Recycling center...

I'm about to show you a mess...no cleaning up before this post:)

This shelf has housed our recycling before it goes outside into the big recycling bin for the last two years. As you can see...it has also become the dumping grounds for everything else as well. Bottles and paper were always falling off and it was getting really annoying.

So one day I was in the garage and saw a can of stain left over from doing our headboard. Not one to want to waste anything, I got the brush out and decided to stain the shelf that held our recycling...so at least it would look nicer!

Thinking I needed to do something to organize the chaos that was the shelf...I moseyed on over to Joann's and got two unstained crates.  Which I then proceeded to spray paint with the purple spray paint that I had in the garage...we're going for low cost here...but what happened?

 

Not enough spray paint. So I got a black can of spray paint out and it became a hodge-podge paint job of what was in the garage. And then I loaded it all back into the house...

 

Doesn't it look better? I'm not super sold on the purple, but I think it's kinda funky and am gonna work with it for now. It has made recycling so much easier! All we have to do is take the crate down and dump it in, instead of awkwardly carrying as much as you could, dropping something every two seconds!

 

You know what's even better? It only cost about 14 bucks. (crates were on sale).

Woohoo!

 

What do you think?

Sarah

O Sewdutch sisters, Where art thou?

Well, we've been awful at updating the blog...

but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything!

 

As national news has put it...Alaska is baking...

 

Or at least was.

 

For the entire month of June we had ridiculous temperatures and beautiful days. It was great except for the couple of days where it got so hot it was unbearable...80s up here is unbearable. We don't have AC in most buildings...so its hot. But because it was so beautiful, we've been out doing all kinds of things...hiking, camping, fishing, painting, biking...yah know the stuff we can't do in the winter!

 

I also was on my own for a couple of weeks as Andy climbed Mt. McKinley. (if you want to check out his amazing pictures....go here). So I got down to some projects that I had wanted to do for a long time. My pictures are a little crappy due to the fact that he brought the camera on his expedition. So I phone pictures it is.

 

I have multiple post in the wings so if you've stuck around there will (fingers crossed) be posts the rest of the week.

 

To begin I have the remediation of the ugly purple/maroon door.

 

This is the ugly purple/maroon door.

 

I may have forgotten to take a full picture of the door...and had already started painting, so this will suffice for a close up.

It was super crappy paint job. You could see the brush strokes and the white underneath...and the paint was all over the handle and lock. Sloppy.

 

Now, our house is tan with forest green trim. Not a whole lot goes with the lovely green. Even the gutters are green so I can't just paint the trim.

 

I thought about what color for a long time. Red would look to Christmasy. Yellow, Orange and Purple were out.  Brown was boring, and so was Green. So I decided on a Blue. It was a perfect choice. It looks way better.

I even took the hardware off and cleaned it up with some citraslov. It just looks classier overall.

No paint splatters on the handle, a full coverage of paint...and just all-together better!

 

Wanna know what's even better? It took about 2 hours to do the whole thing. Two coats and all...cause it was hot that day and the paint dried in record time:)

 

I love projects that can make such an impact but take little to no time at all.

 

What do you think?

Sarah

I did it again....

So a month or so back I posted about how I had redone a bathroom in our house and had painted it orange....well more like fleshy brain matter...but I digress...I had painted one of the walls in a checker pattern with white. Below are a few pictures for you to remind yourself.

Well after about a month I decided it had too much of a brain matter color to it and the lines in the checker board weren't even. Every time I went in there it looked worse and worse to me. The straw that broke the camels back was the fact that neither Andy, myself or Nathania....liked it. It was ugly. I tried to like it. I really did...mostly cause I went through the hassle of painting it and it took FOREVER!

So, whats a girl to do when she hates the color of her bathroom and she has guests arriving in 2 days?

Mix up some paint of course!

We have this really pretty dark blue, but it was gonna be too dark for the small space. So I added some of the fresh green that I had painted our other bathroom with and voila! I had the color I wanted and didn't spend a dime. WOOHOO for being cheap!

