Photos of Our Cottage Kitchen New Hardwood Flooring

I can hardly believe the turn out for this week's Make Your Monday event! You all have been super busy with your creative selves, haven't you?! Thank you so much for adding your link! I will be sharing with you the projects that caught my eye a little later this week because today I'd like to show you photos {and pinch me as I know I must be dreaming} of our completed hardwood flooring in the kitchen.

Last week I shared with you some photos of the kitchen floor "surgery" we had to perform recently in order to prepare for the laying of the hardwood, along with some additional history about our kitchen. In short, I've been waiting for this flooring for a looooooong time. It has been a slow, labor intensive journey getting to this point with our kitchen. It has been a slow, labor intensive journey getting to this point with our kitchen.We've been working on it little by little for over three years now, but when you're on a budget, slow progress is better than none at all, right? We still have to tackle the trim work, install/paint beadboard, and work on a few other small projects I've been dreaming about for a while, but I feel like the hardest parts of the kitchen remodel are behind us. We've knocked out walls to install windows and french doors, installed a new plank ceiling and lighting, added trim to and then painted our standard honey oak cabinets, installed a new countertop, backsplash, and faucet, replaced the appliances, and finally over the course of the last two weekends, laid the hardwood flooring. {I literally got down on my hands and knees and kissed it when it was completed.}Thanks again to my mom who helped get us going with this project while she was here:)

So this is where we began a couple of weeks ago...This was a little scary. I was hoping our measurements were correct so that we would have nice, straight flooring. Getting the first row right was very important! I had visions of us getting halfway finished and having to rip everything out to start over due to mathematical errors! But thankfully, that didn't happen. We, do, though, have the rest of the house to go, so I'll be on pins and needles with each room, I'm sure!



We used Bruce 3/4" oak in the Marsh finish. {We're told it's the same as Gunstock, more or less.} Part of me really wanted dark wood flooring, but having two dogs and three kids, I knew I needed something that would hide dirt and hair well without me having to sweep myself silly.



It adds the warmth I've been longing for for so long...





Not to mention the shine is amazing! There is just something about living with subflooring for years that will make you appreciate a good old fashioned shiny floor when you finally get it!



I'm looking forward to seeing how the kitchen flooring will look against white doors, trim, and beadboard. The bare wood door and trimwork you see in the photos will all be painted white.



I'd like to paint my chairs a dark, rich brown that almost looks black, but not quite...



...Like the color of the frame around this floral art.



This is where it all began...



We aren't finished with the kitchen yet, but this project was definitely a major, long awaited milestone!

Make Your Monday! Week 6

I t's time for another Make Your Monday link event! Show us where your creativity has taken you lately by joining in!

To participate in Make Your Monday, just follow these 3 easy steps:

1) ~First, create a blog entry about something you made yourself. **Include in your blog entry a link back to this post so that others can discover this great list of Make Your Monday links and have an opportunity to contribute. To get this link, just click on the post title above and then copy the address that appears at the top of your browser.

2) ~Next, add your Blog name down below along with a short description of your project

3) ~Lastly, below your blog name/project description, add the permalink of the blog entry about your project {not your blog homepage}. Where's the permalink? Just click on the title of your Make Your Monday entry and then copy the address that appears in the address bar and paste it down below. It should look something like this:
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/2009/07/your_project.html.

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If your link disappears, it may be because of one of two reasons:
~You added the wrong link to MckLinky {please don't add the link to your blog homepage but instead add the link to your specific Make Your Monday post}
~You didn't add the proper Make Your Monday link to the blog entry you listed in MckLinky {please don't add the link back to my homepage but instead add the link to this post}

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Don't worry if you come back and your blog isn't listed anymore. You can just make the needed adjustments and add your link again. You can grab the Make Your Monday button for your site, too, if you like.

That's it! We're looking forward to seeing what you've been up to! Have fun visiting and commenting on all the creative projects below!

{This list will be opened at 7 pm Pacific tonight, Sunday September 20th and will remain open until Tuesday August 22nd, 12 am Pacific.}

Dark Brown Spray Paint Recommendations?

C an anyone recommend a dark brown satin or semi-gloss spray paint? It's such a deep brown, it almost looks black. I've seen sprays that are called "Expresso", but the cap looks like a medium brown and not dark brown. I've posted a photo above of the shade I'm looking for. I'm thinking about repainting my dining room chairs in this shade in the future. Any ideas? Thanks!

