Sunday, February 10, 2013

Hutch Makeover

Since we moved into our new place, we have been seriously lacking in the furniture department. We decided that each month we would try to buy one new piece of furniture until we finally finished up and were able to fill all of our new rooms. We really struck gold at the end of January. After some major Craigslisting, I stumbled across a hutch that I knew would be PERFECT and for a steal of only $50.00! We called up the sellers straight away and sent Clint into the city the next day to pick it up.

When it got home, we were so surprised at the great shape that it was in for the deal that we had got. But, in typical fashion, I decided that it needed a little paint and a little lovin. So I went right to work. Here are some of the before shots. Unfortunately, I got a little too excited and didn't get to grab too many good pictures.

Clint decided our hutch made a better storage bench.....

Doors and drawers removed

Removed the glass doors and the glass center shelf
 We headed to Home Depot to get the supplies to strip the wood and get the paint. Instead, we discovered an awesome new kit made by Rustoleum. For anyone who is needing to paint some furniture I HIGHLY recommend it. The kit comes with everything you need to paint your furniture. It has a cleaner, the paint which can be tinted to over 20 colors, a glaze and a gloss cover. You get all this for less cost and less work than buying the traditional stripper and paint and it was so easy!

You start by wiping down the entire piece with the wood cleaner. This basically gets all the gunk off the piece. Then, you use the bonding paint. I ended up putting on two coats of black paint on mine to make sure everything was covered. Once the paint was dry, I did some light sanding around all the edges to get that worn and distressed look. It was already looking beautiful!
Black paint going on the doors

First coat of black

First coat of black on both pieces

BEAUTIFUL!! Two coats of black and some light sanding

Since we had decided to paint our piece black, we were able to skip the glaze and head straight onto the top coat. It only took a few hours to dry and we were all set to go. Because everything was made so easy with our handy new kit, it only took me about 8 hours to do all of this work! So awesome! I could hardly wait to get it moved inside and decorated. I am seriously in love with this piece. It turned out better than I could have imagined. Now we just need to get a new dining room table and some chairs and we will be all set!


Terrible light but seriously, how beautiful is this?!

Droolingggg! Now just to get some more things to decorate with!

Dining room finally starting to come together <3 

New door hardware

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!
Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! Until next time!

XOXO,

Kate & Clint

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thank you Pinterest!

If you haven't been on Pinterest, you haven't lived. Period. End of story. Pinterest helped me plan almost every detail of my wedding and now that that's over, it helps me cook, clean and decorate our house. I had seen a project a couple of different times that I had been curious to try, so last Sunday I decided to give it a shot. Office stores like Office Depot or Staples sell what they call "engineering sized prints." Basically these are HUGE prints that you can get for like ZERO dollars. Seriously. I felt like I was stealing from them. The largest size you can get is a 3" x 4". I was looking for a large picture to go over our new fireplace, so we decided on one of our wedding pictures and I headed off to our local Staples to get it printed.

I selected a 2" x 3" and was so blown away by the quality of the print. You can only get them in black and white, but that totally wasn't a big deal to me. My next stop was over to home depot to pick up some foam board to mount the picture on. Pinterest instructed me to pick up a sheet of foam insulation and have it cut into the size you need. I pick up one piece of insulation and had a very helpful man cut it into 3 3" x 4" sections. The whole piece of foam cost about $10.00. I also grabbed some spray glue while I was there to use to glue the photo down. When I got home, I had Clint help me cut down one of the sheets of insulation to be the right size.

I love having a handy man around!

This is the part where I forgot to take pictures, and the part where I learned a tip that wasn't covered on pinterest. When gluing the picture down, I started on the left side and sprayed the glue in about five inch sections so that I could slowly lay the picture down and wouldn't get any nasty air bubbles. I continued to spray and lay until I reached the far right side. Then, we just had to flip the picture over, duck tape a piece of wire in a loop shape and it was ready to go! The only place where I will do something differently next time is that I will be sure to not spray the entire board in glue and just spray the outer areas. By spraying the entire board down, it warped slightly and now has a little bend to it, but I don't mind it right now. The picture looks BEAUTIFUL and all together only cost about $15.00 total! Such a steal!! 


Sorry about the yucky camera, but look at that beautiful picture!

