Guest Room Progress: Installing a New Closet Door and Refinishing Wood Floors

We began our Guest Room redo in this blog, and now we have made some progess.

In the last blog I mentioned the two big projects that had to be done on this room, 1- refinishing the hard wood floors we discovered when we removed the carpet, and 2- installing a real closet door, as opposed to the beautiful curtain (sarcasm font) that was hanging there.  You can see the curtain covering the closet in this photo below behind the door to the room, unfortunately that was the only photo I have of it before we took it down, darn! 

So we went on yet another Home Depot Adventure (like seen here) to get a new closet door.  Sadly, we knew we were not going to find a door just like all of our other doors in the house since all of the doors are the original doors from 1924.  We just needed something basic that would be a huge step up from the curtain hanging there.  Once we picked the door we also picked a out a door knob, we got an oil rubbed bronze handle, trust me, I would have preferred one of the antique knobs, but those are pretty spendy at Home Depot, I am still hoping I can find a functional one at an antique store and re-install later.

Well, the day came to install the door, and it was not a pretty one, I only have photos of the door after install because at the time when we put it in, it was a weeknight, it was late, and we were just a bit cranky (understatement) hey, this whole home renovation thing isn't sweet rosey at all moments!  

So picture this, we get the door, the measurements fit the door frame, but of course... IT DIDN'T FIT!!!  So Alex had one of his ***** moments (censored, imagine B, F, and S words).  The main reason it didn't fit?  We live in a 86 year old home, so it has been through 86 years of life and winters, meaning the home has settled and shifted over those years, nothing is an exact even measurement anymore, and more importantly door frames aren't straight, boo.  So, we headed down to the basement so Alex could saw the door down a tad to fit. 

Have you ever sawed a door?  Neither have we, so again, picture this, we have a decent size work bench in our basement, but not as big as a door, so to get it to lay flat, we had to weigh it down on one side, so guess what we used?  ME!  I laid on the door to hold it in place and Alex sawed away, don't worry, he always sawed away from my direction and we had our sexy safety goggles on.  But yea, looking back I really wish I had a picture of this, talk about dedication to getting the job done!

After a couple tries (as you can see in this photo since the plate moved quite a bit) the door was up!

This photo show where we sawed the edge of the door off to fit, we also sawed at the bottom of the door.

And here we have the door up!  No more curtain, so much better!

Alex is a pro at finishing wood floors, so he got this done in a day since the space was a lot smaller than our living room, and here we have the gleaming floors that used to be hidden by carpet. 

I painted the room pretty quick as well, we chose Behr's "cumberland fog" for our color, we like neutrals mostly, so our house is mainly greys and light blues, so this matched the flow of the house.

So, I guess that photo is a bit of a preview for you, I am still trying to figure out final decor, I was thinking black and white to match the paintings I made, but now I am thinking I want something sweeter, lighter and more inviting for guests, hmmm.....

Perfect Items for Our (sort of) Mud Room

I am very excited that I found some perfect items to create our (sort of) mud room. I guess I keep saying "sort of" because it isn't really a mud room- as in- it isn't a room of our house. So maybe I should call it "The Mud Entry"? I don't know, guess that works, because as "the lady of the house", I like to keep our space clean and tidy, and this entry is where all the dirt gathers, thus needs cleaning often! So, the back entry is now... The Mud Entry. Yay!

I found this hook, shelf, and upper cabinet cubby combo online, I know as is the size will not work, we need only one of those cubbies/ hooks for our 22" wall, so I am hopeful we can order in a single "cubbie" size equaling a mere 16". If we can't get a single cubby/ shelf, we will settle for hooks we can install easily, which might just be the better option because it may only cost $20 total.



For the seating, I am settled on getting a stool from Ikea, this stool measures 15.5", perfect to fit our 22" wall and will not be in the way at all! And in white it matches the rest of our house and trim, not to mention the $29.99 price tag appeals to my budget!



Now, on to the best item! This is a Smith and Hawken brand item you can find at Target, I stumbled upon it during a random Target trip and was immediately stunned! I grabbed it right off the shelf, didn't even look at the price, I knew it would be perfect for shoe storage at the "Mud Entry", I was so pumped! But speaking of price, it was only $39.99, a deal for such a large basket, and it has chalkboards on it! How cute is that? I love chalkboards these days after my Antique Chalkboard Project which you can view here.



Well, now that I have found what I want, it should only be a few days until I post the "afters" for the Mud Entry (at least I hope a couple days, I sure would love the organized and cute space)!

A "Hammers and High Heels" Farewell to Summer... Au Revoir Until Spring My Fair Wedges!

Wa, Wa, Wa, it is that time of year, fall has arrived, too early if you ask me, but it is time to put away the summer heels and welcome back my old fall/ winter time friends (and of course find some new ones!).