 I then spent the next two days painting it, and putting up the towel rods again. I even put up a mirror, but that's a story for a whole different post.

Here is the result. What do you think? Improvement or not? I think its a vast improvement.

The color is truer in the bottom two pictures. We need to work on the light...think we're gonna add a light in with a new fan.

I haven't put the shelf back up yet, cause I'm not sure I like it. We'll see.

What have you been working on? Did you ever re-paint a room within two months?

Sarah

its not easy being green

We've been slowly re-painting our house...well actually, I've been painting...but anyhow recently I decided to tackle the bathroom in our bedroom. It was nothing special or fancy...

White walls, beige floors

ugly mirror and stage lights....pretty typical for these here parts.

I had recently come across a can o' paint at Home Depot in the mistints area that I REALLY liked. It was this fantastic spring green. So I bought it and painted our bathroom with it.

The difference is amazing! I had the shower curtain already and it matched perfectly. The bathroom looks way more modern now!

The next step is to replace the lights....which I have but need Storman to come and help me!

What do you think?

Sarah

Orange you gonna check it out?

So guess what? Anchorage officially broke the record for snow…yup we have had over 134.5 inches of snow this year. Slightly ridiculous no?

Well since Saturday we had snow…all day long…I got to work on the bathroom on our main floor.  The bathroom was white when we bought it. But the previous owners…who were hoarders, no joke….did a really crappy job, plus I’m not one for white paint. Now don’t get me wrong it has it’s place, but it is not what I wanted and it made the bathroom boring. Oh, I can’t forget the loverly mirror that was in there. It had a pretty shell motif. Ohh la la! NOT. So I took the mirror down…but that’s another post entirely.

Sorry for the messy before pictures...but it's all I got

So what color did I paint it? Orange. I really like the color orange….and the tile that is in the shower had an orangey pattern. I first painted it a more fleshy color that turned into looking like brain matter. Not cool. SO I added more orange and went with it. It’s a quite bright orange that you can't really tell in the pictures. But I likes it.

I also decided that a pattern was needed on a wall. I had grand plans of using a stencil and putting a pattern on similar to the tiles. This did not work…why? Because we have stupid-silly-on-every-wall texture. I’m not sure there is anybody in the whole state that doesn’t have textured walls. Boo Hiss is what I said to them. So I used painters tape to come up with the squares. This worked, but only to a degree…my lines aren’t super clean…the tape said something about edge lock. Yah not so much. It didn’t take those lovely textured walls into account. But I like the look well enough.

We still have quite a bit of work to do:

~Take toilet out and paint behind it, and possibly tile the floor…

~Put up some shelves…painted white

~Put up the mirror with a white frame

~Change out the lovely stage lights.

But for now it’s functional again. I will update again when there has been some progress.

Sarah 

Make Do March Day 7...the bug has bitten

the organization bug that is...and if you know anything about me you know that organization rarely works its way into my world,(really...ask anyone and I mean anyone who knows me...) so I ran with it. And in the spirit of Make Do March...these were all things that I had planned to do..oh weeks ago. So I'm crossing them off the list.

Lets begin with my linen closet....oh my I can't believe I'm putting this out on the Internet...but here is my linen closet in the state it was in.....it was basically a catch all for anything and everything. Not good. It also wasn't organized very functionally. It had been on my mind for several weeks to get some bins...which I did, can you see them sitting in the closet? They have green lids, on the left...they've been living there for awhile now...oops!

I finally used them! I was able to organize the closet, make it more user friendly and just have a piece of mind that it's organized!

 

 The next organization project that I took on was that of my buttons....oh.my.word. I LOVE buttons. I would say it's near an obsession for me. We have this lovely thrift store that if they can't use the donated clothes, the cut the buttons off and sell them...for a $1 a bag. I've been cut off and told that I'm no longer allowed to buy buttons. Yeah right...who am I kidding? I look for them EVERY time I'm there:) But I digress, I had been storing all of these buttons in two organizers...but one broke and it wasn't as functional as I would have liked, and they were prone to spilling. So when I saw these at the thrift store I couldn't resist....but that was about 3 weeks ago...and they were taking up space on my living room floor.

