Hey there! I'm finally back for an update on the kitchen renovation. A lot of progress has been made since the initial update I gave a few weeks ago, you can check that out here for a refresher.

The flooring is completely installed. We had initially thought we'd keep the tile in the entryway but I'm so glad we decided to put wood there too. We haven't caulked along the baseboards and touched up the paint yet.

All of the cabinets have been installed! We ended up changing our minds on the original cabinet plan and layout. The fridge wall was originally going to have two sets of drawer cabinets but when we put the second set into place it was just too crowded. It had also been the plan to have open shelving in that area. Pretty much as soon as cabinet installation started I knew that open shelving wasn't going to be the right fit for us. So I went back to Lowe's and we ended up ordering an angled 12-inch base cabinet, a glass front upper cabinet, and an upper wine rack.

I love the way the updated cabinet design worked out! It finally gave me that "jumping for joy" feeling. :) I maybe clapped. And then ran to grab a bottle of wine to put in the rack!

We've also added all the appliances back into the room. It's been nice to have the microwave and fridge back in their spots. The old ugly fish eye lights have been replaced with LED can lights. I also finally decided on a countertop. Loren sort of left the counters up to me and I went full on crazy lady trying to make that choice. But! I did it, and the counters should be installed this week.

Still on the to-do list is picking and installing a backsplash and cabinet hardware. Also, picking out a faucet! Haha! :) The trim work still needs to be installed as well. Hopefully we're just a few weeks away from being finished. I joked and said hopefully we'd be done by our birthday (mid-July) but it's actually seeming like a real possibility! Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Have a good week friends!

Love,
K

How to Install LED Recessed Lights

While we've been working on our kitchen it became very obvious that our existing lighting was not going to cut it. We had these fish eye lights which are useful if you want to direct light in a specific direction but a bit unusual in the kitchen. Also...ours were filthy. An electrician was over to do some different work and mentioned that I could replace the fish eye lights with these LED recessed lights. I hadn't heard of such a thing but took a peek next time Loren and I were at Lowe's. Take a look (link here)...

The nice guy at Lowe's gave me a quick run down on how to swap out the lights and then Loren gave me some step by step instructions. BUT! I swapped them all out on my own! I feel pretty accomplished about it, but it truly is super easy.

First things first, turn the breaker off for the area you're working on. Then take out all the existing lightbulbs. Now you're ready to actually switch the light fixtures.

Next step is to remove the old light. For our lights I just had to get a grip on the trim of the existing fixture and then tug on it a bit. It can feel like you're pulling on the lights too hard but they're just held in place by some metal spring type things. Once you're done it should look like this.

Up next, take the portion of the new retrofit lights that looks like the bottom of a light bulb and then screw it into the socket.

Now all you have to do is tuck the socket and wires up into the opening in the ceiling. Once everything is in place, push the light into the housing. Again, there are friction clips that hold the light into place so just push it into place and make sure it's snug and not moving around.

That's it! Once you get all the lights in place, you can turn the breaker back on and admire your handy work.

I love how the lighting looks in the kitchen now. And since the new lights are LED we shouldn't have to change them while we're still living here. :) Being so close to the ceiling did make me realize that it probably needs to be painted sooner rather than later...that's thrilling news. If you're in the market for some updated recessed lights I'd encourage you to check these out, and let me know!

Hope you liked this little tutorial today! Enjoy the rest of the week friends!

Love,
K

Kitchen Reno: Part 1

Hi friends! I mentioned last month that we were about to get started with the kitchen renovation at our house and thought I'd finally provide an update. Let's start at the beginning...these are listing pictures but the only real changes were pictures taped to the fridge, and our cowboy pig cookie jar on the counter. :) There's going to be a lot going on so I figured I'd break the posts down and try to share in real time as much as possible. Today it's pretty much all about demo...

We're replacing the flooring, cabinets, counters, and back splash. The plan was to do the demo portion ourselves to help with the budget. A few weeks ago Loren removed all the cabinets and we started removing the tile. Thankfully a friend came and helped with that because he was way more successful at breaking up the tile than I was! We used a Bagster for all the debris and it was so easy. I'd highly recommend it if you're going to have a lot of construction materials that are heading to the dump. We were able to get all the tile up and then decided to have the flooring installation crew finish the demo of the subfloor.

It was a bear! They worked on the floor for days getting it ready for the flooring to get installed. The subfloor under the tile had been glued AND stapled over linoleum.

And here's a sneak peek of the flooring getting installed!