I feel that I don't address the "high heels" part of my blog enough, Alex and I are in mostly "Hammers" mode once we get home, but the heels are a HUGE part of my life! Anyone that sees me day to day will confirm I spend most of my time walking around in 3.5" to 4.0" heels, and yes, it does sound kind of stupid, and looking at this photo of my summer sandals makes me giggle, but hey, I am 5 feet tall! Doesn't that give me a right to rock big heels?!?! I just need to be at everyones else's level is the way I see it, I hate being the small fry!

So, I gathered my wedges (well the ones that sit at home, I also have 6 bins of shoes in my cubical at work, ha) and stuck them in my big plastic storage bin which will be taken to the basement, and sadly sit for 5-6 months.



Au Revoir until Springtime my Fair Wedges! Wedges are by far my favorite type of heel to wear, so you will be missed!

Mud Rooms... I want one!

For a while now I have not been able to get mud rooms out of my head! It all started when my sister showed me the plans for her new house, she and her husband are building their dream home in Hudsonville Michigan. The one thing on the building plans that I loved (well I loved all of it, especially the kitchen and huge closets!) was the mud room at the entrance from their garage. I just kept thinking, gosh that would be so nice to have a space by our entry from the garage that we could put all of our stuff!
We have a coat closet by our front door, but rarely come in to the house that way, and with the type of winters we have in Minnesota, I would love a place to put coats, wet boots and a place to sit and remove them. However the space by our back door is hardly workable for a mud room, (photos below), but I knew I could figure something out.
Another sign that I should continue my mud room quest was this blog on the Lettered Cottage, I was able to gain some more inspiration for my... sort of, mud room.

Here is what I would say is a dream mud room... lots of space with seating, cubbies, hooks, and drawers, what more could you want?


Next is one that gave me some more hope, it is a smaller space, and more unique to the house, still has the seat and storage...


And this one gave me even more hope that I could figure out a mud room for our house, all this one has is a wall with hooks, but it works!


And then here is a DIY one that a friend of mine did. Abby and Jason work a lot of their house and also noticed that in many new houses they have those built in mud room cubbie set ups, so Jason built one, fancy isn't it?!?! When I saw this picture I again thought, hey I want a mud room!


So here's my dilemma, the space by our backdoor is more open, no walls really, and it isn't a hallway, so we didn't want it cluttered up with stuff sitting out everywhwere. The photo is taken from the little sunroom area off of our living room with the back door to the right, the mini bathroom straight ahead, and the hallway to the kitchen and basement stairs to the left.


Here is another photo, all we have is a mirror in the space now, which we like, but we are just a little stumped on how we can make this work for us, again, we don't want it to become a cluttered up space since it isn't a closet area, we pass through it to get into the basement or to the kitchen or bathroom.


So here is a photo from the basement stairs facing the backdoor, the longest wall we have in the space is the left wall with the mirror, measuring 30", however, we can't put anything there because you you would just run into it (as you can see from the photo) if you walked into the space. The other wall to the right of the door measures only 22", I thought, "That's it!?! What the heck can I fit here that would be useful?"


And here is the view from the back door facing the basement stairs. The wall on the left also measures 22", what in the world can I do with two 22" walls that could make it useful?



So I started to think, what do we really need that would make a big difference?
1- some kind of seat
2- some place to put shoes or boots
3- hooks

Hooks I am still on the fence, since I don't want the space to look cluttered or like a closet. And we need some kind of decor is the space as well, it is pretty plain and sad looking.

So here's to hoping I can come up with a useful mud room-like space, and not spend too much dough on it!

We're Back!

It has been a while since Alex and I have been working on the house or doing any blogging. We decided last minute to take a trip to Michigan to visit with family and take our own trip up north for our first wedding anniversary. Now, we are rested, tan, and ready to start some new house projects as fall approaches!

Here are some highlights from our "Pure Michigan" trip!

Of course we had to start by hitting the beach, there is nothing like a sunny Lake Michigan day at the beach, and we were lucky to get to play in some waves!

On the night of our actual wedding anniversary, Alex and I had dinner at Mangiamo in good old Eastown Grand Rapids where we got married.  It was wonderful, we even shared the same dessert we had on our wedding day.  Even better, they let us have dinner for free! It was so nice and special, the staff is still great there!

Next we were off to Traverse City to start our trip up north, we started by exploring town and doing a little shopping. We stopped at the Mackinaw Brewing Company for lunch and Alex got to sample their beers. He was pretty excited.

In the evening, we headed to Chateau Chantal, one of the most beautiful vineyards atop a hill in the Old Mission peninsula for some wine tasting.

We actually had never been wine tasting together so it was a lot of fun. Our favorite was the Rose Malbec.

