From Deck to Flag

Happy President's Day! To celebrate, how about an American themed post for today?

When we moved into our house we knew our deck needed some love. Nails were popping up and the wood was splintering. Well, it turns out the deck needed a whole lot of love. After Kyle's foot nearly went through the wood when he stepped on it, we decided it was best to tear it down and build new. When Kyle tore it apart and we discovered all sorts of rot.

Not all of the wood was rotten. A good part of it was, but there was still some that was usable. So, of course, Kyle got to work reusing the wood. He had an idea to make an American flag. It is similar to pallet art, but instead it's tear-down-your-old-deck art. 

We opted to use a brighter red and blue color than an actual American flag. We did this because it sticks with the color scheme we have going on elsewhere in the house. We used the red for our front door, and the blue on the tree painting that is hanging in our living room.

After he assembled the wood, Kyle taped off the stripes and rolled the red paint on. To do the stars, we cut them out of cardstock, taped them into place, and Kyle rolled the blue paint on right over the top. It actually worked great! I was worried the paint might leak through, but the stars came out nice and crisp.

Here is the finished product. This thing is big. Like 6.5 feet wide big. It's pretty awesome.  It sure makes quite the statement, doesn't it?

It seems that Kyle and I have a tendency to take on a lot at one time. There is typically some sort of project in progress around here.. When Kyle was working on the flag, there were two other projects that we were also working on. Kyle used the deck wood to make a frame for his tree painting in our living room, and we bought and reupholstered an old couch which we also placed in our living room. Here is what our garage looked like with three projects in progress at the same time:

I think we need a shop... :)

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Home: Our Happy Tree on Canvas

In the 6 1/2 years Kyle and I have been married we have moved 8 times. Yes, we've moved twice in one year, two times. We have been pretty transient. College will do that to you. Now that Kyle has a "real" job, we bought a home, and we are grown up people, we are finally settling down in one place for a little bit.

We haven't ever felt compelled to do much decorating in our apartments. We knew we wouldn't be there long, so we just didn't. 1 1/2 years later, our home is still the same way. Most of the walls are bare or have one lonely picture hanging on them. It's time to change that! We're here to stay and we want to make our home feel like we belong there. 

Kyle is a designer. It is his profession, but also it is innate in him. It is what he loves to do. He has a constant flow of ideas running through his head. Not a little trickle, but a real stream of ideas. And it is starting to rub off on me as well. Kyle had an idea to create a large painting of a tree to place above the couch in our living room. 

We wanted it bright and happy. We love color! We went with lime green and as close to cyan as I could find. It is hard to find a good cyan. I was surprised at what a difficult time I had finding just the right blue. P.S. That lime green is the same green Kyle used to put an accent stripe around the sewing desk he made for me last year.

We laid out our canvases, on our guest bed of all places, down in the basement away from child hands. We put on a light coat of gesso to prime the canvas for painting. And then got to work.

I don't have any pictures to show of Kyle actually painting on the tree. My hands were full and I just didn't think to use a tripod. Kyle made a file of the artwork and using our projector, projected the image onto the wall. I held up each of the six canvases while Kyle worked quickly to paint in the image.

It turned out pretty awesome. We both love it. But, it needed a frame. Last summer, Kyle tore down our old decrepit deck, and saved the reusable wood. He took a few pieces and made a frame. 

The frame really finishes it off. What a happy tree! And that is the beginning of the never ending task of decorating our home.

Home: Painting the Front Door

We bought our house 1 1/2 years ago. It was built in 1987, which really isn't that old. I was born before then, so it can't be old! But, it has reached the age of needing updates. Mostly what it needs is a good coat of paint everywhere. One of the first places to start was our front door. Take a look at the before.

It's just so blaaaaah... and the paint is chipped to the metal. 

 I hated that when people came to our home, the first thing they saw was our old beat up front door.

The inside wasn't much better. When the previous homeowners painted the walls and trim they did a pretty sloppy job of it. They painted right on the door and the hinge! 

 I'm not a fan of the wall color, but that has to stay for now. But look, the front door is the same color. It sinks right into the wall. So boring...

My husband is awesome. Seriously awesome. He spent 1 1/2 days painting that front door. It took quite a bit longer than we originally thought it would. But it was so worth the effort. 

To start with, since the paint was chipped down to the metal, we had to strip all of the paint off the door. There it is, bare, right down to the metal. The red spots are areas where Kyle filled in a couple of larger dents in the door with some bondo (auto body filler).

Then came priming.

And then painting. Look at that bright red! We really wanted a red-orange, which it is. But it is heavier on the red side than we originally wanted. I still love it though! The color we chose was Grenadine by Behr. It was nice and bright and happy. And definitely not boring.

Now look at that happy door! Isn't that more inviting?  

We even painted the inside the same color. I love the pop of color it adds. It was definitely needed.

And now our house is easier to find. It's the one with the bright red door! (Yes, we still need to paint the trim. It's somewhere on our long list of updates to make.)

Our New Food Storage Room

We are so lucky to have a room in our basement we can dedicate to food storage. I’ve wanted to build up a supply of food for a while now, but we just haven’t had the space to do it. Now we can!

Kyle and I talked about getting a freezer for a few months. It was something we wanted, but decided it wasn’t something we could do immediately. Before Keira was born I was really hoping to be able to do some freezer meal cooking. I knew I’d be short on time, patience, and sleep. I didn’t want to throw meal planning into the mix as well. But, the freezer in our refrigerator was already pretty full. There would be hardly any room for pre-made meals.

