A Long Time Coming...

This past weekend, we spent it exploring Washington DC with family. We had a great time walking to the monuments, seeing a concert, and going to museums. It is definitely up there on my list for best vacations. Funny, huh? 2 hours away from us and stayed with family but we didn't drive a car for 3 days and we had great fun learning the metro and bus maps on the new android phone that my husband got....






Going home to Richmond, we decided to stop at IKEA. I was tired but I said alright because how can we go to DC but not stop at IKEA? It is like a my family's tradition!!

Well, I am glad that we stopped because we hammered out what we want the den to look like. We have been in our house for 2 years and haven't done a thing to it. It is in the basement and it has been a catch all for the mismatched furniture of apartments past. This is what the room looked like before we purchased the house:


Funky huh? No, that is not our furniture. Yeah, the green carpet is still there.... I won't give away any ideas away except this to brighten up the room. This makes me so happy because this long room with short curtains reminds me of a trailer...

This room redesign will probably take some time since the holidays are coming up and we have to find the "right" furniture out there for our vision. I am really excited to have these decisions discussed and made. We have such a good time discussing our style and what we have done so far. This room has taken us a long time to figure out but I knew that it would come to us!

Just when you thought that I couldn't get any cheaper....

I looked at this lint remover brush for a week on my bathroom sink. The fabric had come off making it unusable. What are they like $5-6 in the stores? Well, after a week of forgetting to find one, I thought to myself "You can fix that. Don't waste your money!"

So, for 5 minutes of my time (mostly to heat up the glue gun), some hot glue, and my hemmer was all that was needed. I applied the hot glue along the edges and I used my hemmer to stuff the fabric back down in the brush. I was proud to keep something from going into the trash and it works like new. That is all that matters, right? Plus, I saved $5. It may not be a diamond but it adds up over time.

Good thing too because it can get kind of hairy having 3 cats in the house!

DIY Wall Art

If you want some art for your house and you have an idea, why not try painting it yourself? If you are no artist, do you have a friend that paints?

I told my husband that I wanted a huge Chrysanthemum for our bedroom. I looked at prices of prints that were 20 x 24 and couldn't believe my eyes. Over $150 for a print and I wasn't in love with the picture which means that I would be wasting my money.

We looked at pictures of chrysanthemums online to get an idea of what we were looking for. Then, like most projects, something else came up and I completely forgot this idea until Jeff gave me this for our 4th anniversary present:




I do have on hand an amazing, talented, artistic husband but I encourage you to go out there and try painting something for your walls.

By the way, looking at this can you guess that he made and stretched the canvas himself with stuff we had lying around the basement? That ultra-resourceful husband of mine!

It is so beautiful and so priceless to me!

What to do with Leftovers...

I used to despise leftovers!! I hated that the reheated stuff was just the same thing the night before with the exception if it was spaghetti. I could eat that 24/7. Leftovers can be so boring!!

So, moving into this house has made me more thrifty, as if I could get anymore thrifty-er... I love leftovers now! Why?? Because usually I try to figure out a way to recreate them into something else that is "new to me". For instance, using leftover taco meat and spanish rice to make stuffed peppers (found here).

I have recently was thinking of writing a book for this very concept but found out some have already beat me to the punch. Anyways, just making it a game keeps things interesting. Such as last night, I re-used brown rice and put it into a pan of red beans, rice, and polish sausage. I also have some potato soup in the fridge. What could I do with that? It could be a base for chicken/turkey pot pie, a dip, or put into another soup...

A Floor is Like An Onion

A floor is like an onion because it is made up of layers. The floor beams, the sub floor, the real floor, etc. etc. When we moved into our house, we always knew that the kitchen floor had a few extra layers because you have to step up slightly when walking into the room.

Recently, Jeff decided to pull up the top layer of linoleum. Underneath that? Plywood... Underneath that? Linoleum. It is this wonderful pattern that I absolutely love!

Side note- when we bought this house we decided we wanted to keep it in the same time frame that it was built. It was built in 1962... However if you have seen previous posts we tend to lean towards the 1950's.

I wanted this cool vintage pattern of linoleum. The previous linoleum was dark and terrible! They covered up that cool pattern for this:
Cool 50's vintage Linoleum (Left) under the current blah linoleum (Right)



So the condition of the cool vintage pattern linoleum is not good. The pic I showed is pretty good but a lot of it has waxy buildup in the pattern creases and also it has holes from staples and some large cuts from getting the plywood removed from the floor... I had an idea of fixing the linoleum floor. So, I got to researching and found that Amazon sold a linoleum repair kit for $6 and thought it was worth a shot.

Turns out it is a lot harder than it sounds to repair linoleum.
Here is what I did:
First, cut out any discoloration, burnt, etc spots from linoleum.
Then, you put on this adhesive/floor leveler goo, let dry and add your tinted linoleum goo.
Let that dry. Put a piece of provided pattern paper over the semi-dried goo and heat up provided curing tool with the iron.
Place the curing tool on top of the paper and move in a circular pattern to harden the goo into your linoleum repair. If you remove the paper and the goo comes off, you start over and heat it longer.
I wish I had pics to show you!

Eventually, after the 5th try, I put the iron on top of a towel and "ironed on" the repair. The repair finally cured into a harden piece with the linoleum but unfortunately, it looks weird because my tinting skills were not up to par.

It would take me years to repair this floor but I can say that it was worth trying to save the floor for the $6 invested. However, I am looking for a new floor. Sigh. Maybe I should pull up this floor to see what it underneath that! Just kidding...

And the Green Goes On

In our living room, we have this terracotta tile as the hearth. It would not be so bad but it is terracotta pieces of tile. Why? On? Earth?

We knew that we wanted to change the tile to something more modern. We shopped and shopped for tile and both really kept coming back to this green glass tile at Home Depot: It is Daltile's Mint Jubilee. So pretty. So clean.



So what was holding us back?
1. Well, we didn't know how glass tile would hold up in front of the fireplace. Currently we don't use the upstairs fireplace because we don't want it smokey smelling but we are wanting to install gas logs... After much thought, the glass tile is super thick (5/16 inch thick) and it was worth a try.
2. It was also expensive for us. I qualified this purchase by asking my husband to purchase it and install it for me for Christmas. I know, I know, I am a silly, silly girl. We also had a very limited supply and had to shop more than one home depot to get all of the needed tiles to do this project. In the end, I think the tile was $90. Not bad.
3. There was already so much green in the living room- from the walls, carpet, chair and they were not the same color green. Our solution to be discussed later.




Some afterthoughts to this installation is that we were very happy that the concrete underneath the terracotta tile was present so the tile had a stable base. There was a lot of prep work and sanding that my husband did to get that all smoothed out before starting! Surprisingly, there is a small crack in one of the glass tiles. From expansion? I don't know. I would think that the concrete that is underneath that would keep that from happening. Maybe, it was already there before installing but I doubt it.