Chairs!

We've had our new dining room table for almost a month now - and gave our old table and chairs to some friends. That means we've had no chairs! We *do* have a couple of flea market finds...some old ladderback chairs that are a little too short for our table. My orginal plan was to just collect old chairs like that from yardsales and flea markets. The problem that I'm having is finding them in good condition (not wobbly with worn out seats) and also I'm having trouble finding old chairs that have the proper seat height. I even searched ebay, but I'm reluctant to buy chairs from there because I can actually try them out to determine their stability, plus usually if they are really nice chairs, they're just way out of my budget - and THEN there are shipping costs.

Last week on Ebay, though, I did find someone that had an Ebay store and he sells rocking chairs, ladderback chairs, etc. The chairs were a decent price, about $79 each, but shipping was $30 per chair - and I need 8 chairs! But I read about his chairs on his site and he said that the chairs were make by Hinkle Chair Company in Springfield, Tennessee - just a hop, skip and a jump from here (no shipping costs - we can pick them up ourselves! ) Hinkle Chair company is a family owned business that has been around since 1834 and they are the company that makes rocking chairs for Cracker Barrel - which are really good quality, sturdy chairs that will last forever.

So I did a little research and found the Hinkle Chair Company website. I contacted someone from the company and asked him to give me a price on the chair that I'm looking for. He quickly got back to me and let me know the price was $36 to $41, depending on if I wanted slat or rush seats, and all 8 chairs would cost me about $322 if I went with the slat seats. I couldn't believe it! I was expecting to pay at least $80 to $100 per chair!!!!

I talked it over with Jeff and we decided to go ahead and put our order in because, well, we need chairs, lol. I went back to the Hinkle site, which appears to be new because not all of their items were listed yet. But I did notice that they had added their ladderback chairs to their catalog. I was puzzled to see that the price was not $36, but $69. My heart sank. I knew we really couldn't afford to spend $600 on chairs right now.

So I contacted Blake, (the Hinkle representative that quoted me the $36 price) and asked him about the price difference. I just received an email back from him. He wrote "I think I quoted you the[b]wholesale price[/b]...." [size=9]([i]Oh drats!!!![/i]) [/size] [b]"...but will honor the price that was quoted." [/b] I'm just dumbfounded! I'm getting these chairs at half the cost - they are losing money - but they, or I should say Blake, gracefully honored his word. Wow, I just can't believe it. I would highly recommend this company and I plan on supporting them in the future if we need more chairs or rocking chairs or a porch swing.

I just placed my order - I'm so excited! Here are the simple chairs we are getting. It took a while for me decide between the rush seating and the wooden slats, but I finally decided on the slat seating because I think they will be easier to clean - food and drink spills will just fall right through the slats, plus Jeff really likes the style. ***Edit: We decided to go with the rush seats afterall...we don't have to worry about loose slats in the future....*** Here is the chair (imagine with rush seating):

Yum

I'm sitting here this very sunny morning enjoying my hot cup of coffee. I so look forward to it each morning. On mornings that I have to take Sydney and Adrian to school, we all have to get up way too early for our own good, lol, and so when we get back home around 7:30, the girls just want to snuggle up in the living room and watch PBS, I get them a breakfast bar and some milk, then I sit down to nurse my irish cream laden coffee. This is my way of warming up to the day:)

Things are still pretty upside down here at home. Our french doors and kitchen windows are now installed, so most of the dirty work is over (for now). Soon we'll be putting up drywall and trimming out the windows from the inside. But for now, I'm perfectly content to just have SUNSHINE!!!! Yesterday, I didn't do any kind of work in the other parts of the house because I couldn't pull myself out of the kitchen. And boy, does the rest of the house need attention! Big time:( A lot of stuff, garage sale things, etc., just got piled onto our loveseat and other parts of the living room, I have a ton of laundry to do, and the girls once perfectly organized room is now slightly trashed. It's amazing how if you don't stay right on top of things practically 24/7, everything just starts falling apart. But oh well. Such is life.

French doors and windows!

Well, yesterday was a big day. Actually, it was a very big weekend. On Saturday, Jeff completed the framing for the windows in the dining area but ran out of daylight and didn't get to install the windows. Yesterday, he knocked out the wall where our french doors would go. As you'll see in the pictures below, we had no walls whatsoever on one side of our kitchen and dining room! I'm sure our neighbors enjoyed the show, lol. It was crazy but a lot was accomplished. Norm, our very multi-talented friend [size=9](he's a hairdresser, he can sew, AND he's a great carpenter!) [/size]came and helped Jeff get the doors installed. It was a big job and took quite a while. Norm's wife, my good friend and the mother of the the girls' best friends, brought over some BBQ and salad and potato salad [size=10](she is amazing too!) [/size]later in the day and it was so nice...the kids running around outside having a blast, us enjoying all the craziness while trying to keep the [b]six [/b]kids from stepping on nails, and of course the guys working on the doors. I wish I would have taken pictures of everyone... But it was a day to remember, that's for sure!

