A splash of color

As I mentioned earlier in the week I was looking to add some color to the kitchen to tie in the turkey plates that were my great-great grandmothers (and they were hanging in my grandmothers kitchen until she died this past spring).  I was having a tough time--nothing at Bed Bath and Beyond, Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, Chefscatalog.com, Amazon.....well you get the idea.  Nothing was even close to the right color.

Then I stumbled upon some pieces on Amazon from Le Creuset that looked like the RIGHT color!  The only problem was no one had anything other than the utensil crock.  :(  So on a whim yesterday I called the outlet in Leesburg and found that they had the color--the regular stores weren't carrying it anymore and a lot of the pieces were 40% off!  PLUS they had canisters---WOOHOO!  I picked them up today after Brody got off the bus and I love them---the color is perfect--like it was made for those plates.  It's a great splash of color. :)

Old kitchen canisters for flour and sugar--plain white

New blue canisters and utensil holder=splash of color and ties in the plates

A close up-there was a larger one too but I wasn't sure what I would store in it!  Bread?  lol

Close up--I am thinking of getting rid of that spice rack

A close up of the turkey plates!  I have 6 in total--two on the side of each cabinet over the sink and two up above the sink

What a difference......

We've lived in this house for 10 years and I have pretty much always hated the white cabinets.  I prefer darker ones but mostly because the white ones SHOW EVERYTHING!  Since I couldn't easily and inexpensively change the color of the cabinets I decided to change the color of the hardware.  Last year my parents had their kitchen remodeled and came across the spare knobs from their old cabinets (that they had put on not long before the renovation).  They gave me these extra ones forever ago and I hadn't thought about trying them until now.......

Old and new

Old and new from far away

All new

I had to buy 46 of them but thankfully Lowes stilled carried the color etc.  I have since gotten a paper towel holder that is about the same color and changed the pantry door knob to the same color as well.  Next up are a new utensil holder (that should arrive tomorrow) to pull in the blue from the turkey plates on the wall and hopefully some new flour and sugar containers in the same blue to replace the white ones that are next to the bananas on the counter.

They work fast!

In the 3 hours I was at the gym and running one errand the guys took down all of our old gutters and put up bright and shiny new ones!  The good news is since they are done Brody will get a nap today! YAY!  (way too much noise yesterday for Brody to nap)

Yep they are new!  And they look bigger which I guess is good! 

Shiny and new

From the 2nd floor looking at the porch overhang

Same spot yesterday with the old gutters

A new roof in 8 hours!

Today we had a new roof put on our house.  We kept waiting for a hail storm or something to get a new one from our insurance company but the hail storms seemed to hit about 5 miles away instead.  Oh well.  Our roof is almost 20 years old and had at least one leak that we knew of--couple that with the fact that our home inspector in 2002 said the roof wasn't going to last more than a few years.....it was time to get a new roof.  These guys showed up at 8am and left around 4pm--you would never have known they were here except the fact that the new roof looks awesome!  ;)  Tomorrow they come back to install new gutters!

Parts of the old roof

A guy up on the roof in the very beginning

Many guys on the roof now--lol

All done!

This is the small "roof" over the porch.  Sorry about the screen in the picture but you can see the color/pattern of the shingles.

Neverending

I hadn't posted many pictures since the carpet first arrived in the basement and honestly it feels like a never ending project.  Most of the things are where they need to be like the TV, the toys etc but it's the little things like finding homes for all of the pictures, stuff on the walls in the play room and FINDING A NEW HOME FOR THE POOL TABLE!  Does anyone want to buy a beautiful pool table that has seriously been used a total of 10 times? It's currently in pieces all over the spare bedroom as you will see.  ;)  So we are still actively working on piecing it all together but other things around the house like laundry and the dishes seem to always get in the way.  lol

Angle 1 of the play room--only Hokie stuff is going on the walls

Angle 2 of the play room

The main TV/couch area

The spare bedroom with the parts of the pool table strewn about

The catch all side of the basement that will eventually house that fridge, maybe a bar and maybe a foosball and/or air hockey table.

Just in time!

The bedroom in the basement is put together just in time for Evan's parents to get here later today.  They will notice a new flat screen TV on the wall since we couldn't find a TV stand that was tall enough/not too wide for the old TV.  (well I found stands that were but only for flat screen TVs and I got this TV as a graduation gift from college so it's definitely not flat-lol)  We will be tucking the cords up behind the TV but for now the room is totally livable again!  The bathroom is almost serviceable as well.  Before yesterday it was PACKED with stuff from the remodel/carpet etc.  I cleaned all that I could yesterday but the pool table slate is sitting in front of the shower and it's way too heavy for me to help Evan move....which means I can't get into the shower to clean in it until they get here and Poppy helps Evan move it.  Oh well.  :)

Carpet!

