Yeeks

Oh my I have had a busy couple of weeks.  No excuse for not blogging...but whew I'm tired.  

First, just as we were getting quotes to finish our basement (can we say expensive), the person who was upstairs fixing our washing machine told us that we would be needing a new washer. Fantastic! As I said, our washer and dryer our upstairs...in this closet:

Now, this is kind of nice because I don't have to go very far to hang up clothes, fold, etc.  I also kind of like that there is no laundry "room". For procrastinators such as myself, it forces me to put the stuff away. But and I say this with a big BUT, the problem is what do you do if it breaks? Well.  Let me tell you.  You need to have two people and one who can perform this move:

Except with a dryer.  Then the other guy climbs under and hooks up the washer.  It costs like $300 just to have it looked at.  Oh and forget about cleaning.  Tried that.  You end up disconnecting the dryer vent and then you have to pay $300.  

Now that the washer is broke we thought maybe we should just put it in the basement.  Well there is no hookup.  Of course.  So, next Tuesday they're jackhammering the floor and putting in a hookup.  Fun stuff.

Which brings me to my question of: Can anyone recommend they're washer and dryer? I'm just not sure if it's worth spending a lot to get a new fancy one.  But then I don't want to be buying another in 5 years.  So maybe it is? 

On the up side, last weekend was my birthday.  I'm the big 25 now, so I can officially rent a car!!!! I think I'm going to buy a new camera with some of the money I got.  I also got these lovely flowers:

Bring on the washer dryer suggestions!!!

Projects of 2009 Party

Rhoda over at Southern Hospitality did the most wonderful post about the projects she did around her house in 2009.  She had 10 to post, however, she probably could have done 50.  So ambitious and creative! While I don't have that many, I thought I'd share what we did do.  

1.  Master Bedroom

This is a room that we actually just finished and I haven't done a post about yet.  I think I may do a separate post in a couple days showing more of what we did.  I don't have any before pictures but you can see the color of the walls in this picture from when we were redoing the master bath.

Before Color:

After:

Like I said, check back in a week or so to see more pics of all the projects we did. I'm going to do a bit about repainting laminate furniture. For a little run-down though we painted, made a headboard, added new bedding, bought a new dresser, added a new picture from the Ann Arbor Art Fair, added window treatments, and redid some end tables.

2.  Headboard

Here is a pick of the headboard that we made out of a door for the Master Bedroom.  We didn't have one before.  I really like the headboard because it's attached to the wall and my favorite...it only cost $22!

3.  Guest Bath

You can see the official post that I did about it here, but this will give you an idea of what happened in this room.

Before:

As you can see, there were wood floors in the bathroom....Who knows. 

After:

We replaced the wood floor with a dark slate tile, that you can see in the link above.  We also framed the mirrors out in white, painted the walls grey, and added some accessories.  The candle sticks are gone now and have a new home in our bedroom :)

4.  Powder Room

This is one of the rooms I don't have a before picture for.  It used to be a very deep red.  There was also no mirror on the wall and no blinds.  

After:

Obviously, this still has some left over Christmas decorations :) However, we painted, added a mirror, wood blinds, and did a wall of fabric panels.

5.  Spice/Paper Closets

Oddly enough, this is probably one of my favorite things I did this year. Moving the spices freed up so much much space in my kitchen cabinets. I love the paper door too because now I don't have so much floating around the rest of the house.  I painted each door panel with many coats of magnetic paint and put the spices in magnetic jars.  Voila!

6.  Kitchen Sink

Again...no before picture.  It used to be a stainless sink that was VERY shallow and had a standard faucet.  I'm so glad we replaced this so I don't give myself a shower every time I wash something other than a fork!

7.  China Cabinet

As for the common theme, there is also no before pictures of this.  I would kill for some though, because this was honestly so much work!  It used to be a light (ugly) brown that was really dull and bland.  The panels on the front were more than not fun to paint :)  I also added some new pulls to the doors.  

8.  Master Bath

This is another re-do that some of you may have seen before here.  These are some peeks of what we did:

Before:

The wall color was a burnt orange, there were molding wood floors (gross!), and again just pull-down blinds.

After:

We painted the walls a very light blue, changed to small octagonal tiles, added wood blinds, and accessories.

9.  I'm tired.

10.  I'm going to take a nap.

Now go check out some more projects at Rhoda's blog here!!

Have a great day!!

Bathroom Redo #2

Dear Blog,

Sorry I neglected you this week.  You see, I've been fighting off this cold thing and also really busy around the house.  I promise to get better.