It's so exciting. All of the flooring is in now but the trim work isn't happening until next week because some piece needed was on backorder. We also have started installing a few cabinets in places where we can. Hopefully I'll be back with prettier photos and updates next week. And keep your fingers crossed that I can make a counter top decision within the next couple days. :) Hope you're having a good week!

Love,
K

Under Cabinet Lighting

I've always been interested in adding under cabinet lighting to our kitchen cabinets. I think it looks nice, and with our floor plan I thought it would be nice to add a little more light without having to just leave on the kitchen lights...too harsh for night time movie watching. :) The trouble with under cabinet lighting though, is it's expensive. I'd seen several different options or kits but they were all in the $100 range and I just wasn't interested in spending that much. Enter Ikea. I was there browsing one day and came across this:

The best part? This light set was $30! I knew it would take a little bit more effort to set up since it wasn't meant for cabinets but I thought it was worth a try for the price.

The lights are actually pretty cool. You can customize how you connect them which allows you to fit them to your designated area (a gal I encountered at the store actually used the lights behind her TV). There are these connector pieces that you use to lengthen your row of lights and then they all hook to this hub looking thing for power. (Sorry about the pictures, Loren actually did most of the work while I was gone one day but was sweet enough to snap some cell phone pics for me to share)

We laid out the lights on the counter before attaching them to the cabinets just so we could mess with the sizing without having to remove the adhesive every time. The actual installation is really simple, there's little sticky pads on the back of the lights so you just peel and stick. The cords were a bit trickier. I ended up slicing some 3M strips to match the width of the cords and using that. At first I just used a few pieces and after awhile the cords started to sag, but I added more so basically the entire cord was supported by 3M strip and it seems to be holding up well. There's a few strategically placed thumb tacks keeping the cords in place too.

You like those blue paint leftovers?! The kitchen was a lovely baby blue color when we moved in so I don't know when that bright primary blue color was used. Anyway, this is the hub that you connect all the light stick pieces into for power. I think I mentioned before that there are extension pieces in the light set so it's pretty easy in a relatively small space to get all your lights connected.

The hub (as I call it) attaches to the power cord, and to power the lights our wonky cupboards actually came in handy. Since we don't have an actual corner cabinet, there's open space in that area. So we just plugged the lights in at the nearest outlet and tucked the switch up into the cupboard. Yeah, we have to open the cabinet door to turn the lights on and off but it's really not that big of a deal for us. Especially considering how much money we saved using this little cheapo set.

I love the nice glow it adds to the kitchen. At night when we're in the living room area we can just leave the under cabinet lights and sink light on and it's perfect.

Does anyone else have cabinet lighting? I love it and wish we would've installed it years ago! Let me know what you think in the comments! xoxo, K

Overhead Lighting Upgrade

A couple years ago I updated the light above our kitchen sink to have a pendant light, rather than the recessed light that had been there since we moved in. We've been digging the nice glow from the pendant light every since then.

But yesterday we made a trip to Lowe's for something completely unrelated to light fixtures but I happened to come across this little guy.

What's sort of funny about it, is that on the shelf at Lowe's it was right next to our existing pendant shade which made it all that much easier for me to decide to take home the new shade. I realized that our current cover had a lot of gold/yellow tones to it and I didn't really care for that. And I really loved the nice texture that this other pendant cover had. So for just for $20 I brought it home.

The installation was super easy but did take both hands so I don't have any pictures. It was just remove light bulb, unscrew old pendant, screw on new pendant, and replace the light bulb. Lots of lefty-loosey, righty-tighty. Here's the new cover shining bright:

And a quick before and after:

I'm loving the new cover!! Usually I have something that still irks me when I switch things out but this time I just love it, and feel like it's such an improvement over the last cover. It's so nice when you can be happy with a quick and easy update! Let me know what you think in the comments below!

A Little Bit of Whimsy

I wanted to show you a quick little change I recently made to our kitchen towels; just to add a little whimsical touch to them. I decided to add some pom-pom trim to the kitchen towels we already had so this was a cheap project too! The spool of trim was $3.99 at JoAnn's, and I'm sure it was either on sale or I used a coupon.

The first step was to wash all the kitchen towels so they were ready for their makeover. After that I ironed both the towels so the edges were nice and smooth.

Next it was time to get the sewing machine out. My sewing machine and I have a love/hate relationship. When I manage to get that sucker to do what I want, I love it. Otherwise, we're not friends. I also noticed after taking a sewing class with fancy sewing machine that it really does make a difference. Anyway, off topic. I pinned the pom-poms in place along the edge of my towel and was ready to go.

