Kitchen

Hi guys!

Thanks for coming back for the kitchen portion of the home tour.  Our kitchen is right in the "heart" of the home (right smack dab in the middle).

I like it being right in the middle of the house.  If you're going to have one room at the heart of the house, it's gotta be the kitchen, right?  Or should it be in the stomach of the house?  Anyway...it's not at the gross stomach so stop saying that.  It's at the heart, and it's passed through every time we have to potty or go on the computer or tell the dog to stop barking at people walking in the alley way...it gets a lot of traffic (and I painted the floor white - I'm a genius.)

But alas, I am very pleased and blessed with the way it turned out...you know...3 years later!  :)  Here's a before and after for ya:

This print above came from the very talented Shelli Dorf on Etsy.   Check her out.  She has such sweet, whimsical prints.  I also have to say I was very pleased not only with the print itself, but the service.  It arrived on a rainy day, and the mailman had left it sticking out of the mailbox.   I panicked a little as I opened it, and I was sure it was ruined.  What I found when I opened the envelope was a very tightly sealed second plastic envelope.  Not a drop on the print.  I was so thankful for the extra effort.

The frame above was a quick, cheap yard sale find that I wrote about here, and the writing inside it says, "Making soup is fun."  It's one of the first thing our wee-est one made in kindergarten, and it resonated with me.  I mean, who can argue with that?

Phooey!  We forgot to get one from the very same angle (above), but you get the idea.  I did write about the red sliding barn door, and it's been so handy.  It's pin on pinterest is also my main source of traffic into the blog. I love people - they all love a good, cheap, easy DIY just like me!

The above light is from Rejuvenation lighting, and I highly HIGHLY recommend them.  They have so many period piece lighting for older homes, and even a feature on the website where you can find the lighting that specifically matches the lighting that would have been common for the year that your home had been made - which is what we did here.  Our home was made in approximately 1920, and this is the type of light they would have used at the time.  Except I got it in red - which is sassier than for a light than the 1920 lights. And what should a light be, if not sassy?

 This kitchen "island" is made from my childhood dresser.  It is the dresser that matches the mirror in our living room I wrote about here.

I would like to go off on a tangent about this dresser, but I think I can milk a whole other post out of it, so that's what I'm going to do down the line.

I just recently added this little addition of the instagram prints to the refrigerator.  I kind of want to chuckle a a little and say, "Welcome to my Pinterest kitchen".  This is definitely an idea I stold directly from pinterest - no holds barred.  But, can I be a hipster jerk right now and just say I had a chalkboard and a dresser in here before Pinterest did?  (No?  That's not classy, right?  Okay, I didn't say that then.)

And that's, as they say, that - for the kitchen. (Why do I always want to say, "See you next time" at the end of my posts like I'm hosting a monster movie of the week on television?)   I need a catchy tag line to end every post without having to think about it so hard.

"See you next time for some new tasty fig milkshakes?"
"I think we've had our FILL of fig milkshakes for now.  Let's throw out our empty paper cups and..." No that's no good.
"Sa la vie and farewell and parting is such sweet sorrow, but alas we will meet again...when the....moon...." Erm...that doesn't work either.

Any ideas?  Anybody?

Smell ya later.

DIY Sliding Barn Door

Hello everyone!  The post you're looking for is below.  When you're done checking out this post, please visit my Etsy Shop with completely unique illustrated cards designed by myself and using a fine natural laid paper! 

I'm sooper excited to show you this sliding barn door project!  Check. It. Out.  That's it down there. 

Okay that's a bright picture, but it's all I gots!

So, our funky old house has so. many. doors.  Out of EIGHT rooms, only ONE has one door.  TWO rooms have TWO doors, and THREE rooms have........THREEEEEE doors!  Granted, it's a little bit of a different way to live always zig zagging through this maze, (but I am always comforted that should there be a fire, there's almost always three exits).  One of these days I may figure out why this old house was designed like this, but as for now...I dunno.

My point is - with all those doors moving in and out, one finds it hard to make the space for them to swing open and closed.  Most of the folks that own houses around here utilize the pocket door; I, however, fell in love with this sliding barn door I had come across photographs such as these below and knew it would be a great alternative to a pocket door:





  

















But upon looking into the price of sliding barn door hardware - I thought it would be wishful thinking swept under the rug.  I mean, that's not even a, "Well, maybe someday" investment.  That's more of like a, "Somebody put me out to pasture if I'm crazy enough to spend $300 on one door" investment.

And then, comes Country Living magazine to the rescue - they posted a lovely tutorial on how to DIY this here.

We already had a door lying around that we had taken from another area, so the whole project was done for around $40 using this hardware:

Okay, I goofed on the street elbows, and instead picked up  REGULAR 90° elbow pieces.  What you want is a 90° STREET elbow - and this means the threads will be on the outside of one side of the pipe, rather than the inside- to fit into those floor flanges you see there.

Once we got the hardware  home, it was just a bunch of measuring, drilling, screwing, and fitting the puzzle pieces together.

Can you look at it and see where everything went?  I will not post a detailed step-by-step tutorial, if you want that, got the link provided above.  I will; however, give these notes:

**It's a little bit tricky drilling into the side of a door - it's pretty thin - so take your time drilling and be careful not to split your wood.  Be mindful to go straight in, lest your drill angle out and make a hole through the front or back of your door!

**Make sure you measure the extra room for your eyelet hooks.  Your pipe will not be fitting directly above your door - I left about 1 1/2" extra for the pipe to go through the eyelets.

**When we first started moving the door around, it made an AWFUL squeaking noise.  I oiled mine up (with PAM. hehe), and it has worked just loverly ever since!

There we go!  That's the DIY sliding barn door for ya.

And, just FYI, this is what this area of the kitchen looked like shortly after we bought it.  This is NOT what it looked like WHEN we bought it.  Actually, I wish I had taken more pictures the day we stepped into this house...but just take it from me, there was a crazy black UFO lookin' fan/light in here, and the walls were dingy gray.

Pretty cool, huh?

And here's another photo, just for funsies: