one.  I've seen some tutorials on how to do a Roman shade, which I like the look of and seem pretty easy to make myself.  Luckily, Sherry from Young House Love posted a tutorial on how she made hers just this week.

Source

Cute, right?  And I know I'll never need to use it functionally, since I want to get as much natural light in that room as possible.  That and the kitchen faces the pasture, so privacy's not an issue.

4.  Build a farmhouse table - We'll file this under "Patrick's gonna tackle" projects.  Tons of people are making their own farmhouse-style tables for around $100 (check out ana-white.com for several good plans), so we're totally jumping on that wagon.  Here's the look we're going for:

Pottery Barn Solomon Dining Table

And here's another view:

This baby's on sale this week for $1,699.00.  A steal, right?  We'll be making our own out of furniture-grade poplar.  Don't worry, I'll make Patrick write a detailed tutorial so you can make one for yourself.  The Pottery Barn version is 42" wide and is adjustable in length from 76" to 122" when fully extended.  Now that's a big bad table, and I would love to have one that size, but our dining room just isn't large enough for a table that size.  Our version will be 36" wide and 66" in length, which is just enough dining seating for six people.

5.  Cut and stain wall shelves for the dining room - We're making four 30" wide shelves with brackets for the dining room so we can display my ironstone collection on the wall.  I was looking for simple black iron brackets, and I found these at Lowes:

Source

6.  Replace the old outlets + switches in the kitchen, mudroom and dining rooms with white ones - Small job, but needs done.

So that's it for the home improvements that have to be done this week.  Thank goodness the hubs has Friday off.

In other Thanksgiving-related news, over on Brooklyn Limestone, Stefanie posted these cute woodland animal labels / tags to use for your Thanksgiving table. 

Source

Just download and print 'em out on cardstock and you're good to go. 

We're not having that many people over, but these were just too cute to not use.  That got me thinking about a whole woodland animal theme for our Christmas wrapping this year.  I'm going to use these tags and draw a faux bois pattern on brown kraft paper with a silver or a white Sharpie paint pen, similar to this look:

Source

I'll be sure to post the process and results when I start wrapping presents - after I start buying presents!

Finally, I printed out two recipes for the Thanksgiving meal this morning, both ones that I've never tried before.

Alton Brown's Best Ever Green Bean Casserole

and

Bourbon-Sweet Potato Brulee

I know AB would never steer me wrong, and green bean casserole can't be all that hard (can you believe I've never made it?).  The sweet potato brulee recipe has a couple of bad reviews, but I think that's from people who were thinking it was going to be an actual creme brulee, just made with sweet potatoes, which it is not.  It's mashed, creamy sweet potatoes with a brulee top.  Smoq, a local barbeque place here in Cincinnati, does a version which is Just. Pure. Heaven.  Can't wait.

DIY-ing Like a Boss

Thanks for that, Andy Samberg.

The hubs and I have been hammering out projects all around the house over the last week.  The best news?  The heat, AC and ductwork are finally installed!  After 5 full days of having dudes in our house banging, sawing, and crawling around (all while I'm still trying to work at home), we finally have roasty, toasty 16 SEER heat-pump goodness pumping through the house.  And take a look at this baby:

Isn't that sweet?  And other than the super-fancy (and super pricey!) Nest thermostats, it's just about the schmancey-iest thing in our house now.

Patrick built a 3' x 3' x 3' composting area so we can have nutrient-rich organic gold for the garden in the springtime.  He used 2x4 treated lumber for the corner posts, and wood pallets for the sides.

The brick building is the little church that's next to our pasture, by the way.

We've also been sticking it to the kitchen.  (If you missed the last post about our kitchen progress, check it out here.)

Here's an update on the progress we've made over the last week.

Look at that cute booty!

With the old boiler heating unit and fuel oil tank gone, we can finally start tearing out the old baseboard registers that are in every room.  We've decided that rather than trying to tackle them all at one time, we're just going to go room-by-room and "makeover" the entire room at once and remove them then.  They will just hang out and hid the disgusting part of the wall and flooring that's been covered up since 1958.  Yuck.  We found part of a deck of playing cards (all stuck together in a big playing card amoeba), abaseball card and a rainbow magnet behind the one in the kitchen.

We bought this big Dragor rug from IKEA on Thursday night, thinking that we'd just cover up as much of the ugly faux brick laminate as we could until we do the "real kitchen remodel" down the road.  (We bought another one for the mudroom, and you can see it peeking out in the photo below.)  And then we told ourselves, "Selves - you could spend a *little* more money and do peel and stick vinyl tiles on the kitchen floor and be way happier."  So we did.

Saturday morning we woke up and started peeling up lineoleum.

 

The thing that gets me most about pulling up lineoleum (we've done it before at the Jasper house) is the smell.  And thank goodness these people didn't have cats.  Gross.

So we made with the sticky (icky), and after we primed the now-exposed subfloor with self-stick tile primer, we started laying our tiles down.

Here's what we used.

We found it on clearance at Lowe's for $0.98 a square foot.  They only have the 18"x18" available online here.

We decided to be extra over-achievers and do grout as well.  I never imagined that they made grout for peel-n-stickies, since the whole advantage of peel-n-stickies is ease of installation and why would you want to add an extra step in what's supposed to be a quickie job?  Because it looks way nicer than just butting the tiles up against each other.

Patrick gettin' grouty

Be-yooo-tee-ful!

Here's a photo of the right side of the kitchen.  Please ignore the towels and miscellaneous tools laying out.  We're working here, people.

 

 

And here's the left side of the kitchen.

