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Our Breakfast Nook Refresh – Part 1
Happy Sunday Friends! An avid reader, I’ve always loved the idea of a window seat somewhere in our home so that I could enjoy lounging the afternoon away to a good book or cuddling up with one of the dogs as I listen to the rain. When we first toured the house, I couldn’t picture a better place for a built-in than the breakfast nook. From the delightfully over-sized window and its soothing natural light throughout the day, to the sense of seclusion it offers, feeling tucked away within our otherwise open floor plan. It was the perfect spot! Now the challenge… With our humble footprint of a house, everything…
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Board & Batten – Grid Wall
Morning friends! A few months ago the Mr and I determined it was time for a change of pace and listed our home on the market (more on that to come). Now, despite all of the improvements we’d managed over the past year, I couldn’t help but feel hopelessly underwhelmed with reviewing our living room space. When we first moved in, the entirety of the main level was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, every nook and cranny in a harsh and very unflattering yellow. It felt busy and not in a good way. More like a slept through your alarm, rushed out to your car, and realized halfway to…
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Board and Batten
When we first moved into our home we found that the dining room’s previous “look” offered little in the way of charm. Initially, I armed myself with a roller and set to painting over the saturated yellow with my favorite neutral, Grey Owl by Benjamin Moore. It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do and we were left with how we wanted to inject our personality into the space. In our dining room, we found that we had one actual wall, a shared wall to the living room, and two partial walls where the walls had been opened with wide-set archways. Going for a feature wall seemed the…
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Planking – what NOT to-do
It is no secret that I am an avid admirer of just how clean planking looks and how it has the power to transform a small misshapen nook of a dining room into a light and open space. Four years ago, we decided to embark upon our first DIY-Planking escapade and two years later, with a lot of breaks in between, we were finally able to enjoy our success. Was it perfect? Far from it but from the picture below, it’s hard to see the imperfections as they just added to the charm. Despite the unexpected issues we came across, after thinking ourselves newfound experts thanks to endless blog tutorials…
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We Built This Cat Tower
Taking a break from our regularly – although not so regularly – scheduled remodeling crud to bring you something fun-ish. We built a cat tower!!! It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for awhile, debating back and forth about the details of a cat tree – whether we buy or build and when. We do have scratcher boxes all over the house that we’re constantly tripping over (or maybe it’s just me being a total clutz.) Regardless, the cats seem to ignore them half the time, even when it is RIGHT THERE. Do they walk the extra foot to the scratch box? No. Instead, the little boogers opt to dig their claws into…
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Skimming the Walls and Other Lessons in Drywall Mudding
Ah, wall skimming. Sometimes, it’s not enough to spackle the dents and holes in your walls. Sometimes, there are just too many to deal little marks and dents to deal with and trying to cover each one individually is just plain tedious. I present for your viewing pleasure, Exhibit A (left side) the wall in our soon to be the rec room. This little beauty comes pretty much as is – minus a few attempts to spackle over the dents in the wall we have done nothing to it. Exhibit B (right side) is a wall in our hallway we have spackled again and again and then finally painted in…
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Horse Fencing 101: Post Edition
Hello again! Whose ready to talk fence posts? I can feel your excitement already…I mean after all, who WOULDN’T get jazzed up over such a sensational topic! Right? But seriously, after the hassle of deciding which type of fencing material would be best for our needs and the safety of our horses we were left with the realization that fencing materials did not come with the inclusion of fence posts. Naturally, after a few minutes of, “But why though?!”, it made perfect sense yet those few minutes were quite a sad realization. Never one to turn down a challenge, the research began again. I don’t know if it’s possible but…
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Horse Fencing 101: Choosing the Right Fence
As you all know, the Mr. and I left our cozy suburban lifestyle behind when the chance to own our very own farmhouse became a viable choice for us. Now then, first things first… we have acres of rolling pasture surrounding our home but only semi cross-fenced sections with barbed wire and wobbly splintered posts. Yeah, …not going to work for my horses. So… while I could spend the day complaining about the serious hazards of barbed wire fencing and animals, let’s just leave it at I do not like it and do not permit it to be -anywhere- on my property…at all. That being said, it was time to…