Until next time!

Xoxo,

Clint & Kate


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Our first Southern Adventure

One of the things that we had been most looking forward to when we found out we would be moving to Georgia, was the proximity of where we would be living to so many neat places. We are only about a 30 minute drive to downtown Atlanta, a two hour drive to North Georgia, a two and a half hour drive to Savannah a 4 hour drive to Panama City and Hilton Head and only 6 hours from Disney! Our plan coming down here was to be sure to take at least one weekend trip per month to explore our new surroundings. With all of the hustle and bustle of getting our stuff settled, we decided that our January trip would be up to the city to explore. So, we called upon our trusty tour guide from afar, Lori Timm. Lori and I worked together a few years ago and have remained close friends and she is basically an expert on all things off the beaten path about Atlanta.

For our first visit, we decided to focus mainly on food and drink with one extra stop thrown in. We drove up to the city in the early afternoon and made our first stop at Six Feet Under across from Oakland Cemetery. As far as we are concerned, this is a must go for anyone in the Atlanta area looking for a unique place to eat. You have the option to eat indoors or outdoor on the upper deck overlooking the beautiful historical cemetery. We feasted on alligator bites, catfish poboys, and buffalo chicken sandwiches all washed down with a couple of cool drinks.


Biggest catfish po'boy in the history of po'boys!


Our next stop was to hop on over to the Oakland Cemetary where Bobby Jones, the legendary golfer as well as Margaret Mitchell Marsh, the author of Gone With the Wind are buried. It was an architecturally beautiful place, that you could simply get lost for hours in. However, with the temperatures reaching almost 80 on that beautiful January day, Clint and I decided to take a quick tour only and then make our way to another refreshment stop.




Bobby Jones

Margaret Mitchell Marsh

Beautiful overlook of Downtown

After we finished up at Oakland, we headed over to the Georgia Tech campus to a little bar and grill called Cyprus. Since it was such a beautiful day, we selected a seat out on the patio and enjoyed the weather and each other. We can't thank Lori enough for being such a great tour guide even all the way from Germany. We are really loving the city and will probably be spending many more weekends exploring its many neighborhoods! 

The view from Cypress

Until next time!

Xoxo, 

Clint & Kate


    

Sunday, January 13, 2013

New house = New Stuff

I am learning very early on, that marriage is truly all about compromise. It is about sometimes having to do things that you don't want to do in order to make sure that your spouse is happy. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing that makes me smile bigger and feel better then when I know Clint is happy. Which is exactly how I ended up with some new things that weren't exactly my first choice, but have already started to grow on me.

When we moved from the apartment, we did not have a washer and dryer. We know coming into the new house that this is something that we would need to purchase. Call me old school, but I was totally content with my top load washer and dryer with only a couple settings and none of those fancy platforms. However, apparently my husband was not so impressed with my squeaky ways. Long story short, we ended up picking out a new pair of front load appliances from Sears. I have to say, he was right. They are very nice and I finally feel like we've moved into the 21st century. 

Pretty new washer and dryer
The second compromise that I have made since being in the new house was one that did not go down so easily. We knew that we wanted to get a larger couch to put in the living so we could move the smaller couch out into the formal living room area where there wouldn't be as much traffic. As a woman, I thought that a couch, love seat and an overstuffed chair would look fabulous. My husband thought that we needed a sectional sofa with plenty of room, lots of recliners and maybe some cup holders. Such a typical man. Cue marital battle. We went to store after store after store and could not agree on one piece of furniture. Clint had fallen for a large dark suede sectional and I was lusting over a lighter burlap inspired couch and loveseat. Usually my husband is very flexible and easy going. But, not this time! It took me some time, but I finally decided that if it was that important to him that we get the couch that he liked, I would suck it up and buy it. And so we did. And as I type, I am reclining back on my comfy sectional wondering why on earth I don't listen to my husband more often. (Don't repeat that). Until next time!




Xoxo,

Clint & Kate

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Happy Birthday To Me!

Oh yeah, in the midst of all that crazy moving, I had a birthday! I am now officially a quarter of a century old. Or as Clint would say, just a day closer to putting me in a home. He's the best husband ever. Since I had such a terrible day on the 28th, we celebrated my birthday by pretending it was actually on the 29th. We had dinner at the French Market in Locust Grove which is one of our favorite places now. 

