Small projects completed

I got a few small house projects completed this weekend, quite a few I got from Pinterest.

First was this spice rack on the inside of a pantry door. Here's the "pin":

Here's my version: 

Next was this custom utensil insert:

Here's mine:

The next two weren't found on Pinterest. First, I replaced the toilet paper holder in the grey bathroom because a normal sized toilet paper roll wouldnt fit on it and actually spin: 

Before

After:

Lastly, I added a clothes rod to the laundry room so that clothes could be hung up in there that needed to hang dry: 

The kitchen pantry

Nearly from the beginning of moving in, I've been frustrated with our kitchen pantry. It's super narrow and deep. What's worse, whomever built it added this 6 inch "wall" to the right side which makes it even narrower and prevented me from adding pull out drawers. So, like most folks, we use the first 4 inches of shelf space, when we buy new food we shove it in and whatever was there somehow finds its way to the back of the shelf. Rachel forbade me from sharing the oldest out of date food item I found when clearing out the shelves.

Two weeks ago I began disassembling the mini "wall" thinking there must be a logical reason for its existence. Perhaps there was, but after removing it, I haven't figured out what it was.

Here's the breakdown of how it happened:

This pic is after I began getting carried away with demolition --- the door and door frame have already been removed and I've begun to tear off the sheet rock at the bottom of the door jamb:

Stuff hiding behind the wall:

Here's another pic of the wall:

Sheet rock removed, two 2x4's:

2x4's removed, shelf supports removed

Added new spacers to make mounting the ball-bearing drawer slides easier and to space the slides out from the wall so that they'll clear the door trim:

First three drawers made and installed:

Everything put back together, all I need to do now is paint:

The hay is gone!

This no longer exists:

My parents came over on Super Bowl Sunday and my dad spray painted the ceiling in Behr Ultra semi-gloss white. Monday night, I began painting the hay wall a minty color.

Tuesday night after work, I finished painting the kitchen:

For now, were going to leave the tan lower half, were thinking either white or maybe even a grey. Now, the cabinets all need to be painted glossy white. Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make old dirty cabinets look worse. 

Kitchen

Take a good look, it's not going to look like this much longer:

Sold those chairs

 Those cool barrel shaped chairs we got with our kitchen table as mentioned here.The ones we contemplated recovering. The ones that sat around for 8 months.

We spent $75 on the table and chairs and sold the chairs last weekend for $40. So the table only set us back $35 and $15 in paint!

Drywall Sander

Browsing Amazon's tool selection, I came across this:

An orbital drywall sander with vacuum hose attached. Too bad it's $431! It uses a 9" round sanding disc which is huge.

Home Depot doesn't rent it, Lowes has no rental equipment in the Sacramento area (based on their website), but Sunbelt in West Sacramento does have it for rent:

http://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment/equipment.aspx?itemid=0040046&catid=s45

Why is this exciting? I dislike hay embedded in my kitchen walls:

Closet Organization

This closet, just off our kitchen, was a mess. It was home to our broom, mop, re-usable bags as well as plastic and paper bags. Except there was no organization, open the door and everything came tumbling out. Which meant we usually left the broom and mop out all the time.

Took some leftover melamine and built some cubbies for it all:

 

Not only does everything have a home now, but we also gained another shelf for cleaning products or maybe canned food.

Kitchen table is done!

Remember that kitchen table we bought awhile back? Mentioned here and here.

We got it for $75, but it was just too short. I raised it three inches as mentioned in the above link before being painted.

My dad painted it for Rachel and I using Kelly Moore Dura-Poxy which is a pretty durable paint for high traffic items. Dura Poxy needs a week or so to cure/harden, so we just moved it back into the kitchen this weekend! If such a thing existed at Crate and Barrel it'd probably be five times the amount we paid.

Before:

 

After:

DIY Pendant lamp

This chandelier in the breakfast nook just wasn't our style:

Before we moved in

We liked the look of modern pendants, but not for $300. So I DIY'ed it.  It's actually just a large lampshade (diameter of 16") that we got at Lamps Plus for $40.Then, I got some lamp hardware from IKEA on a recent spree ($13). Lastly, got the small ceiling cover from Home Depot ($6)

I just got done rigging up this pendant lamp in our breakfast nook.

For $59, aint too bad huh?

The round table should be white by the end of the week.

Raised the table

So I raised the table 3 inches! Now it's normal table height. The next step is to paint it white.

A new kitchen table

Rachel and I wanted to put a round kitchen table in our breakfast area. We were originally thinking a white Tulip table like this:

 

But then we started thinking about all of the different shades of white we might have in the kitchen, from the fridge to the cabinets to the tile, to this table. 

So we decided to find a round table we could paint white and then paint the chairs to match, so at least something would match.

A quick Craigslist search discovered this:

I emailed the lady and 2 hours later it was ours! The base (not shown above) is very ornate. We're going to paint the table white-ish and sell the chairs back on Craigslist.

When we got the table home, we noticed it was a little short, 26 inches. So, I sawed off the table top from the base, I will pick up a spacer of some sort at Home Depot tomorrow and raise it 3 inches.

 

After, this gets heightened and painted a nice crisp white, we think it's going to look awesome, and a perfect candidate to submit to Design Sponge's Before and Afters.