Thanks,

Ashley

Ok, now that we got that out of the way I am happy to say that cold and all I finally got the bathroom done!  Yay!  At least there is one project that feels like it is completed.  

Here are some before pictures:

And here is the completed project:  (take a look at the candle sticks--i'm not sure about them yet.  what you do think?)

Now, I'm off to work outside!

TGIF!

Bathroom Redo #1

Yay!! We finally have one bathroom completely done!! Thank goodness, because I feel like we have 700 projects that aren't finished. The weather this weekend in Michigan totally messed up my plans.  

So here are the before pics. The color was like a burnt orange. I didn't mind the color so much but our bathroom is pretty small and it made it feel very cave-ish.  

Here you can see why you shouldn't put wood floors in a bathroom. When we bought the house I liked how it looked, but never considered what happens when you mix water and wood. The result is that the boards get spaces between them and the finish peels off. When that happens you get mold. Gross!!

Okay now here is the new and improved space:

Ignore the paint that I need to peel off the mirror here :)

And finally the new floors minus the mold:

Well there you have it!  Now we need to finish the other one.... More pics to come.

This post is being shared with Remodeling Guy for his Remodeling Round up!

Have a great day!!

Ahhh Yard Work

This weekend is one of the only weekends coming up where we have time to do some much needed yard work.  Project number one is to weed and mulch the flower beds.  Project number two is to dig a trench and then put some tubing in to re-direct the water away from the house.  I didn't think that that sounded life fun at all so I decided to mulch instead. However, as always I get dragged into hubby's projects too :) Oh and to top it all off we had to take breaks every 15 minutes to escape the storms. Yes, it's been a fun day.  So here are some pictures of what I've been up to this morning:

These pictures don't really do it justice.  I should have instead taken pictures of my disgusting muddy feet.  Although that might gross everyone out just a little.  Instead just take my work for it.  

I will post pictures of everything once it is done and not raining but here is a picture of my half done mulch so far.  I definitely think the brown looks better!

Okay here is where I need some advice.  What do you think could be done in this area to pretty things up a little.  Could I move the rocks?  Keep in mind it is Spring here in Michigan and the plants aren't pretty yet.  I like most of the plants, but I feel that they are a little random in placement. The rocks at the top are kind of in a half-moon shape in front of those little trees which I kind of like.  I think the rest is very scattered though.  Any suggestions?

Have a great rest of your weekend!!

Whew!!!!

Well I feel like a bad blogger for not keeping up on my posts the past couple of days!  Things have been a little crazy around here.  We still aren't done painting or tiling.....However, the yard is looking quite a lot better.  Not like this anymore:

We do still have this little situation going on though:

And here's our bedroom:

Serene, no?

At least I feel like the yard is taken care of.  We do still have flags all over our yard making us look like a used car lot but hopefully with the sprinkling we won't have any more hay grass.  My husband will probably turn into a crazy yard man now.  

I'm hoping by tomorrow at least one bathroom will be completely painted.  I will try to post our menu for the week, but it will likely consist of pizza and things I made then froze.  

Have a great Sunday!!!

Got Me Thinking

Yesterday felt like a whirlwind day. It’s funny how you can go have so many feelings all in one 24-hour period.

Fear: My day started with needing to go to the basement to get something out of the freezer. Why is it that I need to run up the stairs like someone jumped out of the corner and is chasing me with an ax? Honestly, our house is new. We do not have a giant old scary basement with lots of little rooms. It is big and bright with windows. At camp when I was little someone told a scary story about someone breaking into their house and hiding in their basement, only to come up when they left the house. It’s forever imbedded in my brain. I think when I’m eighty I’ll be running up the stairs with my Life Alert the same way I do now.

Sadness: Someone close to me lost their job the day before yesterday. I want to help so badly but know that no matter what I do they are still being affected on so many levels. With everything you hear about the economy I feel like it has finally hit home a little for me.

Excitement: My hubby and I decided to finally take the plunge and get underground sprinkling. I am sick of trying to water the lawn. This is something I generally couldn’t care less about….but I don’t want to be the ugly house on the street anymore. We are the only house to not have it and I’m starting to feel like the ugly step-kid.

Love: I had a hard time sleeping last night. My racing mind wouldn’t calm down. The hubby of course is snoring away. Although, I think that even in his deep sleep he usually knows when I’m not. He reached over and held my hand, and I was out in no time. Such little things make me feel so blessed to be married.