Below are some pictures of our progress so far. The doors are in and the windows will be installed this afternoon [size=9](it may rain tomorrow, and having the windows before then may be a good thing)[/size]. You'll see how the inside and outside looked before everything was ripped out and then you'll see how they currently look. I took a picture of the dining area this morning so that you can see just how much light comes in now, and the light you see is diffused because of the plastic we have up. I am *thrilled* to wake up to and to come home to a cheery kitchen.

So the windows and doors are our first kitchen project. I'm not exactly sure what is next. Probably the countertops and sink, plastering the walls, and then the floors, followed by the lighting. I'm dreading the floors because we're going to be staining them ourselves, and that process will take awhile. We'll have to move the appliances and furniture to the living room!

So here are the photos. I love the photo of the girls having lunch in our wall-less dining room, hehe.
















Great job, Jeff and Norm!!!!

Kitchen Furniture

I thought I'd share a few pics of the kitchen island and primitive style farm table we had built. I'm really serious about getting back to basics! Getting rid of our glasstop dining table will help me *so* much when it comes to cleaning. Kids are just walking fingerprints anyway...glass never stays clean, hehe! The back wall behind the table will soon have windows!











For information on where to buy this furniture and pieces like it, check out Fuzzot Furniture. Be sure to look at their photos and their "about" page:)

New Tub!

Here are the pics of the new tub....











We haven't added the new faucets yet because we don't want the bronze finish to be scratched up during the wall and tile installation. Now we're still using the old one for now. It's coming along!

If Walls Could Talk

Our house is just one big project right now, lol. I started patching up the walls in the living room and hallway the other day to prepare them for painting. Then I realized just how dinged up and coated with paint these 30 year old walls are. We're using a really good quality satin paint (we have kids - the walls must be cleanable!) but the satin finish has a slight sheen and it really highlights all the imperfections in the wall. So, I made the major decision to drastically change the look and feel of our walls. I went to Lowes and bought a huge bucket of texturizing plaster and brought it home and went to work! As I've mentioned before, my goal is to turn this place into a cozy little cottage. The walls are going to lend themselves to that cottage type feel now. Basically, I'm just applying a thick layer of the plaster (or drywall compound, whatever you call it) in a random pattern over the walls. It looks so cool!!! Very warm, very old, very charming. And I haven't even painted yet! I like the look so much that I'm going to also do the kitchen and dining room even though we've already painted in there. (Lol, Jeff wasn't too happy about that idea, but it will be well worth it. Poor guy has already painted the kitchen twice to please his picky little wife!) I think I'm going to wait to do those rooms closer to spring when we'll be tearing out the countertops and floors. It is very much a process and will take a really long time to complete the entire house, but that is my goal...little by little, room by room. And it's so fun to put that stuff up, too. I feel like a painter slapping my brush around on a huge canvas!



One wall in the living room, the back wall, is going to be painted a very refreshing bluish/greenish color. It's the same color that will be going in a small portion of the bathroom (We have a whole gallon of it...would be a shame to waste it!) I put a large sample of it on the living room back wall the other day and couldn't believe how wonderful it felt:) From the living room, you see four different colors...cool bluish-green/sunny warm yellow in the living room/ mellow peasoup green in the kitchen, and a bold cranberry red in the dining room. I can't wait to see how it all comes together. I'm thinking about applying a loose white glaze over the top of the paint to settle into the crevices in order to highlight the textured walls



Next week during the holiday break, Jeff and Norm will start ripping out our old tub. I'm so nervous! But I'm looking forward to replacing it.



Our roof was completed a week or two ago - so glad to have THAT taken care of! No more leaks in the sunroom! We removed the skylights because that's where the water was coming in.



I guess that's all for now!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub, A Roof and a Tub

One drawback of buying an older home is that you have to replace what is old and worn out. But one advantage of buying an older home is that you get to replace what is old and worn out with what truly matches your taste.