Kitchen Floor Surgery

Good morning, everyone! I hope you all have had a great September so far. Thank you for all your sweet messages and well wishes in my last post - I'm really looking forward to getting back to blogging!

I had a wonderful visit with my mother and it was so hard dropping her off at the airport yesterday. Little did I know a couple of weeks ago that we would finally be laying the hardwood that had been stored in the garage for three years.She is such a hardworking person who was more than happy to help us with some really heavy duty work around here. While I thought we would pass some of our time going junking, sewing, or other light weight fun activities, she was instead helping to rip out old subflooring in the kitchen, leveling out dips in the floor, hauling in heavy boxes of hardwood, and assisting in the actual install of the new flooring. Little did I know a couple of weeks ago that we would finally be removing the unsightly "hump" in our kitchen floor and laying the hardwood that had been stored in the garage for three years. I can't even remember how it came about that my mother and I decided that we'd try to coax hubs into performing surgery on our floor {to remove the "hump" that has been there since we bought the house}. Hubs couldn't believe that we'd actually give up junking for such dirty work, but he was on board and so we all tackled the floor together!

You'll see in the first photo above what our original kitchen flooring looked like. Believe me when I say that the photo makes the flooring look a lot nicer than it actually was, and you also can't see the hideous hump in the middle of floor which was the result of the previous owners trying to mesh the kitchen addition with the old part of the house. The hump, {or the protruding backbone of my kitchen as I've called it} has always driven me a little bonkers. First of all, I wasn't sure what was causing it. Second of all, I was worried that there was nothing we could do about it and that it would make laying hardwood flooring a nightmare. I remember one day a couple of years back, I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to find out what was going on with the hump, so I ripped out the linoleum with hubs help. Under the lino was a thin layer of plywood, lots of some kind of concrete patch, and this lovely yellow flooring which nearly burned my eyes out.



What a mess that concrete patch was! I think the previous owner was trying to fill in the big gap between the old and new parts of the house. We had to break it all up with a hammer to remove it.






I was so relieved when we removed that yellow lino...Even the ugly subloor looked better in comparison!



We weren't yet ready to pull up the rest of the flooring to fix the hump or install our hardwood {we were getting ready to host a party and it also just wasn't in our budget at the time} so we just painted over the mess with cheap white paint for the time being. Note to readers: Never use cheap white paint to paint your floors. They will never look clean. But I lived with it like this for two years, sometimes biting my tongue about it, but not often.



To my delight, though, the "hump" underwent major surgery two weeks ago.



Old subflooring was removed,



...the hump was sanded down as far as we could get it,



... and new plywood subflooring was added.



{By the way, who needs a dog house when your husband can sleep under the floor when you're mad at him?}



The hump was just about all gone after all of this, but my mom and I added some floor leveler over the plywood to smooth out a couple of dips caused by the slight height difference between the kitchen addition and dining room. I must say that at the point the photo below was taken, my middle child declared that "our kitchen floor is getting uglier by the day".

See that weird, colorfully wrapped thing hanging from the ceiling? That's the light above our kitchen island that we kept whacking our heads on for two weeks. I thought that if we covered it with something bright and patterned {an old vintage sheet}, we'd still have some sense left by the end of the project.

Yeah...that didn't work.



I was still reluctant to believe that all this subfloor prep work would totally solve the height difference problem, but I can say that now that the 3/4 inch hardwood has been installed, you would never, ever know that we had a hump backed kitchen. Surgery was a complete success!

We still have a little bit of hardwood to lay in front of the french doors because we need to spline a transition door piece {add a "tongue" to the transition piece where it currently just has a groove so that it connects to the flooring properly} - and what do you know - there is only one place to buy splines around here. They were closed when we were working on the flooring this weekend, so we just went as far as we could go. I've since read that you can just make splines yourself, but we didn't know that then.

I'll share photos of the new flooring soon. I still can't believe that finally, FINALLY, we have one room with some nice, shiny flooring. I thank my mother for motivating and helping us to tackle this project while she was here to help and hubs for his skillful execution!

A is for....

A is for Away, for that is where I will be for much of September.





M is for Mom, who will arrive shortly for a nice, leisurely visit.



A is also for Appreciation for all those that visit Twice Remembered in my absence...



Please make yourselves at home here and I will see you when I return!

Another Not-So-Small Clock Transformation

I've been wanting to post about another clock transformation that I recently worked on and I thought the fun My Project Under $15 link event at Maman Tattoos, Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage, DIY Day at Kimba's Soft Place to Land and Hooked on Fridays at Hooked on Houses would be a perfect reason to write about it today.

