While Melissa is busy working hard all day I’ve continued to keep busy.
I rediscovered my love fro Cross Stitching. My mother taught me how to cross stitch (along with many other random skills…which I am forever thankful for) when I was younger. This was the first one I’ve completed in about 25 years or so.
Melissa made the frame. It’s perfect.
I saw this on Pinterest and decided to recreate it for our family. We have tons (literally) of stones all over our property so it was pretty easy to find them all.
Bonfire season is now upon us so I bought a bunch of wood. So, naturally, I wanted to organise it. So I built a quick fire wood shelf.
I also made a Macrame planter for the office and a sign to hold the boys’ leashes.
Melissa and I bought the boys a mini soccer boy so we are now, officially, “soccer mums”.
With the major house projects done I’ve been keeping busy by creating some storage pieces for our kitchen.
Our stove is a stand-alone so I created a small shelf to sit next to it to serve as both a shelf and to hide the giant stove outlet in the floor. I also made a shelf for above the stove. And I ordered a paper towel holder from Amazon to replace the cheap plastic one the previous owners had.
The total cost of all three came to about $19.
Shelf above stove: The board is from a FREE pallet Melissa got from work. I sanded it and stained it using stain we already had. The brackets we bought at Menards for $1.99/each. After buying some mounting hardware, the total cost came to around $5.
Shelf next to stove: The top boards are from the same pallet as the above stove shelf. We had some leftover 2×4’s as well. Total cost of this project was free.
Paper towel holder: $12.99 +tax on Amazon.
I made a new pantry shelf to replace the metal IKEA one we had (it’s now in the garage holding tools). It was too small and the aesthetic didn’t fit the rest of our kitchen. This new shelf is by far my favourite piece I made (so far).
Total cost for this project was around $22.
Well, technically $66 since Melissa bought me a fun toy from Lowe’s. A new Black + Decker Mouse Sander! Prior to this sander we had a vintage 1960’s style sander which, did do a decent job but, was old and the sandpaper didn’t stay on very well.
The only part I bought were the boards which I got from Lowe’s. I stained them using the same stain as the other pieces. The back of the shelf was a piece of old paneling from our kitchen wall demo that I cut and painted using the same paint as the upper part of our kitchen focal wall. Screws and nails we already had as well.
I much prefer shallow shelves vs deep shelves. I’m an “out of sight out of mind” brained person. So I love that everything on this shelf I can see. I no longer have to move other jars around or place things on the floor to pull out a jar. Plus, it’s super cute and I can better showcase all of the jars which is part of my design style.
I don’t like to let things go to waste, even scrap wood. So I decided to create a cute little painting using the leftover piece of pallet board. In our next house it will hang with our wooden map but since we don’t want to put any unnecessary holes in our brand new walls, it sits above the stove.
Our garden and my flowers are coming along nicely. We added a few more plants as well; some more tomatoes, summer squash, and zucchini.
The boys have adapted to all the major house changes quite well.
Since the new kitchen floor is slippier than the old linoleum they’ve learned the hard way not to run super fast through the kitchen!
Now that our major home projects are complete we are just relaxing and enjoying our hard work.
If I begin feeling stir-crazy again while Melissa is at work I may paint the guest room. I also plan on repainting all of the big trim pieces throughout the house, paint the small area between the bedrooms, and possibly build some more things. But we shall see!
Summer is on its way, thankfully, so we are excited about warmer days ahead!
Melissa bought this house shortly before we began talking. I remember some of our early conversations were about her doing some minor repairs in the house.
I moved into this house in late October 2019. Since then we have remodeled all but two rooms in the house (laundry room and guest room).
I remember looking up the listing to this house when Melissa first told me about it. I can’t forget my initial reactions when I saw the listing photos. To say it was gawdy is an understatement. The previous owners had fake flowers, feather boas, Jesus paintings, rooster/hen decals, crosses, beads, etc on nearly every wall and surface of the house.
Fast forward almost two years since Melissa bought the house and we are 95% complete with all of the renovations we wanted to do. In honour of all of our hard work I thought I’d share the listing photos with the current photos so you could see just how far this little home has come.
*I tried to get the same angles as the original but some I didn’t. But you still get the idea.*
The next stage of the bathroom remodel is complete! We painted the cabinets, the bathroom door, and installed the bottom trim (Melissa actually did that on her own, she did an amazing job).
Before, during, and after of our bathroom cabinets:
Bathroom door and trim:
Our last few projects are small. We want to install some shelves above the toilet, clean up the tile paneling, recaulk the shower, and maybe frame the wall mirror.
We are doing the kitchen one wall at a time in order to be able to continue to use our kitchen. We decided to start with the most labour intensive wall. We found quite a few surprises under the paneling.
Kitchen progress in pics. No more pictures/updates until this wall is completed!
An Awfully Big Adventure 