Jules Jewels- Repurposed Goods and DIY Ideas: July 2014

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Picking Paint the Right Way!

If you don't know me, I am what my friends would call a "get it done now" kind of girl. I don't waste time, I don't ponder things for years on end, I get an idea, research it and do it. As for paint, I have been painting for years. I painted every single room in our old house, actually numerous times and I even wall papered. I am very familiar with paint, paint shades, what paints will work together, etc. So when we bought this house I knew the paint had to go right away. Who could live with terracotta and peach on their walls??? I couldn't! My old house was beige but with hues of pink in it. With this house I wanted more gray on the walls. So I went to the paint store and got swatches. I took all the swatches home, put them up on the wall and found my paint color. Now in the past, this has always worked for me but this time it didn't:( I got a light gray for my downstairs. I bought a 5 gallon bucket for $115. Once I got home, I got to painting! About 4 rolls onto the wall with the paint roller, I knew this was the wrong color! The gray looked awful with my flooring and the walls looked cold and blah! I had just made a huge purchase and it wasn't right! My husband was going to kill me!!! So, in order to not completely waste my paint, we did use it up in the office (which only took up maybe a gallon) and I just passed it off to my cousin to paint his room. Now, there is a fix to paint you don't like. If it is light paint, you can take it back to the paint store and they can add color to it so you don't waste it. For me, I have literally painted every room in the house so I don't have any use for it anymore.

After my wrong paint debacle, I started again, looking for beige paint but with heavy grey hues in it. I found the perfect fit along with another color one shade lighter for my hallways and living room (Hallways tend to be darker than other places in your house so lighter shades are best in those areas). Since I didn't have much furniture at the time of painting, I was afraid to go with bold colors on the walls. When picking paint colors, you should have a staple piece in the room that you can build from. Painting the walls blue first and then shopping for bedding, accessories, couches, etc. to match your blue wall is a nightmare!! You will never find just the right color you want to tie everything in! So with knowing this, I went safe on my walls. Everything matches beige right!! But on that same note, beige can be boring;)

As for the upstairs, we have low, curved ceilings (only 6 feet tall on the curves). This makes painting tricky! If you trim out the top of the wall, showing off the curved ceilings, your wall will look even shorted then it is. I wanted the ceilings to look as tall as possible so I went with a very light beige on the walls and ceilings. Unfortunately this is boring again. I went from a navy blue bedroom wall in my old house to the inside of an almond color. The only exciting color was my daughters room which is covered from floor to ceiling in pink and of course our grey office;). Looking back, I could have gone slightly darker with the beige and still gotten the open feeling I wanted. I will say, beige has been easy to decorate but I find I have to add lots of color in the room to make it pop.

Tips for painting shopping:
1. Look at a color wheel and read up about color matching. It will help you in the long run.
2. Find a starting point. Get the bedding, couch, drapes, or furniture you want for the room FIRST. Don't do that after you paint the walls!
3. Think about lighting in that area. I mentioned earlier that I chose a beige one shade lighter in my hallways and living room. This is because they tend to be darker than other places of my house. If you put a dark color in a dark room, it will be dark. I know on home shows they are saying you can do it, but it will be dark. (Remember, rooms look brighter on TV because they have a million lights on in the room along with the camera light.)
4. Get lots of swatches! Match the swatches up to your furniture. Look for the hues in the swatch- grey, pink, yellow, orange. You can play off those hues in your design.
5. GET A SAMPLE JAR! - Don't make my mistake! Buy a $2.75 sample jar. If you hate the color, you won't be crying like I was about it.
6. Make sure this color will compliment the next room. If you have adjoining rooms, make sure the rooms flow together. Don't paint red walls in one room and green in the next, unless you want your house to look like Christmas all year long;)
7. Follow your gut! I was 4 paint rolls in with my grey paint and I knew it wasn't right. I could have kept going and tried to live with the color but I didn't. Painting is a lot of work! I knew I didn't want to do it again so I chalked up the loss, and went with my gut! And boy am I so glad I did that! I love the color I have up now.

Good Luck and Happy Painting:)

Pink room! Ceiling and all.

Using a sprayer was easiest upstairs. This is my husband and dad on the job:)

This is the master. You can see the coved ceilings. If we trimmed in that line for the ceiling, the room would have looked even shorter!

Today the master. I tried to all in color to the room. Still a work in progress but comfortable for now. Painting the furniture is on my to do list:)

Entry way. It is dark so I wanted a lighter color.

Living room and dining room. One shade off from each other. They look very similar in person due to lighting. I rolled the downstairs with a power roller. So much faster!

Living room now. I painted out the book shelves a darker color so they would pop. I will blog about that crazy project later!

Another view of living room color.

Kitchen , dining, family and playrooms are actually the same color. Lighting changes the look of things.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

It's either take out forever or a new kitchen!