Our home has good bones, but there are certain elements in each room that will slowly but certainly be replaced one room at a time. For instance, I really don't like our baseboards. They are very plain and not very farmhouse/cottage-like. I love nice wide baseboards, so what I have in mind are about 5 inches wide. We need trim around our windows (our windows have none...*yawn*)and also some pretty crown moulding throughout most of the house. All of the plain core doors will be replaced by more substantial doors with more detail. And the ceilings throughout our house are either popcorn or plaster, which does not at all go with the kind of environment I'm trying to create. I would love to cover over the ceilings with pine planks painted a gloss white or off white. Yeah, we're going to be busy for a while, lol, but it's very exciting and fulfilling for me to slowly turn the cottage that currently only exists in my mind into a beautiful real space.



On to the rub-a-dub-dub part of this entry...Our house has two and a half bathrooms, but one of them is upstairs and incomplete (our whole upstairs is one huge incomplete space!). So that now leaves us with only one whole bathroom...a small one at that. I didn't at all mind this when we were considering buying the house because I knew that when the girls were old enough for us to move to the master bedroom upstairs, Sydney would take over our current bedroom/half bath and the two younger girls would use the full bath for all of their girly needs. And I hate cleaning bathrooms, so I wasn't at all turned off by the idea of having a smaller bath. It was still bigger than the ones we had before when we were renting.



The decor, however, is a different story. The flooring is linoleum that is relatively new but very plain. The light fixture above the sink screams 70's, the one above the door is a sad little excuse for lighting. The shelving is plastic-coated ClosetMaid, which is great if they are inside of a closet, but mine are just out in the open. The countertop use to be ugly yellow laminate covered with contact paper (ick!), but that was our very first makeover tackled our first month here. We replaced it with tile and it looks much better. It looks like what you might find in an older country home. Below is a picture of the countertop we did...it's certainly not perfect but looks better than yellow laminate!

The tub, ugh, has seen better days. It is very old and unsightly. And narrow. I keep it hidden behind shower curtains. We knew that someday we would replace it, but we'll soon be replacing the linoleum floor with tile and if the tub is ever going to come out, now is the time to do it. I've had my eye on a certain Whirlpool tub (below) and told Jeff about a month ago that this is what I would love to have. Since the bathroom is small, why not make it small and cozy and relaxing...a pretty little jewel box in which to escape? And I can't tell you how much this would help me when my joints are giving me trouble or when my stess levels are at their peak.







Well, today Jeff called me from work to tell me that not only are we ready to get our roof replaced, but we'll be able to renovate our bathroom now as well...*and* he's even springing for the Whirlpool tub:) I was so happily surprised! Surprised because, for one thing, we'll have to literally move the wall on one end of the tub down about an inch and a half...tearing down and building it up again. Plus, the tub will need to be surrounded by tile so that we can also us it to shower. So lots of work involved.



Besides replacing the lighting and sink faucet and door, we'll also have to build real wood shelving to replace the Closetmaid shelves. This shouldn't be hard, and I'd like to add some nice moulding to it for an added touch. The old baseboards will need to be replaced with nice wide baseboards, plus crown moulding added around the tops of the walls. Ah, and I would love to put up pine planks on the ceiling, but that is kind of spendy, so we'll have to see. I know that we are putting this in our kitchen this coming spring, so maybe we should practice installing it in our bathroom, lol. It's not a big space, so maybe we can fit it into our budget. As I mentioned, our floor will be tile that looks really old world. The color is called Toasted Wheat (below). I'm not sure if the tile surrounding the tub should be the same as the floor or more similar to the countertop. We'll see.







We are going to have so much going on here at home. We have a roofer in mind but we'll probably be getting our roofing shingles in Chattanooga, and I don't know *when* this month we'll get down there. Our weekends are booked with activities (yardsale, congregation picnic, wedding!) I hate the thought of waiting until November to begin, but that is probably when it will be. This month, Jeff is going to start on whipping the deck back into shape, replacing old boards and then restaining it. Plus, we're working on our living room. It would be nice if we could just put the paint up, lol, since I finally have the right color, but we need to first repair and dings in the walls, and before that, Jeff has to run the wiring for surround sound and a couple of wall sconces that are going to flank the fireplace. Such a process! But it's enough work to keep us busy this fall.



Poor Lindsay and Zoe...I have all that new bedding, etc., that I bought several weeks ago for their room, and it's yet to even come out of the packaging:( They don't even know I have it! It's at the top of my closet now. Eese and I often talk about how with our homes, if we do anything, we want to do it right. I don't want to pull out the "accessories" for their room until the room itself is completed (new paint, moulding, baseboards, doors, refinished furniture...), but I'm happy that I have something to go on and a design plan for their room.



That's my home news for the day:)