O-Me-G

That's what's been in my head about every thirty minutes for the past week. Our to-do list is a bit outrageous. Ever bite off more than you can chew? That's what it feels like. If I don't have time to blog about it, too much is happening at once. At least that's my theory. So let me introduce you to pure, unadulterated chaos. Are you ready for forever change your opinion of us?

While working on our mini-kitchen renovation, we had to bring a bunch of stuff out to the dining room. It's been weeks since we have eaten at the dining room table. 

This is the breakfast-nook as we turn it into a formal storage/pantry area. Not looking too fancy yet.

This is the kitchen as Joey repaints (not matte white this time!), and refinishes the cabinets. Notice the pizza box? Yep pizza and Chinese food. All week.

And that, my friends, is the guestroom #2. Yep. I haven't seen Joey in days. While he is downstairs in the kitchen, I am upstairs pounding the pavement on this room. We have a guest this week. Maybe that's why a lot of this has been going on...

Flattering, eh?

So the gem in all this madness is a little trick Joey came up with while working in the kitchen. He took a "break" from the painting and cabinets to work on something else. Let me pass you over to him so he can explain.

Greetings again friends. Lana and I are going through a relatively large DIY kitchen remodel right now and I want to share a little slice of what we're doing to help save some cheddar during the process.

We have these gold door knobs that came with the doors in our kitchen. Lana and I looked into changing them to brushed aluminum, or steel, or whatever people make door knobs out of these days, and for the model we have Home Depot wants a bit over 200 bucks plus a few weeks to order and ship. So during a moment of clarity I decided to see if I could just refurbish the existing ones. After all, they aren't made of gold or I'd have sold them already.

Turns out, my theory was correct. Not made of gold. I just removed the face plates and door knobs and busted out the trusty Dremel.

With a coarse sanding attachment for removing the apparently micron thick layer of faux gold and the steel brush attachment to polish the rough bits, this is what you get.

Be sure to do two things while attempting this project. 1. Wear a face mask and eye protection. Little metal bits are not good for your respiratory or ocular systems. 2. Tell your significant other what you are planning on doing. Little gold bits look like glitter. And you are going to be covered in it, and we all know how that conversation goes.

Have fun. Save some bacon. And make an old tired part of your space feel new.

4th Times a Charm

I have been trying to stop sneezing long enough to write a post! Seriously! I am officially allergic to the morning. Hello world, here is your memo! For 3-4 hours every morning you will get nothing but sneezes out of me! Now back to our regularly scheduled post....

Hope you aren't all sneezy! So when Joey was working on the Pinterest Challenge in the Kitchen, I was in the weird-o breakfast nook, which by the say is way too claustrophobic to be a breakfast nook. What was I doing in the breakfast nook? Beautifying!

Pulling colors from the newly modified wall space above the cabinets, we chose a warm grey to cover one wall in the nook. So far we have invested $15 in wood and $10 in chalkboard spray paint. Compared to those rockstar prices, this $26 gallon of paint has been the luxury purchase so far.

So the plan was to simply paint the wall and add some $3.50 decals I found at Home Goods.

That was the plan. Then the plan changed. We have a bev-fridge that lives where the fork is, and has to live there because there are no outlets on this room. Behind that wall we have an outlet at the perfect height, hence the bev-fridge must live in that very place.

Down came the fork and the spoon. Out the window went the vision.

Perhaps I was distracted because at that very moment Joey was working on the chalkboard fridge two feet away from me. Being the nosey Nelly that I am, I kept peeking in and "helping".

So I carefully restuck the fork and spoon on the swing door which leads into the dining room to give them a safe and temporary home. Then I problem solved that darn wall. It seems like a waste of space, so I wanted to give it purpose. 

Soooo I came up with the idea of rustic built-in's. Reclaimed wood, like in the kitchen, to house the massive amount of kitchen goods we have.  Plus give an attractive place for little miss bev-fridge to live. 

So I took a very simple idea to plot out how the shelves would be best utilized based on how Joey hung the deer head, and went to work. Goodness, we love our Scotch Blue Tape! I looked at the items we had, and measured them, then started taping and labeling on the wall.

This was exactly the guide we needed for when we put the shelving up. We are still on a hunt for salvaged wood, but so far we are excited about the vision of this wall. And why is 4th time a charm you ask?...

We had to paint the wall four times before it stuck! It kept peeling and nicking. We almost gave up on it all together! Weirdness.

Any tips on where get to reclaimed wood around NYC? We are on the craigslist.org hunt, and of course checking out Build it Green in Queens....Secret places anyone wants to share?

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck....

...about 15 bucks worth! 'Morning all! We are super excited to share what $15 worth of wood did for us this weekend. Like I mentioned before, we took advantage of the long weekend, and really hit the ground running. Check this out. 

Joey, our friend Duane, and myself headed out to Queens to go to a little place we have mentioned before, Build it Green. It's a magical place where demo'ed building scraps go to find a new home, and we dig it. 

..and dig through it! After going through piles and piles of wood, we hand selected what we thought would work best in our kitchen. 

 Just 15 smackers and about two hours of work later, we were grinning ear to ear. We prepped and measured the wood on the floor, and planned it out just how it would look on the wall before we used a nail gun to put it in place. Here is a shot of what our kitchen in progress looked like before:

 Armed with a ladder and a nail gun, Joey transformed above the cabinets from the above to the below. 

We had a weird snag in the installation, it was an outlet we needed to figure out what to do with. 

Joey wounded up routing out the back of those wood panels so they would fit over the outlet with out it bulging out. At the end of the day, we wound up with this:

We likey! If you are wondering why we have no kitchen cabinets, it's because Joey is in the process if refinishing them! After our 10K estimate from Home Depot to refinish them, we thought it would be smart to at least give it a go and see how we do with some paint and spackle. We have had some kitchen drama in the past and are looking to overcome it. I think this is a really good start.