One day, a few weeks before Keira was born I was surprised with a phone call from my in-laws asking if I’d be around that afternoon and informing me to expect a delivery. They surprised me with an upright freezer for Christmas! Kyle, the little stinker, had been plotting with his parents to surprise me. I was so excited! It came in time for me to make my freezer meals. Hooray!

Before we hooked up the freezer and stocked it, we decided to spruce up the room. It needed some major touch up.

Before.

The concrete floor was stained with paint and whatever else. There wasn’t any trim installed and there were gaps between the sheetrock and the floor. There were a few holes in the wall- one where we’re pretty sure some little mice friends of ours had come through. (Yes! Mice! We caught 5 mice in a two week period earlier this fall. I was disgusted and afraid we’d have to call an exterminator. Luckily they finally stopped showing up.) The mice had left some little presents to remind us of them on the floor, which we of course didn’t want anywhere near our food. The walls were dinged and marked up by who knows what. The room really was pretty sad. There was some existing shelving, but it wasn’t well constructed, and it didn’t fit into our layout of housing a freezer in the room. Kyle reused the wood from those shelves to make some new shelves for general storage in our utility room.

So, Kyle and I decided to gift ourselves a new food storage room. We spent way too much time at Lowe’s, Home Depot, and online looking at flooring. Way too much time. To the point that I was dreaming about it at night. Who knew there was so much to think about and consider. We obviously didn’t. We finally decided on a vinyl adhesive flooring from Home Depot that we could install directly over the concrete. We bought the flooring one evening and Kyle laid it that very same night. He knew I wanted to get the freezer running so I could stock it before Keira was born. He worked hard and fast. He really amazes me sometimes. Ok, pretty much all the time.

New freezer and new floor.

We really should have painted before laying down the flooring, but my mom was staying in the room right next to this room and we didn’t want to inundate her with fumes. After she left Kyle finished the room by giving it a fresh coat of paint with paint we already had in the garage. He then installed trim and new shelving. It looks and feels tons better!

After.

I love it! We have plenty of space to store food, water, and other emergency essentials.

Part of my parent’s Christmas gift to us this year was a start on our food storage. They supplied us with some staple items like flour, rice, oats and salt. A couple of the local grocery stores had case lot sales, so I was able to buy a few cases of some canned goods that we use. We finally have some food storage. Yay!

One more look:

By the way, my mom helped me make and freeze a bunch of meals. It has been a great help. I haven’t had to make many trips to the grocery store or worry over making meals. It’s been fantastic!

Reversible Quilt

When we moved into our house Kyle insisted we upgrade to a new bed. Our old mattress was cheap and the frame moved- a lot. Kyle always got the best sleep when I was gone. Apparently I move around too much.

We have a spare bedroom in the basement, so we put our old bed down there for guests to use. When we did that I also moved our bedding down there with it. We have been using the same quilt for the past 5 years. Love the quilt- but I am so tired of it. Time for a change!

For the first couple of months we slept with just a sheet set on the bed. It was warm enough we didn’t need any more bedding. But, now that it’s gotten colder, much colder, we need a quilt!

The color scheme of everything in our house is brown and aqua blue. Our wedding colors were brown and aqua blue. I am so done with brown and aqua blue. Kyle agrees. That means we were in need of a new color scheme- at least for our bedroom. I wanted to stick fairly neutral, but still wanted some fun color somehow. We chose to go with white, gray, and highlight with cyan blue.

Knowing that I would eventually tire of looking at the quilt, I chose to make it reversible, which was super simple. I didn’t do any quilt piecing, so the front and the back instantly had the same look, just different colors.

White on one side, gray on the other, with cyan blue binding. When I tire of gray, I can flip it over and enjoy white.

To try to keep the cost down (quilts can be expensive to make!), I bought two queen sized flat sheets from WalMart for $11.47 each. Not a bad price for all of that fabric. It may not be the highest quality fabric, but it’ll do for now. I bought my batting from JoAnn’s on sale for 40% or 50% off. It ended up being about $15 for queen sized batting. The cyan fabric I purchased at WalMart for about $3 a yard. Overall I spent approximately $40- $45. To sew and customize a queen sized quilt exactly how I want it, I’d say that’s a decent price.

Just a note- if you do decide to do something similar, make sure queen size is big enough for your bed. We don’t have a box spring. Our mattress sits on an IKEA bedframe with wood slats for support. Because of that, our bed isn’t as thick as others, so a queen sized sheet was enough fabric to adequately cover the bed (and us while we sleep).

I got a little fancy with the quilt, and tried out sewing with one thread color in the needle, and another in the bobbin. I really wanted the white to be white, and the gray to be gray. I think it worked out pretty good!

It is difficult not to have one thread color show up on an opposite side. Playing with the tension on your machine can help reduce it. I messed around a little bit and just set it to what I could accept the most. So, if you look close, there are little spots of white on the gray.

But you do have to get up pretty close to notice it. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me one bit.

If you’ve ever quilted, you know it’s important to baste the quilt really well before you quilt it. (Basting is pinning the front, batting and back together. You lay everything as flat and straight as you can, and pull it tight. I used safety pins to pin all 3 layers together. This is to prevent the fabric from shifting while you quilt.) I knew this, but basting, on the floor, while pregnant is difficult and uncomfortable. I think ideally you should baste about every 6 inches. I did more like every 18” or 1.5 feet. And, because of it, the quilt puckered in a few places.

Kyle was nice enough to help me unpick some of the lines where the puckers were the worst. That took forever and was super tedious. I knew there were some left, but I just closed my eyes and pretended I didn’t see them. So, lesson learned- baste really well. There is good reason for it!

I love our new quilt! It just makes me happy. And so do those blue pillows. I’ll show you how I made them in another post.