Yummy peanut butter cupcake
Also, I am so beyond blessed with two little angels for cousins. I mean seriously!! Come on, have you ever seen two more adorable little ladies?! They are such a wonderful part of our lives. I was surprised with this adorable video on my phone from them. I just love them to pieces!


Monday, January 7, 2013

Boxes, and paper, and junk! Oh my!

When December 31 finally rolled around, I woke up with a little more pep in my step. It was finally "officially" moving day. The movers who had taken our stuff over two weeks ago were finally set to arrive at our house with all of our stuff. We figured it would be a pretty quick process. We didn't really have that much stuff and not too much of it would need to be moved upstairs. Boy were we wrong! I am still sitting here wondering where the heck did all of this junk come from and how on earth did we store it all in our tiny apartment?! And then I start to have flashbacks of our guest room bursting at the seams and I push it all back into the back of my mind....so frightening.

Boxes piled to the ceiling in the formal living room
More boxes stacked to the ceiling in the guest bedroom
Overall, the unpacking process was fairly smooth with the only downside being the fact that it was still FREEZING in our house. But picking up boxes and moving furniture and all of the other activities throughout the day helped to keep the blood flowing. The number one thing we learned - the moving company didn't play around when it came to wrapping your fragile items.

The paper mountain begins
They must have killed an unbelievable amount of trees just to send us to Georgia! Such a waste. Not that I'm complaining that none of our stuff got broken. It was such a blessing to have my family down there to help us unpack. My mom is a master unpacker. She set to work straight away on the kitchen.

Before I knew it, it was slowly starting to resemble the kitchen that we had left behind in Peoria! My heart started to smile and I just felt that we were going to be very happy here. The first day of unpacking was very successful and we made a lot of progress. Clint kept especially busy as the paper smasher.


Please enjoy a few more photos of our brand new house in its very primitive state. I can't wait to start sharing new pictures with you as we make it feel more like a home!
Formal dining room looking into the formal living room
Master Bedroom

Living Room
Until next time!

Xoxo,

Clint & Kate

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Ice, Ice Baby

When we woke up on the 29th of December and headed over to the Hampton City Hall to turn on our utilities, all seemed right in the world. We were in our new home, my family was down there with us to help us get settled in and all of our belongings were going to be delivered on the 31st. However, once we left the Hampton City Hall, all was a mess in the world! The gas was not administered through the city like we had originally thought. Instead, we had to contact a gas marketer and they had to contact Atlanta Gas Light and they had to come out and turn our heat on! What a disaster. So we called up the gas company that our Realtor recommended and were told that the earliest they would be able to send someone out to turn on the gas would be January 3......WHAT?! No heat, no stove and no hot water for six more days. This had to be a joke. We fought, we pushed and tried to make up an emergency that would qualify us to receive emergency gas turn on service with no luck.

This news wouldn't have been as terrible, if it wasn't unseasonably cold in Georgia. Our house was hovering right around a cool 49 degrees when we had gone to check on it that morning. With no light at the end of the tunnel, we decided that the only solution for us was to buy a space heater and hope that would help. My parents picked one up for us and told us it was our "house warming" gift. Literally. They are so full of jokes sometimes. We needed to get in the house and get it all cleaned so that it would be ready for the movers to come on the 31st. So we cleaned. And we froze. And froze. And froze. We checked back into our hotel for an additional five days and kicked ourselves for not being more prepared. A mistake that we will not make again.

Needless to say, the arctic temperatures in the house combined with the nightmare that we had on our move down had me shaken. But, God is good all the time. Our realtor called us later that evening and let us know that she would be bringing over some more space heaters to help warm up the house and they were going to take some money off our rent for the inconvenience (which was totally unnecessary since it was our fault but still greatly appreciated). With lighter hearts, we agreed to make the best of our situation and to look forward to starting off a new year in our new home.

Thank goodness for space heaters!

A roasty toasty 52 degrees

New kitchen!

Entry way, formal living room and formal dining room (and the giant kennel purchased to fly Sarabi....grrrrr)

So cold!

Even colder!

Keeping toasty warm in the bathroom being super helpful as usual

Until next time!

xoxo,

Clint & Kate