Screen Porch Progress

A week has gone by and Ryan has made so much progress on the screen porch.

Ryan MADE these steel turnbuckle supports himself! I'm so proud of him.

installing the first rod and turnbuckle set-1 of 3

They look awesome!

more demolition-removing the soffit to make room for the porch door

notice the white column to the right of Ryan...

That was fun!

woah! There's no column anymore! It took me a while to realize this haha

the new door frame

where the column use to be

Ready for a screen door

and our lucky horseshoe is up!

Did I mention he finished the roof decking this weekend too?

The new roof tied in above the old garage roof.

ceiling and turnbuckles!

Pretty soon we'll be sitting out here.

We are having a new roof put on our house this week...then comes the railings/screen/trim/doors/fan. so close!

Screen Porch

Ryan has made A LOT of progress on the screen porch since I made the construction page. We have so many projects going on...yes I can hear the all familiar sound of the air compressor as I type...So here's a quick look into the progress...

 

Being a good helper

Decking is done and framing has begun!

Where Ryan had to tie into the roof for the framing.

caught in the frame...hah

View from other side

I love it already, thank you Ryan!!!

We are blessed to have amazing friends to come help us on the hard part! Thank you Rob!

and Andrew!

Even Claire Bear got her paws in on the action <3

Looking good babe! Roof framing is almost done.

Kitchen Chalkboard

In our kitchen we have a fireplace with a long brick wall and I needed something to break up the space. Big chalkboards are so much fun and I thought it would be great for the kitchen to write notes on. I found this old dresser mirror at Goodwill for $10 and figured I could do something with it, plus I loved the size of it.

I took the mirror out and flipped it over. So I painted the chalkboard paint on the backside of the mirror (if I ever want to use the mirror side as a mirror I can). Before painting the frame I had to sand it to get the finish off, so the paint would stick/not scratch off. First I painted the mirror blue (with a paint sample I already had)...

 But I didn't like the way the blue looked in the kitchen at all. I have a lot of earthy tones in there, green, burnt orange, red, etc...so I decided to paint the mirror green. On the left is the mirror painted with chalkboard paint. It took two coats to really cover it well. This is the chalkboard paint I used and it's great quality:

...and here it is finished and hanging :) It breaks up the brick wall and it's so fun to write on too! (I think my husband has written on it more than I have!)

Dresser Mirror: $10

Chalkboard Paint: $10.97 at Home Depot

Sample Paint-Jade Romanesque: $3.00 at Ace Hardware

Total Cost: $23.97

China Hutch

My Meme gave me her china hutch from when her and my Papa were first married. She still uses the dining room table, but the hutch was down in the basement. With her permission of course, I gave it a little makeover! 

Here is the hutch before: 

 The hutch was definitely used and well loved, it had a couple of places that were chipped (you can kinda see on the front corner in the picture above) and the legs were a little scratched up. 

The two pieces are separate, so I took them apart and primed both of them (instead of sanding). I used Kilz odorless primer.  The vinyl strip came off the front, so we filled it in the wood filler. Same with all the chips on the both pieces. After the wood filler dried (the next day) I sanded it down to smooth it out/make it even with the rest of the wood.

 

After priming, I painted both pieces white and the back of the shelves/sides of the drawers teal. The white I used was: Ace Essence, Satin, Casablanca

The teal I used was: Clark and Kensington, Turquoise Bay

and here it is all finished!

I painted a heart around a pretty piece of the wood grain to show the original :)

 

I am soooo excited about the way it turned out, I love it!

Thank you, Meme. 

Hutch: priceless

Primer: already had 

Quart of teal paint-Free (promo deal coupon from Ace Hardware)

Gallon of white paint: around $20

Total Cost: around $20 (however much the white paint was)

Hardwood Door Mat

When my parents built their house 12 years ago they put hardwood floors down in the kitchen and had leftover scraps. Dad found the leftover scraps when he was cleaning out his workroom and of course, Ryan and I snatched them up!

some of the left over pieces

 We wanted to make a doormat, something like this:

This one was made with rope and we soon realized that since there's no rigidity in rope it would pinch our little feet-sies. (One thing you should know about us, we are almost always barefoot. I for one, don't like to wear shoes if I can help it.) My husband, being the problem solver he is, never ceases to amaze me and came up with using cable instead. We bought 10 feet of thin cable from Ace Hardware.

First we cut the scraps of wood all to the same length and then stained them using Minwax, Kona. (We had stain left over from the Crate Shelves project.) Ryan drilled holes all the way through the sides of each slat of wood and through the top, fed the cable through, knotting it each time he passed it through the hole.

Then he would pull back on the wire so the knot would fit/sit tightly in the hole, and so on...until all the boards were threaded. This was no easy task, it took him a while to master how to tie the perfect tight knot and measure it out between each board.

The scraps of wood were enough to make two door mats and we gave one do our dear friends Rob and Alaina. Check her blog out sometime: http://recycledinteriors.blogspot.com.

Anyways, this is how they turned out! We love how the shiny cable looks against the dark wood.

Total cost of project for two mats: $10

$10 thin cable from Ace