Yesterday they put the carpet in the basement....which means the remodel/repair is now complete!  Just need to start putting all of the furniture etc into place which will take a few days since I can't do it alone.  Stay tuned for the final look!  (and yes the carpet is very light-Evan's choice not mine-lol)

Carpet gets here tomorrow!!!

I am so happy that the carpet gets put in tomorrow--maybe then we can finish putting the basement back together!  On Saturday we put the big TV and couches in the spot they will live now and it looks pretty good (well except for the lack of carpet and we didn't move the coffee table yet-lol).  Tuesday night will be busy around here trying to get things into their new homes!

I love donation day!

I know I've said this before but roughly once a month we gather things for a donation.   If you haven't used it yet....you should.  It's so EASY!  I log onto http://www.gooddonor.org/ and select when I want to donate, what types of things I am donating and they just show up!The basement overhaul meant a lot of random things were going this time-things that we had but I have no idea why we still had them.  Like the 2 large boom boxes.  I know one was mine in college but I don't know about the other one.  Who uses those anymore?  ;)  A lot of random toys from the basement--and I mean random like crappy Happy Meal toys--all of the good toys are still down there.  I also got rid of a lot of old clothes that were too big--which exposed a huge problem in my closet.  I have not one long sleeved shirt that fits now.  I have a few 3/4 length shirts that are a little big (size L) but I probably need to get a few that fit.  I have found that even though I am now a M top I can't always wear a M because it tends to be too short in my arms AND my torso.    Hopefully I can find some acceptable "tall" ones on Old Navy.com or something.  Anyway.....it was GREAT to get that stuff out of the basement.  There were other things I wanted to part with but Evan wasn't ready yet.  ;) 

And no the cute kitty in the window is NOT getting donated

The basement is a work in progress

We are still trudging through the basement debacle.  The carpet should be arriving in another week or so--they could have it put in next week but Evan would rather they do it when he's in town (and actually that works best for me too in case there are issues etc). I "think" we know where things are going to go but only time will tell if they fit where we think they will.  Are we having fun yet?  ;)

This is where the TV and couches are slated to go

This side of the room is empty-possibly a bar in our future?

The pool table will be moving here

The bed will go back where it was.  ;)

Clearly this will be the kids' new play room

Today's basement video

Maybe the new look of the old pool room/new playroom is why the Hokies pulled off the HUGE win today!  It's at the end of the video.  I can't wait to start putting the cool stuff we have on the walls.  :)

Basement update VIDEO

Pictures don't do it justice

With the flash the pictures are washed out and shiny but without the flash everything is very dark.  :(  So use your imagination I guess.  I love how the green bedroom has turned out.  I think it looks great!  They got almost all of the 1st coat on the walls in the main part of the bedroom done today as well.  Tomorrow will be drywall, baseboards, 2nd coat and the Hokie room! I will take a video tomorrow night with all of the lights on and maybe the colors will seem right.  ;)   I can't wait for this fiasco to be OVER!

Basement bedroom with the flash-shiny and lighter than in person.

Main part of the basement without the flash-the ladder is where the TV used to be.

Basement bedroom without the flash--very dark--the real color is somewhere in between.  

3 inches?

According to the guys that were on my roof earlier there were at least 3 ijnches of crap in our gutters.  The people that lived here before us had these screens put on (unelss it was the builder) that kept out most large things like leaves and branches.  Well those are DEAD now.  They were so flimsy after years and years of being up there they were almost like ribbon with wire on the sides.  So they had to go--of course this means they want to sell us new screens BUT they reccommend you still clean them every year even with the screens.  Which means in the end it's cheaper to just get them cleaned every year.  ;)  I wish I had a picture of the small tree that has been growing off and on out of the corner gutter for years now.  THankfully it's gone now--I just wish I had takjen a picture of it so I could look back and laugh.  We do have a large overgrown tree on one side of our house that is rotting the wood trim and tearing up our shingles apparently--he showed me pictures.    Can I do the "hail or something damage my roof so we can get it replaced for free" dance now?

One of the many piles of crap that came out of the gutter-the windows were wet since they were getting splashed by the hose--sorry for the picture quality for that reason.

This was one of the screens--in this pictrure it was flapping in the breeze waving at me.

Decisions are being made!

