pretty little home

It's no secret that I love my house.

And I never love it more than in the springtime when it looks it's best!

This month I did just a few small projects to spruce up the outside of the house.

First up, this very sad pillar on our front steps. Wow. I didn't realize how TERRIBLE it looked until I put the before and after pictures together! Unfortunately, the wood was rotted in places, so I got a hard drying, paintable wood filler and filled in all the cracks and holes. I sanded everything completely smooth and used Behr's best quality exterior paint in my favorite white (Creamy White). It's not perfect and it's not a long term solution, but it looks so much better and it's a quick fix until we can replace the wood on the pillars. 

My second project is one of my favorite things I've ever done to my little house: windowboxes!! I fell in love with the idea of windowboxes just this spring and found all kinds of great, easy tutorials on how to make them. I used cedar fence posts, sanded them nice and smooth, and screwed them together, then used the same Behr exterior paint to paint them white. The biggest mistake I made was cutting the wood myself. When I went to Home Depot to buy it, it was close to closing time and I couldn't find an employee to cut it for me. I got tired of waiting, so I decided to just take it home and do it myself. It's much harder to cut wood perfectly straight and exactly the same length than I thought, so the first windowbox I made is definetely not perfect. I did better on the second one!
To hang these, I screwed metal L-brackets into the studs under the window. My original plan was to just put the boxes on the brackets and screw them in from the bottom, but they didn't feel very sturdy that way because the windowbox wasn't secured to the house. I ended up taking them off the brackets and drilling holes through the windowbox, then screwing through the windowbox, through the brackets, and into the studs. They feel much more secure now!
Here's how I found the studs: If you look at house framing diagrams, you'll see that there are studs framing the window on all sides. Studs are generally 16 or 24 inches apart. My window is 48 inches wide, so I took a guess that the studs were placed 16 inches apart, putting two studs under the window instead of just one. So I simply measured 16 inches from where I guessed the king studs (side studs) were and drilled holes there. I hit the studs on the first try for all of my brackets, which honestly, was pretty lucky!
Drilling through aluminum siding (yes, we have aluminum siding) was simple. You just want to make sure that you don't tighten your screws flush, because the aluminum siding will buckle. It needs room to move.

Here's the view from the street. I love how much character and charm they add! Here's to hoping I can keep the plants alive and that they really fill in.

The one where I paint the kitchen cabinets

Hello!

I spent all of January painting our kitchen cabinets!

Now they're done!

And I'm never going to paint anything ever again!

Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. And the results were worth it!

My before kitchen was fine and I was happy with it for quite a while. I don't know what the finish on the cabinets would be called, but it was NOT the typical '90s honey oak (that would have been gone the first 6 months of living here). It's nice, but now let me show you the transformation!

Ta-da! I am really happy with the finished product. It's so much richer now. We did not intentionally paint the cabinets to match the barstools, however. I'm trying to decide what to do about them now--maybe glazed coral? Any suggestions?

We also added hardware, which we didn't have before. I had my heart set on copper hardware--the cabinet's hidden hinges are copper and I fell in love with how it looked against the gray-blue. Copper hardware is expensive, though, so I bought some cheapo stuff from Amazon (these bin pulls and these knobs) and spraypainted them with Rustoleum hammered copper spray paint, plus a protective glossy topcoat. They add so much warmth to the darker cabinets!
Now a little bit about the actual painting experience... I'm not going to bother giving a detailed post because there are plenty out there already. I spent a lot of time researching products and had it narrowed down to General Finishes milk paint (find it on Amazon), Benjamin Moore Advance, and the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit. I settled on the kit because it promises NO sanding or priming (says it right on the box!) so I figured if I didn't have good results, I could get my money back. Other products might claim to not require sanding or priming but say on the can that it's recommended.
Instead of sanding, the kit comes with a deglosser (like liquid sandpaper) and you use that on all the surfaces to help adhesion. Then you use the bond coat in your choice of their tintable colors--we chose "Castle". After two coats of bond coat, you can put on the decorative glaze (we skipped it) and then the protective topcoat. Everything was super simple, just time-consuming! I used a 2 inch angled brush and there are no brush marks anywhere. To avoid brush marks, you just want to make sure to use very little paint and brush in the direction of the wood grain. I read terrible horror story reviews of the topcoat being so difficult to work with and bubbling, or being streaky, or leaving brush marks, but I didn't have any trouble with it at all. It's a nice low sheen, too, instead of high gloss.
Total time: estimated 50 hours.
How much did this all cost?

• Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit: $78
• Hardware: $30 for 10 bin pulls and 20 knobs (yeah, awesome stuff!)
• Spraypaint: $4.97
• Spray sealer: $5ish 
• Longer screws for hardware: $.97
• Total: LESS THAN $120!!!!

If you are thinking about painting your kitchen cabinets, do it. It's a lot of work, but anyone can get great results if you are patient and use the right product!

Five year house anniversary!!

We are celebrating our five year anniversary of living in our little home this month!!

I can't believe it's been five years.

When we bought this house, we had a five year plan. It's not a huge house and we thought we would be moving "up" after five years. I had no idea how attached we would get to our house, neighborhood, friends, ward, and school. I can't even imagine leaving! We really lucked out with everything. I put 0 thought into schools when we were house hunting (Tempe was only 2) but our neighborhood school has been great and is in a great location that allows my kids to walk to school (Juno's preschool is in an elementary school on a really busy street next to the freeway off ramp and none of the kids walk--it's made me really appreciate having a safe walking school!)

I have really come to terms with us staying in a "small" house long term, even with a fourth child. People raise bigger families in smaller houses all over the world--even in the US--and it's a really silly attitude to think we are outgrowing our home. I've learned to cut back on our stuff and really organize and use our space better and I feel like we fit just fine (for now!)

So, to celebrate our fifth anniversary I'm sharing some pictures of our living room. I have struggled with our living room, home to the giant mirror wall, but for the first time in five years, I really like it!

So since we've lived here, we've painted the room (Stone Fence by Behr) and built giant bookshelves (actually my dad did both of those things for us) and I have had a hard time committing to fabrics for the window seat cushions and pillows. I think I've finally found something I will be able to stick with!

Gold letter A hanging over the fireplace... 

New chairs, new pillows on the couch, and a view of the bookshelves. Also found wood window shade and birch tree curtains.

Gigantic bookshelves with my globe collection lining the top! I love my globes. I know that you can find tons of posts on Pinterest about how to "stage" bookshelves, but to be honest, we just have too darn many books and we need the space for them and not cute knickknacks. That's the mirror behind the shelves, by the way--people often think it's just a room divider and the wall is open.

These are the chairs that my mom got me last month!! We had mismatched, old, falling apart chairs that I hated so much and I think she finally got sick of hearing me complain, so she offered to buy me some new ones. I found these at Target for $70 each. 

I added the gold tips on the legs with metallic spray paint and I kind of love it!

View from the top of the stairs, just so you can get a better idea of the room. We love how much light this room gets and it's fun to sit on the window seats and read.
Overall, I love how this room has turned out--cozy, a great gathering spot for us to plop down and read our many books, but still presentable to guests when they walk through the front door!