You'll notice that my pins were going in both directions and that's because neither way was working all that well. I started sewing hoping it would somehow work and it did. With no pins at all. The easiest way to sew the trim on was to just go slow and guide it along the edge of the towel. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the sewing but you get the idea; line the two pieces up and sew. :) My lines aren't perfectly straight, but you can't tell one bit. That's my kind of sewing! 

Here's the towel hanging on the oven. I love it!

That's the quick little update I made in the kitchen. It's not a big change but it makes me happy when I see the little pom-poms there. I was thinking that you could easily make these for a housewarming gift for a friend or family member...cheap, cute, and easy! Do you like the new trim? Anyone else been adding trim to their textiles? I feel like I've been seeing pom-poms all over Instagram! 

P.S. Just a quick note about the amount of trim needed - one spool from JoAnn's was enough for one towel, edging both sides. 

Bronzed

The other day I noticed that our paper towel holder was looking pretty ugly. I mean, not that I've ever seen a pretty paper towel holder but ours was looking extra ugly. It dawned on me it was because it stuck out so much in our kitchen.

Everything else is darker and the light wood tone just wasn't working for me...seemed like the perfect occasion to try out some oil-rubbed bronze spray paint. I've heard lots of good things about ORB so I was pretty excited to give it a try. I chose the Rust-oleum Universal Paint & Primer in One.

I got everything setup in the garage to start spraying. I had to rig the post that the towels go on from the ceiling. I couldn't figure out how to get the spray paint on all the surfaces at the same time other than hanging it. I was pretty impressed with my zip-tie skills. Haha! It worked like a charm though; I was able to get nice even coats on all sides and leave it hanging to dry.

Here's the finished product back in the kitchen. Great improvement I think! It's obviously not the most exciting thing in the world...since it holds paper towels but it looks a lot better!

I do really love the finish though. It's amazing how bronze it actually looks since it's just a spray paint. I sort of want to spray everything I see with it. Anyone else been on an ORB kick lately? If you have the urge I'd totally recommend this paint. Let me here about your projects in the comments.

Bon Appetit

This weekend I picked up the cutest little sign for the kitchen. I was at Z Gallerie browsing around and remembered seeing this little gem on their website.There are a ton of word options in this design but I loved the bon appetit version the first time I saw it online and those feelings were only confirmed in real life. So, I snatched that bad boy up! I'd been dealing with an awkward art situation in our kitchen. We had a map of Montana. We're not from Montana. We don't live in Montana. It was a gift idea gone wrong, I put the frame there to test the size, and then it stayed for a very long time.


Anyway, I decided to remove Montana from the kitchen. I nailed my new little sign up under the cabinets, put our jar of licorice back, and loved it.



It's such a small little thing but it makes me happy every time I look at it. What do you think? Have you added any new artwork in your home recently?

Let there be light!

While Loren was gone last week I decided to tackle a few home projects. Sometimes its easier for me to work when he's not around to distract me with his cuteness! :) I'd been wanting to put in a pendant light above our kitchen sink and decided to take the plunge. We have recessed lighting in our kitchen so I wasn't exactly sure how to do it but figured going to Lowe's was a good start.



And what do you know?! Lowe's had just the product I needed! A recessed lighting conversion kit! WAHOO!! I should've bought a lotto ticket the same day because I couldn't believe how lucky I was to find such an easy solution. I also picked out a shade that I thought would look good with the rest of our kitchen decor.



I got the pieces out and looked over the directions. It was a super easy installation. First, you just remove the existing light bulb. Then you unscrew the cord stopper from the new pendant fixture and unscrew this little piece on the back cover. This allows you to adjust the cord length to whatever you need for your area. Once you're done adjusting the cord length then you screw the white plastic screw back into space.





Next step is to hang the electrical fixture into the existing light socket. It goes in just like a light bulb would - easy peasy. Sorry about the not great picture, I was standing on the counter and trying to balance the light and hold the camera...it was a little tricky.



Then you push the pendenant base up to cover the plastic from the recessed lighting hole. Once you've lined it up you tighten the cord stopper which holds the base in place on the ceiling.



All that's left is to install the shade. It goes on just like any other shade/bulb - there's a plastic ring that is removed and then replaced to hold the shade in place. That's it! All done!




I really like it, and it was such a simple spruce up. It casts a pretty glow in the kitchen without being overpowering. The longer it's up and on the more I like it!