Since the painters start work this Thursday we had to make some decisions quickly!  The picture below shows the color we are doing the walls in the basement "mocha" and the color of the bedroom in the basement "oakmoss".  They play nicely off the neutral colored carpet we are going with "oakman".  The name of the carpet color makes me laugh for some reason.  :)  Hopefully the painting will be done on Saturday like they promised.  Then we will hopefully get the carpet installed the following week! 

Then in the old pool room/red room we are still doing Hokie colors.  Originally we were thinking of doing chair rail around the middle of the room and maroon on top and orange on the bottom.  I was worried the maroon wouldn't work very well with some of the large Hokie decorations we have.  Not to mention one of them would almost blend and look funny.  I certainly didn't want orange on top--way too much orange.  lol  So we saw a bunch of pictures of basements etc where they did 2 walls one color and 2 walls another.  Then one of the Hokie things could go on the short orange wall and look really good.  :)  So the long walls will be all maroon and the short walls will be orange.  The chair rail has been scrapped.  Home Depot has the official NCAA colors in the Glidden paint but our painter uses Sherwin Williams so we shall see what he says.  This is a Chicago Bears example of how we would do the walls.

Dear Freecycle, I love you.

I don't know how many of you use "Freecycle" but I love it. http://www.freecycle.org/ Yes the constant emails are annoying and I have no desire for about 95% of the stuff that comes up but every once in awhile something pops up that is awesome.  (for those that aren't aware--Freecycle is a site that you register for based on your neighborhood etc and people post things that they want out of their house--for free of course)  Earlier today someone said they had some instant pendant lights that just screwed into a recessed light fixture.  I said I would take them and I picked them up.  Ok.  Now for starters there are 2 of them--never used and the tag on the box says they are from "Plow and Hearth" with an original retail of $49.95 each!  You can actually find them still on their site here.  I don't think I have a good place to put them in my house really since my kitchen is all white and they are an ivory type shade with brown but I hope they can be used in my parents new kitchen--the colors sound like they will work perfectly!

Contemplating colors

I think I've narrowed down the colors for the walls in the basement.  (keep in mind the pictures show the colors a little darker than they are in real life and Evan hasn't chimed in yet but I bet he says "sounds good to me"  lol)  The picture below shows some browns on the left and a green on the right.  I am thinking the green will be a great color for the bedroom down there.  Right now it's a very pale blue and is kind of blah.  Since I have to buy all new bedding this green should be very easy to work with.  The  browns are what I am thinking for the rest of the main part of the basement.  I am leaning towards the darker color but I know the lighter color would look to--the lighter color is very similar to the color we have in the family room.

Now the picture below this is what we are thinking for what is now known as the "red room" or "pool room". We are talking about making it a Hokie/play room.  Hokie room meaning all of the random Hokie stuff we have to go on the walls etc. and of course the colors of the walls.  (as an aside we have Hokie things we have never put up in this house like a very cool VT Hokies neon sign and a huge Hokie bird stain glass thing)  They are going to mount chair rail in the room and have one color on top and another on the bottom.  I think it should be orange on the top and maroon on the bottom but I just don't know which would look best.  These colors are very close to the colors in this magnet.  Evan has the official color mix from the VT website but the guy at Sherwin Williams looked at me like I was from Mars when I told him that.  ;)  What do you think?

New layout in the basement?

I spent part of the morning today measuring the spaces in our basement.

My first idea was to put the TV over where the toys currently are.  Unfortunately there is a large pillar nearby that makes it impossible to place the couches there.  Darn--I wanted to get the TV and various other electronics as far away as that stinking door as I could.

The next idea is to move the TV to the large wall to the right of the door.  It "could" work there but the distance from the TV to the couch won't be as much as it is now and I know Evan wants it "just right".  It would get the TV away from the danger zone of that door though and the speakers probably wouldn't have to be moved. 

The only other idea for the TV is to keep it where it is.  Not really a fan of this option but if Evan wants to keep the couches as far from the TV as possible it's really the best option.

I think we are really considering moving ALL of the toys into the red room where the pool table currently resides.  Everything would fit nicely in there and then we would have a place for everything AND be able to just close the door to the mess-lol.  The pool table will fit perfectly in the area where the toys are right now.  So we don't "have to" get rid of it.  Maybe we would play more pool if it were "right there".  ;)

The other change is that I am hoping I can move the bed in the basement bedroom so that you can walk around it on both sides.  ;)  I measured it and it "may" work but we won't really know until we try to move it.  If it does work I will see about mounting the TV that is down there to save some space in that room as well.  The room is small and very oddly shaped thanks to the furnace and AC being in that wall.

Stay tuned for some decisions and pics when we start getting contractors in here!