Buying a house is already difficult but buying a house that needs work is another thing! I can't tell you how many times I wanted to cry myself to sleep over this house. My body just physically couldn't take the pain of manual labor anymore. From painting every room, to unpacking, organizing, repurposing lots and lots of furniture, hanging items, digging up dirt, hauling rocks, pulling ivy out, to exterior painting, remodeling bathrooms, refinishing cabinets, hanging light fixtures, the list goes on and on! So when we moved in, we made a list of things we could tackle ourselves and things we needed help with. Then we prioritized things from most important to later down the road. Well on the top of my list was a new kitchen. I am a huge fan of cooking. I cook every night and I knew that there was no way in hell I was going to cook in that kitchen. The microwave and oven both were broken. Drawers were falling apart. And the tile was disgusting! So I told my husband, "It's either take out forever or get me that new kitchen!" So we got a new kitchen:)

When redesigning a room, you want to have a clear picture of what you want. After many hours spent on Houzz.com, I came up with a look I wanted and ran with it. We ordered our shaker style cabinets from Lowe's and got the granite from a place in Rancho. I will say, going from dark quartz countertops to now a light granite countertop, I am not a fan of granite. I really wish I had chosen the light quartz countertops. They are more durable, don't stain and you never have to reseal them. Lesson learned! From that point we got a contractor to help us out. The layout of the kitchen stayed the same because of budget and how our house flows but we did do some changes. First I wanted two food pantries which allowed me to hid the sides of the frig. Also, we extended the countertop to allow for barstools. Both great decisions. Another good decision was my standing double oven. It takes up the same space as a normal oven but allows you to use less energy when making a pizza or small dish. For the backsplash I knew I wanted subway tiles, which are inexpensive and easy to put up.

There are still things we would like to do in the kitchen but don't have the money for right now. We want can lights and hanging pendants over the island. But for now, my husband and I are happy with what we were able to put up. We took down the old light box, dry walled the lovely hole in the ceiling and put up a track light (online purchase $200). We changed out the old light above the sink (Lowe's $50) to match the track light and took out the ceiling fan over the kitchen table and put up a simple light (Lowe's $30). We also would love to change the flooring out but since it runs most of the downstairs, we can't afford that either. But for now it all works.

If you are considering a kitchen remodel, here are a few tips! First, save up! Our kitchen remodel ran about $20,000. That was no structural moves and basic appliances and cabinets. If you are looking to cut costs, try refinishing your cabinets. We paid about $10,000 for the cabinets. Refinishing would cost you about 1/3 of that. Second, roll with the punches. We had a horrible time with demo. All our cabinets were nailed in not screwed. It was a nightmare getting the nails out! Then we had a leak in the sink plumbing. Then we had to move the frig water line. Then we had to move the gas line for the oven because the oven stuck out too far with the old line. Then we realized that the cabinet layout was slightly off from the old layout and the subfloor was exposed. Could we find the same flooring to match- NOPE! So we did our best with matching some new to old. Putting the sink back in took about two days. We couldn't match the new piping with the old piping. But we prevailed! And third, don't be afraid to tackle some of the projects yourself to save some money! Even though the demo was a pain, it saved us $1,000. Doing all the lighting and dry wall ourselves saved us money too. Putting back in all the appliances and sink ourselves saved us money. Painting not only the kitchen but the entire house saved us thousands of dollars! So with all that said, enjoy some before and after pictures of our remodel!

Before- Me measuring for my new kitchen!

Before- No island for seating making it look even smaller of a kitchen.

We did the demo of the kitchen to save money. You can see too that the wall color has changed. In the mix of all of the demo, I repainted the house. I didn't want to have to worry about trimming out the paint around the new cabinets.

We took down the top cabinets first and then worked on the bottom half.

Double oven!

Granite- Love it but it just doesn't hold up like Quartz.

Finished project until we tackled the lighting:) Subway tile ties it all together.

You can see the pantries flank the two sides of this wall, thus hiding the frig. I also wanted the cabinets to go from floor to ceiling. It is not a huge space and the ceiling are not tall like in some new homes. I think this really helps modernize our house.

My husband and I have changed quiet a few light fixtures at this point and decided to tackle these two lights ourselves. The pendant over the sink and the track light.

We were not fans of the fan above the table so we swapped it out with this inexpensive light!

You can see the pendant light in this picture along with our with new windows.

Funny, as I am looking back at these photos, I notice some of my décor has changed too. Good thing I buy cheap all the time:)

Monday, July 28, 2014

From the beginning!

About 4 years ago my husband starting bugging me about moving. I am not opposed to moving but were he wanted to move was 50 minutes away from my job. With a new baby and 17 month old, I wasn't prepared for the commute at that time. About 6 months after that conversation we started looking in that area he wanted. The market was low at the time but we knew it would still be difficult financially to move. So we paid off things, saved all our money and waited. Almost a year went by and I was finally ready to make the leap. We toured a few homes, put in a few offers and nothing was right. One day we went out with our realtor and checked out some homes. There was one home in the neighborhood we wanted, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, pool, 3 car garage, all that we wanted. Our realtor said we had to jump on it, but something wasn't right for me. I just wasn't feeling it! So I asked her to take us over to another house around the corner that I liked but knew was out of our price range. She was reluctant at first but agreed. This house had been vacant for a year, but the previous owners still hadn't moved out most of their stuff. On the outside, the yard was overgrown, no lawn and the paint color was hideous. As we walked in, I knew my realtor was thinking, "Holy hell, this place is awful." As I walked in I fell in love! Don't get me wrong, the place was a mess! Food, trash, awful paint colors, disgusting kitchen, carpet stunk, backyard looked like Ivy ate it, but I saw beyond all of that and saw what this house could be. My father always told me, when you buy a house it's about location, location, location! And this was the location we wanted. Not to mention it had 5 bedrooms, a playroom, 3 bathrooms, pool, and a 3 car garage. All the things we wanted! It would be a lot of work for us but my husband and I were up for the challenge. So we put in an offer and waited! Short sale turned into a 9 month "long sale" but in the end we got it and for a great price! So with this blog I will document all we have done. Things you should do and things you shouldn't do and so much more. So enjoy our ride and hopefully this will inspire you to take on a fixer up house or just a DIY project!!!