The New Favorite Thing in my Kitchen

Hello everyone!

I think everyone by now watches Fixer Upper on HGTV, right?  I love the farmhouse style that Joanna brings to many of her clients homes including her own.  One of the first things I noticed in her home was this unique wall mounted cup holder.  

So, when I found one offered from Decor Steals for much less than she sells it in her store, I jumped at it.

I hung my set of cow milk glasses on it.

It's hanging beside this cabinet (that holds our computer).  It fits perfectly in that spot and is convenient to where we keep the rest of our dishes.

I'm enjoying this new piece and glad that I had a place for it.

 

I am on a weekend trip with my mom and sister right now.  It's nice to be somewhere that is a little warmer too.  I'll be sure to share pics when I get back.  

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Thanks for stopping by.

~ Kelly ~

Share Your Style Link Party

Hello everyone!

This week has been so different from last week.  The weather here is awful!  We've been dealing with lots of freezing temps and ice everywhere.

However, if you don't have to go outside, it really is pretty.

Well, it may be cold outside, but we can still have fun inside!  Are you ready to party?  

I welcome you to the first Share Your Style link party and hope that you will continue to join us every week.  Sherry with No Minimalist Here is your host this week, so I will let her start us off. 

Hi Everyone. 

I am very excited to be hosting the very first Share Your Style link party.  This party has been a couple of months in the making and it is wonderful to finally see my ideas come to fruition. 

For maximum exposure add your link to one blog and it will show up on all Eight blogs.

 Click on any host below to add your link to all eight blogs.

Sherry @ No Minimalist Here    Debra @ Common Ground         Barbara @ 21 Rosemary Lane

Lynn @ The Vintage Nest          Kelly @ The Essence Of Home   Martina @ Northern Nesting
Ron @ Uptown Acorn                Amanda @ Dixie Delights

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoy the party.

Hugs,

Sherry

   

   

    http://new.inlinkz.com/luwpview.php?id=495544" title="click to view in an external page.">An InLinkz Link-up

   
   

   

New House Exterior Color

Hello everyone!

I'm all smiles now that our house been repainted and spiffed up.  It had been years since our house had been painted and lets just say it showed!  We had some things repaired on our house too such as siding near our chimney replaced, and flashing added to keep the rain water from running down the chimney and mildewing.  We had a window frame repaired that was splitting and our front porch floor stained for the first time.  Our back deck got restained as well.  Our front door got restained a darker color and I couldn't be happier. We even had our driveway and walkway cleaned.  It feels like we live in a brand new house now!  We still need to put out fresh pine straw to make the yard look better and plant a few bushes in front of our front porch but other than that, we're done!  

Ready to take a look?

It was a very cloudy day when I took these pics, so the lighting is not the best.  

This picture shows you more of the color we used.  We used to have a taupe colored house with black shutters.  Now it is a beige color house with olive green shutters.

The white trim used on the porch is a warm white instead of a bright white now.

Here is our darker front door now.  We plan on changing out the door handle to a brushed nickel.  I'm still weeding out all the brass in this house!!

I love our newly stained front porch floor now.  I don't know why we waited so long to do it!

We painted our back french doors and gutters the same color as our shutters too.  I'm liking that change.  They used to be white.  We will also be replacing the light fixture on our back deck.

 The house feels so clean now.  No more peeling paint on the front porch, no more mildew on the siding and shutters, no more bare wood where we replaced it and never repainted it, and no more spider webs!  If you ever think you hate your house, just repaint it and you'll fall in love all over again.  

Here are the paint and stain colors we used:

Sherwin Williams

Body color:  SW 6143 Basket Beige

Shutter and gutter color:  SW 6152 Superior Bronze

trim color:  SW 6154 Nacre

stain color on floor:  SW 3540 Mountain Ash 

stain color on door:  Minwax (don't have name)

I need to contact my painter for the front door stain color.  He used his own stain and didn't leave us the can.  

If you are local and are looking for good painters, let me know.  I can give you the name of who did ours. 

Don't forget the big link up party is coming soon!  Be sure to link up this Wednesday night at 7:00 EST.  

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Kelly ~

New Furniture Arrangement in Family Room

Hello everyone!

We are in the middle of having our house exterior painted right now.  Before the painters could begin painting, they had to pressure wash our house.  Sometimes, a little bit of water can get in under the windows when that happens.  So, I was careful to move furniture away from windows and pull drapes back etc.  When I did that in the family room, I discovered how nice the furniture looked all grouped in a cozy seating area together.  So, voila!  A new furniture arrangement was born.

Now, everything is in a U shape in the center of the room.  I ended up moving a few other pieces around to make the room feel more balanced too.  

The clock moved across the room to this wall.

And the chest of drawers that was there, moved where the clock used to be.  

I really like the new arrangement.  I think it makes the room feel bigger too.  

I will be sure to share the home exterior when it's all done.  I'm going with a new color scheme so it will look very different.  There is still a lot left to do.  The painters have been working around the colder temps and wind, so it is slowing down the process.  I'm excited to see what it looks like when it's all done.

Also, I wanted to let you know something very exciting!  Next Wednesday night at 7:00 my blog will be sharing a link party.  My blog, along with 7 others want you to "share your style"!  You can link up on Wednesday night and your link will appear on all of our blogs at the same time.  You will be getting a lot of exposure that way.  Each week a different blogger will host the party, but it will show up on all 8 blogs.  So, I hope that you will join me in this new endeavor!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

~ Kelly ~

Bathroom Remodel Day Six

Hello everyone!