We took a couple pictures of the vineyard. It is hard to tell but you can see Lake Michigan in the distance from the hill, it was gorgeous.

Then we were off to downtown Traverse for dinner, we like to check out more than one place usually if we are doing exploring, so we went to Red Ginger for a drink and appetizer. We ordered Sake, I have never tried it, so we did, and I will never try it again! Ick!

After Red Ginger, we went to Amical for dinner, we ordered mussels, and they were awesome! I usually can't eat mussels because they would make me cringe when I looked at them, but these weren't bad at all.

Then off to Mackinaw City! We crossed the bridge because I insisted on going to Castle Rock and to see a little bit of St Ignace, which sadly has gone downhill since we were little.

Here we are after racing up Castle Rock, lots of stairs, Alex beat me (jerk).

We headed to Mackinaw Island to do some shopping and sightseeing, we also went to a couple cute pubs and ate a lot of food that day.

Once we got back from our travels up north, we spent a lot of time with our nephew Henri, he is almost 1 now and starting to walk a little, check out his cute hat!

We went to Binder Park Zoo with Alex's sister, brother in law, and Henri. He loved to point at all the animals!  But the best part by far was hand feeding the giraffes!  It startled me at first (obviously, and I was mad that this was the only picture Alex got), but it was so cool! Their tongues are so long!

On our last day of the trip, we celebrated Henri's first birthday since we can't be in Michigan for his actual birthday, I can't believe how much he has changed in a year! Here is his topless cupcake photo with mom!  He dove in face first for that cupcake once she set it down!  It was hilarious and adorable!

 So that was our little Michigan trip!  Loved every minute!

Starting on the Guest Room: Carpet Removal

The four objectives we had to accomplish before we could decorate our guest room were:

1. Removing the carpet
2. Refinishing the floors
3. Adding a closet door
4. Painting the walls.

This blog covers the first step, removing the carpet. We checked under the carpet in a corner of the room to see what the hard wood floors looked like underneath, they weren't in very good condition, but could totally be refinished to look gorgeous! Here is a picture of the room with the existing carpet:



And time to lift it up!



Then Alex got started removing the carpet pad.



Pulling out carpet nails is so much fun! Right Alex?!?! This part wasn't very fun, we stayed up late getting every last nail, it was a pain!



And finally, after every nail was removed, we had the hard wood floor clean and ready to be sanded and refinished! You can also see in this photo that there is a curtain behind the door, what is that you ask? It is the closet for the bedroom, and at some point they had taken the door off of the closet and it disappeared from the house, so sad! So we had to find and install a closet door, will cover that in a separate blog.



And the view from the doorway to the room with the wood flooring exposed.

The New Sink in our Mini Bathroom is Installed!

So I made a previous blog about the sink we ordered:

http://hammersandhighheels.blogspot.com/2010/07/porcher-elfe-sink-has-been-ordered.html

We had to order this tiny sink because our bathroom is so small, and with the way the plumbing pipes are installed, the existing sink and toilet were so close together, when you would, ahem, use the facility, you would be leaning over the sink as you conducted your business.

Here is a before photo, it is hard to tell from the photo, but if you can picture a person sitting on the commode, their knees would be under the bowl of the sink and their chest would butt up to the rim of the sink, not comfortable, and certainly awkward! I  never really used this bathroom, I would just go upstairs to our larger bathroom to avoid the awkward space, anytime I did use it, it just reminded me we had to get a new sink.

So again, the very before when we moved in, beige and wooded fixtures, ick!

Then after we painted and got new fixtures, still didn't use it because of the sink.

So... DOWN WITH THE OLD SINK!

Here is the old sink (the big round one) and our new Porcher Elfe sink (longer rectangular sink)!

Here is a size comparison photo, you can see that the Elfe solves our tight space problem, the Elfe sink only extends 9 inches from the wall, HUGE space saver!

Alex is holding the faucet we ended up getting, the original one I ordered was wrong, we needed a "single hole" since the sink only had one hole for the water, and I had accidently ordered a "single handle"- not the same thing, whoops!

We ended up getting a Price Pfister Sedona faucet for $89.99 at Home Depot.

Here is a picture of Alex holding the sink after attaching the drain and faucet.

Prepping to mount the sink...

And finally, the sink is up!!!

So happy with the final look! And yes, that is the original medicine cabinet to the house, someone once asked why don't we just move the mirror and cabinet over, but you can't destroy original elements to the house! Crime! Not to mention you have to move the plumbing lines, that didn't sound fun to us, no way. The new sink works great!

Here is a view from back behind the toilet (sort of), so much space now, the sink made such a difference in this room, I actually use it now! No need to run up and downstairs to use a bathroom, so nice!

*** Update!  The bathroom sure didn't stay this color for long!  Check out the new look we gave our bathroom here!