 

 

And here's another one showing the (currently naked!) window and sink area.

 

And we hung a new light fixture in here, and one in the dining room. 

Here's the dining room's new fixture:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's simple and rustic and I love the way it looks with the big cow painting.  Here's the link to buy it.

 

Here's what we did in the kitchen:

Grayton Light - Buy it Here

I went with the one I really wanted for the kitchen (see previous post), and it looks FAB-YOU-LESS.

And here it is in daytime light, not illuminated:

I still need to put another two coats of ceiling paint on our homemade ceiling medallion (that's on today's to-do list).  We had to get creative on how to cover the big 16" x 16" square hole from the old recessed fixture, and I really don't like the look of the ceiling medallions you buy at the store, so we made our own.

We used 1/2" thick furniture grade plywood and 1/2" beaded quarter round moulding.

We used four screws to hold the plywood in place on the ceiling, and a pneumatic air nailer to attach the moulding to the plywood.

I decided to go with the chalkboard wall idea for the weird wall along the right side of the kitchen.  Rather than doing a chalkboard all the way to the floor, I decided we should compromise and do paneling along the bottom part of the wall.  It will add some much needed architectural interest to the room, as well as helping to break up the big span of black on the wall.

I used Rust-Oleum ChalkBoard paint - $9.67 at Home Depot - in the original black finish.  They have a tintable version, but I liked the idea of repeating the black from the light fixture in the paint color.

Since I knew we were doing wainscoting, I measured up 40 1/2" (allowing 1 1/2" for trim for a total of 42" - bar height) on each edge of the wall and drew a line so that I could only paint the area I needed.

It says to use a roller for best results, and since I always want the best results, I started with a roller.  The paint is thinner than regular latex wall paint, and it splattered all over the freshly laid, not even 6-hours old floor.  Cue the drop cloth!  So I busted out the 4" big boy Purdy brush and used soft, sweeping X-strokes.  I actually like the texture better with the sweeping, crossing brushstrokes than what a roller would have produced.

Bye Bye Sharkey Gray!  I'll use you somewhere else in the house!

 

I used a 1" angle Purdy brush on the edges where the ceiling and perpendicular walls meet the chalkboard wall, since I personally hate taping things off when I don't have to.

 

Here is the result after one coat:

 

That big ol' drip is from using the roller.  See why I switched to the brush?

 

It's dry to the touch after just 30 minutes, and you can do the second coat after 4 hours, which is where I am now.  Time to go do the second coat!

 

 

Kitchen Progress

When we moved in last weekend our kitchen looked like this:

. . . and today it looks like this:

A big step in the right direction, that's for sure.

We spent THE WHOLE WEEKEND sanding, priming, and painting the faceframes and doors to the cabinets.

I used a combination of oil-based primer and latex interior paint for the cabinets.

We used a 6" soft roller for the primer and a 2" or 1" Purdy angled brush for the paint.  The color I ended up going with for the cabinets was Behr Ultra Premium Plus Silky White UL170-12, because the color I originally selected was a Sherwin-Williams color, and being the total control freak that I am, I don't always trust the color match machine, so I selected the closest color they had.

Creamy yet true white.

I decided we were going to paint the soffits above the cabinet the same color, rather than doing a different wall color, to give the illusion of cabinets going to the ceiling.  A little trick of the eye to help us out with our low, ranchy-house ceiling.

Taking out the scalloped valance above the sink really opened that space up, allowing more light to come in.  Our old kitchen had one too:

The Jasper House

And just think, those were probably super trendy at one time . . .

I bought hardware from Home Depot, although we are going to let the doors dry a little bit longer (giving them a full 24 hours to cure) before we put them back on.

I finally decided to just go with brushed nickel afterall. 



Source



Source

The look is more traditional than I originally thought I was going to go, but I just can't say no to a sparkly crystal knob.  I liked the cup pull's shape - not too angular, but not a hemisphere shape like some others I've seen.

I did find a crystal knob in a really dark oil-rubbed bronze finish, and a cup pull in a matte black finish, but I just didn't want to risk the colors being too far off.  Because even though no one else may notice, I'd always know they didn't REALLY match.  And then I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

We had to fill the holes in the drawer fronts and on the doors, because the previous owners had handle pulls on the doors (there were two holes and we only needed one now) and the new cup pulls are 1/2" smaller than the old ones.

I've got it down to two choices for the ceiling light fixture.  They're both from Home Depot, and both about the same price and size.



Source



Source

I think I like the top one for the kitchen (I really like the way the shape echoes the crystal knobs), and the bottom one for in the mudroom.  I like how they both are semi-chandalier / semi-flushmount styles, and have a bit of Old World, carriage house feeling.  Plus, they both go with this chandalier I found for the dining room:

Source

And thank goodness, they're all affordable options.  I can't tell you how disappointing it is to finally find what you're looking for and see that it's going to cost you $300+ to get it.

I'm still trying to decide what to do on this wall:

It's only 6 3/4" deep, so I can't really do shelving there.  I was thinking about doing my gallery wall with the photo ledges there, but I also keep thinking about how much fun the hubs and I would have with a chalkboard wall.



Source



Source

Either way, the register and the wood moulding are going to be coming down this week.

The HVAC guys are here today and tomorrow installing our central heating and A/C.  This girl doesn't do window units in the humid southern Ohio summer, plus the old fuel-oil boiler system is loud and costs a fortune to fill the giant tank outside.  It'll be nice to get rid of that puppy and not have to look at it sitting out there in the yard.

I can't wait to get the kitchen finished so I can show you how it turns out!