We are REALLY making some good progress with the bathroom now!  We just installed the new cabinet hardware and our plumber installed the new hand shower.  Both of those came from Build.com.  They shipped these items to us and they  worked out just as we had hoped they would.  Sometimes you never know how things will look in person after you receive them from only seeing them on a computer monitor.  To learn more about Build.com, please see this post.  

We ordered this hand shower.  

I'm so glad to finally have a hand shower now just so I can clean the shower more easily!

I love the new oil rubbed bronze look in here.

We had someone come out to measure our shower for the new frameless enclosure.  We are relieved to be told that it CAN be installed!  So, we placed our order with  them since they  gave us a very competitive quote.  We should be able to get it installed within a week.

We ordered these cup pulls for the drawers.

And these knobs for the cabinets.

Here is a before shot.

And here is the after!

Looks like we need to replace the hinges now.  Ugh!  Won't this ever be finished?

Ok, drumroll please..................

Here is how it looks so far.

My husband will paint the tub faucet today (since it's our last day of warm weather for awhile).  

We will order a new drain for the tub and have already ordered the new shower drain.  Whew!  

I hope to be able to share the new shower enclosure very soon.  I can't wait to be able to use our shower again.

Thanks for stopping by.

~ Kelly ~

A New School House Light in the Kitchen

Hello everyone!

This past weekend, my husband hung a new light fixture in our kitchen.  The reason for it was this light fixture, in our hallway, quit working. Confused?  Keep reading.

(Oops!  I took this picture as he was already starting to dismantle it. By looking at it that way, you would KNOW why it wasn't working!  LOL!)

Every time my husband would try to fix it, it would quit working again after just a few days.  So, I decided that we would need a new one.  What to do?  I decided to move the one that was hanging in our kitchen to this space and get a larger one for our kitchen instead.  

So, down this light came.

And up went the other one.

I have always loved the look of school house lights.  They have such a great vintage look.  So, I found one at Build.com.  They helped us get this for our kitchen but all opinions are my own.

In order to find the right light, I headed to their website.  It was very easy to narrow my search down by the way it was set up.  You can pick what style light you want, what finish, what price range, what brand and what dimensions. Once you've picked out a light, you can see all of the specs so you don't have to wonder if it will fit well in your space or what it's made of etc.   If you have any questions, there is even a live chat button you can click on and someone will be able to help you immediately.

I picked out this Minka Lavery light fixture.  It was bigger than the one I had so I thought it would fill the space a bit better.  

Here it all lit up.

We have been enjoying our new light.  This light has adjustable lengths too and came with a shorter rod or additional rods according to the length we needed. 

The nice thing about the website is that they also included reviews from others that have purchased this product.  I was able to read those and feel confident about my decision before ordering it.  If I needed to find similar products, they included a section for matching products as well.  I received it just days after it was ordered too!  Now, that's great service.

So, if you're looking for affordable lighting options and quick delivery, you should give them a try.

More progress has been made in our master bathroom and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you soon.  This week, we should know whether a frameless shower enclosure is possible.

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Kelly ~

Bathroom Remodel Day Five

Hello everyone!

More progress has been made in the master bathroom.  The sink faucets were purchased.

I love the high gooseneck style and the fact that it swivels.

Here is what we had.

And here is what we have NOW.

Notice my new soap and toothbrush holder?  They arrived too!

So, I have two matching sinks with these faucets and bathroom accessories now.

Next, we bought the shower lever.

The only thing we wanted was the lever (shown in the middle). But, we had to buy it in a package that sold all of these items.   I have a hand shower (that I'll share with you in another post) that was installed as well.  We had to have a plumber come out and install this for us because our 19 yr old house was set up with old hardware that no longer fits the new hardware sold at stores.  A plumber was also needed to cut a hole in the wall from behind the shower (in the toilet room) to gain access to change out our old hardware.  Argh!  This is quickly becoming a very expensive shower.

Now, we have to paint over the wall panel installed over the hole cut in the wall.  

Now, I understand why people gut bathrooms in older homes to renovate them rather than trying to make simple cosmetic changes.  Nothing is simple when your house is almost 20 years old!

We are STILL waiting on more quotes for our shower enclosure.  We're anxious to get started either way we go with it.

However, there is ONE more big problem that we discovered today after speaking with our plumber.

See this?

Well, the faucet will have to stay.  We will change out the brass drains. Those are easy.  However, we will have to remove this faucet and paint it (like we prepared to do with our shower) in order to save our sanity and our money.  Our current set up for the tub is just like our shower and we do not have easy access without quite a bit of construction.  I'm so disappointed by this because I was really looking forward to having a beautiful gooseneck faucet with pretty handles right here.  Our tub is the first thing you see as you enter the room too. 

Can I just tell you how much we dislike the builder that built our home right now????  You would NOT believe how much money we have spent correcting things that he did wrong in this house.  It has been problem after problem and we're finding shortcut after shortcut that he took. 

Ok, I just had to vent for a moment.  Renovation projects cause that sometimes. 

 I hope you'll stick around for the final reveal after all is finally complete!  

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Kelly ~