Budget Mudroom

Our house was built in 1989.  We've replaced all the sinks and shut off valves in the house except for in the mudroom and laundry room. 

We found a cabinet on clearance for $40 at Lowe's.  It was discounted due to door damage.  The door damage happened to be 2 small red scuffs that I cleaned off with a Mr. Clean magic eraser.  We brought the cabinet home and hubby said he'd work on the sink in a few weeks.  Well the sink didn't want to wait the shut off valves started  leaking a week later!  So that led to us replacing the sink at 9pm at night.

Before:

The sink was the one we were originally going to use for our kitchen. It came from Lowe's 5 almost 6  years ago. Then hubby thought we should use an under mount sink and I'm so glad we did.  The counter top was discounted from Lowe's as was the faucet.

Now:

The upper cabinet came from Habitat Restore for under $10.  I used spray primer for plastic on the doors since they are thermofoil.  Then spray painted them white.  They had yellowed.   I do plan to add some trim to the cabinet.

Under the window I want to put a bench with baskets under it.

On the other wall I hung another cabinet I found at Habitat Restore for $10.  I did the same to the door because it had yellowed.  I added a 1/4" piece of plywood painted white to the side and some trim.

Before:

Now:

Now to just paint the walls, add the rest of the trim, put a bench in and add some bifold doors for the closet and it will be done.

Entry Table

Over the years many things have changed.   When we first moved in our walls were a builder grade flat white paint.  Then I painted them an off white then the orange.  Now they are the tan color.

edited:  Look what I found today (5/8/14) going through some pictures!  This was at Christmas time a few years back.  Grandma & Grandpa Owen were over.  Goodness the boys look so small!! :)

 That was before we put in new doors & windows and before we refinished the hardwood floors and redid all the trim in the house.  The floors had a walnut color stain on them.  When we refinished them we just gave them a good sanding and clear coated them.

Here's what it looked like when it was orange.

Then I painted it all and redid the trim.  We put all the oak trim in after we moved in.  Hubby milled all the trim and we stained it the golden oak color.  Now I have it stained with the java gel.

I started to make a cabinet to go by the front door to hold shoes, gloves and hats.  The only problem is while I could get it to that point I have no idea how to make doors or drawers that I wanted.  That is all hubby's department!   So instead I took the top off that I made, bought some legs and put a table together with baskets underneath.  The unfinished cabinet will be used for something else eventually.

 

 

The table legs were from Lowe's  They were roughly $88.  The apron was left over poplar from our workshop. The table dimensions are 36" tall, 18" deep and 78" long.  For the aprons the short ends are 6"x 10 1/2" and the long ends are 6"x 70 1/2".  I used pocket screws to put it all together.  The stain color is Early American.

The baskets under the table are from Target.   They were $39.99 each.
The lamps were from Habitat Restore for like $5 each.  They were brass and I spray painted them ORB.

Linked up with:

Many Projects Going On At Once!

Currently we are building cabinets for a clients kitchen, doing a mudroom cabinet plus I have a few small things I'm working on for our house.  I've got a dining table I'm making, 2 night stands and a cabinet for by our front door.

Here's  a few pictures of what's going on around here.

That was after I came back from Lowe's.  I bought wood for the dining table and the top for my cabinet by the front door.

Here's the cabinet before I painted the ends.  It still needs a center piece of plywood, face frame, shelves, 4 doors and trim around the bottom.

 I found the table legs at Lowe's. They were the bulkiest ones they had and need to be cut down to 29" since they are 35" tall.   I plan on cutting the bun feet off and also some of the top part. 

These are the side panels for my bedside tables.  The little tables will have 3 drawers each.  The tops will be stained and the rest will be painted black.

Bathroom Cabinet Pt. 2

Remember I bought the wrong hinges for the cabinet.

You can read about that HERE

I went to Lowe's and bought the new hinges.  Only problem is 20 years later they've decided it would be better not to use as much material in making them.  They are smaller now so the holes do not line up!

I ended up filling the holes in the cabinet and on the doors.  I sanded down the paint then used glue & toothpicks to fill the holes.   I'm currently letting it dry then I'll snip them off and sand again.  Fix the paint and get this cabinet finished and back on the wall!!

Small Bookcase

This was my Dad's bookcase when he was a child.

It started out stained a light honey color, then I painted it white and now it's green.  This bookcase has been all over the house.  It's been in my room, the kids rooms, the family room and now it's in the living room!

I don't think I ever got a picture of it while it was painted white.

I decided to put the finished bookcase in my living room to replace the table that was near the end of the  sectional.

Buffet

We picked up the buffet on Monday.  Thank you Sarah for giving it to us!  I love it!   Since I hurt my arm on Tuesday, I had to wait for my boys to help bring it into the house for me.  Jacob helped carry it in today.  I got it cleaned up, lightly sanded and then put a coat of primer on it!  I then dug through my paint stash and found I'm out of black paint.  That's ok that just means I get to go to Lowe's again!

 

I didn't prime the stretcher wood at the bottom because I plan on taking it off and putting a shelf there in it's place.  Like what the buffet in my mood board has:

 

As for how I hurt my arm, we were loading up the trailer so we could leave for work and the door closed on my arm!  OUCH!  It's all bruised with some minor swelling.  Needless to stay my wrist is hurting pretty good now after priming that cabinet.  Time for some motrin!  

Here's the last project I worked on.  Hubby does custom finished carpentry.  He built an entertainment center for Sarah, the one who gave me the buffet, and I did all the finishing on it.  We went and installed it on Monday.

 The wall before and after.

You can see more of his work on his website HERE.

Dresser Turned TV Stand

I took a free to us dresser and turned it into a t.v. stand.   It started out looking like this:

I gave it a light sanding, filled the knob holes, primed and painted it.  I also found some trim from Hubby's workshop and gave that a light sanding, prime and painted. 

Trim I used on the bottom of the dresser.

Some of the primed trim.

Then with Hubby's help we turned it into this:

 

We still need to raise the t.v. up just a tad to get it to slide perfectly underneath it.  

Kitchen Progress

This has got to be one of the world's longest kitchen remodel projects EVER!  We started buying things to redo the kitchen roughly 4 years ago this summer.   We bought nearly everything like appliances, wood to build the cabinets, hinges, knobs/pulls, drawer slides etc.  Then we built the cabinet carcasses.  It wasn't until the Summer of 2011, specifically July, that we started to gut the kitchen.

This was the picture on the house listing that we looked at before we purchased the house.

The ugly kitchen....and really yes the previous owners used that picture on the listing!!

  We got to planning what we wanted to do:

in the mean time we had painted since moving in.

Then we got to work.  Pete helped a little but most of the demo was done by my younger 2 boys and myself.

Jacob & Nathan taking out the drywall

Remodeling is a messy job!

Just some of the wiring damage we found inside the walls.

After all the demo and clean up, Pete got to work on putting it all back together.   We redid all the electrical, added more recessed lights, wiring for under cabinet lighting, dry walled, redid the hardwood floors Pete installed a few years ago and painted.

Pete mudding and taping the drywall

Pete refinishing the hardwood floor.

Floor is done!

Cabinets are in, although not done.

It's coming along.  That's a granite slab leftover from gutting a homeowners kitchen.

We still need to make the cabinet doors, shelves and drawers.  We still need to make and install all the trim and get the granite installed.

At least for the most part the kitchen is usable!