I was able to organize them by color...don't they look great? And the best part is that there is sooo much more room for MORE BUTTONS!!!!

The third thing that I got my organization on with were my cookbooks...they were hanging around in my cupboard above my stove...the place my mom always kept them...logical right? Well, I have a nice vent going through my so they didn't fit very well, and I could never fit them in there the right way...plus I just ordered two more cookbooks...where were they going to fit:)?

 I have this lovely plant stand/bookshelf that I've been dumping extra stuff on...that was perfect for my cookbooks. It even fits my magazines that I like to keep with good recipes. With the cookbooks there, I get more space in my cupboards, no place to dump stuff that doesn't go there and more room for more cookbooks! Win, Win, Win,!

So have I over shared on a completely random topic? Yup...it's what I do. Also...I'm not done!

I've really decided to overhaul our bathrooms....you saw the first one completed and the sink installed in the next one. Well I'm trying to find a good color for the upstairs bathroom....I ended up mixing some paints to get this color:

It's kinda peachy....so my question is....

Is it too peachy? I'm wondering if I need to make it more orange...which is what I'm leaning too. As you can see I have a lovely tile to work with....so I'm trying to work around it.

I would love a vote from you all! Leave a comment and let me know what I should do!

Happy Organizing

Sarah

psst....our Linky is still open! Link up anything that goes along with Make Do March...doesn't have to be from today!

check one off the list

YAY! I finished! I finally finished re-doing...well actually just re-painting one of our bathrooms...we have 3 full baths, which is slightly overkill in my opinion...but such is life. Our bathroom in the basement was this loverly brown when we moved in...and in my humble opinion it looked like poop, especially with the tile that is EVERYwhere. So I needed a change.

Halfway through last summer I got really crazy and tried painting one wall this really pale green...well it was too minty and I didn't tape/prepare/do a good job. This project was abandoned until about proximately 4ish weeks ago (I'm really good at starting things...but not a good finisher...ask my mom:p). I found some mistinted paint at Lowes that I thought would go with the tile...so I rallied the troops, aka Andy, and we taped and painted three walls.

Lovely before pictures....

The white is actually green....but not the right green...anyhoo we painted the 3 walls that are still brown in the before pictures with the champange-like color that I found at Lowes and really liked it, but we thought it really need some more color.

My friend Krista had painted her kitchen a color that I loved and I thought would go with the tile...and she had a whole bunch of samples, which she let me use! I found the right shade, called Window Shopping (Valspar). I had tried all the samples she gave me...and the one I thought looked awful, just so happened to be the one she used, and well vice versa she thought the Window Shopping looked like dog vomit...just goes to show you that paint looks so much different with different lighting! We both like what each of us used:) We painted the wall that I had attacked earlier in the summer that color. We think it gave the room just the bit of oomph it needed.

Can you see the difference in the wall color?

 

 We also had to remove all the caulking around the tile...it was old, painted over and done really badly. I got it all off and Andy re-caulked it. I wanted clear, but he accidentily used white...it looks fine, so I don't really care:)

I ended up using a brown shower curtain that I already had and we hung up a picture that we had sitting around for ages up to add some color.  I also used the same fixtures that were there...they all matched and were in good condition. Although gold is not my favorite, I'm too cheap to go out and get new stuff! I actually think it goes well with the tile.

Overall I'm super happy with the way it turned out. The only other change I may make is to get a wooden toilet seat cover. I think it would go better overall, but we weren't thinking about that when we replaced it...we just wanted the foamy cracked, nasty seat that was there gone!

This is some awsome wallpaper we found under the shower curtain attachment...I thought it was just under that part...but found out later that they never took the wall paper down, they just painted over it. Fantastic right?....NOT! But I just painted over it too. Oh well.

What do you think?

Happy Painting!

Sarah