Back a couple of years ago, I found this little large beauty behind the counter at Goodwill. I asked to see it and it only took me a nanosecond to tell the cashier I was buying it. It came from Ballard Design and the original price sticker on the back of the clock says: Catalog Price - $289, Outlet price $215. Wow! I don't how much the person who had the clock before me paid for it, but do you want to know how much I shelled out at Goodwill that day?Don't you love finding good things in your closet...?

$12.99.

Uh-huh. You read it correctly - just $12.99!

The color, though, was all wrong for my cottage. My original plan was to paint it in an oil rubbed bronze finish similar to this clock at Pottery Barn. But I didn't have a place for the clock at the time, {and really, I still don't, though we are working on that}. So I stored the clock away until I discovered it in the back of my closet a couple of weeks ago. {Don't you love finding good things in your closet, as opposed to not-so-good things like - say - a mouse...or a sandwich?}



I thought the face was just fine as it was, so I removed it and put it aside so that I could work on the rest of the clock.



After a couple of coats of Rustoleum's Colonial Red, which I already had on hand, and some antiquing glaze - also in my d-i-y arsenal, she was transformed before my very eyes. From green and dowdy to...










Red and radiant!



I think she wears red really well, don't you?!

So total cost? $12.99 for the clock + the paint and glaze I already had on hand = Less than $15!

{Um. Is it just me or does the clock look bigger red than it did when it was green? *scratches head*}

Check out all the other inexpensive projects and even join in yourself by clicking on the buttons below! Have fun!

New Cottage Front Door and Make Your Monday Highlights

A little earlier this summer, hubs and a friend intalled a new front door that really suits my cottage style. It took a while to convince hubs that using a door like this as a front door was really okay. He seemed to think it belonged only on the side or back of the house. In my desperate attempts to sway him, I was fortunately able to find photos in magazines and online that showed french style doors used as front doors. I think he's pleased with the door afterall. The little entry way at our front door as you come into the house was always very dark, but now all the extra light really brightens the space and it doesn't feel so much like a cave anymore. We haven't painted the door yet - we'll probably do that in the spring when we work on the exterior of the house, but for now, I think it looks 100% better compared to the old door metal door from the 70's that was there before! Now all the extra light really brightens the space...

Now, I have some good news and some bad news about Make Your Monday! Which do you want to hear first? The good? The bad?

Ok, we'll talk about the bad first and get it out of the way: I won't be hosting any Make Your Monday link parties for the next 2 to 3 weeks because that's about how long my mother will be staying with me. She's been visiting my aunt up until now, but she arrives here on Sunday. I haven't seen her in a couple of years and we have a lot of catching up to do! Also, I will be doing the Make Your Monday link parties through October but won't be hosting any in the months of November or December. I hope you understand and I know that you'll enjoy participating in all the other wonderful link parties that take place throughout the week on various blogs. If you want to know where those are, just look in my side bar near the bottom under where it says Events.

Now the good news - actually, the GREAT news is that we had 44 projects submitted for this weeks event! That's just...awesome! Thanks to each and every one of you who submitted, and let me tell you, many who have found my site through a search engine end up spending a lot of time going through the Make Your Monday links. It's just so very inspiring, and yes, even a little addictive!

So on to this weeks highlights! Let's get started!

Amanda at The Worthy House made darling lamp shades from ribbon...{red polka dot! *swoon*!}



Ashley at Shanty2Chic transformed a ho-hum clock into an eye catching show piece...



Christina at The Esselman Family created a piece of art that would rival the Pottery Barn version anyday!


Lyssa at the Crafty Clique made the sweetest baby boys quilt. Again, I'm a sucker for polka dots and chocolate brown!



Cindy at Cottage Instincts is a girl after my own heart with these adorable custom clothespins she made! I LOVE the vintage looking papers she used!




And now we have Jennifer at The Old Painted Cottage who has toiled alongside her husband for the past year turning their first home into their dream cottage. They aren't finished yet, but I guarantee you that what they've been able to accomplish in the last 12 months will knock your socks off! Here is just a taste of their big reveal....Simply amazing!



For more photos and info on all of today's featured Make Your Monday bloggers, please be sure to visit their blogs and say hello! And if you haven't gotten a chance already, check out the rest of the fabulous Make Your Monday links from this week. Thank you to all that joined in!

And remember, Maman Tattoo is having a great link party on Wednesday {tomorrow} and the theme centers around projects that cost less that $15. I hope you are able to join in on the fun!